As soon as Rabbie turned sixteen he went to the farm of his uncle in Kirkoswald near Turnberry. The farm was called the Shanter Farm and was sited between Turnberry and Culzean. This was where the grave of "Tam" was and having fond memories of the farm "Tam O Shanter “ was penned later in life with Kirkoswald in mind.

In 1773 Robert fell in love with Nelly Fitzpatrick and penned his first poem in her honour but his father had other ideas and sent him to his Uncle Samuel Brown to study maths. Burns life during this time was much better and greatly different to the hard backbreaking work at Mount Oliphant where Robert had to plough till he dropped. His father had tied himself to a lease for the next twelve years to Mount Oliphant.

Two years later Robert was allowed to go to study again but his mind was not on the subject because his eyes roved to Peggy Thomson. He remembers this liaison fondly and with great affection, mentioning it amongst the poems in his later published Kilmarnock collection. The lease finally ended on Mount Oliphant and he went to look for another suitable place to farm, hoping for better terms this time.

His next farm was Lochlea and he was given money to start up the tenancy. They lived at Lochlea in a healthier lifestyle for four years. Robert had his first major row at Lochlea with his father about dancing of all things. He wanted some fun time when he could learn to dance and his father protested against it. He later mentioned that his father never forgot this row and held it against him for the rest of his life.

The year now was 1780 and Burns decided he wanted to write his news to his friends and his first letter went to David Nine, a good friend of Burns. A love affair started with Alison Begbie, a labourer at a nearby farm who was literate and received many letters from Robert. He also penned the song "Mary Morrison" for Alison, keeping her identity secret. The affair broke up however when he proposed and she declined.

In November 1780 Burns formed the Tarbolton Bachelors Club. The club met once a month and debated on any topic which took their fancy apart from religion. The club was a gentlemanly one where swearing and obscene language were not allowed. The criteria to join were for a man to be
open and honest, to love at least one woman in his life and to think every one was equal.

In July 1781 Burns joined the St David’s Lodge in Tarbolton. It guaranteed help from his brothers in times of need and in the eighteenth century the need was often. It also gave him a wider range of friends than he had before. Burns moved to Irvine in Ayrshire in 1781, a royal borough dating back as far as the thirteenth century and a major port for the illegal import of taxable goods.

William Burness, his father, had sent Robert to Irvine to learn how to make flax into linen. The family decided the way to move forwards was to grow flax on the farm and harvest it and make it in to flax themselves. It was the stripping of the flax indoors which started up Burns’s heart disease that eventually killed him. During this time Robert became more religious and penned religious verses and also ones about his pain.

Sometime during the New Year the shop he opened in Irvine to sell linen had caught fire and everything went up in smoke with it. While at his lowest ebb he met a new friend Richard Brown who managed to help Burns back up. During his time under Richards’s influence Robert partied and took up with many women.

He then returned to Lochlea where he worked the plough by day and wrote to his friends at night, telling them about his daily life. His father’s life was failing greatly and he took his landlord to court about arrears he was supposed to owe. Robert knew he would have to provide for his mother and six siblings. To help him bear the burden he retreated to the world of poem song and verse.

The Common Place Book was his masterpiece. He included the song about Nelly and brought his poetry up to date. The religious verses he wrote while gripped by despair and misfortune. He worked on his book from 1783 to 1785.

His father died in February 1784 and told Robert on his death bed that he thought he was no good. It was Robert who saved the family from starving after his father died and who managed to put a new roof over their heads. A farm called Mossgiel, two miles away from Lochlea was leased for £90 a year from a lawyer called Gavin Hamilton. It was during his time at Mauchline that Burns grew to maturity as a poet, composing many of his enduring satires, narratives and epistles.

Robert then took up with a young girl called Elizabeth Paton who worked for Agnes Brown. The poet wrote a song for her like he did for all the others. She gave him a son and daughter in May 1785 and he penned a poets’ welcome for his daughter.

By the summer of 1784 Burns was twenty five and had met Jean Armour in Mauchline. She was nineteen and from a respectable family of a fellow mason.

During the two years writing of his Common Place Book Burns took ill again and for a few months was unable to do much. Once better his poetry changed to works he had heard before but which he amended to his own liking, for example "Green Grow the Rushes Oh".

While living in Mauchline Burns wrote the vast majority of his poems and these show insight to the way of life at that time. Burns also sat in court against wrong doers and some of his more risqué poems tell of the predicament his fellowman gets in to. He also narrated a poem about Poosie Nancies Inn owned by Agnes Gibson. Beggars used to congregate here and Robert took an interest in them. This poem He wanted to include in his later Edinburgh book but was scoffed at for showing the way low lives lived. He regretted later on that he never kept a full copy though
some of it has been included.

"Holy Wullies Prayer" was written next and it was a friend of Burns, Gavin Hamilton’s misfortune at being reported for not going to church that made the bard pen it as he thought that the people who reported him were much worse underneath but holding up a cloak of religion as a shield.

"To A Mouse" followed and the lovely poem "Maggie" about a loyal horse in her latter years and the old farmer who owned her remembering the good days and thanking her for her loyalty. This is a very touching poem.

"The Twa Dogs" shows an understanding of a rich and poor divide, an assumption that rich is better and the poor dog telling the rich one that he too has a good life and not to make assumptions. In the eighteenth century the majority of the poor lived in squalor, many living on watery porridge. The aristocrats were however very rich and squandered their money trying to find something to keep them amused. There was no middle ground. You were either rich or poor.

Jean Armour fell pregnant in the summer of 1786 and was sent to Paisley by her family. Robert did the decent thing and asked for her hand but was refused. He had taken up with Mary Campbell but conducted this relationship on the quiet so it was not established that he was seeing two girls at the same time. Burns was certainly in trouble however and decided to escape abroad, deciding on the West Indies in October. It appears that he proposed to Mary too and asked her to go with him. We know this by the two poems "Highland Lassie Oh" and "Will Ye Go To The Indies, My Mary", which were printed in 1792. Burns also contradicts himself by penning the farewell, where he speaks of missing Jean not Mary. In 1785 Robert also approached a printer in Kilmarnock to make a book of his poems. John Wilson printed these in 1786. The money for the copyright was instructed to go to Elizabeth Paton’s daughter. Jean Armour gave birth to twins on the 3rd September, a boy and a girl. Robert didn't go to Jamaica after all. The twins were called Robert and Jean and were given to Roberts’s mother to bring up.