Burns

[vox]

At Dumfries I visited Jean the widow of Burns. She resides in a small neat white house there and has about £200 a year allowed her by her two sons in the East Indies.

She appears about 58 years of age, hardly middle size, but growing rather stout. Her face may be called of a square cast, with something in it excessively fascinating, though not what one can call beautiful, and the sallowness of age appears to be advancing upon her.

She has all the appearance of having been what the Scotch call a sousie lass.

I asked her to let me see the two silver candlesticks silver snuffers and snuffer tray which were presented to her in 1821 by some gentlemen in Sheffield. She brought them carefully wrapt up in silver paper and at the same time expressed her pride in having such a present. On the tray the following inscription by Montgomery is engraven :

"The Gift of a few Scots in Sheffield to the Widow of Bums

He pass'd thro' life's tempestuous night,

A brilliant, trembling, Northern light,

Thro' years to come, he shines from far,

A fix'd unsettling polar Star

JM"

Burns died July 21, 1796 and was buried in a common grave at the N E corner of Dumfries Church yard.

About the year 1817 a monument was erected by public subscription at the SE corner of this church yard and a vault made for the coffin that

contained his remains, which were taken up and enclosed in another of lead, and an outer one of oak and removed hither.

Within the monument Burns is represented in white marble as large as life, with a pair of gaiters on his legs, and a Scotch bonnet carelessly placed on the side of his head, having hold of the plough with one hand, and in musing mood looking down on the mountain daisy, which the plough is about to crush. A little above and beyond him appears a figure as represented in his poem of the Vision, about to place a wreath of laurel or holly on his head. There is no inscription only the word "Burns" on the pedestal.

GH