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Burns's Journal of His Border Tour
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The only occasions on which Burns is known to have kept a regular journal were his tour of the Border in May, 1787, and his visit to the Highlands in the late summer of the same year. Dr. Currie, the poet's first authorized biographer, made some slight use of these documents, but what was alleged to be the complete text was first published by Allan Cunningham in 1834, after being further quoted by Lockhart in his Life of Burns in 1828. When the original of the Highland journal again came to light some years ago it proved to be considerably briefer than Cunningham's printed text. Mr. J. C. Ewing, who in 1927 edited the work in facsimile, believes the additions to have been made by Burns himself in a recension, now lost, of his original penciled notes. Professor Snyder, however, suspects Cunningham himself to be the author of the revisions, and in the absence not only of Burns's enlarged manuscript but of any proof that such a manuscript ever existed, it is difficult not to agree with Snyder. Cunningham's reputation as editor and biographer is so justly suspect that the burden of proof rests upon the defenders of his text.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1934
References
1 F. B. Snyder, Life of Robert Burns (New York, 1932), pp. 244 and 254 note.
2 The journal is included in all complete editions of Burns from Cunningham onwards; in the Chambers-Wallace (1896) it is scattered through pages 102 to 119 of Vol. ii.
3 In this and all succeeding quotations, italics represent matter omitted by Cunningham.
4 The Letters of Robert Burns (Oxford, 1931), i, 92.
5 The page numbering is much later than Burns's time, and whoever did it evidently numbered only the pages which contain writing, for beginning with p. 44 the even numbers occur for the most part on the right-hand pages.
6 “Burns's Literary Correspondents, 1786–1796.” Burns Chronicle (1933), pp. 18–77.—The document, printed for the first time, was drawn up by Burns's literary executors for the use of Dr. Currie. It enumerates, with brief and now badly mutilated summaries of their contents, more than three hundred letters from other persons which were found among Burns's papers. Even in its damaged condition the catalog is of prime biographical importance.
7 Cf. Letters, ii, 102–103.
8 Ibid., i, 60.
9 Ibid., i, 226; see also MLN (March, 1933), for correction of the date, and some additional details.
10 Burns Chronicle (1933), p. 28.—The editor has misread the lady's name as “Tall.”
11 Jamieson lists the first, under the spelling “Hope,” as “South of Scotland,” and the verbal use of “parreck”—spelt “parrock”—as “Roxburghshire.” As a noun “parreck” is also listed as “Dumfriesshire.”