To Burns in the vigour of his early manhood the question of livelihood seemed easily answered. He was a good enough ploughman to be assured of the porridge and the few shillings a week which a skilled labourer could earn on a Scottish farm. There was no degradation in such service. The labourers, like the hired help on New England farms, ate with the family and took whatever share in the conversation they were capable of. Moreover, anyone, whatever his rank, who was capable of ‘a sensible crack’ was sure of welcome in households which had either to provide their own entertainment or go without. Not even the prospect of dependent old age held any terrors. The tradition of the blue-gowns, or licensed beggars, still persisted in rural Scotland. An old man past work who could talk interestingly could count on a meal and a place by the fire at almost any farmer’s ingle. Burns seriously thought of this as a possible end of his own life. The expression of the idea in several poems might be dismissed as rhetoric had he not repeated it in the sober prose of his letters. He actually pictured himself as spending his manhood in labour, love-making, and poetry and his old age as a sort of Edie Ochiltree. Such a vision of course was adolescent. To fulfil it a man must have no dependents. Burns seems to have imagined at first that if he could help to keep the home together until his brothers and sisters were able to establish themselves his responsibilities would end. The liberation of his poetic talent entailed among other things a shrinking from the burdens of marriage on narrow means. His rejected proposal to Alison Begbie had come before his realization of his poetic calling; his rejected offer to Jean Armour in 1786 was the result of sympathy for her condition and not of a desire to settle down. But he soon learned that he could not so simply escape responsibility. His children must be provided for somehow even if he did not marry their mothers. Despite the casualness with which he incurred paternity his parental feelings were strong. ‘_Vive l’amour et vive la bagatelle_’ sounded well as a motto until it was confronted by the actual problem of helpless lives which owed their existence to him. As a Man of Feeling he could not, even had he wished to, turn his back on them with Don Juan-like callousness. Besides, the law might have something to say in the matter--as Burns learned in the course of four suits or threatened suits by four different women within two years. Unless he chose to flee the country and repudiate his obligations he had to provide himself with settled livelihood.