PART ONE TAM O'SHANTER AND OTHER POEMS RELATING TO THE AYR AND ALLO WAY DISTRICTS A THOUSAND beautiful pictures of the Ayr might be made, as it "rins wimplin to the sea." The neighborhood in which Burns was born and lived is beautified by many charming rivers. Ayr, Afton, Doon, Lugar, Irvine, Faile and Cessnock Water all run in Ayrshire near where Burns lived. Beside these rivers Burns sat or walked in the gloaming, when his heart was full of music and his mind illumined by great thoughts, and composed the songs that live on through the years. Hamilton Wright Mabie says: "Scotland was rich in material for lyric poetry; hills and rivers, moors and highlands lay under a beautiful mist of legend and tradition. To Burns the very air was charged with poetry, and his heart responded to every appeal made to his imagination." The pictures of the Ayr refer to places connected with Burns. All the river scenes in this book show that Rev. L. McLean Watt was right when he said: "Burns was really set by heaven in an en [21] vironment uniquely suitable for a poetic mind like his." In his later years the winding Nith amply supplied the inspiration of the Ayrshire rivers in earlier years. The great centres of the life development of Burns were Alloway, Mauchline, Ellisland farm, and Dumfries. Alloway is a small village about two miles from Ayr. Ayr is a large town on the Ayr River near the Firth of Clyde. Burns was born in Alloway near the Doon River. Alloway Kirkyard was made celebrated by Burns as the place where the witches were dancing when Tam O'Shanter was on his way home from Ayr one market night after he had been drinking late with Souter Johnnie. Souter (Shoemaker) Johnnie lived in Kirkoswald, eleven miles from Ayr, and Tam O'Shanter (Douglas Graham) lived fourteen miles from Ayr, and three miles from Kirkoswald. Burns when seventeen went to school in Kirkoswald and knew Tam O'Shanter and Souter Johnnie, whose home was only a few doors away from the school Burns attended. Mount Oliphant farm on the Carrick border was near Alloway. Burns was seven years old when his father moved to Mount Oliphant, and eighteen when he left it. Under proper conditions the years from eleven to eighteen have a transforming influence in awakening the deep centres of a man's strongest powers. When Burns was fifteen he loved his harvest mate, Nellie Kirkpatrick, and he always said the love of his girl sweetheart made him a poet. Love during AYR AND ALLOWAY DISTRICTS the adolescent period will not make every boy a poet; but the entrancing love of a sweet, pure girl between fourteen and seventeen will kindle a youth's highest power more surely and more productively than any other influence, and the central image of God in Burns was the power of poesy. Burns was sent to school in Kirkoswald, about ten miles from Mt. Oliphant, to learn mathematics, mensuration, surveying, etc., when he was seventeen. Next door to the school lived his second sweetheart, Peggy Thompson. To Peggy he wrote "Now Westlin Winds," and "Lines to an Old Sweetheart." In the Kirk yard of Kirkoswald are the graves of Tam O'Shanter, Souter Johnnie, Kirkton Jean, the Schoolmaster of Burns in the Village, and the Grandmother of Burns, Mrs. Brown. Mauchline was the centre of some of the vital stages of the development of Burns. It is about two miles from Mossgiel Farm to which he went when he was 25 years of age. Here he met Jean Armour and Highland Mary. Jean was born in Mauchline, Mary was a servant in the home of Gavin Hamilton, who was a leader among the laymen in the new religious movement against the "auld lichts." Burns was naturally opposed to Rev. William Auld and Holy Willie, and association with Gavin Hamilton intensified his sympathy with vital religion, and his dislike for superstition, hypocrisy, bigotry, and some of the doctrines of the "auld licht" preachers. His soul was full of reverence for vital religion. He wrote "The Cottar's Saturday Night" at Mossgiel. He and Jean were married |