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shows that the farmer's son had been mistaken as to the ownership of the animal-described the meeting as "a most agreeable little party," and he mentioned " Lang, a dainty body of a clergyman; a Mr and Mrs Stodart a glorious fellow, with a still more glorious wife."

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The present tenant of Covington Mains is Mr Thomas Johnstone, whose wife received me very courteously on a recent visit to the farm. The room in which the Poet was entertained is on the left hand of the front entrance. Mrs Johnstone had no doubt as to the identity of the apartment, but when I asked if she could show me the room in which Burns slept her confidence departed. "Perhaps," she said—and the remark may have been made to soothe my disappointment-" Perhaps the party did not get to bed at all."

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That Burns was thoroughly at home in the society of the farmer of Covington Mains is evident from the following further extract from the letter of young Prentice : 'My father was exactly the sort of man to draw forth all the higher powers of Burns's mind. He combined physical and moral strength in an extraordinary degree; had a great deal of practical knowledge; had read and thought much; had a high relish for manly poetry; much benevolence; much indignation at oppression, which nobody dared to exercise within his reach; and no mean conversational powers. Such was the person to appreciate Burns-aye, and to reverence the man who penned The Cotter's Saturday Night'; and accordingly, though a strictly moral and religious man himself, he always maintained that the virtues of the Poet greatly predominated over his faults. I once heard him exclaim with hot wrath, when somebody was quoting from an Apologist: What! do they apologise for him? One-half of his good, and all his bad, divided amang a score o' them, would make them a' better men! The opinion which Burns formed of his host was equally high. "No words," he wrote in the letter already quoted, "can do him justice. Sound, sterling sense and plain, warm hospitality are truly his."

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No anecdote or conversational fragment of that memorable night in the parlour of the farmer of Covington Mains has been preserved. The late Rev. Thomas Somerville, D.D., Minister of Blackfriars, Glasgow, said, in the chapter on Robert Burns in his book, George Square, Glasgow, that "it is stated that on this occasion he (Burns) made his address to a haggis

'Great chieftain o' the puddin' race!'

But Dr Somerville does not support the statement, and there are other traditions as to the circumstances under which that famous piece was composed. According to James Hogg, it was written at dinner in the house of Mr Andrew Bruce, Castlehill, Edinburgh, and Robert Chambers says that the last stanza, as originally printed

"Ye Powers wha gi'e us a' that's gude,
Still bless Auld Caledonia's brood,
Wi' great John Barleycorn's heart's blude

In stoups and luggies,

And on our board that King o' Food,

A glorious haggis

was extemporised as a grace to a dinner, of which a haggis formed a part, in the house of a friend, said to be a Mr Morison, cabinetmaker in Mauchline. The one thing clear is that the poem was published for the first time in The Caledonian Mercury on 19th December, 1786, and that it was reprinted in The Scots Magazine in January of the following year.

The festivities of the Covington people did not end with the night; they were resumed next morning at the breakfast table of Mr and Mrs James Stodart-the couple so highly eulogised by the Poet-Hillhead Farm, less than half a mile distant. But before Burns left Covington Mains there occurred an incident of which he probably never heard, and which seems to have been first made public by Dr Somerville (who was a great-grandson of Archibald Prentice) in his Glasgow volume. Dr Somerville wrote: "I have heard James Stodart's son (a James Stodart also)

say, when nearly eighty, that he remembered passing the Mains that morning, with other companions, on his way to school. The pony was waiting at the door for the owner to start on his journey. The stalwart Bauldy' came out and ordered him and the other boys to stop and haud the stirrup for the man that was to mount, adding 'You'll boast of it till your dying day.' The boys said, 'We'll

'Stop and haud They took courage,

be late, and we're fear'd for the maister.' the stirrup; I'll settle wi' the maister!' as well they might, for Prentice was six-feet-three, and the dominie but an ordinary mortal. That boy Stodart (almost an octogenarian at the time he spoke to me) said, I think I'm prouder of that forenoon frae the schule than a' the days I was at it.'

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There is no record of the party at Hillhead Farm. All that Archibald Prentice, jun., says is that it was large ; but it is not difficult to imagine that, however many newcomers there may have been, most of the company of the previous evening were present. Those who had spent "a nicht wi' Burns" would not willingly forego a morning in the same delightful and invigorating society. It is a tradition at Hillhead, which was then a clachan,* and still contains several houses, that while the Poet rested there his pony was shod by the local blacksmith, who, we may be sure, did not spend more time on the job than was absolutely necessary. He would want to join the company in the spacious parlour, situated, like the similar apartment at Covington Mains, on the left-hand side of the entrance. The meal was not a hurried one, and the whole forenoon seems to have been passed at the table. We learn from the narrative of young Prentice that by lunch time Burns had proceeded only as far as the Bank Farm, about a mile away as the crow flies, and reached by crossing

*It may be noted that "the farm and hamlet of Hillhead " find a place in The Red Hose, a tale of Upper Clydesdale in the days of George the Fourth, by William Scott. At the period of the story the tenant was Archibald Stodart, whose kirn, one of the most celebrated in the district, is described,

a ford on the Clyde.

The tenant of the Bank, which is in the neighbouring parish of Carnwath, was John Stodart, the father of the gudewife of Covington Mains, who had also invited a large party to meet the eminent visitor. That evening Burns rode into Edinburgh, where he was in a short time to become the "lion" of the season, and a few days later he returned the pony to Reid by John Samson, brother of the immortal Tam.

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That Burns returned to Covington Mains does not admit of doubt. Archibald Prentice kept a diary, preserved by his son John, and under date May 1st, 1787, we read: "Cold; ... Mr Burns here." It is evident from the dates of Burns's correspondence that the visit was of short duration. On 30th April he wrote from his lodgings in the Lawnmarket to William Dunbar, and on 3rd May he addressed a letter to the Rev. Dr Hugh Blair from the same quarter. According to Robert Chambers, this was one of several excursions, having generally some

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obscurity, if not mystery, resting upon them," which Burns made from Edinburgh into Upper Clydesdale. Chambers suggested that Burns may have become enamoured with a peasant girl, whom he secretly went to see, and that she is celebrated in the song, "Yon wild, mossy mountains," of which the first three verses may be quoted :—

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"Yon wild, mossy mountains sae lofty and wide,
That nurse in their bosom the youth o' the Clyde,
Where the grouse lead their coveys thro' the heather to feed,
And the shepherd tends his flock as he plays on his reed.

Not Gowrie's rich valley, nor Forth's sunny shores,
To me hae the charms o' yon wild, mossy moors;
For there, by a lanely, sequestered stream,
Resides a sweet lassie, my thought and my dream.

Amang thae wild mountains shall still be my path,
Ilk stream foaming down its ain green, narrow strath,
For there, wi' my lassie, the day lang I rove,

While o'er us unheeded flee the swift hours o' love.

Other biographers and critics have also attempted to account for the song, and to identify the maid whose charms had caught the fancy of the Poet. Scott Douglas had no hesitation in assigning the close of 1786 as the date of its composition, and that it was produced on the journey between Mossgiel and Edinburgh. He wrote: Composing on horseback was a favourite occupation of his (Burns's) mind a few years afterwards, when passing through wild, sequestered scenery, and it may reasonably be supposed that the muse accompanied him during this solitary ride through those moors, where the infant Clyde meanders, and is fed by rills from Tintock and the Culter Fells." The Rev. Dr P. Hately Waddell went a step further. He observed: "Death had by this time dissolved the bond between him (Burns) and Mary, and circumstances for a time had alienated his affections from Jean. Some country beauty in the moors of Tintock must have attracted his attention there, and he has immortalised the nameless beauty accordingly." William Stenhouse concluded that

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