WHISKY and SMUGGLING,

THE "PRINCE OF WALES" and 'HIGHLAND MARY'

A Modern Liquor
Whisky, even in the 1770’s, was ‘a modern liquor’, previously the ‘usquebaugh’ had been distilled from thyme, mint,
anise or other herbs.

Records suggest that, by 1772, some six thousand bolls of bere, or bear (hordeum sativum vulgare) - a four-rowed type of
barley - were being grown in the area, expressly for distilling purposes. The crop, needing a 10 to 15 week growing
season, ripened 2-3 weeks earlier than other cereal crops and by 1811 half of all the arable acreage in the Hebrides was
devoted to growing bere.

Much flax had been grown in Kintyre and now the women , more generally accustomed to spinning the yarn, found
themselves employed in distilling, their husbands out in the fields. Despite the quantity of bere being grown, there were
often shortages, as in 1782-1783 when the harvest failed causing acute distress in the area and, desperate for whisky,
some were even persuaded to convert their bread ‘into poison’. The Duke of Argyll obliged all his tenants to enter into
articles, to forfeit five pounds and their stills, in case they were detected making this liqueur d’enfer. There were many
illicit stills !

Achaglass, John McKechney; Achapharic, John McTaggart, Neil McIlreavy, John McKinven, Neil Downie,
Duncan McLean; John McCoag; Achavrad, John McStalker; Arifeach, Angus Gilchrist and Malcolm McEachern;
Auchnadryan, Alex and John McFarlane; Donald McEachern; Ballochroy, Johnny Blue; Samuel and Coll McAlester;
Barr Glen, Neil McCorkindale and Ed McCallum; John McFiggan; David Turner (the inn-keeper); Carnebeg, Alex
Graham; John Campbell (moved to Garvoline, Skipness); Clachaig Glen ? ; Muasdale, Angus Bell; Cleongart, ? ;
Bellochantuy, Arch. McEachern; Courshelloch, Hector and Donald Thomson and Arch. McEachren; Lochend,
Gilbert and Samuel Currie; Loch Kieran (3 stills); Stewartfield Arch. McMurchy and Rhunahaorine which
exported to Ayrshire.

. . . . . and Smuggling
Ayr too had been the preferred landing area for George Moore’s smuggling net-work, controlled from The Isle of Man
and using Lady Isle, off Troon as a storehouse. Around 1765, with increased ‘revenue’ activity, he and other
smugglers from Guernsey and Ireland, moved their bases and stores to Sanda.

Sanda Island had been in the possession of the Priory of Whithorn until 1493 when Angus Macdonald, son of the
chief of Islay and Kintyre, had fled there to seek sanctuary in the island’s chapel. Angus eventually became tenant and,
later, owner of Sanda. The fortunes of the Macdonalds of Sanda declined during the 1700’s, the mainland holdings
reduced to but one farm. They sold all the remaining family lands, including Sanda, in 1799 but, in 1825, bought
back what had been then sold and Sanda remained in the family until after the 1914 - 1918 War.

Smuggled goods were not just confined to alcoholic drinks. Salt from Ireland, oatmeal, tobacco, silk, linen, lace,
poplin, cambric, silk, woollen and cotton stockings and leather shoes were all in demand. Wool was regularly and
illegally exported to Ireland from Southend and Port na h-Olainn - the wool port, just three miles north of the Mull of
Kintyre lighthouse. Horses too were often smuggled to Ireland through Southend. Campbeltown vessels frequently
set out from Liverpool, ostensibly bound for Scandanavia, intending to unload their ‘duty free’ cargoes of salt, tobacco,
rum and sugar on the Clyde coast.

Smuggling was so prevalent that the Customs were “hardly able to pay the salaries of their own officers”. The practice
was so generally approved by the populace that it was almost impossible to obtain any evidence and many well known
and respected family names were involved in the trade !

The “Prince of Wales” and ‘Highland Mary’

Chasing the smugglers, the Revenue cutters, largest of all was the 250-ton “Royal George” crewed by 60 men and
based in Millport. To Campbeltown came the “Prince of Wales” and, amongst her crew, one Archibald Campbell
who had at some time lost the use of an eye in service. Campbell may have been born in Campbeltown but that is
unconfirmed. In any case, he married a Dunoon girl, Agnes Campbell of Auchamore, between Dunoon and Kirn, on
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June 19, 1762. They had four children - Mary, Robert, Agnes and Archibald - and it seems that, though no records
of their births exist, Mary was born at Auchamore in or about 1764.

With the “Prince of Wales” stationed in Campbeltown, the family, through a cousin of his wife, a Mrs Elizabeth
Campbell, or McNeill, who lived in Broombrae, in the north-east part of Saddell Street, successfully secured the
tenancy of an adjacent house, in 1773. Three years later, in 1776, Archibald Campbell, suspected of “different little
pickeries and theftious practices”, left the Revenue Service. As a seaman, he probably had no trouble getting a job on
the local fishing smacks.

The Campbell children, Mary, then too Robert, attended a school conducted in a thatched house just 50 yards away
from their home and when Mary was 14 she got a job as a domestic servant in a house in Kirk Street, then the ‘Quality
Street’ of the town, on the opposite side of the harbour.

Two years later, Mary, then aged 16, went to work in Lochranza and a couple of years or so later, about 1782,
moved to a new situation at Coilsfield, the Castle of Montgomery, near Tarbolton. Seemingly, the situation was
procured for her by a Mre Elizabeth Campbell who had recommended Mary to the favourable notice of a Miss
Arbuckle, a lady belonging to a Campbeltown family.

Sometime later, Mary then moved to Stairaird Farm, at Stair, just across the the narrow River Ayr from the Coilsfield
estate. Then she moved to a job at Mauchline Castle where she became nurse-maid to Alexander Hamilton, born on
July 13, 1785 and it was here and about now that Mary met Robert Burns, of (now East) Mossgiel, a close friend of
Gavin Hamilton, Alexander’s father.

Perhaps Burns’ experiences as an Excise Officer and tales of Mary’s father’s days on the Revenue Cutters were the
catalyst, or . . . was it something else ?

Burns was by then closely involved with two other girls, Elizabeth Paton, who gave birth to his daughter on May 22,
1785 and Jean Armour, one of eleven children, her father, a Mauchline master mason, whom Burns had reputedly
first met at a dance during Mauchline’s traditional race week in April 1784.

In 1784 too, William Burness died and Robert, now head of the family, changed the spelling of the family surname to
Burns and moved to Mossgiel.

In January 1786, Burns wrote to his brother poet Davie Sillar “You hae your Meg, your dearest part, and I my darling
Jean” and within weeks, by the end of February or the beginning of March, Jean too was pregnant and she and Burns
signed a declaration of marriage.

Up until 1940 this, though called irregular, was a perfectly legal form of marriage. All that was necessary was that the
participants should declare verbally that they took each other for man and wife. The only difficulty was then in proving
that such a declaration had been made at all !

In later time, after the compulsory registration of marriages, it was usual for the couple to sign a declaration in front
of witnesses and thereafter to present a petition to the Sheriff Court for authority to register the marriage. Jean
Armour’s parents were appalled. Her father fainted at the news and her mother quickly packed off the pregnant Jean to
an uncle in Paisley.

Burns sister, Mrs Isabella Begg, an ancestress of the Macalister-Hall family in Torrisdale, beside Carradale, maintains
that Burns courted Mary on the rebound from Jean Armour.

Jean had fallen pregnant about the end of November or the beginning of December and now the story has it, that, barely
a month later, Mary too had fallen pregnant by Burns and a because of the supposition that Mary too was pregnant, a
view prevails that Burns now married Mary too, again by declaration.

Suddenly, Burns was a bigamist and it is not difficult to understand his terror of discovery. Mary, it seems, was now no
longer at Mauchline Castle, with the Hamiltons and looking after young, nearly year-old, Alexander, but back working
again at Coilsfield and her meetings with Burns continued throughout the early months of the year. Their last recorded
meeting near Coilsfield, the final parting, Mary now supposedly four or five months pregnant, was on May 14, 1786
-
“Ye banks and braes, and stream around, The castle o’ Montgomerie . .
For there I took the last farewell O’ my sweet Highland Mary.”
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Jean Armour’s efforts to conceal her daughter’s pregnant condition, sending Jean off to Paisley, had been in vain.
Holy Willie Fisher, the Mauchline elder and leader of the “houghmagandie pack”, as Burns called the Kirk Session, soon
got on the trail and Jean, summoned to appear before the Kirk Session on June 10th, failed to appear.

Instead she wrote to ‘Daddy’ Auld, the minister, “I am heartily sorry that I have given and must give your Session
trouble on my account. I acknowledge that I am with child and Robert Burns in Mossgiel is the father.” Burns too confessed
his delinquency in letters to Gavin Hamilton at Mauchline Castle and to Arnot of Dalquhartswood.

Jean Armour’s father, James, took the written declaration of marriage to an Ayr lawyer who cut Burns’ and Jean
Armour’s names from the document, an unprofessional, foolish and ineffective act as the marriage itself was still valid.

Burns felt grossly betrayed by Jean’s part in the proceedings. Burns appeared before the Kirk Session on June 25, 1786
and acknowledged his guilt. Now, during July and August, he made another three anxious appearances before the
congregation that he might obtain a certificate of bachelorhood freeing him from his declared marriage with Jean Armour
and too allowing him, hopefully, to set aside his possibly ‘bigamist’ arrangement with Mary, should questions ever arise.

Burns had even more troubles too. It was quite clear to him that his farm, Mossgiel, was a failure and his financial
plight was desperate, he resolved to emigrate, to The West Indies, but, despite booking passage on two separate
occasions, he seems to have made no effort to take up the berths.

On July 31, 1786, the ‘Kilmarnock Edition’ of Burns’ poems was published and became an immediate success. His
immediate financial problems over, Burns came out of hiding from his pursuers and made a tour round South Ayrshire
reaching Mauchline on September 1st when he immediately went to see Jean Armour.

Two days later he wrote, “Armour has just brought me a fine boy and a girl at one throw.” About this same time,
Mary, as the story has it, but a few weeks away from giving birth, returned to Campbeltown and no doubt anxious to
conceal the supposed pregnancy, the family made arrangements for her to go up-river, to Glasgow, to take up an
appointment with a Colonel McIvor, another family relative.

However, Mary’s young brother, Robert, had been apprenticed to his kinsman Peter McPherson, a Greenock ship’s
carpenter and, as events turned, it was to Greenock that Mary went, to look after Robert, who had caught ‘the fever’
soon after arriving there.

Suffice to say, Robert survived but Mary herself succumbed to the fever and died on October 20, 1786, her last words,
according to Peter McPherson, “If it were The Almighty’s will, I would like to live that I might be the wife of Robert Burns, but I
know I am dying and I’m quite willing to go.” Providentially, Peter McPherson had purchased a lair in Greenock Cemetery
just eight days before Mary died and there she was buried.

Burns’ sister, Mrs Isabella Begg, she related to the Macalister-Hall family at Torrisdale, told of a letter that arrived at
Burns’ farm, Mossgiel, at the end of October. Burns took it to over to read by the window of the ill-lit cottage. He
turned white as a sheet, shoved it into his pocket, walked out the door and away, off the farm. There can be little
doubt that the note contained the news of Mary’s death and that Burns, who never reportedly shoed any regrets for his
treatment of women, was for once struck with deep remorse.

We can never know the truth about the affair, or about any baby, because the Campbell family destroyed any papers
which may have existed and Mary’s father seemingly forbade any mention of Burns’ name.

The Campbells did however baulk at the burning of ‘The Good Book’ and the two volume Bible, which Burns presented
to Mary at their parting, can still be seen, a lock of Mary’s golden hair between the pages of the first volume, at the
museum in Alloway.

Building developments in the 1920’s caused the grave to be opened and the remains removed - There was indeed a
baby’s coffin, but it was that Agnes Henry’s baby who had been buried with her in 1827, forty-one years after Mary
died.