Isle, that he held a
house-heating mentioned by Allan Cunningham, to which all the
neighbourhood gathered, and drank, "Luck to the roof-tree of the house
of Burns!" The farmers and the well-to-do people welcomed him gladly,
and were proud that such a man had come to be a dweller in their (p. 102)
vale. Yet the ruder country lads and the lower peasantry, we are told,
looked on him not without dread, "lest he should pickle and preserve
them in sarcastic song." "Once at a penny wedding, when one or two
wild young lads quarrelled, and were about to fight, Burns rose up and
said, 'Sit down and ----, or else I'll hang you up like potatoe-bogles
in sang to-morrow.' They ceased, and sat down as if their noses had
been bleeding."

The house which had cost Burns so much toil in building, and which he
did not enter till about the middle of the year 1789, was a humble
enough abode. Only a large kitchen, in which the whole family, master
and servants, took their meals together, a room to hold two beds, a
closet to hold one, and a garret, coom-ceiled, for the female
servants, this made the whole dwelling-house. "One of the windows
looked southward down the holms; another opened on the river; and the
house stood so near the lofty bank, that its afternoon shadow fell
across the stream, on the opposite fields. The garden or kail-yard was
a little way from the house. A pretty footpath led southward along the
river side, another ran northward, affording fine views of the Nith,
the woods of Friars Carse, and the grounds of Dalswinton. Half-way
down the steep declivity, a fine clear cool spring supplied water to
the household." Such was the first home which Burns found for himself
and his wife, and the best they were ever destined to find. The months
spent in the Isle, and the few that followed the settlement at
Ellisland, were among the happiest of his life. Besides trying his
best to set himself to farm-industry, he was otherwise bent on
well-doing. He had, soon after his arrival in Ellisland, started (p. 103)
a parish library, both for his own use and to spread a love of
literature among his neighbours, the portioners and peasants of
Dunscore. When he first took up house at Ellisland, he used every
evening when he was at home, to gather his household for family
worship, and, after the old Scottish custom, himself to offer up
prayer in his own words. He was regular, if not constant, in his
attendance at the parish church of Dunscore