Page:Life of Robert Burns, the Ayrshire Bard.pdf/3



R was born on the 25th January, 1759, in a cottage about two miles south from Ayr, not far from the KIrk of Alloway and the "Auld Brig of Doon." His father, William Burns or Burness, married Agnes Brown in December 1757, and the poet was their first born. William Burns was a man of great integrity, and of strictly religious principles, and is beautifully painted by the poet as "the saint, the father, and the husband," in the Cottar's Saturday Night. Agnes Brown, the wife of this good man, was a woman of great prudence and sagacity, and is said to have had a considerable resemblance in features to her celebrated son. She possessed a great store of ballads and traditionary tales, which no doubt nourished the imagination of the young poet. With all the eeonomyeconomy [sic] and hard labour of this worthy pair, things did not turn out well, and William Burns removed to the Farm of Mount Oliphant, in the parish of Ayr, on Whitsunday 1766, when Robert was about seven years old. Here, from the soil being