A BURNS MANUSCRIPT.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXII, 11 May 1912, Page 9

A BURNS MANUSCRIPT.

An action which was recently decided m the Court of Session, Edinburgh, referred to the manuscript of Burns' song beginning: A rosebud by my early walk Adown a corn-enclosed 'hawk, Sac gently bent its thorny stalk, All on a dewy morning. The action was by two ladies against the executors of the late Mrs Kirk, of Leith, who was the mother of the parties. Burns wrote the poem for Jeanie Cruickshank while he was staying at her father's house in Edinburgh. Miss Cruickshank was the maternal grandaunt of Captain Kirk, father of the litigants. The defendants said the manuscript had not been found at Mrs Kirk's house. Lord Ormidale said the defendants gave no explanation of the disappearance of the manuscript. He must hold them liable to account for its value. Experts, who had not seen it, had placed its value approximately at £200, on the assumption that it was m good condition, as to which there was some question. He thought it safer, accordingly, to restrict the value to jbJ.SO.