writing; and except when prompted by friendship or gratitude, or, which happens extremely rarely, inspired by the Muse (I know not her name) that presides over epistolary writing, I sit down, when necessitated to write, as I would sit down to beat hemp. Some parts of your letter of the 20th August struck me with the most melancholy concern for the state of your mind at present. Would I could write you a letter of comfort, I would sit down to it with as much pleasure as I would to write an epic poem of my own composition, that should equal the Iliad. Religion, my dear friend, is the true comfort! A strong persuasion in a future state of existence; a proposition so obviously probable, that, setting revelation aside, every nation and people, so far as investigation has reached, for at least near four thousand years, have, in some mode or other, firmly believed it. In vain would we reason and pretend to doubt. I have myself done so to a very daring pitch; but when I reflected that I was opposing the most ardent wishes, and the most darling hopes of good men, and flying in the face of all human belief, in all ages, I was shocked at my own conduct. I know not whether I have ever sent you the following lines, or if you have ever seen them; but it is one of my favourite quotations, which I keep constantly by me in my progress through life, in the language of the book of Job, Spoken of religion: Against the day of battle and of war. 'Tis this, my friend, that streaks our morning bright, 'Tis this that wards the blow, or stills the smart, Within the breast bids purest raptures rise, Bids smiling Conscience spread her cloudless skies.' I have been busy with Zeluco. The doctor is so obliging as to request my opinion of it; and I have been revolving in my mind. some kind of criticisms on novel-writing, but it is a depth beyond my research. I shall, however, digest my thoughts on the subject as well as I can. Zeluco is a most sterling performance. Farewell! A Dieu, le bon Dieu, je vous commende! We have to turn from this serious letter to two of the merriest affairs in which we have any record of Burns being concerned. The first was that which gave rise to his well-known song of Willie brewed a Peck o' Maut. Burns's note upon that ditty gives its history. This air is [Allan] Masterton's; the song, mine. The occasion of it was this: Mr William Nicol, of the High School, Edinburgh, during the autumn vacation being at Moffat, honest Allan-who was at that time on a visit to Dalswinton-and I went to pay Nicol a visit. We had such a joyous meeting, that Mr Masterton and I agreed, each in our own way, that we should celebrate the business.' WILLIE BREWED A PECK O' MAUT. O Willie brewed a peck o' maut, And Rob and Allan cam to pree: Three blither hearts that lee-lang night We are na fou', we're nae that fou', Here are we met, three merry boys, It is the moon, I ken her horn, That's blinkin' in the lift sae hie; Wha first shall rise to gang awa', A cuckold, coward loon is he! 1 He is the king amang us three!2 taste Currie's note upon this song, written ten years after its composition, concludes with a sentence which says all that a generous moralist would desire to be said on the ultra-merry meeting described by the bard. These three honest fellows-all men of uncommon talents-are now all under the turf? The second affair alluded to was one in which some of the Nithsdale gentlemen of Burns's acquaintance were concerned. Our bard, in introducing the ballad composed on the occasion, gives the following traditional recital:-'In the train of Anne of Denmark, when she came to Scotland with our James VI., there came over also a Danish gentleman of gigantic stature and great 1 In Johnson's Museum Evidently a mistake. 2 See Appendix, No. 14. 'Wha first beside his chair shall fa'.' prowess, and a matchless champion of Bacchus. He had a little ebony whistle, which at the commencement of the orgies he laid on the table, and whoever was the last able to blow it, everybody else being disabled by the potency of the bottle, was to carry off the whistle as a trophy of victory. The Dane produced credentials of his victories, without a single defeat, at the courts of Copenhagen, Stockholm, Moscow, Warsaw, and several of the petty courts in Germany; and challenged the Scots Bacchanalians to the alternative of trying his prowess, or else of acknowledging their inferiority. After many overthrows on the part of the Scots, the Dane was encountered by Sir Robert Lawrie of Maxwelton, ancestor of the present worthy baronet of that name; who, after three days and three nights' hard contest, left the Scandinavian under the table, "And blew on the whistle his requiem shrill." Sir Walter, son to Sir Robert before mentioned, afterwards lost the whistle to Walter Riddel of Glenriddel, who had married a sister of Sir Walter's.'1 The whistle being now in the possession of Captain Riddel, Burns's neighbour at Friars' Carse, it was resolved that he should submit it to an amicable contest, involving, besides himself, two other descendants of the conqueror of the Scandinavian-namely, Mr Fergusson of Craigdarroch, and Sir Robert Lawrie of Maxwelton, then M.P. for Dumfriesshire. The meeting was to take place at Friars' Carse on Friday the 16th of October. The historical associations connected with the whistle would have been sure to excite an interest in the bosom of the poet: so magnificent a frolic captivated his imagination. We have the expression of this " There are some odd blunders in the legend of the Whistle, which a pedigree of the Maxwelton family in my possession enables me to mention. There was no Sir Robert Lawrie of Maxwelton prior to or during the reign of James VI. Stephen, the third son of John Lawrie, the first of the family on record, and an inhabitant of Dumfries, purchased the lands of Maxwelton from the Earl of Glencairn in 1614. He was succeeded by his son John, who died in the year 1649; and his son and heir, Robert, was created a baronet on the 27th March 1685. By his second wife, Jean Riddel, daughter of the Laird of Minto, he had three sons and four daughters, of whom Catherine was married to Walter Riddel of Glenriddel, and Anne to Alexander Fergusson of Craigdarroch. His son Robert was killed, when a lad, by a fall from his horse in 1702. So the story of Queen Anne's drunken Dane may be regarded as a groundless fable, unless such a person came over in the train of Prince George of Denmark, the husband of our last Queen Anne, which is not very probable.'-Charles K. Sharpe, in 2d edition of Johnson's Musical Museum (1839) iv. 362. It is evidently, nevertheless, to the first baronet that the legend recorded by Burns refers, as his second successor was a son, Sir Walter, a contemporary of Walter Riddel of Glenriddel. The story had probably some such foundation as that described, though incorrectly stated as to time. latter feeling in a letter which he addressed that day on a trivial piece of business TO CAPTAIN RIDDEL, CARS E. ELLISLAND, 16th Oct. 1789.1 SIR-Big with the idea of this important day at Friars' Carse, I have watched the elements and skies, in the full persuasion that they would announce it to the astonished world by some phenomena of terrific portent. Yesternight until a very late hour did I wait with anxious horror for the appearance of some comet firing half the sky; or aërial armies of sanguinary Scandinavians darting athwart the startled heavens, rapid as the ragged lightning, and horrid as those convulsions of nature that bury nations. The elements, however, seem to take the matter very quietly: they did not even usher in this morning with triple suns and a shower of blood, symbolical of the three potent heroes, and the mighty claret-shed of the day. For me, as Thomson in his Winter says of the storm-I shall 'Hear astonished, and astonished sing.' The whistle and the man I sing, The man that won the whistle, &c. Here are we met, three merry boys, Wha first shall rise to gang awa', He is the king amang us three. To leave the heights of Parnassus, and come to the humble vale of prose. I have some misgivings that I take too much upon me, when I request you to get your guest, Sir Robert Lawrie, to frank the two enclosed covers for me; the one of them, to Sir William Cunningham of Robertland, Bart., at Kilmarnock-the other, to Mr Allan Masterton, writing-master, Edinburgh. The first has a kindred claim on Sir Robert, as being a brother baronet, and 1 Burns, in his notes on Scottish song, gives Friday, 16th October 1790,' as the date of the Whistle-contest. It is certainly an error as to the year. It will be admitted that he is less likely to have made a mistake in dating a letter, than in making a statement at the distance of a few years. Besides, his date, Friday, 16th October 1790,' carries error on its own face, for the 16th of October 1790 was not a Friday, though the 16th of October 1789 was. There exists a letter of Robert Ainslie to Mrs M'Lehose, dated Dumfries, 18th October 1790, in which he tells of having been for several days with Burns at Ellisland, but says nothing of a whistle-contest on the 16th. likewise a keen Foxite; the other is one of the worthiest men in the world, and a man of real genius; so, allow me to say, he has a fraternal claim on you. I want them franked for to-morrow, as I cannot get them to the post to-night. I shall send a servant again for them in the evening. Wishing that your head may be crowned with laurels to-night, and free from aches to-morrow, I have the honour to be, sir, your deeply indebted, humble servant, R. B. It appears that, after this letter had been received by Glenriddel, a note was sent to Burns, inviting him to join the party at Carse. He immediately replied in characteristic fashion : The king's poor blackguard slave am I, Or else the devil's in it! R. B.1 He was, accordingly, present, if not at the dinner, at the compotation which followed; and the whole affair has been by him chronicled in the most glowing phraseology in his poem THE WHISTLE. I sing of a whistle, a whistle of worth, Was brought to the court of our good Scottish king, Old Loda, still rueing the arm of Fingal, Old poets have sung, and old chronicles tell, 1 From the original, which was lately found in Craigdarroch House, thus endorsed: 'Wrote by Mr Burns, October 1789, upon a card being sent to him to come to Glenriddel's at Carse, to drink a cheerful glass with Sir Robert Lawrie, Mr Alexander Fergusson, and Glenriddel, upon the meeting of drinking for the Dane's whistle, and gained by Alexander Fergusson.' 2 See Ossian's Caric-thura.-B. |