Profile of the Day: Robert Burns

Do you have Scottish ancestry? On this day in 1759, Scottish poet Robert Burns was born in Alloway, Scotland.

Image: Robert Burns / Library of Congress

The eldest son of William Burns and Agnes Brown, Burns spent his early years working on farms and received little formal education while growing up. However, his parents encouraged him to read and he found writing to be an escape from the hard labor of farming.

In 1786, a collection of Burns’s poems was published for the first time in Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. The collection became an immediate hit and soon his name was known throughout the country. A pioneer of the Romantic movement, Burns not only wrote his own original lyrical poetry, but also collected, and often adapted, many Scottish folksongs. His poem, “Auld Lang Syne,” was set to the tune of an old Scottish folksong, and has become the traditional song to sing in celebration of the New Year.

Today, Burns is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and his birthday is celebrated worldwide as “Burns Night.”

Explore Robert Burns’s family tree on Geni and share how you’re related to the Scottish poet.

View Robert Burns’s Geni Profile