Melville House Books

Robert Burns

“His love might have been like a red red rose, but it turns out that Robert Burns may also have been suffering from a rather nasty STD, according to a collection of explicit writing apparently by Scotland’s national bard, due to go on sale in January 2009,” reports Allison Flood in a Guardian story about a new batch of Burns letters that just came to light. She adds that the letters — to Burns’ friend Robert Ainslie — “see Burns refer to his children as ‘bastards’, and complain about not being able to ride his horse due to a sexually transmitted disease.” Flood says the anonymous owner found the letters “in his mother’s home a decade ago, but decided to wait until the 250th anniversary of Burns’s birth next month before putting them up for sale.” Which is what has a lot of Burns fans up iin arms — Peter Westwood, a director of the Robert Burns World Federation and editor of The Burns Chronicle, “said he was dismayed that the owner was making them public just before the poet’s 250th anniversary,” notes Flood. Says Westwood, “Burns’s letters to Ainslie were quite often very rude and not for public view. It’s rather disappointing that whoever’s organising this decided to bring them out when we’re about to celebrate his 250th anniversary.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.