It is a dretful interestin’ spot on lots of accounts, but on none of ’em so much as bein’ the birthplace of Robert Burns.
The humble cottage where the immortal flower of Genius sprung up like a tall white lily out of the dust of the wayside—
This cottage is on the banks of Bonny Doon—
There Simmer first unfaulds her robes,
And there she langest tarries,
And there he took his last farewell
Of his sweet Highland Mary.
The immortal tenderness and sweetness of that love meetin’ and partin’ has made the waters of Bonny Doon ripple along full of the melodies of the past.
In Nater there is a universal tendency to retain the good and beautiful, and forgit the commonplace and dreary. We forgit the steamin’ vats and big cheeses Mary must have had to turn and lift at her place of service, Gavin Hamilton’s, or, as Burns called it—“The Castle of Montgomerie.”
We forgit all the toilsome labor that must have turned Mary’s pretty hands brown and hard, and made her slim back ache.