Rabbie Burns was an inspiration to a movement of poets in north-east Ireland who spoke a variant of Scots.

They were the Rhyming Weaver poets, a movement of popular versifiers in north and mid Antrim and northeast Down who by trade were weavers of linen or otherwise involved in textile manufacture.

Much of their work, which was originally published in local newspapers, has been lost, but dozens of these poets flourished from the 1780s until past the middle of the next century.

Many took on the mantle of community spokesmen and acquired nicknames signifying this. James Orr (1770-1816), who was perhaps the most notable of these poets, and some of whose work has been favourably compared to that of Rabbie Burns, was known as the Bard of Ballycarry.

Read extracts from Orr's poems The Hill at Donegore and The Irish Cottier's Death and Burial.

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