"Is that Robert Burns's house?" said Janet, in a disappointed voice.
"OUR LITTLE SCOTCH FRIENDS WERE STANDING BEFORE THE LITTLE HOUSE AT AYR, WHERE ROBERT BURNS WAS BORN."
"Yes, my dear," said her father, "great men have often been brought up in small houses like this. Bobby Burns was only a ploughboy, but he became a great poet, one of the greatest in the world."
Our little Scotch friends were standing before the little house at Ayr, where Robert Burns was born. They had come down from Glasgow for the day to visit that part of Scotland made famous by the poet. It is hard to say of whom the Scotch people are most fond and proud, Scott or Burns. The young people had looked forward with a great deal of pleasure to this visit, and they all felt pretty much as Janet did.
It was a tiny house, what the country people call a "clay biggin," with a thatched roof. Inside are many relics of Burns, but the children were, perhaps, more interested in "Alloway's Auld Haunted Kirk." This is the small church of which Burns wrote in his poem, called "Tam-o'-shanter," where Tam saw the witches dance, and from whence he started on his wild ride, with the witches after him riding on broomsticks. It is one of the chief attractions for visitors.
"Oh! it is a creepy poem," said Don; and you will all think so, too, when you have read it.
They saw the "Auld Brig of Ayr," which means the old bridge, across the river Ayr, and they walked along the "Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon," of which Burns wrote and which he loved so well. They visited the monument to Burns. Marjorie remarked that it was not a very grand monument, not nearly so grand as that to Scott in Edinburgh; and she was quite right.
"Not far from Ayr was the home of Annie Laurie," said Mr. Lindsay, as the train speeded them back to Glasgow.
"Was she a real person, father?" eagerly exclaimed the little girls together.