LOCHLEA AND MOSSGIEL
The farm at Mount Oliphant proved a ruinous failure, and after
weathering their last two years on it under the tyranny of the scoundrel
factor, it was with feelings of relief, we may be sure, that the family
removed to Lochlea, in the parish of Tarbolton. This was a farm of 130
acres of land rising from the right bank of the river Ayr. The farm
appeared to them more promising than the one they had left. The prospect
from its uplands was extensive and beautiful. It commanded a view of the
Carrick Hills, and the Firth of Clyde beyond; but where there are
extensive views to be had the land is necessarily exposed. The farm
itself was bleak and bare, and twenty shillings an acre was a high rent
for fields so situated.
The younger members of the family, however, were now old enough to be of
some assistance in the house or in the fields, and for a few years life
was brighter than it had been before; not that labour was lighter to
them here, but simply because they had escaped the meshes and
machinations of a petty tyrant, and worked more cheerfully, looking to
the future with confidence. Father, mother, and children all worked as
hard as they were able, and none more ungrudgingly than the poet.
We know little about those first few years of life at Lochlea, which
should be matter for special thanksgiving. Better we should know nothing
at all than that we should learn of misfortunes coming upon them, and
see the family again in tears and forced to thole a factor's snash;
better silence than the later unsavoury episodes, which have not yet
been allowed decent burial. Probably life went evenly and beautifully in
those days. The brothers accompanied their father to the fields; Agnes
milked the cows, reciting the while to her younger sisters, Annabella
and Isabella, snatches of song or psalm; and in the evening the whole
family would again gather round the ingle to raise their voices in
_Dundee_ or _Martyrs_ or _Elgin_, and then to hear the priest-like
father read the sacred page.
The little that we do know is worth recording. 'Gilbert,' to quote from
Chambers's excellent edition of the poet's works, 'used to speak of his
brother as being at this period a more admirable being than at any
other. He recalled with delight the days when they had to go with one or
two companions to cut peats for the winter fuel, because Robert was sure
to enliven their toil with a rattling fire of witty remarks of men and
things, mingled with the expressions of a genial glowing heart, and the
whole perfectly free from the taint which he afterwards acquired from
his contact with the world. Not even in those volumes which afterwards
charmed his country from end to end, did Gilbert see his brother in so
interesting a light as in those conversations in the bog, with only two
or three noteless peasants for an audience.'
This is a beautiful picture: the poet enlivening toil with talk,
lighting and illustrating all he said with his lively imagination;
Gilbert listening silently, and a group of noteless peasants dumb with
wonder. No artist has yet painted this picture of Burns, as his brother
saw him, at his best. Writers have glanced at the scene and passed it
by. It needed to be looked at with naked, appreciative eyes; they had
come with microscopes to the study of Burns. Far more interesting
material awaited them farther on: _The Poet's Welcome_, for example!
They could amplify that. Here, too, is the first hint of Burns's
brilliant powers as a talker; a glimpse on this lonely peat moss of the
man who, not many years afterwards, was to dazzle literary Edinburgh
with the sparkle and force of his graphic speech.
Probably it was about this time that Burns went for a summer to a school
at Kirkoswald. In his autobiography he says it was his seventeenth year,
and, if so, it must have been before the family had left Mount Oliphant.
Gilbert's recollection was that the poet was then in his nineteenth
year, which would bring the incident into the Lochlea period. In the new
edition of Chambers's Burns, William Wallace accepts Robert's statement
as correct; yet we hardly think the poet would have spent a summer at
school at a time when the family was under the heel of that merciless
factor. Besides, although he speaks of his seventeenth year, he has just
made mention of the fact that he was in the secret of half the amours of
the parish; and it was in the parish of Tarbolton that we hear of him
acting 'as the second of night-hunting swains.' Probably also it would
be after the family had found comparative peace and quiet in their new
home that it would occur to Burns to resume his studies in a methodical
way. The point is a small one. The important thing is, that in his
seventeenth or nineteenth summer he went to a noted school on a
smuggling coast to learn mathematics, surveying, dialling, etc., in
which he made a pretty good progress. 'But,' he says, 'I made a greater
progress in the knowledge of mankind. The contraband trade was at this
time very successful; scenes of swaggering riot and roaring dissipation
were as yet new to me, and I was no enemy to social life. Here, though I
learnt to look unconcernedly on a large tavern bill and mix without fear
in a drunken squabble, yet I went on with a high hand in my geometry.'
The glimpses we have of Burns during his stay here are all
characteristic of the man. We see a young man looking out on a world
that is new to him; moving in a society to which he had hitherto been a
stranger. His eyes are opened not only to the knowledge of mankind, but
to a better knowledge of himself. Thirsting for information and power,
we find him walking with Willie Niven, his companion from Maybole, away
from the village to where they might have peace and quiet, and converse
on subjects calculated to improve their minds. They sharpen their wits
in debate, taking sides on speculative questions, and arguing the matter
to their own satisfaction. No doubt in these conversations and debates
he was developing that gift of clear reasoning and lucid expression
which afterwards so confounded the literary and legal luminaries of
Edinburgh. They had made a study of logic, but here was a man from the
plough who held his own with them, discussing questions which in their
opinion demanded a special training. For an uncouth country ploughman
gifted with song they were prepared, but they did not expect one who
could meet them in conversation with the fence and foil of a skilled
logician. We may see also his burning desire for distinction in that
scene in school when he led the self-confident schoolmaster into debate
and left him humiliated in the eyes of the pupils. Even in his contests
with John Niven there was the same eagerness to excel. When he could not
beat him in wrestling or putting the stone, he was fain to content
himself with a display of his superiority in mental calisthenics. The
very fact that a charming _fillette_ overset his trigonometry, and set
him off at a tangent, is a characteristic ending to this summer of
study. Peggy Thomson in her kail-yard was too much for the fiery
imagination of a poet: 'it was in vain to think of doing more good at
school.'
Too much stress is not to be laid on Burns's own mention of 'scenes of
swaggering riot and dissipation' at Kirkoswald. Such things were new to
him, and made a lasting impression on his mind. We know that he returned
home very considerably improved. His reading was enlarged with the very
important addition of Thomson's and Shenstone's works. He had seen human
nature in a new phasis, and now he engaged in literary correspondence
with several of his schoolfellows.
It was not long after his return from Kirkoswald that the Bachelor's
Club was founded, and here could Burns again exercise his debating
powers and find play for his expanding intellect. The members met to
forget their cares in mirth and diversion, 'without transgressing the
bounds of innocent decorum'; and the chief diversion appears to have
been debate.
If we are to believe Gilbert, the seven years of their stay in
Tarbolton parish were not marked by much literary improvement in Robert.
That may well have been Gilbert's opinion at the time; for the poet was
working hard on the farm, and often spending an evening at Tarbolton or
at one or other of the neighbouring farms. But he managed all the same
to get through a considerable amount of reading; and though, perhaps, he
did not devote himself so sedulously to books as he had been accustomed
to do in the seclusion of Mount Oliphant, he was storing his mind in
other ways. His keen observation was at work, and he was studying what
was of more interest and importance to him than books--'men, their
manners and their ways.' 'I seem to be one sent into the world,' he
remarks in a letter to Mr. Murdoch, 'to see and observe; and I very
easily compound with the knave who tricks me of my money, if there be
anything original about him, which shows me human nature in a different
light from anything I have seen before.' Partly it was this passion to
see and observe, partly it was another passion that made him the
assisting confidant of most of the country lads in their amours. 'I had
a curiosity, zeal, and intrepid dexterity in these matters which
recommended me as a proper second in duels of that kind.' His song, _My
Nannie, O_, which belongs to this period, is not only true as a lyric of
sweet and simple love, but is also true to the particular style of
love-making then in vogue.
'The westlin wind blaws loud an' shill;
The night's baith mirk and rainy, O:
But I'll get my plaid, an' out I'll steal,
An' owre the hills to Nannie, O.'
According to Gilbert, the poet himself was constantly the victim of some
fair enslaver, although, being jealous of those richer than himself, he
was not aspiring in his loves. But while there was hardly a comely
maiden in Tarbolton to whom he did not address a song, we are not to
imagine that he was frittering his heart away amongst them all. A poet
may sing lyrics of love to many while his heart is true to one. The one
at this time to Robert Burns was Ellison Begbie, to whom some of his
songs are addressed--notably _Mary Morrison_, one of the purest and most
beautiful love lyrics ever poet penned. Nothing is more striking than
the immense distance between this composition and any he had previously
written. In this song he for the first time stepped to the front rank as
a song-writer, and gave proof to himself, if to nobody else at the time,
of the genius that was in him. A few letters to Ellison Begbie are also
preserved, pure and honourable in sentiment, but somewhat artificial and
formal in expression. It was because of his love for her, and his desire
to be settled in life, that he took to the unfortunate flax-dressing
business in Irvine. That is something of an unlovely and mysterious
episode in Burns's life. Suffice it to say in his own words: 'This
turned out a sadly unlucky affair. My partner was a scoundrel of the
first water, and, to finish the whole business, while we were giving a
welcome carousal to the New Year, our shop, by the drunken carelessness
of my partner's wife, took fire and burned to ashes, and I was left,
like a true poet, not worth a sixpence.'
His stay at Irvine was neither pleasant for him at the time nor happy in
its results. He met there 'acquaintances of a freer manner of thinking
and living than he had been used to'; and it needs something more than
the family misfortunes and the deathbed of his father to account for
that terrible fit of hypochondria when he returned to Lochlea. 'For
three months I was in a diseased state of body and mind, scarcely to be
envied by the hopeless wretches who have just got their sentence,
_Depart from me, ye cursed_.'
Up to this time, the twenty-fifth year of his age, Burns had not written
much. Besides _Mary Morrison_ might be mentioned _The Death and Dying
Words of Poor Mailie_, and another bewitching song, _The Rigs o'
Barley_, which is surely an expression of the innocent abandon, the
delicious rapture of pure and trustful love. But what he had written was
work of promise, while at least one or two of his songs had the artistic
finish as well as the spontaneity of genuine poetry. In all that he had
done, 'puerile and silly,' to quote his own criticism of _Handsome
Nell_, or at times halting and crude, there was the ring of sincerity.
He was not merely an echo, as too many polished poetasters in their
first attempts have been. Such jinglers are usually as happy in their
juvenile effusions as in their later efforts. But Burns from the first
tried to express what was in him, what he himself felt, and in so far
had set his feet on the road to perfection. Being natural, he was bound
to improve by practice, and if there was genius in him to become in time
a great poet. That he was already conscious of his powers we know, and
the longing for fame, 'that last infirmity of noble mind,' was strong in
him and continually growing stronger.
'Then out into the world my course I did determine,
Though to be rich was not my wish, yet to be great was charming;
My talents they were not the worst, nor yet my education;
Resolved was I at least to try to mend my situation.'
Before this he had thought of more ambitious things than songs, and had
sketched the outlines of a tragedy; but it was only after meeting with
Fergusson's _Scotch Poems_ that he 'struck his wildly resounding lyre
with rustic vigour.' In his commonplace book, begun in 1783, we have
ever-recurring hints of his devoting himself to poetry. 'For my own part
I never had the least thought or inclination of turning poet till I got
once heartily in love, and then Rhyme and Song were in a measure the
spontaneous language of my heart.'
The story of Wallace from the poem by Blind Harry had years before fired
his imagination, and his heart had glowed with a wish to make a song on
that hero in some measure equal to his merits.
'E'en then, a wish, I mind its power--
A wish that to my latest hour
Shall strongly heave my breast--
That I, for poor auld Scotland's sake,
Some usefu' plan or beuk could make,
Or sing a sang at least.'
This was written afterwards, but it is retrospective of the years of his
dawning ambition.
For a time, however, all dreams of greatness are to be set aside as
vain. The family had again fallen on evil days, and when the father
died, his all went 'among the hell-hounds that grovel in the kennel of
justice.' This was no time for poetry, and Robert was too much of a man
to think merely of his own aims and ambitions in such a crisis. It was
only by ranking as creditors to their father's estate for arrears of
wages that the children of William Burness made a shift to scrape
together a little money, with which Robert and Gilbert were able to
stock the neighbouring farm of Mossgiel. Thither the family removed in
March 1784; and it is on this farm that the life of the poet becomes
most deeply interesting. The remains of the father were buried in
Alloway Kirkyard; and on a small tombstone over the grave the poet bears
record to the blameless life of the loving husband, the tender father,
and the friend of man. He had lived long enough to hear some of his
son's poems, and to express admiration for their beauty; but he had also
noted the passionate nature of his first-born. There was one of his
family, he said on his deathbed, for whose future he feared; and Robert
knew who that one was. He turned to the window, the tears streaming down
his cheeks.
Mossgiel, to which the brothers now removed, taking with them their
widowed mother, was a farm of about one hundred and eighteen acres of
cold clayey soil, close to the village of Mauchline. The farm-house,
having been originally the country house of their landlord, Mr. Gavin
Hamilton, was more commodious and comfortable than the home they had
left. Here the brothers settled down, determined to do all in their
power to succeed. They made a fresh start in life, and if hard work and
rigid economy could have compelled success, they might now have looked
to the future with an assurance of comparative prosperity. Mr. Gavin
Hamilton was a kind and generous landlord, and the rent was only L90 a
year; considerably lower than they had paid at Lochlea.
But misfortune seemed to pursue this family, and ruin to wait on their
every undertaking. Burns says: 'I entered on this farm with a full
resolution, "Come, go to, I will be wise." I read farming books; I
calculated crops; I attended markets; and, in short, in spite of the
devil, the world, and the flesh, I should have been a wise man; but the
first year, from unfortunately buying in bad seed; the second from a
late harvest, we lost half of both our crops. This overset all my
wisdom, and I returned like the dog to his vomit, and the sow that was
washed to her wallowing in the mire.'
That this resolution was not just taken in a repentant mood merely to be
forgotten again in a month's time, Gilbert bears convincing testimony.
'My brother's allowance and mine was L7 per annum each, and during the
whole time this family concern lasted, which was four years, as well as
during the preceding period at Lochlea, his expenses never in any one
year exceeded his slender income. His temperance and frugality were
everything that could be wished.'
Honest, however, as Burns's resolution was, it was not to be expected
that he would--or, indeed, could--give up the practice of poetry, or
cease to indulge in dreams of after-greatness. Poetry, as he has already
told us, had become the spontaneous expression of his heart. It was his
natural speech. His thoughts appeared almost to demand poetry as their
proper vehicle of expression, and rhythmed into verse as inevitably as
in chemistry certain solutions solidify in crystals. Besides this, Burns
was conscious of his abilities. He had measured himself with his
fellows, and knew his superiority. More than likely he had been
measuring himself with the writers he had studied, and found himself not
inferior. The great misfortune of his life, as he confessed himself, was
never to have an aim. He had felt early some stirrings of ambition, but
they were like gropings of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of his cave.
Now, however, we have come to a period of his life when he certainly did
have an aim, but necessity compelled him to renounce it as soon as it
was recognised. It was not a question of ploughing or poetry. There was
no alternative. However insidiously inclination might whisper of poetry,
duty's voice called him to the fields, and that voice he determined to
obey. Reading farming books and calculating crops is not a likely road
to perfection in poetry. Yet, in spite of all noble resolution, the
voice of Poesy was sweet, and he could not shut his ears to it. He might
sing a song to himself, even though it were but to cheer him after the
labours of the day, and he sang of love in 'the genuine language of his
heart.'
'There's nought but care on every hand,
In every hour that passes, O:
What signifies the life o' man,
An' 'twere na for the lasses, O?'
For song must come in spite of him. The caged lark sings, though its
field be but a withered sod, and the sky above it a square foot of green
baize. Nor was his commonplace book neglected; and in August we come
upon an entry which shows that poetical aspirations were again
possessing him; this time not to be cast forth, either at the timorous
voice of Prudence or the importunate bidding of Poverty. Burns has
calmly and critically taken stock--so to speak--of his literary
aptitudes and abilities, and recognised his fitness for a place in the
ranks of Scotland's poets. 'However I am pleased with the works of our
Scotch poets, particularly the excellent Ramsay, and the still more
excellent Fergusson, yet I am hurt to see other places of Scotland,
their towns, rivers, woods, haughs, etc., immortalised in such
celebrated performances, whilst my dear native country, the ancient
Bailieries of Carrick, Kyle, and Cunningham, famous both in ancient and
modern times for a gallant and warlike race of inhabitants; a country
where civil and particularly religious liberty have ever found their
first support and their last asylum, a country the birthplace of many
famous philosophers, soldiers, and statesmen, and the scene of many
important events in Scottish history, particularly a great many of the
actions of the glorious Wallace, the saviour of his country; yet we have
never had one Scottish poet of any eminence to make the fertile banks of
Irvine, the romantic woodlands and sequestered scenes of Aire, and the
heathy mountainous source and winding sweep of Doon, emulate Tay, Forth,
Ettrick, Tweed, etc. This is a complaint I would gladly remedy; but,
alas! I am far unequal to the task, both in native genius and education.
Obscure I am, and obscure I must be, though no young poet nor young
soldier's heart ever beat more fondly for fame than mine.' The same
thoughts and aspirations are echoed later in his _Epistle to William
Simpson_--
'Ramsay and famous Fergusson
Gied Forth and Tay a lift aboon;
Yarrow and Tweed, to mony a tune,
Owre Scotland rings,
While Irwin, Lugar, Ayr, and Doon,
Naebody sings.
* * * * *
We'll gar our streams and burnies shine
Up wi' the best!'
The dread of obscurity spoken of here was almost a weakness with Burns.
We hear it like an ever-recurring wail in his poems and letters. In the
very next entry in his commonplace book, after praising the old bards,
and drawing a parallel between their sources of inspiration and his own,
he shudders to think that his fate may be such as theirs. 'Oh mortifying
to a bard's vanity, their very names are buried in the wreck of things
that were!'
Close on the heels of these entries came troubles on the head of the
luckless poet, troubles more serious than bad seed and late harvests.
During the summer of 1784, we know that he was in bad health, and again
subject to melancholy. His verses at this time are of a religious cast,
serious and sombre, the confession of fault, and the cry of repentance.
'Thou know'st that Thou hast formed me
With passions wild and strong;
And listening to their witching voice
Has often led me wrong.'
Perhaps this is only the prelude to his verses to Rankine, written
towards the close of the year, and his poem, _A Poet's Welcome_. They
must at least be all read together, if we are to have any clear
conception of the nature of Burns. It is not enough to select his
_Epistle to Rankine_, and speak of its unbecoming levity. This was the
time when Burns was first subjected to ecclesiastical discipline; and
some of his biographers have tried to trace the origin of that wonderful
series of satires, written shortly afterwards, to the vengeful feelings
engendered in the poet by this degradation. But Burns's attack on the
effete and corrupt ceremonials of the Church was not a burst of personal
rancour and bitterness. The attack came of something far deeper and
nobler, and was bound to be delivered sooner or later. His own personal
experience, and the experience of his worthy landlord, Gavin Hamilton,
may have given the occasion, but the cause of the attack was in the
Church itself, and in Burns's inborn loathing of humbug, hypocrisy, and
cant.
Well was it the satires were written by so powerful a satirist, that the
Church purged itself of the evil thing and cleansed its ways. This,
however, is an episode of such importance in the life of Burns, and in
the religious history of Scotland, as to require to be taken up
carefully and considered by itself.