Burns — Alexander Wilson. 81 



little or no merit. Yet he too enjoyed an uncertain local 

 celebrity, and it is related that while he worked, at the loom in 

 Lockwinnoch, he was importuned by one of his fellow shop- 

 mates who excelled in little, but had the habit of " dandering " 

 about the hedgerows and whin bushes in search of birds nests 

 on Sundays ; to write his epitaph. Wilson silenced him with 

 the following: 



" Below this stane John Allen rests ; 

 All honest soul, though plain ; 

 He sought hale Sabbath days for nests, 

 But always sought in vain." 



Wilson's dislike for the occupation of weaving as much as 

 the knowledge of the injury the constant bending over the 

 loom was effecting upon his health, influenced him to abandon 

 the trade for the pack about 1786, traveling through south- 

 eastern Scotland on foot. It was about 1788 when he had 

 visited the great song poet at Ayrshare, and writes : " Blessed 

 meeting, never did I spend such a night in all my life. Oh, 

 T was all fire ! Oh, I was all spirit .... I have now more deep 

 regard for the muse than ever." In 1889 he collected his 

 writings and having arranged with John Neilson a local printer 

 for their publication ; armed with a proposal in the form of a 

 rhyme, "' resolved to make one bold push for the united inter- 

 est of pack and poems." The following year his octavo vol- 

 ume of 308 pages appeared ^ and his journal is full of his un- 

 successful attempts to dispose of the edition of only 700 copies. 

 A second edition, merely -500 copies of the original, with a new 

 title.- some omissions and additions, followed in a pitiful effort 

 to obtain patrons. Hutchinson says that this great change was 

 effected by merely cancelling a number of pages and substitu- 

 ting newly printed pages. 



He appears to have taken considerable pains, and had re- 

 source to a curious shift to conceal from the public the 



^ Poems by Alexander Wilson, Paisley, Printed by John Neilson, 

 1790. 



- Poems, Humorous, Satirical, and 'Serious, by Alexander Wilson, 

 Edinburgh, 1791. 



