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50 free Robert Burns trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Robert Burns packed a lot into 37 years, and this quiz follows the whole run of it: the clay-and-thatch cottage his father built at Alloway, the debating club and Masonic lodge in Tarbolton, the Belles of Mauchline, the Jamaica job he never took because a three-shilling book of poems made him famous first, the pony ride to Edinburgh, the Nasmyth portrait, the excise rounds in Dumfriesshire and the military funeral in 1796. The poems and songs get their own stretch: Tam's grey mare and the Devil on the bagpipes, the mouse's nest at Mossgiel, the Bruce's speech in Scots Wha Hae, the true meaning of Auld Lang Syne and the country that used its tune as a national anthem. Then Burns Night itself, from the Selkirk Grace to neeps and tatties, and the long afterlife: Steinbeck and Salinger's titles, Bob Dylan's favourite lyric, a Soviet stamp, a crater on Mercury and the oldest statue of the poet, which is in Australia. The easy questions suit anyone who has been to a Burns supper; the expert tier reaches Elizabeth Paton, the Royal Dumfries Volunteers and Robert Fergusson. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Burns, his poems and Burns suppers, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
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Q 01Robert Burns was born in 1759 in which Ayrshire village, two miles south of Ayr?
Alloway
His birthplace cottage now anchors the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum.
Q 02Burns Night is celebrated every year on which date?
25 January
It marks his birthday and is more widely observed in Scotland than St Andrew's Day, the official national day.
Q 03Burns's father William Burnes was a tenant farmer originally from Dunnottar; what was his mother's name?
Agnes Broun
Robert was the eldest of their seven children.
Q 04The cottage where Burns was born was built by his father in 1757 from what materials?
Clay and thatch
It later spent a spell as a pub before the National Trust for Scotland restored it.
Q 05In 1780 Burns and his brother Gilbert founded a debating society in their local village known as what?
The Tarbolton Bachelors' Club
He had joined a country dancing school the year before, to his father's disapproval.
Q 06On 4 July 1781, aged 22, Burns was initiated at St David's, Tarbolton, into which fraternal order?
The Freemasons
He remained active in the craft, and his membership opened doors among Edinburgh's gentry.
Q 07Jean Armour, whom Burns married in 1788, belonged to a group of local girls known as what?
The Belles of Mauchline
Her father was a stonemason; she bore Burns nine children, only three of whom survived infancy.
Q 08In 1786 Burns accepted a plantation book-keeper's job in which colony before his poems kept him home?
Jamaica
The £30-a-year post would have made him an assistant overseer of enslaved workers, a plan he later described bluntly.
Q 09The Highland lass Burns may have pledged himself to by exchanging Bibles in 1786 was really named what?
Mary Campbell
She died of typhus at Greenock that October, and he later wrote 'To Mary in Heaven' for her.
Q 10Burns's first book, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, was published in 1786 in which town?
Kilmarnock
Printed by John Wilson, it sold for three shillings.
Q 11How much did a copy of Burns's first book of poems cost when it appeared in 1786?
3 shillings
It contained 'The Twa Dogs', 'To a Mouse', 'The Cotter's Saturday Night' and 'Address to the Deil'.
Q 12In 'The Twa Dogs', from his first book, the dog Luath was modelled on Burns's own pet of what breed?
Border Collie
A life-size statue of Burns with Luath stands in the Back Bay Fens in Boston.
Q 13The famous 1787 portrait of Burns, the basis for almost every later image of him, was painted by whom?
Alexander Nasmyth
Publisher William Creech commissioned it as the frontispiece for the Edinburgh edition.
Q 21Tam escapes the witches by racing for the bridge over the Doon because they cannot do what?
Cross running water
The dancing witch who leads the chase, Nannie, gets close enough to grab the horse's tail.
Q 22Which tea clipper is named after the short shirt worn by the witch Nannie in 'Tam o' Shanter'?
Cutty Sark
The word means 'short shirt' in Scots.
Q 23Which 1937 John Steinbeck novel takes its title from a line in Burns's 'To a Mouse'?
Of Mice and Men
Burns wrote the poem in 1785 after his plough turned up a mouse's nest at Mossgiel farm.
Q 14In his letters to Agnes 'Nancy' McLehose, Burns signed himself with which pen name?
Sylvander
She was 'Clarinda'; their final meeting in 1791 inspired 'Ae Fond Kiss'.
Q 15Burns contributed enthusiastically to which song collection edited by Edinburgh engraver James Johnson?
The Scots Musical Museum
He also wrote for George Thomson's rival collection, which commissioned settings from Haydn and Beethoven.
Q 16After Edinburgh, Burns took a 1788 lease on which Dumfriesshire farm beside the River Nith?
Ellisland
He gave it up in 1791 and moved into the town of Dumfries.
Q 17Alongside farming, Burns trained for and in 1789 was appointed to which government job?
Exciseman
The work meant long rides in all weathers and detailed bookkeeping.
Q 18Burns's narrative masterpiece 'Tam o' Shanter' was written in November of which year?
1790
It first appeared in print in Francis Grose's Antiquities of Scotland in 1791.
Q 19In 'Tam o' Shanter', what is the name of Tam's grey mare?
Meg
The witches pull off her tail just as she reaches the bridge over the Doon.
Q 20In 'Tam o' Shanter', who is playing the bagpipes at the witches' dance in the haunted kirk?
The Devil
Tam blows his cover by shouting encouragement to a witch in a short shirt, a 'cutty-sark'.
Q 24According to his brother Gilbert, Burns composed 'To a Mouse' while doing what?
Still holding his plough
The poem's full title dates the nest-turning incident to November 1785.
Q 25Which J. D. Salinger novel's title comes from misreading Burns's 'Comin' Through the Rye'?
The Catcher in the Rye
Holden Caulfield imagines himself catching children before they fall off a cliff.
Q 26Which singer-songwriter named Burns's 'A Red, Red Rose' in 2008 as the lyric that most affected his life?
Bob Dylan
The 1794 song became world-famous set to the traditional tune 'Low Down in the Broom'.
Q 27Burns's 'A Man's a Man for A' That', written in Dumfries, drew on the ideas of which political writer?
Thomas Paine
The song was sung at the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999.
Q 28Burns's 'Scots Wha Hae' (1793) is a speech by which Scottish leader before Bannockburn?
Robert the Bruce
He set it to the tune 'Hey Tuttie Tatie', said to have been played by the army at Bannockburn.
Q 29Burns's 'Auld Lang Syne', sent to a song collection in 1788, has a title meaning roughly what?
Old long since
He described it as an old song of olden times that he had taken down from an old man.
Q 30The music now sung to 'Auld Lang Syne', attached to the words in 1799, is best described as what?
A pentatonic folk melody
It was probably originally a sprightly dance played at a much quicker tempo.