of Bralinmuir, could be liable after the Revolution to change his residence on account of his political principles. If he had been represented as suffering in the troubles of the period between 1638 and 1660, belief would have been attended with less difficulty. It is, however, not impossible that, in the course of its transmission from mouth to mouth, the tradition suffered to this extent, and that the time of the Civil War was that actually referred to. On the other hand, it is certain that, however Walter Burness acquired his name, it was one which did not take its rise in that manner, for it occurs in public documents of the age of Bruce. What is more to the purpose, the name of John Burnes, servitor to Sir Alexander Strachan of Thornton, knight-baronet, appears as witness to a disposition granted in 1637 by the Earl of Traquair, Treasurer of Scotland, in the name of the Scottish Exchequer. Thornton is situated within a few miles of Bogjorgan and Bralinmuir, on the estate of Inchbreck, 'whence,' says Dr Burnes, 'our family is known to have come.' Our finding a Burnes in the district in 1637, certainly reduces the likelihood of the family being Argyleshire refugees of the time of the Civil War. It must at the same time be admitted as not impossible, that the supposed Walter Campbell might be the more ready to adopt his territorial appellation as a surname in consequence of finding men of that name already in the country. A curious fact connected with this subject, is the mention by Horace Walpole of a correspondence carried on in 1742 by John Duke of Argyle with the head of the House of Stuart, under the pseudonyme of Burnus (so Walpole spells it). One could almost be disposed to question if there was not some predilection on the part of the Campbell family for Burnhouse, Burn'se, or Burness, as a subordinate appellative, to be used on occasions of difficulty, when their own name was not presentable. Regarding the Cavalier character of Burns's ancestors, it is to be observed that he has affirmed it in the most direct manner. His first reference to the subject occurs in the original manuscript of his autobiography addressed to Dr Moore. There, after stating that his father was from the north of Scotland, he spoke of his ancestors as renting lands of the noble family of the Keiths, Earls 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. But those who dare welcome ruin, and shake hands with infamy, for what they sincerely believe to be the cause of God or their king, are, as Mark Antony says in Shakspeare of Brutus and Cassius, honourable men. I mention this circumstance, because it threw my father on the world at large.' Again, in his address to William Tytler, he says with equal directness, speaking of the name of Stuart: 'My fathers that name have revered on a throne, My fathers have fallen to right it; Those fathers would spurn their degenerate son, Afterwards, writing to Lady Winifred Maxwell Constable (Dec. 16, 1789), he says: With your ladyship I have the honour to be connected by one of the strongest and most endearing ties in the whole moral world-common sufferers in a cause where even to be unfortunate is glorious, the cause of heroic loyalty! Though my fathers had not illustrious honours and vast properties to hazard in the contest-though they left their humble cottages only to add so many units more to the unnoted crowd that followed their leaders-yet what they could they did, and what they had they lost: with unshaken firmness, and unconcealed political attachments, they shook hands with ruin for what they esteemed the cause of their king and country.' What Gilbert Burns says on the other side is as follows:-'I do not know 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 estates in 1715, before my father was born; and among a collection of parish certificates in his possession, I have read one, stating that the bearer had no concern in the late wicked rebellion.' It cannot fail to strike the reader that Gilbert here contradicts something which the poet did not assert. The question is not as to the father, but as to 'fathers,' meaning evidently more remote predecessors. William Burness might have been innocent of this honourable guilt, while his father was not. James Hogg reported his having heard from an old Kincardineshire gentleman named Hutchard, that Burns's grandfather and uncles were out in both rebellions, and that it rendered them obnoxious to the Whigs of that country, and reduced them in circumstances." There is certainly no great improbability in this statement, but rather the reverse, for the natal district of the family was remarkable for the attachment of the people to the House of Stuart. The very laws of the country placed Robert Burnes of Clockenhill, like all the other tenants of the Earl Marischal, under an obligation to follow his lord to the field. Something to the same effect as Mr Hutchard's statement, only a little more general, was lately reported to Dr Burnes by a 'Hogg and Motherwell's edition of Burns, v. 23. 2 Even if he evited this rule (which was not abrogated till 1748), he might well suffer in a different way in subsequent years, as the tenant of a farm which had been transferred from the care of the natural landlord to that of an unrelenting government commissioner. That he did so suffer, and thus fall into embarrassments, is an averment which has reached us from among his descendants in the north. man named Taylor, eighty-seven years of age, residing at Drumlithie. After saying that he had heard that the original name of the family was Campbell, and that it had been changed in consequence of a duel, Taylor stated it as being notorious in his young days that "the Burnesses had been out for the Stuarts.' They were chiefly, he added, of the Episcopal communion. Another circumstance favourable to the poet's account of the family, is its having such a person as the Rev. Mr Greig connected with it. On the whole, considering how weak is the contradiction brought forward by Gilbert, I see little reason to disbelieve that the poet's grandfather and granduncles were out in the affair of 1715-16, in attendance on the standard of the Earl Marischal. The fact was perhaps imparted as a family secret by William Burness to Robert, in consequence of the interest which the young bard took in such matters, and the sympathy which he felt with the ruined cause of the Stuarts; while to Gilbert, whose prepossessions were of an opposite complexion, the old man might not feel the same provocation to be communicative. 1853. A descendant of one of James of Bralinmuir's sons, the Rev. D. Burness, Wiston, Lanarkshire, adduces reasons for doubting that Robert of Clockenhill, or any of his brothers, had a hand in the affair of 1715, or were at all Jacobitically inclined. This Robert, he says, was a Presbyterian; and the names of his children, from 1725 to 1732, are registered as having been baptised by the parish minister. One of his brothers, James, who succeeded the father in Bralinmuir, appears in 1723 as an elder of the parish of Glenbervie; so that he also is to be regarded as a Presbyterian. George, another brother, appears as witness at the Presbyterian baptising of Robert's children-which Mr D. B. thinks he never could have been if an Episcopalian. William, the fourth brother, can be traced as having never suffered in fortune from connection with the Stuart cause, nor anything else. Thomas, the fifth son, was only ten years of age in 1715, and dead before 1745. Thus Mr D. B. regards the bard's grandfather and grand-uncles as persons not at all likely to have been engaged in either of the rebellions. On the whole, it now seems to me most probable, that the imputed Cavalier character of Burns's ancestry mainly arose from the facts, whatever they were, which gave rise to the story of the Argyleshire refugee Campbell. If the first Walter was a Campbell and a Royalist in the time of the Civil War, it is pretty certain that his native district would be no place for him. It might be some faint echo of this family legend which the poet heard, and it might be by some mistake on his part, that the period was changed to the eighteenth-century rebellions, and the circumstances put into a connection with the fortunes of the Marischal family. No. 2 (p. 21).-BURNS'S MOTHER. A few further particulars of the poet's mother, from the recollection of his youngest sister, may be thought worthy of preservation, as characteristic of the old peasant-life of Scotland. Gilbert Brown, of Craigenton, in Carrick, was thrice married, and the poet's mother, Agnes Brown, was his eldest child by the first marriage. She was only nine years of age when her mother died, leaving four younger children. When the mother's death was looked for, a sister came to see her, and was surprised to find how cheerful she was. 'Are you not sorry to leave your husband and children?' asked the sister. 'No,' was the answer; 'I leave my children to the care of God, and Gilbert will soon get another wife.' The father, being of ultra-frugal habits, kept all his servants engaged in the farm and house work; so that the charge of the children fell to the care of the eldest, herself a mere child, but no doubt forced into a premature thoughtfulness by the extraordinary circumstances. Agnes had been taught to read her Bible, and repeat the Psalms, by a weaver in the village, who kept such young pupils beside his loom as he sat at work. At her mother's death, this kind of education came to a stop, and it was never resumed. The mother of Burns was never able even to write her own name. Her mind was shrewd and intelligent, but unavoidably warped with prejudices, though not to a serious extent. After her father's second marriage, Agnes Brown was sent to live with her mother's mother, a good worthy soul, who in her younger days had sheltered the persecuted Covenanters. When this old person was more than ordinarily pleased with her grand-daughter's doings at the wheel, she gave her, as her ten hours or lunch, a piece of brown bread, with a piece of white as kitchen to it, both being only varieties of oatmeal-cake. While here, Agnes occasionally acted as gaudsman or horse-driver to the ploughman, William Nelson, and assisted him to thrash the corn with the flail. They became attached, and were engaged for seven years, when, at the mature age of twenty-six, she gave him up, in consequence of a moral lapse on his part, of the kind most apt to alienate the affections of a pure-minded woman. Soon after, William Burness happened to meet her at a Maybole fair. He had been well affected to a girl he used to meet frequently at Alloway Mill; and he had kept a letter addressed to that maiden for some time locked up in his trunk. He was now so much pleased with Agnes, that immediately on returning home, he took the epistle from his trunk and burnt it. After he had been Agnes's devoted admirer for a twelvemonth, they were married, and little more than another year made them the parents of the most remarkable man of his age in Scotland. Mrs Burness had a fine complexion, with pale red hair, and beautiful dark eyes. She was of a neat small figure, extremely active and industrious-naturally cheerful, but in later life possessed by anxieties, no doubt a consequence of the life of hardships and difficulties through which it had been her lot to pass. She sang very well, and had a never-failing store of old ballads and songs, on which her poetical son must have fed in his boyhood. As a trait of the life of Mrs Burness in the days of sadness which preceded her husband's death, Mrs Begg remembers the old man coming in one day from sowing, very weary. He had used all the thrashed-up grain, and was now desirous of preparing some for dinner to the horses; but his worthy helpmate, on seeing his fatigued state, insisted that he should refresh himself by a rest, while she herself would see that the beasts were duly cared for. The heroic little woman then went to the barn with her servant, Lizzy Paton, and the two soon had the necessary corn for the horses both thrashed and winnowed. Such was the household of the youthful Burns. Who can but regret that the lot of such a family was not from the first a kindlier one! The low deal-chair on which Agnes Brown nursed all her offspring a very interesting relic of a poet's mother-is preserved by Sir James Stuart Menteath, Bart., on whose paternal estate she lived many years. No. 3 (p. 6).-THE BOOKS READ BY BURNS IN EARLY LIFE. It will be observed, from the various recitals regarding Burns's carly years, that he had had access to a considerable number of books in his boyhood and youth. A distinct catalogue of them may serve to give a tolerably clear idea of the advantages of this kind which he possessed. It must be seen that a person having in early life so many books at his command, and who really read and studied them, could not be considered as an uneducated man. IN EARLY BOYHOOD. We may place first in the roll, the books which every child attending school in Scotland is sure to find in his hands: The Shorter Catechism of the Westminster Assembly. Other school-books : A Spelling Book. Fisher's English Grammar. |