Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-08-03
AFOOT IN SCOTLAND.
How Scotland's Great Poet is HOnored
by His COuntrymen.
Visit to the Old Globs Tavern, the Burns
Cottage, the Tomb-simIlarity In the
Lives OF Poe and Burns.
[CopyriEhted. lS9O.l

low
Special Correspondence TO the Gazette.
DUMFRIEs, SCOTLAND, July l0.-Bor-
der wars and border minstrelsy have
given the whole south of Scotland a heri-
tage of nndying interest and enthrall-
ment. Coming upon it with eyes looking
out of the depths Of history and senti-
ment, every object in nature marshals q
host of armored spectres from the
crowded oloister of a romantic and
thrilling past. But there is another and
an immortal presence here. As the
husbandry of peace heals the scars of
bloody battle, as the very flowers OF the
field in precious compensation tbicKest
grow where carnage and fury leave their
deepest stains, there came to this wrath
rank region lustrous soul so simple and
rugged, sweet and grand, tender and
majestic, weak and mighty, that,
throughout the weird, wild land in which
it blossomed, nature seems to pause in
endless shine and bloom. Out of the
stain and scar, out of intolerance and
bigotry, out of ignorance and serfdom,
out of helotrg and hindship. came one
rustic serf whose humble ploughshare
turned beneath the furrOw of his brief
toll all the hatred, superstition, iu-
tolerance, of q thousand warning years.
One Scottish southland peasant voice not
only fused into lliimitable tenderness all
Scotia IS stern and granite soul, but gave
imperishable songs to the uniyeral human
heart.
To all the people of Scotland go dear
has the memory of this man become,
that three of the Southwestern shirss of
the kIngdom-Ayrshire in which the
peasant-poet was born, Kirkcudbright-
shire where he wandered and sang, and
Dumfriesshire, where he lived, loved,
sang and died-are known only as
BURNS Land. - However winsome
are the memories of his early life beside
the Doom. in Ayr; however stamped by
the wondrous coinage of his genius,
which like some magic alchemy trans
formed all things Burns touched, or
named, or knew, to gold, the braes and
burns of Ktrkcudbrlght may be; to my
fancy fair Dumfriesshre was the i'm
perial palace of his worldwide realm;
and this gray old town OF Dumfries itself
his very throne. Here flows the wlmp-
ling Nita, from its sources IN the Lead
and Lowther hills, down past the little
farm of Ellisland, where with his faith
full wife Jean he wrought those brief and
HAPPIEST DAYS OF HIS LIFE.
Here still stands the house on Bank
street, formerly the "Wee Vennei,'
the three little upper rooms of which
were his first "city'' home. The old
tavern where he registered and sang, is
just as he left it. His last earthly
habitation was the same humble cottage
you now find alongside the dragged
Cob Cn11 IN l. 4
street in the olden days. And in the
stately mausoleum beneath the shadows
of ancient ST. Michael's kirk, sur
of those who for 500 years went before
him into the infinite mystery, he lies
asleep, true and loyal Jean still near
him, and all their BARNS beside them in
the wakeless rest.
You or pilgrimIng here to the shrine
of Burns will first Involuntary recall the
principal incidents in his career pre- vious
to his Identification with the old border
city of DumfTies. This can be best told
partially in the language of others. In
tie period between May, 1886, at the
age of twenty-seven years, and the end
of the year 1891, when he came from the
Ellisland farm to the three rooms in the
"Wee Vennel, in DumfrIes, period
of but four and one-half years, more
hope and disappointment, joy
and suffering, anguish from impulsive
wrong doing and heaven of the purest
domestic bliss, temptation and victory,
agonized despair and triumph, had been
crowded into the poets experiences,
then fall to the lot of most great men in
their entire lives. In this brief time,
first he was disowned and then deserted
by Jean Armour, through the bitter and
ever unreasoning opposition of her ia
Their. He was then betrothed to "High-
land Nary Campbell, the heroine of |
his immortal ode ITO Mary In Heaven
who shortly died of malignant fever at |
Greenock, and over whose grave in the |
kirk-yard of the Old or West church, in |
that city, monument was placed bear |
ing the inscription,
Erected
over the grave OF