Next morning there was sun and a flapping wind.
From the street corners of Maybole I could catch
breezy glimpses of green fields. The road underfoot
was wet and heavy—part ice, part snow, part
water, and any one I met greeted me, by way of salutation,
with ’A fine thowe’ (thaw). My way
lay among rather bleak bills, and past bleak ponds
and dilapidated castles and monasteries, to the Highland-looking
village of Kirkoswald. It has little claim to
notice, save that Burns came there to study surveying
in the summer of 1777, and there also, in the kirkyard,
the original of Tam o’ Shanter sleeps his last
sleep. It is worth noticing, however, that this
was the first place I thought ‘Highland-looking.’
Over the bill from Kirkoswald a farm-road leads to
the coast. As I came down above Turnberry, the
sea view was indeed strangely different from the day
before. The cold fogs were all blown away; and
there was Ailsa Craig, like a refraction, magnified
and deformed, of the Bass Rock; and there were the
chiselled mountain-tops of Arran, veined and tipped
with snow; and behind, and fainter, the low, blue
land of Cantyre. Cottony clouds stood in a great
castle over the top of Arran, and blew out in long
streamers to the south. The sea was bitten all
over with white; little ships, tacking up and down
the Firth, lay over at different angles in the wind.
On Shanter they were ploughing lea; a cart foal,
all in a field by himself, capered and whinnied as
if the spring were in him.
The road from Turnberry to Girvan lies along the shore,
among sand-hills and by wildernesses of tumbled bent.
Every here and there a few cottages stood together
beside a bridge. They had one odd feature, not
easy to describe in words: a triangular porch
projected from above the door, supported at the apex
by a single upright post; a secondary door was hinged
to the post, and could be hasped on either cheek of
the real entrance; so, whether the wind was north
or south, the cotter could make himself a triangular
bight of shelter where to set his chair and finish
a pipe with comfort. There is one objection
to this device; for, as the post stands in the middle
of the fairway, any one precipitately issuing from
the cottage must run his chance of a broken head.
So far as I am aware, it is peculiar to the little
corner of country about Girvan. And that corner
is noticeable for more reasons: it is certainly
one of the most characteristic districts in Scotland,
It has this movable porch by way of architecture;
it has, as we shall see, a sort of remnant of provincial
costume, and it has the handsomest population in the
Lowlands. . . .
