Robert Burns | Page 3

other rustic lads, they two lagged far behind
the rest. Robert's voice especially was untuneable, and his ear so dull,
that it was with difficulty he could distinguish one tune from another.
Yet this was he who was to (p. 006) become the greatest song-writer
that Scotland--perhaps the world--has known. In other respects the
mental training of the lads was of the most thorough kind. Murdoch
taught them not only to read, but to parse, and to give the exact
meaning of the words, to turn verse into the prose order, to supply
ellipses, and to substitute plain for poetic words and phrases. How
many of our modern village schools even attempt as much? When
Murdoch gave up, the father himself undertook the education of his
children, and carried it on at night after work-hours were over. Of that
father Murdoch speaks as by far the best man he ever knew. Tender and
affectionate towards his children he describes him, seeking not to drive,
but to lead them to the right, by appealing to their conscience and their
better feelings, rather than to their fears. To his wife he was gentle and
considerate in an unusual degree, always thinking of her ease and
comfort; and she repaid it with the utmost reverence. She was a careful
and thrifty housewife, but, whenever her domestic tasks allowed, she
would return to hang with devout attention on the discourse that fell
from her wise husband. Under that father's guidance knowledge was
sought for as hid treasure, and this search was based on the old and
reverential faith that increase of knowledge is increase of wisdom and
goodness. The readings of the household were wide, varied, and
unceasing. Some one entering the house at meal-time found the whole

family seated, each with a spoon in one hand and a book in the other.
The books which Burns mentions as forming part of their reading at
Mount Oliphant surprise us even now. Not only the ordinary
school-books and geographies, not only the traditional life of Wallace
and other popular books of that (p. 007) sort, but The Spectator, odd
plays of Shakespeare, Pope (his Homer included), Locke on the Human
Understanding, Boyle's Lectures, Taylor's Scripture Doctrine of
Original Sin, Allan Ramsay's works, formed the staple of their reading.
Above all there was a collection of songs, of which Burns says, "This
was my vade mecum. I pored over them driving my cart, or walking to
labour, song by song, verse by verse; carefully noting the true tender or
sublime, from affectation and fustian, I am convinced I owe to this
practice much of my critic-craft, such as it is!" And he could not have
learnt it in a better way.
There are few countries in the world which could at that time have
produced in humble life such a teacher as Murdoch and such a father as
William Burness. It seems fitting, then, that a country which could rear
such men among its peasantry should give birth to such a poet as
Robert Burns to represent them. The books which fed his young
intellect were devoured only during intervals snatched from hard toil.
That toil was no doubt excessive. And this early over-strain showed
itself soon in the stoop of his shoulders, in nervous disorder about the
heart, and in frequent fits of despondency. Yet perhaps too much has
sometimes been made of these bodily hardships, as though Burns's
boyhood had been one long misery. But the youth which grew up in so
kindly an atmosphere of wisdom and home affection, under the eye of
such a father and mother, cannot be called unblest.
Under the pressure of toil and the entire want of society, Burns might
have grown up the rude and clownish and unpopular lad that he has
been pictured in his early teens. But in his fifteenth summer there came
to him a new influence, which at one touch unlocked the springs of
(p. 008) new emotions. This incident must be given in his own
words:--"You know," he says, "our country custom of coupling a man
and woman together as partners in the labours of the harvest. In my
fifteenth summer my partner was a bewitching creature, a year younger

than myself. My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her
justice in that language, but you know the Scottish idiom. She was a
bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. In short, she, altogether unwittingly to
herself, initiated me in that delicious passion, which, in spite of acid
disappointment, gin-horse prudence, and book-worm philosophy, I hold
to be the first of human joys here below! How she caught the contagion
I cannot tell.... Indeed I did not know myself why I liked so much to
loiter behind with her, when returning in the evening