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Updated: May 31, 2025
God grant that there may be another world more congenial for honest fellows beyond this; a world where these rubs and plagues of absence, distance, misfortunes, ill-health, etc., shall no more damp hilarity and divide friendship. This I know is your throng season, but half a page will much oblige, my dear Sir, yours sincerely, CXLVL. To MRS. DUNLOP. ELLISLAND, 25th January 1790.
ELLISLAND, NEAR DUMFRIES, 7th Aug. 1789. Dear Sir, I intended to have written you long ere now, and, as I told you, I had gotten three stanzas on my way in a poetic epistle to you; but that old enemy of all good works, the Devil, threw me into a prosaic mire, and for the soul of me I cannot get out of it. I dare not write you a long letter, as I am going to intrude on your time with a long ballad.
Were it not for the terrors of my ticklish situation respecting provision for a family of children, I am decidedly of opinion that the step I have taken is vastly for my happiness. As it is, I look to the Excise scheme as a certainty of maintenance; a maintenance! luxury to what either Mrs. Burns or I were born to. Adieu. ELLISLAND, 30th June 1788.
Among the Ellisland songs were such as, Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon, Auld Lang Syne, Willie brewed a Peck o' Maut, To Mary in Heaven, Of a' the Airts the Wind can blaw, My Love she's but a Lassie yet, Tam Glen, John Anderson my Jo, songs that have become the property of the world.
The rain is beating on my windows; the rain is beating on the plain; a mist is driving in from the Sound, over which I see only the spires, those Christian beacons. To think for a moment of poor farmer Burns, with the suppers of Edinburgh, and the orgies of the gentlemen of the Caledonian hunt, inflaming his imagination there in the wretched chamber of his low farm-house of Ellisland!
In a fortnight I move, bag and baggage, to Nithsdale; till then, my direction is at this place; after that period, it will be at Ellisland, near Dumfries. It would extremely oblige me, were it but half a line, to let me know how you are, and where you are. Can I be indifferent to the fate of a man to whom I owe so much a man whom I not only esteem, but venerate?
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, See the Poem. CXXXVIII To MR. ROBERT AINSLIE, W.S. ELLISLAND, 1st Nov. 1789.
When I grow richer, I will write to you on gilt-post, to make amends for this sheet. At present every guinea has a five guinea errand with, my dear Sir, your faithful, poor, but honest friend, ELLISLAND, 2nd May 1789.
My compliments to Mrs. Tennant, and all the good folks in Glenconnel and Barguharrie. ELLISLAND, New-year-day Morning, 1789. This, dear Madam, is a morning of wishes, and would to God that I came under the Apostle James's description! the prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
The locality pointed out is the well-known spa village of Moffat, situated among the hills of Annandale, about twenty miles from Ellisland.
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