Robert Burns & Mary Campbell

Mary Campbell was one of his many loves.   She died while their love was still in an embryonic stage.  A love thus cut short in its first flush is left suspended in a heightened state.   This gave added poignancy to her memory, which stayed with him for the rest of his life.   To the reader it lends the added romance which comes from classical tragedy of the ill-starred lovers.    Burns captures these feelings to good dramatic effect in his poem to the memory of his "Highland Mary".

He describes matters in his own words thus:

"My Highland Lassie was a warm-hearted, charming young creature as ever blessed a man with generous love.   After a pretty long tract of the most ardent reciprocal attachment, we met by appointment, on the second Sunday in May, in a sequestered spot by the Banks of Ayr, where we spent the day in taking farewell, before she should embark for the West Highlands to arrange matters among her friends for our projected change of life.   At the close of Autumn following she crossed the sea to meet me at Greenock, where she had scarce landed when she was seized with a malignant fever, which hurried my dear girl to the grave in a few days before I could hear of her illness. "

Whatever the circumstances surrounding the lovers' meeting and her subsequent death, it doesn't detract from the quality of the poem.

Painting By W. Millan  

Ye banks and braes and streams around

The castles of Montgomery!

Green be your woods, and fair your flowers,

Your waters never drumlie,

There simmer first unfauld her robes,

And there the langest tarry;

For there I took the last fareweel

O' my sweet Highland Mary.

How sweetly bloomed the gay green birk,

How rich the hawthorn's blossom,

As underneath their fragrant shade

I clasped her to my bosom!

The golden hours, on angel wings,

Flew o'er me and my dearie;

For dear to me, as light and life,

Was my sweet Highland Mary!

W' mony a vow, and locked embrace,

Our parting was fu' tender;

And pledging aft to meet again,

We tore oursel's asunder;

But, oh! fell death's untimely frost,

That nipt my flower sae early!

Now green's the sod and cauld the clay,

That wraps my Highland Mary!   

O pale, pale now, those rosy lips,

I aft hae kissed sae fondly!

And closed for aye the sparkling glance

That dwelt on me sae kindly:

And mouldering now in silent dust

That heart that lo'ed me dearly!

But still within my bosom's core

Shall live my Highland Mary.

Robert Burns 14th November 1792.