Just been to see book my great-granddad Bard gave great-gran

A SCOTS schoolgirl, who is a 10th generation descendant of Robert Burns, made a special journey to see a book the bard gave to her six-times great grandmother.

- Chris Marzella

Luciana Docherty, 13, from Killearn, Stirlingshire, accompanied by her grandmother Irene, father Campbell, and younger sister Carolina, visited the National Trust for Scotland's Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, in Alloway, Ayrshire, to view a cherished family relic. Elizabeth Burns, also known as Bess, was Burns's first child, born to Elizabeth Paton in 1785, and she was brought up by the poet's mother.

For her eighth birthday, Burns presented Bess with a 1793, second Edinburgh edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect.

As part of the museum's collection of treasured Burns items, the book was taken out of its case for the first time in more than 10 years so that three generations of descendants could pore over the 230-year-old volume.