Scotlands History
Dumfries
Burns's House in Dumfries. Image by Mo Rieve
Robert Burns moved into a three-room flat in Dumfries with his wife Jean and his children in 1791. Five years later Robert died in Dumfries.
In 1791 Burns, his wife Jean and his children moved from Ellisland Farm to a three-room flat in Wee Vennel, Dumfries. Burns rented the second floor flat from Captain John Hamilton of Allershaw. In May 1793 Burns rented a larger house from Captain Hamilton for £8 a year. The house in Mill Street had three bedrooms, a parlour and a kitchen.
Burns had been appointed Excise Officer for Dumfries in September 1789. Excisemen were employed by the government to make sure people paid their taxes. Their job made them unpopular. In February 1792 Burns was promoted to the Dumfries Port Division, earning £50 a year. That year Burns wrote ‘The Deil's Awa Wi' the Exciseman’, showing that he wasn’t very comfortable with his career.
For the first time in his life Burns earned enough money to live comfortably. He could afford to employ a maidservant at the house in Mill Street. His wife Jean was one of the first women in Dumfries to wear a gingham dress.
Burns’s health began to fail towards the end of 1795. His doctor prescribed sea-bathing in the Solway Firth.
For these eight or ten months I have been ailing, sometimes bedfast and sometimes not; but these last three months I have been tortured with an excruciating rheumatism, which has reduced me to nearly the last stage.
You actually would not know me if you saw me. Pale, emaciated, and so feeble, as occasionally to need help from my chair - my spirits fled!
Robert Burns, Letter to Alexander Cunningham, July 1796
Robert Burns died on 21 July 1796. He was 37 years old.
On the 25 July Burns was buried in St Michael’s Churchyard in Dumfries. A huge crowd gathered in the town to watch the funeral procession and mourn the poet.
Burns was a farmer’s son, born in a box bed. He had been hailed as a great poet and celebrated by Edinburgh society but he ended his life in debt, deserted by most of his former friends. Burns chose to write what he believed - no matter whom he offended. He hated hypocrisy and happily satirised the clergy and the ruling classes.
I am determined to flatter no created being, either in prose or verse.
I set as little by princes, lords, clergy, critics, etc, as all these respective gentry do by my bardship. I know what I may expect from the world, by and by - illiberal abuse, and perhaps contemptuous neglect.
Robert Burns, Letter to Mrs Dunlop, April 1787
Burns believed that the quality of a person was what really mattered - not the accident of their birth or the position that they held. All people should be treated as equals.
A year before his death Robert Burns wrote one of his most famous songs - ‘A Man's a Man for A' That’. A little over 200 years later it was sung at the opening of the Scottish Parliament on 1 July 1999.
A Man's a Man for A' That
Is there for honest poverty
That hings his head, an a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by -
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an a' that!
Our toils obscure, an a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that.
What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hodding grey, an a' that?
Gie fools their skills, and knaves their wine -
A man's a man for a' that.
For a' that, an a' that,
Their tinsel show, an a' that,
The honest man, tho e'er sae poor,
Is king o men for a' that.
Ye see yon birkie ca'd 'a lord',
Wha struts, an stares, an a' that?
Tho hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a cuif for a' that.
For a' that, an a' that,
His ribband, star, an a' that,
The man o independent mind,
He looks an laughs at a' that.
A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an a' that!
But an honest man's aboon his might -
Guid faith, he mauna fa' that!
For a' that, an a' that,
Their dignities, an a' that,
The pith o sense an pride o worth,
Are higher rank than a' that.
Then let us pray that come it may
(As come it will for a' that),
That Sense and Worth o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree an a' that.
For a' that, an a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That man to man, the world o'er
Shall brithers be for a' that.
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