36 
ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY LIFE [ch. ii. 
so he left for Paisley, through which he passed, and 
reached Ayr in the evening. 
“After searching for nearly half an hour,” he 
writes, “ I found a bed. But it had been better for 
me that I had slept by a hedge, for I am almost 
covered by tumours and vesications produced by 
the bites of bugs. I did not sleep through the 
night, and to-day got up about six, and visited the 
rigs o Ayr. . . . How gladly I would have 
exchanged my bed last night for the couch of grass 
on the side of Cairngorm.” 
He was now in the “ Land of Burns ” with all 
its associations and inspirations. He visited the 
scenes which were specially hallowed by memories 
of the poet, and among them his birth cottage and 
Kirk Alloway. Of these he writes as follows :_ 
“lam now in a window of the far-famed Kirk 
Alloway, but not in the winnoch bunker in the 
east where sat ‘Auld Nick,’ for that is placed 
beyond my reach by a wall across the church to 
preserve from profanation the dust of a parcel of 
precious lairds of Doonside. I am now much 
better than I was three hours ago. I left Ayr 
about ten and wandered about for some time in 
search of this place, until at length, about a quarter 
of an hour ago, I found it. Not far from this is 
the cottage in which Burns was born. It is now 
converted into a ‘public house,’ as it is called I 
entered it and got half a mutchkin of the favourite 
potation of the unfortunate bard. I knelt down 
upon the floor with my hat off. ‘ Immortal Burns,’ 
said I aloud, ‘ here on my knees I do homage to 
thy genius, and pouring the liquor upon the floor 
added, ‘and pour forth this libation to thy 
