[farms]
An' if thou be what I wad hae thee, [would have]
An' tak the counsel I shall gie thee,
I'll never rue my trouble wi' thee--
The cost nor shame o't--
But be a loving father to thee,
And brag the name o't.
At Mossgiel the Burns family was no more successful than in either of
its previous farms. Bad seed and bad weather gave two poor harvests,
and by the summer of 1786 the poet's financial condition was again
approaching desperation. His situation was made still more
embarrassing by the consequences of another of his amours. Shortly
after moving to the parish of Mauchline he had fallen in love with
Jean Armour, the daughter of a mason in the village. What was for
Burns a prolonged courtship ensued, and in the spring of 1786 he
learned that Jean's condition was such that he gave her a paper
acknowledging her as his wife. To his surprise and mortification the
girl's father, who is said to have had a personal dislike to him and
who well may have thought a man with his reputation and prospects was
no promising son-in-law, opposed the marriage, forced Jean to give up
the paper, and sent her off to another town. Burns chose to regard
Jean's submission to her father as inexcusable faithlessness, and
proceeded to indulge in the ecstatic misery of the lover betrayed.
There is no doubt that he suffered keenly from the affair: he writes
to his friends that he could "have no nearer idea of the place of
eternal punishment" than what he had felt in his "own breast on her
account.
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