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PAGE 176, NOTE 243.-Subsequently | friend of the poet. "Staig," was the provost Major General Dunlop, of Dunlop. of Dumfries; "Welsh," the sheriff of the county.

PAGE 176, NOTE 244.-Rachel, daughter of Mrs. Dunlop, was engaged upon an imaginative sketch of Burns's Muse, Coila.

PAGE 177, NOTE 245.-A mare, the property of Mr. William Nicol, and lent by that gentleman to Burns, in whose keeping it became ill, and died at his farm, of Ellisland.

PAGE 178, NOTE 246.-This piece was published in a newspaper, and from that time forward remained unnoticed until it was reproduced in Chambers's Edition of Burns's Works.

PAGE 178, NOTE 247-The parallel between these lines and those of Johnson, as follow, cannot escape the reader :---

In bed we laugh, in bed we cry,
And born in bed, in bed we die;
The near approach a bed may show,
Of human bliss and human woe.

PAGE 179, NOTE 248.-At the general election, 1799, the representation of the five boroughs of Dumfries, Annan, Kirkcudbright, Sanquhar, and Lochmaben, forming one electoral district, was contested by Sir James Johnstone, of Westerhall, in the ministerial or Tory, and Captain Patrick Miller, the younger, of Dalswinton, in the Whig or opposition interest. Burns, who was friendly to the latter party, here allegorises the contest; characterising Dumfries as Maggy on the banks of Nith; Annan, as Bess of Annandale; Kirkcudbright, as Whisky Jean of Galloway; Sanquhar, as Black Joan frae Chrichton Peel; and Lochmaben as Marjory of the many lochs-appellations, all of which have some appropriateness from local circumstances. The contest was decided in favour of Captain Miller.

PAGE 179, NOTE 249.-Sir J. Johnstone.

PAGE 179, NOTE 250.-Captain Miller. PAGE 179, NOTE 251.-King George the Third.

PAGE 179, NOTE 252.-George, Prince of Wales, afterwards Regent, and King George the Fourth.

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PAGE 180, NOTE 254.-A piece of ordnance, of extraordinary structure and magnitude, founded in the reign of James IV. of Scotland, about the end of the fifteenth century, and which is still exhibited, though in an infirm state, in Edinburgh castle. The diameter of the mouth is twenty inches.

PAGE 180, NOTE 255.—The "Bullers of Buchan" is an appellation given to a tremendous rocky recess on the Aberdeenshire coast, near Peterhead-having an opening to the sea while the top is open. The sea, constantly raging in it, gives it the appearance of a pot or boiler, and hence the

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PAGE 181, NOTE 259.-Francis Grose, author of the Antiquities of England, Ireland, and Scotland, and of several other publications, some of which display considerable knowledge of mankind, wit, and humour, became acquainted with Burns at Captain Riddel's mansion at Friar's Carse, while making the necessary inquiries for his work on Scottish antiquities. He was a bon-vivant, and had acquired enormous personal bulk. Captain Grose died at Dublin, of an apopletic fit, May 12, 1791, in the fifty-second year of his age.

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PAGE 181, NOTE 260.-The parish on the southern frontier of Scotland is called Kirkmaiden, of which this word Maidenkirk is a mere transposition. Kirkmaiden parish is in Wigtonshire.

PAGE 182, NOTE 261.-One of the old traditional Scottish ballads entitled Sir John Malcolm, furnished Burns with the rhythmical model of this piece.

PAGE 182, NOTE 262.-This poem came through the hands of Rankine of Adamhill to those of a gentleman of Ayr, who gave it to the world in the Edinburgh Magazine for February 1818, with the following original superscription:-"To the Right Honourable the Earl of Breadalbane, President of the Right Honourable and Honourable the Highland Society, which met on the 23rd of May last, at the Shakspeare, Coveut-Garden, to concert ways and means to frustrate the designs of five hundred Highlanders, who,

as the society were informed by Mr. M of A-s, were so audacious as to attempt an escape from their lawful lords and masters, whose property they were, by emigrating from the lands of Mr. M'Donald, of Glengarry, to the wilds of Canada, in search of that fantastic thing-LIBERTY."

PAGE 183, NOTE 263 —“As the authentic prose history of the Whistle is curious, I shall here give it. In the train of Anne of Denmark, when she came to Scotland with our James VI., there came over also a Danish gentleman of gigantic stature and great prowess, and a matchless champion of Bacchus. He had a little ebony whistle, which, at the commencement of the orgies, he laid on the table, and whoever was the last able to blow it, every body else being disabled by the potency of the bottle, was to carry off the whistle as a trophy of victory. The Dane produced credentials of his victories, without a single defeat, at the courts of Copenhagen, Stockholm, Moscow, Warsaw, and several of the petty courts in Germany; and challenged the Scots Bacchanalians to the alternative of trying his prowess, or else of acknowledging their inferiority. After many overthrows on the part of the Scots, the Dane was encountered by Sir Robert Lawrie of Maxwelton, ancestor of the present worthy baronet of that name; who, after three days' and three nights' hard contest, left the Scandinavian under the table,

'And blew on the whistle his requiem shrill,'

Sir Walter, son of Sir Robert before mentioned, afterwards lost the whistle to Walter Riddel, of Glenriddel, who had married a sister of Sir Walter's. On Friday the 16th of October 1790, at Friar's-Carse, the whistle was once more contended for, as related in the ballad, by the present Sir Robert, of Maxwelton: Robert Riddel, Esq., of Glenriddel, lineal descendant, and representative of Walter Riddel, who won the whistle, and in whose family it had continued; and Alexander Fergusson, Esq., of Craigdarroch, likewise descended from the great Sir Robert; which last gentleman carried off the hard-won honours of the field." BURNS. [The whistle is kept at this day by the Right Honourable R. C. Fergusson, of Craigdarroch, M.P. for the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright-son of the victor.]

The Rhenish Legends supply us with two or three analogous stories, in which certain cups or tankards figure, and of which they commemorate the facts in their pre

servation.

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PAGE 183, NOTE 264.--Vide the Caricthura of Ossian.

PAGE 183, NOTE 265.-Johnson's Tour to the Hebrides.

PAGE 184, NOTE 266.-James, fourteenth Earl of Glencairn, and in whose younger brother this ancient title became extinct in 1796, was a Whig nobleman of great generosity of disposition. He died unmarried at Falmouth, January 30th, 1791, in the forty-second year of his age. Burns, who considered himself greatly indebted to Glencairn, put on mourning for his death, wrote this beautiful poem to his memory, and called a son after him, now Major James Glencairn Burns, of the East India Company's service.

PAGE 186, NOTE 267.—Alexander Monroe, Professor of Anatomy to the University of Edinburgh.

PAGE 186, NOTE 268.-The favour which formed the burthen of the foregoing poetical epistle, was the translation of the poet from the fatiguing Excise division of Ellisland, to the less laborious one of Dumfries, which favour is acknowledged as having been obtained, in these lines.

PAGE 186, NOTE 269.-An allusion to the decline of the fashion which was so prevalent during the last century amongst gentlemen, to drink to excess, swear, and indulge in other equally delicate amusements, and in which the squirearchy so eminently shone. It was this fashion which had been so severely satirized by Fielding

in his novels.

PAGE 186, NOTE 270.-The ruins of Lincluden church, near Dumfries.

PAGE 188, NOTE 271.-Though found among the papers of Burns, in his own hand-writing, and printed as his in some former editions, the present editor has scarcely a doubt that this poem is not by the Ayrshire bard. It is much more like the composition of Fergusson, or Beattie.

PAGE 188, NOTE 272.-This piece was first published in the edition of Burns's Works, produced by Messrs Chambers, and was contributed by Mr. James Duncan, of Mosesfield, near Glasgow, in whose possession is the original manuscript.

PAGE 189, NOTE 273.-When General Dumourier, after unparalled victories, left the army of the French Republic, April 1793, and took refuge from the infuriated Convention, with the enemies he had lately beaten, some one expressing joy in the event where Burus was present, he chanted almost extempore the sarcastic stanzas of the text.

PAGE 189, NOTE 274.-Captain Riddel, of Glenriddel, or Mr. Riddel of Woodlee park, which is not very decidly ascertained. In either case, we are informed that the parties were reconciled.

PAGE 189, NOTE 275.-The Maria of this lampoon, and that which follows, was Mrs. Riddel, of Woodlee park, a lady of poetical talent and taste, with whom the poet was generally on the best terms, but who had temporarily repudiated him from her society, in consequence of an act of rudeness committed by him when elevated with liquor. She is the lady alluded to by Dr. Currie, of whom Burns, amongst his last days at Brow, asked if she had any commands for the other world, and who wrote the beautiful paper on his death, which first appeared in the Dumfries Journal, and was afterwards transferred entire to Currie's Memoir.

PAGE 190, NOTE 276.-By Esopus, is meant an actor of the name of William

son.

respecting this elegant, but unfortunate woman, is given elsewhere.

PAGE 193, NOTE 284.-On the death of General Stewart, representative of the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, in January 1795, Mr. Heron, of Kerroughtree, a zealous Whig, and a friend of Burns, became candidate for the vacant seat. He was opposed by Gordon of Balmaghie, but gained his election. The third ballad relates to his contest at the general election of 1796, with the Hon. Montgomery Stewart. He was likewise elected on that occasion, but unseated by a committee. It is to be remarked, that the satirical allusions in these ballads, are almost all founded merely in party bitterness, not in truth.

PAGE 194, NOTE 285.-John Busby, of Tinwold Downs.

PAGE 194, NOTE 286.-Alluding to Busby's brother, whose fortune, as it was said, was founded before his emigration to the East Indies, in some transactions in which the Ayr bank was concerned.

PAGE 194, NOTE 287.-Mr. Maxwell, of

PAGE 190, NOTE 277.-Gillespie.
PAGE 190, NOTE 278.-Colonel Mc Cardoness.
Dowal, of Logan.

PAGE 191, NOTE 279.-Burns also in-
scribed the following lines on the windows
of a grotto in Captain Riddel's grounds:
To Riddel, much-lamented man,
This ivied cot was dear ;
Reader, dost value matchless worth?
This ivied cot revere.

PAGE 191, NOTE 280.-Mrs. Riddel, of Woodlee.

PAGE 191, NOTE 281.-These lines were written in the fly leaf of a copy of Thomson's Select Scottish Melodies, presented to Miss Graham, by Robert Burns.

PAGE 192, NOTE 282.-On the night of December the 4th, 1795.

PAGE 193, NOTE 283.-The heroine of several of his songs. Her name was Jean Lorimer, her father being a farmer at Kemeyss-Hall, near Dumfries. Burns seems to have formed an acquaintance with her during his stay at Ellisland, as there is still a pane in the eastern room of that house, bearing her name, and that of her lover John Gillespie, inscribed by her own hand, during a visit she paid there. She afterwards formed an unfortunate alliance with a Mr. Whelpdale, from whom she soon separated. At the time when the following stanzas were addressed to her, she was living in retirement at Dumfries, under depression of spirits, the consequence of her recent domestic unhappiness. Further information

PAGE 194, NOTE 288.-Mr. Douglas, of Carlingwark, gave the name of Castle Douglas to a village which rose in his neighbourhood, and which has since become a considerable and thriving town.

PAGE 194, NOTE 289.-Alluding to Mr. John Syme, an intimate friend of Robert Burns.

PAGE 194, NOTE 290.—Troggin is a term applied, in Scotland to the various wares carried about by hawkers, who, in the same provincialism, are called troggers.

PAGE 194, NOTE 291.-The Earl of Galloway.

PAGE 194, NOTE 292.-Mr. Murray of Broughton.

PAGE 195, NOTE 293.-One of the candidates in this election-Mr. Gordon of Balmaghie.

PAGE 194, NOTE 294.-Alluding somewhat severely, to Busby, of Tinwold.

PAGE 195, NOTE 295.-Burns here alludes to a brother wit, the Rev. Mr. Murhead, minister of Urr, in Galloway. The hit applied very well, for Muirhead was a wind-dried, unhealthy looking little man, very proud of his genealogy, and ambitious of being acknowledged, on all occasions, as the chief of the Muirheads! He was not disposed, however, to sit down with the affront: on the contrary, he replied to it in a virulent diatribe, which may be presented as a remarkable specimen of clerical and poetical irritability; and curious, moreover

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PAGE 195, NOTE 296.—Burus was a private in the volunteer yoeman corps of Dumfries, of which Colonel De Peyster was the commanding officer.

PAGE 195, NOTE 297.-A monument about to be erected by Mr. Heron, of Kerroughtree, in his own grounds.

PAGE 195, NOTE 298.-Alluding to an only daughter, who died in the autumn of 1795, and so far removed from his residence, as to render it impossible for him to visit her at the last. She died, moreover, very suddenly.

PAGE 196, NOTE 299.—The Honourable Henry Erskine was elected Dean of the Faculty of Advocates in 1786, and unanimously re-elected every year till 1796, when it was resolved by some members of the Tory party at the Scottish bar to oppose his re-election, in consideration of his having aided in getting up a petition against the passing of the well-known sedition bills. Mr. Erskine's appearance at the Circus (now the Adelphi Theatre) on that occasion was designated by those gentlemen (among whom were Charles Hope and David Boyle, now respectively Lord President and Lord Justice-Clarke) as "agitating the giddy and | ignorant multitude, and cherishing such humours and dispositions as directly tend to overturn the laws." They brought forward Mr. Robert Dundas, of Arniston, Lord Advocate, in opposition to Mr. Erskine; and at the election, January 12th, 1796, the former gained the day by 123 against 38 votes. The following verses by

Burns describe the keenness of the contest. The mortification of the displaced dean was so extreme, that he that evening, with a coal-axe, hewed off from his door in Prince's street, a brass-plate on which his designa

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tion as Dean of Faculty was inscribed. It is not impossible, that, in characterising Mr. Dundas so opprobriously, and we may add unjustly, Burns might recollect the slight with which his elegiac verses on the father of that gentleman had been treated eight years before.

PAGE 197, NOTE 300.-The Duke of Queensberry stripped his domains of Drumlanrig, in Dumfries-shire, and Neidpath in Peebles-shire, of all the wood fit for being cut, in order to enrich the Countess of Yarmouth, whom he supposed to be his daughter.

PAGE 197, NOTE 301.-Burns was one day being rallied by a friend for wasting his satirical shafts on persons unworthy of his notice, and was reminded that there were such persons (distinguished by rank and circumstance) as the Duke of Queensberry, on whom his biting rhapsodies might more advantageously be expended. He immediately improvised these lines.

PAGE 197, NOTE 302.-Mr. M'Murdo resided at Drumlanrig, as chamberlain to the Duke of Queensberry. He and his wife and daughters are alluded to in the election piece, entitled Second Epistle to Mr. Graham of Fintry. They were kind and hospitable | friends of Burns, who celebrated several of the young ladies in his songs.

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PAGE 198, NOTE 303.-"Sir Walter Scott possessed a tumbler, on which these lines written by Burns on the arrival of a friend, Mr. W. Stewart, factor to a gentleman of Nithsdale. The landlady being very wrath at what she considered the disfigurement of her glass, a gentleman present appeased her by paying down a shilling, and carried off che relic."-LOCKHART.

PAGE 193, NOTE 304.-According to Burns himself, this song was written when he was about seventeen years old, in honour of a damsel named Isabella Steven, who lived in the neighbourhood of Lochlee.

PAGE 198, NOTE 305.-The old ballad, Mc Millan's Peggy, was the model of this song. The heroine of the piece was a young lady educated in a manner somewhat superior to the peasantry in general, and on whom Burns practised to display his tact in captivating, until, by degrees, he fell in love in earnest, and then discovered that the object of this first sport, then earnest, was previously engaged. "It cost me," says he, "some heartaches to get rid of the affair."

PAGE 198, NOTE 306.-According to Mr. Cunningham, this was the same person as Montgomery's Peggy. But more accurate information identifies the heroine of the piece

as Margaret Alison, of Lochlee, who was not engaged, and who actually mourned the inconstancy of Burns.

PAGE 199, NOTE 307.-This was the same Peggy Alison mentioned in the foregoing note.

PAGE 199, NOTE 308.-An adaptation of the Old English Ballad, which was rescued from oblivion, obscurity, and black letter (in the Pepys Library, Cambridge), by Mr. Jamieson, who published it in his collection. PAGE 200, NOTE 309.-Anne Blair, and Anne Ronald, daughters of farmers in Tarbolton parish, and the latter of whom became Mrs. Paterson, of Aikenbrae, have each been spoken of in their native district as the heroine of this song. The poet's family was intimate with Mr. Ronald's, when residing at Lochlee, and even after they had removed to Mossgiel. Mr. Gilbert Burns was at one time considered as a wooer of one of the Miss Ronald's. We learn from Mr. | Cunningham that Mr. Ronald liked the conversation of the post very much, and would sometimes sit late with him; on which one of the girls-probably not Aune-remarked that "she could na see ought about Robert Burns that would tempt her to sit up wi' him till twal o'clock at night."

PAGE 200, NOTE 310.-This song was composed in honour of Margaret Thomson, who lived in a cottage adjoining the Village School of Kirkoswald, where Burns was completing his education, when nineteen years old. Burns himself gives the following account of the matter:-This Miss Thomson afterwards married a Mr. Nielson, and settled with him in the town of Ayr. "A charming fillette," says Burns in speaking of her, "who lived next door to the school, overset my trigonometry, and sent me off at a tangent from the sphere of my studies. I, however, struggled on with my sines and cosines for a few days more; but stepping into the garden one charming noon to take the sun's altitude, there I met my angel,

Like Proserpine gathering flowers,

Herself a fairer flower. It was in vain to think of doing any more good at school. The remaining week I staid, I did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal out to meet her."

PAGE 201, NOTE 311.-"This tune is by Oswald; and the words relate to some part of my private history, which it is of no consequence to the world to know."-BURNS.

PAGE 201, NOTE 312.—In a memoir of Kamsay, in a publication entitled "Lives of Eminent Scotsmen" (3 vols. Boys, London),

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there is presented a very early song to the tune of My Nannie, O, beginning—

"As I came in by Enbro' town,
By the side o' the bonny city, O,
I heard a young man mak his moan,
And O! it was a pity, O.

For aye he cried his Nannie, O!
His handsome, charming Nannie, O!
Nor friend nor foe can tell, O-ho,

How dearly I love Nannie, O!" An improved song to the same air was written by Ramsay; and finally, Burns wedded the music to the following beautiful effusion of natural sentiment, the heroine of which is believed to have been a certain Agnes Fleming, servant at Calcothill, near Lochlee.

PAGE 202, NOTE 313.-" An improvement upon an ancient homely ditty to the same air. It has been pointed out that the last admirable verse is formed upon a conceit, which was put into print long before the days of Burns, and in a place where it is not at all probable that he could ever have seen it-a comedy entitled Cupid's Whirligig, published in 1607. The passage in the comedy is an apostrophe to the female sex, as follows:-"Since we were made before you, should we not admire you as the last, and therefore, perfect work of nature. Man was made when nature was but an apprentice, but woman when she was a skilful mistress of her art."-CHAMBERS.

PAGE 202, NOTE 314.-A quotation from Young's "Night Thoughts."

PAGE 203, NOTE 315.-The "Highland Lassie," celebrated in this song, was the Mary Campbell, to whom Burns was at one time engaged, and devotedly attached, and whose premature death, in fact, prevented her becoming Mrs. Burns.

PAGE 204, NOTE 316.-"Composed on the amiable and excellent family of Whitefoord's leaving Ballochmyle, when Sir John's misfortunes obliged him to sell the estate." BURNS. Maria was Miss Whitefoord, afterwards Mrs. Cranstone. The purchaser of the property was Claud Alexander, Esq., whose

sister Burns has celebrated as the Bonnie Lass of Ballochmyle.

PAGE 205, NOTE 317.—The origin of this beautiful song was the accidental meeting of Miss Wilhelmina Alexander, in the grounds attached to the mansion of Ballochmyle, the property of her brother Mr. Claude Alexander. The song was written in 1786, and immediately forwarded by Burns to Miss Alexander, whose delicacy kept it unknown for the time.

PAGE 205, NOTE 318.-I composed this

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