Leader: Liquor and loose women likely on Rabbie’s menu

Published on Monday 23 January 2012 12:18

ROBERT Burns has his 253rd birthday on Wednesday. If Rabbie were around today, what poem would we ask him to recite?

Thanks to a new poll, we know which of the Bard’s 559 unforgettable works modern Scots prefer.

A quarter plump for Tam o’ Shanter, written in 1790. A Man’s a Man for A’ That comes second, with 17 per cent. So the tale of an amiable drunk makes it over a poem about politics and liberty. There may be a lesson there. As has been well documented, the Bard himself was partial to a dram or two of the water of life.

His favourite malt was Ferintosh, from the Black Isle. In 1690, a certain Duncan Forbes was granted the right to produce whisky free of duty on his Ferintosh estate, as compensation for the burning of his distillery by the Jacobites. Sadly, Ferintosh ceased to be made after a change in the law in 1784, provoking Burns to a lament for his lost tipple.

It’s not clear if those polled about their favourite Burns poem were coy about their knowledge of his erotic collection, The Merry Muses of Caledonia. We suspect that if the Bard did turn up at any of this week’s Burns Suppers, he might be more inclined to tell us what Davy did with his gravy rather than orate of the fate of Tam. Especially after a glass or two of Ferintosh.

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