CHAPTER XIV. MR. ROBERT BURNS, THE POET.
One thing that struck me very forcibly before I had been in Glasgow any length of time was the fact that the people thought a great deal of Mr. Burns, the poet. Streets and lanes were named after him, inns and taverns, shoes, hats, caps, clothing, tobacco, bum-looking cigars, bad whiskey, in fact his name was attached to all kinds of articles to make them sell, and in some cases merely as a mark of respect or affection.
It was plain to the most casual observer that Mr. Burns was thought a great deal of. He had been dead a hundred years or more, yet his personality pervaded the place, and his picture was to be seen on signs, posters, in the stores and elsewhere. For Mr. Burns most Scotchmen will die, Scotch ladies sigh, Scotch babies cry, Scotch dogs ki-yi. He was a good-looking chap, and highly gifted, but the poor fellow died before he had reached his thirty-eighth year, which was a national calamity. Had he lived there is no telling what he might have accomplished, for during the short span of his life he did wonderful things. He took the old Scotch songs that had been written before his day and gave them a twist of his own which improved them vastly, and made them immortal; he portrayed Scottish life in a way that no poet has ever imitated or will imitate maybe, and he loved his country deeply and fervently. His father was a rancher, and a poverty-stricken one at that, and the poet was born in a shack on the farm. The house was a little old one of stone, and a rich man of the day would have used it for a chicken house. In this house and in a china closet in the kitchen was born the greatest poet Scotland ever produced. When Bobbie grew up the old man set him a-plowing, and while at this work the boy composed rhymes which were so good that some of his friends induced him to print them. Old man Burns didn't see any good in the verses, for he knew more about poultry than he did about poetry, and told his son to cut it out. Bobbie couldn't, for it just came natural.
Before he was twenty-one the boy had written lots of good poetry and it was put in book form and printed at Kilmarnock, a town not far from his birthplace. The birthplace of the poet was on the farm near the town of Ayr, in Ayrshire, and that whole county (or shire) is now called "The Burns Country," because it was the poet's stamping-ground. The poet knew lots of people throughout the county and his writings have immortalized many a place in it. After his book had been printed he sprang into fame at once and was made much of by man, woman and child. Being a good-looking chap, the girls began to run after him, and poor Burnsie had the time of his life. He wanted to steer clear of 'em, but he couldn't, for the girls liked and admired him too much. The result was that a few of them got into trouble, and soon some wild-eyed fathers and brothers went gunning for him. The fault was not the poet's wholly, for he couldn't have kept these girls away from him with a cannon. To avoid such troubles in the future he finally married a blond, buxom young lassie called Jean Armour, by whom he had twins, the first rattle out of the box. Not long after that he had two at a throw again. Bobbie could do something besides write poetry, evidently. He was a thoroughbred any way you took him, though the people at that time did not know it and did not fully appreciate his great qualities. It was only after he had been dead a long time that the world fully realized his worth. At the present day they estimate him properly and their affection and reverence for him are boundless. Some of his countrymen call him simply Burns, others call him Rabbie, and still others, "puir Rabbie," puir meaning poor.
The country that he lived in, Ayrshire, is visited by a million strangers or more every year, who visit the shack he was born in and the places he made immortal by his writings. The shack has been fixed up and improved somewhat since he lived in it, and is now a sort of museum where are displayed various editions of the books, manuscripts and other things, that once were his. Among the things is a walking-cane that a New York lawyer named Kennedy somehow got hold of. How Kennedy got the cane I don't know, but he returned it to the Burns collection in the cottage. Mr. Kennedy is a rare exception to New York lawyers in general, for they rarely return anything that they once get their hands on. Mr. Kennedy must have had a whole lot of regard for the great poet.
Lots of people have never read any of Burns' poems. I wonder would they appreciate it if I showed them a few samples? I will not print the long ones, but only the shorter ones, for even they will show, I am sure, the greatness of "Puir Rabbie."
As I said in a previous chapter, when I first set foot in Scotland it was at Greenock, about 25 miles from Glasgow, where a tender took us ashore from the Furnessia. Greenock is quite a city, for it contains a good many factories and other establishments, but the city has become famous the world over just because of one little circumstance connected with the great poet, namely: A young girl named Highland Mary lived there who loved, and was beloved by the poet, and they were engaged to be married. Sad to relate, the young girl died while she was engaged to the poet, which saddened him considerably. Years afterward he married Jean Armour. The poet wrote some lines to the memory of Highland Mary which almost any Scotchman or Scotch lady can recite by heart. Here they are:
HIGHLAND MARY.
Ye banks and braes and streams around