Part 11 (1/2)
A s.h.i.+ning-beached crescent of country facing to the sunset, and rising higher and higher to the east till it becomes mountain, is the county of Ayrs.h.i.+re, fair and famous among the southern Scotch highlands. To a sixty-mile measure by air, between its north and south promontories, it stretches a curving coast of ninety; and when Robert Burns strolled over its breezy uplands, he saw always beautiful and mysterious silver lines of land thrusting themselves out into the mists of the sea, pointing to far-off island peaks, seeming sometimes to bridge and sometimes to wall vistas ending only in sky. These lines are as beautiful, elusive, and luring now as then, and in the inalienable loyalty of nature bear testimony to-day to their lover.
This is the greatest crown of the hero and the poet. Other great men hold fame by failing records which moth and fire destroy. The places that knew them know them no more when they are dead. Marble and canvas and parchment league in vain to keep green the memory of him who did not love and consecrate by his life-blood, in fight or in song, the soil where he trod. But for him who has done this,--who fought well, sang well,--the morning cloud, and the wild rose, and broken blades of gra.s.s under men's feet, become immortal witnesses; so imperishable, after all, are what we are in the habit of calling the ”perishable things of this earth.”
More than two hundred years ago, when the followers and holders of the different baronies of Ayrs.h.i.+re compared respective dignities and values, they made a proverb which ran:--
”Carrick for a man; Kyle for a coo; Cunningham for b.u.t.ter and cheese; Galloway for woo.”
Before the nineteenth century set in, the proverb should have been changed; for Kyle is the land through which ”Bonnie Doon” and Irvine Water run, and there has been never a man in all Carrick of whom Carrick can be proud as is Kyle of Robert Burns. It has been said that a copy of his poems lies on every Scotch cottager's shelf, by the side of the Bible. This is probably not very far from the truth. Certain it is, that in the villages where he dwelt there seems to be no man, no child, who does not apparently know every detail of the life he lived there, nearly a hundred years ago.
”Will ye be drivin' over to Tarbolton in the morning?” said the pretty young vice-landlady of the King's Arms at Ayr, when I wrote my name in her visitors' book late one Sat.u.r.day night.
”What made you think of that?” I asked, amused.
”And did ye not come on account o' Burns?” she replied. ”There's been a many from your country here by reason of him this summer. I think you love him in America a'most as well as we do oursel's. It's vary seldom the English come to see anythin' aboot him. They've so many poets o' their own, I suppose, is the reason o' their not thinkin'
more o' Burns.”
All that there was unflattering in this speech I forgave by reason of the girl's sweet low voice, pretty gray eyes, and gentle, refined hospitality. She might have been the daughter of some country gentleman, welcoming a guest to the house; and she took as much interest in making all the arrangements for my drive to Tarbolton the next morning as if it had been a pleasure excursion for herself. It is but a dull life she leads, helping her widowed mother keep the King's Arms,--dull, and unprofitable too, I fear; for it takes four men-servants and seven women to keep up the house, and I saw no symptom of any coming or going of customers in it. A stillness as of a church on weekdays reigned throughout the establishment. ”At the races and when the yeomanry come,” she said, there was something to do; but ”in the winter nothing, except at the times of the county b.a.l.l.s. You know, ma'am, we've many county families here,” she remarked with gentle pride, ”and they all stop with us.”
There is a compensation to the lower orders of a society where rank and castes are fixed, which does not readily occur at first sight to the democratic mind naturally rebelling against such defined distinctions. It is very much to be questioned whether, in a republic, the people who find themselves temporarily lower down in the social scale than they like to be or expect to stay, feel, in their consciousness of the possibility of rising, half so much pride or satisfying pleasure as do the lower cla.s.ses in England, for instance, in their relations with those whom they serve, whose dignity they seem to share by ministering to it.
The way from Ayr to Tarbolton must be greatly changed since the day when the sorrowful Burns family trod it, going from the Mount Oliphant farm to that of Lochlea. Now it is for miles a smooth road, on which horses' hoofs ring merrily, and neat little stone houses, with pretty yards, line it on both sides for some distance. The ground rises almost immediately, so that the dwellers in these little suburban houses get fine off-looks seaward and a wholesome breeze in at their windows. The houses are built joined by twos, with a yard in common.
They have three rooms besides the kitchen, and they rent for twenty-five pounds a year; so no industrious man of Ayr need be badly lodged. Where the houses leave off, hedges begin,--thorn and beech, untrimmed and luxuriant, with great outbursts of white honeysuckle and sweet-brier at intervals. As far as the eye could see were waving fields of wheat, oats, and ”rye-gra.s.s,” which last being just ripe was of a glorious red color. The wheat-fields were rich and full, sixty bushels to the acre. Oats, which do not take so kindly to the soil and air, produce sometimes only forty-eight.
Burns was but sixteen when his father moved from Mount Oliphant to the Lochlea farm, in the parish of Tarbolton. It was in Tarbolton that he first went to dancing-school, joined the Freemasons, and organized the club which, no doubt, cost him dear, ”The Bachelors of Tarbolton.” In the beginning this club consisted of only five members besides Burns and his brother; afterward it was enlarged to sixteen. Burns drew up the rules; and the last one--the tenth--is worth remembering, as an unconscious defining on his part of his ideal of human life:--
”Every man proper for a member of this society must have a friendly, honest, open heart, above everything dirty or mean, and must be a professed lover of one or more of the s.e.x. The proper person for this society is a cheerful, honest-hearted lad, who, if he has a friend that is true, and a mistress that is kind, and as much wealth as genteelly to make both ends meet, is just as happy as this world can make him.”
Walking to-day through the narrow streets of Tarbolton, it is wellnigh impossible to conceive of such rollicking good cheer having made abiding-place there. It is a close, packed town, the houses of stone or white plaster,--many of them low, squalid, with thatched roofs and walls awry; those that are not squalid are grim. The streets are winding and tangled; the people look poor and dull. As I drove up to the ”Crown Inn,” the place where the Tarbolton Freemasons meet now, and where some of the relics of Burns's Freemason days are kept, the ”first bells” were ringing in the belfry of the old church opposite, and the landlord of the inn replied with a look of great embarra.s.sment to my request to see the Burns relics,--
”It's the Sabbath, mem.”
Then he stood still, scratching his head for a few moments, and then set off, at full run, down the street without another word.
”He's gone to the head Mason,” explained the landlady. ”It takes three to open the chest. I think ye'll na see it the day.” And she turned on her heel with a frown and left me.
”They make much account o' the Sabbath in this country,” said my driver. ”Another day ye'd do better.”
Thinking of Burns's lines to the ”Unco Guid,” I strolled over into the churchyard opposite, to await the landlord's return. The bell-ringer had come down, and followed me curiously about among the graves. One very old stone had carved upon it two high-top boots; under these, two low shoes; below these, two kneeling figures, a man and a woman, cut in high relief; no inscription of any sort.
”What can it mean?” I asked.
The bell-ringer could not tell; it was so old n.o.body knew anything about it. His mother, now ninety years of age, remembered seeing it when she was a child, and it looked just as old then as now.
”There's a many strange things in this graveyard,” said he; and then he led me to a corner where, enclosed by swinging chains and stone posts, was a carefully kept square of green turf, on which lay a granite slab. ”Every year comes the money to pay for keeping that gra.s.s green,” he said, ”and no name to it. It's been going on that way for fifty years.”
The stone-wall around the graveyard was dilapidated, and in parts was falling down.
”I suppose this old wall was here in Burns's time,” I said.
”Ay, yes,” said the bell-ringer; and pointing to a low, thatched cottage just outside it, ”and yon shop--many's the time he's been in it playin' his tricks.”