Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1914-03-26

| when the poet and his brothers and
| sisters migrated to ii with the widow
| ed mother, hardly any larger or more
commodious than the birth cottage
which survives as preserved for the
public at Alloway. At Mossgiel the
| genius of Burns arrived at fruition
| between his twenty-fourth and TWEEN
| ty-seventh years. He threw off the i'm
| perishable poems and songs there
which were published in the first and
Kilmarnock edition of his works in
| 1856. No such affecting contrast be-
| tween domestic environment and poet
| ical production can be paralleled in all
literary history.
1t was there he wrote THE Vision"
i'll which he described his indoor life
in the season of winter thus:
There lonely, by the ingle-cheek,
sat and eyd the spewing reek,
That filled wi hoast-provoking smeek,
The auld clay biggin';
An heard the restless rattons squeak
About the riggin'.
Imagine the scene A little low cot
tage with roof of thatch and walls of
clay, where the rats played at high
jinks in the roof, with the chimney
and fireplace so imperfectly construct
ed that the smoke returned upon the
apartment--this was the home in
which was born The Vision" The
Cottar's Saturday Night" THE Holy
Fair" and many of Burns most thrill
ing satires. including the masterpiece
of Holy Willie's Prayer" The two
brothers elected to act rather as hired
ploughmen than as partners in the
farm and fixed their wages at the then
market rate of CT, to be paid at each
half-yearly term. For clothes, boots
drains, expenses incurred at market
and kirk. books, holidays, privats
benevolence, Burns, in common with
the typical ploughman of his time,
had only five shillings and fourpence
halfpenny per week. The farm was an
economic failure. How could it be
otherwise in the circumstances? The
land was almost starved for " ant of
regular investments of manure. The
two struggling brothers had no money
to invest in livestock. Heart breaking
must have been the struggle to pro-
duce the landlords rent against the
day appointed for the rent court"
Young Burns, when martyred on the
land at Mossgiel, was mirthful and
melancholy by turns. He was inimita-
bly, rollicking and mirth- provoking III
The Jolly Beggars," THE Holy Fair
in Halloween" in the song Green
Grow the Pushes" and in the "Epistle
to John Rankine.' But his melancholy
was greater than his mirth as the sui
len roar of the cataract counts for
more in tie river than the low bick-
ering of the shadows. The "joyless
winter day was more dear to his
crushed mind than "all the pride of
May" He wept in melodious verse
over the erstwhile unsung heroism of
the farm worker. whose solace was
the approach of the day of weekly rest:
The toil-worn cottar frae his labor roes
This night his weekly MOL is at an end |
Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his
hoe
Hoping the morn in ease and rest to
spend,
And. weary. DER the moor, his course
does homeward bend.
He disturbs the field-mouse with the |
plough, but finds the wee, sleeking, |
cow'ring, timorous beastie'' blest COM |
pared with his own lot:
The present only toucheth thee;
But. Och. l backward cast my e'e
On prospects dreari
An forward, tho / Gamma see
l guess an fear.
His condition on the small farm of |
Mossgiel grew worse and worse. The |
partnership was dissolved Hungry |
ruin had the poet in the wind. He suc- /
eeeded in getting his poems printed. |
He resolved to emigrate Edinburgh