Burns on the Beat 2014
Written by author on January 10, 2014
Throughout January Primary school children from across Dumfries and Galloway will be visiting Dumfries Museum and Annan Museum to learn about the Scots language and how Robert Burns intended his songs to be performed. The museums are hosting a series of workshops with Dr Fred Freeman, whose background is in Scottish literature and history, but who is also a renowned bagpipe player and the producer of 30 internationally acclaimed cds of traditional Scottish music, including the complete songs of Robert Burns.
A range of workshops have been offered to school classes. Some focus on Scots language and the energy of Burns’ compositions, with the children marching to their rhythm and learning about traditional dance forms such as jigs, reels and hornpipes. The children can also discover “mouth music” and “diddling” as well as the stories behind the songs. Alternative workshops concentrate on the origins of the language Burns used, and how many words we are familiar with today have their origins centuries ago or look at Robert Tannahill, considered by many to be Robert Burns natural successor, and the way he used the Scots language.
Several schools are taking the opportunity to visit the Robert Burns Centre in Dumfries to watch the haunting audio visual about the poet’s life in Dumfries and examine the scale model of the town as it was in the poet’s day. Others are visiting Robert Burns House, the simple sandstone dwelling where the poet spent the last three years of his life.
By the end of the project Annan Museum and Dumfries Museum will have welcomed over 400 children to the workshops, which have been provided with financial assistance from Live Literature Scotland.
