When Rabbie Burns died more than 10,000 people came to his funeral, a measure of his popularity but nothing compared to what was to come.

The mausoleum of Rabbie Burns

He was only 37 when he died of heart disease but in that last year of his life he had written some of his most-respected works, such as The Lea Rig, Tam O'Shanter and O, My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose.

He was born in Alloway, Ayrshire, in 1759, to a poor tenant farmer and was to become the eldest of seven children.

He grew up working hard on his father's farm, but became very well read, at his father's insistence. At 15, Rabbie wrote his first verse, My Handsome Nell, which was an ode to the subjects, other than farming, that dominated his life...whisky and women.

When his father died in 1784, Rabbie and his brother Gilbert became partners in the farm but poetry and women held him in greater thrall. By the time his first collection was published, he had fathered several illegimate children, including twins to Jean Armour, who was later to become his wife.

He was on the brink of emigrating to the West Indies when Poems - Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect - Kilmarnock Edition was published to critical acclaim.

That success, and parenthood, kept him in Scotland and he eventually moved to Edinburgh where the Ploughman Poet became a national celebrity.

However, to make ends meet he had to take a job as an exciseman. By this stage he had married Jean Armour.

He continued to write, and to build up a body of work that is still celebrated more than 200 years later, never more so than on January 25, Burns Night.