BURNS’ MOTHER.

Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 255, 27 September 1928, Page 2

BURNS’ MOTHER.

MONUMENT TO HER MEMORY. A movement is afoot in Scotland to erect a monument to the mother of Burns. And why not? There counld have been no Burns—no ppet of humanity— j without a mother. She was Agnes j Brown, a farmer’s daughter, who | broke off an engagement of several years with a farm worker, because of his moral lapses, and married William Burns, an upright, God-fear-ing man, in 1756, the poet being born on January 25, 1759. Mrs Burns had a hard time endeavouring to make ends meet for a large and ever-in-creasing family in the earlier years of her married life; but she had then twenty years of happy and peaceful days, albeit they were of widowhood, after she went to live at Grant’s Braes, near Haddington, surrounded by loving children and grandchildren. Her poet son was dead; but his fame had become a live and glowing thing, spreading to the ends of the earth. And if no stone memorial arises to Mrs William Burns, most beautifully has James Muir enshrined the poet’s mother in the following tender lines, than which there could be no more fitting monument:— Oh, mother of the gifted bard Whom Scotia holds her gifted, Deep in thy spirit waiting birth, The honours lay that he has won. Thy source thou had’st in nature wilds, Like some wee rivulet ’mong the hills. But now in him thy eldest bom, Thy untaught spirit the world fills.