Melle likes mice!

For much of his adult life, Robert Burns was a tenant farmer on land where the soil was very poor, and he struggled to pay the rent. While ploughing one day he destroyed the nest of a field mouse, leaving it unprotected just as winter was beginning. The key verse (English translation!) of his poem "To a Mouse" is:-

But mouse you are not alone
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid plans of mice and men
Often go wrong.
And leave us nothing but grief and pain
Not promised joy.

Burns trained as an exciseman (a "Gauger" in old Scots) to supplement his income - he had a wife and four children to support, but eventually he had to give up farming due to debt and ill health and he moved to the town of Dumfries.

Though his poems on social justice were popular with the rich Edinburgh set, he lost many of his patrons by expressing support for the French and American Revolutions. He only kept his job as an exciseman by denying his radical views and joining a local volunteer unit of the army - unfortunately, he had to borrow money to buy the uniform.

His health deteriorated quickly and died at the age of 37. Life can be vey cruel - as Burns lay dead in one room of the house, his wife was giving birth to a son in an adjacent room