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applied to her now being one he himself transcribes, in a letter to Mr Thomson, as one of his earliest effusions, and of which his Handsome Nell,' I think, forms the burden. My friend describes him as being considered at that time as a clever fellow, but a 'wild scamp.' . Nelly Blair is given by Cunningham (1834), Chambers (1838), and Wilson (1846), as the inspirer of the song.

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I think it is clear, therefore, that Nelly Blair was regarded as the heroine of the song up to about the year 1851. Mrs Begg, the Poet's youngest sister, is the sole authority for saying that she was named Kilpatrick.

Dr Chambers, in his 1851-2 edition, made copious. use of the information Mrs Begg was able to give in regard to the incidents and circumstances of her brother's earlier years, and more than once he gave effect to alterations which she had suggested. In the preface he states: "I have, accordingly, entered upon a minute examination of all the materials which exist for a biography of the Poet, and collected new and authentic particulars from all available sources, including the memory of his youngest sister, Mrs Begg, who still survives."

In this edition the following statement was made from the recollection of Mrs Begg: "The first touch of an emotion which afterwards gushed upon him, was now experienced in his seventeenth autumn, on the harvestfield, the cause being that bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass,' a year younger than himself, who had been assigned to him as the partner of his labours; Nelly Kilpatrick by name, and the daughter of the same blacksmith, it appears, who lent him his first book, the Life of Wallace.”

Mrs Begg's statements, however, must be received with caution. At the time the poem was composed (1774) Mrs Begg could not be more than three years of age. Her personal intercourse with her gifted brother was clearly limited to the four years spent by him at Mossgiel, and her girlish recollections are probably not altogether accurate or reliable. In one instance at least we find her statement directly opposed to that of Burns. There

has been some controversy regarding the date of the song, “O Tibbie, I hae seen the day." The Poet himself says: "This song I composed about the age of seventeen." Now, he was nineteen before the family removed from Mount Oliphant, and as Burns was upwards of twelve years Mrs Begg's senior, and she was then only about five years of age, her assertion, unsupported by any other known evidence that the Tibbie of the song was Isabella Stein, is not free from doubt.

Again, the song "My Nannie, O," according to Gilbert Burns, was written in honour of Agnes Fleming. On the other hand, Mrs Begg asserts that it was written in honour of Feggy Thomson of Kirkoswald, while Hamilton Paul traces the heroine to Kilmarnock.

Nor can Gilbert Burns be implicitly relied on. Dr Currie states that Burns walked from Ayrshire to Edinburgh in the course of two days on the occasion of his first visit to the capital. For that statement his informant was Gilbert. As a matter of fact, we are now assured that the journey was done on horseback. Again, the Poet wrote his autobiographical letter in the parlour of Mossgiel, and Gilbert only became aware of its existence some years after his brother's death.

In the new edition of Chambers (1896), revised and brought down to date by Dr Wallace, we find it stated:

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Nelly Kilpatrick by name, the daughter of Allan Kilpatrick, miller at Parclewan, in Dalrymple Parish." There is a note to the effect that Nelly married William Bone, coachman to the Laird of Newark, and that she died about the year 1820. Dr Wallace also states that the blacksmith who lent Burns the Life of Wallace was Henry M'Candlish, or Candlish, blacksmith at Parclewan, in Dalrymple Parish. There is now no hamlet of Par

clewan, and all that is left of the smithy is an outhouse that forms part of the little farmstead.

As will be seen from the above, Nelly Kilpatrick is now supposed to have been the daughter of a millernot of a blacksmith. The blacksmith is said to have been

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an intimate friend of the Poet, and one of his correspondents

in after years.

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Burns, in his letter to Dr Moore, already referred to, says: The two first books I ever read in private, and which gave me more pleasure than any two I have read since, were The Life of Hannibal and the History of Sir William Wallace." It will be noticed that Burns does not mention from whom the books were borrowed. Gilbert is the only authority for saying that the Life of Wallace was borrowed "from the blacksmith who shod our horses." His name is not mentioned. the period of the Poet's death Gilbert was ignorant, as we have seen, that his brother had written the narrative of his life while in Ayrshire; and having been applied to by Mrs Dunlop for some memoirs of his brother, he complied with her request in a letter from which the following is taken : "Murdoch, whose library at that time had no great variety in it, lent him The Life of Hannibal; for the Life of Wallace he did not see for some time afterwards, when he borrowed it from the blacksmith who shod our horses." The blacksmith in question, according to Dr Wallace, is said to have been named M'Candlish, and this was probably the reason why Mrs Begg confused the blacksmith's daughter with the Nelly Blair we have previously referred to.

I think we may safely assume that the Rev. Hamilton Paul refers to Nelly Blair in his edition of 1819. He was almost a contemporary of Burns, and his information about everything relating to the Poet may be regarded as trustworthy. It is quite evident from his remarks that Nelly Blair was recognised in Carrick as the heroine of the song in 1811-some fifteen years after the death of Burns. It would be interesting to know if any of the descendants of the Carrick farmer and his wife are still resident in the district.

Burns, as we know, delighted to refer to the incident that gave rise to these juvenile verses, and the letter to Dr Moore contains the following characteristic remarks

on the subject: "I did not well know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her, when returning in the evening from our labors; why the tones of her voice made my heart-strings thrill like an Æolian harp; and particularly, why my pulse beat such a furious ratann when I looked and fingered over her hand, to pick out the nettle-stings and thistles." As Mr Logie Robertson remarks in his delightful essay on "The old Harvest-Field" "A more beautifully idyllic scene than these perfect lines portray and suggest has never, perhaps, been represented by painter. One wonders that no artist in colours has yet appropriated the subject. Who said that Burns could not write English?"

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Chambers-Wallace and the Centenary Edition (the two modern standard editions of the complete Works of Burns); Scott Douglas (1891 Edition); The Songs of Robert Burns, by the late James C. Dick; For Puir Auld Scotland's Sake, by Hugh Haliburton; and The Heroines of Burns, by

Robert Ford.

IAIN MACDOUGALL.

OBITUARY NOTICES.

INCE the last issue of the Chronicle death has removed a number

SINCE

of prominent Burnsians in Glasgow.

The most recent event is the sudden demise of Mr David Duff, an ex-President of the Carlton Club, and an active worker in the committee carrying on the movement for supplying Burns's Works to the blind. It will be remembered that it was Mr Duff who, in the name of the committee, presented, at the last Annual Meeting of the Federation, the Provost of Galashiels with three volumes of Burns's Poems (in the Braille type for the blind) to be placed in the Public Library of the burgh.

A more familiar figure was ex-Bailie Hugh Mayberry, a Vicepresident of the Federation and a prominent personage at the Annual Meetings of that body. The Bailie was ever a strenuous man, and he rendered good service to the Burns cult as President of the Glasgow Sandyford Burns Club.

A well-known veteran in the Burns movement was lost to us on the death of Mr William Cochrane, of the well-known firm of Messrs William Cochrane & Sons, solicitors. He was for a period a member of Glasgow Corporation, and later occupied the honourable position of Chairman to the Glasgow Parish Council. He was for many years Secretary of the Bridgeton Burns Club, which is the wealthiest and one of the most successful clubs in the country. In that capacity he did a great deal to stimulate interest in Children's School Competitions. He retired from the post of Secretary some years ago, and was succeeded by his son, Mr J. Tullis Cochrane, solicitor.

While all these gentlemen will be much missed in the circles of their own clubs, the unexpected removal of a personality like James Ballantyne, is a loss affecting a much wider area in the Burns world. It is, indeed, a grievous blow to the local Burns movement. It was remarked at the Galashiels meeting that our friend Ballantyne was not the forceful and energetic man that we knew, but no one was prepared for such an early and sudden close to a useful and honourable career.

James Ballantyne was born in the parish of Dundonald, and was an enthusiastic Burnsian from an early date. He was a prominent member of the Glasgow Carlton Club, of which he was President for a term, and there he arranged the scheme for renovating, in Mauchline Churchyard, the memorial which marks the graves

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