I was delighted to be able to show off the ‘chain’ to the Wednesday Club, a pensioners group in Kirkcudbright with whom I have been associated for several years. Along with singer and musician, John Duncan, also from Twynholm, I gave the audience a wide-ranging talk on different aspects of Burns’ life and works.
In particular, I stressed his life as a ploughman especially for the benefit of two widows in the group. Willie Fairley, a ploughman from Twynholm, had died recently and at his wife Joan’s request I had recited Burns’ famous poem To a Mouse at his funeral. For Barbara McCaig I recalled how I had interviewed her husband Jack as part of my degree studies at Glasgow University in 2002, shortly before he died. Another ploughman, he was deeply knowledgeable about Burns and was an accomplished bothy ballad singer. Burns meant a great deal to both men.
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