"O, Willie brewed a peck o' maut, And Bob and Allen cam to see; Three blither hearts that lee-lang night Ye wad na find in Christendie. We are na fou, we're na that fou, But just a drappie in our e'e; The cock may craw, the day may daw, And ay we'll taste the barley bree. It is the moon, I ken her horn, That's blinkin in the lift sae hie; She shines sae bright, to wyle us hame; But, by my sooth, she'll wait a wee. The cock may craw, the day may daw, And aye we'll taste the barley bree." No wonder the pebbles began to show more and more in the plough-land; no wonder the jolly fellows of Dumfries came oftener and oftener; the long bouts too amongst the hills chilled him; the crops grew smaller and smaller; the "barley bree" better and better; he has no tact at bargaining; a stanza of Tam O'Shanter is worth more than ten {296} plough-days, yet he makes gifts of his best songs. Household affairs go all awry, let poor Jeanie Armour struggle as she may; the cottage palings are down; debts accumulate; and so do those rollicking nights at the Globe, or in a shieling amongst the hills. Yet from out all the impending want, and the gloom, and the desperation, come such sweet notes as these, reaching the ear of humanity everywhere:-- "John Anderson, my jo, John, We clamb the hill thegither; And mony a canty day, John, W've had wi' ane anither: Now we maun totter down, John, But hand in hand we'll go, And sleep thegither at the foot, John Anderson, my jo." At last Ellisland must be given up--crops, beasties and all; and never more the wooded banks of Nithsdale shall feel his tread, or hear his chant mingling with the river murmurs. He, and they all--five souls now--just of an age to relish most the woods, the range, the fields, the daisies of Ellisland, must go to one of the foulest and least attractive streets of Dumfries, and to a {297} home as little attractive as the street. Fifty years thereafter I went over that house and found it small, pinched, and pitifully meagre in all its appointments; twenty years later, Hawthorne speaks of both house and street as _filthy_. What could or should supply the place now--to the peasant poet--of the fields, the open sky, the gentle fret and murmurs of the streams of Nithsdale? The foul fiends who taunted him in the woods now lay hold upon him in earnest; every day his fame is flying over straits and seas; every day his poems, old and new, are planting themselves in fresh hearts and brains; every day his wild passions are dealing him back-handed blows. Old neighbors have to pass him by; modest women look away; he has forfeited social position; and I suspect, welcomed in those days of July, 1796, the approaches of the disease which he knew was sapping his life:-- "Oh, Martinmas wind! when wilt thou blaw And shake the dead leaves frae the tree? Oh gentle death! when wilt thou come And tak a life that wearies me?" {298}