LIFE AT ELLISLAND.
"Mr. Burns, you have made a poet's not a farmer's choice." Such was
the remark of Allan Cunningham's father, land-steward to the laird of
Dalswinton, when the poet turned from the low-lying and fertile farm
of Foregirth, which Cunningham had recommended to him, and selected
for his future home the farm of Ellisland. He was taken by the
beautiful situation and fine romantic outlook of the poorest of
several farms on the Dalswinton estate which were in his option.
Ellisland lies on the western bank of the river Nith, about six miles
above Dumfries. Looking from Ellisland eastward across the river, "a
pure stream running there over the purest gravel," you see the rich
holms and noble woods of Dalswinton. Dalswinton is an ancient historic
place, which has even within recorded memory more than once changed
its mansion-house and its proprietor. To the west the eye falls on the
hills of Dunscore, and looking northward up the Nith, the view is
bounded by the heights that shut in the river towards Drumlanrig, and
by the high conical hill of Corsincon, at the base of which the infant
stream slips from the shire of Ayr into that of Dumfries. The
farmsteading of Ellisland stands but a few yards to the west of the
Nith. Immediately underneath there is a red scaur of considerable (p. 095)
height, overhanging the stream, and the rest of the bank is covered
with broom, through which winds a greensward path, whither Burns used
to retire to meditate his songs. The farm extends to upwards of a
hundred acres, part holm, part croft-land, of which the former yielded
good wheat, the latter oats and potatoes. The lease was for nineteen
years, and the rent fifty pounds for the first three years, seventy
for the rest of the tack. The laird of Dalswinton, while Burns leased
Ellisland, was Mr. Patrick Millar, not an ordinary laird, but one well
known in his day for his scientific discoveries. There was no proper
farm-house or offices on the farm--it was part of the bargain that
Burns should build these for himself. The want of a house made it
impossible for him to settle at once on his farm. His bargain for it
had been concluded early in March (1788); but it was not till the 13th
of June that he went to reside at Ellisland. In the interval between
these two dates he went to Ayrshire, and completed privately, as we
have seen, the marriage, the long postponement of which had caused him
so much disquiet. With however great disappointment and chagrin he may
have left Edinburgh, the sense that he had now done the thing that was
right, and had the prospect of a settled life before him, gave him for
a time a peace and even gladness of heart, to which he had for long
been a stranger. We can, therefore, well believe what he tells us,
that, when he had left Edinburgh, he journeyed towards Mauchline with
as much gaiety of heart, 'as a May-frog, leaping across the
newly-harrowed ridge, enjoying the fragrance of the refreshed earth
after the long-expected shower.' Of what may be called the poet's
marriage settlement, we have the following details from Allan
Cunningham:--
"His marriage reconciled the poet to his wife's kindred: there was (p. 096)
no wedding portion. Armour was a respectable man, but not opulent. He
gave his daughter some small store of plenishing; and, exerting his
skill as a mason, wrought his already eminent son-in-law a handsome
punch-bowl in Inverary marble, which Burns lived to fill often, to the
great pleasure both of himself and his friends.... Mrs. Dunlop bethought
herself of Ellisland, and gave a beautiful heifer; another friend
contributed a plough. The young couple from love to their native
county ordered their furniture from a wright in Mauchline; the
farm-servants, male and female, were hired in Ayrshire, a matter of
questionable prudence, for the mode of cultivation is different from
that of the west, and the cold humid bottom of Mossgiel bears no
resemblance to the warm and stony loam of Ellisland."
When on the 13th June he went to live on his farm, he had, as there
was no proper dwelling-house on it, to leave Jean and her one
surviving child behind him at Mauchline, and himself to seek shelter
in a mere hovel on the skirts of the farm. "I remember the house
well," says Cunningham, "the floor of clay, the rafters japanned with
soot, the smoke from a hearth-fire streamed thickly out at door and
window, while the sunshine which struggled in at those apertures
produced a sort of twilight." Burns thus writes to Mrs. Dunlop, "A
solitary inmate of an old smoky spence, far from every object I love
or by whom I am beloved; nor any acquaintance older than yesterday,
except Jenny Geddes, the old mare I ride on, while uncouth cares and
novel plans hourly insult my awkward ignorance and bashful inexperience."
It takes a more even, better-ordered spirit than Burns' to stand such
solitude. His heart, during those first weeks at Ellisland, (p. 097)
entirely sank within him, and he saw all men and life coloured by his
own despondency. This is the entry in his commonplace book on the
first Sunday he spent alone at Ellisland:--"I am such a coward in
life, so tired of the service, that I would almost at any time, with
Milton's Adam, 'gladly lay me in my mother's lap, and be at peace.'
But a wife and children bind me to struggle with the stream, till some
sudden squall shall overset the silly vessel, or in the listless
return of years its own craziness reduce it to wreck."
The discomfort of his dwelling-place made him not only discontented
with his lot, but also with the people amongst whom he found himself.
"I am here," he writes, "on my farm, but for all the pleasurable part
of life called social communication, I am at the very elbow of
existence. The only things to be found in perfection in this country
are stupidity and canting.... As for the Muses, they have as much idea
of a rhinoceros as a poet."
When he was not in Ayrshire in bodily presence, he was there in
spirit. It was at such a time that looking up to the hills that divide
Nithsdale from Ayrshire, he breathed to his wife that most natural and
beautiful of all his love-lyrics,--
Of a' the airts the wind can blaw
I dearly like the west,
For there the bonnie lassie lives,
The lassie I lo'e best.
His disparagement of Nithsdale people, Allan Cunningham, himself a
Dumfriesshire man, naturally resents, and accounts for it by supposing
that the sooty hovel had infected his whole mental atmosphere. "The
Maxwells, the Kirkpatricks, and Dalzells," exclaims honest Allan, "were
fit companions for any man in Scotland, and they were almost his (p. 098)
neighbours; Riddell of Friars Carse, an accomplished antiquarian,
lived almost next door; and Jean Lindsay and her husband, Patrick
Miller, the laird of Dalswinton, were no ordinary people. The former,
beautiful, accomplished, a writer of easy and graceful verses, with a
natural dignity of manners which became her station; the latter an
improver and inventor, the first who applied steam to the purposes of
navigation." But Burns's hasty judgments of men and things, the result
of momentary feeling, are not to be too literally construed.
He soon found that there was enough of sociality among all ranks of
Dumfriesshire people, from the laird to the cotter, indeed, more than
was good for himself. Yet, however much he may have complained, when
writing letters to his correspondents of an evening, he was too manly
to go moping about all day long when there was work to be done. He
was, moreover, nerved to the task by the thought that he was preparing
the home that was to shelter his wife and children. On the laying of
the foundation-stone of his future house, he took off his hat and
asked a blessing on it. "Did he ever put his own hand to the work?"
was asked of one of the men engaged in it. "Ay, that he did, mony a
time," was the answer, "if he saw us like to be beat wi' a big stane,
he would cry, 'Bide a wee,' and come rinning. We soon found out when
he put to his hand, he beat a' I ever met for a dour lift."
During his first harvest, though the weather was unfavourable, and the
crop a poor one, we find Burns speaking in his letters of being
industriously employed, and binding every day after the reapers. But
Allan Cunningham's father, who had every opportunity of observing,
used to allege that Burns seemed to him like a restless and (p. 099)
unsettled man. "He was ever on the move, on foot or on horseback. In
the course of a single day he might be seen holding the plough,
angling in the river, sauntering, with his hands behind his back, on
the banks, looking at the running water, of which he was very fond,
walking round his buildings or over his fields; and if you lost sight
of him for an hour, perhaps you might see him returning from Friars
Carse, or spurring his horse through the hills to spend an evening in
some distant place with such friends as chance threw in his way."
Before his new house was ready, he had many a long ride to and fro
through the Cumnock hills to Mauchline, to visit Jean, and to return.
It was not till the first week of December, 1788, that his lonely
bachelor life came to an end, and that he was able to bring his wife
and household to Nithsdale. Even then the house at Ellisland was not
ready for his reception, and he and his family had to put up for a
time in a neighbouring farm-house called the Isle. They brought with
them two farm-lads from Ayrshire, and a servant lass called Elizabeth
Smith, who was alive in 1851, and gave Chambers many details of the
poet's way of life at Ellisland. Among these she told him that her
father was so concerned about her moral welfare that, before allowing
her to go, he made Burns promise to keep a strict watch over her
behaviour, and to exercise her duly in the Shorter Catechism; and that
both of these promises he faithfully fulfilled.
The advent of his wife and his child in the dark days of the year kept
dulness aloof, and made him meet the coming of the new year (1789)
with more cheerful hopes and calmer spirits than he had known for
long. Alas, that these were doomed to be so short-lived!
On New Year's morning, 1789, his brother Gilbert thus (p. 100)
affectionately writes to the poet: "Dear Brother,--I have just
finished my New Year's Day breakfast in the usual form, which
naturally makes me call to mind the days of former years, and the
society in which we used to begin them; and when I look at our family
vicissitudes, 'through the dark postern of time long elapsed,' I
cannot help remarking to you, my dear brother, how good the God of
seasons is to us, and that, however some clouds may seem to lower over
the portion of time before us, we have great reason to hope that all
will turn out well." On the same New Year's Day Burns addressed to
Mrs. Dunlop a letter, which, though it has been often quoted, is too
pleasing to be omitted here. "I own myself so little a Presbyterian,
that I approve set times and seasons of more than ordinary acts of
devotion for breaking in on that habituated routine of life and
thought, which is so apt to reduce our existence to a kind of
instinct, or even sometimes, and with some minds, to a state very
little superior to mere machinery. This day--the first Sunday of
May--a breezy, blue-skied noon some time about the beginning, and a
hoary morning and calm sunny day about the end, of autumn--these, time
out of mind, have been with me a kind of holiday.... We know nothing,
or next to nothing of the substance or structure of our souls, so
cannot account for those seeming caprices in them, that we should be
particularly pleased with this thing, or struck with that, which on
minds of a different cast makes no extraordinary impression. I have
some favourite flowers in spring, among which are the mountain-daisy,
the harebell, the fox-glove, the wild-brier rose, the budding birch,
and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular
delight. I never hear the loud, solitary whistle of the curlew in a
summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of gray plovers (p. 101)
in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the
enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can
this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the Æolian
harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do
these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own
myself partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities--a
God that made all things--man's immaterial and immortal nature--and a
world of weal or woe beyond death and the grave!"
On reading this beautiful and suggestive letter, an ornithologist
remarked that Burns had made a mistake in a fact of natural history.
It is not the 'gray plover,' but the golden, whose music is heard on
the moors in autumn. The gray plover, our accurate observer remarks,
is a winter shore bird, found only at that season and in that habitat,
in this country.
It was not till about the middle of 1789 that the farm-house of
Ellisland was finished, and that he and his family, leaving the Isle,
went to live in it. When all was ready, Burns bade his servant, Betty
Smith, take a bowl of salt, and place the Family Bible on the top of
it, and, bearing these, walk first into the new house and possess it.
He himself, with his wife on his arm, followed Betty and the Bible and
the salt, and so they entered their new abode. Burns delighted to keep
up old-world _freits_ or usages like this. It was either on this
occasion, or on his bringing Mrs. Burns to the Isle, that he held a
house-heating mentioned by Allan Cunningham, to which all the
neighbourhood gathered, and drank, "Luck to the roof-tree of the house
of Burns!" The farmers and the well-to-do people welcomed him gladly,
and were proud that such a man had come to be a dweller in their (p. 102)
vale. Yet the ruder country lads and the lower peasantry, we are told,
looked on him not without dread, "lest he should pickle and preserve
them in sarcastic song." "Once at a penny wedding, when one or two
wild young lads quarrelled, and were about to fight, Burns rose up and
said, 'Sit down and ----, or else I'll hang you up like potatoe-bogles
in sang to-morrow.' They ceased, and sat down as if their noses had
been bleeding."
The house which had cost Burns so much toil in building, and which he
did not enter till about the middle of the year 1789, was a humble
enough abode. Only a large kitchen, in which the whole family, master
and servants, took their meals together, a room to hold two beds, a
closet to hold one, and a garret, coom-ceiled, for the female
servants, this made the whole dwelling-house. "One of the windows
looked southward down the holms; another opened on the river; and the
house stood so near the lofty bank, that its afternoon shadow fell
across the stream, on the opposite fields. The garden or kail-yard was
a little way from the house. A pretty footpath led southward along the
river side, another ran northward, affording fine views of the Nith,
the woods of Friars Carse, and the grounds of Dalswinton. Half-way
down the steep declivity, a fine clear cool spring supplied water to
the household." Such was the first home which Burns found for himself
and his wife, and the best they were ever destined to find. The months
spent in the Isle, and the few that followed the settlement at
Ellisland, were among the happiest of his life. Besides trying his
best to set himself to farm-industry, he was otherwise bent on
well-doing. He had, soon after his arrival in Ellisland, started (p. 103)
a parish library, both for his own use and to spread a love of
literature among his neighbours, the portioners and peasants of
Dunscore. When he first took up house at Ellisland, he used every
evening when he was at home, to gather his household for family
worship, and, after the old Scottish custom, himself to offer up
prayer in his own words. He was regular, if not constant, in his
attendance at the parish church of Dunscore, in which a worthy
minister, Mr. Kirkpatrick, officiated, whom he respected for his
character, though he sometimes demurred to what seemed to him the too
great sternness of his doctrine.
Burns and his wife had not been long settled in their newly-built
farm-house, when prudence induced him to ask that he might be
appointed Excise officer in the district in which he lived. This
request Mr. Graham of Fintray, who had placed his name on the Excise
list before he left Edinburgh, at once granted. The reasons that
impelled Burns to this step were the increase of his family by the
birth of a son in August, 1789, and the prospect that his second
year's harvest would be a failure like the first. He often repeats
that it was solely to make provision for his increasing family that he
submitted to the degradation of--
Searching auld wives' barrels,--
Och, hon! the day!
That clarty barm should stain my laurels,
But--what 'ill ye say?
These movin things, ca'd wives and weans,
Wad move the very hearts o' stanes.
That he felt keenly the slur that attached to the name of gauger is
certain, but it is honourable to him that he resolved bravely to
endure it for the sake of his family.
"I know not," he writes, "how the word exciseman, or the still (p. 104)
more opprobrious gauger, will sound in your ears. I, too, have seen
the day when my auditory nerves would have felt very delicately on
this subject; but a wife and children are things which have a
wonderful power in blunting this kind of sensations. Fifty pounds a
year for life, and a provision for widows and orphans, you will allow,
is no bad settlement for a poet."
In announcing to Dr. Blacklock his new employment, he says,--
But what d'ye think, my trusty fier,
I'm turned a gauger--peace be here!
Parnassian queans, I fear, I fear,
Ye'll now disdain me!
And then my fifty pounds a year
Will little gain me.
* * * * *
Ye ken, ye ken
That strang necessity supreme is
'Mang sons o' men.
I hae a wife and twa wee laddies,
They maun hae brose and brats o' duddies;
Ye ken yoursels my heart right proud is,
I need na vaunt,
But I'll sned besoms, thraw saugh woodies,
Before they want.
He would cut brooms and twist willow-ropes before his children should
want. But perhaps, as the latest editor of Burns' poems observes, his
best saying on the subject of the excisemanship was that word to Lady
Glencairn, the mother of his patron, "I would much rather have it said
that my profession borrowed credit from me, than that I borrowed it
from my profession."
In these words we see something of the bitterness about his new (p. 105)
employment, which often escaped from him, both in prose and verse.
Nevertheless, having undertaken it, he set his face honestly to the
work. He had to survey ten parishes, covering a tract of not less than
fifty miles each way, and requiring him to ride two hundred miles a
week. Smuggling was then common throughout Scotland, both in the shape
of brewing and of selling beer and whiskey without licence. Burns took
a serious yet humane view of his duty. To the regular smuggler he is
said to have been severe; to the country folk, farmers or cotters, who
sometimes transgressed, he tempered justice with mercy. Many stories
are told of his leniency to these last. At Thornhill, on a fair day,
he was seen to call at the door of a poor woman who for the day was
doing a little illicit business on her own account. A nod and a
movement of the forefinger brought the woman to the doorway. "Kate,
are you mad? Don't you know that the supervisor and I will be in upon
you in forty minutes?" Burns at once disappeared among the crowd, and
the poor woman was saved a heavy fine. Another day the poet and a
brother gauger entered a widow's house at Dunscore and seized a
quantity of smuggled tobacco. "Jenny," said Burns, "I expected this
would be the upshot. Here, Lewars, take note of the number of rolls as
I count them. Now, Jock, did you ever hear an auld wife numbering her
threads before check-reels were invented? Thou's ane, and thou's no
ane, and thou's ane a'out--listen." As he handed out the rolls, and
numbered them, old-wife fashion, he dropped every other roll into
Jenny's lap. Lewars took the desired note with becoming gravity, and
saw as though he saw not. Again, a woman who had been brewing, on
seeing Burns coming with another exciseman, slipped out by the back
door, leaving a servant and a little girl in the house. "Has (p. 106)
there been ony brewing for the fair here the day?" "O no, sir, we hae
nae licence for that," answered the servant maid. "That's no true,"
exclaimed the child; "the muckle black kist is fou' o' the bottles o'
yill that my mither sat up a' nicht brewing for the fair."... "We are
in a hurry just now," said Burns, "but when we return from the fair,
we'll examine the muckle black kist." In acts like these, and in many
another anecdote that might be given, is seen the genuine
human-heartedness of the man, in strange contrast with the
bitternesses which so often find vent in his letters. Ultimately, as
we shall see, the exciseman's work told heavily against his farming,
his poetry, and his habits of life. But it was some time before this
became apparent. The solitary rides through the moors and dales that
border Nithsdale gave him opportunities, if not for composing long
poems, at any rate for crooning over those short songs in which mainly
his genius now found vent. "The visits of the muses to me," he writes,
"and I believe to most of their acquaintance, like the visits of good
angels, are short and far between; but I meet them now and then as I
jog through the hills of Nithsdale, just as I used to do on the banks
of Ayr."
Take as a sample some of the varying moods he passed through in the
summer and autumn of 1789. In the May-time of that year an incident
occurs, which the poet thus describes:--"One morning lately, as I was
out pretty early in the fields, sowing some grass-seeds, I heard the
burst of a shot from a neighbouring plantation, and presently a poor
little wounded hare came hirpling by me. You will guess my indignation
at the inhuman fellow who could shoot a hare at this season, when all
of them have young ones. Indeed there is something in the business of
destroying, for our sport, individuals in the animal creation that (p. 107)
do not injure us materially, which I could never reconcile to my ideas
of virtue." The lad who fired the shot and roused the poet's
indignation, was the son of a neighbouring farmer. Burns cursed him,
and being near the Nith at the time, threatened to throw him into the
river. He found, however, a more innocent vent for his feelings in the
following lines:--
Inhuman man! curse on thy barbarous art,
And blasted be thy murder-aiming eye!
May never pity soothe thee with a sigh,
Nor ever pleasure glad thy cruel heart!
Go live, poor wanderer of the wood and field,
The bitter little that of life remains:
No more the thickening brakes and verdant plains
To thee shall home, or food, or pastime yield.
Seek, mangled wretch, some place of wonted rest,
No more of rest, but now thy dying bed!
The sheltering rushes whistling o'er thy head,
The cold earth with thy bloody bosom prest.
Perhaps a mother's anguish adds its woe;
The playful pair crowd fondly by thy side;
Ah! helpless nurslings, who will now provide
That life a mother only can bestow!
Oft as by winding Nith, I, musing, wait
The sober eve, or hail the cheerful dawn,
I'll miss thee sporting o'er the dewy lawn,
And curse the ruffian's aim, and mourn thy hapless fate.
This, which is one of the best of the very few good poems which Burns
composed in classical English, is no mere sentimental effusion, but
expresses what in him was a real part of his nature--his tender feeling
towards his lower fellow-creatures. The same feeling finds (p. 108)
expression in the lines on _The Mouse_, _The Auld Farmer's Address to
his Mare_, and _The Winter Night_, when, as he sits by his fireside,
and hears the storm roaring without, he says,--
I thought me on the ourie cattle,
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle
O' wintry war.
Or thro' the drift, deep-lairing, sprattle,
Beneath a scaur.
Ilk happing bird, wee helpless thing,
That in the merry months o' spring,
Delighted me to hear thee sing,
What comes o' thee?
Whare wilt then cow'r thy chittering wing,
And close thy e'e?
Though for a time, influenced by the advice of critics, Burns had
tried to compose some poems according to the approved models of
book-English, we find him presently reverting to his own Doric, which
he had lately too much abandoned, and writing in good broad Scotch his
admirably humorous description of Captain Grose, an Antiquary, whom he
had met at Friars Carse:--
Hear, Land o' Cakes, and brither Scots,
Frae Maidenkirk to Johnnie Groats--
If there's a hole in a' your coats,
I rede you tent it:
A chield's amang you, takin' notes,
And, faith, he'll prent it.
By some auld, houlet-haunted biggin,
Or kirk deserted by its riggin,
It's ten to ane ye'll find him snug in
Some eldritch part,
Wi' deils, they say, Lord save's! colleaguin'
At some black art.
It's tauld he was a sodger bred, (p. 109)
And ane wad rather fa'n than fled;
But now he's quat the spurtle-blade,
And dog-skin wallet,
And taen the--Antiquarian trade,
I think they call it.
He has a fouth o' auld nick-nackets;
Rusty airn caps, and jinglin' jackets,
Wad haud the Lothians three in tackets,
A towmont gude
And parritch-pats and auld saut-backets,
Before the Flood.
* * * * *
Forbye, he'll shape you aff fu' gleg
The cut of Adam's philibeg;
The knife that nicket Abel's craig
He'll prove you fully,
It was a faulding jocteleg
Or lang-kail gullie.
The meeting with Captain Grose took place in the summer of 1789, and
the stanzas just given were written probably about the same time. To
the same date belongs his ballad called _The Kirk's Alarm_, in which
he once more reverts to the defence of one of his old friends of the
New Light school, who had got into the Church Courts, and was in
jeopardy from the attacks of his more orthodox brethren. The ballad in
itself has little merit, except as showing that Burns still clung to
the same school of divines to which he had early attached himself. In
September we find him writing in a more serious strain to Mrs. Dunlop,
and suggesting thoughts which might console her in some affliction
under which she was suffering. "... In vain would we reason and
pretend to doubt. I have myself done so to a very daring pitch; but
when I reflected that I was opposing the most ardent wishes, and (p. 110)
the most darling hopes of good men, and flying in the face of all
human belief, in all ages, I was shocked at my own conduct."
That same September Burns, with his friend Allan Masterton, crossed
from Nithsdale to Annandale to visit their common friend Nicol, who
was spending his vacation in Moffatdale. They met and spent a night in
Nicol's lodging. It was a small thatched cottage, near Craigieburn--a
place celebrated by Burns in one of his songs--and stands on the
right-hand side as the traveller passes up Moffatdale to Yarrow,
between the road and the river. Few pass that way now without having
the cottage pointed out, as the place where the three merry comrades
met that night.
"We had such a joyous meeting," Burns writes, "that Mr. Masterton and
I agreed, each in our own way, that we should celebrate the business,"
and Burns's celebration of it was the famous bacchanalian song,--
O, Willie brewed a peck o' maut,
And Bob and Allan cam to pree.
If bacchanalian songs are to be written at all, this certainly must be
pronounced "The king amang them a'." But while no one can withhold
admiration from the genius and inimitable humour of the song, still we
read it with very mingled feelings, when we think that perhaps it may
have helped some topers since Burns's day a little faster on the road
to ruin. As for the three boon-companions themselves, just ten years
after that night, Currie wrote, "These three honest fellows--all men
of uncommon talents--are now all under the turf." And in 1821, John
Struthers, a Scottish poet little known, but of great worth and some
genius, thus recurs to Currie's words:--
(p. 111)
Nae mair in learning Willie toils, nor Allan wakes the melting lay,
Nor Rab, wi' fancy-witching wiles, beguiles the hour o' dawning day;
For tho' they were na very fou, that wicked wee drap in the e'e
Has done its turn; untimely now the green grass waves o'er a' the three.
_Willie brewed a Peck o' Maut_ was soon followed by another
bacchanalian effusion, the ballad called _The Whistle_. Three lairds,
all neighbours of Burns at Ellisland, met at Friars Carse on the 16th
of October, 1789, to contend with each other in a drinking-bout. The
prize was an ancient ebony whistle, said to have been brought to
Scotland in the reign of James the Sixth by a Dane, who, after three
days and three nights' contest in hard drinking, was overcome by Sir
Robert Laurie, of Maxwelton, with whom the whistle remained as a
trophy. It passed into the Riddell family, and now in Burns's time it
was to be again contested for in the same rude orgie. Burns was
appointed the bard to celebrate the contest. Much discussion has been
carried on by his biographers as to whether Burns was present or not.
Some maintain that he sat out the drinking-match, and shared the deep
potations. Others, and among these his latest editor, Mr. Scott
Douglas, maintain that he was not present that night in body, but only
in spirit. Anyhow, the ballad remains a monument, if not of his
genius, at least of his sympathy with that ancient but now happily
exploded form of good fellowship.
This "mighty claret-shed at the Carse," and the ballad commemorative
of it, belong to the 16th of October, 1789. It must have been within a
few days of that merry-meeting that Burns fell into another and very
different mood, which has recorded itself in an immortal lyric. It
would seem that from the year 1786 onwards, a cloud of melancholy (p. 112)
generally gathered over the poet's soul toward the end of each autumn.
This October, as the anniversary of Highland Mary's death drew on, he
was observed by his wife to "grow sad about something, and to wander
solitary on the banks of Nith, and about his farmyard in the extremest
agitation of mind nearly the whole night. He screened himself on the
lee-side of a corn-stack from the cutting edge of the night wind, and
lingered till approaching dawn wiped out the stars, one by one, from
the firmament." Some more details Lockhart has added, said to have
been received from Mrs. Burns, but these the latest editor regards as
mythical. However this may be, it would appear that it was only after
his wife had frequently entreated him, that he was persuaded to return
to his home, where he sat down and wrote as they now stand, these
pathetic lines:--
Thou lingering star, with lessening ray,
That lovest to greet the early morn,
Again thou usherest in the day
My Mary from my soul was torn.
O Mary! dear departed shade!
Where is thy place of blissful rest?
See'st thou thy lover lowly laid?
Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast?
That Burns should have expressed, in such rapid succession, the height
of drunken revelry in _Willie brewed a Peck o' Maut_ and in the ballad
of _The Whistle_, and then the depth of despondent regret in the lines
_To Mary in Heaven_, is highly characteristic of him. To have many moods
belongs to the poetic nature, but no poet ever passed more rapidly
than Burns from one pole of feeling to its very opposite. Such a poem
as this last could not possibly have proceeded from any but the (p. 113)
deepest and most genuine feeling. Once again, at the same season, three
years later (1792), his thoughts went back to Highland Mary, and he
poured forth his last sad wail for her in the simpler, not less
touching song, beginning--
Ye banks, and braes, and streams around
The castle o' Montgomery!
Green be your woods, and fair your flowers,
Your waters never drumlie;
There simmer first unfauld her robes,
And there the langest tarry;
For there I took the last Fareweel
O' my sweet Highland Mary.
It would seem as though these retrospects were always accompanied by
special despondency. For, at the very time he composed this latter
song, he wrote thus to his faithful friend, Mrs. Dunlop:--
"Alas! who would wish for many years? What is it but to drag existence
until our joys gradually expire, and leave us in a night of misery,
like the gloom which blots out the stars, one by one from the face of
heaven, and leaves us without a ray of comfort in the howling waste?"
To fits of hypochondria and deep dejection he had, as he himself tells
us, been subject from his earliest manhood, and he attributes to
overtoil in boyhood this tendency which was probably a part of his
natural temperament. To a disposition like his, raptures, exaltations,
agonies came as naturally as a uniform neutral-tinted existence to
more phlegmatic spirits. But we may be sure that every cause of
self-reproach which his past life had stored up in his memory tended
to keep him more and more familiar with the lower pole in that
fluctuating scale.
Besides these several poems which mark the variety of moods which (p. 114)
swept over him during the summer and autumn of 1789, there was also a
continual succession of songs on the anvil in preparation for
Johnson's _Museum_. This work of song-making, begun during his second
winter in Edinburgh, was carried on with little intermission during
all the Ellisland period. The songs were on all kinds of subjects, and
of all degrees of excellence, but hardly one, even the most trivial,
was without some small touch which could have come from no hand but
that of Burns. Sometimes they were old songs with a stanza or two
added. Oftener an old chorus or single line was taken up, and made the
hint out of which a new and original song was woven. At other times
they were entirely original both in subject and in expression, though
cast in the form of the ancient minstrelsy. Among so many and so
rapidly succeeding efforts, it was only now and then, when a happier
moment of inspiration was granted him, that there came forth one song
of supreme excellence, perfect alike in conception and in expression.
The consummate song of this summer, 1789, was _John Anderson my Jo,
John_, just as _Auld Lang Syne_ and _The Silver Tassie_ had been those
of the former year.
During the remainder of the year 1789 Burns seems to have continued
more or less in the mood of mind indicated by the lines _To Mary in
Heaven_. He was suffering from nervous derangement, and this, as usual
with him, made him despondent. This is the way in which he writes to
Mrs. Dunlop on the 13th December, 1789:--
"I am groaning under the miseries of a diseased nervous system--a
system, the state of which is most conducive to our happiness, or the
most productive of our misery. For now near three weeks I have been so
ill with a nervous headache, that I have been obliged for a time to
give up my Excise-books, being scarce able to lift my head, much (p. 115)
less to ride once a week over ten muir parishes. What is man?..."
And then he goes on to moralize in a half-believing, half-doubting
kind of way, on the probability of a life to come, and ends by
speaking of or rather apostrophizing Jesus Christ in a strain which
would seem to savour of Socinianism. This letter he calls "a
distracted scrawl which the writer dare scarcely read." And yet it
appears to have been deliberately copied with some amplification from
an entry in his last year's commonplace book. Even the few passages
from his correspondence already given are enough to show that there
was in Burns's letter-writing something strained and artificial. But
such discoveries as this seem to reveal an extent of effort, and even
of artifice, which one would hardly otherwise have guessed at.
In the same strain of harassment as the preceding extract, but
pointing to another and more definite cause of it, is the following,
written on the 20th December, 1789, to Provost Maxwell of Lochmaben:--
"My poor distracted mind is so torn, so jaded, so racked and
bedevilled with the task of the superlatively damned, to make one
guinea do the business of three, that I detest, abhor, and swoon at
the very word business, though no less than four letters of my very
short surname are in it." The rest of the letter goes off in a wild
rollicking strain, inconsistent enough with his more serious thoughts.
But the part of it above given points to a very real reason for his
growing discontent with Ellisland.
By the beginning of 1790 the hopelessness of his farming prospects
pressed on him still more heavily, and formed one ingredient in the
mental depression with which he saw a new year dawn. Whether he did
wisely in attempting the Excise business, who shall now say? In (p. 116)
one respect it seemed a substantial gain. But this gain was accompanied
by counterbalancing disadvantages. The new duties more and more
withdrew him from the farm, which, in order to give it any chance of
paying, required not only the aid of the master's hand, but the
undivided oversight of the master's eye. In fact, farming to profit
and Excise-work were incompatible, and a very few months' trial must
have convinced Burns of this. But besides rendering regular farm
industry impossible, the weekly absences from home, which his new
duties entailed, had other evil consequences. They brought with them
continual mental distraction, which forbade all sustained poetic
effort, and laid him perilously open to indulgences which were sure to
undermine regular habits and peace of mind. About this time (the
beginning of 1790), we begin to hear of frequent visits to Dumfries on
Excise business, and of protracted lingerings at a certain _howff_,
place of resort, called the Globe Tavern, which boded no good. There
were also intromissions with a certain company of players then
resident in Dumfries, and writings of such prologues for their
second-rate pieces, as many a penny-a-liner could have done to order
as well. Political ballads, too, came from his pen, siding with this
or that party in local elections, all which things as we read, we feel
as if we saw some noble high-bred racer harnessed to a dust-cart.
His letters during the first half of 1790 betoken the same restless,
unsatisfied spirit as those written towards the end of the previous
year. Only we must be on our guard against interpreting his real state
of mind too exclusively from his letters. For it seems to have been
his habit when writing to his friends to take one mood of mind, (p. 117)
which happened to be uppermost in him for the moment, and with which
he knew that his correspondent sympathized, and to dwell on this so
exclusively that for the moment it filled his whole mental horizon,
and shut out every other thought. And not this only, which is the
tendency of all ardent and impulsive natures, but we cannot altogether
excuse Burns of at times half-consciously exaggerating these momentary
moods, almost for certain stage effects which they produced. It is
necessary, therefore, in estimating his real condition at any time, to
set against the account, which he gives of himself in his letters, the
evidence of other facts, such as the testimony of those who met him
from time to time, and who have left some record of those interviews.
This I shall now do for the first half of the year 1790, and shall
place, over against his self-revelations, some observations which show
how he at this time appeared to others.
An intelligent man named William Clark, who had served Burns as a
ploughman at Ellisland during the winter half-year of 1789-90,
survived till 1838, and in his old age gave this account of his former
master: "Burns kept two men and two women servants, but he invariably
when at home took his meals with his wife and family in the little
parlour." Clark thought he was as good a manager of land as most of
the farmers in the neighbourhood. The farm of Ellisland was moderately
rented, and was susceptible of much improvement, had improvement been
then in repute. Burns sometimes visited the neighbouring farmers, and
they returned the compliment; but that way of spending time was not so
common then as now. No one thought that the poet and his writings
would be so much noticed afterwards. He kept nine or ten milch (p. 118)
cows, some young cattle, four horses, and several pet sheep: of the
latter he was very fond. During the winter and spring-time, when not
engaged in Excise business, "he sometimes held the plough for an hour
or two for him (W. Clark), and was a fair workman. During seed-time,
Burns might be frequently seen at an early hour in the fields with his
sowing sheet; but as he was often called away on business, he did not
sow the whole of his grain."
This old man went on to describe Burns as a kindly and indulgent
master, who spoke familiarly to his servants, both at home and
a-field; quick-tempered, when anything put him out, but quickly
pacified. Once only Clark saw him really angry, when one of the lasses
had nearly choked one of the cows by giving her potatoes not cut small
enough. Burns's looks, gestures, and voice were then terrible. Clark
slunk out of the way, and when he returned, his master was quite calm
again. When there was extra work to be done, he would give his
servants a dram, but he was by no means _over-flush_ in this way.
During the six months of his service, Clark never once saw Burns
intoxicated or incapable of managing his business. The poet, when at
home, used to wear a broad blue bonnet, a long-tailed coat, drab or
blue, corduroy breeches, dark blue stockings, with _cootikens_ or
gaiters. In cold weather he would have a plaid of black and white
check wrapped round his shoulders. The same old man described Mrs.
Burns as a good and prudent housewife, keeping everything neat and
tidy, well liked by her servants, for whom she provided good and
abundant fare. When they parted, Burns paid Clark his wages in full,
gave him a written character, and a shilling for a _fairing_.
In the summer or autumn of the same year, the scholarly Ramsay of (p. 119)
Ochtertyre in the course of a tour looked in on Burns, and here is the
record of his visit which Ramsay gave in a letter to Currie. "Seeing
him pass quickly near Closeburn, I said to my companion, 'That is
Burns.' On coming to the inn the hostler told us he would be back in a
few hours to grant permits; that where he met with anything seizable,
he was no better than any other gauger; in everything else that he was
perfectly a gentleman. After leaving a note to be delivered to him on
his return, I proceeded to his house, being curious to see his Jean. I
was much pleased with his 'uxor Sabina qualis,' and the poet's modest
mansion, so unlike the habitation of ordinary rustics. In the evening
he suddenly bounced in upon us, and said, as he entered, 'I come, to
use the words of Shakespeare, _stewed in haste_.' In fact, he had
ridden incredibly fast after receiving my note. We fell into
conversation directly, and soon got into the _mare magnum_ of poetry.
He told me he had now gotten a subject for a drama, which he was to
call _Rob McQuechan's Elshin_, from a popular story of Robert Bruce
being defeated on the water of Cairn, when the heel of his boot having
loosened in his flight, he applied to Robert MacQuechan to fit it,
who, to make sure, ran his awl nine inches up the king's heel. We were
now going on at a great rate, when Mr. Stewart popped in his head,
which put a stop to our discourse, which had become very interesting.
Yet in a little while it was resumed, and such was the force and
versatility of the bard's genius, that he made the tears run down Mr.
Stewart's cheeks, albeit unused to the poetic strain. From that time
we met no more, and I was grieved at the reports of him afterwards.
Poor Burns! we shall hardly ever see his like again. He was, in truth,
a sort of comet in literature, irregular in its motions, which did (p. 120)
no good, proportioned to the blaze of light it displayed."
It seems that during this autumn there came a momentary blink in
Burns's clouded sky, a blink which alas never brightened into full
sunshine. He had been but a year in the Excise employment, when,
through the renewed kindness of Mr. Graham of Fintray, there seemed a
near prospect of his being promoted to a supervisorship, which would
have given him an income of 200_l._ a year. So probable at the time
did it seem, that his friend Nicol wrote to Ainslie expressing some
fears that the poet might turn his back on his old friends when to the
pride of applauded genius was added the pride of office and income.
This may have been ironical on Nicol's part, but he might have spared
his irony on his friend, for the promotion never came.
But what had Burns been doing for the last year in poetic production?
In this respect--the whole interval between the composition of the
lines _To Mary in Heaven_, in October, 1789, and the autumn of the
succeeding year, is almost a blank. Three electioneering ballads,
besides a few trivial pieces, make up the whole. There is not a line
written by him during this year which, if it were deleted from his
works, would anyway impair his poetic fame. But this long barrenness
was atoned for by a burst of inspiration which came on him, in the
fall of 1790, and struck off at one heat the matchless _Tale of Tam o'
Shanter_. It was to the meeting already noticed of Burns with Captain
Grose, the antiquary, at Friars Carse, that we owe this wonderful
poem. The poet and the antiquary suited each other exactly, and they
soon became
Unco pack and thick thegither.
Burns asked his friend when he reached Ayrshire to make a drawing (p. 121)
of Alloway kirk, and include it in his sketches, for it was dear to
him because it was the resting-place of his father, and there he
himself might some day lay his bones. To induce Grose to do this,
Burns told him that Alloway kirk was the scene of many witch stories
and weird sights. The antiquary replied, "Write you a poem on the
scene, and I'll put in the verses with an engraving of the ruin."
Burns having found a fitting day and hour, when "his barmy noddle was
working prime," walked out to his favourite path down the western bank
of the river.
The poem was the work of one day, of which Mrs. Burns retained a vivid
recollection. Her husband had spent most of the day by the river side,
and in the afternoon she joined him with her two children. He was
busily engaged _crooning to himsel_; and Mrs. Burns, perceiving that
her presence was an interruption, loitered behind with her little ones
among the broom. Her attention was presently attracted by the strange
and wild gesticulations of the bard, who was now seen at some
distance, agonized with an ungovernable access of joy. He was reciting
very loud, and with tears rolling down his cheeks, those animated
verses which he had just conceived,--
Now Tam! O Tam! had thae been queans,
A' plump and strappin' in their teens.'
"I wish ye had seen him," said his wife; "he was in such ecstasy that
the tears were happing down his cheeks." These last words are given by
Allan Cunningham, in addition to the above account, which Lockhart got
from a manuscript journal of Cromek. The poet having committed the
verses to writing on the top of his sod-dyke above the water, (p. 122)
came into the house, and read them immediately in high triumph at the
fireside.
Thus in the case of two of Burns's best poems, we have an account of
the bard as he appeared in his hour of inspiration, not to any
literary friend bent on pictorial effect, but from the plain narrative
of his simple and admiring wife. Burns speaks of _Tam o' Shanter_ as
his first attempt at a tale in verse--unfortunately it was also his
last. He himself regarded it as his master-piece of all his poems, and
posterity has not, I believe, reversed the judgment.
In this, one of his happiest flights, Burns's imagination bore him
from the vale of Nith back to the banks of Doon, and to the weird
tales he had there heard in childhood, told by the winter firesides.
The characters of the poem have been identified; that of Tam is taken
from a farmer, Douglas Graham, who lived at the farm of Shanter, in
the parish of Kirkoswald. He had a scolding wife, called Helen
McTaggart, and the tombstones of both are pointed out in Kirkoswald
kirkyard. Souter Johnnie is more uncertain, but is supposed, with some
probability, to have been John Davidson, a shoemaker, who lies buried
in the same place. Yet, from Burns's poem we would gather that this
latter lived in Ayr. But these things matter little. From his
experience of the smuggling farmers of Kirkoswald, among whom "he
first became acquainted with scenes of swaggering and riot," and his
remembrance of the tales that haunted the spot where he passed his
childhood, combined with his knowledge of the peasantry, their habits
and superstitions, Burns's imagination wove the inimitable tale.
After this, the best poetic offspring of the Ellisland period, Burns
composed only a few short pieces during his tenancy of that farm. (p. 123)
Among these, however, was one which cannot be passed over. In January,
1791, the Earl of Glencairn, who had been his first, and, it may be
almost said, his only real friend and patron among the Scottish
peerage, died at the early age of forty-two, just as he returned to
Falmouth after a vain search for health abroad. Burns had always loved
and honoured Lord Glencairn, as well he might,--although his
lordship's gentleness had not always missed giving offence to the
poet's sensitive and proud spirit. Yet on the whole he was the best
patron whom Burns had found, or was ever to find among his countrymen.
When then he heard of the earl's death, he mourned his loss as that of
a true friend, and poured forth a fine lament, which concludes with
the following well-known lines:--
The bridegroom may forget the bride,
Was made his wedded wife yestreen;
The monarch may forget the crown,
That on his head an hour has been;
The mother may forget the child,
That smiles sae sweetly on her knee;
But I'll remember thee, Glencairn,
And a' that thou hast done for me.
Burns's elegies, except when they are comical, are not among his
happiest efforts. Some of them are frigid and affected. But this was
the genuine language of sincere grief. He afterwards showed the
permanence of his affection by calling one of his boys James
Glencairn.
A few songs make up the roll of the Ellisland productions during 1791.
One only of these is noteworthy--that most popular song, _The Banks o'
Doon_. His own words in sending it to a friend are these:--"March,
1791. While here I sit, sad and solitary, by the side of a fire, (p. 124)
in a little country inn, and drying my wet clothes, in pops a poor
fellow of a sodger, and tells me he is going to Ayr. By heavens! say I
to myself, with a tide of good spirits, which the magic of that sound,
'Auld Toon o' Ayr,' conjured up, I will send my last song to Mr.
Ballantine."
Then he gives the second and best version of the song, beginning
thus--
Ye flowery banks o' bonnie Doon,
How can ye blume sae fair?
How can ye chant, ye little birds,
And I sae fu' o' care!
The latest edition of Burns's works, by Mr. Scott Douglas, gives three
different versions of this song. Any one who will compare these, will
see the truth of that remark of the poet, in one of his letters to Dr.
Moore, "I have no doubt that the knack, the aptitude to learn the
Muses' trade is a gift bestowed by Him who forms the secret bias of
the soul; but I as firmly believe that excellence in the profession is
the fruit of industry, attention, labour, and pains; at least I am
resolved to try my doctrine by the test of experience."
The second version was that which Burns wrought out by careful
revision, from an earlier one. Compare, for instance, with the verse
given above, the first verse as originally struck off,--
Sweet are the banks, the banks of Doon,
The spreading flowers are fair,
And everything is blythe and glad,
But I am fu' of care.
And the other changes he made on the first draught are all in the (p. 125)
way of improvement. It is painful to know, on the authority of Allan
Cunningham, that he who composed this pure and perfect song, and many
another such, sometimes chose to work in baser metal, and that
song-ware of a lower kind escaped from his hands into the press, and
could never afterwards be recalled.
* * * * *
When Burns told Dr. Moore that he was resolved to try by the test of
experience the doctrine that good and permanent poetry could not be
composed without industry and pains, he had in view other and wider
plans of composition than any which he ever realized. He told Ramsay
of Ochtertyre, as we have seen, that he had in view to render into
poetry a tradition he had found of an adventure in humble life which
Bruce met with during his wanderings. Whether he ever did more than
think over the story of Rob McQuechan's Elshin, or into what poetic
form he intended to cast it, we know not. As Sir Walter said, any poem
he might have produced on this subject would certainly have wanted
that tinge of chivalrous feeling which the manners of the age and the
character of the king alike demanded. But with Burns's ardent
admiration of Bruce, and that power of combining the most homely and
humorous incidents with the pathetic and the sublime, which he
displayed in _Tam o' Shanter_, we cannot but regret that he never had
the leisure and freedom from care, which would have allowed him to try
his hand on a subject so entirely to his mind.
Besides this, he had evidently, during his sojourn at Ellisland,
meditated some large dramatic attempt. He wrote to one of his
correspondents that he had set himself to study Shakespeare, and
intended to master all the greatest dramatists, both of England (p. 126)
and France, with a view to a dramatic effort of his own. If he
had attempted it in pure English, we may venture to predict that he
would have failed. But had he allowed himself that free use of the
Scottish dialect of which he was the supreme master, especially if he
had shaped the subject into a lyrical drama, no one can say what he
might not have achieved. Many of his smaller poems show that he
possessed the genuine dramatic vein. _The Jolly Beggars_, unpleasant
as from its grossness it is, shows the presence of this vein in a very
high degree, seeing that from materials so unpromising he could make
so much. As Mr. Lockhart has said, "That extraordinary sketch, coupled
with his later lyrics in a higher vein, is enough to show that in him
we had a master capable of placing the musical drama on a level with
the loftiest of our classical forms."
Regrets have been expressed that Burns, instead of addressing himself
to these high poetic enterprises, which had certainly hovered before
him, frittered away so much of his time in composing for musical
collections a large number of songs, the very abundance of which must
have lessened their quality. And yet it may be doubted whether this
urgent demand for songs, made on him by Johnson and Thomson, was not
the only literary call to which he would in his circumstances have
responded. These calls could be met by sudden efforts, at leisure
moments, when some occasional blink of momentary inspiration came over
him. Great poems necessarily presuppose that the original inspiration
is sustained by concentrated purpose and long-sustained effort; mental
habits, which to a nature like Burns must have at all times been
difficult, and which his circumstances during his later years rendered
simply impossible. From the first he had seen that his farm would (p. 127)
not pay, and each succeeding year confirmed him in this conviction. To
escape what he calls "the crushing grip of poverty, which, alas! I
fear, is less or more fatal to the worth and purity of the noblest
souls," he had, within a year after entering Ellisland, recourse to
Excise work. This he did from a stern sense of duty to his wife and
family. It was, in fact, one of the most marked instances in which
Burns, contrary to his too frequent habit, put pride in his pocket,
and sacrificed inclination to duty. But that he had not accepted the
yoke without some painful sense of degradation, is shown by the
bitterness of many of his remarks, when in his correspondence he
alludes to the subject. There were, however, times when he tried to
take a brighter view of it, and to persuade himself, as he says in a
letter to Lady Harriet Don, that "one advantage he had in this new
business was the knowledge it gave him of the various shades of
character in man--consequently assisting him in his trade as a poet."
But, alas! whatever advantages in this way it might have brought, were
counteracted tenfold by other circumstances that attended it. The
continual calls of a responsible business, itself sufficient to occupy
a man,--when divided with the oversight of his farm, overtasked his
powers, and left him no leisure for poetic work, except from time to
time crooning over a random song. Then the habits which his roving
Excise life must have induced were, even to a soul less social than
that of Burns, perilous in the extreme. The temptations he was in this
way exposed to, Lockhart has drawn with a powerful hand. "From the
castle to the cottage, every door flew open at his approach; and the
old system of hospitality, then flourishing, rendered it difficult
for the most soberly inclined guest to rise from any man's board (p. 128)
in the same trim that he sat down to it. The farmer, if Burns was seen
passing, left his reapers, and trotted by the side of Jenny Geddes,
until he could persuade the bard that the day was hot enough to demand
an extra libation. If he entered an inn at midnight, after all the
inmates were in bed, the news of his arrival circulated from the
cellar to the garret; and ere ten minutes had elapsed, the landlord
and all his guests were assembled round the ingle; the largest
punch-bowl was produced, and,--
Be ours to-night--who knows what comes to-morrow?
was the language of every eye in the circle that welcomed him. The
highest gentry of the neighbourhood, when bent on special merriment,
did not think the occasion complete unless the wit and eloquence of
Burns were called in to enliven their carousals."
It can readily be imagined how distracting such a life must have been,
how fatal to all mental concentration on high objects, not to speak of
the habits, of which it was too sure to sow the seeds. The frequent
visits to Dumfries, which his Excise work entailed, and the haunting
of the Globe Tavern, already spoken of, led to consequences, which
more than even deep potations, must have been fatal to his peace.
His stay at Ellisland is now hastening to a close. Before passing,
however, from that, on the whole the best period of his life since
manhood, one or two incidents of the spring of 1791 must be mentioned.
In the February of that year Burns received from the Rev. Archibald
Alison, Episcopalian clergyman in Edinburgh, a copy of his once famous,
but now, I believe, forgotten, _Essay on Taste_, which contained (p. 129)
the authorized exposition of that theory, so congenial to Scotch
metaphysics, that objects seem beautiful to us only because our minds
associate them with sensible objects which have previously given us
pleasure. In his letter to the author, acknowledging the receipt of
his book, Burns says, "I own, sir, at first glance, several of your
propositions startle me as paradoxical: that the martial clangour of a
trumpet had something in it vastly more grand, heroic, and sublime
than the twingle-twangle of a Jew's-harp; that the delicate flexure of
a rose-twig, when the half-blown flower is heavy with the tears of the
dawn, was infinitely more beautiful and elegant than the upright stub
of a burdock; and that from something innate and independent of all
association of ideas--these I had set down as irrefragable orthodox
truths until perusing your book shook my faith." These words so pierce
this soap-bubble of the metaphysicians, that we can hardly read them
without fancying that the poet meant them to be ironical. Dugald
Steward expressed surprise that the unschooled Ayrshire ploughman
should have formed "a distinct conception of the general principles of
the doctrine of association;" on which Mr. Carlyle remarks, "We rather
think that far subtler things than the doctrine of association had
been of old familiar to him."
In looking over his letters at this time (1791), we are startled by a
fierce outburst in one of them, apparently apropos of nothing. He had
been recommending to the protection of an Edinburgh friend a
schoolmaster, whom he thought unjustly persecuted, when all at once he
breaks out: "God help the children of Dependence! Hated and persecuted
by their enemies, and too often, alas! almost unexceptionally, received
by their friends with disrespect and reproach, under the thin disguise
of cold civility and humiliating advice. Oh to be a sturdy savage, (p. 130)
stalking in the pride of his independence, amid the solitary wilds of
his deserts, rather than in civilized life helplessly to tremble for a
subsistence, precarious as the caprice of a fellow-creature! Every man
has his virtues, and no man is without his failings; and curse on that
privileged plain-speaking of friendship which, in the hour of my
calamity, cannot reach forth the helping-hand without at the same time
pointing out those failings, and apportioning them their share in
procuring my present distress.... I do not want to be independent that
I may sin, but I want to be independent in my sinning."
What may have been the cause of this ferocious explosion there is no
explanation. Whether the real source of it may not have lain in
certain facts which had occurred during the past spring, that must
have rudely broken in on the peace at once of his conscience and his
home, we cannot say. Certainly it does seem, as Chambers suggests,
like one of those sudden outbursts of temper which fasten on some mere
passing accident, because the real seat of it lies too deep for words.
Some instances of the same temper we have already seen. This is a
sample of a growing exasperation of spirit, which found expression
from time to time till the close of his life.
Let us turn from this painful subject, to one of the only notices we
get of him from a stranger's hand during the summer of 1791. Two
English gentlemen, who were travelling, went to visit him; one of whom
has left an amusing account of their reception. Calling at his house,
they were told that the poet was by the river-side, and thither they
went in search of him. On a rock that projected into the stream, they
saw a man employed in angling, of a singular appearance. He had a cap
of fox's skin on his head, a loose great coat fixed round him by a (p. 131)
belt, from which depended an enormous Highland broadsword. It was
Burns. He received them with great cordiality, and asked them to share
his humble dinner--an invitation which they accepted. "On the table
they found boiled beef, with vegetables and barley broth, after the
manner of Scotland. After dinner the bard told them ingenuously that
he had no wine, nothing better than Highland whiskey, a bottle of
which he set on the board. He produced at the same time his punch-bowl,
made of Inverary marble; and, mixing it with water and sugar, filled
their glasses and invited them to drink. The travellers were in haste,
and, besides, the flavour of the whiskey to their southern palates was
scarcely tolerable; but the generous poet offered them his best, and
his ardent hospitality they found impossible to resist. Burns was in
his happiest mood, and the charm of his conversation was altogether
fascinating. He ranged over a variety of topics, illuminating whatever
he touched. He related the tales of his infancy and youth; he recited
some of his gayest and some of his tenderest poems; in the wildest of
his strains of mirth he threw in some touches of melancholy, and
spread around him the electric emotions of his powerful mind. The
Highland whiskey improved in its flavour; the marble bowl was again
and again emptied and replenished; the guests of our poet forgot the
flight of time and the dictates of prudence; at the hour of midnight
they lost their way to Dumfries, and could scarcely distinguish it
when assisted by the morning's dawn. There is much naïveté in the way
the English visitor narrates his experience of that 'nicht wi' Burns."
Mr. Carlyle, if we remember aright, has smiled incredulously at (p. 132)
the story of the fox-skin cap, the belt, and the broadsword. But of
the latter appendage this is not the only record. Burns himself
mentions it as a frequent accompaniment of his when he went out by the
river.
The punch-bowl here mentioned is the one which his father-in-law had
wrought for him as a marriage-gift. It was, when Chambers wrote his
biography of Burns, in the possession of Mr. Haistie, then M.P. for
Paisley, who is said to have refused for it three hundred guineas--"a
sum," says Chambers, "that would have set Burns on his legs for ever."
This is the last glimpse we get of the poet in his home at Ellisland
till the end came. We have seen that he had long determined if
possible to get rid of his farm. He had sunk in it all the proceeds
that remained to him from the sale of the second edition of his poems,
and for this the crops he had hitherto reaped had given no adequate
return. Three years, however, were a short trial, and there was a good
time coming for all farmers, when the war with France broke out, and
raised the value of farm produce to a hitherto unknown amount. If
Burns could but have waited for that!--but either he could not, or he
would not wait. But the truth is, even if Burns ever had it in him to
succeed as a farmer, that time was past when he came to Ellisland.
Independence at the plough-tail, of which he often boasted, was no
longer possible for him. He could no more work as he had done of yore.
The habits contracted in Edinburgh had penetrated too deeply. Even if
he had not been withdrawn from his farm by Excise duties, he could
neither work continuously himself, nor make his servants work.
"Faith," said a neighbouring farmer, "how could he miss but fail? (p. 133)
He brought with him a bevy of servants from Ayrshire. The lasses
did nothing but bake bread (that is, oat-cakes), and the lads sat by
the fireside and ate it warm with ale." Burns meanwhile enjoying
himself at the house of some jovial farmer or convivial laird. How
could he miss but fail?
When he had resolved on giving up his farm, an arrangement was come to
with the Laird of Dalswinton by which Burns was allowed to throw up
his lease and sell off his crops. The sale took place in the last week
in August (1791). Even at this day the auctioneer and the bottle
always appear side by side, as Chambers observes; but then far more
than now-a-days. After the roup, that is the sale, of his crop was
over, Burns, in one of his letters, describes the scene that took
place within and without his house. It was one which exceeded anything
he had ever seen in drunken horrors. Mrs. Burns and her family
fortunately were not there to witness it, having gone many weeks
before to Ayrshire, probably to be out of the way of all the pain that
accompanies the breaking up of a country home. When Burns gave up his
lease, Mr. Miller, the landlord, sold Ellisland to a stranger, because
the farm was an outlying one, inconveniently situated, on a different
side of the river from the rest of his estate. It was in November or
December that Burns sold off his farm-stock and implements of
husbandry, and moved his family and furniture into the town of
Dumfries, leaving at Ellisland no memorial of himself, as Allan
Cunningham tells us, "but a putting-stone with which he loved to
exercise his strength, and 300_l._ of his money, sunk beyond
redemption in a speculation from which all had augured happiness."
It is not without deep regret that even now we think of Burns's (p. 134)
departure from this beautiful spot. If there was any position on earth
in which he could have been happy and fulfilled his genius, it would
have been on such a farm--always providing that it could have given
him the means of a comfortable livelihood, and that he himself could
have guided his ways aright. That he might have had a fair opportunity,
how often one has wished that he could have met some landlord who
could have acted towards him, as the present Duke of Buccleuch did
towards the Ettrick Shepherd in his later days, and have given a farm
on which he could have sat rent-free. Such an act, one is apt to
fancy, would have been honourable alike to giver and receiver. Indeed,
a truly noble nature would have been only too grateful to find such an
opportunity put in his way of employing a small part of his wealth for
so good an end. But the notions of modern society, founded as they are
so entirely on individual independence, for the most part preclude the
doing and the receiving of such favours. And with this social feeling
no man was ever more filled than Burns.