Qualla: Robert Burns and the Eglinton Estate

Robert Burns and the Eglinton Estate: Introduction

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. In December 1787, the most famous poet Scotland would ever produce sat down to write a letter to a friend. Do you remember a Sunday we spent together in Eglinton Woods, he asked Richard Brown, the sea captain who had once fought for American independence. You told me, on my repeating some verses to you, that you wondered I could resist the temptation of sending verses of such merit to a magazine. Twas actually this, Robert Burns added, that gave me an idea of my own pieces. Without that walk in the beech woods south of Kilwinning, there might have been no Kilmarnock Edition. There might have been no Burns Night. There might have been a different shape to the Scottish imagination altogether.

Image: Public domain

Robert Burns and the Eglinton Estate: Nine Months in Irvine

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rosser1954 Roger Griffith, Public domain. Burns came to Irvine, North Ayrshire, in 1781, at the age of twenty-three, to learn the unromantic craft of flax-dressing. He worked at the heckling shop in the Glasgow Vennel under Alexander Peacock, possibly his mother's half-brother. Dr John Cumming of Milgarholm, provost of I...

Image: Rosser1954 Roger Griffith | Public domain

Robert Burns and the Eglinton Estate: The Drukken Steps

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rosser1954 Roger Griffith, Public domain. The friend was Richard Brown, six years older, a sailor whose mind, Burns later wrote, was fraught with courage, independence, magnanimity, and every noble manly virtue. I loved him, I admired him to a degree of enthusiasm; and I strove to imitate him. The two walked, again and a...

Image: Rosser1954 Roger Griffith | Public domain

Robert Burns and the Eglinton Estate: A Patron, a Pony, and a Few Strong Women

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger Griffith, Public domain. Archibald Montgomerie, the 11th Earl of Eglinton, succeeded to the title in 1769. He had raised the 77th Regiment of Foot in 1757 and was known as General Montgomerie. Encouraged by Mrs Dunlop of Dunlop, who had described Burns to Doctor John Moore as a Miracle of Genius, the Ear...

Image: Roger Griffith | Public domain

Robert Burns and the Eglinton Estate: The Statue That Was Thrown in the River

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rosser1954 Roger Griffith, Public domain. Eglinton Castle is now a ruin, but the Country Park around it remains, and the gardens established by the Clement Wilson Foundation once held a small Belgian bronze statue of Burns. R. Clement Wilson had found it at Deuchars of Perth, an antique dealer's, and had it cleaned of st...

Image: Rosser1954 Roger Griffith | Public domain