The Cotters Saturday Night

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

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Excerpt from The Cotter's Saturday Night: And Other Poems "For my own affairs, I am in a fair way of becoming as eminent as Thomas a Kempis or John Bunyan; and you may expect henceforth to see my birthday inserted among the wonderful events, in the Poor Robin's and Aberdeen Almanacks, along with the Black Monday and the Battle of Bothwell Bridge." So Burns wrote to a friend in the brief heyday of his prosperity at Edinburgh. When his last illness came upon him, and his life seemed a shipwreck, he told his wife: "Don't be afraid: I'll be more respected a hundred years after I am dead than I am at present." Both of these prophecies, the jocose and the serious, have been completely verified, for the 25th of January, 1759, Robert Burns's birthday, is a date to be found in many a list of the world's memorable events; and now that he has been dead a century, his fame lives secure with that of the great poets. His father, William Burns, at the time of the poet's birth was a gardener and farm-overseer at Alloway in Ayrshire in Scotland, and was always a poor man. Like many others of his class in Scotland, he prized highly every mental accomplishment, and gave his children, of whom the second son Gilbert was always the most closely identified with his elder brother Robert, every advantage within his limited reach. Through him an excellent teacher was brought to the village. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.