"The piper loud and louder blew,
The dancers quick, and quicker flew;
They reel'd, they set, they cross'd, they cleekit,
Till ilka carlin swat and reekit,
And coost her duddies to the wark,
And linket at it in her sark."
The ride on this tram has developed a dizziness.
"Wi' tippenny we fear nae evil;
Wi' usquebae we'll face the devil!"
Did we cry "weel done, cutty sark!" Then we, too, must descend and hurry on foot to the old Brig o' Doon. Not pausing long for The Monument, even to look at the wedding ring of Jean Armour, or the Bible Burns gave to Highland Mary; but on to the Auld Kirk which stands opposite.
To Burns we owe this church in more ways than one. When a certain book of "Antiquities" was being planned, Burns asked that the Auld Kirk of Alloway be included. If Burns would make it immortal? yes. So the story of Tam o' Shanter came to make Kirk Alloway forever to be remembered. What would William Burns, covenanter, have thought? For I cannot but think that William looked often askance at the acts of his genius-son. But William was safely buried within the kirk, and if the epitaph written by the son reads true, William was excellently covenanted.
"O ye whose cheek the tear of pity stains,
Draw near with pious rev'rence and attend.
Here lies the loving husband's dear remains,
The tender father, and the gen'rous friend.
The pitying heart that felt for human woe,
The dauntless heart that fear'd no human pride,
The friend of man, to vice alone a foe,
For 'ev'n his failings lean'd to virtue's side.'"
The auld clay biggan still stands in Alloway, and "the banks and braes o' bonnie Doon" bloom as "fresh and fair" to-day as they did a century and a half ago. It is a simpler place than the birth house on High Street in Stratford, and a simpler environment than College Wynd in Edinburgh. This is a true cotter's home, and Saturday nights within must have been of the description.
BURNS' COTTAGE, BIRTH-PLACE OF ROBERT BURNS, AYR.
Somehow it is less of a tourist's way of forced entry, this through the barn, than the basement door at Abbotsford; and so one passes through the byre and into the kitchen, where stands the bed in which Robert Burns was born. It is all beautifully homely, as lowly as a manger; and, how the world has been filled by what was once small frail life herein!