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On This Day: 25th of January
On this day in 1759:
Burns Night
Scotland's national bard, Robert Burns, was born.
Burns did not attend the University, due his family's straitened financial circumstances. However, his eldest son Robert Burns Jnr, the younger of the first twins born to Jean Armour, matriculated to study at the University in 1802 and over twenty-five of the characters who appear in his poems studied at the University. These alumni include:
William Auld, "Daddy Auld" the minister of Mauchline (1742-91).
William Dalrymple, the "Dalrymple mild" of The Kirk's Alarm, the minister of Ayr (1746-1814) who baptised Burns.
William M'Quhae, described in The Twa Herds as "that curs'd rascal ca'd M'Quhae", who graduated in 1756.
Alexander Fergusson, (attended 1763) grandson of "Bonnie Annie Laurie", hero of the ballad of The Whistle, "So famous for wit, worth and law".
The University Library's Special Collections Department holds Robert Burn's own copy of his 1787 work, Burns Poems: Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (Sp Coll RB 2521). It is signed by Burns on page vii and it is also annotated by him on several pages. An extra verse of Tam Samson's Elegy has been added on the margin of page 152 and there are three manuscripts poems in his hand at the end of the volume.
Births and Deaths
On this day in 1759
Robert Burns was born.
On this day in 1916
David Raphael was born.
On this day in 1799
Thomas Muir died.
On this day in 1868
Frank Laurie Grant was born.
On this day in 1862
Nisbet Thomson Hendry was born.
On this day in 1863
Alexander McDonald was born.
On this day in 1967
James Donald Mitchell died.
On this day in 1870
Robert William Nairn was born.
On this day in 1884
Jane Alexander was born.
On this day in 1885
John Stuart Armour was born.
On this day in 1879
James Macdougall Black was born.
On this day in 1877
John James Buchan was born.
On this day in 1880
James Alexander Cormack was born.
On this day in 1888
William Deanburn Dunlop was born.
On this day in 1889
Wilfred Leveson Henderson was born.
On this day in 1888
Isabella May Lennox was born.
On this day in 1889
John McDowall was born.
On this day in 1890
Kate Dalrymple Ramsay was born.
On this day in 1886
Grace Isabel Scott was born.
On this day in 1883
Thomas Baillie Smith was born.
On this day in 1872
George Glen Blyth Young was born.
On this day in 1891
Alastair Campbell was born.
On this day in 1885
Alex. John Davidson McDonald was born.
On this day in 1889
Nathaniel Crichlow was born.