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How Robert Burns wrote new poetry 60 years after his death — with a little help from Victorian ‘table-rapping’ séances

Death was no barrier to writing poetry for a man of Robert Burns’s skills.

At least, that’s what a group of spiritualists known as the Yorkshire Table Rappers believed.

In the Victorian era spiritualism – the belief that that the dead could make contact with the living – was increasingly popular.

‘Table-rapping’ was the knocking sound supposedly made by the dead as they communicated during séances.

Robert Burns first started talking to the Keighley spirit circle around 1855 — nearly 60 years after his death.

As , “Burns would spell out messages to them letter by letter”.

They included:

Take heed of what I say
And poetry I will give

To cheer your mind from day to day
And tell you how to live

Casting doubt on Burns’s contact

As his visits to the group continued Burns began to dictate poetry in ‘Scotch’, although not in any recognisable dialect of Scotland.

And while this led some Scots spiritualists to doubt the Keighley group’s claims, according to Dan they were able to turn the confusion to their advantage.

“It demonstrated that it must be Burns [contacting them] because none of them knew Scots and yet they were able to write in this language.”

Burns on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

The programme in full

Serious Burns

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