Descriptive letterpress printed opposite this photograph:

THE AULD BRIG O’ DOON.

“Weel mounted on his grey mare, Meg,

A better never lifted leg,

Tam skelpit on through dub and mire,

Despising wind, and rain, and fire;

Whiles glowering round wi’ prudent cares,

Lest bogles catch him unawares;

Kirk Alloway was drawing nigh,

Where ghaists and houlets nightly cry.

✻       ✻      ✻      ✻        ✻

Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg,

And win the key-stane of the brig;

There at them thou thy tail may toss,

A running stream they dare na cross.”

Tam o’ Shanter.

THE scenery of the “Bonnie Doon” is pretty enough in itself, but its association with the songs of Burns imparts to it transcendent interest. In an evening walk by the banks and braes of the winding Doon, past Alloway’s auld haunted kirk and the Brig o’ Doon’s keystone arch, you will see many of those things which have been filtered through the mind of Burns into his verse-lassies “wi’ lint-white locks,” youngsters paddling i’ the burn, the Castle o’ Montgomery, and may be “the bonny blink” of some Mary’s e’e, to which Burns was but too susceptible. You may see the rose and woodbine twine, and hear the mavis pour its melodious song, and stroll where ” the milk-white thorn still scents the evening gale.” Cottars’ ” wee bit ingles” stand beneath the shadow of their appropriate tree, and were the traveller to enter one he would see the “big ha’ Bible” reposing on its shelf. The hymn of praise is still Dundee’s ” wild warbling measure,” “plaintive Martyrs,” or ” noble Elgin.” To wander amidst the natural scenery that a great poet has enshrined in verse is like a posthumous visit to the studio; an inspection of the draperies and materials he has grouped and worked up into his pictures; the backgrounds, and the side scenes, the ” setting” of the pearl of thought, but the setting only, or framework, that he has wreathed around his poetic gems. The Banks o’ Doon but furnish the materialities which clothe, not inspire, his songs; many another stream would have served his purpose equally well. Burns was a true artist in his own particular walk. He well knew how to arrange his materials.

“And rustic life and poverty

Grew beautiful beneath his touch.”

He was very fond of particular accessories the burn, the hawthorn, the mavis notably, and the silvery birch or “birk” (Scottish) he used inordinately, and introduced it at every opportunity, He was as much addicted to its use as Reynolds to the use of carmine and the fugitive lakes, or Turner to the scarlet shadow. Burns had an eye for colour: he tipped his modest daisies with crimson, and hung upon every green blade a pearl of dew, But he used his colour judiciously: it was only when wrong and oppression roused his flaming scorn and anger that he dipped his brush in the primaries, and his manipulation became terribly vigorous, Like many other great poets, and painters too, though he occasionally worked upon a larger canvas successfully, his smaller pieces were his best, His litle birds sang sweetest!