I was seized with a keen desire to see Holmes again... He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, his hands clasped behind him.

Arthur Conan Doyle

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Robert Burns Walking TrailsRobert Burns Walking Trails

This Trail pinpoints several locations in Edinburgh that have strong connections with the bard. Not all the locations are in the city-centre, so some planning might be required if you wish to visit them all.



Robert Burns made two extended visits to Edinburgh as a young writer newly exposed to fame and celebrity. They turned out to be critical in his life and art.

When Burns came in 1786-87, and again in 1787-88, the Scottish Enlightenment was in full swing. Edinburgh was "a hotbed of genius" replete with great thinkers, world-changing books and enterprising printer-publishers.

But Edinburgh was also where the aristocrats, lairds and lawyers gathered to socialise and manoeuvre. They managed Scotland on behalf of a distant Parliament in London.

Burns was a brilliant new artistic talent but a poor farmer’s son. Lionised as a national bard, he was also patronised and sometimes snubbed. The poet’s famous affair in Edinburgh with Agnes McLehose or ‘Clarinda’ was edgy because it crossed class boundaries.

Though a new edition of his poems was produced, Edinburgh stifled Burns’s artistic instincts and he returned to southwest Scotland with mixed feelings. However Burns began the song writing and collecting which was to become central to his artistic legacy in Edinburgh.





Text by Donald Smith. Donald Smith is Director of the Scottish Storytelling Centre. Among many publications he is the author of God, the Poet and the Devil: Robert Burns and Religion (2008) and Between Ourselves (2008), a novel about Burns and Edinburgh.


(c) Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust, 2009