Celebrations For Burns' Night

3:14pm UK, Sunday January 25, 2009

Robbie Burns, Scotland's national poet

The traditional Burns suppers consists of haggis and whisky for the toast.

Burns' hometown of Alloway in Ayrshire opened the weekend of events with a Scotland-wide programme of poetry readings, music and dance to celebrate the life of the author of "Auld Lang Syne".

Burns' face also adorns a set of postage stamps created by the Royal Mail to commemorate the anniversary, with one featuring the words of one of his best-known poems, "A Man's A Man For A' That".

Tonight, we celebrate not just the man of the moment, but Scotland’s human being of the millennium.

This evening in Alloway, Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond will sit down to a traditional Burns Night Supper, a dish of minced sheep's heart, liver and lungs mixed with onion, oatmeal, suet, stock and salt, and boiled in the animal's stomach.

"Burns was indeed a man who spoke for all occasions. A man born of humble rank, whose legacy today goes far beyond riches," said Mr Salmond.

The cooking of haggis

"Tonight, we celebrate not just the man of the moment, but Scotland's human being of the millennium."

He added: "Over 200 years since his work was written, it has been translated into every known language. And it is as resonant today as it ever was."

Fans of the poet have set up a website in a bid to break the world record for the largest simultaneous toast, hoping that hundreds of thousands around the world will raise their glasses to "the immortal memory of Robert Burns" this evening.

Born on January 25, 1759, Burns died when he was just 37, but filled his life with bawdy romps through the picturesque hills of Ayrshire and Dumfries which provided the inspiration for much of his work.