DEATH OF HIGHLAND MARY. 137 work. When Macpherson came home to breakfast, he asked what had detained him from the yard, and was told that the young man was very poorly. Mary jocularly observed that he had probably taken a little too much after supper last night, and Macpherson, to keep up the badinage, said, "Oh, then, it's just as well, in case of the worst, that I have agreed to purchase that lair in the churchyard; " referring to a place of sepulture which he had just secured for his family-a very important matter in Greenock, as there was no resting-place for the remains of those who did not possess such property, except the corner assigned to strangers and paupers, or a grave obtained by favour from a friend.* The young man's illness proved more serious than was at first supposed, and Mary attended him with great tenderness and assiduity. In a few days Robert began to recover, but, at the same time, Mary drooped, and became seriously unwell. Her friends believed that she suffered from the cast of an evil eye, and recommended her father to go to a cross burn-that is, a place where two burns meet-and select seven smooth stones from the channel, boil them with new milk for a certain time, and then give her the milk to drink! It must be remembered that these were Highland people, and that the Highlanders are to this day full of superstitious notions. The drink was duly prepared, as had been recommended, and given to Mary; but her illness was soon declared to be fever, of a malignant species then prevalent in the town; and, in a few days, the poor girl died. She was buried in the lair which her relative had so recently bought, being the first of the family who was placed in it.' The exact date of Mary's death would * From the Greenock Register of Lairs,' it appears that the plot of ground passed into Peter Macpherson's possession Oct. 12, 1786. appear to be the 21st of October 1786, and to have taken place in the lane called Minch Collop Close. 'Mary's parents and other near relations, who afterwards settled in Greenock, were of such a grade of mind and strain of sentiment, as to shrink for many years from all acknowledgement of Burns as her lover. It cannot be surprising that a man who could think of administering a decoction of pebbles as a cure for his daughter's illness, was narrow-spirited enough to burn the letters of a great poet, and forbid his name to be mentioned in the family. The mother, who was a good, kind-hearted creature, was more relenting. She learned to sing the song of the "Highland Lassie" to her grandchildren. On being asked by her grand-nephew, Mr. J. C. Douglas, if she thought that Mary would have married Burns, she said that she could not tell what might have happened if Mary had survived, but she Idid not think her sweet lassie could have ever been happy with so wild and profane a genius as Burns--yet, she would immediately add, that he was "a real warmhearted chield," for such was the impression he had made upon her when he had subsequently paid her a visit. * * * There is, indeed, all desirable reason to believe that Mary was of a character to have graced, if not even rectified, a companion spirit such as Burns— who, in subsequent years, might well have imagined that with her he could have been something different from what he was.'* Mrs. Campbell's estimate of her daughter's lover proves that she must have been a shrewd woman. At this juncture Burns had received Dr. Blacklock's letter, and was turning over in his mind the various * Chambers. BURNS HEARS OF HIGHLAND MARY'S DEATH. 139 suggestions it had excited. He was still undecided about his West Indian voyage; the departure of the vessel in which he had proposed to sail had been delayed; and he does not seem to have abandoned his scheme until some time between the 30th of October and the 18th of November, as would appear from his letters of those dates to Major Logan and Mr. Robert Muir, of Kilmarnock. He had just written his poem of 'The Brigs of Ayr,' and had been introduced to Professor Dugald Stewart, and his (late) pupil Lord Daer, son of the Earl of Selkirk; and, as Lord Daer was the first scion of nobility to whom the Ayrshire ploughman' had spoken, the fact of sitting down with him at the same table was one to be remembered and celebrated in verse: This wot ye all whom it concerns, I, Rhymer Robin, alias Burns, October twenty-third, A ne'er-to-be-forgotten day, Sae far I sprackled up the brae, 6 I dinner'd wi' a Lord! And so on through six stanzas of self-glorification, and crooking of the pregnant hinges' of the mental 'knee' before this young nobleman. The constrained enjoyment of this important repast was not damped by the knowledge that his Highland Mary had died two days previously. The news, however, shortly reached him at Mossgiel:- Mrs. Begg remembers that, after the work of the season was over, and she had, as usual, taken to the big wheel, in which either her mother or one of her sisters was assisting her-Robert and Gilbert being also presenta letter for the former was handed in. He went to the window to open and read it, and she was struck by the look of agony which was the consequence. He went out without uttering a syllable. The family learned nothing of the facts of the case till after the publication of some of the songs written upon Mary; and even then they became aware of this strange passage in their brother's history only as something too sacred for discussion or remark.' The letter, doubtless, was from Robert Campbell, Mary's brother, and written in accordance with her dying wishes. CHAPTER XIII. ROMANCE AND REALITY. The other side of the Question-The Naked Truth-Ugly UCH is the story of Highland Mary: and, so far as she is concerned, it is a very pretty story, romantic and pathetic. But, strip it of its pretty romance, and what are the naked facts? Very ugly indeed, for the nude truth is not always beautiful. Hitherto, we have been carefully keeping out of sight a very painful narrative that was marching side by side with Highland Mary's history, and which must now make its appearance. That it does so to the eternal shame of Burns, is a discovery for which I am not altogether accountable; for, so far as facts go, I have been able to add but little to what has been already brought forward by Mr. Douglas and Mr. Robert Chambers, and it is these two countrymen of Burns, and admirers of his great genius, who, in the cause of truth and justice, have feathered the shafts to pierce through that false shield of poetical glamour under which he attempted to shroud his very doubtful attachment for Highland Mary. That attachment, which is now so world |