BURNS AND BONNIE JEAN.

A COMMEMORATIVE TABLET AT MAUCHLINE.

ΑΝ

N interesting ceremony took place at Mauchline on Saturday afternoon, June 28, 1902, when a marble tablet was unveiled at the house in which Burns and Jean Armour began their wedded life. The idea of thus permanently marking the historic house originated with the Glasgow Rosebery Burns Club, and permission to carry it out was cordially granted by Miss Miller, postmistress, who is now the proprietrix of the property. The house is situated off the Cross, and further up on the opposite side is Nance Tannock's, a public-house in Burn's time, where he first repeated to his Mauchline friends some of the masterpieces he composed while resident at Mossgiel, and on the other side of the Cross stands the house where Mary Morrison lived. The marble tablet, which was prepared by Mr. Mossman, sculptor, Glasgow, has been placed over the doorway of the house, and it bears the following inscription :

Here Burns and Jean Armour began Housekeeping

in 1788.

Erected by Rosebery Burns Club,
Glasgow, 1902.

The unveiling ceremony was performed in presence of a large gathering. The weather was bright and warm, and admirably suited for an outdoor function. The Rosebery Burns Club was represented by Mr. P. T. Marshall, president; Mr. R. Murray Dunlop, secretary; Deacon Jack, Dr. Biggs, Messrs. James S. Fisher, Arthur E. Collins, James French, James Angus, H. A. Fisher, Thomas Dunlop, Arch. Hunter, and Wm. Logan, most of whom were accompanied by their wives; and among others present were the Rev. James Higgins, B.D., Tarbolton; Rev. Wilson Baird, Mauchline; Mr. William Higgins, Buenos Ayres; ex-Provost Marshall, Maybole; Mr. Andrew Pollock, Mauchline; &c.

Mr. P. T. Marshall, as president of the Rosebery Burns Club, extended a cordial welcome to all present. The Rosebery Club, he said, had ever made an effort to stand in the front rank of Burns Clubs from a literary point of view and otherwise. It had often been laid to the charge of Burns Clubs—many times, unfortunately, with some little truth—that they met once a year, and had a feast of some kind, and that this was all they did to keep fresh and green the great memory of the National Bard. He could assure them that the members of the Rosebery Burns Club could take some little credit that its career was very different from that. They had ever endeavoured to assist in charitable and other laudable objects, and he might tell them that they were among the first to subscribe towards the funds for the erection of the Burns Memorial Homes at Mauchline. During the winter months they carried on a course of lectures, principally on Scottish subjects, and he might say that they had been fortunate in securing some men of the very best literary talent to deliver these lectures. He had only further to say that they had been fortunate in getting the Rev. Mr. Higgins, of Tarbolton, a wellknown authority on Burns, to give them a brief address.

Rev. Mr. Higgins then delivered an eloquent address. He said I have undertaken to speak as appropriately to the occasion as I can for the space of fifteen minutes. I do not propose to attempt to travel at all wide over the field, which is almost trodden hard, in connection with Burns's career and his literature. I proceed at once to say that as we stand here and look at this old house memory takes us away back to those days when the poet wandered about the streets of Mauchline or mused by the bonnie banks of Ayr. In 1784 the Burns family came to the farm of Mossgiel, and, so far as can be made out, Burns was not long resident in that farm until he made the acquaintance of his Bonnie Jean. Even did time permit, I do not in the least feel inclined to dwell upon the chequered four years between 1784 and 1788. In 1788, shortly after the close of the poet's second winter in Edinburgh, Burns and Jean Armour were married, and as this beautiful tablet tells us to-day-and will tell to succeeding generations of the poet's admirers who come to this good old town from far and near-Burns led his bride home to the modest little apartment which surmounts the tablet. In con

nection with this little home here, I ask you to listen to Burns's own words which are always eloquent and interesting. Writing to Mrs. Dunlop of Dunlop, he says:

66 'Your surmise, madam, is correct, I am indeed a husband. The most placid good nature and sweetness of disposition, a warm heart gratefully devoted with all its powers to love me, vigorous health and sprightly cheerfulness, set off to the best advantage by a more than commonly handsome figure these, I think, in a woman may make a good wife, though she should never have read a page but the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, nor have danced in a brighter assembly than a penny pay-wedding.' To another female acquaintance, Miss Chalmers, he wrote at the same time :

"I have married my Jean. I had a long and much-loved fellowcreature's happiness or misery in my determination, and I durst not trifle with so important a deposit; nor have I any cause to repent it. If I have not got polite tittle-tattle, modish manners, and fashionable dress, I am not sickened and disquieted with the multiform curse of boarding-school affectation; and I have got the handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, and the kindest heart in the country.”

After their marriage, Burns repaired to Ellisland to get his farm and his new house there in order to bring home his Bonnie Jean. That separation was doubtless a painful one to the poet and his young wife, then 23-Burns was 29-but out of pain has come the richness of song. We have two lyrics from the poet's pen in this connection which we can never cease to admire. I refer first to the world-famed "O' a' the airts the wind can blaw.” The other song to which I refer I might preface with a word of explanation. Burns, down in Dumfriesshire, gazed wistfully up the valley of the Nith, which, as you know, is shut in by the hill of Corsincon. Waiting for the home-coming to the new farm of his young wife, he penned the stirring song, in no way, in my opinion, inferior to the first "O were I on Parnassus' Hill." The poet never had any reason to regret or retract one word of these complimentary and ardent things he said of his Bonnie Jean. She remained a true, devoted, and patient wife to the poet all through the sad closing years of his life, and it is well known that throughout the thirty-eight years of her widowhood she fondly cherished the memory of Robert Burns, and boldly and ably defended his name and his memory against that form of criticism and meddling of which we have heard too much-a form

of criticism and meddling and prying which, I think, lovers of Burns will most effectively meet if they treat it with silent contempt. The poet and his works can speak for themselves. One word in closing. I can echo most cordially the words spoken by the president of the Rosebery Burns Club, wherein he indicated that the Rosebery Club is worthy of the name of a Burns Club. It is worthy of imitation by the big majority of so-called Burns Clubs, in that the members do not content themselves with a mere name and with a meeting once a year, on the Poet's natal day, to spend an evening of long speechifying, large eating, and prolonged potation. I trust then, that, as generation after generation of visitors comes here from all ends of the earth to see the place made famous by the poet Burns, this tablet will reflect credit upon the efforts of the Rosebery Burns Club to cultivate Scottish lore, Scottish song, Scottish history, and Scottish patriotism, and will encourage the Rosebery Burns Club to look around and find some other useful and appropriate work that they can do in honour of the poet's memory.

LORD PROVOST CHISHOLM ON BURNS.

Under the auspices of the Glasgow Mauchline Society, and on behalf of the National Burns Memorial Cottage Homes at Mauchline, a grand open-air concert was given at Cessnock Castle, Galston, on Saturday afternoon, July 5, 1902. Similar entertainments have been given in previous years at the braes of Ballochmyle, on the banks of Doon, and at Loudoun Castle, and substantial sums of money have thereby been raised in aid of the scheme which the Glasgow Mauchline Society has so successfully carried through in honour of the Ayrshire Bard. The office-bearers of the Society, and particularly the treasurer, Mr. Thomas Killin, have been indefatigable in their exertions to complete the Endowment Fund, and they are now within measurable distance of seeing the fulfilment of their long-cherished desire, as the amount required, after the proceeds from last Saturday's concert are taken into account, will be something under £400. Brilliant weather favoured the event, and there was an attendance of between four and five thousand people assembled within the Cessnock grounds,

which were kindly thrown open for the occasion by Mr. J. Harling Turner, the popular factor to His Grace the Duke of Portland. The programme, which was of a varied and most enjoyable character, was admirably sustained by the Newmilns Burgh Silver Prize Band, the Glasgow Male Voice Choir and Male Voice Quartette, and Mr. Angus Brown, the blind tenor. The band, under the capable leadership of Mr. W. Smith, played its various selections in first-rate style and evoked the heartiest applause. The male voice choir rendered several part songs with excellent effect, and the singing of the quartette party, consisting of Messrs. Graham, Mackinnon, Smith, and M'Dermid, was quite a masterpiece of cultured vocalisation. At an interval in the programme, Councillor Hugh Alexander, Glasgow, introduced Mr. Samuel Chisholm, LL.D., Lord Provost of Glasgow, who had kindly undertaken to give a brief address on Burns.

Lord Provost Chisholm, who had a most enthusiastic reception, said-I assure you it is with a very deep conviction of the high honour that has been conferred upon me in being asked to take any part, and especially so important a part in this interesting gathering, that I stand on this platform in this fair and beautiful district to-day. And yet I cannot help feeling that there is some apparent incongruity in your sending for me to be present-that you should send for a man who hails not from Ayrshire, but from a distant county on the eastern seaboard of Scotland; that you should send for a man who has been and is so immersed in city life that glimpses of Nature such as this fair sight before us to-day-those glimpses of which he of whom we are thinking speaks about when he refers to "Nature's charms, the hills, the woods, the sweeping plains, the foaming floods "-I say it is incongruous that you should send for a man to whom these things are like angels' visits, few and far between, to come and speak to the men and women, the lads and the lasses of Ayrshire, on the subject of their darling and deservedly beloved Bard. And if I accept the honour as I do with all humility and with all gratitudeit is because I desire to recognise in the fact that you have sent for me an illustration of this, that you, men of Ayrshire as you are, recognise frankly that Burns was not the poet of Ayrshire alone. He loved his county and it deserved his love, fair and beautiful as it is, and specially fair and