Glimpses of Burns in the Dunlop Collection           25

instructions about paying a large sum of money for stock on iMar-
tinmas. Stewart's wife, Catherine Gordon of Afton and Stair,
thought highly enough of the Kilmarnock Poems to invite Burns
to Stair House on the river Ayr, and he in turn thought highly
enough of her to take time from his proposed emigration to Ja¬
maica to copy in September 1786 "a parcel of Songs," the Stair
MS., which was broken up in Victorian sale and auction. And five
years later Burns prepared for "the first person of her sex & rank
that patronised his humble lays" a sixty-eight page selection, the
Afton MS., which includes "Tam o' Shanter" and is now safely
kept in the Burns Cottage iVIuseum, Alloway. The poet's finest
tribute to Mrs. Stewart is in "The Brigs of Ayr" (1786):

Benevolence, with mild benignant air,

A female form, came from the to^v'rs of Stair.

Gavin Hamilton, the Mauchlinc writer (lawyer) serving Alex¬
ander Stewart, had subleased Mossgiel to Robert and Gilbert
Burns on Martinmas 1783, the brothers informally agreeing to
allow themselves ^73 year each as wages for their labor on the
118-acre farm. A liberal in politics and religion, Hamilton soon
got into a row with the Auld Licht (Old Light) minister, William
Auld, who accused him of defalcation in stent money collected
(taxation for the poor), irregular church attendance, travel on
the Sabbath, laxity in family worship, and abusive letterwriting.
While Hamilton was successfully carrying his defense through
the higher Presbyterian courts. Burns gleefully joined the fray
with a satire, "Holy WiUie's Prayer" (1785), barbed against
Auld's abettor, the hypocritical iMauchline elder, ^Villiam Fisher.
He also took occasion to praise honorable "Gaun" in "To the Rev.
John M'lMath: Inclosing a copy of Holy Willie's Prayer":

An' may a bard no crack his jest
What way they've use't him?

In turn, this "gentleman in word an' deed" promoted subscrip-