It’s Burns Night again!

It’s Burns Night again!

Another Burns Night has come around – as I told you last year, same time, it’s the celebration of the Scottish national poet’s birthday. https://romanceloversite.com/2018/01/25/celebrating-burns-night/

It’s Rabbie’s 260^th this year, and as always there are big events all around Scotland, and not only, all through the weekend. Which other country can boast about having a holiday for their greatest poet? And the proceedings are very solemn and traditional:

https://www.scotland.org/events/burns-night/how-to-hold-your-own-burns-supper

If – like us here in Piraeus, Greece – you haven’t got a Scottish butcher close to you and aren’t able to obtain a sheep’s stomach for a haggis, you can always do a good old-fashioned Scotch Broth; a very nutritious soup/stew made of lamb and lots of vegetables. I’ll tell you the recipe in my next post! And don’t forget to get a bottle of Scotch whisky to raise a toast to Rabbie…

Of course, what would Burns Night be without reading – and maybe even reciting – some of Rabbie’s poems? That’s basically the reason we gather together! So how about his most famous poem, Tam O’Shanter? It’ll certainly get you into a romantic winter mood! And the Robert Burns Federation provides us with an English translation, too – a great way of learning a bit of Scots…

http://www.robertburns.org.uk/Assets/Poems_Songs/tamoshanter.htm

And don’t forget some bagpipe music – namely “Auld Lang Syne”, to which Rabbie didn’t write the lyrics himself as many people think, but it’s a very old Scottish folk song and he was the first one who wrote it down. And it’s, of course, played and sung at the end of every Burns Supper!