" But to claim authorship of the poem would have lessened its authenticity in the eyes of Burns, who relished his own reputation as a "heaven-taught ploughman.
"It seems fitting that the Solway Centre is opened in the part of the world where the word 'environment' was created by Carlyle in 1826 and which has sustained creativity from the 'ploughman poet' Burns to modern land artists Jencks and Goldsworthy, " she said.