Burnous

“ At that hour a coolness falls over everything, intense silence reigns, the sky above grows a deeper and deeper blue, and the palms and talha trees look mysterious in the half-light. Soon the stars shine out like diamond points, and it grows darker and darker, until the chill night-breeze of the desert stirs the feathery heads of the date-palms. Then the lawless nomads, my companions, would wrap their burnouses closely about them, scoop out a hole in the warm sand, and there repose until the first flush of dawn. ”

“ Burnet, apparently unarmed, had his revolver securely tucked away.
Burnet had lived long enough in Mesopotamia to have more than a passing acquaintance with the camel, its moods and vagaries; but during the next few days he learnt more about that useful "ship of the desert" than he had known in all his previous experience. His steed tramped on hour after hour at the same steady pace, with a jolting movement that he found unpleasant and tedious. He longed for the lithe, springy, varied gait of a horse, and once ventured to express his preference to his companion. ”

“ The tragedy of Burns's life is known to all of you. Surely we may say, if discrepancy between place held and place merited constitute perverseness of lot for a man, no lot could be more perverse than Burns's. Among those secondhand acting-figures, mimes for most part, of the Eighteenth Century, once more a giant Original man; one of those men who reach down to the perennial Deeps, who take rank with the Heroic among men: and he was born in a poor Ayrshire hut. The largest soul of all the British lands came among us in the shape of a hard-handed Scottish Peasant. ”

“ He searched for them for hours, going deeper and deeper into the forest than he had ever been before. He saw strange trees and strange flowers, and heard strange sounds: and at last the sun began to go down, and he knew he would soon be left in the dark. His little feet and legs were scratched with brambles, and were so tired that they would scarcely carry him; but he dared not go back to the swineherd's hut without finding the swine. The only comfort he had on all the long way was that the little brook had run by his side, and sung its song to him ”

“ We saw Burns's house - a place that made me deeply sad - and spent the afternoon down the banks of the Nith. I had not spent a day by a river since we lunched in the meadows near Sudbury. The air was as pure and clear and sparkling as spring water; beautiful, graceful outlines of hill and wood shut us in on every side; and the swift, brown river fled smoothly away from before our eyes, rippled over with oily eddies and dimples. White gulls had come up from the sea to fish, and hovered and flew hither and thither among the loops of the stream. ”

“ For, though Burney's strength was prodigious, the strength of this other was something monstrous. Burney was being beaten back step by step, inch by inch; he was being borne down. Great sweat drops stood on his face. His teeth were clenched in a frozen snarl of supreme physical effort. His knees were bending slowly, slowly—his back was yielding. The huge, hairy hands of the Thing were reaching, reaching—the great talonlike fingers were spread and tensed for the death clutch. The snarl broke suddenly into a scream to freeze one's blood ”

“ It has been dug and kept free of weeds, but my Law has been broken.
There is no Blue Flower."
Then the little cripple got up trembling and hobbled through his rickety gate and threw himself down upon the earth before the King's white horse, sobbing hopelessly and heart-brokenly.
"Oh King!" he cried. "I am only a cripple, and small, and I can easily be killed. I have no flowers at all. When I opened my package of seeds I was so glad that I forgot the wind was blowing, and suddenly a great gust carried them all away forever and I had not even one left. ”

“ There was no one in sight, no smoke from any dwelling; all was as still as if it were a valley of the dead. Only from the upper air the larks were singing, and the melancholy peewits cried ever over the lower moorlands. From this place my course was clear; I went up the prattling Wandel Burn, from where it entered the river, and soon I was once more lost in the windings of the dark hills. There is a narrow bridle-path which follows the burn, leading from Broughton in Tweeddale to Abington, so the way was easier walking. ”

“ Burney lifted his chin from his heaving chest, and stared somberly at the dead. "Sure, I knowed about him," he admitted dismally. "I never knowed he was dangerous, though—till he commenced killin' sheep. Even then I didn't think he'd—tackle a human being. He's—always been harmless. Just—simple-minded and wantin' to live around in caves like an animal. He never hurt nobody—before. It must 'a' just growed on him, kinda, from killin' them—sheep." ”

“ He allowed himself one little human enjoyment. A small bird called a burnet made friends with him and lived in his cell, ate from his fingers and his trencher, and only left him at the breeding season, after which it brought its fledged family back with it. This little friend lived for three years with the prior, and to his great grief came no more in the fourth. The learned have exhausted their arts to discover what a burnet can be, and have given up the chase. ”

“ The airy beings that to the impassioned soul of Burns seemed cold, bloodless, unattractive, rise up lovely in their own silent domains, before the dreaming fancy of the tender-hearted Shepherd. The still green beauty of the pastoral hills and vales where he passed all his days, inspired him with ever-brooding visions of Fairy Land, till, as he lay musing on the brae, the world of shadows seemed, in the clear depths, a softened reflection of real life, like the hills and heavens in the water of his native lake. ”

“ Another thing that disturbed Henry Burns not a little was the knowledge that his excursions over the roof were now attended with greater risk than ever. It would not do to encounter the stranger there unexpectedly. What might not the man, suddenly aroused, and desperate, as Henry Burns believed him to be, do to him, if he found himself discovered? A fall from such a height must mean instant death, and who was there to suspect that he had not fallen, if he should be found next day lying upon the ground? ”

“ At a country wedding the young men have a race to the bridegroom's home, and he who wins, brings out a bottle and glass and drinks the young wife's health. I wish Burns had described a bruse; all sorts of steeds, wild, unkempt lads as well as colts, old broken-down thoroughbreds that did wonders when soopled, huge, grave cart-horses devouring the road with their shaggy hoofs, wilful ponies, etc. You can imagine the wild hurry-skurry and fun, the comic situations and upsets over a rough road, up and down places one would be giddy to look at. ”

“ Not much of a reconciliation so far as words went, but Burney's breath became uneven with emotion. Did you ever see a man take a butterfly from his net carefully, so as not to brush the bloom from its wings? Just so gently did Burney lift her into his arms and carry her down the bluff. And all the while he did not speak. He could think of nothing to say that would not sound irreverent.
Vida spoke but once when he had carried her with safe gentleness down the steepest ledge. "It must be an awful comfort to be so strong," she said. "I wish I was as big as you are." ”

“ Such is the stamp of living literature; and there was never any more alive than that of Burns.
What a gust of sympathy there is in him sometimes flowing out in byways hitherto unused, upon mice, and flowers, and the devil himself; sometimes speaking plainly between human hearts; sometimes ringing out in exultation like a peal of bells! When we compare the Farmer’s Salutation to his Auld Mare Maggie, with the clever and inhumane production of half a century earlier, The Auld Man’s Mare’s dead, we see in a nutshell the spirit of the change introduced by Burns. ”

“ And when, in leaving him, Burns once more laid an exploring touch upon his wrist, the two thin hands suddenly clutched the strong one and bore it weakly to lips which kissed it fervently.
"Well, that's rather an eloquent thank-you, eh?" murmured Burns, as he patted the hands in reply. "No doubt but he's grateful. Put the fiddle where he can see it in the morning, will you, honey? Open the window pretty well: I've covered him thoroughly, and he has a touch of fever to keep him warm. Good-night, little Hungary. Luck's with you to-night, to get into this lady's house." ”

“ Burns, in his innate appreciation of the dignity of humanity, is something of a Siegfried, with the fearless spirit of the forest vocal with the song of birds, the aroma of blossoming shrubs, the play of the waterfall and the restful stretch of meadows with their daisies and heather. ”

“ At the top Burney turned and rode forward on the trail which Breed Jim had lately followed, and went forward at a slow, easy trot that slid the miles behind him with the least effort.
At the Sunbeam the men slept heavily in the stuffy darkness of the bunk house. But Burney, their boss, rode and rode through the sage and the lava, and crossed steep gullies, and skirted ledges that no four-footed thing could scale—unless we except the lizards that lived there—and still he went on. The Great Dipper tilted more and more, and the wind rose and blew chill across the uplands. ”

“ Down we sink into a deep black valley of water, to rise on the cresting summit of an awful wave, again and again, but still no welcome sound of oars rattling in rowlocks. An hour passes, which seems an age, and I despairingly see that Mr. Burns shows signs of growing weakness. ”

“ It seemed odd that Burney should be up there with Vida. He had believed that Burney was riding off the other way, toward the river.
He clutched a splinter of rock, pulled himself up half his length, and looked over the ledge upon baked soil that still sloped steeply up to the crest. He drew himself up by sheer muscular strength over the smooth, black rim and ran up the bluff on his toes until another ledge blocked the way and he must climb again, foot by foot, clinging with his hands and his feet to the face of the rock. ”

“ Ay, Burns is like a great mountain, based on earth, towering towards heaven—of a mixed character, containing gold, silver, brass, iron, and clay, and from which every man, according to his taste, can become enriched by the gold and the silver, or get mired in the clay. ”

“ Moes. G. brunna, Su. G. brunn, Isl. brunn-ur, Germ. brun, Teut. burn, borne, a well, a fountain; Belg. bornwater, water from a well. A rivulet, a brook. S. A. Bor.
Douglas.
2. E. bourn.
In this sense only A. S. burn, and byrna, occur; or as signifying a torrent.
3. The water used in brewing, S. B.
Lyndsay.
4. Urine, S. B. "To make one's burn," mingere. Germ. brun, urina.
Burnie, Burny, is sometimes used as a dimin. denoting a small brook, S.
Beattie.
To BURN, v. a.
1. One is said to be burnt, when he has suffered in any attempt. ”

“ In his relation to Nature there was this great difference between Burns and his literary contemporaries and immediate predecessors, that whereas even the best of them wrote rather as pleased spectators of the country, with all its infinite variety of form and colour, of life and sound, of calm and storm, he sang as one into whose very inmost heart the power of these things had entered. For the first time in English literature the burning ardour of a passionate soul went out in tumultuous joy towards Nature. ”

“ The horseman dismounted and joined Burns, who, on his proposing to him to cross the street, said, “Nay, nay, my young friend, that’s all over now,” and quoted, after a pause, some verses of Lady Grizzle Baillie’s pathetic ballad.
Burns, amidst poverty and sorrow, when needful comforts had almost failed him in his sickness, and his children nearly wanted bread, in the thirty-eighth year of his age, quitted a world that was not soon to look upon his like again. ”

“ Green. 'I believe the poor child is killed. O, Sap, I didn't expect this of you!'
"'Be quiet, my dear,' said Green; 'it was only an experiment.'
"'An experiment, Mr. Green!' retorted the lady, sharply; 'your wife and child nearly killed, and you call it an experiment! Nurturing ostriches to devour your off-spring! I wonder you don't take to raising elephants.'
"'No danger of that, Maria,' replied her husband, meekly. 'I have "seen the elephant." And to-morrow I shall send my entire stock to the auction-room,—Shanghaes, Chittagongs, Brahma Pootras, Cochins, Warhens and Warhoos. ”

“ These tasks, with all their accompanying observations of plants and animals, of weather and seasons, were stronger influences on Burns than John Murdoch was. No poet has revealed a closer or more accurate knowledge of nature; no poet, it may be added, had less of romantic enthusiasm for pure scenery. Burns knew nature as the peasant and the savage knows it, as something on which his health and prosperity and his very life depend. ”

“ One of the half-dozen ancient spellings of the name of the manor of Burnham is Brunan, and the suffix burh means ‘a fortified place.’
Further, men’s bones, Saxon coins, and a Saxon sword have been ploughed up on the adjoining fields; while just south of Burnham there was in the eighteenth century a road known as ‘Bloody Gate’ and just north of it there is still a ‘Dead Man Dale.’ So we shall have to concede that the southern bank of the ‘yellow flood’ has some considerable claims to the possession of the site of the famous battle of Brunanburh. ”