"Kirk Alloway was drawing nigh,
Where ghaists and houlets nightly cry.
By this time he was cross the ford,
Where in the snaw the chapman smoored:
And past the birks and meikle stane
Where drunken Charley brak 's neck-bane.
And through the whins, and by the cairn
Where hunters found the murdered bairn;
And near the thorn aboon the well
Where Mungo's mither hanged hersel."
The whins, the birks were gone: all was now one scene of richest cultivation; but in the midst of a cottager's garden still projected the "meikle stane" from the ground, in a potato bed. To this, by permission of the cottager, we advanced, and from this spot my guide pointed out the traditionary course of Tam on that awful night when
"Before him Doon pours all his floods;
The doublin' storm roars through the woods,
And lightnings flash from pole to pole."
Some of these scenes lay yet far before us; as the well
"Where Mungo's mither hanged hersel,"
which is just on the banks of the Doon itself. Anon we reached the cottage in which Burns was born. This stands on the right-hand side of the road, about a quarter of a mile from Kirk Alloway and the Brig o' Doon. It is a genuine Scotch cottage of two rooms on the ground floor, thatched and whitewashed. It is now, and has been long, a little public house. It stands close up to the road, and over the door is a portrait of Burns, an evident copy from the portrait by Nasmyth, and under it, in large and noticeable letters, "Robert Burns, the Ayrshire Poet, was born under this roof, the 25th Jan., A.D. 1759. Died A.D. 1796, aged 37-1/2 years."
It is well known to most readers that this house was built by Burns's father, and that about a week after Robert, his first child, was born, the roof fell in during a tempest at midnight, and that mother and child had to be carried forth in a hurry, through the storm and darkness, to a cottage, which still remains, not far off, on the opposite side of the road. Robert Burns was born in what is now the kitchen, in one of those recess beds so common in Scotch cottages. This is still shown to visitors by the occupiers of the house. The better room, in which the guests are entertained, that nearest to the town of Ayr, bears abundant marks of the zeal of these visitors. The walls are well written over with names, but not in that extraordinary manner that the walls of Shakspeare's birth-place at Stratford are. The rage here has taken another turn, that of cutting the names into the furniture. There are two plane-tree tables, which are cut and carved in the most singular completeness. There does not seem to be left space, neither on the top, the sides, nor the legs, even for another initial. There were formerly three of these tables, but one of them was sold some years ago. There is a cupboard and chairs all cut over, the chairs having been obliged to be renewed, but the fresh ones are now as much cut as ever. We were informed by Mrs. Gondie, the widow of the old miller, John Gondie, of Doonside Mill, who had lived in the house nearly forty years, that the lease of the property had been bought of Burns's father, by the Shoemaker's Company of Ayr, for one hundred and sixty guineas; but that the property now let for £45 a year; and that the said Shoemaker's Company wishing again to raise the rent, the widow was going to quit at Michaelmas last, and that another person had taken the house and small piece of ground adjoining, at a rental of £60 a year. Mrs. Gondie said that she had been once bid £15 for one of the tables, but had refused it; that, however, being now about to quit the premises, she had sold the chairs and tables to a broker at Glasgow, who was announcing them as the actual furniture of Burns, though it was well known that when Burns's father left this house for Mount Oliphant, a few miles off, when Robert Burns was not seven years of age, he took all his furniture with him. Conspicuous among the carved names in this room was that of an ambitious Peter Jones, of Great Bear Lake, North America.
Burns's father, who was, when he lived here, gardener to Mr. Ferguson, of Doonholm, was a man of an excitable temperament, but of a most upright disposition; and his mother, like the mothers of most remarkable men, was a woman of clear, clever, and superior mind, of a winning address, and full of ballads and traditions. From both sides the son drew the elements of a poet; and we can well imagine him sitting by the humble fireside of this cottage, and receiving into his childish heart, from the piety of the father, and the imaginative tales of the mother, those images of genuine Scottish life which poured themselves forth as well in Tam O'Shanter as in the grave and beautiful Cotter's Saturday Night.
Having insisted on my worthy guide getting some refreshment, we again sallied forth to make a more thorough exploration of the youthful haunts of the poet. And now, indeed, we were surrounded by mementoes of him and of his fame on all hands. The cottage stands on a pleasant plain; and about a quarter of a mile onward you see, on the left hand of the road, the monument erected to his memory: a dome, surmounted with a lyre and the significant wine-cup, and supported on Corinthian pillars. On the opposite, that is, on the right-hand side of the road, is the old Kirk of Alloway; beyond, away to the right, is heard the sea, while the airy range of the Carrick Hills stretches across, closing the landscape before you. At their feet a mass of trees marks the course of the Doon; but, before you reach any of these objects, you pass, on your left, the large open field in which was held the Burns Festival on the 6th of August, 1844. The place where the wall had been broken down to admit the procession was plainly discernible by its new mortar; and a fine crop of corn was now waving where such thousands had, but a year before, met in honor of the immortal exciseman.