The Ulster Scots poetic tradition was, as we have seen, characterized by a sturdy independence of the parent plant, even while its exponents were happy to acknowledge the relationship. The preceding chapters have argued that James Orr worked confidently and authoritatively within the Scottish poetic tradition, extending the range of its genres, and broadening it to accommodate Irish themes and tropes. The title ‘The Burns of Ulster’ with which his contemporaries were pleased to dignify him may be understood to have referred to his adept employment of Scots poetic forms and language and to his wide popularity. Too often, however, it has been assumed to denote imitative or even derivative composition. Orr's plan, however much he admired the Scots bard's poetry, was certainly to draw a clear line between Burns and himself, even, or perhaps especially, in his vernacular works.

Orr's vernacular tribute to Burns, the ‘Elegy, on the Death of Mr Robert Burns, the Ayrshire Poet’, which he penned on hearing of Burns's demise in 1796, makes clear both his familiarity with the Scots bard's works and his admiration for them, as the following stanzas illustrate. First he imbues the moment when he learns of the death with a sense of sublime significance, heralded by a thunderstorm, and by the appearance of a symbolic, sweet-singing lark, about to fall prey to a hawk: