300th Anniversary yesterday

**Mike1** · 3rd May 07, 07:22 AM

Going once...

**highlander_Daz** · 3rd May 07, 08:47 AM

i guess we are nearing lockdown but i dont think its political to say that the problems that Scotland has are very little to do with the Union.- Drugs, Cancer, Heart disease, alchoholism, Neds, knife crime. Very easy to blame westminster- the Union, The English, Bonnie prince Charlie, John Knox, Tony Blair. I will be voteing for the Nats, I just hope they can keep their promises. its a critical time in Scots history.

**Dirka Skene** · 3rd May 07, 09:22 AM

You did an excellent job of explaining the poem. I would have had to read it several times if not for you.

**Phil** · 3rd May 07, 12:50 PM

Thanks. I hope it will encourage you to read some more of Burns' poetry. He was very much a man of the people as well as a true Scottish patriot.

**highlander_Daz** · 3rd May 07, 01:08 PM

Indeed he was Phil, I think his way with words is just fantastic, as a small boy my dad would take us to Dumfries on holiday we would sit fishing on the bank of Loch Ken watching the RAF fly just over the water and I had a really tatty moth eared copy of a burns poetry book wed bought from the bookshop under the tower in Kilmarnock.

"O wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursel's as ithers see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us. And foolish notion; What airs in dress and gait wad lea'e us, And ev'n devotion!"

**McClef** · 3rd May 07, 02:50 PM

Burns wasn't born until 1759, nearly 52 years after the event so he himself had no experience of what it had been like before.

He probably had access to the memories of those who had been alive in 1707 though.

History is fascinating in any event but I wonder if we see it differently when we experience it personally ourselves.