Never is a man more conscious of his manhood than when, with bridle in
hand and a good horse under him, he takes the road at a gallop. As his
steed stretches out and the hoof-beats quicken, as the milestones fly
past and the cool air rushes in his face, he casts care to the winds,
his pulse beats stronger, he rejoices to breathe and to live. The pride
and the pleasure of this experience have ever appealed to the poets,
and the ringing of horse-hoofs echoes through the verse of all ages--in
the warrior chants of Israel; through the sounding Virgilian lines;
to the reverberating rhythm of the “Ride from Ghent to Aix.” But the
maddest, most riotous gallop of all is, perhaps, that of the grey mare
Meg and her master from Ayr to the Shanter farm.
Burns was never more fortunate in his subject than when thus fulfilling
his promise of providing a legend for “Alloway’s auld haunted kirk.” He
did not, it is true, with the nice precision of the Augustan laureate,
trim his verse to a mechanical imitation of sound; but the wild rush
and deftness of the movement of the poem, the quick succession of
humour on pathos, scene upon scene, the ludicrous, the startling, the
horrible, carry away the breath, and suggest more vividly than any mere
measuring rhythm the mad daring of that midnight ride.
There is a little, old-fashioned, deep-thatched inn still standing
where the street leads southwards out of Ayr. Under its low,
brown-raftered roof it is yet easy to imagine how the veritable hero,
Tam, may have sat with his cronies “fast by the ingle, bleezing
finely,” while “the night drave on wi’ sangs and clatter,” and the
storm outside hurled itself fruitlessly against the little deep-set
window. It would need all the liquor he had imbibed to fortify the
carouser for that fourteen-mile ride into Carrick. A midnight hurricane
of rain and wind would be no pleasant encounter on that lonely road,
to say nothing of the eerie spots to be passed, and at least one
point more than a trifle dangerous. But Tam o’ Shanter was a stout
Ayrshire farmer, and, moreover, he was accustomed to face worse ragings
than those of the elements; so it may be supposed that, when he had
hiccupped a last goodbye to his friends, and, leaving the warm lights
of the inn streaming into the street behind him, galloped off into the
blackness of the night, it was with no stronger regret than that he
must go so soon. Half a mile to his right, as he bucketed southward
along the narrow road, he could hear the ocean thundering its diapason
on the broad beach of sand, and at the places where he crossed the open
country its spray would strike his cheek and fly inland with the foam
from Maggie’s bit. Sometimes, when the way lay through belts of beech
and oak woods, the branches would roar and shriek overhead as they
strove with maniac arms against the tempest.
The old road to Maybole, and that which Tam o’ Shanter took, ran a
little nearer the sea than the one which did duty in Burns’ time, and
still serves its purpose; and about a mile out of Ayr it crosses the
small stream at the ford where “in the snaw the chapman smoored.” Here,
on the newer road, a curious adventure is said to have befallen the
poet’s father. There was formerly no bridge across this stream; and the
legend runs that William Burnes, a few hours before the birth of his
son, in riding to Ayr for an attendant, found the water much swollen,
and was requested by an old woman on the farther side to carry her
across. Notwithstanding his haste he did this; and a little later, on
returning home with the attendant, he was surprised to find the woman
seated by his own fireside. It is said that when the child was born it
was placed in the gipsy’s lap, and she, glancing into its palm, made a
prophecy which the poet has turned in one of his verses:--
He’ll hae misfortunes great and sma’,
But aye a heart aboon them a’;
He’ll be a credit till us a’--
We’ll a’ be prood o’ Robin.
If all gipsy predictions were as well fulfilled as this concerning the
poet, the dark-skinned race assuredly would be far sought and courted.
A few strides beyond the stream his grey mare had to carry Tam past a
dark, uncanny spot--“the cairn whare hunters fand the murdered bairn.”
It was covered then with trees, and one of them still stands marking
the place. To the left of the old road here, and hard by the newer
highway, lies the humble cottage, of one storey, where Robert Burns was
born. It has been considerably altered since then, having been used
until recently as an alehouse, and further accommodation having been
added at either end. But enough of the interior remains untouched to
allow of its original aspect being realised. The house is the usual
“but and ben,” built of natural stones and clay, and neatly whitewashed
and thatched. In the “but,” the apartment to the left on entering from
the road, there is little alteration; and it was here, in the recessed
bed in the wall, that the poet first saw light. The plain deal dresser,
with dish-rack above, remains the same, and the small, square, deep-set
window still looks out behind, over the fields his father cultivated.
An old mahogany press with drawers still stands next the bed; the
floor is paved with irregular flags; and the open fireplace, with
roomy, projecting chimney, occupies the gable. An extra door has been
driven through the south-east corner to allow the profane crowd to pass
through, and a larger window has been opened towards the road that they
may see to scratch their names in the visitors’ book; but the rest of
the apartment, towards the back, is little changed, if at all, since
the eventful night when “Januar’ winds blew hansel in on Robin.”
The hour of his ride was too dark, however, for the galloping farmer to
see so far over the fields. A weirder sight was in store for him.
A few hundred yards farther on, when, by a well which is still flowing,
he had passed the thorn, now vanished, where “Mungo’s mither hanged
hersel,” just as the road plunged down along the woody banks of Doon,
there, a little to his left,
glimmering through the groaning trees
Kirk Alloway seemed in a bleeze.
The grey walls of the little kirk are standing yet among the graves,
though the last rafters of the ruined roof were carried off long
since to be carved into mementos. The tombs of Lord Alloway’s family
occupy one end of the interior, and a partition wall has been built
dividing off that portion, but otherwise the place remains unchanged.
The bell still hangs above the eastern gable, and under it remains the
little window with a thick mullion, the “winnock bunker” in which the
astonished farmer, sitting on his mare, and looking through another
opening in the side wall, saw the queer musician ensconced.
A more eerie spot on a stormy night could hardly be imagined, the
trees shrieking and groaning around, the Doon roaring in the darkness
far below, while the thunder crashed overhead, and the lurid glare
of lightning ever and again lit up the ruin. But with the unearthly
accessories of warlocks and witches, corpse-lights and open coffins,
with the screech of the pipes, and grotesque contortions of the
dancers, the place must pass comparison in horror. Yet, inspired by
“bold John Barleycorn,” the farmer stared eagerly in on the revels,
till, fairly forgetting himself in the height of his admiration, he
must shout out “Weel dune, Cutty Sark!” Then, in a moment, as every
reader is aware, the lights went out, the pipes stopped, and the
wrathful revellers streamed after him like angry bees. A few bounds of
his mare down that narrow, winding, and rather dangerous road would
carry Tam to the bridge, and the clatter of terrified Maggie’s hoofs
as she plunged off desperately through the trees seems to echo in the
hollow way yet. All the world knows how she carried her master in
safety across the keystone of the bridge at the cost of her own grey
tail. The feat was no easy one, for the single arch (still spanning the
river there) was high and steep and narrow.
Beyond the Doon the old road rises inland, bowered high with ash and
saugh trees, to the open country; and Tam, pale and sober no doubt, but
breathing freer, had still twelve long miles before him to the far side
of Kirkoswald in Carrick, where sat his wife--
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.