And in this poor cottage, in the wild January weather of 1759, wee Robert was born.  Scarcely a week later, one windy night, a gable of his frail home was blown in.  So fierce was the gale that it seemed as if the whole wall might fall, so, through the darkness, and the storm, the baby and his mother were carried to a neighbor’s house.  There they remained for a week until their own cottage was again made fit to live in.  It was a rough entry into the world for the wee lad.

For some time William Burns went on working as a gardener, then when Robert was about seven he took a small farm called Mount Oliphant, and removed there with his wife and family.

He had a hard struggle to make his farm pay, to feed and clothe little Robert and his brothers and sisters, who were growing up fast about him.  But, poor though he was, William Burns made up his mind that his children should be well taught.  At six Robert went daily to school, and when the master was sent away somewhere else, and the village of Alloway was left without any teacher, William Burns and four neighbors joined together to pay for one.  But as they could not pay enough to give him a house in which to live, he used to stay with each family in turn for a few weeks at a time.

Robert in those days was a grave-faced, serious, small boy, and he and his brother Gilbert were the cleverest scholars in the little school.  Chief among their school books was the Bible and a collection of English prose and verse.  It was from the last that Burns first came to know Addison’s works for in this book he found the “Vision of Mirza” and other Spectator tales, and loved them.

Robert had a splendid memory.  In school hours he stored his mind with the grand grave tales of the Bible, and with the stately English of Addison; out of school hours he listened to the tales and songs of an old woman who sang to him, or told him stories of fairies and brownies, of witches and warlocks, of giants, enchanted towns, dragons, and what not.  The first books he read out of school were a Life of Hannibal, the great Carthagenian general, and a Life of Wallace, the great Scottish hero; this last being lent him by the blacksmith.  These books excited little Robert so much that if ever a recruiting sergeant came to his village, he would strut up and down in raptures after the drum and bagpipe, and long to be tall enough to be a soldier.  The story of Wallace, too, awoke in his heart a love of Scotland and all things Scottish, which remained with him his whole life through.  At times he would steal away by himself to read the brave, sad story, and weep over the hard fate of his hero.  And as he was in the Wallace country he wandered near and far exploring every spot where his hero might have been.

After a year of two the second schoolmaster went away as the other had done.  Then all the schooling the Burns children had was from their father in the long winter evenings after the farm work for the day was over.