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Scotland

But do they know it’s Robbie Burns Night?  I noted Robert Burns last year on this day.

He was an interesting character, and a contemporary of Mozart, Heydn and the French Revolution (which he supported).  The Robert Burns Encyclopedia has some detailed information about him.  The Horsecross in Perth is having a Mozart & Burns 2006 concert this Sunday:

his day of music and words explores their world and art, and ponders what might have happened if Rabbie had met Wolfgang.

2006 is a major year for Mozart lovers - the 250th anniversary of his birth. By way of celebration, Horsecross presents an array of Mozart related events over the coming year, including our Mozart Journeys series, and this day of Mozart+Burns. Why bring together these two great men? Pause for a moment and consider how much they had in common. They were born and died within a few years of each other. Both died tragically young, but left an impressive body of works and both enjoy an enduring status as two of the most influential artists of all time. And there is more: in the Age of Enlightenment, they shared a passionate belief in the dignity of humanity, an egalitarianism at odds with the aristocratic society they depended upon for patronage.

Some twenty years after Burns’ death Beethoven was commissioned to compose folk songs to the words of Robert Burns.  There is a story from last year in the Scotsman as well as the Independent about this. 

As tonight is Burns’ Night, in honour of the Scottish poet Robert Burns, I thought I would post the above photo which I took walking into Eskdalemuir, a little over a year ago. I will also share the instructions on How to Weigh a Hog, by Robert Burns:

1. Get a perfectly symmetrical plank and balance it across a sawhorse.
2. Put the hog on one end of the plank.
3. Pile rocks on the other end until the plank is again perfectly balanced.
4. Carefully guess the weight of the rocks.

Of course this is a very impractical method because where is one to get a sawhorse these days?

While on the subject of Eskdalemuir, there is an Observatory nearby. It provides images and weather data for a weathercam.

I took this photo in the Esk valley, two weekends ago.  This valley has become world-famous recently with the publication of the book, The Da Vinci Code.  The Rosslyn Church, some 57 km (by road) north of where I took this photo, is apparently quite a hot tourist attraction this year.  There is an article in The Telegraph, here, and some background on the church at several websites, such as here, and here. 

At exactly this time last week I stopped to take this photograph on the road between Langholm and Eskdalemuir in Scotland.  On the road up, via Cumbria, I had appreciated the scenery, the colours and life.  At Lockerbie I turned off the motorways and onto roads that hug the contours of the land, so you start to get a better appreciation of of your surroundings.  And I took a wrong turning in Lockerbie and got lost.  And in the valleys I found my phone didn’t work - it only worked when I was on top of hills.  Eventually I found my way onto this road which took me in the right direction, and felt relaxed enough to stop and take this photo in the still strong, but dying rays of the sun.

A truly boring photo, but having last been in that place in the snows of early January I was fixated at the transformation that had taken place.  And change was not just in the sunlight, the grass and the yellow and mauve plants. There was an abundance of animal life: particularly rabbits, insects and of course a wide variety of birds.

But tonight I am off to York.