Axed Robert Burns manuscript could have put career in jeopardy, says scholar
A Robert Burns scholar has unearthed an early version of one of the poet’s songs he believes could have cost him his livelihood had it been published because of its revolutionary ideas.
The cancelled working manuscript of the song Ye Jacobites By Name was written by Burns in 1791 in the early years of the French Revolution, against which reformers in were also agitating for political change at a time when most working people were not permitted to vote.
