AULD LANG SWINE

Burns Night set to celebrate self-confessed sex addict and poet Robert Burns with wild swinger’s party and whisky

Grant Rollings

Published: 3:08, 25 Jan 2019
Updated: 4:24, 25 Jan 2019

ROBERT BURNS will be celebrated across the world tonight with haggis, whisky, poetry and songs — and, most appropriately of all, with a wild swinger’s party.

Revered in his homeland as a champion of the working class, Scotland’s national poet was also a self-confessed sex fanatic — and a pest who left a trail of pregnant young servant girls in his wake.

Rabbie Burns was a known lothario in his day and fathered 13 children from four different women — 'Rabbie' Burns was a known lothario in his day and fathered 13 children from four different womenCredit: Getty - Contributor

Burns wrote poetry on many subjects including Scotlands traditional dish Haggis — Burns wrote poetry on many subjects including Scotland's traditional Haggis dish

The lothario was known for being able to woo women with with his words — The lothario was known for being able to woo women with his words

He even bragged about his prowess in rude rhymes with titles including Nine Inch Will Please A Lady.

So the sex party, which The Sun revealed last week would be held in his honour tonight in Blackpool — complete with a tartan and kilt dress code — is something he would have relished.

The Auld Lang Syne writer’s lesser-known bawdy poems include mention of a “battering ram”, and the lines: “Those limbs so clean, where I between, Commenced a fornicator.”

He also wrote to a friend boasting about a “thundering” romp with wife Jean that “electrified the very marrow of her bones”.

Unsurprisingly, the lothario fathered at least 13 children, by four different women, by the time he died at 37 in 1796.

It was quite a life — one that Scottish actor Gerard Butler, 49, is trying to bring to the big screen with himself in the title role.

“Rabbie” Burns was born in Alloway, Ayrshire, on January 25, 1759 — 260 years ago today. His parents were tenant farmers, and his first poems were invented to entertain himself as he ploughed the fields.
He lost his virginity at the age of 16 to a girl three years younger.

His first child was born to one of his mother’s servant girls — at the same time that he was wooing another girl called Jean, who was pregnant with twins by the end of the year.

Rabbie said he would marry Jean, but her dad refused to let her wed a man he considered a brazen womaniser.

He was right. In the same month that Jean realised she was pregnant, Rabbie was trying to run away to Jamaica with a dairymaid known as “Highland Mary” — who he had also promised to wed. These plans were dashed when Mary died of typhus aged 23 in 1786. Unsurprisingly, she too was already carrying his baby.

Robbie Burns was going to runaway to Jamaica with Highland Mary but then returned to marry Jean from his home town — Robbie Burns was going to runaway to Jamaica with 'Highland Mary' but when she died he returned to marry Jean from his home townCredit: Alamy

Financially stretched by these romantic escapades, Rabbie brought out his first volume of poetry in the hope of making some cash. It was a sensation, and Rabbie moved to the bright lights of Edinburgh, where he got two more servant girls pregnant.

One of them lost her job as a result and died in extreme poverty three years later.

It is a far cry from Rabbie’s image as a champion of workers’ rights — and even as an early feminist.

Having wrought havoc on the women of the Scottish capital, Burns returned home to Ayrshire in 1788 to try once more to marry Jean.

Since he was now a famous poet, this time Jean’s father did not object — and the couple went on to have nine children.

A wife, though, was never going to stop his bad behaviour, and he fathered another illegitimate child with local barmaid Anna Park in 1791.

Along with his love life, his boozing and carousing also became infamous.

It has even been suggested that his death aged 37 was caused by him falling asleep in the snow at the roadside after a major session down the pub.

But other historians claim the real killer was the chronic rheumatic heart disease he had suffered from childhood.

Whatever the cause of death, Burns will live on for ever in his words.
Truly, this old acquaintance will never be forgotten.

Macca At Burns Night Supper

Dram good deals

Burns Night calls for a wee dram to toast the bard’s 260th birthday – and there is plenty of Scotch that won’t break the bank.
Booze expert Jilly Goolden raises a glass and rates supermarket whiskies out of ten.