The happiest part of our visit to Scotland was seeing our friends Helen and Joe. But the next best thing was visiting the place where Robert Burns lived in Alloway, Ayrshire. I really like Robert Burns' poems, especially one called Tam o Shanter. We went to a special theater in Alloway and saw a movie about Robert Burns and another about Tam O Shanter.

We visited the early home of Robert Burns in Alloway, Scotland

Robert Burns was born on the 25th of January in the year 1759, when America was being colonized. All the Scottish people celebrate his birthday and eat Haggis (a dish made of minced meat, onions, and oats cooked in a sheep's stomach), drink scotch whisky and read poems.

His parents were not even close to being rich and they lived in a small house that the father built. When Robert was seven, he and his family moved to a place that the father was renting. That house is still standing and we got to visit it.

Robert did not go to a regular school. How he was educated was that all the farmers in the area would save up their money and hire a teacher for their children. And Robert liked reading the best.

When Robert was old enough (that meant at a very young age) he had to go out and help do farm work. But he worked too hard. Some say you usually saw him working out on the farm when it was wet and rainy and his back was breaking. Maybe that's why later on in life he got very ill.

When Robert was eleven his family moved again. Sadly the family had a great many problems. But then something went terribly wrong. Robert was only 25 when his father died. We went to "Alloway Kirk" and saw his father's gravestone with a special poem that he wrote for his father.

When Robert was in his twenties he and his friends built a club so they could meet each other socially. They would fight and talk about girls. When he was older he wrote love poems to the young women he liked.

Robert Burns was famous with the ladies. Some people thought that that was wrong to love so many ladies, and some thought he was mean and selfish. People in his church criticized him about his drinking and romancing. So Robert got mad at the church!

Soon Robert began to publish his poems and songs. His two most famous poems are To a Mouse written when Burns ploughed up the home of a little mouse, and another is Tam o Shanter. That poem is so famous that a ship was named after a line in the poem. The ship's name is the Cutty-Sark (which is a short shirt worn by a witch named Nannie in the poem). We got to visit the Cutty - Sark, a big beautiful ship made of wood that used to bring tea from India. His most famous song is Auld Lang Syne.

Sometimes it is very hard to understand Burns' poems because it is very hard to understand Scottish, and old Scottish is even worse. I was happy that Helen and Joe gave me a book that told me what the words meant.