|
Mauchline Village
Mauchline, a village or small town of
Ayrshire, the capital
of the parish just described, is situated at the
intersection of the Glasgow and Dumfries, and the Edinburgh
and Ayr turnpikes; 1¼ mile north of the river Ayr; 2 miles
from Catrine; 5 from Tarbalton; 6½ from Old Cumnock; 7 from
Galston; 10 from Kilmarnock; 12 from Ayr; 30 from Glasgow;
and 62 from Edinburgh. Its environs are a delightfully
cultivated country, studded with fine mansions. The town is
neatly editiced, has a pleasing appearance, and, measured
by the bulk of its population, looks prosperous and
important. Its charter as a burgh-of-barony having been
lost, about 125 years ago, in the conflagration of the
Register-office of Edinburgh, it has not re-acquired power
to elect its own magistrates. Its peace, however, is
well-preserved by a baron-bailie and neighbouring justices
of peace. The parish-church, occupying a site in the centre
of the town, is highly ornamental to it, and has been
pronounced one of the most handsome ecclesiastical edifices
in Ayrshire. It is chiefly Gothic, and built of red
sandstone; and at the east end it sends up a tower 90 feet
in height, and surmounted by turrets. Its predecessor, a
lumpish, plain, sombre building, well-known to most
Scotchmen, and associated in the minds of many with profane
thoughts, as the scene of Burns' 'Holy Fair,' stood for six
centuries on the same site, surrounded by the public
burying-ground. A lock-up-house, built about 12 years ago,
has two cells, but is designed as a place of only brief
confinement. The town has a branch-office of the Commercial
bank of Scotland; a savings bank; two good inns; far more
than enough of ale-houses; a public library; and four
schools. Annual fairs, chiefly for cattle, are held on the
last Wednesday of January, the 2d Tuesday of May, 17th day
of June, the 22d day of July, the last Tuesday of August,
the 27th day of October, and the 2d Tuesday of December,
all old style; and a horse-race occurs in the end of April.
The weaving of cotton goods employs a huge proportion of
the inhabitants. In 1828, the town, jointly with Catrine,
had 300 hand-looms; and in 1838, it had 175. Mauchline vies
with Cumnock and Laurencekirk in the manufacture of wooden
snuff-boxes and cigar-cases. The workmen, about 60 in
number, are singularly expert in the arts of hingeing,
polishing, and painting the boxes, and display a skill
which fixes the pleased attention of a stranger. Burns has
given great notoriety to Mauchline in his poems, and
associated its name, and that of many objects in itself and
its vicinity, with some of his most clever, and at the same
time most daringly unhallowed pleasantries. The farm of
Mossgiel, on which he resided nine years, and which he
subleased from Mr. Gavin Hamilton, writer in Mauchline,
lies about a mile north-west of the town: see article
MOSSGIEL. An old edifice, the relic of the ancient priory,
and the residence in Burns' days of Mr. Hamilton, called
Mauchline-castle, and situated near the church, was the
scene of some of his amours, and contains a room in which
he wrote his very profane parody called 'the Calf.' The
cottage or change-house of 'Poosie Nancy,' or Agnes Gibson,
which was one of his chief resorts in quest of the 'clachan
yill,' and the scene of his piece called 'the Jolly
Beggars,' stands nearly opposite the churchyard-gate. It
was "the favourite resort," says Allan Cunningham, "of lame
sailors, maimed soldiers, wandering tinkers, travelling
ballad-singers, and all such loose companions as hang about
the skirts of society." Separated from the gable of this
house, only by the commencement of an intervening lane,
stands the public-house kept by John Dow, another great
resort of Burns, a thatched plain building of two stories.
On a pane on one of its back windows the poet wrote the
absurd epitaph on his host, representing Dow's creed to be
simply a comparative estimate of the value of his several
liquors. The lane which strikes off between these houses is
the Cowgate, along which 'Common sense,' or the poet's
correspondent Dr. Mackenzie, escaped when a certain
minister appeared at the tent. In the churchyard, so
painfully associated with the demoralizing images, and in
some instances too just satire of our bard's 'Holy Fair,'
may be seen the graves of the Rev. Mr.Auld, Nanse Tinnock,
and some other persons whom he made the butt of his rhymes.
Various scenes of his exquisite lyrics, —pieces in which
the effusions of his genius may be enjoyed with less pain
and damage to the moral feelings, —occur along the banks of
the river Ayr. Population of the town, in 1821, 1,100; in
1831, 1,364.
|
