Should Old Acquaintance be Forgot...Stories from the Family Tree

Synonymous with ringing in the New Year is the singing of Auld Lang Syne, a Scots poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 and set to the tune of a traditional folk song. Roughly translated as "old long since," or more idiomatically, "long long ago," you may have paid Robby Burns homage this past weekend.

I am reminded that while digging around in the outer branches of Barb's family tree, I came across the name Robert Burns. Surely not, I thought. By golly, it is, I discovered. Robert Burns, the Scottish poet, author of Auld Lang Syne, and To a Mouse (not to mention To a Louse) is waaay out on a limb of Barb's ancestral tree.

To be sure, she is not a direct descendant of Robbie. Not even close. In fact, the way it works is that a great great grand-uncle of Barb's was married to a woman whose grandfather was the brother of Burn's wife, Jean Armour. Did you follow that? And there's the story.

In High School English Literature they skipped over the part about Burns being quite the scoundrel. There may have been a quiet mention in College English Literature, but I went to Abilene Christian and we didn't talk much  about those things there, either.

Turns out that Robert's first child, Elizabeth Paton Burns, was born to his mother's servant, Elizabeth Paton while he was courting Miss Armour, who became pregnant with twins in 1786. Burns signed a paper attesting his marriage to Jean, but her father tore it up, "in the greatest distress, and fainted away." To avoid disgrace, her parents sent Jean to live with her uncle in Paisley.

Meanwhile, with Jean away and with Burns gaining some success as a poet, he managed to fall in love with Mary Campbell, whom he had seen in church. Some say they exchanged Bibles and plighted their troth over the Water of Fail in a traditional form of marriage, but alas, Mary died of typhus only a few months later, and that ended that.

Burn's rising popularity (and income) as a poet eventually won over Jean Armour's father and Robert and Jean were officially married in 1788 (by this time he had fathered four children with Armour, one of which was living). They eventually had nine children, though only three survived infancy.

Evidently, the domestic life didn't appeal to Burns; he went off to Edinburgh, where he embarked on a relationship with the separated Agnes "Nancy" McLehose, with whom he exchanged passionate letters under pseudonyms. Nancy eventually reconciled with her husband, but Burns had already moved on to Jenny Clow, Nancy's domestic servant, who bore him a son, Robert Burns Clow, in 1788. He also had an affair with a servant girl, Margaret "May" Cameron.

There's more, but you get the picture. In fact, Wikipedia says that through his twelve children by four different women, Burns has over 600 living descendants in current times.  So it's actually somewhat surprising that Barb is not actually related to auld Robbie.

Happy New Year