The flattery of being a national hero would delight Burns. If his followers were only mealy-mouthed where he was outspoken, they would merely amuse him. He would not mind if they slobbered over his sins, for the unco guid were old acquaintance of his. But at the thought of his worshippers exalting his weakest work and ignoring his best, his very soul would scunner. The real Burns was not the dropper of tears over ploughed-under weeds but the man who brought in the neighbours for a kirn-night and kissed the lasses after every dance; the man who sat by farmers’ ingles and on ale-house benches listening to the racy earthy talk of his people and storing his mind with folk sayings and old songs. He was not ashamed of being a Scottish peasant, the heir of all the picturesque and frequently bawdy tradition of Scots folk literature. Neither was the man who wrote, ‘But yet the light that led astray Was light from Heaven’, ashamed of his human nature. But his worshippers are ashamed of the best part of his nature and his work. And nobody else reads him at all. INDEX Abbotsford, 227 _Aberdeen Almanac_, 45 Aberfoyle, 47 Adam, Alexander, 119 Addison, Joseph, 40, 234 _Adventures of John Cheap the Chapman, The_, 46 _Adventures of Telemachus_ (Fénelon), 51 ‘Ae fond kiss,’ 149, 172, 264 Agriculture in Scotland, 10-16, 188 Agriculture, Professorship of, Edinburgh, 155 Aiken, Robert, 93-96, 98, 142, 144, 147, 193, 194 Ainslie, Robert, 65, 107, 110, 112-115, 144, 150, 151, 167, 168, 170, 173, 186, 214 Albert, Prince Consort, 306 Allen, John, 110, 291 Alloway, 11, 36-41, 48, 279 Alloway Kirk, 36, 266 Almack, William, 30 ‘A Man’s a Man,’ 289, 292 American Colonies. _See_ United States American Revolution, 70, 82, 225, 290 Anderson, Robert, 196, 247 Anne, Queen, 60, 287 ‘An’ O for ane-and-twenty, Tam,’ 264 Antigua, 176 Arbroath, 266 Archers, Royal Company of, 108 Argyll, John, Duke of, 5 Armour, James, 77, 94, 139, 142-143, 150, 165, 192 Armour, Mrs. James, 168 Armour, Jean. _See_ Burns, Jean Armour Army, Burns’s opinions of, 155, 179 Arnot, John, 191 Arran, 47 Athole, Jane Cathcart, Duchess of, 116-117 Athole, John, Duke of, 116-117 Auchencruive, 144 Auld Brig, Ayr, 31 _Auld Farmer’s New Year’s Morning Salutation, The_, 58, 249, 250 _Auld Lang Syne_, 260 Auld, Walter, 120, 228 Auld, William, 173, 279 Austen, Jane, 278 Aylmer, Rose, 250 Ayr, 195, 279 Ayr, Brigs of, 31 Ayr, Presbytery of, 92-93 Baker, --, 127 Ballads, 25-27, 38, 43-44, 246, 252, 259, 269 Ballantine, John, 61, 93-96, 202 Ballenden, Braes of, 256 Balmerino, Arthur Elphinstone, Baron, 229, 287 _Banks of Cree_, 271 Bannockburn, 48, 272, 300 Barncailzie, 125 _Barrack-Room Ballads_, 305 Barrie, Sir James Matthew, 305, 307 Bayard, 28 Beattie, James, 25, 29, 75, 104, 270, 302 Bede, 23 Beethoven, Ludwig von, 275