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

freedom in his lease, when he enter
| ed on larger farm about ten miles
| farther in the country" This was the
farm of Lochlea, in the parish of Tar
bolton. Burns was the eldest of seven
children, and his father. who married
late in life, was then prematurely old,
worn out by early hardship" The
good old man wished to find employ
ment for his sons and daughters on
the larger farm, and so obviate the
necessity which otherwise would have
arisen to send them "out to service"
Thrift enabled the family to remove
in comfort to Lochlea. After four
years. William Burns, the father, quar-
relied with his landlord. Litigation en-
sued. After three years tossing and
whirling," says the poet, lin the vor-
tex of litigation, my father was just
saved from absorption in a jail by a
phthisical consumption, which. after
two years promises, kindly stepped in
and snatched him away to where the
wicked cease from troubling, and the
weary are at rest" Such was the
melancholy fate on the land in the
eighteenth century in Scotland of the
tender father and the gen'rous friend"
of Burns "Epitaph on his Father:
The plying heart that felt for human
woe:
The dauntless heart that fear'd no hui
man pride;
The friend of man, to vice alone a foe:
For evn his failings lean'd to virtues
side.
Soon after Burns had witnessed his
fathers sore tribulation, he composed
the most melancholy of all his poems,
Mourn" It was November, the month
of the year that found the ploughman
in his garnet through the long even
ings, and with time on his hand for
efforts and experiments in verse. The
old man of the poem is, obviously,
"Reminiscences of his father. who had
seen the sun overhanging the noors:
Where hundreds labor to support
naughty lordlings pride.
The years had but brought to the old
man added proofs that man was made
to mourn" Fate had a few favorites,
who were caressed in pleasures lap;
but even the affectionate poor man,
the lover of his fellow mortals. unself-
ish, generous to fault, discovered,
while the smiles of love adorned his
"heaven-erected face that:
Mans inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn.
Looking around him upon the servile
state into which he and his class of
farm workers had been born, Burns
poured his great heart of sympathy
and passion into this glowing protest
against industrial tyranny and op-
preston:
See yonder poor. o'erlabor'd wight,
So abject, mean and vile,
Who begs a brother of the earth
To give him leave to toll.
And see his lordly fellow-worm
The poor petition spurn,
Unmindful, tho a weeping wife
And helpless offspring mourn.
As for his distressed father, so for
all the downtrodden poor, death was
"the dearest friend" their recompense
and comfort, and "a blest relief"
The grave had given relief and rest
to the oppressed and rack rented |
small farmer. His sons were obliged to
make shift for a maintenance in the |
interest of the family. When my
father died." says Burns, his all |
went among the rapacious hell-hounds |
that growl in the kennel of justice; but |
we made a shift to scrape little |
money in the family amongst us, with |
which--to keep us together-my broth /
er and l took neighboring farm
Mossgiei was the farm limited hold |
ing near the village of Mauchline. The |
there has been rebuilt since |
Burns day. 1t was an inadequately |
small dwelling house for a family |