Lizzie Sloss; 2. Rita Cameron.

Pianoforte playing-Nan Mathieson. The accompaniments to the competitors were played by Miss M'Kinney, Miss A. Gray, and Mrs M'Kinlay. Mr Harvie Smith presented the prizes, and complimented the Burns Club on the excellent work which they are doing. Acknowledgment was also made of the assistance rendered to the Club by Mr Hutton and his staff in preparing the children for the competition.

THOMAS HADDOW, Hon. Secretary.

NOTES AND QUERIES.

TWO BURNS CHAP-BOOKS.

We have received from Mr W. Turner, the able and popular member of the Sunderland Club, two chap-books-one entitled Poetic Tributes to the Memory of Burns, received by the Newcastleon-Tyne Club: Newcastle, G. Angus, 1817; the other bears-An Interesting History of Robert Burns, the Ayrshire Bard: Glasgow, printed for the Booksellers, No. 60, but has no date. The firstnamed contains three rhymed epistles to the brethren, two of which are initialled from Newcastle and one from Haddington, under date February, 1816. These compositions are all of superior merit, and they are written in the " raucle tongue of Burns. The "Interesting History" is an admirable short summary of the Poet's life, expressed in terse and vigorous language. The Poet's salary is given as £35 per annum ; Jean Armour is only once named ; and there is no reference whatever to Highland Mary. In those early days they "didn't know everything down in Judee." Fugitive literature of this kind is valuable for the light it throws upon the popular estimate of Burns in its own period.

EXTRACT FROM" LIFE OF JOHN KEATS."

Less vivid than the above is the invocatory sonnet, apparently showing acquaintance with the geological theory of volcanic upheaval, which Keats was presently moved to address to Ailsa Rock. Coming down into Ballantrae in blustering weather, the friends met a country wedding party on horseback, and Keats tried a song about it in the Burns dialect, for Brown to palm off on Dilke as an original "but it won't do," he rightly decides. From Maybole he writes to Reynolds with pleased anticipation of the visit to be paid the next day to Burns's Cottage. One of the pleasantest means of annulling self is approaching such a shrine as the cottage of Burns-we need not think of his misery-that is all gone; bad luck to it-I shall look upon it all with unmixed pleasure, as I do upon my Stratford-on-Avon day with Bailey."

On the walk from Maybole to Ayr Keats has almost the only phrase which escapes him during the whole tour to indicate a sense of special inspiring power in mountain scenery for a poet : "The approach to it (Ayr) is extremely fine-quite outwent my expectations-richly meadowed, wooded, heathed, and rivuleted-with

a grand sea view terminated by the black mountains of the Isle of Arran. As soon as I saw them so nearly I said to myself: How is it they did not beckon Burns to some grand attempt at an Epic?" Nearing Kirk Alloway, Keats had been delighted to find the first home of Burns in a landscape so charming. "I endeavoured to drink in the Prospect, that I might spin it out to you, as the Silkworm makes silk from Mulberry leaves-I cannot recollect it." But his anticipations were deceived, the whole scene disenchanted, and thoughts of Burns's misery forced on him in his own despite, by the presence and chatter of the man in charge of the Poet's birthplace:

Cant !
Many

The Man at the Cottage was a great Bore with his Anecdotes I hate the rascal-his life consists in fuzz, fuzzy, fuzziest. He drinks glasses five for the quarter and twelve for the hour-he is a mahogany-faced old Jackass who knew Burns. He ought to have been kicked for having spoken to him. He calls himself " a curious old Bitch "--but he is a flat old dog; I should like to employ Caliph Vathek to kick him. O the flummery of a birthplace! cant ! cant ! It is enough to give a spirit the guts-ache. a true word, they say, is spoken in Jest-this may be because his gab hindered my sublimity: the flat dog made me write a flat sonnet. My dear Reynolds-I cannot write about scenery and visitings. Fancy is indeed less than a present palpable reality, but it is greater than remembrance—you would lift your eyes from Homer only to see close before you the real Isle of Tenedosyou would rather read Homer afterwards than remember yourself. One song of Burns's is of more worth to you than all I could think for a whole year in his native country. His Misery is a dead-weight upon the nimbleness of one's quill-I tried to forget it-to drink Toddy without any care-to write a merry sonnet-it won't do he talked with Bitches-he drank with blackguards; he was miserable. We can see horribly clear, in the works of such a man, his whole life, as if we were God's spies. What were his addresses to Jean in the latter part of his life? A. J. CRAIG. Corstorphine.

ELLISLAND FOR SALE.

The farm and estate of Ellisland, so rich in associations with Burns, and a field adjoining Stoke Poges Churchyard, containing a memorial to Thomas Gray, have been on the market during the last week, and have failed to find purchasers.

Some ultra-literary people have been declaring this deplorable, and have read into it a slight to the memory of two justly famed sons of the Muse. I submit that it is nothing of the sort.

Whatever its literary connections, a field or a farm, coming up for sale, is regarded in this practical twentieth century, not as a matter of poetry, but as a matter of agriculture, and lamentations are needless. Ellisland, I do not doubt, will yet be bought, as will the field at Stoke Poges, despite its monument, but on a purely business basis.

And why not? Need literature come into the question at all? A poet's worshippers hold every foot of ground sacred that is associated with him, but let the more ardent among them remember that his true memorial is to be found in his works, and that, so long as these still hold the love and admiration of the race, there is no cause to be despondent about set-backs in the sphere of agriculture.

VISITORS TO BURNS'S BIRTHPLACE.

As compared with last year's record figures, a slight decrease in the number of visitors to Burns's Cottage and Monument is shown in the official return for the year ending September 30th. The number who paid for admission to the Poet's birthplace was 64,642, a decrease of 1358, and the number who passed through the turnstiles at the Monument was 71,452, a decrease of 4924. The busiest time at both the Cottage and Monument was the Glasgow Fair week, when there were 10,830 visitors at the Cottage and 11,846 at the Monument.

-Glasgow Herald, 5th September, 1920.

CONFESSION OF ANTIQUE SMITH, THE FORGER.

James Cameron, Esq.,

26 George Street,

Edinburgh, 20th November, 1905.

South Street, David Street.

DEAR SIR, With reference to our recent conversation on the articles which appeared in the Dispatch and Scotsman newspapers some years ago, relating to Historical MSS., and of which I believe you have made a collection, allow me to state that though a lot of balderdash, there percolates a soupçon of truth, but I never really at any time took the trouble of reading or studying them after the first or second issues-I left the result to the Laws of Nature, and did not deem it necessary to answer any of them in public print; but all the fac-similes, as far as I recollect, were in my own workmanship, a fact I did not, and do not, deny. I hope on reading them

you will not hold me in any way responsible for the various wonderful theories propounded by some of the writers. They were simply romance, as far as I was concerned.-Yours truly,

A. H. SMITH.

Purchased from Macphail, Bookseller, Edinburgh, by me30th November, 1917. D. M'NAUGHT. James Cameron was a bookseller in St. David Street, Edinburgh a fine specimen of the old school of bibliophiles.-D. M‘N.

BURNS RELICS FOR ALLOWAY.

Some interesting additions have just been made to the collection of Burns relics at the Poet's birthplace at Alloway. They consist of articles that were personal to the Poet or to Jean Armour, and have been acquired from a great-granddaughter of the Poet, Mrs Annie V. Burns Scott, whose home is in South Australia. The most important is a manuscript of the poem, "The Lovely Isabella," dated Edinburgh, 16th March, 1787," and signed by the Poet. It is the only manuscript of the poem known to exist. Its existence was not known to Burns students till 1894, when it was printed in an Australian journal. Other articles included in the collection are one of the Poet's seals, six buttons which belonged to the Poet, a brooch with lock of Mrs Burns's hair, a bracelet with lock of Mrs Burns's hair, silver spoons and sauce ladles which belonged to Mrs Burns, and top of table which belonged to Mrs Burns. The seal is fixed on the end of a silver pen and pencil holder, which, however, is not contemporary with it. The buttons are of brown and white stone, are silver mounted, and of the type used on waistcoats. The brooch, containing a lock of "Bonnie Jean's" hair, is of gold, and is set with seven stones. It bears on its reverse an engraved inscription "From Sarah Burns to her half-sister Annie in memory of their grandmother." The silver spoons, eighteen in number, with two sauce ladles, were a present from James Glencairn Burns to his mother on the occasion of one of his trips home from India.

THE BROWNS OF KIRKOSWALD.

DEAR SIR,-Excuse my troubling you on a matter connected with the family on relations of Robert Burns, the Poet.

I have in my possession, amongst other MSS., a "Contract of Marriage" between one Samuel Broun and Agnes Logie, dated