APPENDIX. No. 14 (p. 56).-WILLIE BREWED A PECK O' MAUT. The date of this song is ascertained to be not later than the 16th October 1789, because in a letter of Burns of that date, he quotes two verses of it. As the vacation of the High School at that time extended from about the 13th August to the 25th of September, the date of the song may be ascertained as within that period of the year. A doubt, however, has arisen regarding the locality. Dr Currie stated that the meeting took place at Laggan, a farm purchased by Mr Nicol in Nithsdale, on the recommendation of Burns.' Allan Cunningham adopts this statement-gives Dunscore as the parochial situation of Lagganand adds: 'It [the song] was composed to commemorate the house-heating, as entering upon possession of a new house is called in Scotland. William Nicol made the browst strong and nappy; and Allan Masterton, then on a visit at Dalswinton, crossed the Nith, and with the poet and his celebrated punch-bowl, reached Laggan "A wee before the sun gaed down." The sun, however, rose on their carousal, if the tradition of the land may be trusted.' It is true that Nicol purchased a small estate called Laggan, not in the parish of Dunscore, which was Burns's parish, but in the adjacent one of Glencairn, and about a mile and a half from Maxwelton House. But there is good evidence that he did not do so till the year following the composition of the song. We are furnished with a note of a disposition by William Riddell of Commieston, W.S., to William Nicol, one of the masters of the High School, Edinburgh, of the lands of Meikle and Little Laggan, lying in the barony of Snaid, parish of Glencairn, and shire of Dumfries, dated 26 March 1790, and registered in the books of Council and Session, 2 April 1790.' It might be supposed possible that Nicol had obtained possession of his property before the date of the disposition, perhaps at the exchanging of missives of agreement, and that thus there might be a house-heating at Laggan in autumn 1789. But in a letter of Burns to Nicol, February 9, 1790, there occurs the following passage:-'I hope Ned [Nicol's son] is a good scholar, and will come out to gather nuts with me next harvest.' Burns would assuredly not have written precisely in this manner, if Nicol had by that time acquired a country residence for himself and his family within four or five miles of Ellisland, and as well provided with nuts as Ellisland itself. We therefore conclude that Burns's note upon the song is to be accepted as intimating Moffat as the scene of the meeting, and that the statements of Currie and Cunningham are mistakes. Nicol's mansion at Laggan was an exceedingly humble one, a room or rather kitchen in one end, and a lair for a cow in the other-in short, a mere hut. He, however, added a good room, so that the house has now tolerable accommodations for a farmer. It is far from unlikely that Burns and he had merry-meetings in this remote upland mansion; but they must have been at a date considerably posterior to the composition of the Peck o' Maut. There is a hazel-copsc at the place, establishing the fact that Ned was independent of the Ellisland coppices at the vacation of 1790 and thereafter. No. 15 (p. 64).-TO MARY IN HEAVEN. Two particulars are to be noted regarding Mr Lockhart's narration-that it assigns September as the date of the incident, and represents evening as the time; whereas we have seen powerful reasons for placing the death of Highland Mary in the latter part of October, and the poem itself seems to imply morning 'Thou ling'ring star, with less'ning ray, That lov'st to greet the early morn, As anything contradictory of theory of the October date tends to 1 In an advertisement announcing the intended sale of parts of the estate of Maxwelton, which appears in an Edinburgh newspaper of 21st November 1786, 'Lot VII.' is composed of the lands of Craiglyrian, about 790 acres, whereof 17 are arable, and 'the lands of Meikle and Little Laggans, consisting of about 284 acres, whereof 69 are arable and 9 meadow-ground; the remainder is good pasture-land, and there is some wood upon these lands.' It is stated that the lands of this lot are let together under a current lease till 1797, at the annual rent of £121, 18s. I have been informed that Nicol paid about £1500 for the Laggans. 1 throw discredit on our whole arrangement of the facts of Burns's life at a very important crisis, we must be excused for having taken what might otherwise appear too much pains to ascertain whether Mrs Burns's anecdote is rightly related as to time, and whether probability does not pronounce in favour of October. We shall at the same time shew that, if we are to receive the anecdote at all, the morning must have been poetically imagined as the time. In the first place, the harvest was late that year. We find in the Scottish newspapers of the time, that, in the middle of October, a great deal of grain was still out even in the favoured district around Falkirk; while a letter from Sanquhar (Burns's neighbourhood), dated the 21st, states that while much was cut, very little was yet got in, owing to the bad weather.' It appears that harvest was commenced by the 8th of September in some districts, but was interrupted by rains, and was not concluded till near the end of the ensuing month. Consequently, the incident might take place in the latter part of October, and still be connected with harvest operations. The second portion of our evidence on the subject is from one of the exact sciences, and appears at once to settle the time of the day-the month-and almost the day of the month. It fully appears that the planet Venus is the one referred to by the poet, for the description applies only to it. Now Venus was in conjunction with the sun, May 30, 1789, and after that became visible as the evening-star towards the end of the summer, reaching its greatest brilliancy in winter. It is therefore certain, that the star which 'loves to greet the early morn' did not at this time 'usher in the day,' and consequently, so far as the time of day alluded to in the poem is concerned, a poetical liberty was taken with truth. On the 21st of September, the sun set at six o'clock, and Venus forty-four minutes thereafter. The planet was, consequently, not to be seen at that time except faintly in the twilight. But on the 21st of October, the sun set in the latitude of Ellisland at 4h 53m, and Venus 1h 3m afterwards. Consequently, Venus would then have begun to assume a brilliant appearance during a short interval after sunset. On that day the moon was four days old, and within eight diameters of Venus.2 The planet would then, of course, be beginning to be dimmed by the moonlight, and this effect would go on increasing till the moon had passed the full-that is, early in November. If, then, we are to set aside the possibility of a later month than October, and keeping in view the all but certainty that Mary was not buried till some time after the 12th of that month, it seems reasonable to conclude, that the barnyard musings of Burns took 1 See Volume I., pp. 252-261, and pp. 320-325. 2 I have to express my obligations to Professor Piazzi Smyth, of the university of Edinburgh, for his kind attention in furnishing these astronomical particulars. place between five and six o'clock of the evening of some day about the 19th or 20th of October, and consequently a very short time after the merry-meeting for the Whistle-contest at Friars' Carse. That a month later than October could have been the date of the incident will, I presume, scarcely be argued for. The moon was at the full on Tuesday the 2d of November, and it could not be till after that day that the first hour of the night would be 'starry,' with Venus in full blaze. By that time, as far as we can gather from the chronicles of the time, the harvest was past. Besides, Mrs Burns might easily mistake September for October, but scarcely for November, a month of such different associations. On this point, the temperature of the time might throw some light, if we could be sure of the exact meaning to be attached to the phrase the frost had set in.' It chances that the temperature of October that year was unusually high, the average at eight o'clock in the evening in Edinburgh being 45° Fahrenheit. The Edinburgh Advertiser of 30th October, speaks of apple-trees and bean-stalks renewing their blossoms in consequence of the extraordinary mildness. On the 19th of October, at eight o'clock in the evening, the thermometer indicated in Edinburgh 51°; on the 20th, at the same hour, 59°; on the 21st, 51° again. The only approach to frost was on the 30th and 31st, when, at eight in the evening, the thermometer was respectively at 33° and 37°. After this, it rose to a more temperate point. Hence it becomes evident, that literal frost did not then exist at any such period of the day. Probably, Mrs Burns merely thought the evening was beginning to be comparatively chilly. If we can admit of this construction being put upon her words, I would be disposed to pitch upon the warmest evening of the little period within which we are confined-for unless the poet had been in a peculiarly excited state, so as to be insensible to external circumstances, which is obviously a different thing from being in a merely pensive state, we must suppose him as not likely to lie down in the open air after sunset, except under favour of some uncommon amount of 'ethereal mildness.' Seeing, on the other hand, how positively inviting to such a procedure would be a temperature of 59°, I leave the subject with scarcely a doubt, that the composition of To Mary in Heaven took place on Tuesday, the 20th of October, and that this was consequently the date of the death of the heroine. No. 16 (p. 217).-THE DEIL'S AWA' WI' THE EXCISEMAN. There may be some flaw in the anecdote so far as this poem is concerned. At least it seems certain that Burns had other prompting for the composition besides his impatience with Lewars, for not only do we see that it is general in its application, but it also |