Last Saturday some 170 people gathered at the Athenee Palace Hotel in Bucharest for Burns Night – an annual celebration for the Scottish community. Born on 25th January 1759, Robert Burns is Scotland’s national poet as well as a pioneer of the Romantic movement.
Burns suppers are organised each year on or around the poet’s birthday, to celebrate his work and the impact it has had on Scottish literature and beyond.
In Bucharest there have been Burns Suppers for the last ten years, organised in aid of ‘Light into Europe‘, a British-Romanian NGO dedicated to raising funds for sensory – impaired children.
There are 40,000 people in Romania with hearing impediments, and 100,000 who have sight impediments, around 25% of all those with disabilities in Romania. ‘Light into Europe’ does two fantastic things.
First of all, it gives very practical help to those that need it – it provides help with sign language, with textbooks, and now guide dogs. And secondly, it supports dedicated and courageous people who are campaigning hard to make sure that there will be better provision for independent living in the future than there is today.
My task of the evening was to propose a toast, according to tradition, to ‘the Immortal Memory of Robert Burns’. I recalled all the things that we Scots and Romanians have in common – the culture of the mountains, haggis (drob), reels (hora) and of course whisky (ziuca). And I recited a famous Romanian poem which I am sure Robert Burns would have appreciated as much as I do – the ‘Miorita’, with its beautiful, lyrical and mystical exposition of the life and landscape of the shepherd. Here it is on YouTube. I hope you enjoy it.
