Selected for 19 April
The famously, 'mad, bad and dangerous to know', Lord Byron died on April 19th, 1825. In Burns's antithetical mind' he had detected both 'dirt and deity'. Byron was very proud of his connection to the aristocratic Gordons of Aberdeenshire. Jane, Duchess of Gordon, a society hostess, was an ardent patroness of the Bard. Burns wrote in defence of her reputation to the editor of a London newspaper in April, 1789. The paper had reprinted some defamatory verses wrongly attributed to the poet. Maybe there was some dirt in HER deity too!
Donny O'Rourke