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The field and the ditch where Mailie met with her

mishap are still, I am informed, pointed out on the farm of Lochlea. The circumstances of the poor

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66

sheep," says Gilbert, were pretty much as Robert has described them. He had partly, by way of frolic, bought a ewe and two lambs from a neighbour, and she was tethered in a field adjoining the house at Lochlea. He and I were going out with our teams, and our two younger brothers, to drive for us at mid-day, when Hugh Wilson, a curious looking, awkward boy, clad in plaiding, came to us with much anxiety in his face, with the information that the ewe had entangled herself in the tether, and was lying in the ditch. Robert was much tickled with Hughoc's appearance and postures on the occasion. Poor Mailie was set to rights, and when we returned from the plough in the evening, he repeated to me her 'Death and Dying Words,' pretty much in the way they now stand." There is something characteristic in the request which Mailie makes, that her son and heir may be brought up in a modest and decent way, and taught to be content with the pleasures of his own fields :—

"An' no to rin an' wear his cloots,

Like other menseless, graceless brutes."

Nor is she unmindful of the education of her "Yowie silly thing" she warns her against the inroads of moorland tups, and exclaims with her last breath,—

"But ay keep mind to moop an' mell
Wi' sheep o' credit like thysel !"

Burns loved pastoral similitudes: in his lampoons on the western clergy he scattered them profusely. In the "Ordination" he enjoins the new pastor to look to the purity of his flock, and be stern about crosses in breeds, and all such matters as injure the flesh and the fleece. In the "Holy Tulzie," too, we find similar allusions-a sort of parody on the figurative sermons of the children of the "Old Light."

POOR MAILIE'S ELEGY.

LAMENT in rhyme, lament in prose,

Wi' saut tears trickling down your nose; Our bardie's fate is at a close,

Past a' remead;

The last sad cape-stane of his woes;

Poor Mailie's dead!

It's no the loss o' warl's gear,

That could sae bitter draw the tear,

Or mak our bardie, dowie, wear

The mourning weed:

He's lost a friend and neebor dear,

In Mailie dead.

Thro' a' the toun she trotted by him;
A lang half-mile she could descry him;
Wi' kindly bleat, when she did spy him,
She ran wi' speed:

A friend mair faithfu' ne'er cam nigh him
Than Mailie dead.

I wat she was a sheep o' sense,

An' could behave hersel wi' mense:

I'll say't, she never brak a fence,

Thro' thievish greed.

Our bardie, lanely, keeps the spence
Sin' Mailie's dead.

Or, if he wanders up the howe,

Her living image in her yowe,

Comes bleating to him, owre the knowe,

For bits o' bread;

An' down the briny pearls rowe

For Mailie dead.

She was nae get o' moorland tips,
Wi' tawted ket, an' hairy hips;

For her forbears were brought in ships

Frae yont the Tweed:

A bonier fleesh ne'er cross'd the clips

Than Mailie's dead.

Wae worth the man wha first did shape That vile, wanchancie thing-a rape! It maks guid fellows girn an' gape,

Wi' chokin dread;

An' Robin's bonnet wave wi' crape,

For Mailie dead.

O, a' ye bards on bonnie Doon!

An' wha on Ayr your chanters tune!
Come, join the melancholious croon

O' Robin's reed!

His heart will never get aboon!

His Mailie's dead.

"Poor Mailie's Elegy" is a later production somewhat than “The Death and Dying Words." It is freer in language and bolder in expression, and more like the vigorous offspring of Mossgiel than the progeny of Lochlea. He already looked upon himself as a poet: the last copestone is laid, he says, on his woes he has not spirit to move out of the house, and calls on his tuneful brethren who dwell on the Doon and the Ayr,

to

"Join the melancholious croon

O' Robin's reed."

His earliest compositions appear to have been frequently revised and corrected-and his alterations are all for the better. 66 The stanza," says Gilbert,

'She was nae get o' moorland tips,'

was, at first, as follows

She was nae get o' runted rams,

Wi' woo' like goats, an' legs like trams,
She was the flower o' Fairlie lambs,

A famous breed;

Now Robin, greetin', chews the hams

O' Mailie dead.'

The taste of Burns rejected the verse, because the concluding lines jarred with the ruling sentiment of the

poem.

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WHILE winds frae aff Ben-Lomond blaw,

And bar the doors wi' driving snaw,

And hing us owre the ingle,

I set me down to pass the time,

And spin a verse or twa o' rhyme,

In hamely westlin jingle.

While frosty winds blaw in the drift,
Ben to the chimla lug,

I grudge a wee the great folks' gift,
That live sae bien an' snug:

I tent less, and want less
Their roomy fire-side;

But hanker and canker

To see their cursed pride.

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