From Dumfries they started on July 2 south-westward for Galloway, a region not overmuch frequented even now, and then hardly at all, by tourists: even Wordsworth on his several Scottish trips passed it by unexplored. Our travellers broke the journey first at Dalbeattie: thence on to Kirkcudbright, with a long morning pause for breakfast and letter-writing by the wayside near Auchencairn. Approaching the Kirkcudbrightshire coast, with its scenery at once wild and soft, its embosomed inlets and rocky tufted headlands, its high craggy moors towering inland, and its backward views over the glimmering Solway to the Cumberland fells or the hazier hills of Man, they began to enjoy themselves to the full. Brown bethought him that this was Guy Mannering's country, and fell talking to Keats about Meg Merrilies. Keats, who according to the fashion of his circle was no enthusiast for Scott's poetry, and of the Waverley novels, at this time guessed but not known to be Scott's, had read _The Antiquary_ (to which he whimsically preferred Smollett's _Humphrey Clinker_) but not _Guy Mannering_, was much struck by what he heard.
I enjoyed the recollection of the events [writes Brown] as I described them in their own scenes. There was a little spot, close to our pathway, where, without a shadow of doubt, old Meg Merrilies had often boiled her kettle, and, haply, cooked a chicken. It was among fragments of rock, and brambles, and broom, and most tastefully ornamented with a profusion of honeysuckle, wild roses, and fox-glove, all in the very blush and fullness of blossom. While finishing breakfast, and both employed in writing, I could not avoid noticing that Keats's letter was not running in regular prose. He told me he was writing to his little sister, and giving a ballad on old Meg for her amusement. Though he called it too much a trifle to be copied, I soon inserted it in my journal. It struck me as a good description of that mystic link between mortality and the weird sisters; and, at the same time, in appropriate language to the person addressed.
Old Meg she was a Gipsy, And liv'd upon the Moors: Her bed it was the brown heath turf And her house was out of doors.
Her apples were swart blackberries, Her currants pods o' broom; Her wine was dew of the wild white rose, Her book a churchyard tomb.