But let us stop at the poet's cottage—the little one-story "clay-biggin" it originally was, when, in 1759, Robert Burns was born there, consisting only of a kitchen and sitting-room; these still remain, and in a little recess in the former is a sort of bunk, or bed, where the poet first saw light; that is, what little of it stole in at the deep-set window of this little den; additional rooms have been built on to the cottage, including a large one for society meetings and anniversary dinners; the little squat thatched cot is the Mecca of thousands of travellers from all parts of the world, as the visitors' book reveals.
An old Scotch woman, who was busy with her week's ironing, her work, for a few moments, to show us the rooms and sell a stereoscopic view, and then returned to her flat-irons. An old fellow, named "Miller" Goudie, and his wife, used to occupy the cot. He now rests in Alloway churchyard, and, as his epitaph says,—
"For forty years it was his lot
To show the poet's humble cot;
And, sometimes laughin', sometimes sobbin',
Told his last interview with Robin:
A quiet, civil, blithesome body,
Without a foe, was Miller Goudie."
A framed autograph letter of Burns, and a picture of him at a masonic assembly, adorn the walls of the large room, and are about all of interest in it. A short distance beyond the cottage, and we come to "Alloway's auld haunted Kirk,"—a little bit of a Scotch church, with only the walls standing, and familiar to us from the many pictures we had seen of it.
Here it was that Tam saw the witches dance; and there must have been the very window, just high enough for him to have looked in from horseback: just off from the road is the kirk, and near enough for Tam to hive seen the light through the chinks, and bear the sound of mirth and dancing. Of course I marched straight up to the little window towards the road, and peeped in at the very place where Tam had viewed the wondrous sight; but such narrow and circumscribed limits for a witches' dance! Why, Nannie's leap and fling could not have been much in such a wee bit of a chapel, and I expressed that opinion audibly, with a derisive laugh at Scotch witches, when, as if to punish scepticism, the bit of stone which I had propped up against the wall to give me additional height, slipped from beneath my feet, bringing my chin in sharp contact with the window-sill, and giving me such a shock altogether, that I wondered if the witches were not still keeping guard over the old place, for it looks weird enough, with its gray, roofless walls, the dark ivy about them flapping in the breeze, and the interior choked with weeds and rubbish.