A LINK WITH THE PAST.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VIII, Issue 2373, 14 August 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

A LINK WITH THE PAST.

It will surprise many, and may interest a few, of our readers to learn that there died at Moffat, on May 13, a veritable, ''•• though .illegitimate, daughter of the poet Burns. The old lady in question, Helen Armstrong by name, who was ninety-seven or ninetyeigh years of age, .resided for v many

years in Moffat, in the same little back street in which she was born somewhere about the year 1788. ■ The fact of her relationship to Burns was well-known in Moffat and the neighborhood. Her mother, Nelly Hyslop, was a beauty in her day, and Bums was, for some time, a devoted admirer of hers. Helen is said to Lave born a Strong resemblance to Burns in her earlier days, and, indeed, the likeness to the porfcrafts of Burcs was traceable to the last in the contour- of the. face in the dark bright eyes, dimmed as they were by age and sickness. . Nor was the likeness confined to physicial points; in her mental - powers. Helen showed a strain of the poetic blood. A few years ago hor conversational powers and hor quickness of repartee were most- amusing and attractive. Even a few months since, when well enough to talk her conversation• was- highly interesting. Helen's life, as far as I learn, was not a very eventful one. She went fo service at a very early age —seven, I thiuk, She belonged _to that genus of Scotch servants, still extant though rather rare; who remain years in one'''place.' arid indentify their employers' intorests with their own. She was thirty years in one situation at tho Buccleuch Arms Inn at Thomhill, with a family named Glendiuning. I believe she lived there till all family had died out, Thomhill, as every schoolboy knows, or" ought to know, is ' close to Drumlanrig Oastle, one of tho ducal palaces of the Buccleuch family. Helen told me she once, saw Sir-Walter

Scott at tho old inn on his way to visit the Duke of Drumlanrig, He came into the kitchen and shook hands with the cook-in his bright and genial way, and, stopping up to the fire, where hung a huge pot of kidn-jy potatoes, be lifted up the-lid, took out a potato, and proceeded leisurely to eat it without the aid of knife or fork.'' The cook,- who was very proud of her kitchen, had all •her.metal bviglitly burnished, and Sir Walter, looking rouud on-it; remarked, "Eh, Lucky,"ye : hae a'b'richt and sliming like siller," To which Lucky replied, '• Ay, Sir-Walter; but ■Wi no' a' gbuld thai glitters."'. Helen

thought that was a very sharp answer, and believed Sir Walter thought so too, at he subsequently related it at dinner-" aniung the gentry."'.'Helen's reminiscences; when she was- well enough to .be in good conversational trim,wero such as might be expected

id. the case of one who,' in her own words, "had'had a long life and' had seen muckle." She added, with pious'thanksgiving, and a touch of true Scottish independance, that in all her life she-had not asked charity, from anyone. The old lady lived entirely alone, her husband liiwing been dead for many years, and she had no family. It is pleasing to know that her last days were relieved and brightened by the kindness' ot friends in Moffatt, who had a great respect and liking, for old Helen, 'not only as an interesting link with a past which already seems far distant, but also as a type of Scotch •character which is unfortunately growing rapidly rarer. Independently'»£ | the interest attaching to her as a daughj ter of Burns, she was a character worth knowing,—M-,A,F.JR,