Robert
Burns
Robert Burns, Scotland's National Bard and the Poet
of Humanity, spent three of the most fruitful years of his short life at
Ellisland Farm, Dumfries. He took up the lease of the farm at Whitsun 1788 but
did not begin farming until 11th June. Thither he brought his wife Jean Armour,
and his two year-old son Robert the following December. His sons Francis
Wallace and William Nicol were born at Ellisland Farm and their half-sister
Betty (fathered by the poet on Helen Anne Park of Dumfries) spent the first
months of her life there too.
Ellisland Farm was described as "a poet's
choice, not a farmer’s choice" of all the farms he was offered by Patrick
Miller, his landlord. He was taken by
the beautiful situation and fine romantic outlook of the place. Walking a path beside the river, "a
pure stream running there over the purest gravel”, he could meditate his songs
- here, by the banks of the River Nith, he could find inspiration whereas he
felt the other farms lacked soul. The months spent building his farmhouse, and
the few that followed the settlement at Ellisland, were among the happiest of
his life.
The farm extended to 170 acres. It had an orchard and Burns had 9 or 10
cows, including 3 fine Ayrshire cows, 4 horses and some sheep. The Ayrshire dairying system was introduced
and cheese including ewe-milk cheese was made.
Crops such as oats were grown, but while it seems a large farm it was
ill-drained as well as hungry and soft of lime. Dykes were required and even the farmhouse had to be built before
the family could move in, in mid-1789.
Ellisland was described as a “humble-enough abode”,
with “only a large kitchen, in which the whole family, master and servants,
took their meals together, a room to hold two beds, a closet to hold one, and a
garret, coom-ceiled, for the female servants, this made the whole
dwelling-house”.
The house exists today and appears comfortable
enough. The impression that it was a
cut above the average farmer’s house of the day is reinforced by a comment made
by Ramsay of Ochtertyre who looked in on Burns in the course of a tour. Ramsey wrote: "Seeing him pass quickly
near Closeburn, I said to my companion, 'That is Burns.' On coming to the inn
the hostler told us he [Burns] would be back in a few hours to grant permits;
that where he met with anything seizable, he was no better than any other
gauger; in everything else that he was perfectly a gentleman. After leaving a note to be delivered to him
on his return, I proceeded to his house, being curious to see his Jean. I was much pleased with his 'uxor Sabina
qualis,' and the poet's modest mansion, so unlike the habitation of ordinary
rustics.”
When two English gentlemen visited Burns, "On
the table they found boiled beef, with vegetables and barley broth, after the manner
of Scotland”.
An intelligent man named William Clark, who had
served Burns as a ploughman at Ellisland during the winter half-year of
1789-90, survived till 1838, and in his old age gave this account of his former
master: "Burns kept two men and two women servants, but he invariably when
at home took his meals with his wife and family in the little parlour."
Clark thought he was as good a manager of land as most of the farmers in the
neighbourhood. The farm of Ellisland was moderately rented, and was susceptible
of much improvement, had improvement been then in repute. Burns sometimes
visited the neighbouring farmers, and they returned the compliment; but that
way of spending time was not so common then as now. No one thought that the
poet and his writings would be so much noticed afterwards. He kept nine or ten
milch cows, some young cattle, four horses, and several pet sheep: of the
latter he was very fond. During the winter and spring-time, when not engaged in
Excise business, "he sometimes held the plough for an hour or two for him
[W Clark], and was a fair workman. During seed-time, Burns might be frequently
seen at an early hour in the fields with his sowing sheet; but as he was often
called away on business, he did not sow the whole of his grain."
Clark noted that the poet, when at home, used to
wear a broad blue bonnet, a long-tailed coat, drab or blue, corduroy breeches,
dark blue stockings, with cootikens or gaiters. In cold weather he would have a
plaid of black and white check wrapped round his shoulders.
Unfortunately, the stony, infertile, poorly dressed
and badly drained ground of Ellisland Farm turned out to be a ruinous bargain
for Burns. During his first harvest, the weather was unfavourable, and the crop
a poor one. Burns switched from arable farming to dairying, but after only
three years, decided to give up the land altogether and concentrate on his
career as an Exciseman.
He probably realised that farming for profit and
Excise-work were incompatible, and a very few months' trial must have convinced
Burns of this. But besides rendering regular farm industry impossible, the
weekly absences from home, which his new duties entailed, had other evil
consequences. They brought with them continual mental distraction, which
forbade all sustained poetic effort, and laid him perilously open to
indulgences which were sure to undermine regular habits and peace of mind.
About this time (the beginning of 1790), we begin to hear of frequent visits to
Dumfries on Excise business, and of protracted lingerings at a certain howff,
place of resort, called the Globe Tavern, which boded no good. There were also
intromissions with a certain company of players then resident in Dumfries, and
writings of such prologues for their second-rate pieces, as many a
penny-a-liner could have done to order as well.
When Burns sold off his farm-stock and implements
of husbandry, and moved his family and furniture into the town of Dumfries at
Martinmas (11th November) 1791, he left at Ellisland no memorial of himself,
"but a putting-stone with which he loved to exercise his strength, and
£300 of his money, sunk beyond redemption in a speculation from which all had
augured happiness."
Burns as Exciseman
Having taken on the job, he set his face honestly to the
work. He had to survey ten parishes,
covering a tract of not less than fifty miles each way, and requiring him to
ride two hundred miles a week.
Smuggling was then common throughout Scotland, both in the shape of
brewing and of selling beer and whiskey without licence. Burns took a serious
yet humane view of his duty. To the
regular smuggler he is said to have been severe; to the country folk, farmers
or cotters, who sometimes transgressed, he tempered justice with mercy. Many
stories are told of his leniency to these last. At Thornhill, on a fair day, he was seen to call at the door of a
poor woman who for the day was doing a little illicit business on her own
account. A nod and a movement of the
forefinger brought the woman to the doorway. "Kate, are you mad? Don't you
know that the supervisor and I will be in upon you in forty minutes?" Burns at once disappeared among the crowd,
and the poor woman was saved a heavy fine.
Another day the poet and a brother gauger entered a widow's
house at Dunscore and seized a quantity of smuggled tobacco. "Jenny," said Burns, "I
expected this would be the upshot.
Here, Lewars, take note of the number of rolls as I count them. Now, Jock, did you ever hear an auld wife
numbering her threads before check-reels were invented? Thou's ane, and thou's no ane, and thou's
ane a'out--listen." As he handed
out the rolls, and numbered them, old-wife fashion, he dropped every other roll
into Jenny's lap. Lewars took the
desired note with becoming gravity, and saw as though he saw not. Again, a woman who had been brewing, on
seeing Burns coming with another exciseman, slipped out by the back door,
leaving a servant and a little girl in the house. "Has there been ony brewing for the fair here the day?"
"O no, sir, we hae nae licence for that," answered the servant
maid. "That's no true,"
exclaimed the child; "the muckle black kist is fou' o' the bottles o' yill
that my mither sat up a' nicht brewing for the fair."... "We are in a
hurry just now," said Burns, "but when we return from the fair, we'll
examine the muckle black kist." In
acts like these, and in many another anecdote that might be given, is seen the
genuine human-heartedness of the man, in strange contrast with the bitternesses
which so often find vent in his letters.
Ultimately, as we shall see, the exciseman's work told
heavily against his farming, his poetry, and his habits of life. But it was some time before this became
apparent. The solitary rides through
the moors and dales that border Nithsdale gave him opportunities, if not for
composing long poems, at any rate for crooning over those short songs in which
mainly his genius now found vent.
"The visits of the muses to me," he writes, "and I
believe to most of their acquaintance, like the visits of good angels, are
short and far between; but I meet them now and then as I jog through the hills
of Nithsdale, just as I used to do on the banks of Ayr."
Principal Shairp, 1879
Brownhill Inn
This famous old coaching inn stands south of
Closeburn on the A76. Robert Burns was
a frequent visitor. The landlord at the time, one Mr Bacon, retained an
interest in the poet. After Burn’s
brother Gilbert became tenant of Dinning Farm near Closeburn in 1798 and then
sold the contents of the house two years later, the bed in which the poet was
born was purchased by Mr Bacon. His
groom slept in the bed for many years and eventually bought it himself, in
1829, moving thereafter to Dumfries, where a relative is supposed to have cut
it up and made it into snuff boxes.
Bacon was married to Catherine
Stewart, sister of William Stewart, factor to the estate of Closeburn. Burns is reputed to have paid many a visit
to the old Closeburn Castle to see Willie, who just happened to be the father
of ‘Lovely Polly’, a woman whose
unconventional approach to relationships may have suited Burns, although there
is no record of them ever having an affair.
O Lovely Polly Stewart, O charming Polly Stewart
There's ne'er a flower tha blooms in May
That's half so fair as thou art.
The flower it blaws, it fades, it fa's,
And art can ne'er renew it;
But worth and truth eternal youth will gie to Polly Stewart.
The flower it blows, it fades, it fa's,
And art can ne'er renew it;
But worth and truth eternal youth
Will gie to Polly Stewart!
May he whase arms shall fauld thy carms
Possess a leal and true heart !
To him be given to ken the Heaven
He grasps in Polly Stewart!
An English commercial traveller called Ladyman
arrived at the Inn and was told by Bacon that he would be dining with Burns and
his friends. One of the items on the
menu was bacon. Burns and some of the
company would have preferred to do without the presence of Mr Bacon, and when
the Landlord went out to see about fresh supplies of toddy, Burns's friends
asked him to make up a spontaneous verse, to prove that it was really the poet
himself whom Ladyman was meeting. With
hardly a moment's thought, Burns produced:
At Brownhill we always get dainty good cheer
and plenty of bacon each day in the year;
we've a thing that's nice, and mostly in season —
But why always Bacon? — Come, tell me the reason?
At the sale of the effects of Mr Bacon after his
death in 1825, his snuff-box, was found to bear the inscription: Robert Burns Officer of the Excise
The Buchanites
An entry in the Dictionary of National Biography says that
Mrs Elspeth Buchan (1738-1791) was the daughter of an innkeeper near
Banff. During a visit to Greenock she
met and married Robert Buchan, a potter.
They separated and in 1781 she moved with his children to Glasgow, where
she heard the Revd. Hugh White preach.
She was so impressed that she moved to Irvine and persuaded Mr White
that she was a saint specially privileged by Heaven. She claimed to be immortal and able to give immortality to her
followers by breathing on them. Mr
White declared from the pulpit that she was the woman mentioned in Revelations
while she declared the Minister to be the child the woman brought forth. In Irvine the sect was reputed to practise
behaviour including "a community of wives" and "orgies in the
woods" that contravened social norms as they prepared to ascend en bloc at
short notice to Heaven.
Robert Burns heard her preach in Irvine and reported that
"their tenets are a strange jumble of enthusiastic jargon; among others
she pretends to give them the Holy Ghost by breathing on them which she does by
with postures and gestures which are scandalously indecent. They have likewise a community of goods and
live nearly an idle life in barns and woods where they lodge and lie together
and hold likewise a community of women as it is another of their tenets that
they can commit no mortal sin."
On expulsion from Irvine, they settled in Dumfriesshire and
as they did not believe in marriage led a holy life like brothers and sisters.
Elspeth Buchan and her followers the Buchanites moved to New Cample Farm in
Nithsdale. They lived temporarily in an
old barn whilst they built a rough community house known as 'Buchan Ha'. Here they suffered further persecution, but
managed to stay on, growing to 60 members, until local magistrates forced them
out.
They lodged in the New Cample house from April 1784 to March
1787. Once she was assailed as a witch,
but protected by the sheriff, who afterwards tried 42 of the rioters. They also did not believe in regular paid
employment. They eventually moved to
Newhouse, Crocketford where she died.
The cottage still survives south of Thornhill in a field east of the
A76.
The society came to an end when Mrs Buchan shattered the illusions
of her followers in 1791 by dying a natural death. The end of the Buchanite saga came in 1846, when the last
Buchanite, Andrew Innes, died. Innes,
who lived at Crocketford, had expected a resurrection of the mummified body of
Mother Buchan on March 29th 1841 - the 50th anniversary of her death. He was disappointed and died at Newhouse in
1846, which coincided with the discovery of Mother Buchan's hidden, mummified
body.
It
has been said that Robert Burns had a secret lover who was a member of the
Buchanites and some people think he may actually have been involved with the
sect but there is no evidence of this.
Daniel Defoe - Letter XII - Containing a Description of
the South-Western Part of Scotland, 1725
We
could not pass Dumfries
without going out of the way upwards of a day, to see the castle of Drumlanrig,
the fine palace of the Duke of Queensberry, which stands at twelve miles
distance, upon the same river [the River Nith]; the vale on either side the
river is pleasant, and tolerably good: But when these rapid rivers overflow their
banks, they do not, like the Nile, or even like the Thames and other southern
streams, fatten and enrich the soil; on the contrary, they lodge so much sand
and splinters of stone upon the surface of the earth, and among the roots of
the grass, that spoils and beggars the soil; and the water is hurried on with
such force also, as that in a good light soil it washes the best part of the
earth away with it, leaving the sand and stones behind it.
Drumlanrig,
like Chatsworth in Darbyshire, is like a fine picture in a dirty grotto, or like
an equestrian statue set up in a barn; 'tis environ'd with mountains, and that
of the wildest and most hideous aspect in all the south of Scotland; as
particularly that of Enterkin, the frightfullest pass, and most dangerous that
I met with, between that and Penmenmuir in North Wales; but of that in its place.
From
Drumlanrig I took a turn to see the famous pass of Enterkin, or Introkin Hill:
It is, indeed, not easy to describe, but by telling you that it ascends through
a winding bottom for near half a mile, and a stranger sees nothing terrible,
but vast high mountains on either hand, tho' all green, and with sheep feeding
on them to the very top; when, on a suddain, turning short to the left, and
crossing a rill of water in the bottom, you mount the side of one of those
hills, while, as you go on, the bottom in which that water runs down from
between the hills, keeping its level on your right, begins to look very deep,
till at length it is a precipice horrible and terrifying; on the left the hill
rises almost perpendicular, like a wall; till being come about half way, you
have a steep, unpassable height on the left, and a monstrous calm or ditch on
your right; deep, almost as the monument is high, and the path, or way, just
broad enough for you to lead your horse on it, and, if his foot slips, you have
nothing to do but let go the bridle, least he pulls you with him, and then you
will have the satisfaction of seeing him dash'd to pieces, and lye at the
bottom with his four shoes uppermost. I pass'd twice this hill after this, but
the weather was good, and the way dry, which made it safe; but one of our
company was so frighted with it, that in a kind of an extasy, when he got to
the bottom, he look'd back, and swore heartily that he would never come that
way again.
Indeed,
there were several things this last time we pass'd it, which render'd it more
frightful to a stranger: One was, that there had been, a few days before, a
suddain frost, with a great deal of snow; and though, a little before the snow,
I pass'd it, and there was nothing to be seen; yet then I look'd down the
frightful precipice, and saw no less than five horses in several places, lying
at the bottom with their skins off, which had, by the slipperiness of the snow,
lost their feet, and fallen irrecoverably to the bottom, where the
mountaineers, who make light of the place, had found means to come at them, and
get their hides off.
Daniel Defoe - Letter XII - Containing a Description of
the South-Western Part of Scotland, 1725
We
could not pass Dumfries
without going out of the way upwards of a day, to see the castle of Drumlanrig,
the fine palace of the Duke of Queensberry, which stands at twelve miles
distance, upon the same river [the River Nith]; the vale on either side the
river is pleasant, and tolerably good: But when these rapid rivers overflow their
banks, they do not, like the Nile, or even like the Thames and other southern
streams, fatten and enrich the soil; on the contrary, they lodge so much sand
and splinters of stone upon the surface of the earth, and among the roots of
the grass, that spoils and beggars the soil; and the water is hurried on with
such force also, as that in a good light soil it washes the best part of the
earth away with it, leaving the sand and stones behind it.
Drumlanrig,
like Chatsworth in Darbyshire, is like a fine picture in a dirty grotto, or like
an equestrian statue set up in a barn; 'tis environ'd with mountains, and that
of the wildest and most hideous aspect in all the south of Scotland; as
particularly that of Enterkin, the frightfullest pass, and most dangerous that
I met with, between that and Penmenmuir in North Wales; but of that in its place.
From
Drumlanrig I took a turn to see the famous pass of Enterkin, or Introkin Hill:
It is, indeed, not easy to describe, but by telling you that it ascends through
a winding bottom for near half a mile, and a stranger sees nothing terrible,
but vast high mountains on either hand, tho' all green, and with sheep feeding
on them to the very top; when, on a suddain, turning short to the left, and
crossing a rill of water in the bottom, you mount the side of one of those
hills, while, as you go on, the bottom in which that water runs down from
between the hills, keeping its level on your right, begins to look very deep,
till at length it is a precipice horrible and terrifying; on the left the hill
rises almost perpendicular, like a wall; till being come about half way, you
have a steep, unpassable height on the left, and a monstrous calm or ditch on
your right; deep, almost as the monument is high, and the path, or way, just
broad enough for you to lead your horse on it, and, if his foot slips, you have
nothing to do but let go the bridle, least he pulls you with him, and then you
will have the satisfaction of seeing him dash'd to pieces, and lye at the
bottom with his four shoes uppermost. I pass'd twice this hill after this, but
the weather was good, and the way dry, which made it safe; but one of our
company was so frighted with it, that in a kind of an extasy, when he got to
the bottom, he look'd back, and swore heartily that he would never come that
way again.
Indeed,
there were several things this last time we pass'd it, which render'd it more
frightful to a stranger: One was, that there had been, a few days before, a
suddain frost, with a great deal of snow; and though, a little before the snow,
I pass'd it, and there was nothing to be seen; yet then I look'd down the
frightful precipice, and saw no less than five horses in several places, lying
at the bottom with their skins off, which had, by the slipperiness of the snow,
lost their feet, and fallen irrecoverably to the bottom, where the
mountaineers, who make light of the place, had found means to come at them, and
get their hides off.