Mossgiel Farm

Photo: Mossgiel Farm. Image by Anne Burgess

Robert and Gilbert Burns rented Mossgiel Farm from Gavin Hamilton for £90 a year. Robert composed some of his best loved poems and songs at Mossgiel. He also met Jean Armour, his future wife.

Robert and Gilbert Burns rented Mossgiel Farm near Mauchline from Gavin Hamilton, a fellow Freemason, in March 1784. The rent was £90 a year.

Gilbert wrote ‘...farm of Mossgiel lies very high, and mostly on a cold wet bottom. The first years that we were on the farm were very frosty, and the Spring was very late'. Their crops were poor and the brothers struggled to make any money from the farm.

Robert wrote some of his most famous poems and songs at Mossgiel, including 'Holy Willie's Prayer', 'The Jolly Beggars' and 'To A Mouse'.

To A Mouse, on turning her up in her nest with the plough

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murdering pattle.

I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth born companion
An' fellow mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss't.

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
Its silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's win's ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld.

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still thou are blest, compared wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

While Robert was at Mossgiel he first met Jean Armour. Jean was one of the Mauchline Belles.

Robert and Jean were betrothed and Jean was pregnant. Jean’s father, James, a master mason, was outraged. He sent Jean away to stay with her uncle in Paisley. Robert felt deserted by Jean and courted Mary Campbell, his ‘Highland Mary’.

Burns had decided to emigrate to Jamaica, turning his back on life as a poor tenant farmer. He booked passage on a ship set to sail in late summer but the amazing success of his first book, ‘Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect’, changed his mind.

Six hundred and twelve copies of the Kilmarnock Edition were printed. Within three weeks almost all of the copies had been sold.

In the autumn of 1786 Highland Mary died. She was buried in the West Highland Churchyard in Greenock. On 3 September Jean Armour gave birth to twins, a boy and girl. She named them Jean and Robert. 

Burns decided to stay in Scotland and set out for Edinburgh to seek a patron and a publisher for a new edition of his ‘Poems’.