 I'm pleased that the next item of business is a member's business debate on motion 3351, in the name of Emma Harper, on celebrating Burns and the Scots language. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put, and I would ask those members who wish to speak in the debate to please press the request-to-speak buttons now. I call on Emma Harper to open the debate. There are a lot of subscribers to this debate, so please be quite tight on your time. Seven minutes please, Ms Harper. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Today is Robert Burns' birthday, the ideal day to celebrate Robert Burns and the Scots language, 220-yen years after his death. I declare an interest as president of Dumfries Ladies Burns Club number one. Folk fia hour the world and here in Scotland celebrate Burns on this day, whether they're in the globe in Dumfries with the Hough Club or in the place of the Bard's birth in Allaway. There's much clutter and singing the songs and reciting the verses written by the best-known Scottish Bard. Burns' mother tongue was Scots. He spoke and wrote the Scots language. He speared and screaved the Scots lead. My mother tongue was Scots when I was a wee lassie. Then, as I grew up, I lost a lot because it wasn't acceptable to use the Scots words at scale. I'm rediscovering the money words that I used as a wane that were not used in scale when I grew up on the farm with the other wanes. We were happy to get clarity when we lout the burns, duked awa for the kicking kai in the bair, managing to hang on to our jammy pieces when we were clapped in our wally-naves. I'm saddened. It guards me great that, 40 years after being tellt, don't speak like that, speak properly. I am now learning my loss lead again. Robert Burns was asked to avoid his Scots and submit for the Kilmarnock edition poems in English. Further correspondence to his publisher, George Thomson, when he was requested to write supplementary poems in English, Burns wrote, If you're for English verses, there is, on my part, an end of the matter. I have not that command of the language that I have of my native tongue. In fact, I think my ideas are more barren in English than in Scottish. The Kilmarnock edition was printed in Scots. It did much to support, popularise and champion the Scots lead. I would argue that we are richer for this decision. My motion states that Robert Burns influenced thinkers around the world. Abraham Lincoln, Jay Guevara and Hugh McDermott, even Bob Dylan said that Robert Burns was his greatest inspiration. This year, the influence of Burns on the USA is marked in a special TV documentary on the BBC, which I'm guy looking for it to watch in. Burns wrote about fairness and equality in many of his songs, and there's one song, A Man's a Man for Adat, that when Midsur sang it at the opening of this session, it showed how powerful and relevant the words are the day. I see John Burkey cadillored, was trotsaboot dyn o dat, though hunters worship at his word, he's but a coof for Adat, for Adat and Adat, his ribbon star and Adat, the man o independent mind he looks and laughs at Adat. Scottish Parliament recognises Robert Burns, and many after him should be celebrated for screaming and spearing in their own lead. Burns' words have such muckl standing as they have been embedded on the outside of the walls of this very building. Jackie Kaye, the Scots macker, she's got a wee sports Scots poem for the baby box, and Billy Kaye was last year awarded service to the Scots for his commitment to advancing the lead for many years. The cultural significance of the Scots language has been promoted by the Scottish Government. Much progress has been made to advance the knowledge and understanding of the cultural importance that will recognise the Scots lead in recent years. Minister Alasdair Allan must be commended. We now have the Scots language centre, the National Library of Scotland, the Wee Windies and great Scots language resources for teachers. There's been great work done by money scientists, neuro-linguisticists, sick as Dr Michael Dempster, an exceptional champion of the Scots lead, Matthew Fitt. Bath are here the day in the gallery. Matthew Fitt is teaching Waynes in some of the most deprived areas. He told me the other day that Scots is the silver bullet for raising the confidence of so many of Scotland's Waynes who have been taught the early clever simply because they speak Scots. I'm just starting to understand the implications for the Waynes and how not only allowing but expecting that better attainment, there's that word again, can be achieved by focusing more on our native tongue. Then there's the neuro-linguistical research conducted by Michael Dempster. He's exploring development o language in the brain and how learning the Scots at an early age, even at the same time as English, is key to understanding our functional development. He's can for Scots to be a central consideration in all speech research carried out in Scotland. Watch him on YouTube, we're needing to talk about our language. Worldwide evidence suggests bilingual people pay money cognitive advantages, including later onset dementia by around five years. That suggests that the use of Scots is a potential untapped goldmine in care and wellbeing work in Scotland. All of the websites, videos, education materials and the experts I have spoken to promote furthering Scots language and bringing the benefits to us all. We need to make sticker that the lead guns for it. I'm asking the Scottish Government to continue to support the lead and celebrate Burns for keeping our language alive and let's continue to transmit it orally but perhaps even more important, scraping it, recording it, getting it written down. This is crucial. Finally, Presiding Officer, I commend my motion, Burns and the Scots language to be your sauncey face. Talking the sauncey faces, I call John Scott, to be followed by Willie Coffey. Presiding Officer, when Jackman Billy's leave the street and Ruthie Neabour's Neabour's meet, as market days are wearing late and folk begin to tack the gate, and we sit boozing at the nappy getting foo and uncah happy, we think none the long Scots miles, the mosses, waterslaps and stiles that liatunas in our home, where sits our silky-sil-en-dame, gathering our brwslet, gathering the storm, nursing our wrath to keep it warm. This truth, pan d'Ernestam-e-Shantar, as hefie air, eindeg did canter, all the air, when there are tunes or passes, for honest men and Bonnie Lasses. Presiding Officer, I will stop there before you all become too enthralled in this magnificent poem, which defines Burns, Ayrshire and Broad Scots. At that point, I agree with Emma Harper that one of Burns' great achievements was to help firmly established Scots or indeed Broad Scots as a language in its own right. The reason for this is that Tama Shantar is an epic poem on a par with Milton's paradise lost and recognised worldwide as being so. Another reason for reciting those lines is to show that, in addition to this still being the living language of many lowland Scots to this day, the observations in his works are as relevant to this day as they were then. Gathering her brwslet, gathering the storm, nursing our wrath to keep it warm, is still the welcome on many a doorstep to many men in Ayrshire at any rate following enjoyment at a hostelry of their choice and a forewarning of a row to come. The lines of what some poor they gift to Guy is the poor to see ourselves as others see as it would for money, a blun or freass and foolish notion was and remains a shorthand for mockery and condemnation of vanity and stupidity in daily and indeed political life. There are many more quotations from Burns that have become part of many people's life and language, my own included, coming from a farming background like Emma. Burns though was unique, which is why his words have been translated into so many different languages. The Russians put aside Tolstoy, the French put aside Voltaire to read and recognise the quality of his work and over 10,000 Burns suppers are held annually at this time of year to celebrate the range of his work. These suppers bring people together to discuss, debate and appreciate and enjoy the value and the meaning of his work, whether that be an analysis of his poetry, his songs or his letters. Because his own life was so convivial, his legacy has engendered spirited gatherings and suppers where fun and laughter predominate with philosophical discourse in offer 2. Indeed, tonight, here in our own Parliament building, our Presiding Officer is, as we speak, welcoming guests from all over the world, as well as parliamentarians, to the Presiding Officer's Burns supper, now well established as one of the highlights of our parliamentary year. However, what Burns apart was not his observations of human nature, nor his wit, or his satire, or his views of the church, or his ambivalent political views, but it was his empathy that made him so special. His unique ability to connect with and relate an appeal to all levels of society, whether in his own time in Edinburgh or his beloved Ayrshire, and to still be relevant and connected to this day is what sets him apart from others. His ability to take the ordinary day-to-day aspects of life and love and comment, verse or song on them makes him and his legacy unique. Tonight, Presiding Officer, we celebrate this legacy that is established Ayrshire, his birthplace and the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum as a must-visit location for the worldwide Scottish diaspora and others who are rightly so proud of him and who flock to Ayrshire, to Allaway, to Burns Cottage, to the banks of the Dune, to see for themselves the landscape and buildings that inspired Tama Shantar and many other works. I call Willie Coffey to be followed by Lewis MacDonald. Thank you and congratulations to Emma Harper for securing this member's debate celebrating Burns in the Scots language. There was indeed a blast to a January wind on or shortly after the night Burns was born in 1759. A portion of the old clay biggin in Allaway, built by his father William, was said to have blown in during a storm. A fitting entrance to this world, perhaps for Scotland's greatest poet, and that same blast to a wind still blows as strongly today as it did then. We are eternally grateful to Robert Burns for what he did, not just for the magnificent poetic legacy that he left us during his 37-shot years, but for writing in his native Scots Ayrshire tongue, he gave credibility to the Scots language and probably set the foundations for its recognition internationally. Aren't we relieved that Burns basically ignored the pleas by Dr John Moor and others in 1787, just a year after the Kilmanna edition was published, to write not in Scots but in English, to reach, as he put it, a wider audience of admirers. He did attempt some work in standard English, but quickly abandoned it. His book was already a huge success, and he was working on his Edinburgh edition, and lots of his works in Scots had already been penned awaiting publication. Thank God for that and the legacy that we now enjoy written in that rich Scots language of Ayrshire, where much of it can still be heard today. Can you recall, Presiding Officer, the small but famous extract from Tama Shantar that was initially led by my colleague John Scott? Oh, Tama had still been so wise as to my own wife Kate's advice. She told me, well, there was a skeleton, a blethering buster and drunken blellum that, from November to October, a market day, there was no sober, and the unthinkable version of it in English. Oh, Thomas, had you but been so wise as to have taken your own wife Kate's advice? She told you well you were a waster, a rambling bustering drunken buster, that, from November until October, each market day, you were not sober. It's much, much more than the Scots words themselves that are lost there. The equivalent words are there, but for me there's no real connection with the sense of drama and development, and as a result the impact of such a wonderful depiction that scene illustrates would have been diminished beyond repair. Interestingly, most, if not all of his letters, were written in highly polished technical English, even more elaborate than we see today, reflecting the style of the 18th century. But when it came to exercising his creative talents and poetry, or shaping and crafting the lyrics of many hundreds of Scots folk songs that would have been lost had he not intervened, Burns was clearly at home using the everyday language of his own people, and I think he knew that. We have other more contemporary Scots writers to thank too for keeping our language fresh and current. McDermott, of course, wrote masterpieces such as The Drunk Man, which looks at the Thistle in Scots, and even has a conversation with Burns in it, saying, Rabbie, Wydd Stow, we're here, the world hath need thee, and Scotland may or say, o the likes of thee, that whiskey wans smoothed, your liars become a laxative for all the quacity. A plea, I think, for more intelligent and informed discourse amongst the people, especially when talking about Burns himself. Back to Ayrshire again briefly, we are proud of our other two sons, Billy Caffey, Gostin and Rab Wilson, the new Cymruc. Billy, making a huge contribution to the Scots language in his book The Mother Tongue and his numerous radio and TV productions, all delighting in using Scots as his preferred medium. Rab Wilson, distinguished writer and poet, who wrote a magnificent poem for us in Scots in 2009, during the dispute with the Agile over the ridiculous decision to take Johnny Walker away from Kilmarnock after 189 years. Our Scots language is very much alive today, but it could always benefit more from use, more exposure and more encouragement, especially amongst our youngsters, to create new works, poems and songs in their native language. We too have a role to play as MSPs in the Scottish Parliament. We too should use our own language much more than we probably do. After all, it is who we are, and we should not be feared to use it. Well done to Emma Harper for bringing this matter to the attention of the Parliament. Lewis MacDonald, followed by Ruth Maguire. I am sorry that I have to leave before the minister's reply, Presiding Officer, for which my apologies are to all concerned. I am very grateful to Emma Harper for bringing this debate, in part because of my father, Reverend Roger MacDonald. He was first a published poet in Gaelic, Scotland's other language, too long neglected, and an enthusiastic translator between English and Gaelic. He was deeply honoured to be crowned bard of the national mod in 1977. However, when he went from St Columbus's parish church in Stornoway to Inch parish church in Aberdeenshire, he discovered a third Scottish tongue for poetry and prose, just as we, his children, discovered it in daily life. Aberdeenshire Scots is known today as Doric, thanks to the classical preoccupations of 19th century scholars. However, it is, in truth, one of the richest regional varieties of a language that is to be heard in many places, from Shetland to Galloway. That lowland Scots is not heard in the Outer Hebrides, but it is still the mother tongue of local children in Inch in the Gerey and in many other communities besides. Roddie MacDonald would have fully agreed with the view expressed in the motion this evening that the written word in a standard form is vitally important to sustaining and transmitting a living but largely oral culture from one generation to the next. He considered himself bilingual, which he defined as not just speaking and writing in two languages, not even just thinking in two languages but dreaming in both Gaelic and English, as he had done for most of his life. I do not think that he ever dreamt in Scots, but he did make understanding and explaining the relationships among Scots and English and Gaelic a real focus of his learning and his creativity in the second half of his life. There is a book that reflects that focus very well, which he wrote in collaboration with Joyce Collie and Derek McLear in 1995. It goes not by one name but by three. It is called Trilingual Poetry, Bardach, Chrychananach and also Sangs in Three Tongues. That was original and groundbreaking, but it was in translating the entire works of Robert Burns from Scots and English into Gaelic that Roddie MacDonald's scholarship in Scots and creativity in Gaelic found their perfect fusion. As Derek McLear has said, what is impressive about the work is not just that it is at scale but also that the translations succeed in retaining the metre and rhythms in which Burns wrote while presenting them in a quite different language. However, my father would have said that achieving that was not so hard or down only to his own poetic gifts. He was delighted to discover that a good deal of the Scots language of Robert Burns derived from the Gaelic language, which some earlier translators had indeed failed to recognise. The Scots tongue of Robert Burns is not as some would have it different from Northern English because only of loan words from Scandinavia or the Low Countries or France, those loan words are to be found in Yorkshire and Northumbday as well. What makes the Scots language unique is its roots in Scottish Gaelic combined with those other influences. Robert Burns was born in Ayrshire in 1759, the same year in which the last speaker of Ayrshire or Galloway Gaelic died. His family had moved not long before from the North East at a time when Gaelic was still the first language in places such as Upper Deaside and Glengairn. The cadences and metres of Burns could readily translate from Scots to Gaelic, precisely because Gaelic had helped to shape those rhythms and metres in the first place. Audre Macdonald was proud to make the connections among Scotland's three tongues because he believed that those connections strengthened them all. If he were still with us, I am certain that he would want to join us in celebrating those things today. A flora gang any further, I am minded to accept a motion under rule 8.14.3 that the debate be extended by 30 minutes due to the amount of speakers that we still have. Ms Harper, would you move that motion? Is everyone agreed? I have used your three languages, Mr Macdonald. Ruth Maguire, please, to be followed by Oliver Mundell. I congratulate my colleague Emma Harper on securing this debate, marking the importance of both our national bard, Robbie Burns, and one of our national languages, Scots. Many towns lay claim to the bard, but there can be no doubt that it is the town of Irvine in my constituency that has the strongest claim of all. Indeed, without Irvine, there might not even have been a world famous poet called Robert Burns for us to talk about today. For it was in the then bustling harbor of Irvine where Burns arrived in 1781 as a young 22-year-old that he became friends with a local sea captain, Richard Brown, who encouraged him to become a poet. This is attested to Burns' own hand, who later wrote to Brown reminding him of a Sunday that he had spent in Eglinton Woods, where Brown, upon hearing Burns' recite some of his verses, had expressed his wonder that Burns could, and I quote, resist the temptation of sending verses of such merit to a magazine. It was this moment in Burns' own words that he decided to endeavour at the character of a poet. So Allaway may have made the man, but it was Irvine that made the poet. It seems fitting that Irvine is home to what one national paper deemed to be the A-list Burns Club, and particularly proud to draw the chamber's attention to the Irvine Burns Club, which has an unbroken history of nearly 200 years since it was first established in 1826, and will this year celebrate its 191st anniversary. The first president of the club, Dr John Mackenzie, attended Robert Burns' father in his last illness, and the first vice-president was David Siller, a friend of Burns from his early twenties. The highlight of the club's calendar is, of course, the annual Burns' night celebration, which I am hugely looking forward to attending. However, as great a poet as Burns was and as braw as Burns' suppers are, it is important to remember that Scots should not only be for Burns' night, that we still have much to do to overcome the paradox that the Scot language we celebrate and encourage on one day of the year remains all too often misunderstood and even discouraged and disparaged at the rest of the time. As someone with a bit of Gallic, I am only too familiar with the hostility that can be faced from some quarters when it comes to Scotland's minority languages, but one thing Gallic is never accused of is of being a dialect or worse, a corruption of English. With Scots on the other hand, and despite great and on-going efforts to raise awareness of the status and the history, those misperceptions are still all too common. Overcoming them remains perhaps the biggest issue for those of us who want to see the language respected and promoted. As such, while I welcome today's debate and look forward to joining my friends at word powers radical Burns' night tonight and then Urban Burns club later in the week, I do hope that this Parliament will take opportunities in the future to delve deeper into the issues around Scots and to continue to build on the progress that's already been made in normalising, legitimising and promoting the language in all settings, written and spoken. Apologies for calling in the wrong order earlier. Stuart Stevenson, please, followed by Oliver Mundell. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, and many thanks to Emma Harper for the opportunity to talk about Burns. I've used this opportunity to extend the world of people who are familiar with Burns to one additional person, and that is my new American intern, Mellia Daley, who's sitting in the public gallery, who's written my speech for me tonight. I stand with you today to celebrate the enduring legacy of the great poet Robert Burns and, of course, the Scots language. It's central, I believe, to understand what is meant by the word legacy. Legacy implies something of great significance in the past that continues to affect our present. It's a history ever present and impactful, a perfect description of Scots and the Bard. Now, Scots language has had a turbulent history. It went through periods of discrimination when it was not to be spoken in good company, to times when it was a champion of the Scots people. We have championed the language in large part thanks to Robert Burns, whose memory we celebrate today. It was a language that divided society at parts of its history, but that's partly why it makes such an impact on our legacy today. It shows us the diversity of our history. However, it was something that now is a dual of our culture where once it was very different. We remember the man who wrote the great literary works in Scots and helped to secure the Scots language importance and the definition of Scotland. Burns was, without doubt, a literary genius. He had to read very few of his works to see why that's so. He also, of course, was a man with a reputation for womanising and entirely justifiably. We rarely talk about one particular woman in his life, and of course that was his wife, Jean Armour. She was the silent, strong supporter of the poet. I suspect being a poet's wife under any circumstances then or now, not terribly easy. Loyal wife, not one coming forward, but she was always there when Burns needed and loved her. He was arranging Scots into iconic poems. She was making sure that the basics of his life were looked after. She was working to make life better, not just for her, but for her significant family. I'm not sure what role she played in the family beyond those which were hers, of course. Her legacy is alive in Scotland right alongside that of Burns, so we should think of her as we think of Burns. We work diligently and proudly to celebrate Robert Burns' life. I'm not here to preach on that. I perhaps came to Burns quite later in my life, but I think that people right across Scotland understand who Burns is and what he's contributed to Scottish life. People on farms, on ships and cities all know of Burns. They are all part of the community that has inherited the legacy of Burns. The language and the words of Burns live today as they lived when he wrote them. It's a strengthening of the ties that bind us together. We overcome and rise above difficulties by looking at some of the things that Burns writes. We find simple enjoyment in the words of Burns. When we hear Holy Willie's prayer, when we hear Tama Shanta, the narrative simply engages us. It's part of what makes us a Scott, but it's also part of what we contribute to the world community. As Burns said of Jeane, to see her was to love her, the legacy of Burns and Scots is that we recognise his words are more than simply words. Their legacy is us. Oliver Mundell, to be followed by Gillian Martin. Always I find quite intimidating to stand up and speak about Robert Burns, particularly when you've only got four minutes, because my first memory of a Burns supper was in Moffat, where it opened with a joke that said that any speech on Burns should last exactly as long as it takes a married man to make love to his wife. At the time, I had no idea what that meant, but I've been told to sit down, but I won't, I'll continue, because this debate is really, really important. I am very grateful to Emma Harper for bringing this forward. Again, I know that it's a subject that she's very passionate about and has a long-standing history with in the community. When I was in Dumfries today at the memorial service to commemorate Burns' life at St Michael's Church in Dumfries, there were many people who were very, very excited to know that this debate was taking place tonight. Burns is really at the heart of Dumfries at the heart of my Dumfriesshire constituency. I'm without getting too controversial for what is a member's debate. I would take a slight issue with this claim from those in Ayrshire that he properly belongs to them, because, although he might have been born there, we've still got him and it is very, very important to Dumfries. You know, you can't go around my constituency without finding Burns' heritage, without meeting people who are there to explore his legacy and history, whether it's in Dumfries itself or further afield. I mean, he's visited practically every pub that's still open and still on-going and generally had a rather good time, with the notable exception, of course, of Echo Feckon, where he managed to get stuck of an evening. He described the village as a wicked and evil little place. It had absolutely nothing to do with the residents or the quality or quantity of the drink. It was purely because there was a lady singing in the establishment on the evening in question, and Burns felt that listening to her was like the sound of the sow meeting the butcher's knife. He couldn't decide whether the answer was to get drunk or, as I say, to hang himself, but luckily he chose the drink. You know, you only have to go to my hometown of Moffat again to see his connection with local drinking establishments, because it was there that he wrote in the window, asking why God made the gems so small and why so large the granite, because God meant mankind should place a higher value on it. You cannot escape his enduring legacy or the power of his works. I wanted to very briefly read out a section of his epistle to Davie, a brother poet. It's no entitled, not in rank. It's no in wealth, like London Bank, to purchase peace and rest. It's no in making muckl mare. It's no in books. It's no in lear, to make us truly blessed. If happiness hay not our seat and centre in the breast, we may be wise or rich or great but never can be blessed. Nay treasures nor pleasures could make us happy lang, the heart's eyes, the par eye, that makes us ripped or rang. I think that it burns and scots are in our heart. He wrote of Wallace that no scots couldn't be moved by the tale of William Wallace, but I think now, as we look at his legacy, there's no scott who cannot be moved by the influences had on our nation, so thank you. I call Gillian Martin to be followed by Fulton MacGregor. I'm proud that our Parliament recognises the richness of the various scott's tongues and they just in debate specifically about our mother tongue. Even in this parliamentary session, if you look through our official report of this place, you'll find new minus scott's words pepping in our member's speeches, not least from my friend Emma Harper, with whom I share a challenge to sneak in the odd wee boorish, or crater, or hallyracket in our speeches, and who knows, I might even get away with a bihookie and a bism one day if it doesn't skinner, the Presiding Officer, or should I say, the heed bummer. My thanks go on to John Afff, a fine queen, Emma Harper for this debate, not least because I can catch up with her in the middle of wordies on the record. In schools last week, Gareth Burns would have been learning their burns, and it reminds me of my own school days, when it was the only time of year that we could speak scott's erdoric in the classroom while on the legitimacy. It's changed days. Last week, I was in Mikkel Mill School in Ellen, and they have scott's erdoric hour at the place, and it's najest for burns night. Being the hill place, the erdoric words Zodha was and other ways were encouraged to tell stories of their tongue. We're celebrating the life of the bar today, and Burns Feather was, of course, from the north-east, changing his name from Burness to Burns as he headed down to Ayrshire. The north-east is a very strong scott's erdoric language tradition, and we all like to think that Burns was influenced by his father's history. Talking of Burns is as good an excuse as any to shine a light on other champions of the mother tongue, some that might not be so well known as our bard, like Jeane and Lucy Stewart from Fethyrdangos, or Fishes, it's known. Their renditions of traditional scott's songs and ballads helped fuel a renaissance of interest in Scottish music that began in the 1960s. Lucy's collected and recorded work was an influence to Bob Dylan. In 1962, Bob Dylan modelled his song A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall on Lord Randall, which Lucy's work had introduced him to. The Stewart family tradition goes on with Elizabeth Stewart, who's widely known as a traditional Doric folk singer and storyteller in her own right and who I'm proud to say is a constituent of mine. Then there's Stanley Robertson, like the Stewart quines for a traveling family. Stanley was a poet and storyteller who had the great privilege of working with Before His Death on a range of Doric materials for a literacy programme for Aberdeen schools. The oral tradition of traveling folk in the north-east was embodied by this man, whose mind was chock-full of old stories from generations of traveling folk, that I am glad to say they've been collected in the Elphinston Kist at Aberdeen University, and the Elphinston Kist is a rich collection of the songs, stories and rhymes of the north-east that leads me on to the keeping of the Kist, the unofficial north-east bard, Sheena Blackhall. Burns are learning burns to a moose right now, but I bet you they can arisite Sheena's poem, Hulet, without you in it a second thought. Celebrating burns every year reminds us of the richness of the mother tongue, but we folk like Sheena, and I believe Matthew Fithews in the gallery, scribing anawa in a national in our mother tongue every week, our macker Jackie Kaye and Derek McClure, who Lewis mentioned the author of one of my favourite books, Why Scots Matters, and are the good work of the wanes and the teachers, Scots and Doric is alive and well, and it's nigh just for the 25th of January, but for are the days of the year. I call Fulton MacGregor to be followed by Finlay Carson. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and thanks to Emma Harper for giving me and everybody else the opportunity to talk in this debate. It is fair to say that I'm a wee bit of a Burns fan, and I see Emma's book there, and I've also got the complete collection book, and I've got it in CD format as well, and it's quite a number of CDs, I have to say, but I would highly recommend it to anybody who wants to listen to it, and it's a whole load of different singers from across Scotland, some of you may be familiar with it. I think that going to the motion itself, I think that it is fair to say that Bond still influences people here in Scotland and across the world, and I was very, very heartened today to see schools across my constituency, as I'm sure it was for everybody here. Their Twitter feed's been very active today and all the kids engaging in the various Burns activities, and I've got a few examples. For example, at Townhead primary school, there was a poetry competition and the delighted winners were showing their prizes. At Kirchaw's primary school, they were tweeting about watching the Highland Games, and they had dressed up, and it was good to see the pictures shown in a grossed audience, and at St Stephen's primary school, they tweeted that they were learning about the Scots dialect and that they had taken the time to write their own poem, as such, and I thought that that was very, very fitting and in line with tonight's debate. I think that it is good that the kids are today across the constituency and across Scotland are getting to learn about our heritage and the Scots dialect, and when I was growing up, we'd done Burns every year, like probably most people in school, but I think there's regional variations in accents and words that we use, and I didn't actually realise that a lot of the words that I was using until I went to university and actually went out the confines of Coatbridge in wider Lanarkshire that people would say to me why do you speak so slang and stuff like that, so I didn't actually realise that a lot of those words that were still, you know, integrated into my speech at various points were actually Scots language, and when I did find that out as a sort of teenager in my 20s, I was absolutely delighted. For me, in terms of Burns work, I, you know, obviously like the classics, a man's a man, and banks and braids, amongst many others, but I also like some of the more lesser known ones for the airs and the ballad that is the lament of Mary, Queen of Scots, which I think is an absolutely fantastic poem. Two of my favourites are Parcel of Rogues in a Nation and the absolutely brilliant Caledonia. Parcel of Rogues in a Nation, I think, is a very political message that he gives at that time. You know, to think that somebody was writing and sort of the messages he was getting across at that point in time. I think it's absolutely fascinating to think how many years ago that it was. I would like to say that I had intended to go to the full dinner tonight at the Presiding Officer Burns event, but I've also promised my wee boy to eat some haggis with him. He's just come up for three, so I hope to everybody that is going that it's a good night, and I've already now put in my apologies. I'd like to finish with the final paragraph from my favourite song that I mentioned earlier. It pips it as my favourite, it's called Caledonia, and the final paragraph is, Thus bold and dependent on conquered and free, Her bright course of glory for ever shall run, For brave Caledonia a mortal must be, I'll prove it from Euclid as clear as the sun, Rectangle, Triangle, the figure we'll choose, The uprightest chance and old time is the base, But brave Caledonia is the high pot in use, Then the air goes she'll match them and match them always. Officer, it's a real privilege to take part in this debate, and I thank Emma for securing it. It's such a shame that we've been conditioned out of speaking in Scots, because when I'm at home I very quickly revert to my playground chat with my dad, and we talk about the weather and what we're going to do, and I very quickly go into it, particularly if you're a wee rusty nail, and it's a shame that we have to put in an effort actually not to use Scots when we're in the debating chamber. From a personal perspective, 25 January has always been a really important date for myself and my family. There's every likelihood that my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was Burns' blacksmith, because he lived at Hollywood just at the time that Burns farmed at Ellysland, but my family are all Burns enthusiasts. My daughter Vicki and son Hugh regularly sing, recite or play Burns' works, but tonight there's no point in giving you a history of Robert Burns because I'm quite sure you'll know it just as well if not better than me, but what is worthy of reflection is to recall the state of the world in which Burns was born into and in which he grew up in. Only 13 years had passed since the battle of Culloden, which was the last battle fought in British soil, one in which Scots, let's not forget, participated on both sides. When Burns was only 17, came news of the American Declaration of Independence, and by the time he was 30 we had the French Revolution. All through his life there were conflicts. Wherever he lived in those times, he lived with a certain amount of fear, suspicion, danger and challenge. Of course, much of those uncertainties and challenges were also reflected in the thinking and writing of the time. With all this turmoil, he can only have influenced the mind of young Robert as he sought to answer the questions that must have poured out of his fertile imagination. Many of those questions must have been political, and I'm always fascinated by the fact that most shades of political spectrum will claim that Robert Burns was one of his own. The socialist and our Labour colleagues have left would look to a man's a man, for all that, for all that, it's coming yet for all that, that man to man, the world, our soul, brothers be, for all that. The nationalist could choose Burns' address at Barnockburn, more commonly known as Scotswahey, which was written just about three or four miles away from where I live at the moment, and gate ties of fleet. Scotswahewolis, Bled, Scotswam Bruce, is often led, welcome to your gory bed, or to victory. Why, for Scotland's king-and-law, freedom saw was strongly draw. Freedom stand, or freeman fall, let him follow me. And us unionists, and amazingly, I believe, even some UKIPers claim him as their own from the address to the Dumfries volunteers. O, let us not, like snarlinkers, enranglin be divided till slap come in on uncalun and we are wrong decide it. Be Britain still to Britain true among ourselves united for never bought by British hands when British rangs be righted. So we cleverly spanned all shades of politics, and as a novice politician I can only admire the dexterity and ease with which she did so. Given the tumult of the day, he could easily have written with bitterness, envy, greed or jealousy, but what emerges from his work is a picture of a man of understanding, of honesty, of justice and of extraordinary emotion and compassion for his fellow man. As all of us already said, he penned his epistle to Davie when he was only 25. It's no entitled nor ranks, it's no in wealth in London banks to purchase peace and rest, it's no in making muckl mare, it's no in books, it's no in lair, to make us truly breast. If happiness has not her seat and centre of the breast, we may be wise or rich or great but never can be blessed. Ne treasures, ne pleasures can make us happy lang, the hearts I depart I that makes us right or rang. Burns also had a healthy scepticism of the authorities, whether it took the shape of the local landlord, the local church, the presbyty or parliament, and he made it quite clear in Holy's willy prayer when he wrote, Lord hear my earnest cry in prayer against that presbytery I hear, thy strong right hand, Lord, make it bear upon their heeds, Lord visit them and denies spare for their misdeeds. I'm sure that scepticism would be alive and well today, presiding officer, but what I'm certain of is that he would have been enormously proud of the moment that will live with me and many other MSPs forever. It's how he would have been filled with pride at the opening of Holyrood in both 1999, when Sheena Wellington and more recently, when Midjewyr in 2016 sang the wonderful anthem. The letters pray that Comet May has Comet Will for a that, that sense and worth or are the earth shall bear the great and are that. For a that, and are that, it's coming yet for a that, that man to man the world our shall brothers be for a that. Presiden officer, there can surely be no better vision for any politician no matter his creed or political colour than that. John McAlpine Thank you, Presiding Officer, and thank you to Emma Harper for securing this debate. For all that I love the poetry of Robert Burns, what pleases me most is that down these two centuries and more since he died our country has chosen his birthday to think on a poet and poetry. I don't mind whether it's his radical sentiments, his observations on a fast-disappearing, agrarian way of life, body verses or the pureless tale of Tamoshanta. We cheer our most famous poet, recite and enjoy his verses and songs and do so in a singular style. I don't suppose it's unique, but it is perhaps unusual that a country should for a day each year take its collective breath and turn its thoughts to poetry in this way, and it makes me just a little proud because poetry matters. Since our Parliament has reconvened, we've blessed ourselves with marvellous mackers, cementing poetry in our consciousness and our civic life. None of us who watched it or who might have had the privilege of being present when the Scottish Parliament reconvened will forget Sheena Wellington singing A Man's A Man and just how a nation responded on that day, but the occasion was also illuminated by Amy Linnaker, a school girl from Thurso, with her poem How to Create a Great Country, which contained a thistle's worth of spike. Just this month, our latest macker Jackie Kay caused a bit of a stushy with her poem about the love that parents feel for their newborn babies. I loved it. My daughter Rachel shares a birthday with Robert Burns, and I hope that she will indulge me as I take the opportunity to wish her a happy birthday. Let your life heal up health charm, you are my bony blessed bear. When Jackie Kay took her post, she said, As Robert Burns demonstrated, poetry holds up a unique mirror to a nation's heart, mind and soul. It's the pure language that tells us who we are. Holding that mirror to a nation's heart, mind and soul can be dangerous. Even a poet as sensational as Robert Burns, a rock star on his day, had to watch his step. Writers and songsmiths across the world endured persecution. We live in a world where some governments or rulers can be so alarmed at thoughts written, spoken or sung that they'll suppress them cruelly. In these dangerous times and worrying times, we need our poets more than ever. Poetry, whether in its highest expression or the rhymes of the playground, has the capacity to be fun, to make us laugh, to make us cry, to bring the best of us to the fore. Poetry can do that. Are we a nation of poets? Perhaps it's not a bad aspiration. Although we may believe poetry to be in the mist and our hills or in the closest unwinds of our burrows and cities, embedded in our souls or in our DNA, such a belief, such an aspiration cannot be fulfilled by chance. It must be nurtured and protected. Space and time, understanding and our love, given to all of our languages and all of our means of expression. So Robert Burns, today, in a chamber full of honest men and bonny lasses, and hopefully some bonny men and honest lasses too, I toast not just your memory but all the poets past, present and future of our multi-form, our infinite Scotland. I'm starting to feel quite emotional. I call John McAlpine to be followed by the last of our open speakers who will be Claire Adamson. Thank you. I want to congratulate my friend Emma Harper on securing this debate. Normally, we see muckled flight in here. On the day on the bar's birthday, we are all canty and agreed. Robbie Burns would be fair, astonished and content to hear himself praised a new reconvened Scots Parliament. Sort it again, despite the actions of that partial erogs he admonished Lang Syne. I'm the Scots scholar, but I mean a speak Scots. Money Scots, where a good Scots tongue in their mooth have been tell they just haver in slang. Our Parliament can challenge those attitudes. In 2003, a cross-party group on the Scots lead was formed by Labour's Kathy Petey and the SNP's Irene McGuigan. The statement of principles for that group is worth repeating. Yn, Scots is a language. Toa, action mon butane, to pit and end, to all prejudice and discrimination again, the Scots language. To I, the Scots language is integral and essential to cultural and personal identity in Scotland. Fawr, a knowledge of Scots is vital to a knowledge of Scotland. Five, action mon butane, to gi the Scots language whatever means is needed, to make sticker its transmission and continuity. Six, Scots should be essential part of the educational curriculum in Scotland at all levels. Seven, nebody should be penalised or pit and done for speaking Scots. Echt, Scots proper names and place names should be valued and safeguarded. The on-principles were skewed more than a decade's sign. Have they been achieved? Ahamadouce. There's more work to be done. I hope all the MSPs who spoke say that the day will consider supporting another cross-party group on the Scots lead and play our part in helping it to thrive all year. The statement of principles of that group quoted Ian Crichton-Smith, another poet who wrote in Gaelic another tongue. He that loses his language loses the world. Let that our lesson be. I call Clare Adamson. Thank you Emma Harper for securing this wonderful debate this afternoon. So many heroes of the Scots language have already been mentioned today, particularly Billy Kaye, whose book The Mother Tongue gave me permission to love my language and I'm very grateful to him for that. To Matthew Fitt, a very grateful thanks for the wonderful memories I have with my now 19-year-old son reading your books in Scots language and being able to share those, especially with my English nieces, wonderful memories and wonderful experiences of our language. One person who hasn't been mentioned and as she comes from Motherwell, it would be very amiss of me not to mention Liz Lockhead, someone who has been a wonderful marker for Scotland and inspired so many of her. And I'd just like to quote from her poem, Bairnsang. It was January, a guide-reak day, the first day I went to the school. So my mum hapt me up in my good navy blue napcoat with a red tartan hood, birrald a scarfer on my neck, poured on my pixie and my pockies, it was that bitter. Said, new you'll no starve, gave me a wee kiss and a kid on scalp on the bum and sent me across the playground to the place where I'd learned to say it was January. A really dismal day, the first day I went to school. So my mother wrapped me up in my best navy blue topcoat with a red tartan hood, twirled a scarfer around my neck, pulled on my bubble hat and mittens, it was so bitterly cold. Said, now you won't freeze to death, gave me a little kiss and a prudence slap on the bottom to the place where I'd learned to forget to say it was January. And a guide-reak day, the first day I went to school. A short extract from Bairnsang, which to me is a lesson for every child in Scotland about their language, about the warmth, the nature, the feeling of the language that's their own and how they should never be made to feel as if that language does not belong to them. But today is all about Bairns and Bairns is many characters and some of these indiscretions and the negative side of them have been mentioned today. Although he's often considered not to be a friend to women, there are two poems in particular of Bairns that mean a lot to me. Both are songs, I won't sing them to date to present them to you, thankfully, but they're unusual and they are both told from the point of view of a woman. The first one is an extract from The Rantan Dog, and it's about young women who find themselves pregnant and married and has all the concerns that might face someone today in that situation who'll buy the baby's clothes, who'll pay the midwife at that time, who'll claim the baby, and it's what my bernie cluts will buy, what will tent me when I cry, what will kiss me where I lie, The Rantan Dog, the Daddy Oat, who will own he who did the fort, who will buy the grown-in mot, who will tell me what to call it, The Rantan Dog, the Daddy Oat. I think that shows a real understanding of the predicament of women from Bairns. The other poem that came to mind when I was listening to him today was The Highland Widow's Rement. It's a poem that Bairns wrote and one that meant so much to him on seeing a woman from the Highlands begging, someone who'd been made destitute. It's about the end of the war in Culloden, where she was made homeless. Their woe fo tail, what need not tell, right to their anger-dealed, my Donald, and his country fell upon Culloden's field. O I am come to the low country, Ocon, Ocon O'Cree, nay woman in this world wide, say wretch now as me. Those are a few of my favourite bits of Bairns, and I thank Emma once again for this wonderful opportunity to celebrate him this evening. I call Alasdair Allan to close this debate. Around seven minutes, please, minister. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Money thanks to Emma Hartbar for bringing this debate to the fflair of the Parliament, the night, and to the Routh, the ithers, our money to name at SPAC in the debate and all. Able is that he had disappointment that there was a night, when Stuart Stevenson's SPAC, because money us at this place are acquaint with Stuart Stevenson's tales of his family and his family history, and it was a sad disappointment to money us to find out at Stuart Stevenson isn't he come down for the great man himself. But let me start by reading one of the first reviews that Burns ever had at the Scots magazine at the 1st of December 2017 at the SACs. It tells us a fair lot about the things Burns and the Scots tongue has had to thaw their henormest 200-year, and like Miss Harper, I come to the bit of Scotland that says tway esthé du toit. The reviewer scribes in his bit of the Scots magazine, I know not if I shall be accused of enthusiasm and partiality when I introduce to the notice of my readers a poet of our own country, the person to whom I allude is Robert Burns and Ayrshire Ploughman. In mentioning the circumstance of his humble situation, I mean not to urge the merits of his poetry solely when considered in relation to the loneness of his birth and the little opportunity of improvement which his education could afford. Those particulars indeed might excite our wonder at his productions, but his poetry, considered abstractly and without the apologies arising from his situation, seems to me fully entitled to command our feelings and to obtain our applause. What Burns comes to socially is earth and pear to what he is, but it has been yes to sneer at him or to garfolk, to lose at his poetryman, just to be a cootie or a stuff. The reviewer rings his hands a wee bitty mare and says, then there is the language in which most of his poems are written. In England it cannot be read at all without such constant reference to a glossary as to nearly destroy that pleasure. Some of his productions, however, especially those of the grave style, are almost English. Gennacan, our set dawn for the record, he is saying this. Burns, when am I going to sell a route at all this, for the year letterary scene at Mitter's is in London, but he eludes it Burns can, mere or less, scream English for buy, so he can't be all the gathered on earth. With what uncommon penetration and sagacity has this heaven-taught Ploughman from his humble and unlettered station looked upon men and manners? We hear the review of the Kilmarnock edition at Jens, praise and burns and patronising him, and Gennacan, for the record, maybe is the first-ever yes of the phrase heaven-taught Ploughman. I represent the Gaelic speaking bit of Scotland. I was brought up at the other end of the country or the gither. Both my grandfather's was Ploughman, say Burns speaks to me, but Burns speaks to the Hale world in awe. Just as Mr MacDonald mentioned about his feathers' work to translate Burns from Scots into Gaelic, just the other week, I've already written it to me to ask or to tell me about a new etel to our set Burns into Estonia. Already, as other members have mentioned, Burns is being recited and sung the world out of the night. As Mr Scott rightly says, per to the way that it is that we're celebrating him is that he gave the Scots tongue an epic poem and the status that he brought with it. The Scottish Government fordures the recognition of Scots in all its forms, it is at the heart of our communities and our literature. A few years ago, I was a member of the Government's Scots Language Ministerial Working Group, and since then, for the first time in 2011, there was a question on Scots of the Census that showed a million and a half Scots had some canon of Scots. We brought in Scots language co-ordinators of the skills, Scots lead policy and many other things for buy, and Creative Scotland and others has been supportive in awe. Although some members grat for rage about it at the time, as an education minister, I brought in the requirement that the higher English exams be a compulsory question on Scottish literature. However, let me give the hand-mased word to Burns himself and the satirical words that he addressed to Scotland's representatives at the Husa Commons. Of course, Burns did not hear a vote himself, but he had his own views, and among other things he had views on the question of language. He said, Could he, some commutation broach, I'll pledge my faith in Gidbread scotch, he needn't fear their foul reproach, nor erudition, yawn, mixty, maxy, queer, hodgepodge, the coalition? All Scotland has a rockle tongue, she's just a devil way of rung, and if she promised all their young to tuck their peat, though by the next she should be strung, she'll no dessert. God bless your owners, all your days, with soaps of kale and brats of clays. In spite of all the thievish cays that haunts St Jamie's, your humble poet sings and prays while rab his name is.