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Updated: May 12, 2025
I have only known existence by the pressure of the heavy hand of sickness, and counted time by the repercussion of pain. I close my eyes in misery and open them without hope. Yet it was literally on his deathbed that he composed the exquisite song, O wert thou in the Cauld Blast, in honour of Jessie Lewars, who waited on him so faithfully. In June he wrote: 'I begin to fear the worst.
He died miserably in 1796, when only thirty-seven years old. His last letter was an appeal to a friend for money to stave off the bailiff, and one of his last poems a tribute to Jessie Lewars, a kind lassie who helped to care for him in his illness.
'The anecdote is a trivial one in itself; but we feel that the circumstances the deadly illness of the poet, the beneficent worth of Miss Lewars, and the reasons for his grateful desire of obliging her give it a value.
My Dearest Love, I delayed writing until I could tell you what effect sea-bathing was likely to produce. It would be injustice to deny that it has eased my pains, and I think has strengthened me; but my appetite is still extremely bad. No flesh nor fish can I swallow: porridge and milk are the only things I can taste. I am very happy to hear, by Miss Jess Lewars, that you are all well.
It is curious, and something more, to connect it with the subsequent musical fate of the song, for many years after, when Burns had become a star in memory's galaxy, and Jessy Lewars was spending her quiet years of widowhood over her book or her knitting in a little parlour in Maxwelltown, the verses attracted the regard of Felix Mendelssohn, who seems to have divined the peculiar feeling beyond all common love which Burns breathed through them.
By that admirable artist, so like our great bard in a too early death, they were married to an air of exquisite pathos, "such as the meeting soul may pierce." Burns, Jessy Lewars, Felix Mendelssohn genius, goodness, and tragic melancholy, all combined in one solemn and profoundly affecting association!
'John, he said to one of his brother volunteers, 'don't let the awkward squad fire over me. He lingered on for a day or two, his wife hourly expecting to be confined and unable to attend to him, and Jessie Lewars taking her place, a constant and devoted nurse.
The ship was armed and well manned; and while Lewars, a brother-excisemen, posted to Dumfries for a guard of dragoons, Burns, with a few men under him, watched to prevent landing or escape. It was while impatiently waiting Lewars's return that he composed this song. When the dragoons arrived Burns put himself at their head, and wading, sword in hand, was the first to board the smuggler.
Copyright, 1916, by Elsie Singmaster Lewars In the year 1868, when Memorial Day was instituted, Fosterville had thirty-five men in its parade. Fosterville was a border town; in it enthusiasm had run high, and many more men had enlisted than those required by the draft. All the men were on the same side but Adam Foust, who, slipping away, joined himself to the troops of his mother's Southern State.
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