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156 worship, until one of his forefathers lost the patrimonial estate, by siding with Montrose during the wars of the Commonwealth. A more useful circumstance for his future career was his father's love of Scottish antiquarianism, which induced him to hoard up every tale, ballad, and legend connected with his native country—a love which Allan quickly acquired and successfully prosecuted. Like the children of the Scottish peasantry, he was sent to school at a very early age; but he does not seem to have been particularly fortunate in the two teachers under whom he was successively trained, for they were stern Cameronians; and it was probably under their scrupulous and over-strict discipline that he acquired that tendency to laugh at religious ascetism which so often breaks out in his writings. He was removed from this undesirable tuition at the tender age of eleven, and bound apprentice to a stone-mason; but he still could enjoy the benefit of his father's instructions, whom he describes as possessing "a warm heart, lively fancy, benevolent humour, and pleasant happy wit." Another source of training which the young apprentice enjoyed, was the "trystes" and "rockings" so prevalent in his day—rural meetings, in which the mind of Burns himself was prepared for the high office of being the national poet of Scotland. The shadows of these delightful "ploys" still linger in Nithsdale, and some of the more remote districts of Ayrshire; and it is pleasing to recal them to memory, for the sake of those great minds they nursed, before they have passed away for ever. They were complete trials of festivity and wit, where to sing a good song, tell a good story, or devise a happy impromptu, was the great aim of the lads and lasses, assembled from miles around to the peat fire of a kitchen hearth; and where the corypheus of the joyful meeting was the "long-remembered beggar" of the district; one who possessed more songs and tales than all the rest of the country besides, and who, on account of the treasures of this nature, which he freely imparted, was honoured as a public benefactor, and preferred to the best seat in the circle, instead of being regarded as a public burden. But the schoolmaster and the magistrate are now abroad; and while the rockings are fast disappearing, the Edie Ochiltree who inspired them is dying in the alms-house. May they be succeeded in this age of improving change by better schools and more rational amusements!

While the youth of Allan Cunningham was trained under this tuition, he appears also to have been a careful reader of every book that came within his reach. This is evident from the multifarious knowledge which his earliest productions betokened. He had also commenced the writing of poetry at a very early period, having been inspired by the numerous songs and ballads with which the poetical district of Nithsdale is stored. When about the age of eighteen, he seems to have been seized with an earnest desire to visit the Ettrick Shepherd, at that time famed as a poet, but whose early chances of such distinction had scarcely equalled his own; and forth accordingly he set off in this his first pilgrimage of hero-worship, accompanied by an elder brother. The meeting Hogg has fully described in his "Reminiscences of Former Days;" and he particularizes Allan as "a dark ungainly youth of about eighteen, with a boardly frame for his age, and strongly marked manly features—the very model of Burns, and exactly such a man." The stripling poet, who stood at a bashful distance, was introduced to the Shepherd by his brother, who added, "You will be so kind as excuse this intrusion of ours on your solitude, for, in truth, I could get no peace either night or day with Allan till I consented to come and see you." "I then stepped down the hill," continues Hogg, "to