Burns is a Tough Read

[Hopper250]

So I've been reading Robert Burns. "The Songs and Poems of Robert Burns" a collection sorted by year that was published around 1900. (I don't remember the exact date). He is a tough poet to read, and I don't mean the mix of Gaelic with English. That is easy enough to read and even if I don't know the exact word I can look it up or figure it out from context. He is just hard to read. I suspect its the a rythmactic nature of his poems. The songs read quickly and easily, by the poems are at times quite harsh.

Any one else experience this?

[Nile]

I believe that, like so many things, with practice, it gets easier. I like to read a folio (facsimile) that I have of Burns poems that is printed in the old style and fonts. In it "s" looks like "ƒ" which confuses things even more.

Try reading his poems out loud; you'll 'here' nuances in the words that your mind will understand (that aren't revealed by silent reading).

Nile

[Hopper250]

I've been doing so and I still find him harder to read than contemporaries Coleridge and Wordsworth. I suspect by the time I'm done it'll be easier but at 20% of the book it hasn't changed much.

[EagleJCS]

Not all poems have meter or rhyme (or either!). (Think haiku.)

Scots - Burns wrote in Scots (or Lallans), not Gaelic - words are also sometimes written differently from how they are pronounced. This is especially true in Burns' time, when spellings were not standardized. The pronunciation of Scots does not follow standard English pronunciation for the spelling provided.

[A Hay]

Try reading his poems out loud; you'll 'here' nuances in the words that your mind will understand (that aren't revealed by silent reading).

Nile

Congratulations Hopper250!

I have "Robert Burns-The Complete Poetical Works" edited by James A Mackay, and I have been reading through it for the last few years. I have heard enough Scot's dialect that now I can hear in my head how most of the poems should sound. Some of the poems I can read again and again, while with others, once was enough. There is a companion book by Mackay, a biography of Burns, and I found it very helpful to cross-reference the period when some of the poems were written with events in Burn's life. It put them in context so to speak.

Hope you don't give up on him, some of the later poems and songs were among his best.

Regards,

Tom

[guardsman]

Try youtube , quite a few readings to be heard , will help to understand the lingo LOL

[auld argonian]

I have to admit that I have a "cheat sheet" tucked into the back of my pocket sized RB book...a couple of pages of Scots to American English dictionary!

Best

AA

[Jock Scot]

I have to confess that after three score years and ten, plus a tad, I have not yet developed a taste for Burns' writings , nor I may add, haggis.

[Chas]

I have never thought that Burns was supposed to be read - he is supposed to be listened to.

[Jock Scot]

I have never thought that Burns was supposed to be read - he is supposed to be listened to.

That too can be a particularly tiresome exercise in endurance, especially when an appallingly dreadful pseudo Scots accent is involved!