ted the bard to celebrate the contest. Much discussion has been
carried on by his biographers as to whether Burns was present or not.
Some maintain that he sat out the drinking-match, and shared the deep
potations. Others, and among these his latest editor, Mr. Scott
Douglas, maintain that he was not present that night in body, but only
in spirit. Anyhow, the ballad remains a monument, if not of his
genius, at least of his sympathy with that ancient but now happily
exploded form of good fellowship.

This "mighty claret-shed at the Carse," and the ballad commemorative
of it, belong to the 16th of October, 1789. It must have been within a
few days of that merry-meeting that Burns fell into another and very
different mood, which has recorded itself in an immortal lyric. It
would seem that from the year 1786 onwards, a cloud of melancholy (p. 112)
generally gathered over the poet's soul toward the end of each autumn.
This October, as the anniversary of Highland Mary's death drew on, he
was observed by his wife to "grow sad about something, and to wander
solitary on the banks of Nith, and about his farmyard in the extremest
agitation of mind nearly the whole night. He screened himself on the
lee-side of a corn-stack from the cutting edge of the night wind, and
lingered till approaching dawn wiped out the stars, one by one, from
the firmament." Some more details Lockhart has added, said to have
been received from Mrs. Burns, but these the latest editor regards as
mythical. However this may be, it would appear that it was only after
his wife had frequently entreated him, that he was persuaded to return
to his home, where he sat down and wrote as they now stand, these
pathetic lines:--

Thou lingering star, with lessening ray,
That lovest to greet the early morn,
Again thou usherest in the day
My Mary from my soul was torn.
O Mary! dear departed shade!
Where is thy place of blissful rest?
See'st thou thy lover lowly laid?
Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast?

That Burns should have expressed, in such rapid succession, the height
of drunken revelry in _Willie brewed a Peck o' Maut_ and in the ballad
of _The Whistle_, and then the depth of despondent regret in the lines
_To Mary in Heaven_, is highly characteristic of him. To have many moods
belongs to the poetic nature, but no poet ever passed more rapidly
than