Agnes Broun - Life and Character

Life and Character

Agnes Broun (or Brown) was the oldest of her five siblings, and was aged just 10 when her mother, Agnes Rainie, died. She spent two years looking after the family.

In 1744, after her father Gilbert was remarried to Margaret Blaine, she was sent to live in Maybole with her maternal grandmother, Mrs. Rainie. This grandmother was a repository of much oral tradition, including Scottish songs and ballads. She had no great liking for her two stepmothers, one of whom was several years her junior and this may explain why Robert Burns had no contact with his maternal grandfather.

Agnes attended a dame school held in a weaver's cottage and learned the psalms by heart, picked up some basic reading skills, but writing was not part of her education and she never even learned to write her own name.

Agnes was eventually engaged to one William Nelson, a ploughman, who she worked with, but broke off the engagement after 7 years due, reportedly, to an indiscretion on Nelson’s part. It is thought that she met William Burnes or Burness, eleven years her senior, a market gardener, at the Maybole Fair in 1756. They married on the December 3rd, 1757 in Ayr, and settled at Alloway, South Ayrshire, living in a clay cottage that William had planned and built himself. Here they were to raise four of their seven children, including her eldest, Robert Burns, born on January 25, 1759. In 1767, about a year after moving to Mount Oliphant, Agnes gave birth to William Burnes (b. 30 July), followed at roughly two year intervals by John (b. 10 July 1769) and Isobel (b. 27 July 1771). Later homes were Lochlea, Mossgiel, and finally Grant's Braes, Bolton, near Haddington in East Lothian where she died.

She was to outlive both her son and husband by several decades. William Burnes died aged 63 in 1784, and Agnes then went to live with her son, Gilbert, until 1798 at Mossgiel and then at Dinning in Nithsdale for two years, before, in 1800, four years after Robert’s death they moved to Grant's Braes, East Lothian. She lived until just short of the age of 88, and was buried in the churchyard in Bolton Parish Church, Bolton, East Lothian. She had seven children, three of whom predeceased her. Of her many grandchildren, at least ten died before her, a reflection of her own old age and the much shorter life expectancies of those times.

According to Robert Burns’ sister, Mrs. Begg, she “was rather under the average height; inclined to plumpness, but neat, shapely, and full of energy; having a beautiful pink-and-white complexion, a fine square forehead, pale red hair but dark eyebrows and dark eyes often ablaze with a temper difficult of control. Her disposition was naturally cheerful; her manner, easy and collected; her address, simple and unpresuming; and her judgement uncommonly sound and good. She possessed a fine musical ear, and sang well.”

Mark Twain wrote of her in Innocents Abroad (Ch. XXXVI): "It reminds me of what Robert Burns’ mother said when they erected a stately monument to his memory: "Ah, Robbie, ye asked them for bread and they hae gi'en ye a stane."