96 Transactions. 
These papers are interesting inasmuch as they relate to persons 
who were intimately associated with Burns, and, as we have seen, 
were themselves the subjects of his verse, and also the immediate 
relatives of one whose chequered life forms a romantic story, and 
whose beauty the Poet celebrated in song :— 
“© OQ lovely Polly Stewart ! 
O charming Polly Stewart ! 
There’s not a flower that blooms in May 
That’s half so fair as thou art.” 
Polly Stewart was the daughter of William Stewart, half-sister 
of Hannah Lee, and niece of Mrs Catherine Stewart, the persons 
whose wills are here. I do not know that the papers add almost 
anything to the story of Polly Stewart, but they contain references 
to herself, and to her family, who are the principal beneficiaries 
under her father’s will. Polly was first married to her cousin, 
Ishmael Stewart, by whom she had three sons, and the will of 
Mrs Catherine Stewart bears—‘ Item, I leave and bequeath to 
each of William, Charles, and Alexander Stewart’s children pro- 
create of the marriage between the now deceased Ishmael Blow- 
field Stewart, late residenter at Springfleld, and my niece Mary 
Stewart, the sum of five pounds sterling.” Mrs Stewart also 
remembers Polly herself in the matter of dress :—“ Item, I leave 
and bequeath to my niece Mary Stewart, daughter of the said 
William Stewart, to purchase a suit of mournings, the sum of 
ten pounds sterling ;” and after leaving another niece five of her 
best gowns, and three of her best aprons, she leaves the remainder 
of her clothes to a cousin, “ my best silk cloak excepted, which I 
leave and bequeath to my niece Mary Stewart.” Ishmael 
Stewart, Polly’s first husband, had, according to Dr Ramage, to 
leave the country under a cloud, and dared not return ; and it 
was never known what became of him. Polly was married a 
second time to George Welsh, farmer in Mortonmains, grand- 
uncle of the late Mrs Thomas Carlyle, a man highly respected, 
by whom she had two daughters, Hannah and Grace. The mar- 
riage proved to be unhappy, and a separation took place, when 
Polly joined her father in Maxwelltown, where he had come to 
reside. From his will we learn that William Stewart was resid- 
ing in Maxwelltown, that he possessed the lands of Bilbow and 
the houses built thereon, lying in the parish of Troqueer ; he was 
tenant of three farms belonging to the Duke of Queensberry, and 
joint-tenant of Kelhead Limeworks, and he held one-fourth 
share of the woollen manufactory carried on at Cample under 
