At  a  Greenock  Burns  celebration,  Mr.  John  Amot,  in  pro-
posing "The  Memory  of  Highland  Mary,"  said  that  of  the
many  towns  more  or  less  associated  with  Burns — -Ayr,
Irvine,  Mauchline,  Kilmarnock,  Edinburgh,  and  Dumfries
— Greenock  might  take  a  very  high  place.  Ayr  had  the  un-
speakable honour  of  having  given  him  birth  ;  Kilmarnock
issued  his  first  edition  ;  Edinburgh  lionised  him,  and  then
somewhat  contemptuously  neglected  him  ;  Dumfries  shel-
tered him  in  his  last  weary  years — there  the  "  respectables  "
shunned  him  while  living  and  afterwards  gave  him  a  great
funeral ;  and  Greenock  found  "  a  place  of  blissful  rest  "  for
the  remains  of  the  one  woman  who  really  had  his  heart.
Greenock  had  a  great  trust  in  the  Old  West  Kirkyard,  where
near  by  stood  the  only  church  of  the  pre-Reformation  period
in  town.  In  the  place  where  "the  rude  forefathers  of  the
hamlet  sleep,"  and  within  sound  of  hundreds  of  hammers
and  the  roar  of  machinery,  lay  the  dust  of  her  who  had  be-
come a  great  literary  fact,  to  whose  shrine  thousands  of
people  gathered  from  all  parts  of  the  world.  Various  com-
plaints had  appeared  from  time  to  time  in  the  newspapers
about  the  neglect  of  Highland  Mary's  grave  by  the  Greenock
Burns  Club,  but  these  complaints,  so  far  as  the  Club  was
concerned,  had  no  foundation.  The  kirk-session  of  the  Old
West  Kirk  was  the  obstacle  that  stood  in  the  way.  In  clos-
ing, Mr.  Arnot  said  : — Mary  Campbell's  worth,  her  nobility
of  character,  her  grace  of  disposition,  and  her  comelj^  form


l;)G  Highland  Mary.
