Chapter V: Part 5

Another day, our ramble follows the winding Nith northward from Lincluden. As we proceed, the lovely and opulent dale, once the scene of clannish strife, presents an appearance of peaceful beauty, pervaded everywhere with the sentiment of Burns. In one enchanting spot the stream circles about the grounds of ancient Friars Carse, now a tasteful and pretty seat. It was erstwhile the residence of Burns's friend Riddel, to which the poet was warmly welcomed: here he composed the poem "Thou whom Chance may hither lead," and here he presided at the famous drinking-match which he told to future ages in "The Whistle." It is noteworthy that the first Scotch winner of the Whistle was father of Annie Laurie of the popular song, and that the contest here was between two of her grandnephews and her grandson,--the latter being victorious. Burns celebrated his friend of this old hermitage in seven of his poems; and the present proprietor carefully cherishes the window upon whose pane the bard inscribed "Lines written in Friars Carse." A little way beyond lies Druidical Holywood, where once dwelt the author of "De Sphaera," and next we find the Nith curving among the acres which Burns tilled in his happiest years, at Ellisland. Embowered in roses and perched upon an eminence overhanging the stream is the plain little dwelling which he erected with his own hands for the reception of his bonnie Jean. It is little changed since the time he lived under its lowly roof. We think the rooms dingy and bare, but they are better than those of his abode at Alloway and Mossgiel, much better than those in which he died at Dumfries. In the largest of the apartments, by a window which looks down the dreamful valley, Burns had a rude table, and here he penned some of the most touchingly beautiful poetry of our language,--poems which he had pondered as he worked or walked afield. Adjoining the house is the yard where he produced the exquisite lines "To Mary in Heaven;" in this near-by field he met "The Wounded Hare" of his verse; in yonder path along the murmuring Nith he composed the immortal "Tam O'Shanter," laughing aloud the while at the pictures his fancy conjured; and all about us are reminders of the bard and of the idyllic life which here inspired his muse: it would repay a longer journey to see the spot where the one song "John Anderson, my Jo" was pondered and written.

[Sidenote: Annie Laurie--Early Home]

[Sidenote: Annie Laurie and her Lover]

A further jaunt amid varied beauties of woodland shade and meadow sunshine, of gentle dale and savage scaur, brings us past historic Closeburn to the neighborhood of Thornhill. Here at the Buccleuch Arms the illegitimate daughter of Burns was for thirty years a servant, and boasted of having had a chat with Scott among the burnished utensils of her kitchen. Two miles eastward Scott found the Balfour's Cave and Leap described in "Old Mortality." Middle Nithsdale expands into a broad valley, commanded by lofty Queensberry and lower green hills and diversified with upland brae, shadowy copse, sunny mead, and opulent plantation. This lovely region, dotted with pretty hamlets, embowered villas, and moss-grown ruins, and teeming with the charming associations of history and sentiment, holds for us a crowning interest which has drawn our steps into its romantic haunts: it was the birthplace and life-long home of Annie Laurie. On the right of the Nith, among the bonnie braes of the song, we find the ancient manor-house of Maxwelton, where the heroine was born. The first of her race to reside here was her great-grandfather, who in 1611 built additions to the old tower already existing. The marriage-stone of Annie Laurie's grandparents, John Laurie and Agnes Grierson, is set in the massive walls and graven with their initials, crest, and date. This Agnes was daughter of the bloody persecutor who figures in "Redgauntlet," and whose ashes lie in Dunscore kirk-yard, not far distant. Another stone in the Maxwelton house commemorates the marriage of Robert Laurie and Jean Riddel, the parents of the heroine of the song,--this Robert being the champion of Bacchus who won the Whistle from the noble Danish toper. In this ancient abode, according to a record made by her father, "At the pleasure of the Almighty God, my daughter Anna Laurie was born upon the 16th day of Decr., 1682 years, about six o'clock in the morning;" here the bonnie maiden grew to womanhood; here occurred the episode to which the world is indebted for the sweet song; from here she married and went to her future home, but a few miles away. In the last century much of the venerable edifice was destroyed, but the older portion, which had been part of a stronghold in the time of the border wars, remains intact since Annie dwelt within. This part is still called The Tower, and consists of a large rectangular structure, with a ponderous semi-circular fabric abutting it at one end, its fortress-like walls being five feet in thickness and clothed by a luxuriant growth of ivy. Newer portions have been added in varying styles, and the mansion is now an elegant and substantial seat. All about it lie terraced lawns, with parterres of flowers, noble trees, and banks of shrubbery: lovely grounds slope away from the house and command an enchanting view which must often have delighted the vision of the fair Annie. Her boudoir is in the second story of The Tower; it is a corner room, forming now an alcove of the drawing-room; it has a vaulted ceiling of stone, and its windows, pierced in the ponderous walls, look out through the ivy and across an expanse of sward, flower, and foliage to the wooded braes where she kept tryst with her lover. Among the treasures of the old house is a portrait of the bonnie heroine which shows her as an impressively beautiful woman, of lissome figure, large and tender eyes, long oval face with Grecian features, wide forehead framed by a profusion of dark-brown hair. Her hands, like her "fairy feet," were of exceptional smallness and beauty. The present owner of Maxwelton, to whom the writer is indebted for many courtesies, is Sir Emilius Laurie; from him and from the lineal descendants of the widely-sung Annie who still inhabit Nithsdale are derived the materials for this account of that winsome lady. The lover who immortalized her was William Douglas of Fingland, and she requited him by breaking "her promise true" and marrying another man. Douglas is said to have been the hero of the song "Willie was a Wanton Wag;" he was one of the best swordsmen of his time, and his personal qualities gained him the patronage of the Queensberry family and secured him social advantages to which his lower rank and poverty constituted no claim. He and Annie met at an Edinburgh ball, and seem to have promptly become enamoured of each other. To separate them, Sir Robert quickly carried his family back to Nithsdale, but Douglas as quickly followed, and lurked in the vicinage for some months, clandestinely meeting his love among "Maxwelton's bonnie braes." Here the pair plighted troth, and when Douglas returned to Edinburgh, to assist in a projected Stuart uprising, he took with him the promise which he celebrated in the tender melody. The song was published in an Edinburgh paper and attracted much notice. Douglas's devotion to the Jacobites cost him his sweetheart; his political intrigues being suspected, he was forced to fly the country, and when, after some years passed in France, he secured pardon and returned, she was the wife of another. After giving "her promise true" to some other lovers, she married in 1709 Alexander Fergusson, a neighboring laird, who could not write poetry but had "muckle siller an' lan'" and a genealogy as long as Leviticus. Douglas and Annie never met again, and she makes but a single reference to him in her letters: being told of his return, she wrote to her sister, Mrs. Riddel, grandmother of Burns's friend, "I trust he has forsaken his treasonable opinions and is content."

[Sidenote: Her Later Home]

A stroll of but a few miles along a delightful way, fanned by the sweet summer winds, brings us to Craigdarrock, Annie Laurie's home for more than half a century. It is a spacious and handsome edifice of three stories, with dormer-windows in the hip-roof; a conservatory is connected at one end, bow-windows project from either side, and clambering vines cover the walls of the lower stories.

It is beautifully placed in a vale overlooking the winding stream, with the rugged Craigdarrock looming steeply in the background. Most of the mansion was built under the direction of Annie Laurie, and the gardens were laid out by her in their formal style: a delightful walk beneath the trees on the margin of the water was her favorite resort, and is still known by her name. Within the spacious rooms are preserved many of her belongings: curious furniture and hangings, quaint fineries of dress, her porcelain snuff-box, her will, a package of her letters written in the prim fashion of her time and signed "Anna." Through these epistles we look in vain for indications of the wit and genius which one naturally attributes to the possessor of the bright face which inspired a deathless song. In this house she lived happily with her husband, and was at once the Lady Bountiful and the matchmaker-in-ordinary for the whole countryside; here she died, aged seventy-nine. This estate has been handed down from father to son for fifteen generations, the present urbane laird, Captain Cutlar Fergusson, being a great-great-grandson of Annie Laurie and grandson of the hero of Burns's "Whistle." This famous trophy--a plain object in dark wood--is preserved here at Craigdarrock, and has not been challenged for since the bout which Burns witnessed.

[Sidenote: Burial-place]

In the now ruined church of Glencairn, hardly a mile from her birthplace, and not far from her later home, Annie Laurie worshipped, and in its yard, which has been a place of burial for a thousand years, she was laid with her husband, among the many generations of his kindred, by the gable-end of the ancient church. Her sepulchre was not marked, and it is to be feared the bones of the erst beauteous lady have been more than once disturbed in excavating for later interments in the crowded plot. From the summit of Craigdarrock we look upon the wilder beauty of the upper Nith, a region of moorland hills and dusky glens, where we may find the birthplace of "the Admirable Crichton," and beyond it the bleak domain where the poet Allan Ramsay first saw the light. Beyond this, again, the sweet Afton "flows amang its green braes," and we come to the Ayrshire shrines of Burns.

A few miles westward from Craigdarrock, and not so far from Carlyle's lonely den, is Fingland farm, the birthplace and home of Annie's poet-lover. It lies among sterile hills in the wild Glenkens of ancient Galloway, near the source of Ken water. From neighboring elevations we see Craigenputtock and the swelling Solway, and westward we look, across the dark fens and heathery hills of the region "blest with the smell of bog-myrtle and peat," almost to the Irish Sea. In this region Crockett was reared, and he pictures it in his charming tales "The Raiders" and "The Lilac Sunbonnet."

No trace of the peel-tower in which Douglas dwelt remains, but we know that it stood within an enclosing wall twenty yards square and one yard in thickness. The tower had projecting battlements; its apartments, placed above each other, were reached by a narrow, easily defended stair. In such a home and amid this most dismal environment Douglas grew to manhood, his poetic power unsuspected until it was called forth by the love and beauty of Annie Laurie. Later he wrote many poems, but diligent inquiry among the families of Buccleuch and Queensberry shows that few of his productions are now extant save the famous love-song. It is notable that he did not "lay doun his head and die" for the faithless Annie; instead, he made a runaway marriage with Elizabeth Clerk, of Glenborg, in his native Galloway, subsided into prosy country life, and reared a family of six children, of whom one, Archibald, rose to the rank of lieutenant-general in Brittany.

[Sidenote: Annie Laurie--The Singer and the Song]

Douglas's song was revised by Lady Scott, sister of the late Duke of Buccleuch, and published by her for the benefit of the widows and orphans made by the Crimean War. Lines of the original, for which the writer is indebted to a descendant of Annie Laurie, are hereto appended, that the reader may appreciate how much of the tender beauty of the popular version of the song is attributable to the poetic talent of Lady Scott.

"Maxwelton banks are bonnie,
Where early fa's the dew,
Where me and Annie Laurie
Made up the promise true:
Made up the promise true,
And ne'er forget will I:
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I'd lay doun my head and die.

"She's backit like a peacock;
She's breastit like a swan;
She's jimp about the middle;
Her waist ye weel may span:
Her waist ye weel may span,--
She has a rolling eye;
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I'd lay doun my head and die."

A NIECE OF ROBERT BURNS

_Her Burnsland Cottage--Reminiscences of Burns--Relics--Portraits--
Letters--Recitations--Account of his Death--Memories of his Home--Of
Bonnie Jean--Other Heroines._

In the course of a summer ramble in Burnsland we had sought out the homes, the haunts, the tomb of the ploughman poet, and had bent at many a shrine hallowed by his memory or his song. From the cottage of "Bonnie Jean" and the tomb of "Holy Willie," the field of the "Mountain Daisy" and the church of the "Holy Fair," the birthplace of "Highland Mary" and the grave of "Mary Morison," we came to the shrines of auld Ayr, beside the sea. Here we find the "Twa Brigs" of his poem; the graves of the ministers satirized in "The Kirk's Alarm;" the old inn of "Tam O'Shanter," and the very room, with its ingle, where Tam and Souter Johnny "got fou thegither," and where we may sip the nappy from the wooden caup which Tam often drained. From Ayr a delightful stroll along the highway where Tam made his memorable ride, and where William Burns carried the howdie upon the pillion behind him on another stormy winter's night when the poet was born, brought us to the hamlet of Alloway and the place of Burns's early life. Here are the auld clay biggin, with its rude stone floor and roof of thatch, erected by the unskilled hands of his father, where the poet first saw the light, and where he laid the scene of the immortal "Cotter's Saturday Night;" the fields where his young hands toiled to aid his burdened sire; the kirk-yard where his kindred lie buried, some of their epitaphs written by him; the "auld haunted kirk,"--where Tam interrupted the witches' dance,--unknown save for the genius of the lad born by its roofless walls; the Burns monument, with its priceless relics; the ivy-grown bridge, four centuries old, whose arch spans the songful stream and across which Tam galloped in such sore peril, and its "key-stane," where Meg lost "her ain gray tail" to Nannie, fleetest of the pursuers; the enchanting "banks and braes of bonnie Doon," where Burns wandered a brown-eyed boy, and later found the inspiration of many of his exquisite strains. We have known few scenes more lovely than this in which his young life was passed: long and delightful is our lingering here, for interwoven with the many natural beauties are winsome memories of the bard whose spirit and genius pervade all the scene.

[Sidenote: Miss Burns Begg--Bridgeside Cot]

[Sidenote: Recitations--Bonnie Jean]

Returning thence past the "thorn aboon the well" (the well is closed now) and the "meikle-stane" to the ancient ford "where in the snaw the chapman smoor'd," we made a detour southward, and came by a pleasant way--having in view on the right the picturesque ruin of Greenan Castle upon a cliff overhanging the sea--to Bridgeside cottage, the home of Miss Isabella Burns Begg, niece of the poet and long his only surviving near relative. We found a cottage of stone, from whose thatched roof a dormer-window, brilliant with flowers, peeped out through the foliage which half concealed the tiny homelet. The trimmest of little maids admitted us at the gate and led along a path bordered with flowers to the cottage door, where stood Miss Begg beaming a welcome upon the pilgrims from America. We were ushered into a prettily furnished little room, upon whose walls hung a portrait of Burns, one of his sister Mrs. Begg, and some framed autograph letters of the bard, which the niece "knew by heart." She was the daughter and namesake of Burns's youngest and favorite sister, who married John Begg. We found her a singularly active and vivacious old lady, cheery and intelligent, and more than pleased to have secured appreciative auditors for her reminiscences of her gifted uncle. She was of slender habit, had a bright and winning face, soft gray hair partially concealed by a cap, and when she was seated beneath the Burns portrait we could see that her large dark eyes--now sparkling with merriment or misty with emotion, and again literally glowing with feeling--were like those on the canvas. Among the treasures of this room was a worn copy of Thomson's "Seasons," a favorite book of Burns, which he had freely annotated; his name in it is written "Burnes," as the family spelled it down to the publication of the bard's first volume. In the course of a long and pleasant chat we learned that Miss Begg had lived many years in the cottage, first with her mother and later with her sister Agnes,--named for Burns's mother,--who died before our visit and was laid beside her parents and the father of Burns in the kirk-yard of auld Alloway, where Miss Begg expected "soom day, please God an it be soon," to go to await the resurrection, thinking it an "ill hap" that she survived her sister. She innocently inquired if we "kenned her nephew Robert in America," and then explained that he and a niece of hers had formerly lived with her, but she had discovered that "they were sweetheartin' and wantin' to marry, which she wouldna allow, so they went to America," leaving her alone with her handmaiden. Most of her visitors had been Americans. She remembered the visits of Hawthorne, Grant, Stanley, and Helen Hunt Jackson,--the last with greatest pleasure,--and thought that "Americans care most about Burns." She mentioned the visit of a Virginian maid, who by rapturous praise of the uncle completely won the heart of the niece. The fair enthusiast had most of Burns's poems at her tongue's end, but insisted upon having them repeated by Miss Begg, and at parting exclaimed, after much kissing, "Oh, but I always pray God that when he takes me to heaven he will give me the place next to Burns." Apparently, Robin still has power to disturb the peace of "the lasses O." Yet we can well excuse the effusiveness of our compatriot: to have listened to the old lady as she sat under his portrait, her eyes twinkling or softening like his own, her voice thrilling with sympathetic feeling as she repeated in his own sweet dialect the tender stanzas, "But pleasures are like poppies spread," "My Mary! dear departed shade!" and "Oh, happy love, when love like this is found," and others of like pathos and beauty, is a rapture not to be forgotten. She spoke quickly, and the Scottish accent kept one's ears on the alert, but it rendered the lines doubly effective and melodious. Many of the poems were inspired by special events of which Miss Begg had knowledge from her mother, which she recalled with evident relish. She distinctly remembered the bard's widow, "Bonnie Jean," and often visited her in the poor home where he died. Jean had a sunny temper, a kind heart, a handsome figure, a fine voice, and lustrous eyes, but her brunette face was never bonnie. While she lacked intellectual appreciation of his genius, she was proud of and idolized him, finding ready excuse and forgiveness for his failings. When the frail "Anna with the Gowden Locks" bore him an illegitimate child, Jean cradled it with her own, and loyally averred to all visitors, "It's only a neebor's bairn I'm bringin' up." ("Ay, she must 'a' lo'ed him," was Miss Begg's comment on this part of her narrative.) Jean had told that in his last years the poet habitually wore a blue coat, with nankeen trousers (when the weather would allow), and his coat-collar was so high that his hat turned up at the back. Her account of the manner of his death is startling, and differs from that given by the biographers. He lay apparently asleep when "sweet Jessy"--to whom his last poem was written--approached, and, to remind him of his medicine, touched the cup to his lips; he started, drained the cup, then sprang headlong to the foot of the bed, threw his hands forward like one about to swim, and, falling on his face, expired with a groan. Jean saw him for the last time on the evening before his funeral, when his wasted body lay in a cheap coffin covered with flowers, his care-worn face framed by the wavy masses of his sable hair, then sprinkled with gray. At his death he left MSS. in the garret of his abode, which were scattered and lost because Jean was unable to take care of them,--a loss which must ever be deplored.

[Sidenote: Reminiscences--Burns' Youth]

[Sidenote: Mossgiel--Recollections]

One of the delights of Miss Begg's girlhood was the converse of Burns's mother concerning her first-born and favorite child, the poet, a theme of which she never tired. Miss Begg remembered her as a "chirk" old lady with snapping black eyes and an abundant stock of legends and ballads. She used to declare that Bobbie had often heard her sing "Auld Lang Syne" in his boyhood; hence it would appear that, at most, he only revised that precious old song. Miss Begg more than once heard the mother tell, with manifest gusto, this incident of their residence at Lochlea. Robert was already inclined to be wild, and between visiting his sweetheart Ellison Begbie--"the lass of the twa sparkling, roguish een"--and attending the Tarbolton club and Masonic lodge was abroad until an unseemly hour every night, and his mother or Isabella sat up to let him in. His anxious sire, the priest-like father of the "Cotter's Saturday Night," determined to administer an effectual rebuke to the son's misconduct, and one night startled the mother by announcing significantly that he would wait to admit the lad. She lay for hours (Robert was later than ever that night), dreading the encounter between the two, till she heard the boy whistling "Tibbie Fowler" as he approached. Then the door opened: the father grimly demanded what had kept him so late; the son, for reply, gave a comical description of his meeting auld Hornie on the way home,--an adventure narrated in the "Address to the De'il,"--and next the mother heard the pair seat themselves by the fire, where for two hours the father roared with laughter at Robert's ludicrous account of the evening's doings at the club,--she, meanwhile, nearly choking with her efforts to restrain the laughter which might remind her husband of his intended reproof. Thereafter the lad stayed out as late as he pleased without rebuke. The niece had been told by her mother that Burns was deeply distressed at his father's death-bed by the old man's fears for the future of his wayward son; and when his father's death made Robert the head of the family, he every morning led the household in "the most beautiful prayers ever heard;" later, at Ellisland and elsewhere, he continued this practice, and on the Sabbath instructed them in the Catechism and Confession. Mrs. Begg's most pleasing recollections of her brother were associated with the farm-life at Mossgiel, where he so far gave her his confidence that she was allowed to see his poems in the course of their composition. He would ponder his stanzas during his labors afield, and when he came to the house for a meal he would go to the little garret where he and his brother Gilbert slept and hastily pen them upon a table which stood under the one little window. Here Isabella would find them, and, after repeated perusals, would arrange them in the drawer; and so it passed that her bright eyes were the first, besides his own, to see "The Twa Dogs," "Winter's Night," "The Bard's Epitaph," "The Cotter's Saturday Night," the satirical poems, and most of the productions which were published in his Kilmarnock volume. His sister testified that he was always affectionate to the family, and that after his removal to a home of his own he invariably brought a present for each when he revisited the farm, the present for his mother being always, despite his poverty, a costly pound of tea. Most of the receipts from his publishers were given to the family at Mossgiel. Miss Begg intimated that Burns's mother did not at first like his wife, because of the circumstances of the marriage, but Jean's stanch devotion to her husband won the heart of the doting mother, and they became warm friends and spent much time together after Burns's death. The niece believed that the accounts of his intemperance are mostly untrue. Her mother, who was twenty-five years old at the time of his decease, always asserted that she "never saw him fou," and believed it was his antagonism to the "unco' guid" that made them ready to believe and circulate any idle report to his discredit.

Mrs. Begg saw and liked "Highland Mary" at the house of Gavin Hamilton, and knew Miss Dunlop, the blooming Keith of Burns's "New-Year Day." Another of his heroines the niece had herself visited with her mother; this was Mrs. Jessy Thompson, _nee_ Lewars, who was a ministering angel in his final illness, and was repaid by the only thing he could bestow,--a song of exquisite sweetness, "Here's a health to ane I lo'e dear." Our informant had seen in that lady's hands the lines beginning "Thine be the volumes, Jessy fair," which the poet gave her with a present of books within a month of his death. Many other reminiscences related by the niece are to be found in the biographies of the bard, and need not be repeated. The letters which hung upon her walls are not included in any published collection. She assisted us in copying the following to Burns's youngest brother:

[Sidenote: A Letter of Burns]

"ISLE, Tuesday Evening.

"DEAR WILLIAM,--In my last I recommended that valuable apothegm, Learn taciturnity. It is certain that nobody can know our thoughts, and yet, from a slight observation of mankind, one would not think so. What mischiefs daily arise from silly garrulity and foolish confidence! There is an excellent Scots saying that a man's mind is his kingdom. It is certainly so, but how few can govern that kingdom with propriety! The serious mischiefs in Business which this Flux of language occasions do not come immediately to your situation, but in another point of view--the dignity of man--now is the time that will make or mar. Yours is the time of life for laying in habits. You cannot avoid it, tho' you will choose, and these habits will stick to your last end. At after-periods, even at so little advance as my years, 'tis true that one may still be very sharp-sighted to one's habitual failings and weaknesses, but to eradicate them, or even to amend them, is quite a different matter. Acquired at first by accident, they by-and-by begin to be, as it were, a necessary part of our existence. I have not time for more. Whatever you read, whatever you hear of that strange creature man, look into the living world about you, look to yourself, for the evidences of the fact or the application of the doctrine. I am ever yours,

"ROBERT BURNS.

"MR. WILLIAM BURNS, Saddler, Longtown."

The sentiment and style of this epistle are suggestive of the stilted conversations of Burns, recorded in Hugh Miller's "Recollections." Miss Begg was pleased by some account we could give her of American Burns monuments and festivals; she seemed reluctant to have us leave, called to us a cheery "God keep ye!" when we were without the gate, and stood looking after us until the intervening foliage hid her from our sight. As we walked Ayr-ward, while the sun was setting in a golden haze behind the hills of Arran, we felt that we had been very near to Burns that day,--had almost felt the thrill of his presence, the charm of his voice, and had in some measure made a personal acquaintance with him which would evermore move us to a tenderer regard for the man and a truer appreciation of his verse, as well as a fuller charity for his faults:

We know in part what he has done,
God knows what he resisted.

[Sidenote: Death of Burns's Niece]

For some months after our visit to Bridgeside, quaint letters--one of them containing a portrait of the worthy occupant of the cottage--followed us thence across the sea. These came at increasing intervals and then stopped; the kindly heart of the niece of Burns had ceased to beat on her eightieth birthday.

A recent pilgrim in Burnsland found an added line on the gravestone in the old kirk-yard, to tell that Isabella Burns Begg rests there in eternal peace. At Bridgeside, her once cherished garden is a waste and her tiny cottage has wholly disappeared. "So do things pass away like a tale that is told."

HIGHLAND MARY: HER HOMES AND GRAVE

_Birthplace--Personal Appearance--Relations to Burns--Abodes: Mauchline,
Coilsfield etc.--Scenes of Courtship and Parting--Mementos--Tomb by
the Clyde._

There is no stronger proof of the transcending power of the genius of Burns than is found in the fact that, by a bare half dozen of his stanzas, an humble dairy servant--else unheard of outside her parish and forgotten at her death--is immortalized as a peeress of Petrarch's Laura and Dante's Beatrice, and has been for a century loved and mourned of all the world. We owe much of our tenderest poesy to the heroines whose charms have attuned the fancy and aroused the impassioned muse of enamoured bards; readers have always exhibited a natural avidity to realize the personality of the beings who inspired the tender lays,--prompted often by mere curiosity, but more often by a desire to appreciate the tastes and motives of the poets themselves. How little is known of Highland Mary, the most famous heroine of modern song, is shown by the brief, incoherent, and often contradictory allusions to her which the biographies of the ploughman-poet contain. This paper,--prepared during a sojourn in "The Land o' Burns,"--while it adds a little to our meagre knowledge of Mary Campbell, aims to present consecutively and congruously so much as may now be known of her brief life, her relations to the bard, and her sad, heroic death.

[Sidenote: Birthplace--Early Home]

She first saw the light in 1764, at Ardrossan, on the coast, fifteen miles northward from the "auld town of Ayr." Her parentage was of the humblest, her father being a sailor before the mast, and the poor dwelling which sheltered her was in no way superior to the meanest of those we find to-day on the narrow streets of her village. From her birthplace we see, across the Firth of Clyde, the beetling mountains of the Highlands, where she afterward dwelt, and southward the great mass of Ailsa Craig looming, a gigantic pyramid, out of the sea. Mary was named for her aunt, wife of Peter McPherson, a ship-carpenter of Greenock, in whose house Mary died. In her infancy her family removed to the vicinage of Dunoon, on the western shore of the Firth, eight miles below Greenock, leaving the oldest daughter at Ardrossan. Mary grew to young womanhood near Dunoon, then returned to Ayrshire, and found occupation at Coilsfield, near Tarbolton, where her acquaintance with Burns soon began. He told a lady that he first saw Mary while walking in the woods of Coilsfield, and first spoke with her at a rustic merry-making, and, "having the luck to win her regards from other suitors," they speedily became intimate. At this period of life Burns's "eternal propensity to fall into love" was unusually active, even for him, and his passion for Mary (at this time) was one of several which engaged his heart in the interval between the reign of Ellison Begbie--"the lass of the twa sparkling, roguish een"--and that of "Bonnie Jean." Mary subsequently became a servant in the house of Burns's landlord, Gavin Hamilton, a lawyer of Mauchline, who had early recognized the genius of the bard and admitted him to an intimate friendship, despite his inferior condition. When Hamilton was persecuted by the kirk, Burns, partly out of sympathy with him, wrote the satires, "Holy Willie's Prayer," "The Twa Herds," and "The Holy Fair," which served to unite the friends more closely, and brought the poet often to the house where Mary was an inmate. This house--a sombre structure of stone, little more pretentious than its neighbors--we found on the shabby street not far from Armour's cottage, the church of "The Holy Fair," and "Posie Nansie's" inn, where the "Jolly Beggars" used to congregate. Among the dingy rooms shown us in Hamilton's house was that in which he married Burns to "Bonnie Jean" Armour.

[Sidenote: Personal Appearance]

[Sidenote: Betrothal and Parting]

The bard's niece, Miss Begg, of Bridgeside, told the writer that she often heard Burns's mother describe Mary as she saw her at Hamilton's: she had a bonnie face, a complexion of unusual fairness, soft blue eyes, a profusion of shining hair which fell to her knees, a _petite_ figure which made her seem younger than her twenty summers, a bright smile, and pleasing manners, which won the old lady's heart. This description is, in superlative phrase, corroborated by Lindsay in Hugh Miller's "Recollections:" she was "beautiful, sylph-like," her bust and neck were "exquisitely moulded," her arms and feet "had a statue-like symmetry and marble-like whiteness;" but it was in her lovely countenance that "nature seemed to have exhausted her utmost skill,"--"the loveliest creature I have ever seen," etc. All who have written of her have noticed her beauty, her good sense, her modesty and self-respect. But these qualities were now insufficient to hold the roving fancy of Burns, whose "susceptibility to immediate impressions" (so called by Byron, who had the same failing) passes belief. His first ephemeral fancy for Mary took little hold upon his heart, and the best that can be said of it is that it was more innocent than the loves which came before and after it. Within a stone's-throw of Mary dwelt Jean Armour, and when the former returned to Coilsfield, he promptly fell in love with Jean, and solaced himself with her more buxom and compliant charms. It was a year or so later, when his intercourse with Jean had burdened him with grief and shame, that the tender and romantic affection for Mary came into his life. She was yet at Coilsfield, and while he was in hiding--his heart tortured by the apparent perfidy of Jean and all the countryside condemning his misconduct--his intimacy with Mary was renewed; his quickened vision now discerned her endearing attributes, her trust and sympathy were precious in his distress, and awoke in him an affection such as he never felt for any other woman. During a few brief weeks the lovers spent their evenings and Sabbaths together, loitering amid the

"Banks and braes and streams around
The castle of Montgomery,"

talking of the golden days that were to be theirs when present troubles were past; then came the parting which the world will never forget, and Mary relinquished her service and went to her parents at Campbeltown,--a port of Cantyre behind "Arran's mountain isle." Of this parting Burns says, in a letter to Thomson, "We met by appointment on the second Sunday of May, in a sequestered spot on the Ayr, where we spent the day in taking farewell before she should embark for the West Highlands to prepare for our projected change of life." Lovers of Burns linger over this final parting, and detail the impressive ceremonials with which the pair solemnized their betrothal: they stood on either side of a brook, they laved their hands in the water and scattered it in the air to symbolize the purity of their intentions; clasping hands above an open Bible, they swore to be true to each other forever, then exchanged Bibles, and parted never to meet more. It is not strange that when death had left him nothing of her but her poor little Bible, a tress of her golden hair, and a tender memory of her love, the recollection of this farewell remained in his soul forever. He has pictured it in the exquisite lines of "Highland Mary" and "To Mary in Heaven."

[Sidenote: Mementos]

In the monument at Alloway--between the "auld haunted kirk" and the bridge where Maggie lost her tail--we are shown a memento of the parting; it is the Bible which Burns gave to Mary and above which their vows were said. At Mary's death it passed to her sister, at Ardrossan, who bequeathed it to her son William Anderson; subsequently it was carried to America by one of the family, whence it has been recovered to be treasured here. It is a pocket edition in two volumes, to one of which is attached a lock of poor Mary's shining hair. Within the cover of the first volume the hand of Burns has written, "And ye shall not swear by my name falsely, I am the Lord;" within the second, "Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths." Upon a blank leaf of each volume is Burns's Masonic signet, with the signature, "Robert Burns, Mossgiel," written beneath. Mary's spinning-wheel is preserved in the adjoining cottage. A few of her bright hairs, severed in her fatal fever, are among the treasures of the writer and lie before him as he pens these lines.

[Sidenote: Coilsfield--Plans of the Lovers]

A visit to the scenes of the brief passion of the pair is a pleasing incident of our Burns-pilgrimage. Coilsfield House is somewhat changed since Mary dwelt beneath its roof,--a great rambling edifice of gray weather-worn stone with a row of white pillars aligned along its facade, its massive walls embowered in foliage and environed by the grand woods which Burns and Mary knew so well. It was then a seat of Colonel Hugh Montgomerie, a patron of Burns. The name Coilsfield is derived from Coila, the traditional appellation of the district. The grounds comprise a billowy expanse of wood and sward; great reaches of turf, dotted with trees already venerable when the lovers here had their tryst a hundred years ago, slope away from the mansion to the Faile and border its murmuring course to the Ayr. Here we trace with romantic interest the wanderings of the pair during the swift hours of that last day of parting love, their lingering way 'neath the "wild wood's thickening green," by the pebbled shore of Ayr to the brooklet where their vows were made, and thence along the Faile to the woodland shades of Coilsfield, where, at the close of that winged day, "pledging oft to meet again, they tore themselves asunder." Howitt found at Coilsfield a thorn-tree, called by all the country "Highland Mary's thorn," and believed to be the place of final parting; years ago the tree was notched and broken by souvenir seekers; if it be still in existence the present occupant of Coilsfield is unaware.

[Sidenote: Burns's Regard for Mary--Her Death]

At the time of his parting with Mary, Burns had already resolved to emigrate to Jamaica, and it has been supposed, from his own statements and those of his biographers, that the pair planned to emigrate together; but Burns soon abandoned this project and, perhaps, all thought of marrying Mary. The song commencing "Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary?" has been quoted to show he expected her to accompany him, but he says, in an epistle to Thomson, that this was his farewell to her, and in another song, written while preparing to embark, he declares that it is leaving Mary that makes him wish to tarry. Further, we find that with the first nine pounds received from the sale of his poems he purchased a single passage to Jamaica,--manifestly having no intention of taking her with him. Her being at Greenock in October, _en route_ to a new place of service at Glasgow, indicates she had no hope that he would marry her then, or soon. True, he afterward said she came to Greenock to meet him, but it is certain that he knew nothing of her being there until after her death. During the summer of 1786, while she was preparing to wed him, he indited two love-songs to her, but they are not more glowing than those of the same time to several inamoratas,--less impassioned than the "Farewell to Eliza" and allusions to Jean in "Farewell, old Scotia's bleak domains,"--and barely four weeks after his ardent and solemn parting with Mary we find him writing to Brice, "I do still love Jean to distraction." Poor Mary! Possibly the fever mercifully saved her from dying of a broken heart. The bard's anomalous affectional condition and conduct may perhaps be explained by assuming that he loved Mary with a refined and spiritual passion so different from his love for others--and especially from his conjugal love for Jean--that the passions could coexist in his heart. The alternative explanation is that his love for Mary, while she lived, was by no means the absorbing passion which he afterward believed it to have been. When death had hallowed his memories of her love and of all their sweet intercourse,--beneficent death! that beautifies, ennobles, irradiates, in the remembrance of survivors, the loved ones its touch has taken,--then his soul, swelling with the passion that throbs in the strains of "To Mary in Heaven," would not own to itself that its love had ever been less.

Mary remained at Campbeltown during the summer of 1786. Coming to Greenock in the autumn, she found her brother sick of a malignant fever at the house of her aunt; bravely disregarding danger of contagion, she devoted herself to nursing him, and brought him to a safe convalescence only to be herself stricken by his malady and to rapidly sink and die, a sacrifice to her sisterly affection. By this time the success of his poems had determined Burns to remain in Scotland, and he returned to Mossgiel, where tidings of Mary's death reached him. His brother relates that when the letter was handed to him he went to the window to read it, then his face was observed to change suddenly, and he quickly went out without speaking. In June of the next year he made a solitary journey to the Highlands, apparently drawn by memory of Mary. If, indeed, he dropped a tear upon her neglected grave and visited her humble Highland home, we may almost forgive him the excesses of that tour, if not the renewed _liaison_ with Jean which immediately preceded, and the amorous correspondence with "Clarinda" (Mrs. M'Lehose) which followed it.

Whatever the quality or degree of his passion for Mary living, his grief for her dead was deep and tender, and expired only with his life. Cherished in his heart, it manifested itself now in some passage of a letter, now in some pathetic burst of song,--like "The Lament" and "Highland Mary,"--and again in some emotional act. Of many such acts narrated to the writer by Burns's niece, the following is, perhaps, most striking. The poet attended the wedding of Kirstie Kirkpatrick, a favorite of his, who often sang his songs for him, and, after the wedded pair had retired, a lass of the company, being asked to sing, began "Highland Mary." Its effect upon Burns "was painful to witness; he started to his feet, prayed her in God's name to forbear, then hastened to the door of the marriage-chamber and entreated the bride to come and quiet his mind with a verse or two of 'Bonnie Doon.'" The lines "To Mary in Heaven" and the pathetic incidents of their composition show most touchingly how he mourned his fair-haired lassie years after she ceased to be. It was at Ellisland, October 20, 1789, the anniversary of Mary's death, an occasion which brought afresh to his heart memories of the tender past. Jean has told us of his increasing silence and unrest as the day declined, of his aimless wandering by Nithside at nightfall, of his rapt abstraction as he lay pillowed by the sheaves of his stack-yard, gazing entranced at the "lingering star" above him till the immortal song was born.

[Sidenote: Her Grave]

Poor Mary is laid in the burial-plot of her uncle in the west kirk-yard of Greenock, near Crawford Street; our pilgrimage in Burnsland may fitly end at her grave. A pathway, beaten by the feet of many reverent visitors, leads us to the spot. It is so pathetically different from the scenes she loved in life,--the heather-clad slopes of her Highland home, the seclusion of the wooded braes where she loitered with her poet-lover. Scant foliage is about her; few birds sing above her here. She lies by the wall; narrow streets hem in the enclosure; the air is sullied by smoke from factories and from steamers passing within a stone's-throw on the busy Clyde; the clanging of many hammers and the discordant din of machinery and traffic invade the place and sound in our ears as we muse above the ashes of the gentle lassie.

For half a century her grave was unmarked and neglected; then, by subscription, a monument of marble, twelve feet in height, and of graceful proportions, was raised. It bears a sculptured medallion representing Burns and Mary, with clasped hands, plighting their troth. Beneath is the simple inscription, read oft by eyes dim with tears:

Erected Over the Grave of

HIGHLAND MARY

1842.

"My Mary, dear departed shade,
Where is thy place of blissful rest?"

BRONTE SCENES IN BRUSSELS

_School--Class-Rooms--Dormitory--Garden--Scenes and Events of Villette
and The Professor--M. Paul--Madame Beck--Memories of the Brontes--
Confessional--Grave of Jessy Yorke_.

We had "done" Brussels after the approved fashion,--had faithfully visited the churches, palaces, museums, theatres, galleries, monuments; had duly admired the windows and carvings of the grand cathedral, the tower and tapestry and frescos and facade of the Hotel de Ville, the stately halls and the gilded dome of the Courts of Justice, and the consummate beauty of the Bourse; had diligently sought out the naive boy-fountain, and had made the usual excursion to the field of Waterloo.

[Sidenote: The Park--Heger Mansion]

This delightful task being conscientiously discharged, we proposed to devote our last day in the Belgian capital to the accomplishment of one of the cherished projects of our lives,--the searching out of the localities associated with Charlotte Bronte's unhappy school-life here, which she has so graphically portrayed. For our purpose no guide was needful, for the topography and local coloring of "Villette" and "The Professor" are as vivid and unmistakable as in the best work of Dickens himself. Proceeding from St. Gudule to the Rue Royale, and a short distance along that thoroughfare, we reached the park and a locality familiar to Miss Bronte's readers. Seated in this lovely pleasure-ground, the gift of the Empress Maria Theresa, with its cool shade all about us, we noted the long avenues and the paths winding amid trees and shrubbery, the dark foliage ineffectually veiling the gleaming statuary and the sheen of bright fountains, "the stone basin with its clear depth, the thick-planted trees which framed this tremulous and rippled mirror," the groups of happy people filling the seats in secluded nooks or loitering in the mazes and listening to the music; we noted all this, and felt that Miss Bronte had revealed it to us long ago. It was across this park that Lucy Snowe was piloted from the bureau of the diligence by the chivalrous Dr. John on the night when she, despoiled, helpless, and solitary, arrived in Brussels. She found the park deserted, the paths miry, the water dripping from the trees. "In the double gloom of tree and fog she could not see her guide, and could only follow his tread" in the darkness. We recalled another scene under these same trees, on a night when the gate-way was "spanned by a flaming arch of massed stars." The park was a "forest with sparks of purple and ruby and golden fire gemming the foliage," and Lucy, driven from her couch by mental torture, wandered unrecognized amid the gay throng at the midnight concert of the Festival of the Martyrs and looked upon her lover, her friends the Brettons, and the secret junta of her enemies, Madame Beck, Madame Walravens, and Pere Silas. The sense of familiarity with the vicinage grew as we observed our surroundings. Facing us, at the extremity of the park, was the palace of the king, in the small square across the Rue Royale at our right was the statue of General Beliard, and we knew that just behind it we should find the Bronte school; for "The Professor," standing by the statue, had looked down a great staircase to the door-way of the school, and poor Lucy on that forlorn first night in "Villette," to avoid a pair of ruffians, had hastened down a flight of steps from the Rue Royale and had come, not to the inn she sought, but to the _pensionnat_ of Madame Beck. From the statue we descended, by a series of stone stairs, into a narrow street, old-fashioned and clean, quiet and secluded in the very heart of the great city, and just opposite the foot of the steps we came to the wide door of a spacious, quadrangular, stuccoed old mansion, with a bit of foliage showing over a high wall at one side. A bright plate embellished the door and bore the name Heger. A Latin inscription in the wall of the house showed it to have been given to the Guild of Royal Archers by the Infanta Isabelle early in the seventeenth century. Long before that the garden had been the orchard and herbary of a convent and the Hospital for the Poor.

[Sidenote: Characters of Villette]

[Sidenote: The Hegers]