His father was a native of the north of Scotland, but he was driven by various misfortunes to Edinborough, and thence still farther south to Ayrshire, where he was first employed as a gardener in one of the families in that vicinity, and afterwards, being desirous of settling in life, took a lease of a little farm of seven acres, on which he reared a clay cottage with his own hands, and soon after married a wife. The first fruit of this union was our poet, whose birth took place two years thereafter. Robert, during his early days, was by no means a favorite with any body. He was remarkable, however, for a retentive memory, and a thoughtful turn of mind. His ear was dull, and his voice harsh and dissonant, and he evinced no musical talent or poetical genius until his fifteenth or sixteenth year. It is pretended by his biographers, (of whom there have been several, and who all agree in this opinion,) that the seeds of Poetry were very early implanted in his mind, and that the recitations and fireside chaunts of an old crone, who was familiar in his father's family, served to cherish their growth, and strengthen their hold upon his memory. This "auld gudewife" is said to have had the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning fairies, witches, warlocks, apparitions, giants, dragons, and other agents of romantic fiction. Speaking of these tales and songs, he says, in his later years, "so strong an effect had they upon my imagination, that even to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I am fain to keep a sharp look out in suspicious places; and, though nobody can feel more sceptical than I have ever done in such matters, yet it often requires an effort of Philosophy to shake off these idle terrors."