Park Village
Cample
Dalgarnoc
Other
This famous old coaching inn stands South of Closeburn
on the A76 Robert Burns was a frequent visitor when on his excise duties.
The landlord at the time, one Mr Bacon, retained an interest in the poet. After
Burn’s brother Gilbert became tenant of Dinning Farm near Closeburn in 1798,
and then sold the contents of the house 2 years later, the bed in which the poet
was born was purchased by Mr Bacon. His groom slept in the bed for many years
and eventually bought it himself in 1829, moving thereafter to Dumfries, where a
relative is supposed to have cut it up and made it into snuff boxes .
Mr Bacon Landlord of Brownhill Inn, in Dumfriesshire, married Catherine Stewart,
sister of William Stewart, factor to the estate of Closeburn. An English
commercial traveller called Ladyman arrived at the Inn, and was told by Bacon
that he would be dining with Burns and his friends (Chambers says that this
anecdote was quoted by Ladyman in 1824). One of the items on the menu was bacon.
Burns and some of the company would have preferred to do without the presence of
Mr Bacon, and when the Landlord went out to see about fresh supplies of toddy,
Burns's friends asked him to make up a spontaneous verse, to prove that it was
really the poet himself whom Ladyman was meeting. With hardly a moment's
thought, Burns produced:
"At Brownhill we always get dainty good cheer
and plenty of bacon each day in the year;
we've a thing that's nice, and mostly in season —
But why always Bacon? — Come, tell me the reason?"
'At the sale of the effects of Mr Bacon, Brownhill Inn, after his death in 1825,
his snuff-box, being found to bear the inscription:
Robert Burns
Officer
of
The Excise
Below is a poem supposedly inscribed on a pain of glass at Brownhill Inn by Robert Burns as far as I am aware the pane of glass may now be kept at Ellisland.
THE HENPECK'D HUSBAND.
CURS'D be the man, the poorest wretch in life,
The crouching vassal to the tyrant wife!
Who has no will but by her high permission;
Who has not sixpence but in her possession;
Who must to her his dear friend's secret tell;
Who dreads a curtain lecture worse than hell.
Were such the wife had fallen to my part,
I'd break her spirit, or I'd break her heart:
I'd charm her with the magic of a switch,
I'd kiss her maids, and kick the perverse bitch.