This is my first cache so I decided I'd start a gentle series around the area where my parents live.
This area in Thornton is known as 'Poet's Corner', you will see why when you make your way around the area!
Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide. Not bad for a Farmer.
I suppose being a farmer in Scotland in those days was grim work, so a bit of escapism through some poetry must have lifted his spirits. Me, I prefer to blow bubbles!
Rabbie he was a bit of a romantic, so the poetry must have done the trick. His first child, Elizabeth Paton Burns (1785–1817), was born to his mother's servant, Elizabeth Paton (1760-circa 1799), while he was embarking on a relationship with Jean Armour, who became pregnant with twins in March 1786. Burns signed a paper attesting his marriage to Jean, but her father "was in the greatest distress, and fainted away." To avoid disgrace, her parents sent her to live with her uncle in Paisley. Although Armour's father initially forbade it, they were eventually married in 1788.[7] Armour bore him nine children, but only three survived infancy.
Burns was in financial difficulties due to his want of success in farming, and to make enough money to support a family he took up a friend's offer of work in Jamaica, at a salary of £30 per annum. The position that Burns accepted was as a bookkeeper on a slave plantation. This seems inconsistent with Burns' egalitarian views as typified by his writing of The Slave's Lament six years later, but in 1786 there was little public awareness of the abolitionism movement which began about that time.
At about the same time, Burns had fallen in love with Mary Campbell (1763–1786), who he had seen in the church while he was still living in Tarbolton. She was born near Dunoon and had lived in Campbeltown before moving to work in Ayrshire. He dedicated the poems The Highland Lassie O, Highland Mary and To Mary in Heaven to her. His song "Will ye go to the Indies. my Mary, And leave auld Scotia's shore?" suggests that they planned to emigrate to Jamaica together. Their relationship has been the subject of much conjecture, and it has been suggested that on 14 May 1786 they exchanged Bibles and plighted their troth over the Water of Fail in a traditional form of marriage. Soon afterwards Mary Campbell left her work in Ayrshire, went to the seaport of Greenock, and sailed home to her parents in Campbeltown.
Robert Burn's death followed a dental extraction in winter 1795. The funeral took place on Monday 25 July 1796, also the day that his son Maxwell was born.
At least I now know that Robert Burns & I share something in common - Dentists do me no favours either!
If you ain't got a pen, you ain't a real cacher... Jack.... this cache has no pen(cil) but a 'self portrait with cache' posted on your log will suffice.
The Pip-Mobile
Please note:
This cache meets the Urban Placement Guidelines