1 first Monday of * HALLOWE'EN.* OF a' the festivals we hear, Frae Handsel-Monday1 till New-Year, Or yet can boast o' better cheer, Langsyne indeed, as now in climes. But customs vary wi' the times Ranged round a bleezing ingleside, For that day's wark is thrawn aside At Hallowe'en. Mayne's poem is believed to have suggested to Burns both the subject and style of one of his happiest compositions. It does not appear to have been printed since 1783, and is now extremely scarce. Placed at their head the gudewife sits, Bogle's ha'e gart folk tyne their wits Grieved, she recounts how, by mischance, Or sail wi' witches ower to France Syne, issued frae the gardy-chair1, That a' fu' daintily may fare At Hallowe'en. And when they've toomed2 ilk heapit plate, And a' things are laid out o' gate3, To ken their matrimonial mate, The youngsters keen Search a' the dark decrees o' fate A' things prepared in order due, Gosh guide's! what fearfu' pranks ensue! Their sweethearts by the far end pu' At Hallowe'en. I armchair. 2 emptied. 3 way. I drenched. 2 could hardly climb. 3 yearn. 4 magic spells. 5 close. Ithers, wi' some uncanny gift, In an auld barn a riddle lift, Their joe appears, as white as drift, But 'twere a langsome tale to tell Plump in a filthy peat-pot fell At Hallowe'en. Half filled wi' fear, and droukit1 weel, To cast his cantrips 4 wi' the Deil O Scotland! famed for scenes like this, Shall steek 5 their e'en, Will ever be the constant wish of Jockie Mein. ROBERT BURNS. 1759-1796. Of all the long growth of Scottish poetry there can be little doubt the work of Robert Burns was at last the flower. The heroic had found a voice in Barbour, Henry the Minstrel, and the Marquis of Montrose, pastoral delights in the verse of Henryson and Ramsay, allegory in Dunbar, and satire in Sir David Lyndsay and Sir Richard Maitland. Rustic jollity had been painted by James V., Francis Semple, and Robert Fergusson, and rural melancholy by Drummond of Hawthornden. The bitter-sweet pains of love had never wanted singers, including James I., Alexander Scot, and a host of nameless ballad-makers. And, almost in his own day, nature wild and free had found interpreters in Thomson and Fergusson and Bruce. But in the song of Burns all these passions and emotions, with a hundred others, were poured forth in a torrent which, for lyric vigour and variety, remains without a rival in the world. The story of the life of Burns is well known by everyone, and may only be briefly summarized here. The cottage is still standing by the roadside, two miles southward out of Ayr, in which, on January 25, 1759, the poet was born. A story has recently gained some currency-it is given at length in the new Evergreen of Spring, 1895-that Burns was really a descendant of a wandering tribe of Highland bards of the name of Campbell; but the story has been sifted and entirely disproved by Mr. Wallace, the latest and one of the most painstaking editors of the poet's works. The grandfather of Burns was a farmer in Kincardineshire, and the poet's father, William Burness or Burnes, after working as a gardener in Edinburgh and on the estate of Doonside, near Ayr, had sought to add to his resources by taking a perpetual lease of seven acres of land, close by Alloway Kirk, on which with his own hands he set up the thatched clay "bigging" already referred to. To this dwelling in December, 1757, he brought home as his wife Agnes Brown, the daughter of a farmer in Kirkoswald, and the mother of the poet. When Robert, who was the eldest of their family, was five years old, William Burnes leased the neighbouring farm, Mount Oliphant, of some eighty-seven acres; and the proprietor, his former master, lent him a hundred pounds to stock it. From the burden of this undertaking, it may be said, William Burnes never recovered. On his landlord's death he fell into the hands of a factor who pressed him unmercifully, and for two years, till the end of the lease, the little household was driven to sore straits to tide over its difficulties. During that time, probably, the seeds were sown of the consumption which finally carried the good man off. When the poet was sixteen, his father took the larger farm of Lochlea, in Tarbolton parish, some ten miles further inland. But after four years residence here, he became involved in a lawsuit regarding the terms of his lease, which harassed him for three years. It was finally decided against him, and the decision meant ruin. The news of this was a final blow, and he was saved from the probable horrors of a gaol by the kindly hand of death. Meanwhile, on the wheel of such stern circumstance, the poet's character had been taking shape. William Burnes, grave, irascible, and somewhat broken by ill-fortune, was of the intelligent type of the Scottish peasant, with his own sound thoughts on religion and his duties towards his family. The family catechism which he drew up, and the custom of friendly talk which he cultivated with his sons, show that he had ideas, and that he did his utmost to awaken and guide the intelligence of those in his charge. Of actual schooling Burns had the Scottish peasants' ordinary share. Grammar and writing he learned in the roadside schoolhouse, and arithmetic was taught him at home by his father. He lost none of his few opportunities, though these were bare enough, of bettering his knowledge; perfecting himself in French, after a fortnight's tuition; making a brave attempt at Latin; and even attending the parish school at Kirkoswald for a quarter to learn surveying. All the time he was greedily devouring every book he could lay his hands on. The boy who began at the age of nine by poring over "The Life of Hannibal" and the " "History of Sir William Wallace," who struggled with ancient history as he found it in geographical grammars and Stackhouse's "History of the Bible," and who got his ideas of manners, criticism, and literature from works like Addison's "Spectator," Locke's "Understanding," and the poetry of Pope and Allan Ramsay, was by no means unprovided with the solid foundations of knowledge. It is true that from the age of thirteen a seemingly hard fate compelled him to moil like a galley-slave on his father's farm. That experience, however, was itself an education, and even when driven at his hardest he found time for books. There was a collection of 66 songs which especially interested him. "I pored over them," he says, driving my cart, or walking to labour, song by song, verse by verse: carefully noting the true tender, or sublime, from affectation and fustian. I am convinced I owe to this practice much of my critic craft, such as it is." He wrote also |