Blogging from A to Z Challenge: R is for Robert

I’m in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge for the month of April.  I need your help!  To meet this challenge, I’ll be doing one post a day, working through the alphabet.

Your job is to comment and keep me motivated!  Let me know you’re out there and following along.  Can she make it?  Will she?  Of course she will!  With you as my cheering section, I won’t be stumped by J or Q or even X.

So without further ado, here is today’s post.

R is for Robert.  There are two of special note in Scotland – Robert the Bruce, and the poet Robert Burns.   After the horrific events of earlier this week, I’m choosing to keep this light and talk about Robbie Burns, the poet.  

Burns is so venerated in Scotland and around the world that his birthday, January 25, is a holiday in many areas and is celebrated with a special dinner.   Of Haggis.  More about that in a minute.

His most famous poem in the United States is certainly Auld Lang Syne, sung every New Year’s Eve just at midnight.  

But his next most famous might be Address to a Haggis, recited during the Robert Burns birthday celebration dinner.  I won’t quote it here (it’s quite lengthy).  The haggis is then slit open with a very sharp ceremonial dirk (see D is for Dirk) – or a kitchen knife – and dinner is served.  

After dinner, there is more singing, quoting Burn’s works, and of course, consumption of ale and whisky.  The evening ends with Burns’s Toast to the Lasses, Reply from the Lasses, a recitation of Burns’s Tam o’Shanter and singing – you guessed it – Auld Lang Syne.

If that sounds like fun, mark your calendar for January 25th!  

Interested in finding the other nearly 2000 blogs participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge?  Click on the title, then scroll down to find the sign-up list.