Robert Burns

It’s funny seeing the terrible fuss some Scottish people are making after Jeremy Paxman described (accurately in my view) Robert Burns’ poetry as sentimental doggerel. It often feels like a good result if one can make it through any conversation with a Scot without having to accept with good humour some sort of complaint about England or the English. Make even the slightest suggestion though that Scotland is not the mistreated heaven on earth that its natives believe it to be and you’ll be in for a lecture, and as for Scottish culture and cuisine, why it’s only the English that eat oats nowadays isn’t it?

Anyway, someone said that Mr Paxman should read more Burns so that he could understand the poet’s great insight better and it got me thinking. Isn’t it about time someone produced a decent Burns anthology in translation? All the translations I’ve ever seen make him seem prosaic and shallow when the picturesque language is stripped away. Come on Seamus Heaney, let’s settle this once and for all!