It’s Robert Burns’ Day in Scotland and elsewhere as fans of the poet raise their glasses to toast the man and his verse, preferably at a Burns Supper, where haggis is eaten, strong drink is quaffed, and songs are sung (some of them not suitable for mixed company). 

I saw little of Burns at the Writers’ Museum in Edinburgh. His room was being renovated. Instead, I looked at the exhibits of his compatriots, Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Walter Scott. 

But today’s festivities are a perfect excuse to write about Scotland, look through photos of the place, and honor one of the most famous of Burns’s poems, Auld Lang Syne.

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!
And gie’s a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak’ a right guid-willie waught,
For auld lang syne.