Three towns of this Scottish corner contend not for the birth but for the honours of Burns. If Dumfries is the capital of Burnsland and the place of his burial, Ayr is gateway to the land and the place of his birth; while Kilmarnock, weaver's town and most unpoetic, but productive of poets and poetesses, claims for itself the high and distinct literary honours, having published the first edition in an attic, and having loaned its name as title for the most imposing edition, and having in its museum possession all the published Burns editions.
Ayr River
To follow his footsteps through Burnsland were impossible to the most ardent. For Burns was a plowman who trod many fields, and turned up many daisies, and disturbed many a wee mousie, a poet who dreamed beside many a stream, and if he spent but a brief lifetime in all, it would take a lifetime, and that active, to overtake him.
"I have no dearer aim than to make leisurely pilgrimages through Caledonia; to sit on the fields of her battles, to wander on the romantic banks of her rivers, and to muse on the stately towers or venerable ruins, once the honoured abodes of her heroes."
He did this abundantly. We have followed him in many a place. But in Burnsland it were all too intimate, if not impossible. He knew all the rivers of this west country, Nith, Doon, Ayr, Afton.
"The streams he wandered near;
The maids whom he loved, the songs he sung,
All, all are dear."
He did not apparently know the sea, or love it, although he was born almost within sound of it; and he sings of it not at all. He knew the legends of the land. "The story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins," and he deliberately followed the Bruce legend, hoping it would enter into his blood and spirit, and something large and worthy would result. It did, not an epic, but the strong song of a nation, "Scots wha hae."
His land was the home of Lollards and Covenanters. Independence was in the blood. It was the land of the "fighting Kennedys," who disputed with each other, what time they were not furnishing an Abbot of Crossraguel to dispute with John Knox, or a Gude Maister Walter Kennedy to have a "flytting" with the Kynge's Makar, William Dunbar. Where Burns secured his Jacobitism I do not know, but, of course, a poet is by nature a Jacobite; as he himself said, "the Muses were all Jacobite."
Burnsland is rich in other literary associations. Johannes Scotus is reckoned to have been born also at Ayr; and there are John Galt, James Boswell, James Montgomery, Alexander Smith, Ainslie, Cunningham, and the Carlyles, and Scott in some of his most lively romances. The Book of Taliessin is written in part of this land, the Admirable Crichton was born here. It is a close-packed little port-manteau of land. There is pursuit enough for at least a summer's travel. And, without doubt, there are as many pilgrims who explore Ayrshire as Warwickshire, and much more lovingly.