Two new Burns poems discovered alongside 'rude' letters
Alison Flood writing in guardian.co.uk, Monday 15 December 2008

His love might have been like a red red rose, but it turns out that Robert Burns may also have been suffering from a rather nasty STD, according to a collection of explicit writing apparently by Scotland's national bard, due to go on sale in January 2009.
The poems and letters, which cast a different light on the man known for his romantic verse including "Ae fond kiss and then we sever", reportedly see Burns refer to his children as "bastards", and complain about not being able to ride his horse due to a sexually transmitted disease.

Their owner, who wishes to remain anonymous, found them in his mother's home a decade ago, but decided to wait until the 250th anniversary of Burns's birth next month before putting them up for sale. The collection, which runs to 25 pages, is made up of letters Burns sent to his friend, the Edinburgh lawyer Robert Ainslie, between 1787 and 1789, as well as two poems.

Read the full story at The Guardian online.