REMOVAL OF MRS BURNS TO ELLISLAND. The forests are leafless, the meadows are brown, How long I have liv'd-but how much liv'd in vain! How foolish, or worse, till our summit is gain'd! And downward, how weaken'd, how darken'd, how pain'd! 297 TO MR JAMES JOHNSON, ENGRAVER. MAUCHLINE, November 15, 1798. MY DEAR SIR-I have sent you two more songs. If you have got any tunes, or anything to correct, please send them by return of the carrier. I can easily see, my dear friend, that you will very probably have four volumes. Perhaps you may not find your account lucratively in this business; but you are a patriot for the music of your country, and I am certain posterity will look on themselves as highly indebted to your public spirit. Be not in a hurry; let us go on correctly, and your name shall be immortal. I am preparing a flaming preface for your third volume. I see every day new musical publications advertised; but what are they? Gaudy, painted butterflies of a day, and then vanish for ever: but your work will outlive the momentary neglects of idle fashion, and defy the teeth of time. Have you never a fair goddess that leads you a wild-goose chase of amorous devotion? Let me know a few of her qualities, such as whether she be rather black or fair, plump or thin, short or tall, &c.; and choose your air, and I shall task my muse to celebrate her. R. B. The bachelor life of Burns was now drawing to a close. His new house proving wholly unready for the reception of his wife, he had obtained temporary accommodation for her at a neighbouring farm. Accordingly, in the first week of December, he conducted Mrs Burns to the banks of the Nith. During the preceding week two servant-lads and a servant-girl had migrated thither from Mauchline, with some cart-loads of the plenishing made by Morrison; besides, I presume, a handsome four-posted bed, which Mrs Dunlop had contributed as her marriage-gift. The servant-lass, named Elizabeth Smith, still lives at Irvine (1851.) She reports that Mrs Burns was anxious, on going into a district where she was wholly a stranger, to obtain the services of a young woman whom she already knew. Elizabeth was engaged accordingly, but not till her father, in his anxiety for her moral welfare, had exacted a formal promise from Burns to keep a strict watch over her conduct, and, in particular, to exercise her duly in the Catechism-in both of which points she admits he was most faithful to his promise. About a mile below Ellisland there is a small tract of ground which has once been encircled by the waters of the Nith, partly through natural channels, and partly through an artificial trench. Here rises a small old dismantled tower, with more modern buildings adjoining to it on two of its sides—the whole forming the farm-buildings of The Isle; for such is the name of the place, still retained, although one of the ancient water-courses is now only a rushy piece of ground. The place, which has an antiquated, and even somewhat romantic appearance, was the property of Mr Newall, writer in Dumfries, whose family had lived in it during the summer, but only for a short time, in consequence of certain nocturnal sounds in the old tower having led to a belief that it was haunted. What added a little, or perhaps not a little, to the eeriness of the spot, was that the old burying-ground of Dunscore, containing the sepulchre of the dreaded persecutor, Grierson of Lagg, was in the immediate neighbourhood. Such was the 'moated grange' at which the illustrious poet welcomed home the mistress of his heart-the fascinating, never-to-beforgotten Jean Armour. We may well believe that it was a time of great happiness to Burns when he first saw his mistress installed in her little mansion, and felt himself the master of a household, however humblelooked up to by a wife as ' the goodman,' and by a host of dependents as 6 the master.' Who can refrain from sympathising with the great ill-requited poet in this brief exception from a painful life? According to Dr Currie 'Animated sentiments of any kind almost always gave rise in our poet to some production of his muse. His sentiments on this occasion were in part expressed by the following vigorous and characteristic, though not very delicate verses: they are in imitation of an old ballad : I hae a wife o' my ain, ELLISLAND, 17th December 1788. MY DEAR HONOURED Friend—Yours, dated Edinburgh, which I have just read, makes me very unhappy. 'Almost blind and wholly deaf, are melancholy news of human nature; but when told of a much-loved and honoured friend, they carry misery in the sound. Goodness on your part, and gratitude on mine, began a tie which has gradually entwisted itself among the dearest chords of my bosom, and I tremble at the omens of your late and present ailing habit and shattered health. You miscalculate matters widely when you forbid my waiting on you, lest it should hurt my worldly concerns. My small scale of farming is exceedingly more simple and easy than what you have lately seen at Moreham Mains. But, be that as it may, the heart of the man and the fancy of the poet are the two grand considerations for which I live: if miry ridges and dirty dunghills are to engross the best part of the functions of my soul immortal, I had better been a rook or a magpie at once, and then I should not have been plagued with any ideas superior to breaking of clods and picking up grubs; not to mention barn-door cocks or mallards-creatures with which I could almost exchange lives at any time. If you continue so deaf, I am afraid a visit will be no great pleasure to either of us; but if I hear you are got so well 1 Phenomenon as Burns was, fêted in society, and universally famed, he is little spoken of in the contemporary journals, amongst which it was not then the fashion so much as now to refer to the doings of individuals. On the 28th of November 1788, the Edinburgh Advertiser has a paragraph about him : Burns, the Ayrshire Bard, is now enjoying the sweets of retirement at his farm. Burns, in thus retiring, has acted wisely. Stephen Duck, the Poetical Thresher, by his ill-advised patrons, was made a parson. The poor man, hurried out of his proper element, found himself quite unhappy; became insane; and with his own hands, it is said, ended his life. Burns, with propriety, has resumed the flail-but we hope he has not thrown away the quill.' again as to be able to relish conversation, look you to it, madam, for I will make my threatening good. I am to be at the New-year-day fair of Ayr: and, by all that is sacred in the world, friend, I will come and see you. 6 Your meeting, which you so well describe, with your old schoolfellow and friend, was truly interesting. Out upon the ways of the world! They spoil these social offsprings of the heart. Two veterans of the men of the world' would have met with little more heart-workings than two old hacks worn out on the road. Apropos, is not the Scotch phrase, auld lang syne,' exceedingly expressive? There is an old song and tune which has often thrilled through my soul. You know I am an enthusiast in old Scotch songs. I shall give you the verses on the other sheet, as I suppose Mr Ker1 will save you the postage. 6 AULD LANG SYNE. Should auld acquaintance be forgot, CHORUS. For auld lang syne, my dear, For auld lang syne, We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet, We twa hae run about the braes, But we've wandered mony a weary foot, We twa hae paidl't i' the burn, Frae morning sun till dine; But seas between us braid hae roar'd, Sin' auld lang syne. And here's a hand, my trusty fiere, And gie's a hand o' thine; companion And we'll tak a right guid willie-waught, draught For auld lang syne. 1 Mr Ker was the postmaster in Edinburgh-a very different kind of official from what have since ruled in the same chair. This worthy man was always ready to frank a letter for a friend. Strange stories are told of weighty packets-one, it is said, containing a pair of buckskin-breeches for a sportsman in the Highlands— passing free through the post-office in his day, MYSTIFICATIONS ABOUT SONGS. And surely ye'll be your pint-stoup, And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet 301 Light be the turf on the breast of the Heaven-inspired poet who composed this glorious fragment! There is more of the fire of native genius in it than in half-a-dozen of modern English Bacchanalians ! Now I am on my hobby-horse, I cannot help inserting two other old stanzas, which please me mightily: : Burns came to indulge in little mystifications respecting his songs. Though he here speaks of Auld Lang Syne as an old fragment, and afterwards communicated it to George Thomson, with an expression of self-congratulation on having been so fortunate as to recover it from an old man's singing, the second and third 1 At a festival in honour of Burns, lately held in Boston, United States, an Irish gentleman said: 'He felt much inclined to claim the poet as an Irishman; but the attempt would be vain: one of the best known of his lyrics would detect him at once 'And surely you'll be your pint-stoup, And surely I'll be mine!' There was Burns, in the characteristic spirit of national thrift, settling the reckoning, and upon condition, too, that you were to pay for the first pint-stoup. An Irishman would never have thought of that.'-London Newspaper, March 1851. 2 This song may be effectively sung to one of the numerous sets of the Highland Laddie, which the reader will find in Johnson's Musical Museum. 3 North Berwick Law, a conical hill near the shore of the Firth of Forth, very conspicuous at Edinburgh, from which it is distant about twenty miles. |