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leisure to studying the "Muck Manual," the unworldly and impracticable man made this his school—

Behind yon hills where Lugar flows,

'Mong moors and mosses many, O! The wintry sun the day has clos'd, And I'll awa to Nannie, O!

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Her face is fair, her heart is true,
As spotless as she's bonnie, O!
The opening gowan wet wi' dew,
Nae purer is than Nannie, O!

It is true that his contemporaries of all classes reaped the benefit of his election, in those exquisite lays that were soon in the mouths of the fairest and the brightest of the daughters of Scotia, and brought poetry and sensibility to adorn the firesides of the peer and the peasant; but there was no stamped agreement between society to receive, and the poet to bestow, the blossomings of his spirit for a consideration: while there was an agreement, and doubtless it was a stamped one, and backed with ample securities for due fulfilment, between the poet and the excise office.

It con

Mauchline is about eleven miles from Ayr. tains upwards of 1500 inhabitants. Here was the scene of the Holy Fair,—of the Old and New Light controversy, of the Jolly Beggars,-of his courtship and marriage of bonnie Jean,-of his friendship with Lapraik and David Sillar; and here, in the occasional quiet of his soul, he composed the "Cotter's Saturday Night," his Poetical Epistles to his Poetical Friends, and his Lyrics to the Mouse and the Daisy.

lochmyle."

THE BRAES OF BALLOCHMYLE.

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HE scenes of some of his most admired songs are to be found in this neighbourhood. Between the village of Catrine and Howford Bridge are the pleasure-grounds of Ballochmyle House, which inspired that beautiful lyric, "The Lass of Bal

On an evening in summer, the poet, in his wanderings by the banks of the Ayr, sauntered through the private grounds of Mr. Alexander, on the braes of Ballochmyle, about two miles from Mossgeil. "Mr. Alexander," says Professor Wilson, "had recently taken possession of the mansion, when, one summer evening, his sister, Miss Wilhelmina Alexander, a young lady distinguished by every grace of person and mind, walking out along the lanes, after dinner, encountered a plain-looking man, in rustic attire, who appeared to be musing, with his shoulder placed against one of the trees. The grounds being forbidden to unauthorised strangers, the evening being far advanced and the encounter very sudden, she was startled, but instantly recovered herself and passed She thought no more of the matter till, some months after, she received a letter from Burns, recalling the circumstance to her mind." The letter is dated Nov. 18, 1786.

on.

"Though I daresay, madam, you do not recollect it,

as I believe you scarcely noticed the poetic rêveur as he wandered by you, I had roved out as chance directed in the favourite haunts of my muse, on the banks of the Ayr, to view nature in all the gaiety of the vernal year. The evening sun was flaming over the distant western hills: not a breath stirred the crimson opening blossom, or the verdant spreading leaf. It was a golden moment for a poetic heart. Such was the place and such was the hour, when, in a corner of my prospect, I spied one of the fairest pieces of nature's workmanship that ever crowned a poetic landscape or met a poet's eye. The enclosed song was the work of my return home; and perhaps it but poorly answers what might have been expected from such a scene."

"THE LASS OF BALLOCHMYLE."

I.

'Twas even-the dewy fields were green,
On every blade the pearls hang,
The zephyrs wanton'd round the bean,
And bore its fragrant sweets alang:

In ev'ry glen the mavis sang,

All nature list'ning seem'd the while;
Except where greenwood echoes rang,
Amang the braes o' Ballochmyle.

II.

With careless step I onward stray'd,
My heart rejoic'd in nature's joy,
When musing in a lonely glade,

A maiden fair I chanc'd to spy;
Her look was like the morning's eye,
Her air like nature's vernal smile,
Perfection whisper'd, passing by,
"Behold the lass o' Ballochmyle!"

THE LASS OF BALLOCH MYLE.

III.

Fair is the morn in flow'ry May,
And sweet is night in autumn mild,
When roving thro' the garden gay,
Or wand'ring in the lonely wild:
But woman, nature's darling child!
There all her charms she does compile:
Ev'n there her other works are foil'd
By the bonnie lass o' Ballochmyle.
IV.

O had she been a country maid,
And I the happy country swain,
Tho' shelter'd in the lowest shed

That ever rose on Scotland's plain:
Thro' weary winter's wind and rain,
With joy, with rapture, I would toil;
And nightly to my bosom strain
The bonnie lass o' Ballochmyle!

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The young lady took no notice of the effusion, which not a little wounded the poet's self-love. But she long afterwards displayed an adequate sense of the honour conferred upon her: a rustic grotto was erected on the spot where she encountered the poet, to commemorate the occurrence; and in the year 1840, when asked by her nephew, the present Laird of Ballochmyle, to give

him the song to be kept as an heir-loom in the family, she replied "Na! Na! I will never part with it as long as I live." Miss Alexander illustrates, we are inclined to think, a very common disposition; the tendency to overlook or the inability to appreciate untrumpeted genius, and the over-worship of its renown and its prestige.

THE HOLY FAIR AND HOLY WILLIE.

It was in this district that Burns became the poetical champion of the New Light polemical faction. The Old and the New Lights were the two extremes of the Calvinistic Kirk at the time; the Old Light representing the strict and puritanical, the New Light the liberal and worldly aspect of the Church-the two extremes so notorious in all epochs of Christianity, where faith and reason are made antagonistic, the plaintiff and the defendant in the religious law-suit.

The scene of "Holy Fair," one of his most noted effusions on this theme, is the Church-yard of Mauchline, when, in the distance, upon a summer Sunday morn,―

The rising sun owre Galston muirs,
Wi' glorious light was glintin,

The hares were hirpling down the furs,
The lav'rocks they were chantin

Fu' sweet that day.

On this sacramental day, when, in Scotland, in these times, the communicants were wont to divide their worship between the church and the ale-house, the poet describes the modes and manners of preachers and people in very vigorous touches; but, neither the sub

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