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Updated: May 10, 2025
A visit to the scenes of the brief passion of the pair is a pleasing incident of our Burns pilgrimage. Coilsfield House is somewhat changed since Mary dwelt beneath its roof a great rambling edifice of gray weather-worn stone with a row of white pillars aligned along its facade, its massive walls embowered in foliage and environed by the grand woods which Burns and Mary knew so well.
She was yet at Coilsfield, and while he was in hiding his heart tortured by the apparent perfidy of Jean and all the countryside condemning his misconduct his intimacy with Mary was renewed; his quickened vision now discerned her endearing attributes, her trust and sympathy were precious in his distress, and awoke in him an affection such as he never felt for any other woman.
It was then a seat of Colonel Hugh Montgomerie, a patron of Burns. The name Coilsfield is derived from Coila, the traditional appellation of the district.
Howitt found at Coilsfield a thorn-tree, called by all the country "Highland Mary's thorn," and believed to be the place of final parting; years ago the tree was notched and broken by souvenir seekers; if it be still in existence the present occupant of Coilsfield is unaware..... Mary remained at Campbelltown during the summer of 1786.
In her infancy her family removed to the vicinage of Dunoon, on the western shore of the Firth, eight miles below Greenock, leaving the oldest daughter at Ardrossan. Mary grew to young womanhood near Dunoon then returned to Ayrshire, and found occupation at Coilsfield, near Tarbolton, where her acquaintance with Burns soon began.
Within a stone's-throw of Mary dwelt Jean Armour, and when the former returned to Coilsfield, he promptly fell in love with Jean, and solaced himself with her more buxom and compliant charms. It was a year or so later, when his intercourse with Jean had burdened him with grief and shame, that the tender and romantic affection for Mary came into his life.
I went first to the monument, within which on a centre table are the two volumes of the Bible given by Burns to Highland Mary when they "lived one day of parting love" beneath the hawthorn of Coilsfield.
He told a lady that he first saw Mary while walking in the woods of Coilsfield: and first spoke with her at a rustic merrymaking, and "having the luck to win her regards from other suitors," they speedily became intimate.
Here we trace with romantic interest the wanderings of the pair during the swift hours of that last day of parting love, their lingering way 'neath the "wild wood's thickening green," by the pebbled shore of Ayr to the brooklet where their vows were made, and thence along the Faile to the woodland shades of Coilsfield, where, at the close of that winged day, "pledging oft to meet again, they tore themselves asunder."
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