I struggled to get much out of this and I don't think it's really Burns' fault. To get any real appreciation one must both hear it in a Scots accent and understand the Scots dialect it is written in. I can mentally supply the former but I don't know the latter. Of course there are copious glosses to explain it all but reading them as you go disrupts the flow consierably. I'm used to dealing with this sort of thing when reading Middle English, when generally I end up reading the passage at least twice, but Middle English is easier than this Scots! Then most of these pieces turn out to be lightweight comic verses, satires and the like; not much return for the effort involved. ( )