system of hospitality, then flourishing, rendered it difficult for the most soberly inclined guest to rise from any man's board in the same trim that he sat down to it. The farmer, if Burns was seen passing, left his reapers, and trotted by the side of Jenny Geddes, until he could persuade the bard that the day was hot enough to demand an extralibation. If he entered an inn at midnight, after all the inmates were in bed, the news of his arri val circulated from the cellar to the garret; and ere ten minutes had elapsed, the landlord and all his guests were assembled round the ingle; the largest punchbowl was produced; and

"Be ours this night-who knows what comes to-morrow ?" was the language of every eye in the circle that welcomed him.* The stateliest gentry of the county, whenever they had especial merriment in view, called in the wit and eloquence of Burns to enliven their carousals. The famous song of The Whistle of worth commemorates a scene of this kind, more picturesque in some of its circumstances than every day occurred, yet strictly in character with the usual tenor of life among this jovial squirearchy. Three gentlemen of ancient descent, had met to determine, by a solemn drinking match, who should possess the Whistle, which a common ancestor of them all had earned ages before, in a Bacchanalian contest of the same sort with a noble toper from Denmark; and the poet was summoned to watch over and celebrate the issue of the debate.

These particulars are from a letter of David Macculloch, Esq., who, being at this period a very young gentleman, a passionate admirer of Burns, and a capital singer of many of his serious songs, used often, in his enthusiasm, to accompany the poet on his professional excursions.

"Then up rose the bard like a prophet in drink,
Craigdarroch shall soar when creation shall sink;
But if thou would'st flourish immortal in rhime,
Come, one bottle more, and have at the sublime."

Nor, as has already been hinted, was he safe from temptations of this kind, even when he was at home, and most disposed to enjoy in quiet the society of his wife and children. Lion-gazers from all quarters beset him; they eat and drank at his cost, and often went away to criticise him and his fare, as if they had done Burns and his black bowl* great honour in condescending to be entertained for a single evening, with such company and such liquor.

We have on record various glimpses of him, as he appeared while he was half-farmer, half-exciseman; and some of these present him in attitudes and aspects, on which it would be pleasing to dwell. For example, the circumstances under which the verses on The Wounded Hare were written, are mentioned generally by the poet himself. James Thomson, son of the occupier of a farm adjoining Elliesland, told Allan Cunningham, that it was he who wounded the animal. "Burns,' said this 66 person, was in the custom, when at home, of strolling by himself in the twilight every evening, along the Nith, and by the march between his land and ours. The hares often came and nibbled our wheat braird; and once, in the gloaming, it was in April,-I got a shot at one, and wounded her: she ran bleeding by Burns, who

* Burns's famous black punchbowl, of Inverary marble, was the nuptial gift of his father-in-law, Mr Armour, who himself fashioned it. After passing through many hands, it is now in excellent keeping, that of Alexander Hastie, Esq., of London.

was pacing up and down by himself, not far from me. He started, and with a bitter curse, ordered me out of his sight, or he would throw me instantly into the Nith. And had I stayed, I'll warrant he would have been as good as his wordthough I was both young and strong."

Among other curious travellers who found their way about this time to Elliesland, was Captain Grose, the celebrated antiquarian, whom Burns briefly describes as

"A fine fat fodgel wight

Of stature short, but genius bright;"

and who has painted his own portrait, both with pen and pencil, at full length, in his Olio. This gentleman's taste and pursuits are ludicrously set forth in the copy of verses

"Hear, Land o' Cakes and brither Scots,
Frae Maidenkirk to John O'Groats,

A chield's amang ye takin' notes ;" &c.

and, inter alia, his love of port is not forgotten. Grose and Burns had too much in common, not to become great friends. The poet's accurate knowledge of Scottish phraseology and customs, was of great use to the researches of the humorous antiquarian; and, above all, it is to their acquaintance that we owe Tam o' Shanter. Burns told the story as he had heard it in Ayrshire, in a letter to the Captain, and was easily persuaded to versify it. The poem was the work of one day; and Mrs Burns well remembers the circumstances. He spent most of the day on his favourite walk by the river, where, in the afternoon, she joined him with some of her children. "He was busily engaged crooning to himsell, and Mrs Burns perceiving that her presence was an interruption, loitered behind with

her little ones among the broom.

Her attention

was presently attracted by the strange and wild gesticulations of the bard, who, now at some distance, was agonized with an ungovernable access of joy. He was reciting very loud, and with the tears rolling down his cheeks, those animated verses which he had just conceived :

'Now Tam! O Tam! had thae been queans
A' plump and strappin' in their teens ;
Their sarks, instead of creeshie flannen,
Been snaw-white seventeen-hunder * linen,-
Thir breeks o' mine, my only pair,
That ance were plush o' good blue hair,
I wad hae gi'en them off my hurdies,
For ae blink o' the bonnie burdies!'"+

To the last Burns was of opinion that Tam o' Shanter was the best of all his productions; and although it does not always happen that poet and public come to the same conclusion on such points, I believe the decision in question has been all but unanimously approved of.

The admirable execution of the piece, so far as it goes, leaves nothing to wish for; the only criticism has been, that the catastrophe appears unworthy of the preparation. Burns might have avoided this error,-if error it be,-had he followed not the Ayrshire, but the Galloway, edition of the legend. According to that tradition, the Cutty Sark who attracted the special notice of the bold intruder on the Satanic ceremonial, was no

"The manufacturer's term for a fine linen, woven on

a reed of 1700 divisions."-Cromek.

The above is quoted from a MS. journal of Cromek. Mr M'Diarmid confirms the statement, and adds, that the poet, having committed the verses to writing on the top of his sod-dyke over the water, came into the house, and read them immediately in high triumph at the fireside.

other than the pretty wife of a farmer residing in the same village with himself, and of whose unholy propensities no suspicion had ever been whispered. The Galloway Tam being thoroughly sobered by terror, crept to his bed the moment he reached home after his escape, and said nothing of what had happened to any of his family. He was awakened in the morning with the astounding intelligence that his horse had been found dead in the stable, and a woman's hand, clotted with blood, adhering to the tail. Presently it was reported, that CuttySark had burnt her hand grievously over-night, and was ill in bed, but obstinately refused to let her wound be examined by the village leech. Hereupon Tam, disentangling the bloody hand from the hair of his defunct favourite's tail, proceeded to the residence of the fair witch, and forcibly pulling her stump to view, showed his trophy, and narrated the whole circumstances of the adventure. The poor victim of the black-art was constrained to confess her guilty practices in presence of the priest and the laird, and was forthwith burnt alive, under their joint auspices, within watermark on the Solway Frith.

Such, Mr Cunningham informs me, is the version of this story current in Galloway and Dumfries-shire but it may be doubted whether, even if Burns was acquainted with it, he did not choose wisely in adhering to the Ayrshire legend, as he had heard it in his youth. It is seldom that tales of popular superstition are effective in proportion to their completeness of solution and catastrophe. On the contrary, they, like the creed to which they belong, suffer little in a picturesque point of view, by exhibiting a maimed and fragmentary character, that in nowise satisfies strict taste, either