After a perfunctory round in Glasgow, our thoughts turn toward Ayr; even though we have already made two pilgrimages to Burnsland, the spell is unbroken and still would be though our two visits were two score. We will not follow the Kilmarnock route again, but for the sake of variety will go by Barrhead and Irvine on the sea. It proves a singularly uninteresting road; Barrhead is mean and squalid, the small villages are unattractive, and Irvine is a bleak, coal-shipping town. Irvine would be wholly commonplace had not the poet James Montgomery honored it by making it his birthplace and had not Bobby Burns struggled nearly a year within its confines to earn a livelihood as a flax-dresser. The ill luck that befell nearly all the poet’s business ventures pursued him here, for his shop burned to the ground and Irvine lost her now distinguished citizen—though she little knew it then, for Burns was only twenty-two. Perhaps it was a fortunate fire, after all, for had he prospered he might have become more of a business man than poet, and the world be infinitely poorer by the exchange. A colossal statue recently erected commemorates his connection with Irvine and again reminds one how Burns overshadows everything else in the Ayr country.
The Station Hotel affords such a convenient and satisfactory stopping-place that we cut short our day’s run after completing the forty miles from Glasgow. There is really not much in the town itself to detain the tourist; we wander down the main street and cross the “Twa Brigs;” from the beach we admire the broad bay and the bold rocky “Heads of Ayr” to the south. In the distance are the dim outlines of the Emerald Isle, seen only on the clearest days, and nearer at hand the Isles of Bute and Arran. The town is quite modern; there is considerable manufacturing and ship-building and many of the landmarks of the time of Burns have been obliterated.
Fortunate indeed is it that the shrines at Alloway have not shared the same fate—a third visit to these simple memorials may seem superfluous, but we must confess to a longing to see them all again. The birthplace, Kirk Alloway, the monument, the Brig o’ Doon and the museum, with its priceless relics of the poet—all have a perennial interest for the admirer of Burns and Scotland. The bare simple room where the poet was born has a wealth of sentiment that attaches to few such places, and I cannot forbear quoting Mr. George Eyre-Todd’s little flight of fancy inspired by this same primitive apartment:
“One can try,” he writes, “to imagine the scene here on the afternoon of that wild winter day when ‘a blast o’ Januar’ win’’ was to blow ‘Hansel in on Robin.’ There would be the goodwife’s spinning-wheel set back for the nonce in a dark corner; the leglins, or milking-stools—on which the bright-eyed boy was to sit a few years later—pushed under the deal table; the wooden platters and bowls from which the household ate, arranged in the wall rack, and the few delf dishes appearing in the half-open aumrie or cupboard; while from the rafters overhead hung hanks of yarn of the goodwife’s spinning, a braxie ham, perhaps, and the leathern parts of the horses’ harness. Then, for the actors in the humble scene, there was a shadowy figure and a faint voice in the deep-set corner bed; the inevitable ‘neighbour-woman’ setting matters to rights about the wide fireplace in the open chimney; and William Burness himself, whip in hand, hurriedly getting into his heavy riding-coat to face the blast outside.
“A glance at the face of the great eight-day clock, a whispered word and a moment’s pause as he bends within the shadow of the bed, while the neighbour turns industriously to the fire, and then, with a pale face and some wildness in the eyes, the husband makes off, over the uneven floor of flags, and the door closes after him. In a minute or two the tramp of the hoofs of his galloping mare dies away in the distance, and the women are left, waiting.
“Behind him as he turned from his door on that wild day, the farmer would hear the Doon thundering down its glen, and the storm roaring through the woods about the ruin of Alloway Kirk, which his son’s wild fancy was afterwards to make the scene of such unearthly revels. The old road to Ayr was narrower and more irregular, between its high hedges, than the present one; and every step of the way had some countryside memory belonging to it. Behind, by its well, where the road rose from the steep river-bank among the trees, stood the thorn ‘where Mungo’s mither hanged hersel’.’ In the park of Cambusdoon an ash tree still marks the cairn ‘where hunters fand the murdered bairn.’ Farther on, in a cottage garden close by the road, is still to be seen that ‘meikle stane, where drucken Chairlie brak’s neck bane.’ And on the far side of the Rozelle wood, a hundred yards to the left of the present road, was ‘the ford where in the snaw the chapman smoor’d.’
“As William Burness reached the stream here a singular incident befell him. On the farther side, when he had crossed, he found an old woman sitting. The crone asked him to turn back and carry her over the river, which was much swollen by the rains. This, though he was in anxious haste, he paused and did, and then, dashing a third time through the torrent, sped off on his errand to Ayr. An hour later, on returning to his cottage with the desired attendant, he found to his surprise the gipsy crone seated by his own fireside. She remained in the house till the child was born, and then, it is said, taking the infant in her arms, uttered the prophecy which Burns has turned in his well-known lines:
‘He’ll ha’e misfortunes great and sma’,
But aye a heart abune them a’,
He’ll be a credit till us a’;