'
Next morning there was sun and a flapping wind. From the street
corners of Maybole I could catch breezy glimpses of green fields.
The road underfoot was wet and heavy - part ice, part snow, part
water, and any one I met greeted me, by way of salutation, with 'A
fine thowe' (thaw). My way lay among rather bleak bills, and past
bleak ponds and dilapidated castles and monasteries, to the Highland-
looking village of Kirkoswald. It has little claim to notice, save
that Burns came there to study surveying in the summer of 1777, and
there also, in the kirkyard, the original of Tam o' Shanter sleeps
his last sleep. It is worth noticing, however, that this was the
first place I thought 'Highland-looking.' Over the bill from
Kirkoswald a farm-road leads to the coast. As I came down above
Turnberry, the sea view was indeed strangely different from the day
before. The cold fogs were all blown away; and there was Ailsa
Craig, like a refraction, magnified and deformed, of the Bass Rock;
and there were the chiselled mountain-tops of Arran, veined and
tipped with snow; and behind, and fainter, the low, blue land of
Cantyre.
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