My Favourite Books

Number 6 - Poems and Songs of Robert Burns

I bought this hardback collection of Burns' poems and songs in 1975 for the bargain price of 95p. I bought it in Mrs Wotherspoon's shop in Campbeltown and it was old Mrs Wotherspoon herself who sold it to me. I needn't make very much editorial comment about this book - the works of Burns are either important to you or they're not. They are important to me. Although over the years I have accumulated quite a number of 'collected works' of Burns, including the supposedly definitive Canongate issue, I always come back to this book as my first and favourite collection. When Death's dark stream I ferry o'er (A time that surely shall come), In Heaven itself I'll ask no more Than just a Highland welcome.