Grampian Club > Monuments and monumental inscriptions in Scotland > Volume 1

412 RENFREWSHIRE.
wards resided at Campbelton. On Sunday, the 14tli of May, 1786,
Mary and Burns held a farewell meeting in a secluded spot on the
banks of the Ayr. Their adieu was performed with a striking
ceremonial, common to the rural courtships of the West. The
lovers stood on each side of a small brook ; they laved their hands
in the stream, and, holding a Bible between them, vowed mutual
fidelity. Mary presented the poet with a Bible in one volume;
Burns handed her in return a more elegant one in two volumes.
The lovers never again met. Mary returned to Campbelton,
where she some months resided with her parents. Meanwhile her
younger brother, Eobert, was entered as an apprentice with Peter
McPherson, ship carpenter at Greenock, whose wife was a cousin
of Mary's mother. Mary accompanied her brother to Greenock,
with the double purpose of seeing him safely transferred to the
care of her relation, and of taking farewell of Burns before his
intended departure for the West Indies. On the day following his
arrival at Greenock Mary's brother fell ill; Mary attended him
with care and tenderness, and he recovered. But Mary was seized
next, and her illness proved to be fever of a most malignant type.
In a few days she expired, and her remains were interred in
McPherson's burial-place. She died in November, 1786.
On his tombstone a lengthened inscription celebrates the learning
and personal qualities of John Wilson, Master of the Grammar
School in Greenock, who died on the 2nd June, 1789, aged sixty.
On the tombstone of Eobert Andrew Macfie and his wife and
children are these lines : —
" The saints, in early life remov'd.
In sweeter accents sing,
And bless the swiftness of the flight
That bore them to their King."
James Shaw, butcher, who died in 1799, is by his widow cele-
brated thus : —
" A tender parent, a dear friend.
A loving husband to the end.