Why are most of Burn's poem difficult to read...?

Question

Why can't he spell?

Answer 1

I understand them, but only just. You probably cant understand the scottish dialect and phrases that he uses because you live somewhere else, and most of the language he uses has died out now anyway, replaced by american slang

Answer 2

Ah, my dear, he was writing in a different time - and in a different country. The language he used is not the standard English with which you are familiar. Hence the variant spellings.

Answer 3

he scottish innit

Answer 4

For the same reason as other writings such as Beowolf written in Anglo -Saxon and The Canterbury Tales written by Chaucer in medieval England they were written in the language of their day.

Answer 5

If you do a Google search for him you will find lots of helpful websites with glossaries and some translations into modern English.

Answer 6

Burns wrote at a time when most of the people he wrote for understood his Doric.

I do not think he envisaged acclaim outside of Scotland.

It is only in fairly recent times that his poetic comments on social life and thinking has been valued all over the world.

"The rank is but the guinea stamp,

The mans the gowd for a' that"

True today as it was then.