Ayrshire

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We'll awa’ to Ayrshire, Where green grow the rashes, O'; We'll awa’ to Ayrshire, To see the bonnie lasses, O. SIR ALEXANDER Boswell.

AYRSHIRE, the country of Bruce and of Burns,—the peculiar part of Scotland where man is most manly and woman most beautiful,—is one of the largest counties south of the Forth, stretching eighty miles in a crescent shape along the coast of the western sea, and being in some places thirty miles broad. In every sense of the word, this is a most important county. It is everywhere highly productive, either in grain, cattle, the labours of the dairy, or in mineral wealth; it possesses a large and very active manufacturing community; and it is endowed with a liberal share of that dearest of all gifts—historical and poetical association. Every thing seems to be constituted on a peculiarly large and liberal scale in Ayrshire. The men are decidedly taller and more robust than other natives of Scotland,¹ and the cattle and horses display proportions equally extraordinary. There is also a degree of masculine strength and energy about the minds of the Ayrshire people, a sort of whiskered and buckskin-breeked hardihood, correspondent to their physical qualifications. The mind, character, and consequently the writings, of Burns, were thus characterised in a very eminent degree. The aristocracy of Ayrshire is a very numerous and honourable body; as is testified by two valuable genealogical volumes lately published by Mr Robertson of Irvine. The Kennedies, the Montgomeries, the Boyds, the Blairs, the Stewarts, the Campbells, the Boswells, the Cunninghams, and the Cochranes, are the chief families. Of the first of these, now represented by the Earl of Cassilis, it was formerly said in an old rhyme:

Twixt Wigton and the town o' Ayr, Portpatrick and the Cruives o' Cree, Nae man need think for to bide there, Unless he court wi' Kennedie;

a fearful delineation of feudal power. All the great Ayrshire families have produced men more or less eminent in the history and literature of their country. Ayrshire is divided into three great districts. Cunningham, the most northerly, is separated from Kyle by the river Irvine; and Kyle, the central section, is divided from Carrick, the most southerly, by the famous river Doon. Cunningham is a level and fertile district; Kyle is partly mountainous; and Carrick is little else than a vast tract of hills. The best productions of those different regions are thus expressed in an ancient popular rhyme:

Kyle for a man, and Carrick for a cow, Cunningham for butter and cheese, and Galloway for woo’.

But modern improvements have tended somewhat, we believe, to derange these peculiarities. It was in Ayrshire that the doctrines of the Reformation were for the first time promulgated in Scotland. The Lollards of Kyle, as the first persons tinged with these sentiments were called, suffered persecution for conscience-sake before the termination of the fifteenth century. When the Reformation, therefore, arrived in full force, the people of this country, being to a certain extent prepared for the change, received it with unexpected facility. The impressions so easily made were proportionably strong, and remained ineffaceable amidst all the religious convulsions that afterwards took place. This was all very well at the time. But it unfortunately happened that the state of apprehension and alarm into which they were thrown by their persecutions, caused among the people an excessive tenaciousness and affection for the unworthy as well as worthy parts of their faith, and occasioned the perpetuation of many observances which appeared to every unconcerned eye as nothing but ridiculous. Thus, the state of the public mind in regard to religion was in Burns's time perfectly contemptible, as appears from his writings; and it may be said even yet to be characterised by no little degree of the fanaticism and austerity, which called from that satirist so powerful a correction. Previous to the era of 1770, Ayrshire was in a very rude state—destitute of roads, the land unimproved, and no manufactures. Such was the state of the country in regard to roads and the means of transportation from one place to another,² about the year 1730, that Hugh Earl of Loudoun, then a child, being under the necessity of travelling from Loudoun Castle to Edinburgh, was, it is recorded by tradition, carried in a species of pannier, slung across the back of a horse, ...' thus, accompanied by a servant on another horse, accomplished the journey of sixty miles in somewhat less than a week. It was on account of some attempts at reforming and improving the domestic condition of the farmers of Ayrshire, that the unfortunate Earl of Eglintoune acuired his unpopularity, and was so little lamented at his death. His lordship used to cause his tenants to change farms with each other, with the view, as he alleged, to prevent their beds and other furniture from rotting with damp, and in order to incite them to greater personal activity. 'He’s an unco fashious man that Yerl o' Eglintonne,' they would sometimes say to each other; ' he's ay plan-plannin and ay change-changin, and ae way or another he's never of our o Od, I wiss he mayna meet wi' his merchant some day.' When eventually shot o a poacher, it was very generally remarked, that 'he had lang been fey, and lang been working for a mischief, and noo he had got it.' The indolence and squalor which the earl vainly endeavoured to abolish, have now, of course, entirely disappeared.^{3 The first thing that gave an impulse to agriculture in Ayrshire was the establishment of Douglas, Heron, and Company's Bank at Ayr. This institution, no doubt, was ill-conducted in all its departments; its officials, for one thing, were foolishly extravagant in their expenses wherever they went, insomuch that there is a proverb current to this day throughout Ayrshire, Galloway, and Dumfriesshire, being the expression used on all occasions by these men,--' Never mind the reckoning, Douglas, Heron, and Company pays for a' !” Yet, though productive of ruin to many individuals, the Ayr bank was the cause of much good in the country; supplying, while it lasted, to some public-spirited persons, the means of improving and planting their estates, and raising a spirit of activity in the community at large, which was never afterwards permitted to flag. The most striking of the natural features of Ayrshire is the appearance, from the shore, of Ailsa Craig, which rises sheer out of the sea, at the distance of fifteen miles from land, somewhat like an inverted top. The distance of this object causes it to be seen from the greater part of the coast, though it everywhere appears to be quite at hand. The Bass alone, on the coast of East Lothian, bears any resemblance to this singular rock; and it is remarkable that both teem with the peculiar bird called the Solan Goose, which is only to be found in one other similar Scottish island,that of St Kilda. So tall and massive is Ailsa, and such is the effect produced by the levelness of the sea between, that the sight of it, even at the distance of fifteen miles, oppresses the imagination. Nothing can be more startling than its first appearance, as the stranger comes down upon the coast from the mountains of Carrick. It is an object quite unlike any he has ever been accustomed to see upon the ocean; it seems some strange, some awful prodigy; and his very senses reel under the terrific impression. Yet, such is the difference which education and circumstances can work upon the minds of different men, that, according to veritable report, an honest farmer from the interior, on first coming within sight of the rock and the surrounding watery plain, made no other observation upon the subject than that 'he thought he never had seen so large a meadow, with so large a hay-rick in the middle of it.' Ailsa Craig belongs to Ayrshire. It is about two miles in circumference; is the property of the Earl of Cassilis; and is let at L.30 per annum. Its principal productions are solan geese, goats, and rabbits. It is uninhabited, though the remains of a house of some strength are yet to be seen perched upon the upper edge of the eastern front of the crag. 1 It is, we believe, from Ayrshire, that the gallant and gigantic horse-regiment so well known by the epithet of 'the Scots Greys,' has been for many years chiefly recruited. 2 Carts were first used in Ayrshire, at the erection of the bridge over the Irvine Water near Riccarton, in 1726. 3 Mr Aiton, in his intelligent 'View of the Agriculture of the County of Ayr,' where many highly curious facts are stated, thus accounts for the ignorance and indolence of the tenantry. 'The generality of the tenants were altogether ignorant of the fundamental principles of agriculture and of the laws of nature on which these principles are founded. Information on these subjects was not then relished. An extensive acquaintance with the mysterious, abstruse, and disputed points of systematic divinity, was the species of knowledge then generally sought after, and to which the greatest fame was attached. The people had been taken from the plough and other peaceful labours of the field, to assist the reformers in demolishing churches and hunting down the popish clergy, who were the best farmers then in Scotland; and it was not till near the end of the last century that they returned to their proper occupation. * * * Their ambition was not to improve the soil, but to reform the church ; not to destroy weeds and brambles, but to root out heresy; not to break up the stubborn soil, but to tread down the Whore of Babylon and the Man of Sin.' p. 74. Mr Aiton immediately afterwards adds: 'The selling of meal by the weight instead of measure, was, when first introduced, considered a dreadful schism; and the introduction of winnowing machines was testified against, from some of the pulpits, under the denomination of DEIL's Wind.' p. 77. " Robert Chambers, The Picture of Scotland. Volume First. (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1827), 283-288. https://books.google.com/books?id=GUwDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA283#v=onepage&q&f=f…}