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Burns, sometimes known as the 'ploughman poet', was the eldest son of a
poverty-stricken farmer. Though his father had moved to Ayrshire, where
Burns was born, in order to attempt to improve his fortunes, he eventually
died as a bankrupt - after taking on first one farm and then, unsuccessful,
moving to another - in . Robert, who had been to school since the age
of six, and was also educated at home by a teacher, had, by the age of
fifteen, already become the farm's chief labourer. He had also acquired a
reading knowledge of French and Latin and had read Shakespeare, Dryden,
Milton and the Bible. After his father's death, he and his brother continued
farming together, working now at Mossigiel.
The poverty of Burns' early life, though far from being overcome, had
produced in him a supporter of the French Revolution and a rebel against
both Calvinism and the social order of his time. His rebellious nature soon
became evident in his acts. Burns' first illegitimate child was borne to him by
Elizabeth Paton in . Two sets of twins later followed, and various
amorous intrigues, from Jean Amour, whom he afterward married.
It was also during this period that Burns' first achieved literary success.
Though he had thought of emigration to Jamaica as a possible way to avoid
his mounting problems, he published his Poems Chiefly in the Scottish
Dialect on July at Kilmarnock. This volume contained, among others,
'The Cotter's Saturday Night', 'To a Mouse', 'To a Mountain Daisy' and 'The
Holy Fair', all of which were written at Mossigiel. The volume brought him
immediate success.
After Burns, married in and having moved to Ellisland with his
bride, worked chiefly for James Johnson, whom he met in Edinburgh, and,
later, for George Thomson. It was for these men that Burns compiled and
added to the two great compilations of Scottish songs: Thomson's Scott's
Musical Museum and Johnson's Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for
the Voice. Alongside this work, which Burns did on an unpaid basis, he also
worked, from onward, as an Excise Officer. This allowed him to give up
farming and move to the Dumfries. He died from rheumatic fever just five
years later, having also published, again in , his last major work, a
narrative poem entitled 'Tom O'Shanter'.