Robert Burns wrote about art, friendship, religion, animals, drink, marriage and love. The First two and the last of these themes - poetry, sociability and sexual adventure, to call them by other names - commemorate activities which enabled him in youth, as did his drinking, to face the prospect of a lifetime's hard labour on the land. After just such a life, his own auld farmer addressed his auld mare in these words:

LRB 6 August 1981 | PDF Download