page_title: Agnes Broun
section_title: Life and character
hierarchical_section_title: Agnes Broun / Life and character
caption_attribution_description: English: Burns Cottage Bicentenary of Robert Burns death
context_page_description: Agnes Broun, Agnes Brown or Agnes Burnes, was the mother of Scotland's national poet, Robert Burns. Agnes's father, Gilbert, was the tenant of the 300-acre farm of Craigenton, in Kirkoswald parish, South Ayrshire, Scotland.
context_section_description: A bed and breakfast called the Whitestone Cottage, on the Culzean estate in Ayrshire, claims to be Agnes Broun's birthplace, however she was christened at Kirkoswald that is close to Craigenton Farm.
  Agnes was aged just 10 when her mother, Agnes Rainie (1708–1742), died. As the oldest of six siblings Agnes spent the next two years looking after the family, but in 1744, after her father had found a new wife, she was sent to live in Maybole with Jean Rainie, her maternal grandmother. Agnes's grandmother was a repository of much oral tradition, including Scottish songs and ballads that influenced Agnes and encouraged her to pass them on to her children.
  Agnes's father Gilbert remarried twice, Margaret Blaine (1718–1751) and then Catherine Mott (1747–1820). Agnes reportedly had no great liking for her stepmothers, the latter of whom was several years her junior and this may explain why Robert Burns had little or no contact with his maternal grandfather.
  Agnes attended a dame school held in a weaver's cottage and learned psalms by heart, acquired basic reading skills, but did not learn to write, not even her own name.
  Agnes was at first engaged to William Nelson, a ploughman, with whom she worked,  but she broke off the engagement after seven years, due reportedly to an indiscretion on Nelson's part.
  It is thought that Agnes first met William Burnes, 11 years her senior, a market gardener by trade, at the Maybole Fair in 1756. Agnes and William married on 3 December 1757 in Ayr, and settled at Alloway, South Ayrshire, living in a clay cottage that William had both designed and built. At this Alloway cottage they raised four of their seven children, including her eldest son, Robert Burns, who was born on 25 January 1759. The midwife at the birth of Robert was Agnes McClure, wife of the blacksmith John Tennant, and their next-door neighbour. Gilbert was born on the 28 September 1760, Agnes on 30 September 1762 and Annabella on 14 November 1764.
  In 1767, about a year after moving to Mount Oliphant, Agnes gave birth to William Burnes (b. 30 July), followed by John (b. 10 July 1769) and Isobel or Isobella (b. 27 July 1771). Later homes were at Lochlea, Mossgiel, Dinning and finally at Grant's Braes, Bolton, near Haddington in East Lothian where she died in 1820 aged 87.
  Agnes is recorded to have had a major role in cultivating the family's five acres at Alloway's New Gardens, keeping poultry, growing vegetables and making cheeses using milk from her four or so cattle the family kept.
  When Agnes's husband William Burnes died aged 62 in 1784 she went to live with her son Gilbert, at Mossgiel, until 1798 and then lived at Dinning in Nithsdale for two years before they moved to Grant's Braes, East Lothian. Agnes died aged 87 and is buried in the churchyard in Bolton Parish Church, Bolton, East Lothian. Agnes and William had seven children, three of whom predeceased her. Of her many grandchildren, at least ten died before her, a reflection of her own old age and the much shorter life expectancies of those times.
  According to Robert Burns’s youngest sister, Isabella Begg, she “... was rather under the average height; inclined to plumpness, but neat, shapely, and full of energy; having a beautiful pink-and-white complexion, a fine square forehead, pale red hair but dark eyebrows and dark eyes often ablaze with a temper difficult of control. Her disposition was naturally cheerful; her manner, easy and collected; her address, simple and unpresuming; and her judgement uncommonly sound and good. She possessed a fine musical ear, and sang well.”
  Mark Twain wrote of her in The Innocents Abroad (Ch. XXXVI): "It reminds me of what Robert Burns’s mother said when they erected a stately monument to his memory: "Ah, Robbie, ye asked them for bread and they hae gi'en ye a stane.""
  Agnes's half-sister was Jean Brown (1750–1821) who, in 1775, married James Allan and lived at Old Rome Ford near Gatehead, in East Ayrshire. It was at Old Rome that Robert Burns briefly lodged in the summer of 1786 while avoiding a writ from James Armour in regards to his 
caption: Robert Burns's birthplace at Alloway.
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