It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Burns

It’s January!  Let’s see what’s on my to-do list:

1. Read a Robert Burns biography – check;
2. Order the haggis – check
3. Put together the Immortal Memory speech – check
4. Send out the invitations to Burns supper – check
5. Practice the poems and songs I’ll recite – check

These and a dozen other things are how I get ready for our Burns Supper, an event that admirers of Robert Burns and his poems and songs have done for more than 200 years since 7 or 8 of his close friends shared the first supper a few years after his death in 1796.   The event, which happens on or near January 25, the anniversary of his birth in 1759) is centered around a meal and contains, at minimum, a Burns poem, a haggis, and a toast to the great Scottish poet.  Our four-hour event includes good food, good poetry, good conversation, and a wee dram or two of good scotch.

Below is the invitation I’m sending out tonight.  It’s not original but that’s o.k.: with a literary event you don’t have to do every thing from scratch.  If anybody reading this is going to be in the Washington D.C. area on January 22 and would like to join us, give me a call.

Tae Oor Good Friends
Frae Gary and John

You are weel bidden tae oor

Burns Supper

on Setturday, Januar 22

A wee dram a’ a bite – five o’clock
Supper – six o’clock

At John’s hoose
Adelphi, Maryland

Let us ken if ye are comin’

Weir yer kilt or wha’ hae ye.

What though on hamely fare we dine
Wear hoddin’ grey and a’ that
Gie fools their silks and knaves their wine;
A man’s a man for a’ that.