the ordinary celebration of the communion. Most readers will recollect the features of this scene, as so graphically touched by the poet "Then in we go to see the show: On every side they're gatherin, Some carrying deals, some chairs and stools, And some are busy bletherin. "Here some are thinking on their sins, And some upon their claes; Ane curses feet that fyled his shins, Anither sighs and prays: On this hand sits a chosen swatch, Wi' screwed up, grace-proud faces; On that a set o' chaps at watch, "Aff and up the Cowgate," The house seen in the view to the right of the church, is a plain, but not uncomfortable inn, denominated the Whitefoord Arms. It was a favourite resort of Burns, who, on the back window of one of the upper rooms, scribbled an amusing epitaph on the host, John Dow, in which he made out the religion of that worthy to be a mere comparative appreciation of his various liquors. From the same back window he could converse in the language of the eyes with his Jean, whose father's house was immediately behind, in the lane denominated the Cowgate. The reader will recollect an allusion to this lane in the Holy Fair. Common Sense, who, on the appearance of a particular minister in the tent, is said to have gonewas not, it appears, the abstraction usually so called, but the bodily form of Dr John Mackenzie, (afterwards of Irvine), who had carried on a controversy with Burns, under that assumed name. From a part of the church-yard opposite to that from which the view is taken, a back door opened into the hostlery of old Nanse Tinnock, in whose house the poet promises to drink the health of Pitt, "nine times a-week." Nanse is long dead and gone, but the door still remains, a memorial of the old days of tent-preaching in Mauchline. The design of this access was to enable the congregation to hold a more ready communication with the bread and cheese and foaming ale, which they required for the solacement of their physical system on these occasions. Mrs Tinnock is described as having been a true ale-wife, in the proverbial sense of the word-close, discreet, civil, and no tale-teller. When any neighbouring wife came, asking if her John was here, "Oh no,” Nanse would reply, shaking money in her pocket as she spoke; "he's no here,” implying to the querist that the husband was not in the house, while she meant to herself that he was not among her half-pence-thus keeping the word of promise to the ear, but breaking it to the hope. Her house was one of two stories, and has a front towards the street by which Burns must have entered Mauchline from Mossgiel. The date over the door is 1744. It is remembered, however, that Nanse never could understand how the poet should have talked of enjoying himself in her house "nine times a-week." "The lad," she said, "hardly ever drank three half-mutchkins under her roof in his life." Nanse, probably, had never heard of the poetical licence. The house of Mr Gavin Hamilton, now possessed by his son, Mr Alexander Hamilton, forms the most conspicuous object in the engraving. The taller part of the edifice to the left, is a portion of the castle formerly connected with the Priory of Mauchline: the rest of the house is comparatively modern. Mr Gavin Hamilton was a writer, or legal practitioner, of highly respectable character—a man of spirit and intelligence, generous, affable and enlightened.* Unfortunately, his religious practice did not square with the notions of the then minister of Mauchline, the "Daddy Auld” already alluded to, who, in 1785, is found in the session-records to have summoned him for rebuke, on the four following charges:-1. Unnecessary absence from church, for five consecutive Sundays (apparently the result of some dispute about a poor's rate); 2. Setting out on a journey to Carrick on a Sunday; 3. Habitual, if not total neglect of family worship; 4. Writing an abusive letter to the session in reference to some of their former proceedings respecting him. Strange though this prosecution may seem, it was strictly accordant with the right assumed by clergymen at that period to inquire into the private habits of parishioners. It was fortunately, however, mixed up with some personal motives in the members of the session, which were so apparent to the Presbytery, to which Mr Hamilton appealed, that that reverend body ordered the proceedings to be stopped, and all notice of them expunged from the records. Prepossessions of more kinds than one induced Burns to let loose his irreverent muse in satire against the persecutors of Mr Hamilton: and the result was several poems, in which it is but too apparent that religion itself suffers in common with those whom he holds up as abusing it. About two years after, when Burns had commenced the Edinburgh chapter of his life, a new offence was committed by Mr Hamilton. He had, on a Sunday morning, ordered a servant to take in some potatoes which happened to have been left out in the garden after being dug. This came to the ears of the minister, and Mr Hamilton was summoned to answer for the offence. Some ludicrous details occur in the session-records. It is there alleged that two and a half rows of potatoes were dug on the morning in question, by Mr Hamilton's express order, and carried home by his daughter: nay, so keen had the spirit of persecution been, that the rows had been formally measured, and found to be each eleven feet long; so that twenty-seven feet and a half altogether had been dug. The Presbytery or Synod treated this prosecution in the same way as the former, and Burns did not overlook it in his poems. He alludes to it in Holy Willie's Prayer, when he makes that individual implore a curse upon Mr Hamilton's and on several other occasions. "basket and his store, Kail and potatoes"— In Mr Hamilton's house, is shown the room in which Burns composed the satirical * Mr Lockhart, in his Life of Burns, both editions, has given a somewhat incorrect account of Mr Hamilton, his family, and the causes of his quarrel with the kirk-session of Mauchline. His father was a son of Hamilton of Kype in Lanarkshire, and it was only by his wife that he was in any way connected with the district of Carrick; she being a daughter of Kennedy of Daljerrok. It is related of the laird of Kype that he was once paying a visit to the Duke of Hamilton, when his grace inquired in what degree he was related to the ducal house, and whereabouts in the family tree the race of Kype was to be found. "It would be needless to seek the root among the branches," answered the haughty laird, who perhaps had some pretensions to be of the principal stock of the Hamiltons, or knew at least that the claims of the ducal house to the chiefship were by no means clear. CASSILLIS CASTLE AND CASSILLIS DOWNANS. 23 poem entitled the Calf. He had called upon Mr Hamilton on his way to church, and found him confined with gout, but was desired by him to bring home a note of the text on which the minister should preach. Mr Hamilton's writing-room had then a backdoor leading to the church. By this way Burns entered on his return, and finding a sister of Mrs Hamilton writing a note at the business desk, requested a pen, and, sitting down on the other side, scribbled in a few minutes one of the most bitter jeux d'esprits he ever penned. This room is further remarkable as the one in which the poet was married, that ceremony being rather of a legal than of a religious complexion. From the sessionrecord, it would appear that the ceremony took place on the 3d of August, 1788, and that Mr Burns, being informed that in irregular marriages it was customary for the bridegroom to pay a small fine to the poor of the parish, gave a guinea for this purpose.* * CASSILLIS CASTLE AND CASSILLIS DOWNANS. THE poem of Halloween opens, it will be recollected, thus "Upon that night, when fairies light On Cassillis Downans dance, In the accompanying print, this favourite scene of fairy sport is seen rising behind the ancient mansion from which it takes its name. The castle stands on a beautiful haugh on the left bank of the Doon, about a mile from the parish-village of Dalrymple. The lands, and probably also the castle of Cassillis, appear to have passed, in the reign of David II., from a family named Montgomery, into the possession of Sir John Kennedy of Dunure, direct male ancestor of the present Marquis of Ailsa. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, it must have been the chief residence of this powerful race, as David, third Lord Kennedy, was, about 1510, created Earl of Cassillis. This nobleman fell at Flodden, with many of his followers; and there is still to be seen, in front of the castle, a very large plane tree, underneath whose melancholy boughs his surviving people are said to have spent several weeks in lamentation of their own and their country's calamity—for which reason, it bears the appellation of the Dule Tree. Tradition tells a tale of another kind in connection with Cassillis castle. While John, the sixth Earl, was attending the Assembly of Divines at Westminster in 1643, his consort is said to have been seduced away from this house by a party of gipsies, supposed to have been headed by a lover in disguise; the consequence of which imprudence was her confinement for life in a tower belonging to her husband in the neighbouring town of Maybole. These circumstances are more particularly related in an old ballad, which is sung to a beautiful air; but it is * Part of the above article appeared, for the first time, in Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 93. |