Walter Scott, one of the giants of Scottish literature, has a monstrous monument in Princes Streer, Edinburgh, but is largely unread. In contrast, the other giant Robbie Burns (1759-1796), a ploughboy, has an evening every year when people across the world, not just in Scotland, salute his “immortal memory”; and Auld Lang Syne, a song he may have written, is sung across the world on New Year’s Eve. Many of his poems, lots of them in Scots, are well known, much loved, and studied in schools. I first knew the poem below as a song, sung beautifully by Eddie Reader, and many of Burns’s poems are songs. At age 72 and married to a Scottish wife for 47 years, this poem speaks directly to me, particularly the day after a dentist filled a hole in a broken tooth and told me that my molars are “crumbling” (all that eating).

John Anderson my jo, John,
When we were first acquent;
Your locks were like the raven,
Your bony brow was brent;
But now your brow is beld, John,
Your locks are like the snaw;
But blessings on your frosty pow,
John Anderson my Jo.

John Anderson my jo, John,
We clamb the hill the gither;
And mony a canty day, John,
We’ve had wi’ ane anither:
Now we maun totter down, John,
And hand in hand we’ll go;
And sleep the gither at the foot,
John Anderson my Jo.