SOURCE: "The Language of Burns," in Critical Essays on Robert Burns, edited by Donald A. Low, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975, pp. 54–70.

In the following essay Murison outlines the history of the Scots dialect and examines the relationship between Scots and English in Burns's writing.

No small part of a poet's business is the manipulation of words, and the great poets have usually been great creators also in the use of language. But even the greatest have to work within the general limits of the language they begin with, its vocabulary, its idiom and its rhythms, and Burns is no exception. In his case the picture is complicated by the fact that for historical reasons he had two languages at his disposal, whose relations to one another have to be understood before we can appreciate his technique and achievement.

Scots and English are essentially dialects of the same original language...