In The Town Itself The Lit Face Of The Clock Peered Down
The Street; An Hour Was Hammered Out On Mr. Geli's Bell, And From
Behind The Red Curtains Of A Public-House Some One Trolled Out - A
Compatriot Of Burns, Again!
- 'The saut tear blin's my e'e.'
Next morning there was sun and a flapping wind. From the street
corners of Maybole I could catch breezy glimpses of green fields.
The road underfoot was wet and heavy - part ice, part snow, part
water, and any one I met greeted me, by way of salutation, with 'A
fine thowe' (thaw). My way lay among rather bleak bills, and past
bleak ponds and dilapidated castles and monasteries, to the
Highland-looking village of Kirkoswald. It has little claim to
notice, save that Burns came there to study surveying in the summer
of 1777, and there also, in the kirkyard, the original of Tam o'
Shanter sleeps his last sleep. It is worth noticing, however, that
this was the first place I thought 'Highland-looking.' Over the
bill from Kirkoswald a farm-road leads to the coast. As I came
down above Turnberry, the sea view was indeed strangely different
from the day before. The cold fogs were all blown away; and there
was Ailsa Craig, like a refraction, magnified and deformed, of the
Bass Rock; and there were the chiselled mountain-tops of Arran,
veined and tipped with snow; and behind, and fainter, the low, blue
land of Cantyre.
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