There is a broader horizon to be seen, looking westward from the fields of Mossgiel, than from those of Lochlea; the lands are higher and nobler of contour. Superb trees, which must have been superb a century ago, stand to right and left of the house,--beeches, ashes, oaks, and planes. The fields which are in sight from the house are now all grass-grown. I have heard that twenty years ago, it was confidently told in which field Burns, ploughing late in the autumn, broke into the little nest of the
"Wee sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie,"
whom every song-lover has known and pitied from that day to this, and whose misfortunes have answered ever since for a mint of reassuring comparison to all of us, remembering that "the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men" must "gang aft aglee;" and the other field, also near by, where grew that mountain daisy,
whose name is immortal in our hearts as that of Burns. This farm-wife, however, knew nothing about them. The stern air of the north country in which she had been reared still chilled somewhat her thoughts of Burns and her interest in his inalienable bond on the fields of her farm.
It is but a mile from Mossgiel's gate to Mauchline, the town of "bonnie Jean" and Nansie Tinnoch and Gavin Hamilton. Surely a strange-assorted trio to be comrades of one man. Their houses are still standing: Jean's a tumble-down thatched cottage, looking out of place enough between the smart, new houses built on either side of it; Gavin Hamilton's, a dark, picturesque stone house, joined to the ruins of Mauchline Castle; and Nansie Tinnoch's, a black and dilapidated hovel, into which it takes courage to go. It stands snugged up against the wall of the old graveyard, part below it and part above it,--a situation as unwholesome as horrible; a door at the head of the narrow stairway opening out into the graveyard itself, and the slanting old stones leering in at the smoky windows by crowds. In the days when all the "country side" met at the open-air services in this churchyard,
"Some thinkin' on their sins, an' some on their claes,"
no doubt Nancy Tinnoch's was a lighter, whiter, cheerier place than now; else the "Jolly Beggars" would never have gone there to tipple.