We had inquired, as we came along, as to the place of which we were in quest; and finding nobody with a very clear or ready conception of it or its whereabouts, began to feel as if it were of a half-fabulous character. At length, however, at a place called Crossford, we were told we should have to leave our carriage and the road, and ascend the side of the valley to the northward, where, about a mile and a half onward, we should find a small farm called Laggan Park. This we hoped to find to be the true place. To walk a mile and a half up hill on a roasting July day was not a task to be encountered on light grounds; however, we had resolved to make out our point if possible. Behold a couple of wayfarers, then, pursuing their way along the skirts of turnip-fields, through slight coppices, and along various clayey braes, with this unseen place of Laggan Park still keeping wonderfully ahead, long after it ought to have been reached. We wondered how the Ayrshire bard would have looked carrying a punch-bowl along our present path, after a journey of eight miles similarly loaded; and whether he would have thought any amount of the 'barley bree' during 'the lee-lang night' a fair recompense for his toils. At length, we arrived at the spot, but in a state of deliquescence and exhaustion not to be described. It is a small farm-establishment, nestling in a bosom of the hills, with some shelter and good exposure, making up for elevation of position, so that its few fields of growing grain, of potatoes, and meadow grass, have a tolerably good appearance. Some patches of ancient coppice at the base of the barish hills behind, give it even a smiling aspect. The farmer, seeing us approach, left his people in the field, and came to greet us. We entered a neat clean room, and met a kind reception from 'the Mistress,' who was as trigly dressed as if she had been expecting company. It soon became clear, from our conversation with the good couple, that our toils were crowned with success. This really had been Nicol's property; it still belonged to a member of his family. That line of gray heights seen from the door was what Burns alluded to when he facetiously dubbed his friend 'Illustrious lord of Laggan's many hills.' This cottage had been the retreat of the High School master in his hours of rustic vacation. There was a difficulty, which we discussed over a glass of most welcome spirits and water furnished by the farmer: Did this neat room form a part of the dwelling of Nicol? It appeared not. It was a modern addition. The original house, to which it adjoined upon a different level of flooring, was the merest hut, of one room, with a line of box-beds dividing the sitting-place from a small space, which, being rudely causewayed like a cow-house, had probably been employed in keeping animals of some kind. Such was the humble tuguriolum of Willie Nicol of the 'peck o' maut'—an interesting memorial of the simplicity of country life in Scotland at the close of the eighteenth century. We did not venture to indulge in any dreamings as to festive meetings between Burns and Nicol in this humble shed; for we felt that here there was no certain ground to go upon. Enough that we could be assured of Burns and Nicol having been together here; two most singular examples of the peasant class of their country, and one of them an unapproached master of his country's lyre, whose strains have floated to the ends of the earth, and promise to last through many ages.
The elements of the place, and the ideas connected with it were, after all, too simple to detain us long. We only waited to snatch a slight pencil sketch of the house and its adjuncts; and then, having taken leave of the farmer and his wife, we retraced our steps to the road. Somewhat unexpectedly, and not at all in keeping with the idea of either Maxwellton braes or Laggan's many hills, we discovered in our walk that the rough terrace-like ground over which we had passed before coming in sight of Nicol's estate, was a moraine, or mass of débris, produced and left there by a glacier. Its surface, thickly covered with loose blocks of rock different from that of the district, first fixed our attention; then looking into some openings which had been made in the earth for building materials, we readily observed that the internal constitution of the mass was precisely like that of the moraines of the existing glaciers of the Alps, and of the similar masses of drift scattered over Sweden—a confused mixture of angular, slightly-worn blocks of all sizes, bedded in clayey gravel of a brown colour. Such objects are rare in Scotland; but here is undoubtedly one, though we cannot pretend to tell from what quarter it has come. The thing most nearly resembling it in general appearance, which we have ever seen, is an undoubted ancient moraine at a place called Mosshuus, in the Valley of the Laug, in Norway.
One reflection arises at the conclusion of this trivial investigation, and it is this—If so much doubt and obscurity have already settled on circumstances which took place scarcely beyond the recollection of living people, can we wonder at that which invests the events of a more remote epoch? If editors in our enlightened time have contrived so soon to give the history of Burns a mythical character, what safety have we in trusting to such ancient narrations as those of Plutarch or Thucydides? On the other hand, where even such a biography as that of Burns is placed by sound and carefully-examined evidence upon an irrefragable basis, a service is rendered to the public beyond the merits of any immediate question that may be under discussion, in the encouragement which it gives to historical inquirers of all grades, to rest satisfied with nothing on vague assertion, but to sift everything to the bottom.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Life and Works of Robert Burns, edited by Robert Chambers. 4 vols. Edinburgh: W. & R. Chambers.
ONE-SIDEDNESS.
Plantagenet. The truth appears so naked on my side,
That any purblind eye may find it out.
Somerset. And on my side it is so well apparelled,
So clear, so shining, and so evident,
That it will glimmer through a blind man's eye.