National poet of Scotland. The son of a poor farmer, he early became familiar with orally transmitted folk song and tales. His father’s farm failed, and a farm he started himself quickly went bankrupt. Handsome and high-spirited, he engaged in a series of love affairs, some of which produced children, and celebrated his lovers in his poems. His Poems,
Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786) brought acclaim but no financial security, and he eventually took a job as an exciseman. He later began col¬ lecting and editing hundreds of tra¬ ditional airs for James Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum (1787—1803) and George Thomson’s Select Col¬ lection of Original Scotish Airs (1793-1818); he substantially wrote many of these songs, though he did not claim them or receive payment for them. Among his best-known songs are “Auld Lang Syne,” “Green Grow the Rashes, O,” “John Anderson My Jo,” “A Red, Red Rose,” and “Ye Banks and Braes o’ Bonnie Doon.” He freely proclaimed his radical opinions, his sympathies with the common people, and his rebellion against orthodox religion and morality.
Burnside, Ambrose (Everett) (b. May 23, 1824, Liberty, Ind., U.S.—d. Sept. 13, 1881, Bristol, R.I.) Union general in the American Civil War. A graduate of West Point, he was promoted to major general in 1862 and replaced George B. McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac; he was himself replaced after the Union loss at the Battle of Fredericksburg. He resigned in 1864 after the “Burnside mine” fiasco in the Petersburg Campaign, when a mine explosion intended to damage Confederate troops resulted in heavy Union losses. He was governor of Rhode Island (1866-69) and a U.S. senator (1875-81). He originated the fashion of side whiskers, later known as “sideburns.”
Burnt Njall See Njals saga
Burr, Aaron (b. Feb. 6, 1756, Newark, N.J.—d. Sept. 14, 1836, Port Richmond, N.Y., U.S.) U.S. politician, third vice president of the U.S. (1801-05). He served in the American Revolution on George Washing¬ ton’s staff until 1779. He had a successful law practice in New York from 1782 and served as state attorney general (1789-91) and in the U.S. Sen¬ ate (1791-97). In 1800 he won the vice presidential nomination on the Jeffersonian Republican ticket. In the election, he and Thomas Jefferson received the same number of electoral college votes; under procedures then prevailing, the electors had cast their votes for both Jefferson and Burr without indicating which should be president and which vice presi¬ dent. The election went to the House of Representatives, which became
Fanny Burney, detail of an oil painting by her brother, E.F. Burney; in the National Portrait Gallery, London
Robert Burns, detail of an oil painting by Alexander Nasmyth; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY,
LONDON
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
300 I burro ► Burundi
deadlocked. Jefferson eventually was chosen president after Alexander Hamilton endorsed him; Burr became vice president. Burr resented Hamil¬ ton’s action and his later effort to block Burr’s nomination for governor of New York in 1804. Following some remarks by Hamilton about Burr’s character, Burr challenged him to a duel, in which Hamilton was mortally wounded. Burr fled to Philadelphia, where with Gen. James Wilkinson he planned an invasion of Mexico. He was tried for treason in 1807 before John Marshall, whose narrow interpretation of the constitutional charge led to acquittal. Under a cloud, Burr left for Europe, where he tried in vain to interest English and French authorities in his scheme to conquer Florida. In 1812 he returned to New York to resume his law practice.
burro See donkey
Burroughs, Edgar Rice (b. Sept. 1, 1875, Chicago, Ill., U.S.—d. March 19, 1950, Encino, Calif.) U.S. novelist. Burroughs worked as an advertising copywriter before trying fiction. His jungle adventure novel Tarzan of the Apes (1914) became the first of 25 books featuring Tarzan, the son of an English nobleman abandoned in Africa and raised by apes. He wrote 43 other novels.
Burroughs, John (b. April 3, 1837, near Roxbury, N.Y., U.S.—d. March 29, 1921, en route from California to New York) U.S. essayist and naturalist. In his early years he worked as a teacher, farmer, and U.S. Trea¬ sury Department clerk. In 1873 he moved to a farm in the Hudson River valley. Traveling extensively, he hiked and camped with John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt, among other friends, and accompanied an expedition to Alaska. His many books helped establish the genre of the nature essay; they include Wake-Robin (1871), Birds and Poets (1877), Locusts and Wild Honey (1879), Ways of Nature (1905), and Field and Study (1919).
Burroughs, William S(eward) (b. Jan. 28, 1855, Auburn, N.Y., U.S.—d. Sept. 15, 1898, Citronelle, Ala.) U.S. inventor. He was self- supporting from age 15. In 1885 he constructed his first calculating machine; though it proved commercially impractical, he patented a prac¬ tical model in 1892. This machine was a commercial success, but he died before he could earn much money from it. A year before his death he received the Franklin Institute’s John Scott Medal. In 1905 the Burroughs Adding Machine Co. was organized as successor to the company he had started. William S. Burroughs was his grandson.
Burroughs, William S(eward) (b. Feb. 5, 1914, St. Louis, Mo., U.S.—d. Aug. 2, 1997, Lawrence, Kan.) U.S. novelist. The grandson of the inventor William S. Burroughs, he attended Harvard University and later became a member of the central group of the Beat movement. His experimental novels evoke, in deliberately erratic prose, a nightmarish, sometimes wildly humorous world. His early Junkie (1953) frankly describes his experiences as a heroin addict. The Naked Lunch (1959; film, 1991), his best-known work, is preoccupied with homosexuality and police persecution and vividly satirizes the grotesque world of the addict. (Burroughs accidentally killed his second wife while executing a drunken prank.) In his later novels, including The Soft Machine (1961), Nova Express (1964), The Wild Boys (1971), Cities of the Red Night (1981), and The Western Lands (1987), he further experimented with dystopian visions and radical technical devices.
Bursa formerly Brusa ancient Prusa City (pop., 1997: 1,066,559), northwestern Turkey. It was founded in the 3rd century bc, at the foot of the Mysian Mount Olympus near the southeastern shore of the Sea of Marmara, as the seat of the kings of Bithynia. It flourished under the Romans (see Roman Republic and Empire) and later under the Byzantine Empire. After Crusaders conquered Constantinople (modern Istanbul) in 1204, it was a seat of Byzantine resistance. The Ottoman Empire took it in the early 14th century and made it their first great capital. Conquered by Timur in the early 15th century, it was later recovered by the Ottomans. Though the Ottoman capital was later moved to Constantinople, Bursa continued to prosper. Under the Republic of Turkey, it is a centre for agri¬ culture and is noted for its carpets and many 15th-century mosques.
Burschenschaft Vbur-shon-.shaftV (German: “youth association”) Ger¬ man student organization that started as an expression of the nationalism prevalent in post-Napoleonic Europe. First appearing in 1815, the early groups were liberal and egalitarian and favored the political unification of Germany. The groups were suppressed under the Carlsbad Decrees and went underground until 1848, when they participated in the German revo¬ lution (see Revolutions of 1848). After German unification, they adopted a new and aggressive nationalism.
bursitis \bor-'sI-t9s\ Inflammation of the lubricating sac (bursa) over a joint or extension of a joint, or between tendons and muscles or bones, caused by infection, injury, arthritis or gout, calcium deposits along a ten¬ don or joint, or repetitive minor irritation. Common types are “house¬ maid’s knee,” “soldier’s heel,” “tennis elbow,” and “weaver’s bottom.” Bursitis in the shoulder is the most common form. Usually occurring in people unaccustomed to physical labour, it may be so painful that the affected part cannot be used. Treatment includes rest, heat, mild exercise, and medication to relieve inflammation and remove calcium deposits.