BURNS AT ELLISLAND

Otago Witness, Issue 3595, 6 February 1923, Page 24

BURNS AT ELLISLAND

FROM FARMER TO EXCISEMAN. The farm of Ellisland, near Dumfries, which has been presented to the Scottish people under the will of the late George Williamson, an Edinburgh merchant, and is, under the care of the Burgh of Dumfries, henceforth to be maintained as a centre of interest in the poet, was the scene of many interesting events during the three short years when Robert Burns made it his home, besides being the source of inspiration of some of his best, known verses. In February, 1788, Burns turned his back on Edinburgh and all the disappointments and disillusions of that deceptive city, and, making a poet's rather than a farmer’s choice, became tenant of the farm cf Ellisland, belonging to Patrick Millar, laird of Dalswinton, on the banks of the Nith, some five or six miles above Dumfries. Because of its beautiful situation and fine romantic outlook the poet selected the poorest of the several farms on the Dalswinton estate which Were offered him. To this choice may be attributed the fact that while he failed in farming, during the three years spent at Ellisland he produced some of his finest and most popular poetry.

“The farm steading of Ellisland,” writes Principal Shairp, “stands but a few yards to the west of the Nith. Immediately underneath there is a reel scaur of considerable height, overhanging the stream, and the rest of the path is covered with broom through which winds a greensward path, whither .Burns used to retire to meditate liis songs.” Among the songs composed at ElPisiand were “Ye Banks and Braes o’ Bonnie Doon,” “Auld Lang Syne,” “Willie Brewed a Peck o' Maut,” “To Mary m Heaven,” “O’ a’ the Airts the Wind Gan Blaw,” ‘My Love She’s But a Lassie Yet,’’ “Tam Glen,” and “John Anderson, My Jo.’ But the greatest poem of the Ellisland period was “Tam o’ Shantcr,” one of the poet’s greatest achievements. Burns was legally installed as tenant of the Ellisland farm on Alarch 13, 1788, but he did not take up his abode there until June 13 following In the interval he returned to Ayrshire and completed his longcontemplated but too-long-deferred marriage with Jean Armour. There was no proper house on the farm, and at first he had to leave his wife and his one surviving child behind him at Alauchline while he sheltered in a mere hovel on the skirts of the farm. This discomfort, together with the newness of his su? roundings, created in the poet's mind much despondency, and he yearned for Ayrshire. Yet he kept hard at work, although the weather was unfavourable and the crop a poor one. It was not, until the first week of December. 1788, that the poet’s lonely bachelor life came to an end, and he was able to bring his wife to Nithsdale. Even then the house at Ellisland was not ready, and he had to put up for a time at a neighbouring farmhouse. Nevertheless Burns met the coming of the new year of 1789 more cheerfully and with higher hopes than •for many years past. The house at Elliland —a humble enough abode —was not finished until the middle of 1789. “When all was ready,” writes Principal Shairp “Burns bade his servant, Betty Smith, take a bowl of salt and place the Family Bible on the top of it, and, bearing these, walk first into the new house and possess it. He himself, with his wife on his arm, followed Betty and the Bible and the salt, and so cbey entered their new abode.” The aouse, which was the poet’s first real home, and the best he and his wife were ever destined to find, consisted of a large kitchen in which the whole family, servants and all. took their meals together, a room to hold two beds, a closet to hold one, and a garret, coom-ceiled, for the women servants. Here, for a while, the poet was happy, working hard and striving to make both ends meet, the while making the songs he loved so well. Misfortune dogged his footsteps, and an increase in his family, together with the prospect that his second year’s harvest would be a failure like the first, led to his making application to he appointed excise officer in the district in which he lived, and to this request, which Was immediately granted, may be attributed the subsequent decadence of both man and poet. The melancholy seouel is pathetically described by Principal Shairp:— The continual calls of a responsible business, itself sufficient to occupy a man —when divided with the oversight of his farm, overtaxed his powers, " and left him no leisure for poetic work, except from time to time crooning over a random song. Then the habits which his roving Excise life must have induced were, even to a soul less social than that of Burns, perilous in the extreme. The temptations he was in this way exposed to, Lockhart has drawn with a powerful hand. “From the castle to the cottage, every door flew open at his approach ; and the old system of hospitality, then flourishing, rendered it difficult for the most soberly-inclined guest to rise from any man’s board in the same trim that he sat down to it. The farmer, if Burns was seen passing, left his reapers, and trotted by the side of Jenny Geddes, until he could persuade the bard that the day was hot enough to demand an extra libation. If he entered an inn at midnight, after all the inmates were in bed, the news of his arrival circulated from the cellar to the garret; and ere ten minutes had elapsed the landlord and all his guests were assembled round the ingle, the largest punchbowl was produced, and “ ‘Be ours to-night—who knows what comes to-morrow ?’ was the language of every eye in the circltj that welcomed him. The highest gentry of the neighbourhood, when bent on special merriment, did not think the occasion com plcta unless the wit and eloquence of Burns were called in to enliven their carousals ” It can readiiy be imagined how distracting such a life must have been, how fatal to all mental concentration on high objects, not to speak of the habits, of 'which it was too sure to sow the seeds. The frequent visits to Dumfries, which his Excise work entailed, and the haunting of the Globe Tavern, led to consequences, which more than even deep potations, must have been fatal to his peace. At length Burns was compelled to throw up the lease of the Ellisland farm, and sell his crops. For the “roup” or auction sale, the auctioneer and the bottle came side by side, and, the sale over; a scene took place within and without the house which “exceeded anything he had ever seen in drunken

horrors.” It was in November or December, 1791. that Burns sold up his farm, stock, and implements and moved his family and furniture into the town of Dumfries. In his essay on Burns, W. E. Henley says: — Is it not plain that Dumfries was inevitable? Or rather is it not plain that, first and last, the life was one logical, irrefragable sequence of preparations for the death? That Alount Oliphaut and Lochlie led irresistibly to Mauchline, as Alauchline lo Edinburgh, and Edinburgh to Ellisland, and Ellisland to the house in the Alill Yennel? And is not the lesson of it all that there is none so unfortunate as the misplaced Titan —the man too great for his circumstances?