Burns burned

A group of Scotland’s leading female poets marked Burns Night by revealing new work tackling the treatment of women by Robert Burns – and speaking out about his “misogyny and abuse”.

Here we go. Every couple months there’s another historic figure to attack. Are they aware that virtually any person prior to 1950 would be considered violently conservative by today’s standards? What do you achieve by judging those that lived in a different world? They are reaching so hard to make their work relevant, rather than just, y’know, writing decent poetry.

James Rees

Leave Burns alone. He was a man of his time.

Christina Taylor

I am a very proud scot and host a Burns Supper most years but I do struggle with the fact that out of all the amazing Scottish inventors, scientists and brave soldiers that in Scotland we choose to celebrate every year an alcoholic and an adulterer and a man who treated women and the mothers of his many children so disrespectfully and cruelly. So when we are toasting Burns I think we should also remember the very strong women in his life who brought up his children in very harsh conditions so he could sit boozing in the pub in the evening and indulging himself in writing his poetry. I agree he is a great poet but let's remember Elizabeth Paton whose life he ruined. She was his mother's servant girl and he got her pregnant having started an affair with jeannie Armour. Jeannie gave birth to nine of his 12 children and raised them singlehandedly, only three survived infancy. His last child was born on the same day as his funeral. So he was not a kind man in the way he treated women and it is not a acceptable to say that's OK as it was a different time back then. As a mother of a son, I will ensure he grows up having absolute respect for all females.

Martine Morrison

I'm so offended that someone living in the 18th century reflected the cultural ideas of the 18th century. But what he did for the history of language… who cares.

Andrew Mcintyre

Celebrate what is good, commend what is admirable – but call out what is wrong. Stand firm to values and fairness. Burns had a low set of moral standards where it came to women, perhaps he was just a victim of the century he lived in. No-one is saying that he wasn’t a great poet or thinker.

Lesley Totten Anybody who has paid even passing attention before being overcome by mistyeyed romanticism knows that he was an adulterer who fathered 12 children by four different women at a time when there was huge stigma for illegitimacy and little welfare support if the father didn’t face up to his responsibilities. At least one of the mothers died in abject poverty with the child succumbing soon after. Aye, a real paragon of women’s rights he was. But it was all good because he wrote a poem about it.

Neil Maclennan There was no such thing as women's rights then. The men and the women behaved as was typical of their time. You can't judge or expect people 200 years ago to behave as if it was today. I'm a woman and I don't judge him or the women.

Irene Board

"The Bard" is part of our history. We learn from our history and mistakes. We don't eradicate, we educate.

Graham Fleming

He said things that were pretty normal in the 1700s. Better cancel all Burns Night celebrations; stop teaching about him in schools; rip down every memorial and demand the police arrest anybody who celebrates him for misogyny.

Oluf Marshall