Review
In the near empty bookshelves of some Presbyterian houses in the 19th century was the complete poems o' Rabbie Burns
- Revising Robert Burns and Ulster: Literature, Religion, and Politics, c.1770-1920
- Four Courts Press
For A’ That
In the nearly empty bookshelves of some Presbyterian houses in the 19th century, one volume came just after the Bible and well in advance of Shakespeare.
This was the complete poems o’ Rabbie Burns. The Ayrshire ‘Plow-Boy’ poet was part of the cultural baggage of the Ulster planters and their descendants and on 25 January each year, the field mouse, the louse and the haggis are celebrated lustily here as across the sheugh.
The coverage is deep and wide, though one misses the steely Antrim Presbyterian doctor from William Allingham’s Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland (1864) who believed, ‘Far too briefly Cromwell ruled’.
Verbal Arts Centre