With so explicit a statement from the poet, we never should have had occasion to feel any doubt about the circumstances referred to in 'Willie brewed a peck o' maut,' had not Dr Currie, the editor of the posthumous collection of Burns's works, inserted therein a note, stating that the merry-meeting 'took place at Laggan, a farm purchased by Mr Nicol in Nithsdale, on the recommendation of Burns.' Currie, proceeding upon the undoubted fact of Nicol having purchased such a farm, seems to have imagined that the meeting was what is called in Scotland a _house-heating_, or entertainment given to celebrate the entering upon a new domestic establishment, Laggan itself being of course the scene. To add to the perplexity thus created, Dr Currie's assumptions were taken up by a subsequent editor, who ought to have known better--the late Allan Cunningham. He gives the whole affair with daring circumstantiality. The song, he says, 'was composed to commemorate the _house-heating_--as entering upon possession of a new house is called in Scotland. William Nicol made the brewst strong and nappy; and Allan Masterton, then on a visit at Dalswinton, crossed the Nith, and, with the poet and his celebrated punch-bowl, reached Laggan "a wee before the sun gaed down." The sun, however, rose on their carousal, if the tradition of the land may be trusted.' Thus, as Laggan is on the right bank of the Nith, while Dalswinton is on the left, we have Masterton crossing the river to join Burns at Ellisland, which is the converse of the procedure necessary on the supposition of Moffat being the locality. A place called Laggan, about two miles from Ellisland, being further assumed as the seat of Nicol, we have the poet marching along to it bearing his punch-bowl as an essential of the frolic!--a particular which this biographer would have probably suppressed, if he had known that the real Laggan of William Nicol is eight or nine miles from Ellisland, in a part of the country naturally so difficult of access, that a visitor might be glad to get there himself without any such nice burden as a punch-bowl to carry. In a more recent edition of the poet's life and writings--where at length an effort is made to illustrate both, by documentary and other exact evidence[1]--the affair is set in such a light as to throw a ludicrous commentary on such testimony as the 'tradition of the land.' It appears, from a letter of Burns in which two verses of the song are transcribed, that it was written before 16th October 1789; while it equally appears that Mr Nicol did not purchase Laggan till March 1790: _ergo_, the maut was not brewed at Laggan; Masterton did not cross the Nith; and the punch-bowl is a myth, which most likely originated in editorial fancy.