BORDER AND HIGHLAND TOURS.
Some small instalments of the profits of his new volume enabled our
Poet, during the summer and autumn of 1787, to make several tours to
various districts of Scotland, famous either for scenery or song. The
day of regular touring had not yet set in, and few Scots at that time
would have thought of visiting what Burns called the classic scenes of
their country. A generation before this, poets in England had led the
way in this--as when Gray visited the lakes of Cumberland, and Dr.
Johnson the Highlands and the Western Isles. In his ardour to look
upon places famous for their natural beauty or their historic
associations, or even for their having been mentioned in some old
Scottish song, Burns surpassed both Gray and Johnson, and anticipated
the sentiment of the present century. Early in May he set out with one
of his Crochallan club acquaintances, named Ainslie, on a journey to
the Border. Ainslie was a native of the Merse, his father and family
living in Dunse. Starting thence with Ainslie, Burns traversed the
greater part of the vale of Tweed from Coldstream to Peebles, recalling,
as he went along, snatches of song connected with the places he passed.
He turned aside to see the valley of the Jed, and got as far as Selkirk
in the hope of looking upon Yarrow. But from doing this he was (p. 061)
hindered by a day of unceasing rain, and he who was so soon to become
the chief singer of Scottish song was never allowed to look on that
vale which has long been its most ideal home. Before finishing his
tour, he went as far as Nithsdale, and surveyed the farm of Ellisland,
with some thought already, that he might yet become the tenant of it.
It is noteworthy, but not wonderful, that the scenes visited in this
tour called forth no poetry from Burns, save here and there an
allusion that occurred in some of his later songs. When we remember
with what an uneasy heart Burns left Ayrshire for Edinburgh, that the
town life he had there led for the last six months had done nothing to
lighten--it had probably done something to increase the load of his
mental disquietude,--that in an illness which he had during his tour
he confesses that "embittering remorse was scaring his fancy at the
gloomy forebodings of death," and that when his tour was over, soon
after his return to Edinburgh, he found the law let loose against him,
and what was called a "fugæ" warrant issued for his apprehension,
owing to some occurrence like to that which a year ago had terrified
him with legal penalties, and all but driven him to Jamaica,--when all
these things are remembered, is it to be wondered, that Burns should
have wandered by the banks of Tweed, in no mood to chaunt beside it "a
music sweeter than its own"?
At the close of his Border tour Burns had, as we have seen, visited
Nithsdale and looked at the farm of Ellisland. From Nithsdale he made
his way back to native Ayrshire and his family at Mossgiel. I have
heard a tradition that his mother met him at the door of the small
farm-house, with this only salutation, "O Robbie!" Neither Lockhart
nor Chambers mentions this, but the latter says, his sister, (p. 062)
Mrs. Begg, remembered the arrival of her brother. He came in unheralded,
and was in the midst of them before they knew. It was a quiet meeting,
for the Mossgiel family had the true Scottish reticence or reserve;
but though their words were not "mony feck," their feelings were
strong. It was, indeed, as strange a reverse as ever was made by
fortune's fickle wheel. "He had left them," to quote the words of
Lockhart, "comparatively unknown, his tenderest feelings torn and
wounded by the behaviour of the Armours, and so miserably poor that he
had been for some weeks obliged to skulk from the sheriff's officers
to avoid the payment of a paltry debt. He returned, his poetical fame
established, the whole country ringing with his praise, from a capital
in which he was known to have formed the wonder and delight of the
polite and the learned; if not rich, yet with more money already than
any of his kindred had ever hoped to see him possess, and with
prospects of future patronage and permanent elevation in the scale of
society, which might have dazzled steadier eyes than those of maternal
and fraternal affection. The prophet had at last honour in his own
country, but the haughty spirit that had preserved its balance in
Edinburgh was not likely to lose it at Mauchline." The haughty spirit
of which Lockhart speaks was reserved for others than his own family.
To them we hear of nothing but simple affection. His youngest sister,
Mrs. Begg, told Chambers, "that her brother went to Glasgow, and
thence sent home a present to his mother and three sisters, namely, a
quantity of _mode_ silk, enough to make a bonnet and a cloak to each,
and a gown besides to his mother and youngest sister." This was the
way he took to mark their right to share in his prosperity. Mrs. Begg
remembers going for rather more than a week to Ayr to assist in (p. 063)
making up the dresses, and when she came back on a Saturday, her
brother had returned and requested her "to put on her dress that he
might see how smart she looked in it." The thing that stirred his
pride and scorn was the servility with which he was now received by
his "plebeian brethren" in the neighbourhood, and chief among these by
the Armours, who had formerly eyed him with looks askance. If anything
"had been wanting to disgust me completely with Armour's family, their
mean, servile compliance would have done it." So he writes, and it was
this disgust that prompted him to furnish himself, as we have seen he
did, with a pocket copy of Milton, to study the character of Satan.
This fierce indignation was towards the family; towards "bonny Jean"
herself his feeling was far other. Having accidentally met her, his
old affection revived, and they were soon as intimate as of old.
After a short time spent at Mossgiel wandering about, and once, it
would seem, penetrating the West Highlands as far as Inverary, a
journey during which his temper seems to have been far from serene, he
returned in August to Edinburgh. There he encountered, and in time got
rid of, the law troubles already alluded to, and on the 25th of August
he set out, on a longer tour than any he had yet attempted, to the
Northern Highlands.
The travelling companion whom he chose for this tour was a certain Mr.
Nicol, whose acquaintance he seems to have first formed at the Crochallan
club, or some other haunt of boisterous joviality. After many ups and
downs in life Nicol had at last, by dint of some scholastic ability,
settled as a master of the Edinburgh High School. What could have
tempted Burns to select such a man for a fellow-traveller? He was (p. 064)
cast in one of nature's roughest moulds; a man of careless habits,
coarse manners, enormous vanity, of most irascible and violent temper,
which vented itself in cruelties on the poor boys who were the victims
of his care. Burns compared himself with such a companion to "a man
travelling with a loaded blunderbuss at full cock." Two things only
are mentioned in his favour, that he had a warm heart, and an
unbounded admiration of the poet. But the choice of such a man was an
unfortunate one, and in the upshot did not a little to spoil both the
pleasure and the benefit, which might have been gathered from the
tour.
Their journey lay by Stirling and Crieff to Taymouth and Breadalbane,
thence to Athole, on through Badenoch and Strathspey to Inverness. The
return by the east coast was through the counties of Moray and Banff
to Aberdeen. After visiting the county whence his father had come, and
his kindred who were still in Kincardineshire, Burns and his companion
passed by Perth back to Edinburgh, which they reached on the 16th of
September. The journey occupied only two and twenty days, far too
short a time to see so much country, besides making several visits,
with any advantage. During his Border tour Burns had ridden his
Rosinante mare, which he had named Jenny Geddes. As his friend, the
schoolmaster, was no equestrian, Burns was obliged to make his
northern journey in a post-chaise, not the best way of taking in the
varied and ever-changing sights and sounds of Highland scenery.
Such a tour as this, if Burns could have entered on it under happier
auspices, that is, with a heart at ease, a fitting companion, and
leisure enough to view quietly the scenes through which he passed, and
to enjoy the society of the people whom he met, could not have (p. 065)
failed, from its own interestingness, and its novelty to him, to have
enriched his imagination, and to have called forth some lasting
memorials. As it was, it cannot be said to have done either. There
are, however, a few incidents which are worth noting. The first of
these took place at Stirling. Burns and his companion had ascended the
Castle Rock, to look on the blue mountain rampart, that flanks the
Highlands from Ben Lomond to Benvoirlich. As they were both strongly
attached to the Stuart cause, they had seen with indignation, on the
slope of the Castle hill, the ancient hall, in which the Scottish
kings once held their Parliaments, lying ruinous and neglected. On
returning to their inn, Burns, with a diamond he had bought for such
purposes, wrote on the window-pane of his room some lines expressive
of the disgust he had felt at that sight, concluding with some
offensive remarks on the reigning family. The lines, which had no
poetic merit, got into the newspapers of the day, and caused a good
deal of comment. On a subsequent visit to Stirling, Burns himself
broke the pane of the window on which the obnoxious lines were
written, but they were remembered, it is said, long afterwards to his
disadvantage.
Among the pleasantest incidents of the tour was the visit to Blair
Castle, and his reception by the Duchess of Athole. The two days he
spent there he declared were among the happiest of his life. We have
seen how sensitive Burns was to the way he was received by the great.
Resentful as he was equally of condescension and of neglect, it must
have been no easy matter for persons of rank so to adapt their manner
as to exactly please him. But his hosts at Blair Castle succeeded to
admiration in this. They were assisted by the presence at the Castle
of Mr., afterwards Professor, Walker, who had known Burns in (p. 066)
Edinburgh, and was during that autumn living as a tutor in the Duke's
family. At dinner Burns was in his most pleasing vein, and delighted
his hostess by drinking to the health of her group of fair young
children, as "honest men and bonny lassies"--an expression with which
he happily closes his _Petition of Bruar Water_. The Duchess had her
two sisters, Mrs. Graham and Miss Cathcart, staying with her on a
visit, and all three ladies were delighted with the conversation of
the poet. These three sisters were daughters of a Lord Cathcart, and
were remarkable for their beauty. The second, Mrs. Graham, has been
immortalized as the subject of one of Gainsborough's most famous
portraits. On her early death her husband, Thomas Graham of Balnagown,
never again looked on that beautiful picture, but left his home for a
soldier's life, distinguished himself greatly in the Peninsular War,
and was afterwards known as Lord Lynedoch. After his death, the
picture passed to his nearest relatives, who presented it to the
National Portrait Gallery of Scotland, of which it is now the chief
ornament. All three sisters soon passed away, having died even before
the short-lived poet. By their beauty and their agreeableness they
charmed Burns, and did much to make his visit delightful. They
themselves were not less pleased; for when the poet proposed to leave,
after two days were over, they pressed him exceedingly to stay, and
even sent a messenger to the hotel to persuade the driver of Burns's
chaise to pull off one of the horse's shoes, that his departure might
be delayed. Burns himself would willingly have listened to their
entreaties, but his travelling mate was inexorable. Likely enough
Nicol had not been made so much of as the poet, and this was enough to
rouse his irascible temper. For one day he had been persuaded to (p. 067)
stay by the offer of good trout-fishing, which he greatly relished,
but now he insisted on being off. Burns was reluctantly forced to
yield.
This rapid departure was the more unfortunate because Mr. Dundas, who
held the keys of Scottish patronage, was expected on a visit to Blair,
and had he met the poet he might have wiped out the reproach often
cast on the ministry of the day, that they failed in their duty towards
Burns. "That eminent statesman," as Lockhart says, "was, though little
addicted to literature, a warm lover of his own country, and, in
general, of whatever redounded to her honour; he was, moreover, very
especially qualified to appreciate Burns as a companion; and had such
an introduction taken place, he might not improbably have been induced
to bestow that consideration on the claims of the poet, which, in the
absence of any personal acquaintance, Burns's works ought to have
received at his hands." But during that visit Burns met, and made the
acquaintance of, another man of some influence, Mr. Graham of Fintray,
whose friendship afterwards, both in the Excise business, and in other
matters, stood him in good stead. The Duke, as he bade farewell to
Burns at Blair, advised him to turn aside, and see the Falls of the
Bruar, about six miles from the Castle, where that stream coming down
from its mountains plunges over some high precipices, and passes
through a rocky gorge to join the river Garry. Burns did so, and
finding the falls entirely bare of wood, wrote some lines entitled
_The Humble Petition of Bruar Water_, in which he makes the stream
entreat the Duke to clothe its naked banks with trees. The poet's
petition for the stream was not in vain. The then Duke of Athole was
famous as a planter of trees, and those with which, after the poet's
Petition, he surrounded the waterfall remain to this day.
After visiting Culloden Muir, the Fall of Fyers, Kilravock Castle, (p. 068)
where, but for the impatience of Mr. Nicol, he would fain have
prolonged his stay, he came on to Fochabers and Gordon Castle. This is
Burns's entry in his diary:--"Cross Spey to Fochabers, fine palace,
worthy of the noble, the polite, and generous proprietor. The Duke
makes me happier than ever great man did; noble, princely, yet mild
and condescending and affable--gay and kind. The Duchess, charming,
witty, kind, and sensible. God bless them!"
Here, too, as at Blair, the ducal hosts seem to have entirely
succeeded in making Burns feel at ease, and wish to protract his
visit. But here, too, more emphatically than at Blair, his friend
spoilt the game. This is the account of the incident, as given by
Lockhart, with a few additions interpolated from Chambers:--
"Burns, who had been much noticed by this noble family when in
Edinburgh, happened to present himself at Gordon Castle, just at the
dinner-hour, and being invited to take a place at the table, did so,
without for a moment adverting to the circumstance that his travelling
companion had been left alone at the inn, in the adjacent village. On
remembering this soon after dinner, he begged to be allowed to rejoin
his friend; and the Duke of Gordon, who now for the first time learned
that he was not journeying alone, immediately proposed to send an
invitation to Mr. Nicol to come to the Castle. His Grace sent a
messenger to bear it; but Burns insisted on himself accompanying him.
They found the haughty schoolmaster striding up and down before the
inn-door in a high state of wrath and indignation at, what he
considered, Burns's neglect, and no apologies could soften his mood.
He had already ordered horses, and was venting his anger on the (p. 069)
postillion for the slowness with which he obeyed his commands. The
poet, finding that he must choose between the ducal circle and his
irascible associate, at once chose the latter alternative. Nicol and
he, in silence and mutual displeasure, seated themselves in the
post-chaise, and turned their backs on Gordon Castle, where the poet
had promised himself some happy days. This incident may serve to
suggest some of the annoyances to which persons moving, like our poet,
on the debatable land between two different ranks of society must ever
be subjected." "To play the lion under such circumstances must," as
the knowing Lockhart observes, "be difficult at the best; but a
delicate business indeed, when the jackals are presumptuous. The
pedant could not stomach the superior success of his friend, and
yet--alas for poor human nature!--he certainly was one of the most
enthusiastic of his admirers, and one of the most affectionate of all
his intimates." It seems that the Duchess of Gordon had some hope that
her friend, Mr. Addington, afterwards Lord Sidmouth and the future
premier, would have visited at Gordon Castle while Burns was there.
Mr. Addington was, Allan Cunningham tells us, an enthusiastic admirer
of Burns's poetry, and took pleasure in quoting it to Pitt and
Melville. On that occasion he was unfortunately not able to accept the
invitation of the Duchess, but he forwarded to her "these memorable
lines--memorable as the first indication of that deep love which
England now entertains for the genius of Burns:"--
Yes! pride of Scotia's favoured plains, 'tis thine
The warmest feelings of the heart to move;
To bid it throb with sympathy divine,
To glow with friendship, or to melt with love.
What though each morning sees thee rise to toil, (p. 070)
Though Plenty on thy cot no blessing showers,
Yet Independence cheers thee with her smile,
And Fancy strews thy moorland with her flowers!
And dost thou blame the impartial will of Heaven,
Untaught of life the good and ill to scan?
To thee the Muse's choicest wreath is given--
To thee the genuine dignity of man!
Then to the want of worldly gear resigned,
Be grateful for the wealth of thy exhaustless mind.
It was well enough for Mr. Addington, and such as he, to advise Burns
to be content with the want of worldly gear, and to refer him for
consolation to the dignity of man and the wealth of his exhaustless
mind. Burns had abundance of such sentiments in himself to bring
forth, when occasion required. He did not need to be replenished with
these from the stores of men who held the keys of patronage. What he
wanted from them was some solid benefit, such as they now and then
bestowed on their favourites, but which unfortunately they withheld
from Burns.
An intelligent boy, who was guide to Burns and Nicol from Cullen to
Duff House, gave long afterwards his remembrances of that day. Among
these this occurs. The boy was asked by Nicol if he had read Burns's
poems, and which of them he liked best. The boy replied, "'I was much
entertained with _The Twa Dogs_ and _Death and Dr. Hornbook_, but I
like best _The Cotter's Saturday Night_, although it made me _greet_
when my father had me to read it to my mother.' Burns, with a sudden
start, looked at my face intently, and patting my shoulder, said,
'Well, my callant, I don't wonder at your _greeting_ at reading the
poem; it made me greet more than once when I was writing it at my
father's fireside.'"...
On the 16th of September, 1787, the two travellers returned to (p. 071)
Edinburgh. This tour produced little poetry directly, and what it did
produce was not of a high order. In this respect one cannot but
contrast it with the poetic results of another tour made, partly over
the same ground, by another poet, less than twenty years after this
time. When Wordsworth and his sister made their first visit to
Scotland in 1803, it called forth some strains of such perfect beauty
as will live while the English language lasts. Burns's poetic fame
would hardly be diminished if all that he wrote on his tours were
obliterated from his works. Perhaps we ought to except some allusions
in his future songs, and especially that grand song, _Macpherson's
Farewell_, which, though composed several months after this tour was
over, must have drawn its materials from the day spent at Duff House,
where he was shown the sword of the Highland Reiver.
But look at the lines composed after his first sight of Breadalbane,
which he left in the inn at Kenmore. These Lockhart has pronounced
among "the best of his purely English heroics." If so, we can but say
how poor are the best! What is to be thought of such lines as
Poetic ardours in my bosom swell,
Lone wandering by the hermit's mossy cell, &c., &c.
Nor less stilted, forced, and artificial are the lines in the same
measure written at the Fall of Fyers.
The truth is, that Burns's _forte_ by no means lay in describing
scenery alone, and for its own sake. All his really inspired descriptions
of it occur as adjuncts to human incident or feeling, slips of
landscape let in as a background. Again, as Burns was never at his
best when called on to write for occasions--no really spontaneous
poet ever can be--so when taken to see much talked-of scenes, and (p. 072)
expected to express poetic raptures over them, Burns did not answer to
the call.
"He disliked," we are told, "to be tutored in matters of taste, and
could not endure that one should run shouting before him, whenever any
fine object came in sight." On one occasion of this kind, a lady at
the poet's side said, "Burns, have you nothing to say of this?"
"Nothing, madam," he replied, glancing at the leader of the party,
"for an ass is braying over it." Burns is not the only person who has
suffered from this sort of officiousness.
Besides this, the tours were not made in the way which most conduces
to poetic composition. He did not allow himself the quiet and the
leisure from interruption which are needed. It was not with such
companions as Ainslie or Nicol by his side that the poet's eye
discovered new beauty in the sight of a solitary reaper in a Highland
glen, and his ear caught magical suggestiveness in the words, "What!
you are stepping westward," heard by the evening lake.
Another hindrance to happy poetic description by Burns during these
journeys was that he had now forsaken his native vernacular, and taken
to writing in English after the mode of the poets of the day. This with
him was to unclothe himself of his true strength. His correspondent,
Dr. Moore, and his Edinburgh critics had no doubt counselled him to
write in English, and he listened for a time too easily to their
counsel. He and they little knew what they were doing in giving and
taking such advice. The truth is, when he used his own Scottish
dialect he was unapproached, unapproachable; no poet before or since
has evoked out of that instrument so perfect and so varied melodies.
When he wrote in English he was seldom more than third-rate; in (p. 073)
fact, he was but a common clever versifier. There is but one purely
English poem of his which at all approaches the first rank--the lines
_To Mary in Heaven_.
These may probably have been the reasons, but the fact is certain that
Burns's tours are disappointing in their direct poetic fruits. But in
another way Burns turned them to good account. He had by that time
begun to devote himself almost entirely to the cultivation of Scottish
song. This was greatly encouraged by the appearance of _Johnson's
Museum_, a publication in which an engraver of that name living in
Edinburgh had undertaken to make a thorough collection of all the best
of the old Scottish songs, accompanying them with the best airs, and
to add to these any new songs of merit which he could lay hands on.
Before Burns left Edinburgh for his Border tour, he had begun an
acquaintance and correspondence with Johnson, and had supplied him
with four songs of his own for the first volume of _The Museum_. The
second volume was now in progress, and his labours for this publication,
and for another of the same kind to be afterwards mentioned,
henceforth engrossed Burns's entire productive faculty, and were to be
his only serious literary work for the rest of his life. He therefore
employed the Highland tour in hearing all he could, that had any
bearing on his now absorbing pursuit, and in collecting materials that
might promote it. With this view, when on his way from Taymouth to
Blair, he had turned aside to visit the famous fiddler and composer of
Scotch tunes, Neil Gow, at his house, which is still pointed out, at
Inver, on the Braan water, opposite the grounds of Dunkeld. This is
the entry about him in Burns's diary:--"Neil Gow plays--a short,
stout-built, honest Highland figure, with his grey hair shed on (p. 074)
his honest social brow; an interesting face marking strong sense,
kind open-heartedness, mixed with unmistrusting simplicity; visit his
house; Margaret Gow." It is interesting to think of this meeting of
these two--the one a Lowlander, the other a Highlander; the one the
greatest composer of words, the other of tunes, for Scottish songs,
which their country has produced.
As he passed through Aberdeen, Burns met Bishop Skinner, a Bishop of
the Scottish Episcopal Church; and when he learnt that the Bishop's
father, the author of the song of _Tulloch-gorum_, and _The Ewie wi'
the crookit horn_, and other Scottish songs, was still alive, an aged
Episcopalian clergyman, living in primitive simplicity in _a but and a
ben_ at Lishart, near Peterhead, and that on his way to Aberdeen he
had passed near the place without knowing it, Burns expressed the
greatest regret at having missed seeing the author of songs he so
greatly admired. Soon after his return to Edinburgh, he received from
old Mr. Skinner a rhyming epistle, which greatly pleased the poet, and
to which he replied,--"I regret, and while I live shall regret, that
when I was north I had not the pleasure of paying a younger brother's
dutiful respect to the author of the best Scotch song ever Scotland
saw, _Tulloch-gorum's my delight_." This is strong, perhaps too strong
praise. Allan Cunningham, in his _Songs of Scotland_, thus freely
comments on it:--"_Tulloch-gorum_ is a lively clever song, but I would
never have edited this collection had I thought with Burns that it is
the best song Scotland ever saw. I may say with the king in my
favourite ballad,--
I trust I have within my realm,
Five hundred good as he."
We also find Burns, on his return to Edinburgh, writing to the (p. 075)
librarian at Gordon Castle to obtain from him a correct copy of a
Scotch song composed by the Duke, in the current vernacular style,
_Cauld Kail in Aberdeen_. This correct copy he wished to insert in the
forthcoming volume of _Johnson's Museum_, with the name of the author
appended.
At Perth he made inquiries, we are told, "as to the whereabouts of the
burn-brae on which be the graves of Bessy Bell and Mary Gray." Whether
he actually visited the spot, near the Almond Water, ten miles west of
Perth, is left uncertain. The pathetic story of these two hapless
maidens, and the fine old song founded on it, had made it to him a
consecrated spot.
O Bessy Bell and Mary Gray!
They were twa bonny lasses,
They biggit a bower on yon burn-brae,
And theekit it owre wi' rashes,
is the beginning of a beautiful song which Allan Ramsay did his best
to spoil, as he did in many another instance. Sir Walter Scott
afterwards recovered some of the old verses which Ramsay's had
superseded, and repeated them to Allan Cunningham, who gives them in
his _Songs of Scotland_. Whether Burns knew any more of the song than
the one old verse given above, with Ramsay's appended to it, is more
than doubtful.
As he passed through Perth he secured an introduction to the family of
Belches of Invermay, that, on crossing the river Earn on his southward
journey, he might be enabled to see the little valley, running down
from the Ochils to the Earn, which has been consecrated by the old and
well-known song, _The Birks of Invermay_.
It thus appears that the old songs of Scotland, their localities, (p. 076)
their authors, and the incidents whence they arose, were now uppermost
in the thoughts of Burns, whatever part of his country he visited.
This was as intense and as genuinely poetical an interest, though a
more limited one, than that with which Walter Scott's eye afterwards
ranged over the same scenes. The time was not yet full come for that
wide and varied sympathy, with which Scott surveyed the whole past of
his country's history, nor was Burns's nature or training such as to
give him that catholicity of feeling which was required to sympathize
as Scott did, with all ranks and all ages. Neither could he have so
seized on the redeeming virtues of rude and half-barbarous times, and
invested them with that halo of romance which Scott has thrown over
them. This romantic and chivalrous colouring was an element altogether
alien to Burns's character. But it may well be, that these very
limitations intensified the depth and vividness of sympathy, with
which Burns conceived the human situations portrayed in his best
songs.
There was one more brief tour of ten days during October, 1787, which
Burns made in the company of Dr. Adair. They passed first to Stirling,
where Burns broke the obnoxious pane; then paid a second visit to
Harvieston near Dollar--for Burns had paid a flying visit of one day
there, at the end of August, before passing northward to the
Highlands--where Burns introduced his friend, and seems to have
flirted with some Ayrshire young ladies, relations of his friend Gavin
Hamilton. Thence they passed on a visit to Mr. Ramsay at Ochtertyre on
the Teith, a few miles west from Stirling. They then visited Sir
William Murray at Ochtertyre in Strathearn, where Burns wrote his
_Lines on scaring some waterfowl in Lock Turit_, and a pretty (p. 077)
pastoral song on a young beauty he met there, Miss Murray of Lintrose.
From Strathearn he next seems to have returned by Clackmannan, there
to visit the old lady who lived in the Tower, of whom he had heard
from Mr. Ramsay. In this short journey the most memorable thing was
the visit to Mr. Ramsay at his picturesque old country seat, situate
on the river Teith, and commanding, down the vista of its old
lime-tree avenue, so romantic a view of Stirling Castle rock. There
Burns made the acquaintance of Mr. Ramsay, the laird, and was charmed
with the conversation of that "last of the Scottish line of Latinists,
which began with Buchanan and ended with Gregory,"--an antiquary,
moreover, whose manners and home Lockhart thinks that Sir Walter may
have had in his recollection, when he drew the character of Monkbarns.
Years afterwards, in a letter addressed to Dr. Currie, Ramsay thus
wrote of Burns:--"I have been in the company of many men of genius,
some of them poets, but I never witnessed such flashes of intellectual
brightness as from him, the impulse of the moment, sparks of celestial
fire. I never was more delighted, therefore, than with his company two
days _tête-à-tête_. In a mixed company I should have made little of
him; for, to use a gamester's phrase, he did not know when to play
off, and when to play on.... When I asked, whether the Edinburgh
literati had mended his poems by their criticisms, 'Sir,' said he,
'these gentlemen remind me of some spinsters in my country, who spin
their thread so fine, that it is neither fit for weft nor woof."
There are other incidents recorded of that time. Among these was a
visit to Mrs. Bruce, an old Scottish dame of ninety, who lived in the
ancient Tower of Clackmannan, upholding her dignity as the lineal
descendant and representative of the family of King Robert Bruce, (p. 078)
and cherishing the strongest attachment to the exiled Stuarts. Both of
these sentiments found a ready response from Burns. The one was
exemplified by the old lady conferring knighthood on him and his
companion with the actual sword of King Robert, which she had in her
possession, remarking as she did it, that she had a better right to
confer the title than some folk. Another sentiment she charmed the
poet by expressing in the toast she gave after dinner, "_Hooi Uncos_,"
that is, Away Strangers, a word used by shepherds when they bid their
collies drive away strange sheep. Who the strangers were in this case
may be guessed from her known Jacobite sentiments.
On his way from Clackmannan to Edinburgh he turned aside to see Loch
Leven and its island castle, which had been the prison of the hapless
Mary Stuart; and thence passing to the Norman Abbey Church of
Dunfermline, with deep emotion he looked on the grave of Robert Bruce.
At that time the choir of the old church, which had contained the
grave, had been long demolished, and the new structure which now
covers it, had not yet been thought of. The sacred spot was only
marked by two broad flagstones, on which Burns knelt and kissed them,
reproaching the while the barbarity that had so dishonoured the
resting-place of Scotland's hero king. Then, with that sudden change
of mood, so characteristic of him, he passed within the ancient
church, and mounting the pulpit, addressed to his companion, who had,
at his desire, mounted the cutty stool, or seat of repentance, a
parody of the rebuke, which he himself had undergone some time before
at Mauchline.