and Mr John M'Burnie, Secretary, Dumfries Burns Club. The others present were:-Mr John Maxwell, President, Dumfries Burns Howff Club, and Mr Thomas Laidlaw, Secretary; Mr Hugh S. Gladstone of Capenoch; Mr C. Oliverson, Weston Norwich; Provost Arnott, Maxwelltown; Dr Hunter, Dumfries; Mr James Carmont, Castledykes; Mr John Symons, Writer; Mr R. D. Maxwell, Editor of the Courier and Herald; Mr Jas. Reid, Editor of the Standard; Mr John Gibson, Mr J. E. Blacklock, Mr G. B. Carruthers, Mr David Fergusson, Mr M. H. M Kerrow, Mr G. W. Shirley, Treasurer Grieve, Dean Lockerbie, Bailie Kelly, Bailie Connolly, Bailie M. Lachlan, Judge O'Brien, Judge Smart, and Judge Farrow. The croupiers were Mr J. H. Balfour-Browne, K.C., of Goldielea; and Mr James Geddes, solicitor, Dumfries.

After luncheon a tour of the various places in and around Dumfries associated with the Poet was made. A short stay was made at Dunscore Old Churchyard, where close to the public road but almost unobservable from the highway were buried the remains of Robert Riddell of Glenriddell, to whom the Glenriddel Manuscripts were originally gifted. The grave, which is somewhat overgrown and carries one's thoughts back to the" resurrecting days of Burke and Hare, was closely examined by Mr Gribbel and the company. In the course of conversation Mr Gribbel remarked that a descendant of Robert Riddell's was at present Chief Justice in the Appeal Court for the Province of Ontario, and that he corresponded with him. regularly. In passing, notice was also taken of the grave of Sir Robert Grierson of Lagg, notorious in the days of the Covenanters. Proceeding less than half a mile further, the company visited Ellisland. Here the visitors were met by Mr John Grierson, the farmer, who conducted them down the famous "Shanter walk close by the winding Nith," and pointed out all places of literary and historic association with the Poet, both outside and inside the farmhouse. Friars' Carse was next visited, and there the company were met and welcomed by Mr and Mrs Dick

son.

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They were conducted by Mr Dickson over the rooms in the mansion-house associated with the Poet, and in the billiard room were shown the manuscripts in the Poet's handwriting of "The Whistle," Thou whom chance may hither lead,” and The wounded Hare," and also a letter, dated 10th January, 1792, all of which are carefully preserved and greatly valued. A tour was also made of the beautiful grounds of Friars' Carse, and a visit made to the Hermitage, where Burns frequently sat, and where he penned many of his sweetest songs. Returning to Dumfries about six o'clock, the company visited the Mausoleum and the old Church of St. Michael's. Burns's House was next visited, and Mr Gribbel was greatly interested in the various relics. Visiting Burns's room in the Globe Hotel, Mr Gribbel had a seat on the chair of the Poet there. The exterior of the house in Bank Street which Burns occupied when he came to Dumfries from Ellisland was also viewed.

After tea in the Station Hotel, Mr Gribbel, accompanied by Sir Alexander Walker, ex-Provost Smith, and Mr M Naught, returned to Glasgow highly delighted with the day's proceedings.

"ELEGY

ON STELLA”:

A BURNS MYSTERY SOLVED.

Abridged by the author from two articles in The Bookman (April, 1919 August, 1920), by kind permission of the Editor, to whom we are also indebted for the use of the illustrations.

I

N nearly every modern edition of Burns's Poems there appears a piece entitled "Elegy on Stella."

It was first introduced into the Burns fold in Macmillan's twovolume Golden Treasury edition of 1865, the editor of which, Alexander Smith the poet, found the poem in Burns's handwriting, in a Commonplace Book of the Bard's, which had been acquired by the publishers. This relic, known as the Edinburgh Commonplace Book, to distinguish it from an earlier one which was privately printed in 1872, was published in extenso in Macmillan's Magazine, vols. 39-40 (1879). The manuscript is now in the Alloway Cottage Collection, having been purchased for £365 in 1897.

In transcribing the Elegy, Burns did not claim authorship, but introduced it thus:

The following poem is the work of some hapless, unknown son of the Muses who deserved a better fate. There is a great deal of the voice of Cona' in his solitary, mournful notes, and had the sentiments been clothed in Shenstone's language they would have been no discredit even to that elegant poet."

Professor William Jack, who edited the Commonplace Book for Macmillan's Magazine, in the course of a lengthy annotation of the Elegy says:—

Alexander Smith is of the opinion that the poem is not by Burns. Pace tanti vivi, I think it is... Burns was perpetually writing Elegy. Nothing is more certain than that all through all his early life he felt himself to be some hapless, unknown son of the Muses, and that the voice of Cona,' the music of Ossian, full of the melancholy wail of the western waves, was often in his ears. As for the disclaimer of the authorship, Burns had previously tried

that innocent mystification, like thousands of bashful authors before and since his day... The much-loved Stella of the Poet is no doubt his Highland Mary; and Jean Armour, the mother of his children, still very dear to a heart for which one love was seldom sufficient, is the Vanessa of the dim background."

Professor Jack further opined that the friend who was in Burns's thoughts "when he wrote the Elegy was probably Richard Brown (mentioned in the famous letter to Dr Moore), whose sea perils, and the tender tragedy of poor Highland Mary, were probably both reflected in these mournful verses, which, he ventured to think, “no man but Burns then living could have written."

In a letter from Burns to Mrs Dunlop dated 8th July, 1789, an epistle not to be found in any edition of the Poet's Works but included in the Robert Burns and Mrs Dunlop Correspondence (Hodder & Stoughton, 1898), he once more transcribed the Elegy, introducing it in this fashion:

"I some time ago met with the following Elegy in MS., for I suppose it was never printed, and as I think it has many touches of the true tender, I shall make no apology for sending it you: perhaps you have not seen it.

[Here he transcribes the Elegy.]

I have marked the passages that strike me most. I like to do so in every book I read..."

The ordinary inedited editions of Burns include the Elegy, transcribed by the Poet without comment, leaving it to be assumed that it is as authentic as Tam o' Shanter." Editors generally, beginning with its sponsor, have looked upon it as doubtful. Smith says: "Still, the Elegy,

so far at least as the editor is aware, exists nowhere else.' In Henley and Henderson's Centenary Edition it is classed among the Improbables," and the editors say there is no earthly reason for attributing the thing to Burns. William Wallace, who edited the Burns-Dunlop Correspondence, speaks of the Poet's description of the origin of the "Elegy on Stella " as "mystifying."

The mystery seemed incapable of solution and, in

spite of editorial doubts, there was the lurking idea that, after all, Burns might have composed the poem, for in a letter to Mrs Dunlop dated 17th December, 1788, after transcribing his famous "Auld Lang Syne," he followed with these similarly mystifying words: "Light be the turf on the breast of the Heaven-inspired poet who composed this glorious fragment !"

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Assuming, however, that Burns was not repeating the unknown poet" subterfuge in regard to the Stella Elegy, and that his two explanations, in addition to being consistent, were also correct, the fact that he supposed "it was never printed" was not calculated to encourage research. And yet, with a faith begotten of some kind of literary second-sight, I started, beginning with Volume I., 1739, searching through a set of The Scots Magazine, which I had added to my tool-books," full of the idea of finding this mysterious Elegy on Stella. And at last I found it. Here, on page 156 of Volume XXXI., March, 1769, printed when Burns was a boy of ten, was the identical poem.

The poet who wrote it signed the Elegy "Gallovidianas," and fifteen pieces over that pseudonym appeared in The Scots Magazine. They will be found as follows:

1766-p. 655; 1767-pp. 95, 198, 265, 313, 435; 1768-pp. 97, 317, 431, 652; 1769-pp. 156, 260; 1770-pp. 36, 615; 1772 -P. 94.

The poems are mostly Elegies, and several of them have as their theme the love-tragedy of the Poet and his Stella. Though it has been so termed, the poem ascribed to Burns is not, strictly speaking, an "Elegy on Stella" at all, for she is not " the ever dear inhabitant below " to whom the first fifteen verses are devoted, the Poet's greater grief o'erflowing all with the transition to Stella"Like thee, cut off in early youth "-in the last five stanzas only.

However, in The Scots Magazine for January, 1770, there is an Elegy on Stella-the first of the series graced