Not all the boy’s education, however, was thus casual and informal. When his removal from Alloway to Mount Oliphant made it impossible for his sons to continue regular schooling William Burnes procured a few textbooks such as Guthrie’s _Geographical Grammar_ and Stackhouse’s _History of the Bible_ for their instruction. Despite the burden of farm work the father managed at times to set regular lessons to be conned at evening by the light of the kitchen fire or a tallow dip. Robert and Gilbert helped to teach their younger brothers and sisters to read and write; their own lessons included the use of a brief religious catechism which their father had himself prepared with Murdoch’s help, for William Burnes was a devout man. Even in boyhood Burns, said Gilbert, was a reader when he could get books. He read whatever he could get his hands on, however dull or ponderous it might be, from theology to poetry. His own lists in his autobiography, highly selective though they are, are proof enough. His first knowledge of classical mythology, for instance, came from Andrew Tooke’s _Pantheon_, an appallingly dull and didactic outline of Greek and Roman religion. He never had Keats’s good fortune in discovering the Elizabethans: his Homer was Pope’s and not Chapman’s. But he reached manhood with a working knowledge of history and geography, a keen interest in current affairs, and an acquaintance with literature which, though spotty, was the more detailed because of its relatively narrow limits. William Burnes’s effort to educate his children at home was part of a family struggle which became one of the strongest influences in forming his son’s character. The usual destiny of the children in a peasant family was to be hired out at the age of ten or twelve as farm servants. This fate, with its breaking of ties, cessation of schooling, and frequent moral danger, William Burnes was determined to avoid if possible. He was a stern father, but an affectionate one. John Murdoch remembered his wrath at a labourer’s ‘smutty innuendoes’, and his children knew that carelessness in word or deed would be sharply rebuked. But they likewise remembered many acts of wordless affection, as when during a thunderstorm the father came to sit with his daughter Agnes because he knew she would be frightened.