[1900:] It was written in the midsummer of the year 1788, just
when the poet had taken possession of the farm of Ellisland, in
Dumfries-shire, and was overseeing the erection of a new
farmhouse and offices there, previous to the reception of Jean
Armour as his legalised wife. His own note to it is simply this:
"This air is by Marshal; the song composed out of compliment
to Mrs. Burns. N.B. - It was during the honeymoon." Earlier
in the same year he sent a fragment of song - My Jean - to
Johnson's 'Museum' [...]. In these ruder, but not less
impassioned, lines we discover the germ of the perfect lyric
under comment. From the figure
Tho' mountains rise and deserts howl
And oceans roar between
the step in improvement is brief to
There's wild woods grow, and rivers flow
And mony a hill between.
And what follows these lines in either verse is not dissimilar in
sentiment. The exact date of the song, Of a' the airts, was
presumably betwixt the 12th and 22nd of June, while the poet was
in his solitude on the banks of the Nith, and his bonnie Jean was
at Mossgiel - to quote his own words - "regularly and
constantly apprenticed to my mother and sister in their dairy and
other rural business," for about this time also he
represents his favourite mare, 'Jenny Geddes', as being homesick
[...]. The poet, too, is casting longing looks in the
"westlan'", or, more strictly speaking,
"north-westlan' airt," and his cry is
Of a' the airts the wind can blaw I dearly like the west
For there the bonnie lassie lives, the lassie I lo'e best
There's wild woods grow, and rivers row, and mony a hill between
But day and night, my fancy's flight is ever wi' my Jean
I see her in the dewy flowers, I see her sweet and fair
I hear her in the tunefu' birds, I hear her charm the air
There's not a bonnie flower that springs by fountain, shaw or
green
There's not a bonnie bird that sings but minds me o' my Jean
That is the song exactly as Burns wrote it; though, in all the
song collections, other verses are added, and even these are
differently phrased. Some editors, in bad taste, have printed
"lo'e" in the second line instead of "like",
and nearly all have written
Though wild woods grow
Wi' mony a hill between
Baith day and night
With the second double stanza, still greater liberty has been
taken; and, I think, to the improvement of the song. Let the
reader compare the above with the following: -
I see her in the dewy flower sae lovely, sweet and fair
I hear her voice in ilka bird wi' music charm the air
There's not a bonnie flower that springs by fountain, shaw or
green
Nor yet a bonnie bird that sings but minds me o' my Jean
The briefness of the song, too, has tempted some respectable
versifiers to make additions to it, for the sixteen lines of the
text just go once through the melody. Mr. William Reid, a late
bookseller in Glasgow - an inveterate song-tinker, [...]
attempted a continuation. But Reid's lines, though frequently
printed, are never sung.
[Upon the banks ... The gamesome lamb ...]
Mr. John Hamilton, of Edinburgh, author of Up in the morning
early, next made the attempt, and with much more success. His
verses, in tenderness of feeling and beauty of imagery, are not
inferior to those of Burns, although they may contain
anachronisms, as Mr. Scott Douglas not unreasonably avers.
Hamilton's addition, which is invariably sung, is as follows: -
[cf. verses 3 and 4 above].
These verses, says Mr. Scott Douglas, are very musical and
expressive; but were, unfortunately, composed under the mistaken
idea that the absence of Jean, referred to in Burns's song, was
that of spring, 1786, when she removed to Paisley to avoid him.
On the poet's own authority, however, the date and the occasion
of the song are rendered certain, and, at that time, instead of
imploring the west winds to "bring the lassie back" to
him, he had only to return to her; and, moreover, she could not
come back to Ellisland, where she had never yet been.
Notwithstanding these anachronisms, it is no small compliment to
Mr. Hamilton that Burns's own sixteen lines are now seldom
dissociated from his imitator's supplementary ones. Cunningham
boldly tells his readers that the whole thirty-two lines are from
Burns's own manuscript; Lockhart quotes the added lines as the
poet's own; and Professor Wilson, in his famous
"Essay", adopts Hamilton's addendum as an authentic
part of the song. Its only weak line is:
That's aye sae neat and clean
which is not poetical at all - has nothing charming about it -
and might read
Wi' her twa witchin' een -
which is at once the language of love and poetry, and runs in a
line with the rest of the sentiment. (Ford, Histories 259 ff)
[1986:] Robert first encountered Jean Armour sometime in 1784,
long before Elizabeth Paton bore him his first baby in May 1785.
Jean was eighteen years old at that time, her hair a cluster of
dark ringlets framing large, widely-spaced eyes above prominent
cheek-bones. Her only portrait was painted in her widowhood, when
her mouth had tightened, but it preserves a face that must have
been beautiful, as well as a steady, unabashed outlook on life.
Jean was said to have possessed a fine figure as well.
How soon Robert possessed Jean, whether she replaced Paton in his
bed, or they took turn and turn about for a space, cannot be
determined. [...] He wrote in September 1785, before any question
of Jean's pregnancy could have influenced his attitude: 'to have
a woman to lie with when one pleases, without running any risk of
the cursed expence of bastards and all the other concomitants of
that species of smuggling - these are solid views of matrimony.'
Not very romantic ones, however; [but] the author of some of the
most tender and lofty love lyrics in the English language was apt
to descend to earth with a thud in his prose.
When the New Year of 1786 arrived, the argument in favour of
marriage had gained weight with Jean's condition. The mystery to
which there is no certain answer, though many hypotheses, is what
prompted Burns, instead of marrying Jean, to descend to the most
elaborate subterfuges to evade the status of a married man.
Jean's father, it is true, would have none of him as a
son-in-law, and packed his pregnant daughter off to relatives in
Paisley. But under the law of Scotland Burns could claim that
Jean was in fact his wife 'by use and wont', of which her
pregnancy provided incontestable proof. There was no need for him
to give her a written declaration, though he did this. The
question is, who advised him to do this, and with what motive. It
has been surmised that the lawyer Gavin Hamilton drew it up for
him: certainly it was his other legal friend Robert Aiken from
Ayr who visited the Armours and advised Jean's father to cut the
signatures out of the bard's declaration. Superfluous as the
document had been in the first place, as any lawyer would have
known, it would have been far simpler to throw it in the fire,
unless the mutilated version could serve a legal purpose, as
evidence.
The essential fact it could demonstrate was that Burns had made
an honourable proposal of marriage, which had been formally
rejected. This the bard emphasised from now on, in a histrionic
manner, as though he were collecting witnesses for his submission
that he was now legally a bachelor, rather than a married man by
use and wont. In April he wrote to Hamilton accepting the loss of
Jean as final, and blaming both her and Aiken for the outcome.
This letter might provide another piece of material evidence.
'[...] Though I had not a hope, nor a wish, to make her mine
after her damnable conduct, yet when he told me the names were
cut out of the paper my heart died within me [...].' In case
Armour should destroy the paper, Burns had written at once to the
other lawyer in the case, providing corroboratory evidence. [...]
Burns dramatized his situation in a remarkable letter [...]. In
it, the miserable Jean was sacrificed on the altar of art. 'I had
long had a wishing eye to that inestimable blessing, a wife.
[...]' He went on to claim that he had made Jean pregnant with
the deliberate intention of claiming her as his wife under Scots
Law, as he could have done but did not. [...]
Nothing that Burns did or wrote at this time can be explained
entirely unless he was seeking to escape from a criminal charge
of bigamy. Nor is the part of Aiken the lawyer comprehensible -
or of Hamilton either - unless they were abetting him in the
stratagem by which he succeeded in establishing his status as a
bachelor so far as Jean Armour was concerned. The other girl in
the case was Mary Campbell, and it is noteworthy that she was the
only girl in his entire life about whom he was both secretive and
mendacious. [...] Robert's family remained equally tight-lipped
about Mary, even after the bard's death. But his mother and
sister Isabella then deposed that he had consorted with her only
after he had been 'deserted' by Jean Armour. Their exact dating
is noteworthy. Jean was sent to Paisley in March and Mary died in
October, possibly in child-birth, or soon after she had borne a
child which died also. If Burns did not associate with her till
after Jean had left him, then he could not have been responsible
for this, and might escape a charge of bigamy.
But Mary Campbell came to Gavin Hamilton's home in Mauchline as a
nursemaid to his son Alexander, who was born on 13 July 1785. So
Burns would have had ample opportunity to make her acquaintance
earlier. [...]
Among the few hard facts about their relationship that have
survived in the systematic cover-up is Burns's promise of
marriage. The material evidence consists of a Bible in two
volumes, preserved today in the Ayr monument. Whether or not he
gave it to her when she left Mauchline to return home on 14 May
1786, this Bible bears witness that he had plighted his troth to
her. It also reveals that Mary's family were as little pleased as
the Armours when they saw Robert's declaration to Jean. One
volume was inscribed with Mary's name, the other with Robert's,
and both have been partially erased. But the Bible contains
Robert's mason's mark [...]. It has been suggested that the
Campbell family could not bring themselves to destroy so valuable
a property, and indeed it has proved to be of inestimable value.
But in any case, such people did not treat the Word of God with
disrespect. They did, however, display implacable hostility to
Burns after Mary's death.
This has to be accounted for, like the attitude of the Armours.
So do the eccentric, almost hysterical acts and words of Burns
during the summer of 1786. His letter to John Arnot complaining
of Jean Armour's removal to Paisley rises to a crescendo of
desperation in which the predicament of the poor girl is totally
forgotten. [...]
Allowing for his delight in self-dramatization, we may conclude
that Burns was in considerable danger of some kind. [...] Robert
Burns, in fact, was in a fix, and it brought out the canny side
of his character as well as the poetic one. He took the practical
steps which anyone of sense might do if he stood in danger of
arrest on a criminal charge of bigamy. His pledge to Mary
Campbell presumably remained a secret in Mauchline, the attitude
of her parents uncertain. But the imbroglio with Jean Armour was
public knowledge. The Armours could have held him to his promise
to marry the girl but instead they had repudiated him. While
Burns trumpeted his tragedy into every ear, he turned it to his
salvation by applying for a bachelor's certificate from his
parish Minister. That would release him from a charge of bigamy
if Mary Campbell's parents were to adopt a different attitude.
At the same time he made arrangements to leave the country. [...]
Compliant as Jean was to remain all her life in her devotion to
the bard, she sent a confession to the Church Session on 18 June.
'[...] I acknowledge that I am with child, and Robert Burns in
Mossgiel is the father. [...]' A week later Robert appeared
before the Church Session in person to admit the truth of the
allegation. [...]
Certainly Robert was allowed to stand in his pew in church,
rather than beside Jean in the place of repentence [sic!], on the
three successive Sabbaths when their sins were expounded from the
pulpit. As he wrote to David Brice, 'I have already appeared
publicly in Church, and was indulged in the liberty of standing
in my own seat. I do this to get a certificate as a bachelor,
which Mr. Auld has promised me. I am now fixed to go for the West
Indies in October.' He had begun making his plans to do this in
April, and during this year he protested that he was doing it in
order to earn the means for Mary Campbell's support, to whom he
was betrothed. [...]
As for ruin and disgrace, Robert found himself confronting a new
danger in July, while he was making his peace with the Church,
and arranging to leave the country. James Armour obtained a writ
against him on the grounds that he planned to flee from his
financial obligations to Jean. Robert learnt of it in time to
execute a deed conveying all his property to his brother Gilbert
on 22 July, before the writ could be served, which he avoided by
going into hiding. [...] Once again, Jean is the scapegoat,
although it appears to have been she who sent Burns timely
warning of what her father intended. [...]
But the previous April, while Jean was in Paisley and he was
consoling himself with Mary, he had taken another practical step
besides his arrangements to emigrate. He had approached a printer
in Kilmarnock with a view to having his poetry published. [...]
On 31 July 1786 was published 'Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish
Dialect'. [...]
Burns' summer of mental torment might have flowed into an autumn
of euphoria. He had obtained the vital bachelor's certificate in
August. In September Jean Armour had been delivered safely of the
twins named Robert and Jean and they were left in the care of his
mother. Only a few weeks later he found himself transformed from
a local celebrity into a national poet. Yet he remained in a
state of anguish [...]. The only conceivable cause for his
continuing anxiety is Mary Campbell. [...] The reason why she
should have [gone from Campbeltown to Greenock in October] is as
mysterious as the cause of her remaining at home without working
during the preceding months, unless she was pregnant. Whether or
not she stayed with a relative called Peher MacPherson, as Jean
Armour had gone to stay with kinsfolk in Paisley, it was
MacPherson who buried her in his lair in the old Greenock West
Churchyard when she died soon after her arrival. Burns' youngest
sister was to relate that a letter was delivered at Mossgiel late
in October, which he took to the light of a window to read.
Deeply upset, he then left the room without a word to anyone and
disappeared from his home. Nobody knows who wrote that letter.
The bard's most comprehensive and universally respected
biographer, the American scholar Dr Franklyn Snyder, left no
doubt of his belief that Mary became pregnant by Burns about a
month after Jean Armour did, and that he made them both a
declaration of marriage, unneccessary in each case under Scots
Law. (Ian Grimble, Robert Burns 49ff)
Immediately he wrote to Clarinda, and described his meeting with
Jean [Armour in February 1788]; 'twas setting the expiring
glimmer of a farthing taper beside the cloudless glory of the
meridian sun. Here was tasteless insipidity, vulgarity of soul,
and mercenary fawning; there, polished good sense, heaven-born
genius, and the most generous, the most delicate, the most tender
Passion. I have done with her, and she with me.' As the world
knows, they had done no such thing. [...]
By the end of April the bard was writing to his friend James
Smith the linen draper, 'to let you into the secrets of my
pericranium, there is, you must know, a certain clean-limbed,
handsome, bewitching young hussy of your acquaintance, to whom I
have lately and privately given a matrimonial title to my
corpus.' [...] But he did not tell Clarinda, leaving her to find
out by hearsay. [...]
But why did Burns so suddenly marry Jean Armour, after all the
scurrilous remarks he had made about her to all and sundry? He
had recently completed his training for the Excise, whose
commissioners may well have been concerned about the irregularity
of his personal life. It has been suggested that they might have
insisted on his marriage as a condition of his employment, and
although there is no evidence for this, no more plausible
explanation has been found for the step he took.
On 5 August 1788 the union was recorded formally by the Church
Session of Mauchline, and five days later Burns offered to [his
correspondent] Mrs Dunlop this specious explanation for his
failure to choose a more appropriate spouse. 'Circumstanced as I
am, I could never have got a female Partner for life who could
have entered into my favourite studies, relished my favourite
Authors, &c, without entailing on me, at the same time,
expensive living, fantastic caprice, apish affection, with all
the other blessed Boarding-school acquirements.' It is a
misogynist's view of the opposite sex, penned by a man to whom
women were a necessity in the byre and the bed. [...]
From June 1788 until May 1789 Burns battled with the builders who
were erecting his new home at Ellisland. [...] Jean remained at
Mossgiel, some forty-five miles away, learning the secrets of
dairy management from the bard's mother. These were inauspicious
circumstances [...]. Not least of the inconveniences was the
distance that separated him from his wife, which moved him to
compose one of his most tender love songs, [...] 'I love my
Jean', to the tune, 'Miss Admiral Gordon's Strathspey'. (Grimble,
Robert Burns 84ff)
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