Chrysti The Wordsmith: The Best Laid Plans

Greetings for Boers and welcome to Christie the wordsmith. Women are most carefully fashioned strategies are ruined by unforseen events. A familiar response is to repeat the philosophical cliche. Well the best laid plans of mice and men. This expression of resignation comes from the pan of the Scottish poet Robert Burns in the late seventeen hundreds. Robert Burns sometimes called the ploughman poet was born to a farm family in 1759 with an early talent for writing Burns began composing verses celebrating Scottish Country Life and romance while he was still a teenager. One windy autumn day while Burns and his brother were plowing a piece of land Robert spied a field mouse scurrying from a freshly turned furrow. The small incident inspired him to compose to a mouse on turning up her nest with the ploughed Novembers 1785. In this poem Burns apologizes to the mouse for disturbing her home forcing her to build another in the face of the coming wind and frost of winter. But he adds philosophically mice are not alone in

experiencing such tragedies and frustrated plans because as he writes The best laid schemes a mice and men gone off to a good day. Though in modern English the famous line has been altered to the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. The meaning remains true to Burns's original sentiments. From the studios of TFM on the campus of Montana State University in Bozeman. This is Christy the wordsmith. CHRISTIE The wordsmith is sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry. Zoot web dot com.