[BITList] Lassie I lo'e the best

[John Feltham]

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Armour,  Jean  (1765-1834), wife of Robert Burns and subject of  
poetry, was born in Mauchline, Ayrshire, on 25 February 1765, the  
second of the eleven children of James Armour and his wife, Mary  
Smith. The family lived in Mauchline's Cowgate. James Armour was a  
master mason whose work included Dumfries House and commissions for  
the duke of Argyll at Inveraray; a black marble punchbowl, worked by  
her father from the Inveraray project, was among Armour's wedding  
presents. Less is known about Armour's mother, aside from her  
reputation for liking music, and her encouragement of her daughter to  
practise singing and dancing.

Armour's education was brief due to domestic demands. She attended the  
local school under Andrew Noble (later the session clerk who recorded  
her name, along with Burns's, for fornication). Her minister, William  
'Daddy' Auld, also later chastized her, along with Burns. Armour met  
Robert Burns in Mauchline, probably early in 1784, soon after he came  
to the neighbouring parish of Mossgiel. As she recalled in 1827 to  
John McDiarmid, editor of the Dumfries Courier, on their first meeting  
Burns's dog had run over Armour's clothes, which were spread on the  
bleach-green:

I scolded, and threw something at the animal. Burns said, 'Lassie, if  
you thought ought o' me, ye wadna hurt my dog!'-I thought to myself-'I  
wadna think much o' you at ony rate!' I saw him afterwards at a  
dancing-room and we fell acquainted. (Westwood, 15)
Burns recalled John Blane speaking highly of Armour's voice and this  
attracted him strongly: later he praised her 'wood-note wild' to  
correspondents including George Thomson  (2 July[?] 1793, Letters,  
2.180).

Against the orders of her parents Armour and Burns continued to meet.  
They became lovers by the end of 1785 and soon Jean was pregnant. Due  
to her parents' objection the couple could not perform a conventional  
marriage and instead signed a paper-a certificate of marriage-in March  
or April 1786 in the presence of witnesses. Armour's father had the  
paper mutilated, thus nullifying the union. Jean was sent during her  
confinement to Paisley, where she stayed with her uncle, Andrew  
Purdie. Meanwhile her father took out a warrant to have Burns  
imprisoned until he found security for Armour and her child; this  
precipitated Burns's move into hiding, 'wandering from one friend's  
house to another', as he explained to John Richmond  (30 July 1786,  
Letters, 1.35).

Armour returned to Mauchline in early summer 1786. There, on 18 June,  
she refused to account for herself in person to the kirk session, and  
instead sent a letter: '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'  (session minutes,  
Westwood, 18). Several weeks later Burns told John Richmond that he  
had 'waited on Armour since her return', though not 'from any the  
least view of reconciliation, but merely to ask for her health; and to  
you I will confess it, from a foolish hankering fondness'. He  
explained that he was prepared to accept William Auld's request to  
acknowledge paternity and so, in return, receive 'a Certificate as  
single man'  (9 July 1786, Letters, 1.32). Burns would later express  
his low opinion of the Armours, particularly as their previously  
hostile attitude to him changed following the success of the  
Kilmarnock edition of his poems, published in July 1786. As he wrote  
to James Smith, 'If any thing had been wanting to disgust me  
completely at Armour's family, their mean, servile compliance would  
have done it'  (11 June 1787, ibid. 1.95).

On 3 September 1786 Armour gave birth to twins, Robert and Jean. In  
all she and Burns had nine children, three of whom survived infancy;  
in addition she raised Burns's daughter Elizabeth (b. 1791) from his  
affair with Anna Park. Of the twins Robert was sent to Mossgiel to be  
cared for by his father's family while Jean died in October 1787. By  
this time her mother was again pregnant, Armour and Burns having  
revived their relationship in the summer. In December Armour was once  
more called before the kirk session and went to stay with William Muir  
at Tarbolton Mill (Burns was in Edinburgh), returning to Mauchline in  
February 1788. Burns now took a room for himself and Armour in  
Mauchline's Backcauseway; he also visited Ellisland, on the River  
Nith, north of Dumfries, to plan for their future together there. On 3  
March 1788 Armour bore him twin girls, who died a few days later.  
About this time the couple were married by a magistrate in a civil  
ceremony at the office of the Mauchline lawyer Gerald Hamilton, and  
the union was confirmed by the kirk session on 5 August 1788. In June  
Burns had moved to a farm at Ellisland and Armour joined him at the  
end of the year.

Before their marriage Burns's letters suggest some unkindness to  
Armour, particularly in his correspondence to her rivals in love. In  
an infamous letter to Agnes Maclehose (23 February 1788) Burns  
referred to 'a certain woman.-I am disgusted with her; I cannot endure  
her! ... Here was tasteless insipidity, vulgarity of soul, and  
mercenary fawning'  (Letters, 1.194-5). Even less chivalrous is the  
often quoted letter to Robert Ainslie, in which Burns describes  
visiting Armour, reconciling her to her mother, and giving her a  
mahogany bed and a guinea; moreover, 'I have f-d her till she rejoiced  
with joy unspeakable and full of glory ... I swore her, privately and  
solemnly, never to attempt to claim on me as a husband ... She did all  
this like a good girl'  (3 March 1788, ibid. 1.200).

After their marriage, however, Burns's tone became uniformly  
affectionate, even when the union was not yet public. To James Smith  
he spoke of his 'clean-limbed, handsome, bewitching young hussy': 'my  
girl has been doubly kinder to me than even the best of women ... in  
similar circumstances'  (28 April 1788, Letters, 1.218). Writing to  
his close companion Robert Ainslie he claimed that his marriage had  
given 'a stability to my mind & resolutions, unknown before; and the  
poor girl has the most sacred enthusiasm of attachment to me, and has  
not a wish but to gratify my every idea of her deportment'  (26 May  
1788, ibid. 1.223). To his patron Frances Anna Wallace (Mrs Dunlop) he  
praised Armour as a housewife and 'agreeable companion', noting that  
'The Muses must not be offended when I tell them, the concerns of my  
wife & family will, in my mind, always take the Pas'  (10 Aug 1788,  
ibid. 1.234). Burns later spoke of Jean's good health, describing her  
as one of the 'hale, sprightly damsels, that are bred among the Hay &  
Heather'  (11 April 1791, ibid. 2.68), and, again to Dunlop, praised  
her as an enthusiastic mother 'determined to make me the Patriarchal  
leader of a band'  (24 Sept 1792, ibid. 2.125).

Burns's letters to Armour suggest their early, passionate attachment  
developed into a close, affectionate, and mutually nurturing  
relationship. On 14 October 1788 Burns wrote to inform her about the  
recent offer of a furnished house: 'I am extremely happy at the idea  
of your coming to Nithsdale, as it will save us from these cruel  
separations'  (Letters, 1.265). A month earlier he had shown an  
intimacy and lack of affectation that was unusual in his  
correspondence: 'My dear Love, I received your kind letter with a  
pleasure which no letter but one from you could have given me.-I  
dreamed of you the whole night last.' Moreover, he made clear his  
regard for Armour's judgement on song: 'I had [a fine] Strathspey  
among my hands to m[ake verses to,] for Johnson's Collection'  (12  
Sept 1788, ibid. 1.254). As these remarks on her knowledge of song  
indicate, Armour acted on occasion as a sounding board for Burns's  
compositions, recalling airs for his use in writing new settings.

Armour and Burns spent their final years together in Dumfries, moving  
there in late summer 1791, first to the Wee Vennel (now Bank Street)  
and, from May 1793, in Mill Hole Brae (now Burns Street). Burns's  
final letter to Jean, written from the Brow Well on 14 July 1796,  
showed the depth of his feeling for 'My dearest love' and sought to  
minimize his distress to spare her feelings:

I delayed writing until I could tell you what effect sea-bathing was  
likely to produce ... it has eased my pains, and I think has  
strengthened me; but my appetite is still extremely bad ... I am very  
happy to hear by Miss Jessy Lewars that you are all well. My very best  
and kindest compliments to her, and to all the children. (16 July  
1796, Letters, 2.329)
Two days later Burns wrote to her father of his fears for his 'poor  
girl, without a friend'  (ibid., 2.330), who was shortly to give birth  
to their ninth child. Burns died at home on 21 July 1796 and their  
son, Maxwell, was born on 25 July, the day of Burns's funeral.

At the time of her bereavement Armour was responsible for six  
children: Robert, Francis, William, Betty (Anna Park's child), James,  
and Maxwell, who died in 1799. She did not obtain money from Burns's  
estate until October. As the widow of an excise officer, Armour  
received a pension of £12 a year, and a benefactor took over her rent.  
A trust fund was established to provide for the family and to assist  
the children when they reached the age of twenty-one. Armour gave over  
Burns's papers to his biographer, James Currie, who also sought to  
benefit the family from the proceeds of his work. However, Armour has  
often been criticized for this action, or at least for not making sure  
that the papers were returned.

In the decades following Burns's death Jean Armour was celebrated as a  
living link to the poet, her fame growing in parallel with the  
development of her husband's status. In this period, and now a  
grandmother, she sat for several portraits, including that by John  
Alexander Gilfillan (1822, Scot. NPG). She also drew the attention of  
writers when, in a well-known incident, she missed a visit from  
Dorothy and William Wordsworth, being at the coast with her children.  
Armour was of particular interest to writers from working-class  
backgrounds like James Hogg and Allan Cunningham. Hogg first  
encountered her in 1804 at St Michael's Church, Dumfries, while  
working at Mitchel Slacks farm. Looking back he recalled her as 'then  
smartly dressed, had fine eyes, and looked very well. She had several  
wooers.' In 1811 or 1812 Hogg met Jean again in Edinburgh and wrote  
later of having 'scarcely ever met a woman, either high or low who  
improved as much on acquaintance. She had a great deal of good sense  
and good nature'  (Hogg, 246).

In later life Armour suffered a series of strokes and was cared for by  
a granddaughter. She died at her home on Mill Hole Brae, Dumfries, on  
26 March 1834 and was buried on 1 April next to her husband in the  
Burns mausoleum, St Michael's Church. Understandably, Jean Armour's  
life has been overshadowed by her husband's, but equally she would not  
be remembered without him. Burns celebrated his Mauchline Belle-a  
'delicious ... armful'  (Letters, 1.63)-in about a dozen songs,  
including 'I hae a wife o' my ain', 'My wife's the winsome wee thing',  
'The Bonie lad that's far awa', and 'Of a' the airts the winds can  
blaw', which celebrates 'The Lassie I lo'e best'. Among the wider  
community she was also regarded with affection and respect, as shown  
in a description of her funeral:

The attendance of invited mourners was ... a handful, compared with  
the crowd ... [of] men, women, and children ... There were few persons  
within reach of the handspokes, on which the coffin was borne, that  
did not, after an old and affecting Scottish custom, show their  
respect ... by assisting to carry her remains in their passage to  
their honoured resting place. ('Funeral of Mrs Burns')

Since her death Jean Armour has continued to attract affection and  
admiration, particularly in Ayrshire and Dumfriesshire. Recent  
commemorations have included the unveiling of statues in Mauchline  
(2002) and Dumfries (2004). In January 2009, on the 250th anniversary  
of the poet's birth, stained-glass windows of Armour and Burns were  
installed at St Michael's. Such commemorations demonstrate a  
continuing appreciation of her importance for her husband's life and  
work. It is an appreciation eloquently expressed by John De Lancey  
Ferguson, editor of the poet's correspondence, for whom Armour was

the real heroine of Burns's life, for of all the women who, more or  
less, loved him, and whom he, more or less, loved, she alone had to  
live with him, and did so "not weighing his merits, but pardoning his  
offences". (Letters, 2.343)

Valentina Bold

Sources  J. Barke, Bonnie Jean (1959) + A. M. Williams, 'Jean Armour:  
Mrs Robert Burns', Burns Chronicle, 2nd ser., 9 (1934), 27-33 + The  
letters of Robert Burns, ed. J. De Lancey Ferguson, 2 vols. (1931) +  
R. Burns-Begg, 'Bonnie Jean, a memoir', Burns Chronicle, 1 (25 Jan  
1892), 47-71 + Dumfries Courier (2 April 1834) + R. Ford, 'Jean  
Armour', The heroines of Robert Burns and their celebrating songs  
(1906), 59-76 + 'Funeral of Mrs Burns' and 'Stanzas on the death of  
Mrs Burns, the poet's widow', Dumfries Courier (9 April 1834) + N.  
Gilruth, 'The devotion of Jean Armour', Gallovidian Annual (1931),  
54-5 + J. Hogg, 'Memoir of Burns', in The works of Robert Burns, ed.  
the Ettrick Shepherd [J. Hogg] and W. Motherwell, 5 vols., vol. 5  
(1834-6), 1-263 + Y. H. Stevenson, Burns and his Bonnie Jean: the  
romance of Robert Burns and Jean Armour  (1967) + P. Westwood, ed.,  
Jean Armour: my life and times with Robert Burns (2001) + A.  
Blacklock, The widow of Burns: her death, character, and funeral (1834)
Likenesses  J. A. Gilfillan, oils, 1822, Scot. NPG [see illus.] ·  
oils, Dumfries and Galloway council, Nithsdale Museums · S. MacKenzie,  
watercolour, c.1820, Scot. NPG; repro. in E. Ewan, S. Innes, and S.  
Reynolds, eds., The biographical dictionary of Scottish women (2006),  
facing p. 126 · R. MacIver, statue, 2002, Mauchline Cross, Mauchline,  
Ayrshire · N. Burleighfield, statue, 2004, Dumfries · stained-glass  
memorial window, 2009, St Michael's Church, Dumfries