Like most proud Scots we are big fans of Burns night and always celebrate with the obligatory haggis, neeps and tatties. BaT director Niall and creative director Kenny have more reason than most to raise a glass to the Bard – Robert Burns is their great, great, great, great uncle! They are directly descended from Rabbie’s siter, Isabella – their great, great, great, great grandmother.
Robert Burns had six siblings, the youngest being Isabella Burns – born on 27 June 1771 in Mount Oliphant, Ayr. She was 12 years younger than her brother and after her father’s death the family moved to Mossgiel Farm where she lived and worked for nine years.
At Mossgiel she married her husband John Begg who in 1810 became the land steward for Mr James Hope Vere MP on his estate at Blackwood in Lanarkshire. On 24 April 1813, after nearly three years at Blackwood, John met his death when his horse reared and fell on him, crushing him to death.
Next in line was her son Robert Burns Begg. He was a school master based in Kinross, and he seems to have survived all his horse riding adventures, dying at the ripe old age of 78 in 1876.
The next descendant in line was the Reverand Bruce Begg, born to Robert Burns Begg on 24 June 1837 in Kinross. He was the Parish Minister at Abbotshall, Kirkcaldy, Fife and later at St Fillans, near Crieff.
Reverend Bruce Begg’s son Andrew Currie Begg, was just 36 years old when he died on the 30th July 1916 at the Somme. A memorial to him can be seen in St Fillans. Tragically his wife died soon after, leaving several orphaned children, one of them being Caroline Begg, Niall and Kenny’s grandmother.
Reverend Begg’s Colonel wrote of him:- “He was a fine soldier and a very gallant and brave man, and, in the attack on the German trenches on the 30th, seeing men hesitating to go over the parapet, jumped up himself and led them on again and again against hopeless odds. His loss to me will be quite irreparable, and I can honestly say it would be almost impossible to find a better adjutant, and in the eight months during which he held that post I had learned not only to value his high qualities as a soldier but to love him as a man”.
His daughter Caroline married Donald Stuart Macalister Hall and resided at Torrisdale for many years. Their eldest son, Donald, Niall and Kenny’s father, took over the reigns in 1969. Torrisdale Estate passed to Niall, the eldest son, in 2010.
So, as we always do, we will tonight raise a glass to Uncle Rabbie, Isabella, and all those who followed. After a wretched time brought about by two recent storms, Darragh and Eowyn always remember “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / gang aft agley…”.
Another fun Burns fact is that the fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger is also a descendant! Rabbie’s brother Gilbert is Hilfiger’s great, great, great uncle.
Could there be a gin and fashion collaboration on the horizon as a homage to uncle Rabbie?
