."1 My father was picture I have drawn of one in my tale of "Twa Dogs." advanced in life when he married; I was the eldest of seven children; and he, worn out by early hardships, was unfit for labour. My father's spirit was soon irritated, but not easily broken. There was a freedom in his lease in two years more, and to weather these two years we retrenched our expenses. We lived very poorly. I was a dexterous ploughman for my age; and the next eldest to me was a brother [Gilbert] who could drive the plough very well, and help me to thrash the corn. A novelwriter might have viewed these scenes with some satisfaction; but so did not I. My indignation yet boils at the recollection of the scoundrel factor's insolent threatening letters, which used to set us all in tears. This kind of life—the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing moil of a galley-slave-brought me to my sixteenth year. We are to think of Burns, then, at Mount Oliphant, as a hard-toiling farm lad, ungainly of manner, somewhat sullen of temper, with little knowledge of the world, save what he acquired in the family circle, and from such books as he had by that time perused; his spirit already saddened and his bodily health impaired by the unusual cares and too heavy labours of his lot. So dragged along the weary years of his boyhood, until, amid his sorrows and toils, he was visited by that first bright dream of woman's love which warmed his care-chilled heart into song. Let the Poet himself tell about this interesting episode: You know our country custom of coupling a man and woman together as partners in the labours of harvest. In my fifteenth autumn my partner was a bewitching creature a year younger than myself. My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her justice in that language, but you know the Scotch idiom-she was a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. In short, she altogether, unwittingly to herself, initiated me in that delicious passion, which, in spite of disappointment, gin-horse prudence, and bookworm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys, our dearest blessing here below. How she caught the contagion I cannot tell; you medical 1 Puir tenant bodies, scant o' cash, How they maun thole a factor's snash; people talk much of infection from breathing the same air, the touch, etc.; but I never expressly said I loved her. Indeed, I did not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her when returning in the evening from our labours; why the tones of her voice made my heartstrings thrill like an Æolian harp; and particularly, why my pulse beat such a furious ratan, when I looked and fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Among her other love-inspiring qualities she sang sweetly; and it was her favourite reel to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme. . . . Thus with me began Love and Poetry. His youthful partner on the "hairst-rig was Nellie Kilpatrick, daughter of the blacksmith who lent him The Life of Wallace, and the song he composed in honour of her charms was HANDSOME NELL. TUNE-"I am a man unmarried." O once I loved a bonnie lass, And whilst that honour warms my breast, As bonnie lasses I hae seen, A bonnie lass, I will confess, Is pleasant to the e'e; But, without some better qualities, She's no' the lass for me. But Nellie's looks are blythe and sweet, And, what is best of a', Her reputation is complete, And fair without a flaw. She dresses aye sae clean and neat, And then there's something in her gait A gaudy dress and gentle air May slightly touch the heart; "Tis this in Nellie pleases me, This song possesses a peculiar interest, being Burns's first. He afterwards said, "I composed it in a wild enthusiasm of passion; and to this hour, I never recollect it but my heart melts, and my blood sallies at the remembrance." He also spoke of it as a very "puerile and silly" performance. But, calling to mind that when he wrote it he was only a boy of fifteen, it may justly be considered no ordinary composition, but one giving, in some of its stanzas at least, rich promise of poetic grace and power. Bearing generally on the foregoing period, and with more special reference to the question of the Poet's education, the following passage from his Autobiography may be quoted as showing what books, in addition to those used in school, he had read up to this stage :-"What I knew of ancient story was gathered from Salmon's and Guthrie's Geographical Grammars; and the ideas I had formed of modern manners, of literature and criticism, I got from the Spectator. These, with Pope's Works, some plays of Shakespeare, Tull and Dickson on Agriculture, The Pantheon, Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, Stackhouse's History of the Bible, Justice's British Gardener's Directory, Boyle's Lectures, Allan Ramsay's Works, Taylor's Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin, A Select Collection of English Songs, and Hervey's Meditations, had formed the whole of my reading. The collection of songs was my vade mecum. I pored over them driving my cart, or walking to labour, song by song, verse by verse, carefully noting the true, tender, or sublime from affectation or fustian. I am convinced I owe to this practice much of my criticcraft, such as it is." CHAPTER II. FROM 1777-1784. AGE, 18-25. TARBOLTON, KIRKOSWALD, IRVINE. The seven years we lived in Tarbolton parish were not marked by much literary improvements; but during this time the foundations were laid of certain habits in my brother's character which afterwards became but too prominent, and which malice and envy have taken delight to enlarge on. Yet, I do not recollect, during these seven years, to have ever seen him intoxicated; nor was he at all given to drinking. GILBERT BURNS. HAVING spent eleven years of unsuccessful toil and struggle in Mount Oliphant, William Burnes removed with his family to Lochlea, in the parish of Tarbolton. The farm then consisted of 130 acres of very indifferent soil, and was taken at twenty shillings an acre- -a poor bargain, again, for the tenant. Lochlea is, in itself, somewhat bare and uninteresting, but from the hill-lands of the farm the outlook is both extensive and beautiful. Landward, there opens up some of the finest Ayrshire scenery; and seaward, the whole Firth of Clyde, with Arran, Cantyre, and Ailsa Craig for majestic background. The place probably owes its name to the little loch which, though long since drained and cultivated, stood a few hundred yards from the farm steading. "It is," says the Poet, "during the time that we lived on this farm that my little story is most eventful." And, certainly, in these seven years he underwent several notable experiences. William Burnes entered Lochlea at Whitsunday 1777; and, although there must have been much to do on the new farm, further proof of the father's anxious desire for Robert's education is found in the fact that, during this first summer, the Poet was sent to study at Kirkoswald, a rural village about a dozen miles south from Ayr. Of this, the last of his schooldays, he says: A circumstance in my life which made some alteration in my mind and manners was, that I spent my nineteenth summer on a smuggling coast, a good distance from home, at a noted school, to learn mensuration, surveying, dialling, etc., in which I made a pretty good progress; but I made a greater progress in the knowledge of mankind. The contraband trade was at this time very successful, and it sometimes happened to me to fall in with those who carried it on. Scenes of swaggering riot and roaring dissipation were till this time quite new to me; but I was no enemy to social life. Here, though I learnt to fill my glass, and to mix without fear in a drunken squabble, yet I went on with a high hand with my geometry, till the sun entered Virgo-a month which is always a carnival in my bosom —when a charming fillette, who lived next door to the school, overset my trigonometry, and set me off at a tangent from the sphere of my studies. I struggled on, however, with my sines and co-sines for a few days more; but stepping into the garden one charming noon, to take the sun's altitude, there I met my angel— "Like Proserpine gathering flowers Herself a fairer flower." The remaining It was in vain to think of doing any more good at school. week I stayed I did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal out to meet her. And the last two nights of my stay in the country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the image of this modest and innocent girl had kept me guiltless. The village of Kirkoswald is fully twenty miles distant from Lochlea; but two reasons may be given in explanation of Burns having been sent for instruction so far from his home. First, it was a noted school" he attended; and, second, he was boarded at little cost with his uncle, Samuel Brown,2 at the farm of Ballochneil, a mile out of the village. The parish takes up some six miles of rugged, rocky Ayrshire coast, well suited for the purposes of the smuggler. During last century contraband trade with the 1 Hugh Roger, the Kirkoswald schoolmaster, was famous in his day as a teacher of mathematics and kindred subjects. 2 Brother of the Poet's mother, whose family belonged to Kirkoswald parish. |
