"I think it's because they actually sounded like people. I mean, so much poetry that we've been studying is all about the "wherefore art thou"s, which is fine if you're Shakespeare. But Burns was... what, a hundred years after Shakespeare? He wrote poetry that sounded like the way people talked. He also wrote a ton of "thou shalt" and "e'vntide beckons" and "O woe is't to be thine enemy" type poetry, but that's the mun being a geek."