Every schoolboy knows that the beautiful village of Alloway in Ayrshire was the birth place of Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns. The traces that he left are still there for all to see, from the cottage where he was brought up to the monument in the graveyard.
The historic documentary, a montage of town and country, is an homage to the people of the Ayrshire, charting their day-to-day lives and their relationship with the land, some of it among the most fertile in Scotland, others, on the higher slopes, as tough as anywhere.
That the land was important to Burns is beyond doubt; he was raised as, and was, a farmer, though not perhaps the most gifted in that department. But in the poems and songs, some of which he deliberately collected, there are countless references to the land and the people.
Whether he is praising the "bonnie lasses" of Ayr, or consoling the frightened mouse running from the scythe, you can feel it everywhere.
Set to a diverse mix of poems, verses and songs penned by the poet, this documentary, made half a century ago, is a unique tribute to the man who lived there almost 200 years before.
BRILLIANT BURNS:
