VISIT TO THE BIRTHPLACE OF JAMES THOMSON, THE AUTHOR OF THE SEASONS.

Southland Times, Issue 881, 13 January 1868, Page 3

VISIT TO THE BIRTHPLACE OF JAMES THOMSON, THE AUTHOR OF THE SEASONS.

BY JOHN &. SMITH. (From the "Border Review and Roxburgh Magazine.") On entering the village by the bridge before mentioned we find ourselves surrounded by all the business establishments of the place. There is the smithy, where Vulcan is heaving the ponderous hammer, and deafening the very echoes with the ring of his giant strokes. There too is the Hotel, where refreshment is afforded to the general traveller on week days, and to the bona fide traveller on William Howitt's day, for visiting the homes and haunts of the poets ; and there, on the other side of the way stands a huge old fashioned halftiled, half-slated and antiquated pile, the brewery, which has been famous for ages for the excellence of its beverage, and the precedents it has furnished the excise, and which it is said occupies the very site of that which was founded by Thorlouyn, the first saxon colonist of Ednam, in the ninth century. "Westward, leaving a wide intervening space, with neatly trimmed garden plots in front, stretch two lines of plain, but substantial looking cottages, the one on the south terminating in the Manse, and Church, and the other, the Northern, in the School-house and school. The internal appearance of the village reminds one very much of those sweet arcadias which we find in the Midland and Southern Counties of England. At a particular house in the west end, to which I was directed by a little girl with the most melting " slae black een " I ever saw, t presented my credentials — in the shape of a letter" of introduction, and was ushered sans ceremonie into the presence of a party of gentlemen, who, on learning the object of my visit, received me with the greatest courtesy and kindness. From the combined knowledge of. the members of this company, all of whom felt a deep interest or rather enthusiasm in the subject, lam enabled to lay before the reader the following brief statement, arranged under its two phases, documentary and traditional. The first, or documentary, is derived from an old, worn, parchment-covered' volume, found built up in a recess of one of the walls of the Old Manse, which in 1833 was taken down to make way for the present modern

structure. "From sundry entries therein contained we learn that the Rev. Thomas Thomson's incumbency in the Parish of Ednam lasted from July 1692 to Nov. 1700, or little more than eight years ; that in 1693 he married Beatrix Trotter "in the Parish of Kelso," and that four out of his family of nine children were born in in Ednam, three sons, Andrew, Alexander and James, the poet of the " Seasons," who was baptized September 15th, 1700, and one daughter.'Jsabel, who became the wife of Mr Thomson, Eector of the Grammar School of Lanark. From these facts thus, briefly stated one or two errors are corrected. It will be seen that the maiden name of the poet's mother was Trotter, not Hume as his biographers assert, and it cannot fail to be noted that, from the date of the poet's baptism, till the final removal of the family from the parish— there is only a space of nine or ten weeks — beyond which, it cannot be shown, and indeed it is most improbable, that Thomson had any subsequent connection whatever with Ednam. Surely after this tourists will abstain from their ejaculations about the beauties of the scenery, and its power of inspiring the opening mind of the poet with that ardent love of Nature which is breathed forth from every line of his i immortal verse, and compilers of guide books will not venture to mislead the credulous public with regard to the scene of the poet's inspiration or the composition of that poem which has gained for him an enduring niche in the temple of fame.* My second source of information, tradition, refers not, of course, to any incidents characteristic of the dawning life of the poet, for these must be sought for elsewhere, but to the exact spot in which he first saw the light. Biographers naturally infer that because Thomson's father was minister of the parish, he was born in the Manse or the parsonage as they wo aid say in England. But this is not borne out, indeed it is plainly contradicted by tradition. Oral testimony cannot certainly be in all cases relied on, but in this instance there is reason to believe that it is conclusive. Thomson's father it would appear was a native of the parish, and the son of the gardener of the Edinonstones, a family who held the estate of Ednam for many centuries, whose mansion house was in the immediate vicinity of the village, and whose lordly halls are now, alas ! converted into a mill-house and its accompaniments. About the time of the poet's birth some necessary repairs were being executed at the Manse, on account of which the minister and his family removed for a time to the cottage of his father, (1) and during their temporary sojourn there the immortal bard was born. This cottage, in 1715 became the village school, and was used as such till 1812, and till a recent period was inhabited. It was for a considerable time the abode of a poor decrepit man, (2) who wrote and published verses, who was largely patronised by the great, and whose chief boast was that he lived in the cottage in which Thomson was born. That humble cottage still stands, but the tool of the "Vandal hath been there ; its front wall has been taken down, and rebuilt at a different angle ; its door and windows have been closed, and it is now used or rather misused as a sort of t outhouse, convenience for the present >" farmer, and all this outrage on classic taste has been perpetrated in order to make some improvements in the entrance 1 to the kirk. The clay-built biggin in which Burns was born is scrupulously preserved. '. Shakespear's house now is the property of ! the nation, and who with a gleam of poetry in his soul, can refrain from i shedding a tear, or uttering a malediction, , when they see the temple once hallowed ' by the inspirations of genius desecrated and defaced by ruthless hands. After enjoying a most delightful ramble amid the rural scenes on the banks of Eden water and in the animated and instructive conversation of my highly gifted companions, the principal theme being of course, Thomson, his birth, his life, his early death, and his immortal works, and after visiting the paltry monument erected to his memory on an eminence in the neighborhood as well as the rendezvous of the famous Club which used to assemble on the poet's birthday under the distinguished patronage of the Earl of Buchan and the gentry of the of the borders, which, it will be remembered, Burns was one one occasion honoured with an invitation to attend, I parted with regret from a society the rememberance of whose kind attentions and congeniality of soul I shall ever cherish with feelings of the deepest gratitude and affection. With you too gentle reader, I must part. If I have contributed to your amusement or information I am abundantly satisfied. It is a subject which many may think trite and antiquated, but it is hoped none will venture to criticise it, but he who, after the enjoyments of a summer holiday is confined once more to the narrow precincts and the routine labours of a dismal dusty ofiice, with the ghost of a sunbeam on his ledger, and the yellow tinge of Autumn on the flowerless Geraniums of his summer dreams.

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