Few readers of Burns’ poetry appreciate the rigours of the farming life to which he was brought up. Farming in Ayrshire in the latter part of the eighteenth century involved an arduous and demanding routine. The domestic architecture, the equipment, the animals, the techniques, the whole way of life, are all present in the most detailed and intimate way in Burns’ poetry. Reading Gavin Sprott’s account of all this, with its precise detail and its careful pointing to the reflection of the farming life in the poetry, we are given a new awareness of the context and meaning of what Burns wrote.

Author: Gavin Sprott
Paperback: 60 pages 28 colour & 47 b&w illustrations
Published: 1990