NEW CUMNOCK
© Robert Guthrie
ROBERT BURNS
The Burns Trail :
Burns Cairn
Knockshinnoch farmhouse
ROBERT BURNS
The Burns Cairn
The cairn was built by members of the New Cumnock Burns Club (500) in 1973 to mark the 50th anniversary of the club. It overlooks the Afton Water honoured by Burns in 'Sweet Afton' and close by is the farm of Laight, which was home to John Logan, a close acquaintance of the bard.
Billy Nisbet, a Past President of the New Cumnock Burns Club recalls the blood, sweat and tears that club members spilled in shifting the stanes for the cairn from the head of Afton to the Laight. Occasionally, there were tears of laughter including one episode when a sheep got stuck on a ledge on Stayamera. Jimmy Paterson, captured the day's events in verse and cried his a work 'A "Dacent" Job' - in tribute to the dry-stane dyker from Dumfries contracted to build Burns' Cairn, who had promised to do 'a dacent job'.
A ewe or tup
Had sprachled up
The stey Styam'ra face,
From safer slopes,
Auld 'wool and chops'
Had reached an unco place.
Fast in a wedge
Upon a ledge
Nae space tae turn aroon;
We couldna 'groop'
Hii it got up
Nor hoo it wad get doon.
We took the view
'Twas 'Le bon Dieu
Qui gardait ce mouton'
His eye he'll keep
On silly sheep
Who know not right or wrong
Stuck on the hill,
The beast stood still,
It made no cry nor fuss,
We thought 'The Twit'!
But-what of it?
What did it think of us ?
Though not in chains,
'Mang heaps o' stanes,
We, strong or weak and skinny,
Wi' rich guidwill
Toiled harder still
Than inmates o' Barlinnie.
And doon the glen
(That sheep wad ken)
More 'Homo-Sapiens'
In leafy glades
Were weildin' spades
Wi' much mair hope than sense.
There, plain to see,
A dominie
Who-Just to make the joke?
In classic pose,
Upon his mose,
Bounced massive lumps of rock
In such a way
It may be, they
Contrive to raise aloft
Their rocky heap,
But-thought the sheep -
"They must be bloody soft."
Gaun back a while,
Beside the Nile
Could be they had 'The Scarabs'
On 'one night stands'
Among the sands
To play fro toiling Arabs.
Who 'neath the whip
In sair hardship,
Strained on, beyond all measure,
To slap stane lids
Ca's Pyramids
On regal stiffs and treasure.
But these 'Confreres'
Strive to inter
Not trophies old and bloody,
Just-here's the laugh! -
A photograph
O' Jimmy Foster's cuddy.
The ewe or tup
Then 'gave it up'
"This warld has mony turns;
Like helpless weans
They're wrastlin stanes
Tae build a cairn tae Burns."
It muses, in glee,
"Noo whit had he
Hae seen in a' this caper?"
He'd say, "Don't strain
At building stane,
Juist - get it doon on paper!"
JAMES S. PATERSON
New Cumnock Burns Club
While Autumn tints the wooded scene
I wandered o'er this hallowed place,
This Vale, where Robert Burns had been
And viewed the Afton, full of grace.
Before the breeze the Scotch Fir swayed,
The Birches held their quiet station,
Across the stream, young children played
Gathering nuts, the future nation.
Old Oaks that grew in Burns's time,
The pale green Ash, so loath to shed,
They bowed and whispered me a rhyme,
While fern and leaves a carpet spread.
Even the clouds that day stood still
High above this tranquil stream,
As if it were our Gods own will
That I should be allowed to dream.
That Man, his headlong plunge arrest,
And in Memory of the Bard revered,
Plant upon your honoured breast
To last as long as God is feared.
A Cairn, A Wish, a Love exposed
High above the Roaring Linn,
By hands of man and thought transposed
With Afton's own discarded whin.
And now as winter lingers near
My Dream comes true, and, as we sleep,
Up past the Laight, with Mary dear,
May Burns a renewed vigil keep.
EDWIN J. YOUNG
New Cumnock Burns Club
