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Updated: July 22, 2025
With so explicit a statement from the poet, we never should have had occasion to feel any doubt about the circumstances referred to in 'Willie brewed a peck o' maut, had not Dr Currie, the editor of the posthumous collection of Burns's works, inserted therein a note, stating that the merry-meeting 'took place at Laggan, a farm purchased by Mr Nicol in Nithsdale, on the recommendation of Burns. Currie, proceeding upon the undoubted fact of Nicol having purchased such a farm, seems to have imagined that the meeting was what is called in Scotland a house-heating, or entertainment given to celebrate the entering upon a new domestic establishment, Laggan itself being of course the scene.
To add to the perplexity thus created, Dr Currie's assumptions were taken up by a subsequent editor, who ought to have known better the late Allan Cunningham. He gives the whole affair with daring circumstantiality. The song, he says, 'was composed to commemorate the house-heating as entering upon possession of a new house is called in Scotland.
Good cause have I to remember it; and were I to live a thousand years, it never would be effaced from my recollection. What first gave rise to the alarm, I have not been able clearly to ascertain unto this day. There was a house-heating up beside Preston, with feasting and dancing; and a great light, like that of a flambeau, proceeded from the onstead.
An object of cheerful interest to him; prophetic of calmer years ahead. It was not till May, 1747, that the formal occupation took place: "Mayday, 1747," he had a grand House-heating, or "First Dinner, of 200 covers: and May 19th-20th was the first night of his sleeping there."
But if the hot-water tank is dependent upon the furnace or other house-heating arrangement, summer is likely to find it out of commission, with the chief element of a good bath obtainable only with much ado. Then some special means of heating water is required.
Sentiment has had a great deal to do with retarding progress in the direction of improved house-heating appliances.
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