Genealogical memoirs of the family of Robert Burns and of the Scottish house of Burnes

40 GENEALOGICAL MEMOIRS OF
The marriage was celebrated on the 15th December. 1 The
bride, Agnes Broun, was born on the 17th March 1732, and
was therefore in her twenty-fifth year. Her father, Gilbert
Broun, farmer at Craigenton, Carrick, was thrice married,
and Agnes was his eldest child by the first marriage. When
she was nine years old her mother died, leaving four younger
children. A sister visiting her mother on her death-bed, sur-
prised to find her so cheerful and resigned, asked her whether
she was not grieved to leave her husband and children. The
dying woman replied, " I leave my children to the care of
God, and Gilbert will get another wife."
Young as she was, Agnes Broun took charge of her father's
younger children, for the domestic servants were chiefly em-
ployed in outdoor work. Before her mother's death she was
by a country weaver taught to read the Scriptures, and at
this point her education ceased. When her father contracted
a second marriage, she was sent to live Avith her mother's
mother, who told her how, in the persecuting days of her
youth, she had sheltered the Covenanters.
At her grandmother's Agnes Broun used the spinning
wheel in winter, and at other seasons worked in the field,
sowed, reaped, and thrashed corn. She had promised her
hand to her grandmother's ploughman, but after an engage-
ment which subsisted five years, she learned that he had
lapsed from virtue, and renounced him. William Burues
met her not long afterwards at Maybole fair. He had thought
of proposing marriage to a young woman at Alloway Mill, but
on meeting Agnes he abandoned his intention. After being
courted about a year, Agnes Broun became his wife. Some
1 William Burnes's Family Bible.
D