polite tattle, modish manners, and fashionable dress, I am not sickened and disgusted with the multiform curse of boarding-school affectation; and I have got the handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, and the kindest heart in the country. Mrs Burns believes, as firmly as her creed, that I am le plus bel esprit, et le plus honnète homme in the universe; although she scarcely ever in her life, except the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and the Psalms of David in metre, spent five minutes together on either prose or verse.

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The most careless reader of the foregoing cannot fail to note the high tension of Burns's feelings in the earlier letters and the tone of deep indignation, as if he were the injured party, which pervades them all, and which approaches hysteria in No. 2 and No. 3. The reason is obvious enough. Some kind of private or irregular marriage-Burns himself styles it " some sort of wedlock "—had taken place between him and Jean Armour, the particulars of which are not made clear. This much we know for certain, a document was duly signed, witnessed, and given to the keeping of Jean as voucher for her character, and the honourable intentions of Burns as the author of her misfortune. document, we are informed, was either mutilated or destroyed at the instigation of Jean's father, she thereby becoming a consenting party to what Burns evidently considered at that time to be tantamount to a divorce, notwithstanding the sacrifices he expressed himself willing to make in order to provide for a wife and family. When he called to enquire for Jean on her return from Paisley, her mother peremptorily forbade him the house. (See Nos. 9 and 11). Hence his indignation and bitter resentment of his contemptuous treatment by the Armours, which their servile attitude towards him on his change of fortune served only to intensify. (See 16 and 19). What kind of "conjugal shield" Burns interposed between Jean and "the darts of calumny " when he became aware of her condition, we describe in the words of Dr Edgar, late minister of Mauchline, and author of the able and instructive volumes, Old Church Life in Scotland, from

which we quote from the chapter dealing with marriages in olden times.

...

THE SCOTS MARRIAGE LAWS.

"In Scotland there have, from a very early period, been two kinds of legal marriage, recognised under the designations of regular and irregular. Regular marriages have always been defined as marriages celebrated according to the regulations of the Church, by authorised ministers, and with religious solemnities, or, as a certain class of ecclesiastical writers are given to say, with sacerdotal benediction. The definition of an irregular marriage has not been so constant and unquestioned. In the strict sense of the term, a marriage may be said to have been irregular when the regulations of the Church were not fully complied with; and, as these regulations varied from time to time, marriages that at one period were held to be regular may at another period have been pronounced irregular. As far back as any living man remembers, it has taken very few formalities to constitute in Scotland a marriage that is binding in law. A man and a woman have had only to take up house together, and declare themselves husband and wife. The law thereupon pronounced them married persons. But this was not always understood to be the law of the land in Scotland, and the Church of Scotland did not always recognise such unions as marriages. The Presbytery of Irvine, in 1753, agreed that in determining questions of marriage the following queries should be put first, did the parties ever acknowledge themselves husband and wife; secondly, did they ever live together as husband and wife; and thirdly, are they habit and repute married persons. . . . When people were found by a Kirk-Session to have been lawfully married, although in an irregular manner, they were not treated as scandalous persons, and censured for living in scandal. Their offence was held to be of a milder type. It was simply a breach of Church order, and it was visited by a censure modified to the measure of misdeed.... Had Burns's alleged marriage by the unlucky paper come before the Civil Courts in 1786, and the fact of consent de presenti been clearly established, it is at least doubtful if the marriage could have been affirmed. There is reason to think that all the length the Court would have gone would have been to grant an order to compel solemnisation. Church Courts, during the greater part of the 18th century, scarcely knew what to recognise as marriages."

:

...

The cautious and painstaking Robert Chambers submitted the question of Burns's marriage to an eminent

counsel learned in the law, whose opinion he incorporated in one of his appendices :

"A marriage once existing cannot be annulled but by divorce. The destruction of documents may place impediments in the way of proving that it had existed, just as burning a bloody shirt may render it more difficult to prove a murder; but the fact cannot be altered. The subsequent formal marriage and the Church censure would go for nothing, except in the way of evidence, and to throw doubt on what might be adduced on the other side.

"The question then is-was there a marriage? Certainly there was, if the document was a declaration by Burns that Jean Armour was his wife, or that he had married her, and she accepted it in that light at the time. The following from Erskine will show that the rule is much older than Burns's day :

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Marriage may be without doubt perfected by the consent of parties declared by writing, provided the writing be so conceived as necessarily to impart their present consent. The proof of marriage is not confined to the testimonies of the clergyman and witnesses present at the ceremony. The subsequent acknowledgment

of it by the parties is sufficient to support the marriage, if it appear to have been made not in a jocular manner, but with deliberation.'

"The difficulties have occurred where the acknowledgment appeared to be with no intention to hold a marriage, but to serve some temporary purpose. Undoubtedly, if Burns had married anybody else he would have been guilty of bigamy."

The presence of a Justice of Peace or other civic dignitary was not an essential part of the irregular ceremony, though, like that of the blacksmith at Gretna Green, it ensured disinterested testimony to the fact. In Burns's case, we have his own declaration (No. 31) that a Justice of Peace was present, and that a fine was paid; the intention of which probably was to facilitate probation, if the need arose, in the Courts of Law. The records of the Session of Mauchline contain many instances of irregular marriages under discipline; so much so as to lead to the belief that the Civil Court was seldom or never appealed to in such cases. The minister and elders in almost every parish were then the only accredited overseers—nay, in many places they were the only local authority vested with powers to control and direct local affairs. Much,

therefore, depended on the personnel of these local tribunals, whose powers were bounded only by their own conception of them. The result was, in many instances, an oligarchic tyranny of the most inquisitorial sort, extending to the minutest details of daily life, whose rigour often defeated the ends in view. Thus, in 1788, the year in which Burns and Jean were reproved for their irregular marriage, the Session Clerk, who apparently had recently been treated to a chorus of sarcastic remarks on the morality of Mauchline, took the opportunity of appending this ludicrous note to the minute of that date: "N.B.-Notwithstanding the great noise, there are only twenty fornicators in this parish since last Sacrament.” Dr Edgar tells us that this form of sin lay" very heavy on the minds of Mr Auld and his Kirk-Session," though, it would appear, the "Poacher Court" had nothing to reproach themselves with on the score of lack of alertness on the part of their gamekeepers. What kind of a man was Mr Auld, on whose shoulders rested the responsibilities of this omniscient and omnipotent local adjudicature? We cannot do better than quote again from Dr Edgar :

DADDIE AULD.

"Mr Auld's name is a household word wherever the poems of Burns are read. From the way in which that minister is spoken of in the writings, and in some of the biographies of the Poet, it is not unlikely that the opinion entertained of him by the public generally is neither very exalted nor very favourable. William Auld was, nevertheless, a man of far more than common force of character, besides being a minister of exemplary faithfulness. Of all the ministers that ever lived in Mauchline . . . I am inclined to say that Mr Auld is the one that was most abundant in pastoral labours, and that left on the parish the clearest and most enduring mark of himself. He was a grave, solemn man-an ultra Sabbatarian-and a bishop, who not only looked over his parish, but ruled with apostolic rigour in his own house. While a terror to evil-doers, he was the praise of those that did well. . . . He was settled in Mauchline in the year 1742, and died at Mauchline in December, 1791, in the 81st year of his age. In 1763, the number of communicants rose to 700; in 1780, to 1300; and in 1786 and 1788 (the two

years in which Burns figured in the Kirk-Session), to 1400. After his death, the numbers went down in a few years to 500.... He is said to have been a man of considerable learning; but, except that he was fairly well informed in Church law and Church procedure, we have no evidence that his acquirements were more than ordinary.... Some of Burns's biographers have called him a leader of the Old Light party in the Church. He certainly belonged to

that party, and he may have been considered an outstanding member of it in the upper district of Kyle; but in no legitimate sense of the term could he be called a leader either of that or of any other party. He made no figure in Church Courts."

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Despite an occasional strained note of brotherly sympathy, Dr Edgar's estimate of Mr Auld is, on the whole, an unprejudiced and just review of the qualities of the man, and his work as Minister of Mauchline for the long period of fifty years. He was a stern and unbending Calvinist, conscientious and courageous in the discharge of what he conceived to be his duty; but he was not devoid of charity and benevolence. There is no trace of vindictiveness or revenge in his dealings with Burns; on the contrary, the Poet himself confesses that he treated him with consideration. He showed great zeal in providing for the poor of the parish, and it was his consuming regard for their interests. which led to the quarrel between him and Gavin Hamilton. The stent," or assessment for the poor, was at that period voluntary, and consequently often fell into arrears; and it was his dictatorial persistence in enquiring after the defaulters which forced Mr Hamilton, as Heritors' Clerk, into a position of antagonism to him and his Session. The subsequent charges brought against Mr Hamilton of Sabbath breaking, &c., undoubtedly savour of persecution; still, Mr Auld had the authority of the binding instructions of the Presbytery in acting as he did. Broader views of Christian life and practice were becoming prevalent, but he was an old man of seventy-five, and clung tenaciously to the old order of things. "His lot was cast," says Dr Edgar, "in a rude, rough age, in which gross licentiousness and shameless perfidy prevailed to an extent that many people have no idea of "-a remark, be it observed, which