PAGES of Robert Burns’s handwritten prose, written on his employer’s stationery, suggest that the Scottish Bard’s passion for poetry couldn’t escape him during his working day.
The 220-year-old manuscript from the University of Edinburgh’s collection shows Burns’s writing on paper featuring the red watermark of the government’s excise office, where he worked from 1788 until his death in 1796.
The celebrated Scottish poet and lyricist was employed as an exciseman to collect taxes and intercept illegal goods, such as smuggled alcohol. He had previously struggled to earn money as a tenant farmer.
