32 Maria Riddell, the Friend of Burns. 



" If you rattle along like 3'our mistress' tongue, 

 Your speed will out-rival the dart ; 

 But a fly for your load, you'll break down on the road, 

 If your stufi: be as rotten's her heart." 



A few weeks later he wrote his " Monody on a lady famed for 

 her caprice." A copy of this he sent to " Clarinda " (Mrs. 

 Maclehose) on June 25th, 1794, with a note : — " The subject 

 of the foregoing- is a woman of fashion in this country, with 

 whom at one period I was well acquainted. By some scan- 

 dalous conduct to me, and two or three other gentlemen here 

 as well as me, she steered so far to the North of my good 

 opinion, that I have made her the theme of several ill-natured 

 things." It is possible that Burns felt the estrangement 

 from Maria Riddell more severely than from the other mem- 

 bers of the family, because a greater, a more sentimental, 

 intimacy had existed between them. That she should 

 alienate herself from him in a similar manner to her relations 

 may have stung him to the exceptional vituperation in which 

 he indulged. It is known that the poet's verses commencing 

 " Farewell, Thou Stream," originally began : — 



" The last time I came o'er the moor 

 And left Maria's dwelling 

 What throes, what tortures passing cure 

 Were in my bosom swelling?" 



and that Maria Riddell was the heroine intended. ''^^ In the 

 copy which he had sent to her he had added : — " On reading 

 over the song, I see it is but a cold inanimated composition. 

 It will be absolutely necessary for me to get in love, else I 

 shall never be able to make a line worth reading on the 

 subject." In July, 1794, however. Burns informed George 

 Thomson, the publisher, that he had " made an alteration in 

 the beginning " of these verses, which he had previously 

 sent him, and they were to run : — 



45 Burns wrote to Maria Riddell, " Friday, noon [April, 1793] 

 . . Mary was the name I intended my heroine to bear, but I 

 altered it into your ladyship's as being infinitely more musical." 

 (W. Scott Douglas, Tlie Works of Robert Burns, vol. vi. (1879), 

 p. 75.). 



