Robert Burns [antikvár]

LIFE Bom at Alloway, near Ayr, 25 January. 1759 I was bom a very poor man's son. My father was gardener to a worthy gentleman of small estate. Had he continued in that station, I must have marched off to be one of the little underlings about a farm-house; but it was his dearest wish and prayer to have it in his power to keep his children under his own eye till they could discern between good and eviL At Mount Oliphant. 1766 So with the assistance of his generous master, my father ventured on a small farm on his estate. Though it cost the schoolmaster some thrashings, I made an excellent English scholar; and by the time I was ten or eleven years of age, I was a critic in substantives, verbs, and particles. In my infant and boyish days too, I owed much to an old woman who resided in the family. She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, and other trtmipery. This cultivated the latent seeds of poetry. My father's generous master died; the farm proved a ruinous bargain; and to clench the misfortune, we fell into the hands of a factor, who sat for the piaure I have drawn of one in my Tale of Tiva Dogs. We retrenched our expenses. We Hved very poorly: I was a dextrous ploughman for my age. This kind of life - the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing moil of a galley-slave, brought me to my sixteenth year; a Uttle before which I first committed the sin of Rhyme. In my fifteenth autumn, my parmer [in harvesting] was a bewitching creature, a year younger than myself Among her love-inspiring qualities, she sung