Robert Burns and the Love-Begotten Babies

It’s a pity that the reputation of Robert Burns, a prolific and uniformly brilliant poet, is consistently condensed into the same few poems, quoted and misquoted over and over again. He wrote on diverse topics – money and politics among them – but on ly a few of his works are widely known. A recurrent theme was his love for and lack of shame in babies born in unconventional cirncumstances.