INTERESTING RELIC OF BURNS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1151, 22 September 1883, Page 3

INTERESTING RELIC OF BURNS.

The following, which we clip from the Glasgow Herald, shows pretty conclusively that the present age is pretty well forward in the palming off business : In the Weekly Herald of June 20th, it is stated that a Mr Dunderdale, commercial traveller, had recently been exhibiting to Provost Lennox, of Dumfries, and other gentleman of the burgh, n silver, doubled-ca&ed verge watch, with a cream-colored dial and gold hands, and, if the inscription is to be believed, it was presented to Burns by his brother-plough-men in March 1785. Mr Dunderdale says that the watch has been in the possession of a gentleman in Liverpool for the past 35 years, and that he had got it from a second cousin of Burns. Now, in the month of May last year, another person named Charles Thorn, a pit-sinker at Craigie, informed the editor of the Kilmarnock Standard that he had in his possession the veritable watch which was presented to Burns by the ploughmen of Ayrshire. The inscription was on it, he said, but he could not give the date as he had forgot it. He only stated that a Kilmarnock doctor had offered him £l6 for it, but he could not part with it for such a trifle, and suggested that an endea. vour should be made to seeure such an interesting relic of the poet for the Burns Museum. Thorn's story was that he got the watch from an old aunt of Burns' at Ayr to take to a friend of hers in Wales, where he was going to work; that he could not find the party; and when he returned to Ayr again the old woman wa3 dead ; hence he kept it to himself for the trouble which he had with it. Mr James Gibson, of Liverpool, the editor of ' Burns' Bibliography,' in an article under the heading, ■ Bogus watches of Burns,' in a Glasgow caper of December 3rd last year, says—Tbig is the fifth watch ot the sort that hos come under my observation, all being of the same conspicuous oharacter • and the fact is the poet never got a watch from his brother ploughmen. He had his father's watch . till he entered the Excise in 1788 or 'B9. He th.in bought a new one, and returned his father's to his mother. The mother kept it till 1819, when she gave it to her grandson,'Gilbert Burns, as a birthday

gifW Mr Gibson, of Liverpool will now perhaps have another one to add to the list of ' Bogus watches of Burns.' The commercial could not be a regular reader of newspapers, otherwise he could have seen that others have been before him, I may mention it here, as perhaps it may not be known to everybody, that the . same Gilbert Burns who got his grandfather's watch died in Dublin, at the age of 77 years, in October, 1881. He and his partner, Mr Todd, carried on an extensive business in Dublin, as jewellers and hardware merchants. Burns left a widow but no family. Mr John Rankin, a merchant in the East End, was on a visit to Ireland about 16 years ago, and had the pleasure of having in his hand the veritable watch of Robert Burns ; for his nephew whogotitkept it till his death. Mr Gilbert Burns Begg, now in Pallokshaw's, corroborates what Mr Gibson, of Liverpool, says—v. J z., that his uncle never got a watch from any party but his father. Mr Begg is Burns' youngest sister's son ; she never heard of her brother getting a watch except from her father.