Robert Burns was well aware of the revolution taking place across the Atlantic as he grew up. The poet was inspired. And America was to be inspired by him. From Abraham Lincoln to Frederick Douglass, and Walt Whitman to Bob Dylan, some of the most significant figures in American politics and culture have cited Burns as an influence.
During key moments in the nation’s history these figures brought Burns’s words to the fore. The Bard hit home too with America’s public, beginning with the ex-pats he reminded of home. Those ex-pats were followed to America by two other Scots who also spread the word of Burns. The industrialist Andrew Carnegie keenly spread the word of Burns across the country. Singer Jean Redpath spread Burns’s music within the folk revival in Greenwich Village in the 1960s.
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Categories:Archive, Media Coverage
Tags:BBC, bbc scotland, robert burns
