Robert Burns | BBC Sounds - In Our Time www.bbc.com/audio/play/m...

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“John Barleycorn” is believed to be one of Robert Burns’s earliest productions, based on its appearance in the poet’s First Commonplace Book. You can listen to “John Barleycorn” on the @glasgowburns.bsky.social website, sung by Bill Adair #folksong #ballad #C18 burnsc21.glasgow.ac.uk/john-barleyc...

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John Barleycorn was a hero bold, Of noble enterprise, For if you do but taste his blood, ’Twill make your courage rise… —Robert Burns, “John Barleycorn: A Ballad”. Based on “the old song that goes by this name”, it celebrates the harvest – & the whisky from the grain #WyrdWednesday #poem #C18

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James Cunningham, 14th Earl of Glencairn – one of Burns’s patrons – had given Burns a diamond-tipped pen, & there are numerous engravings by (or at least attributed to) Burns around Scotland. The Rozelle House Galleries have what might be the thing itself: www.futuremuseum.co.uk/collections/...

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Burns returned later & broke the window, worried about the possible political fallout – but he was too late: it had copied down & published. Burns describes being visited by “a great person” & interrogated “like a child about my matters, & blamed & schooled for my inscription on a Stirling window”

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