Books and things
What is actually worth buying
The books this site argues from, and the few objects a supper needs. Nothing here is about the name entitling you to anything, because that is the one thing nobody can sell you.
This page will eventually carry Amazon links that pay me a small commission. They are not switched on yet, so nothing below is a link and nothing here earns me anything at all. When that changes, this box will say so before you scroll past it.
Either way it has not changed what is on the list. Everything here is something I would have named anyway. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and in this case the pudding is a haggis: the best way to buy one is not through this page.
The poems, in print
The thirteen poems on this site are here to be read for nothing, and they always will be. But a screen is a poor place for verse, and the annotation in a good edition is worth more than any website.
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Poems and Songs
Robert Burns, edited by James Kinsley
Kinsley established the standard text, and this is that text with the notes trimmed to a size you can hold. If you only ever own one Burns, own a Kinsley.
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The Canongate Burns
edited by Andrew Noble and Patrick Scott Hogg
The complete poems with the fullest commentary in print, and much the best on the politics. Its attribution of several anonymous radical poems to Burns is disputed by other scholars, which you should know going in, and which makes it a more interesting book rather than a worse one.
The name, and why the claims are shaky
These are the books behind the arguments on this site. If you think the clan and tartan page is wrong, these are where to go and check, and two of them are more sceptical than I am.
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The Surnames of Scotland
George F. Black
The standard reference, first published in 1946 and still the thing surname claims should be checked against. Unromantic, which is the appeal.
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The Invention of Tradition
edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger
Contains the Trevor-Roper essay on the invention of Highland tradition. This is the argument underneath everything this site says about the tartan trade, made properly and at length by a historian rather than by me.
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Tartan: The Highland Habit
Hugh Cheape
National Museums Scotland, on how tartan actually developed as cloth rather than as heraldry. Short, and it settles the question of whether your family has an ancient sett.
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The Concise Scots Dictionary
Because the glosses on the poem pages here are matched by a script against a Victorian glossary, and a script cannot tell which sense of a word is meant. This is how you check me.
The life, if you want it
This site is about the surname, so it says little about the man. These are the books that do it well.
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The Bard: Robert Burns, A Biography
Robert Crawford
The modern standard, by a poet and scholar who takes the poems seriously as poems. Start here.
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Robert Burns: A Life
Ian McIntyre
Drier and more sceptical than Crawford, and useful precisely because it declines to be charmed.
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Burns the Radical
Liam McIlvanney
On the politics and the Ayrshire religious quarrels that produced them. The best answer to anyone who has only met Burns as a tea towel.
For the night itself
A supper needs almost nothing. A haggis, something to drink it with, and somebody willing to read. These are the only objects worth the money.
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A Glencairn whisky glass
The standard nosing glass, and the one thing on this page that will genuinely change an evening. A set of six costs less than one bad bottle.
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A pewter quaich
The two-handled cup, passed round. Entirely unnecessary and completely worth it once a year. Buy pewter or plain; anything with a clan crest stamped on it is the thing this site exists to warn you about.
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A haggis
Macsween and Simon Howie are both good and both widely stocked. Buy the vegetarian one as well as the meat one, because someone always needs it and the vegetarian one is genuinely good.
Honestly, order this from a butcher rather than Amazon. Chilled food by post is a lottery and January is the worst week to lose it.
What is not on this page
This is the more useful half of the list, and it is not going to change, commission or no commission.
- Crest badges and "Burns family crest" anything. Plaques, signet rings, wall shields, printed scrolls. Arms belong to the individual they were granted to, so the thing being sold is a picture of somebody else's property. See clan and tartan.
- "Your family tartan." There is no ancient Burns sett. The Burns Check was designed in 1959. Anything sold as older than that is either the 1959 design or an invention.
- Clan crest tat generally. Kilt pins, cufflinks and keyrings stamped with a badge nobody has the right to grant you.
- Ancestry DNA kits. A test can tell you about your ancestry. It cannot tell you that you are related to the poet, and the surname is not a lineage. Several hundred thousand of us carry it independently.
- Anything I have not read or used. Which rules out most of what a page like this could profitably carry.
The titles are the recommendation. Where you buy them is your business, and a library is a perfectly good answer.