dancing, and was for some time distractedly fond of it." In the original letter to Dr. Moore, our poet described his ancestors as "renting lands of the noble Keiths of Marischal, and as having had the honour of sharing their fate." "I do not," continues he, "use the word honour with any reference to political principles; loyal and disloyal, I take to be merely relative terms, in that ancient and formidable court, known in this country by the name of Club-law, where the right is always with the strongest. those who dare welcome ruin, and shake hands with infamy, for what they sincerely believe to be the cause of their God, or their king, are, as Mark Antony says in Shakespeare, of Brutus and Cassius, honourable men. I mention this circumstance, because it threw my father on the world at large." But This paragraph has been omitted in printing the letter, at the desire of Gilbert Burns; and it would have been unnecessary to have noticed it on the present occasion, had not several manuscript copies of that letter been in circulation. "I do not know," observes Gilbert Burns, "how my brother could be misled in the account he has given of the Jacobitism of his ancestors. I believe the Earl Marischal forfeited his title and estate in 1715, before my father was born; and among a collection of parishcertificates in his possession, I have read one, stating that the bearer had no concern in the late wicked rebellion." On the information of one who knew William Burnes soon after he arrived in the county of Ayr, it may be mentioned, that a report did prevail, that he had taken the field with the young Chevalier; a report which the certificate mentioned by his son was perhaps intended to counteract. Strangers from the North, settling in the low country of Scotland, were in those days liable to suspicions, of having been, in the familiar phrase of the country, "Out in the forty-five," (1745,) especially when they had any stateliness or reserve about them, as was the case with William Burnes. It may easily be conceived, that our poet would cherish the belief of his father's having been engaged in the daring enterprise of Prince Charles Edward. The generous attachment, the heroic valour, and the final misfortunes of the adherents of the House of Stuart, touched with sympathy his youthful and ardent mind, and influenced his original political opinions.* The *There is another observation of Gilbert Burns on his brother's narrative, in which some persons will be interested. It refers to pages 39 and 40, where the poet speaks of his youthful friends. My brother," says The father of our poet is described by one who knew him towards the latter end of his life, as above the common stature, thin, and bent with labour. His countenance was serious and expressive, and the scanty locks on his head were says Gilbert Burns, seems to set off his early companions in too consequential a manner. The principal acquaintance we had in Ayr, while boys, were four sons of Mr. Andrew M'Culloch, a distant relation of my mother's, who kept a tea-shop, and had made a little money in the contraband trade, very common at that time. He died while the boys were young, and my father was nominated one of the tutors. The two eldest were bred shopkeepers, the third a surgeon, and the youngest, the only surviving one, was bred in a counting-house in Glasgow, where he is now a respectable merchant. I believe all these boys went to the West Indies. Then there were two sons of Dr. Malcolm, whom I have mentioned in my letter to Mrs. Dunlop. The eldest, a very worthy young man, went to the East Indies, where he had a commission in the army; he is the person whose heart my brother says the Munny Begum scenes could not corrupt. The other, by the interest of Lady Wallace, got an ensigncy in a regiment raised by the Duke of Hamilton, during the American war. I believe neither of them are now (1797) alive. We also knew the present Dr. Paterson of Ayr, and a younger brother of his now in Jamaica, who were much. younger than us. I had almost forgot to mention Dr. Charles of Ayr, who was a little older than my brother, and with whom we had a longer and closer intimacy than with any of the others, which did not however continue in after life." were grey. He was of a religious turn of mind, and, as is usual among the Scottish peasantry, a good deal conversant in speculative theology. There is in Gilbert's hands a little manual of religious belief, in the form of a dialogue between a father and his son, composed by him for the use of his children, in which the benevolence of his heart seems to have led him to soften the rigid Calvinism of the Scottish church, into something approaching to Arminianism. He was a devout man, and in the practice of calling his family together to join in prayer. It is known that the following exquisite picture, in the Cotter's Saturday Night, represents William Burnes and his family at their evening devotions. The cheerful supper done, with serious face, His lyart haffets† wearing thin and bare; And "Let us worship God!" he says with solemn air. They chant their artless notes in simple guise; G 2 Fire. + Grey temples. Chooses. § Names of tunes in Scottish psalmody. The tunes mentioned in this poem, are the three which were used by William Burnes, who had no greater variety, Or noble Elgin beets* the heavenly flame, The tickled ears no heart-felt raptures raise; The priest-like father reads the sacred page,† With Amalek's ungracious progeny; Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire; Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme, How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed; The precepts sage, they wrote to many a land; Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand; And heard great Babylon's doom pronounced, by Heaven's command! Then kneeling down, to Heaven's eternal King, That thus they all shall meet in future days; There Adds fuel to. + The course of family devotion among the Scots is, first to sing a psalm, then to read a portion of scripture, and lastly to kneel down in prayer. |