https://www.nts.org.uk/visit/places/robert-burns-birthplace-museum Archives

Burns Day for Ellisland syne

25th January 202625th January 2026 funtime65

And for the day that’s in it and because it’s never brought to mind we’re marking Burns Day for Ellisland syne.

Ellisland Farm, near Dumfries in Scotland’s south-west, was where our national bard wrote the New Year’s anthem For Auld Lange Syne.

His witches’ tale Tam O’Shanter and his paean to doomed love Ae Fond Kiss.

But the only home the wordsmith actually built sits in the shadow of the National Trust village of Alloway and the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum.

Although there is a fightback by friends of Ellisland to restore the farmhouse in the Burns story.

Fair farm

It was to this little corner of Scotland where Burns at the height of his popularity had repaired to a more domestic lot.

The famously restless and spendthrift Burns had, by 1788, set his sights on the lucrative post of an Excise Officer.

And the writer settled on one of three vacant farms his trusty friend Patrick Miller had on offer.

With Burns describing 170-acre Ellisland Farm, with its view over the River Nith and orchard, as ‘the poet’s ch9ice,’

Burns’s choice was to turn it into a splendid six-apartment house, described as a “modest mansion” by visitors in 1789.

Ae Fond Nith

Walking in the footsteps: Inside Ellisland

It was here then among his new country gent set on Nithside that the Ploughman Poet was inspired to write his classic poems.

Surrounded by his ten cows, four horses and some sheep.

Of course, Burns’s native Ayrshire was never too far from his mind.

And it was while regaling himself in the sumptious surrounds of Ellisland Farm that his mind drifted back to the Alloway Kirk.

Dumfries Trail

The Ploughman Poet: In Dumfries and Galloway

And you can to this day see the gravestone of his father William.

Which Robert, brought up on spooky stories by his grandmother at the nearby cottage, used as the set for his witches’ fable.

If you want to find Robert Burns himself though then you’ll want to go back into Dumfries.

And the St Michael’s Churchyard where Robert lies for eternity with his long-suffering wife Jean Armour and some of their brood.

The Robert Burns House, another dwelling where the great man lived, on Mill Street is where he died at 37 and which is now a museum with free entry.

Other features on your Burns Dumfries Trail include the 18th century hostelry, The Globe Inn, known as ‘Burns Howff’ with poems etched on to window panes.

While the Robert Burns Centre , an 18th-century watermill on the banks of the river, features an exhibition about his life in the town.

And the Brow Well & Ruthwell, outside the town, is where Burns sought a cure for the illness which claimed his lfe.

The Immortal Memory

So we’ll tak a drink of kindness now and toast The Immortal Memory.

In truth we did so yesterday at our Burns Supper in the hoose.

And wish the Burnsophiles at Ellisland Farm good luck in their fundraising for their refurb.

With particular interest in the section reaching out to the Scots-American diaspora.

Now if only we could think of a Scots-American with deep pockets and influence who could help rebuild a big, beautiful Burns House.

America, Countries, Food

An Address to a Trumpie gie US her haggis

25th January 202525th January 2025 funtime65

And on this Burns Day. An Address to a Trumpie gie US her haggis.

You might have missed it in the avalanche of executive orders and requests to the new US President.

But Scotland’s haggis-makers are lobbying this son of a Lewis lass.

Tae reverse a 50-year ban on Scottish sheep’s lungs since Richard Nixon inexplicably took against our national dish.

Best laid plans: Of mice and wee men and wimmen

And what’s mair we’re hopeful The Donald will listen.

The Donald, of course, has his footprints, or more his golf spikes, across Scotland.

With courses in Aberdeenshire and Burns’ back yard Ayrshire.

The Scottish diaspora

Now while the 47th President may be more partial to a burger we dare say Mary Ann MacLeod Trump introduced him to the haggis when he was younger… and Burns.

The Bard has, of course, been sustenance for the Scottish diaspora.

And he has given rise to Burns Suppers proliferating around the world.

And visitors to the excellent heritage village of Alloway in Ayrshire will find the extent.

In the Statue House at the Burns Monument Gardens, Alloway.

Where an engraved stone map of the world has miniature Burns statues showing where he is celebrated.

Burns the man for a’ that

Brithers be for a’ that: With ‘The Donald’ in NY

Including of course Donaldland as he’s about to rechristen the USA but the English-speaking world in general.

Burns is also a working man’s hero in Russia too… a man’s a man for a’ that chiming with the socialist ethos.

And that is the beauty of the poet, he is something of a Mr Potatohead.

Or Mr Tattiehead as that could be translated in Scotland.

And that is not to decry Burns as he has been ambushed by socialists, capitalists and colonialists alike.

Washington and whisky

The 48th President of America: In Washington DC

Now just like in Burns’ homeland the Bard is celebrated in our own wee kitchens, in pubs and in grand estates and country houses.

And by his ain folk and by politicians, businessmen, royalty and celebrities alike.

With the St Andrews Society of Washington, DC holding their annual Burns Supper.

Just down the road from the White House at 1615 H Street NW with tickets at ¢250.

Where the good members from the American capital would be only too glad.

To have the half-Scottish 47th President and DC‘s most famous resident make the toast.

To the Immortal Memory and the members to him.

So here’s An Address to a Trumpie gie US her haggis.

Countries, UK

Every Scot is a frustrated Rabbie Burns

25th January 202425th January 2024 funtime65

And because every Scot is a frustrated Rabbie Burns and Irn-Bru drinker we’ve combined our two great passions on this the anniversary of the Bard’s birth.

Just at the same time as Irn-Bru brings Burns to life again through AI.

Here I am channeling my inner Burns with my Address to Scotland’s other national drink, in the style of The Ploughman Poet’s own Address to the Haggis.

And yes, I do both, with all the style and drama played out at every Burns Supper, big and small, across the globe.

With the odd Address to the Lassies from your kilted blogger thrown in at the St Andrew’s Society in Dun Laoghaire, back in the day in my 13 years living in Ireland.

Now, if you really want to give homage to the poet who inspired everyone from Wordsworth to Bob Dylan and beyond then, of course, visit his home village.

Alloway, in Ayrshire, which is a National Trust for Scotland jewel.

I imagine, having trod the boards with the Forth Stanza at the Edinburgh Fringe, that Rabbie would have approved.

Address to the Irn-Bru

On a pedestal: Burns on every Scot’s podium

Fair fa yir honest juicy taste
Great chieftain o’ the saft drinks race
Aboon them a’ ye tak yer place
Coke, Fanta or Sprite
Weel are ye worthy
O a’ grace
Fir ma drinkin’ armThe sparkling tumbler there ye fill
And ne’er a drap ye want tae spill
Cause when yer feelin unco ill
Wi nippin’ heid
Frae every pore whisky distilled
Last nicht ye were half-deidMa mooth begins tae salivate
At what awaits fir ma pallate
Yir bubbles explode at sic a rate
Ah take tae ma lips
And then what a glorious taste,
Ah start tae sip.

A stop for a sip

Then can for can the admen drive
The real thing maks ye feel alive
The sated thirst for which they strive
Illusionary
But here’s a drink tae refresh you
Barr’s Irn-Bru

But how tae get yir tongue roon you
So you can order Irn-Bru
An soond like a Scotsman true
It’s nae the urn ye keep for ashes
Bit cold steel iron fae bloody clashes
Wi you ken who

Gie us an Irn-Bru

Aw roon the wirld they a’ ken you
They ken yir orange an’ blue hue
As Jocks aw ask Nae Irn-Bru?
It’s made frae girders
Gawd help the man wha offers coke
There hae been murders

Or him wha says he kens the taste
And the ingredient he kens the maist
Is bubble gum, well he’s a waste o’ space
Cause men hae gaun tae their grave
Wi the secret o’ the Bru kept safe

Ye bars that mak drinking your care
And serves us up fizzy Tennents beer
That jist maks us want tae go tae the pee-er
Sae If ye wish tae grant Scots’ prayers
Gie us an Irn-Bru

Aye, enjoy your Burns supper and remember every Scot is a frustrated Rabbie Burns.

America, Countries, Europe, Ireland, Music, UK

Green Lighting megamix around the world

17th May 202117th May 2021 funtime65

It’s one of those annoying Government buzzwords so let’s claim it back with a Rainy Days and Songdays Green Lighting megamix around the world. Our favourite songs with ‘green’ in the title and the countries where they transport us.

Wales boyo

Green, Green Grass of Home, Tom Jones, Wales: Down the road I look and there runs Mary, hair of gold and lips like cherries.

Now I dare say most homes have green, green grass unless you live in a very hot country and the land is baked brown. But this just feels Welsh.

That is until you get to the rest of the song and realise that it’s a man on Death Row dreaming of home.

Maybe, Mary had a narrow escape after all. We, though will just imagine it as the beautiful Welsh valleys.

Green Cash

Forty Shades of Green, Johnny Cash: Arkansas and Ireland: The legend is that Johnny was inspired to write this County classic when he looked down from the plane at the patchwork fields of green of Ireland.

As a recruiting call for Ireland our pals at Tourism Ireland would have been proud as in true singer style Johnny namechecks everywhere on the Emerald Island.

Quite who the girl from Tipperary town with the lips like eiderdown is Johnny would never say, perhaps because June would have killed him.

Green Burns Country

Burns Cottage, Alloway,Scotland. https://www.nts.org.uk/visit/places/robert-burns-birthplace-museum

Green Grow The Rashes O, Eddi Reader: Burns and Ayrshire: The sweetest hours that e’er the old poet and ploughman prowler spent were spent among the lasses O.

The old rogue Burns was pure rock’n’roll and could pen a lyric and a tune which is probably why he is held in such high regard by the greatest singer-songwriters of the latter half of the 20th century.

With Bob Dylan, no less, crediting the Scot as his greatest inspiration.

And Henry VIII I am

Greeensleeves, King Henry VIII/Ralph Vaughan Williams, Berkshire: And another old lothario here with King Henry VIII said to have written this for Anne Boleyn.

What better tune then for an English rose to walk up the aisle to in her home county of Berkshire.

My Scary One has lost her head plenty of times since… but that’s been with me.

Vini Verde

La Boheme, Giuseppe Verdi: Prague: No, a non-green tune didn’t slip through. Giuseppe Verdi would actually be Joe Green in English.

The Milanese Verdi had the support of Gaetano Donizetti from nearby Bergamo whom he visited in Vienna which, of course, was the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

And that included Bohemia, or the current-day Czech Republic where the thing to do when you’re in Prague is take in a production at the opera house.

Poppies and Green Fields

The Green Fields of France, The Fureys and Davey Arthur, The Somme: And in the mud of the Somme the soldiers’ minds would drift off to some verdant pasture and memories of precious moments with a loved one.

Every nation sacrificed its most promising generation in No Man’s Land but for those from the furthest outposts of Empire… well, it just seems to be all the more pointless to modern sensibilities.

Eric Bogle, a Scots-born Australian, explores the pyschological cost to one survivor ‘young Willie McBride’. And it was all the more poignant after I’d seen the statue of the Scots soldier in northern France.

And another one to make you cry

Green Onions, Booker T. & the MGs: Memphis: In the home of the Blues, Memphis, Booker T & the MGs came up with their signature instrumental tune.

The story goes that the Stax house band were waiting around for the Sun artist and rockabilly singer Billy Lee Riley to turn up and developed the song.

And why Green Onions? Well Booker T. Jones self-deprecatingly said it was because green onions were the nastiest thing he could think of and something you could throw away. We never would.

Ol’ Green Eyes… well, Blue, but!

Little Green Apples, Frank Sinatra: New Jersey and New York: And a lot more digestible with this old standard covered by all the crooners.

But of all the crooners, none compare with the Boy from Hoboken, New Jersey who made it there in New York, and elsewhere.

And just like Johnny Cash from another song, Frank does his best to include the whole country, in this case America.

So a shout-out to Disneyland, Doctor Seuss in Springfield Massachussetts.

And Indianapolis where it don’t rain in the summertime and Minneapolis where it doesn’t snow when the winter comes. All of which it does to

Beret good

Ballad of the Green Beret, Sgt Barry Sadler/Dolly Parton: Take your pick, the clean-shaven All-American Boy, soldier turned actyor Barry Sadler or Miss American PIe herself, Tennessee’s Dolly.

Either way it’s flag-waving, Americana. And even if you don’t know the song you’ll recognise the tune.

Particularly if you’re a fan of Celtic FC who famously play in green and white hoops and who have adapted the song and lyrics into a favourite fans’ song With a Four-leaf Clover on My Breast.

The evergreen Cliff

Green Light, Cliff Richard, India, England, Portugal and Barbados: And there are few more wholesome and clean-cut than Our Cliff.

The evergreen Cliff belts this one out from the Seventies.

The Peter Pan of Pop who was born in India, grew up in England, and has had homes in Portugal and Barbados, though he is selling up in Bim (and yes I’m interested).

When it gets the Green Light.

America, Countries, Europe, Ireland, Music, UK

Rainy Days and Songdays – International Women

8th March 20218th March 2021 funtime65

Women I will try to express my inner feelings and thankfulness for showing me the meaning of success. – Woman, John Lennon

And on this International Women’s Day a celebration of international women in the places they celebrated.

La Vie en Paris

Edith Piaf, Paris: A solemn fan stands in contemplation at the grave of La Chanteuse in Pere Lachaise.

And gives out to the family trying to negotiate their way through the myriad streets of the huge graveyard in Paris.

Before Le Custode rang the bell on us, in our ears.

Moi? Je ne regrette rien.

La Vie en L’Ecosse

Eddi Reader, Scotland: My own wee country has produced many memorable Scottish singers and singers of Scottish songs.

But I’m picking out Eddi Reader, once of Fairground Attraction, for making Robert Burns and Old Scotland hip again.

With songs such as Jamie Come Try Me and Comin’ Through The Rye.

Scottish Warriors

Eddi learned her craft in Paris where she channeled her own Edith and then brought that vibe over to old Scots.

Old Scots translates too to our brethren and sistren in Ireland.

Where she owned the audience in my adopted town in Greystones, Co. Wicklow, and Dublin.

La Vie en New Jersey

Movie star: Debbie Harry in Union City www.imdb.con

Debbie Harry, New Jersey: Was there anyone racier for an adolescent schoolboy in the late 70s than Debbie Harry?

And when she sings in French on Sunday Girl… incrèdible!

Debbie made even the starkest landscape sing and who can forget the video of her flirting with the camera in the Union City. boatyard?

La Vie en New Orleans et Orlando

Voulez-vous coucher avec mou c’est soir?

Not an invitation, though it was to the thousand or so in Orlando’s Rising Star Karaoke Club in CityWalk, Universal Orlando.

I channeled my own Lady Marmalade there and while you’d be forgiven for knowing it wasn’t French New Orleans.

The compere was gracious enough to tell the audience that that was the way to deliver a girls’ song.

ICI, AUX FEMMES

Caribbean, Countries, Culture

Rainy Days and Songdays – Jamaica sings Burns

25th January 202125th January 2021 funtime65

Robert Burns’s greatest creations Tam O’ Shanter and Soutar Johnny sit with their tankards in the Burns Monument Gardens.

Alongside them is a carved tabletop map of the world with mini-Burns statues depicting where the poet is celebrated.

On this his birthday it is worth considering that Burns is lauded by as vastly opposing cultures as America and in Russia.

Because he was an everyman, ‘a man’s a man for a’ that’ and all that.

Ode to the Caribbean

But also in the old countries of Empire.

My guys and Burns’ guys in Alloway

Burns, proud Scot though he was, had set his sights on the Caribbean.

And he had agreed to a position as a bookkeeper in Port Antonio in Jamaica.

You see Burns’s wild lifestyle was beginning to catch up with him.

A new start

A hard drinker, he was facing penury while he was impregnating women all over Scotland.

Robert Burns

Although there was one, Highland Mary, whom he wished to take to the Indies.

O sweet grows the lime and the orange, and the apple on the pine, but a’ the charms o’ the Indies, Can never equal thine – Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary

Only for his poetry to take off at home which made him change his mind.

And continue juggling his women.

All of which took its toll, of course, and he died, still beset by money worries, at just 36.

Now if only there had been a digital work abroad scheme for Burns like we have today in the Caribbean.

Scots have left their mark all across the West Indies.

Scots in the Indies

The region of Scotland in Barbados being testament.

Glasgow Bar with owner Karl in Tobago

While any excuse to namecheck Glasgow Bar in Tobago.

Now for the day that’s in it, and your regular feature, Rainy Days and Songdays here’s a site with Burns in Jamaican patwa.

And check out this collaboration between Scots producer Kieran C Murray and Jamaican singer Brinathe 2015 Jamaica Sings Robert Burns.

Oh ye Jamaicans by name, lend an ear, lend an ear!

SLAINTÉ

Asia, Countries, Europe, Food & Wine, Ireland, UK

Jimuary, Ginuary, Veganuary, Japanuary

8th January 20218th January 2021 funtime65

And whatever you’re having yourself… January is after all what we make it.

Jimuary in Scotland

And for me and all of us of a Scottish disposition then January is Robert Burns’ Month.

Burns is Scotland’s National Poet and January 25 is his birthday… he would be 252 this year.

Wherever they are in the world Scots put on kilts and start eulogising little mice and the like… ‘wee sleekit timrous beastie, oh what a panic’s in thy breastie.’

It’s all the whisky we drink you see!

Burns’ Village is a magical place with Burns’ Cottage, Alloway Kirk and Brig o’ Doon.

Where you can let your imagination run wild.

January is also the month when Dr Martin Luther King’s birthday is commemorated.. he was born on January 15 but Martin Luther King Day is actually January 18..

I was fortunate enough to attend the 50th commemoration of his assassination and followed the MLK Trail from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi.

Ginuary in Ireland

And you could do worse than Co. Monaghan, the border county where a ginoisseur will guide you through each gin and tonic.

The Scary One turned her nose up at the juniper when presented with a tray of samples only to then dig in and minesweep them all.

Veganuary

And if it’s good enough for Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein and Barry White (and he had a healthy appetite, and for food).

Veganuary has really taken off in recent years and I’ve visited the oul’ plant-based food before on this site.

But seeing that the calendar has come around again and that you’ll be performing a public service by not visiting the shops.

Here’s to all those things in your flower beds which also includes the majestic tulip.

And Japanuary

Thanks here to our friends in The Land of the Rising Sun for always keeping it fun and funky.

So Japanuary?

Well, we’re all being encouraged to get on our bikes and in Japan you can do worse than following the Tanesashi Coastline and bike hire is just £10 per day.

They advise stopping off at fish restaurants and temples while ensuring that through the cycling your body remains a temple.

If that’s too sedentary for you then why not canyon through the Sarugajo Gorge.

Talking of temples you shouldn’t go to Japan and not visit a Zen Buddhist temple.

Oh, and in the year when the Olympics are coming to Tokyo then they’re challenging us all to get our adrenaline vibe on.

And ski a volcanic crater in Niseko.