Updates on recent searches
It is impossible to cover all aspects of Burns in one website. If you do a search which comes up without a satisfactory answer then please return to this site and I will regularly update this page. Recent searches have been on the following subjects.

John Anderson and the missing verse.
There were searches also for the tail-tree and I assume that this refers to the missing verse. In fact Burns version of John Anderson is a sanitised version of a traditional bawdy monologue of 6 verses in which a wife grumbles about her husband's declining powers. Burns took this and transformed it into a tender love-song for old age in which passion has given way to companionship and fidelity. There is no missing verse and certainly, the tail-tree is not in the Burns version.

Man's Inhumanity to Man This comes from the poem Man was made to Mourn. Verse 7.

Burns then proceeds to give sensible advice about helping out a neighbour

The third verse which has been requested recently in the search page is

Wedding Marriage, Poems suitable for this occasion.
Full poems on Wedding Page

Burns Children See This Link

Willie Wastle Check down this page to the last answer where the first verse is printed

Toothache The Address was probably written about May 1789, when he wrote to Creech. Burns description of this is a delightful sensation of an omnipotent toothache so engross all my inner man. Fifty troops of infernal spirits are driving post, from ear to ear, along my jaw bones.

Burns Burial Burns died in Dumfries on 21st July 1796. He was given a military funeral on 25th July, his body being carried to St Michaels Churchyard to the Dead March from Handel's Saul. The whole town turned out to honour his memory, and the volunteers fired a volley on his grave. Nineteen years later, Burns was reinterred in the Mausoleum.

Haggis
Full words, actions and translation on Address to a Haggis

Burns and his Lassies
How many affairs did Burns have?
This is difficult because even by looking at the songs, if we were to catalogue the lassies that received a song from Burns then the answer would undoubtedly be wrong.
For instance Peggy Chalmers turned down a proposal of marriage. It is also an accepted fact that the Burns and Nancy McLehose (Sylvander and Clarinda) affair was no more than an exchange of words and letters, yes, deep feeling for each other but not as far as Burns would have wanted to go.
We also have the affairs that we know about and to whom songs were never written - Jenny Clow for example.
The answer then is not to build a database of lassies mentioned in the songs.
What we do know is the number of children that Burns fathered and again is not as many as some people would like us to believe. The answer to that is 12, of which 9 were to Jean Armour and 1 each to Betty Paton, Anna Park, and Jenny Clow.
I am still unconvinced that Burns fathered the child to Meg Cameron although he most likely did have a one night stand with her.
Coming back to your original question, we do know from the above that he was "close" to Jean Armour and 4 others. Any more than this is pure conjecture. Let us give him the benefit of the doubt as there have been enough detractors, gossip mongers and plain untruths about the man over the centuries.

Masonic History Is this not a secret?
25th June 1781. The two lodges - St James and St Davids were united under the name of St Davids being the oldest charter.
4th July 1781, 9 days after the union Burns was entered an apprentice, his initiation fee was 12 shillings and 6 pence (62p)
1st October 1781 Burns was passed and raised
The union of the lodges was ill fated and St James reconstituted on 8th August 1782
Robert Burns was the only person to be initiated and later passed and raised in the united lodge.
27th July 1784 Burns was elected Depute Master of St James Lodge
23rd June 1786 he was re-elected to the Depute Mastership
He held this office up to 1788
12th January 1787 toasted as Caledonia's Bard in Lodge St Andrews Edinburgh
1st February 1787 affiliated into Lodge Canongate Kilwinning, Edinburgh.
19th May 1787 Burns and Ainslie made Royal Arch Masons in Lodge St Ebbe, Eyemouth. Ainslie paid 1 guinea but Burns was admitted gratis.

Burns Last Song Fairest Maid on Devon Banks was the last song to be sent to Thomson - on 12th July from the Brow Well during his last illness when he was sea bathing.
He returned to Dumfries on the 18th July and wrote his last letter to James Armour begging Jean's mother to come to look after her. In this letter his handwriting is so weak that he can only sign it RB.
However it is acknowledged that his last song was O wert thou in the cauld blast. Written for Jessie Lewars who tended him at the last.
He died on the 21st July.

Dunlop Mrs Frances Anna, 1730 - 1815. A friendship and correspondent (burns wrote more letters to her than to any other correspondent) which lasted from 1786 right through until an inexplicable break towards the end of Burns life.

My Father was a Farmer Burns wrote in his commonplace book under the date April 1784 that this song is a wild rhapsody, miserably deficient in versification but as the sentiments are the genuine feelings of my heart, for that reason I have a particular pleasure in conning it over.
The fifth stanza finely brings out the proud vaunt he so eloquently introduced in his Dedication to the Edinburgh Edition "I was born to the plough and am independent!"
The likely date for this song is 1782. The collapse of his Irvine adventure in 1781 had added much to his stock of experience of human life and human folly.

Golf Gowff is mentioned in the poem "When Guilford Good" Willie was the prime minister Wm Pitt.

Burns Signature The two most common signatures that Burns used were

Coat of Arms Burns had a knowledge about the art of Heraldry ( possibly gained from Captain Grose ) and designed his own Coat of Arms.