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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The troubled spirit of Mary Campbell (Highland Mary) has plagued all the biographers of Robert Burns. Fascinated and yet baffled, they have produced a wide variety of hypotheses, but no one of them has been able to write a wholly satisfactory account of her romance with Burns. The lack of information about her has led some critics to question her existence. It is, therefore, of considerable interest that facts have recently come to light which demonstrate her living presence conclusively and which enable a biographer for the first time to present a clear-cut account of her relations with Burns.
1 W. E. Henley, Works of Burns, Cambridge edition, p. xxxviii.
2 For a fuller discussion of the manuscript and its history, see R. T. Fitzhugh, Robert Burns as Seen by His Contemporaries (an unpublished Cornell doctoral dissertation), p. 70.
3 This tradition is well summarized by Professor Angellier, in Robert Burns, I, 161: “Ce fut le plus pur, le plus durable, et de beaucoup le plus élevé de ses amours. Au-dessus de tous les autres, dont quelques-uns furent plus ardents, il se dresse avec la blancheur d'un lis . . . C'est [l'amour pour Mary] qui conduisit Burns dans la sphère la plus élevée où il atteignit, lui qui inspira ses plus hauts efforts de spiritualité. La douce fille des Hautes-Terres aux yeux azurés fut sa Béatrice et lui fit signe du bord du ciel.”
4 Robert Chambers, revised by William Wallace, Life and Works of Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London, 1896), I, 473 ff.
5 F. B. Snyder, The Life of Robert Burns (New York, 1932), pp. 112, 396.
6 The disputed passage is as follows: “Clarinda—Richmond informed Mr. Grierson that one day this person called at their lodgings for Burns who had gone out.—Richmond knew her well, and also the nature of the intimacy which existed between her and the Poet—and he instantly volunteered his services to find out Burns—but so afraid were both he and Clarinda (Mrs. Maclehose) that she should be discovered he locked her into their appartment and took the key with him. Being unsuccessful in his search to find Burns, he at last returned and liberated the Prisoner.”
7 F. B. Snyder, “Burns and the Smuggler Rosamond,” PMLA, l (1935), 510–521.
8 For the information about Train, I am indebted to R. W. Macfadzean, “Joseph Train, F. S. A. (Scot.),” Burns Chronicle, xiii, Jan. 1904.
9 It is impossible to select Mary's patron from several candidates suggested by this reference.
10 I owe this identification to Mr. William Angus, Keeper of the Registers and Records of Scotland, H. M. Register House, Edinburgh. Dalgoner is near Dunscore, and but a few miles from Dumfries.
11 In the margin is this mark .
12 In the margin is this note in the same hand, “Except the last day of her life when her father asked if she knew where she was. Yes, she said, I am on my bridal bed. She died in the house of her uncle Alex Campbell, Greenock. Her grandfather was tenant to Duke of Argyle but lost his farm rather than let his sons go into the army.”
13 Hans Hecht, Robert Burns, The Man and His Work, tr. by Jane Lymburn (London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, 1936), pp. 87, 88.
14 Ibid., p. 87.
15 For an excellent summary of the whole problem of Mary and a discussion of the facts hitherto known, see Snyder, p. 129 ff.