Lived in Mauchline

A week today is " Burns Night" , the anniversary of the birth of Scotland's national bard Robert Burns. We are now in what is known in parts of Scotland as the "Burns season" , a period that can last from mid January to mid February during which commemorative Burns Suppers are held by almost every organisation.

I was brought up in Ayrshire and have been part of all that since I was at school. This year my biggest event will be the YES Scotland Burns Supper being held in Glasgow at which I will deliver the toast to " The Immortal Memory", a toast that has been given at such events for over two hundred years.

However this blip is of what perhaps the strangest and yet most practical of the many remembrances of the poet, the " National Memorial" in Mauchline which I passed today after a very interesting visit to the enterprise education work being done by the public and private sectors at the new village of Knockroon.

It stands near where Mossgeil Farm was , the farm that Burns tenanted before moving to Dumfries. The wee town of Mauchline now markets its Burns connection under the line "Born in Alloway ,died in Dumfries, lived in Mauchline" and it is a substantive claim to fame. So is the siting of this national memorial , erected for the centenary of his death in 1897, not because of the rather bizarre Gothic structure that stands out in the landscape like a sandstone thumb but because of the very modest traditional houses beside it.

They are - and were always meant to be - a living memorial to Burns' compassion and sympathy because they have provided (since 1897) sheltered housing for elderly people with nowhere else to go.

Originally there were six but the charitable body that runs them has, over the years ,been able to expand the number and now there are 18.

My successive " Immortal Memories" at many Burns Suppers have developed the theme of the unique nature of the annual Burns celebration and the reasons for it.

This memorial is another indicator of the extraordinary place which Burns holds in the hearts and minds of Scotland and how extraordinary has been our individual , collective and continuing response to him.