SOURCE: '"That Bards are Second-Sighted is Nae Joke': The Orality of Burns's World and Work," in Studies in Scottish Literature, Vol. XVI, 1981, pp. 208–16.

In the following essay, Brown examines the influence of the folkloric milieu on Burns's poetry.

Robert Burns is remembered as much for his personality and character as for his poetry and songs. It is a bit ironic that as an individual his roots in a peasant class are extolled, even emphasized; however, as a creative artist his debt to written, elite precedents are principally cited. Both are probably somewhat extreme positions: as an individual Burns both represented and transcended his class and station of birth; as a poet and songwright he followed the example of earlier writers while being influenced simultaneously by the oral literary forms which flourished in the milieu of his birth.

The stress on Burns's literary sources is a natural and...