Of a' the airts the wind can blaw
I dearly like the west,
For there the bonie lassie lives,
The lassie I lo'e best.
There wild woods grow, and rivers row,
And monie a hill between,
But day and night my fancy's flight
Is ever wi' my Jean.
I see her in the dewy flowers -
I see her sweet and fair.
I hear her in the tuneful birds -
I hear her charm the air.
There's not a bonie flower that springs
By fountain, shaw, or green,
There's not a bonie bird that sings,
But minds me o' my Jean.
Yes, it's 25th January again, the anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, and my Ayrshire roots won't let it pass without comment. There has been a few Burns-related posts made in earlier years . There was this one from last year about the Cross Keys in Falkirk and one featuring John Richard's Alehouse and the Burns Tavern in Tarbolton from 2023. In addition, in this post we met a number of other hostelries which were frequented by the bard.
The verses at the start of this post, a declaration of Burns love for his wife, were written in 1878, when he was reportedly staying in the Cross Keys. Not the Cross Keys in Falkirk which we met last year, but the Cross Keys at Pathhead in New Cumnock, Ayrshire, a building which was just eight years old at the time. I can recall passing a pub of this name every time that I travelled from my aunt and uncle's place in Hurlford to my grandmother's house in New Cumnock. Obviously I passed it whilst travelling in the opposite direction too! This pub, however, wasn't necessarily the same building where Burns rested his head, as we'll see in a little while.
Below is a cutting from the Ardrossan and Saltcoats Herald of the 2nd March, 1883.
The final line of Lady Nairn's words has been cut off, so here are the four lines in their entirety:
“The auld hoose, the auld hoose,
Deserted though ye be;
There ne’er can be a new hoose,
Half sae dear to me.”
Long-term readers will have come across some of Lady Nairn's words in these ramblings of mine before. As Carolina Oliphant, lines from her song, 'Will Ye No' Come Back Again?' featured in the post about the lost haunt of my youth, the Highlands in Gorleston.
But back to the newspaper cutting. "...and it is hoped that the proprietor may see his way to rebuild it." The proprietor at the time was James Gray, who also owned Pathhead Colliery.
If James Gray was the owner in 1883, the landlady was Jane McKnight. James and Jane McKnight had been running the Cross Keys since at least 1869 when their son John was born there. After James died in 1879 Jane continued to run the place, with the help of daughters Agnes and Sarah, until she too died in the inn in 1890.
We can get back a little earlier, before James and Jane had the keys to the Cross Keys. Not quite back to Burns' days, but in 1855-1857 the Ordnance Survey carried out a survey – what a surprise! – into local names so that the published details on future maps would be accurate. A Mr. Stewart of the Cross Keys, along with a couple of other Pathhead residents, confirmed that the property, described by the Ordnance Survey as 'a small public house', was indeed called the Cross Keys and was spelt C R O S S K E Y S.
Thomas Stewart was still in residence for the 1861 census and quite possibly the McKnights followed on from him.
Returning to the McKnights, daughter Sarah married clothier William Downie in 1888. William bought the Cross Keys and, together with his wife, continued to run the inn alongside his clothing business and the spirit merchant business which his in-laws had set up.
William was still at the Cross Keys when he died, aged eighty, in 1935.
Sarah died two years later, but the pub kept going through several more decades. Here it is from the air in the 1960s.
Although I've established when the Downies died, I can't manage to pin down quite when the Cross Keys did. I certainly remember it being there, and I know that it's not there now, but as to exactly when it closed its doors for the last time and was flattened I simply can't determine. Its place in Pathhead has been taken by a grass triangle and where its front door used to be there is a bus shelter. It can offer relief from any of the airts that the wind can blow from, including the west, but I doubt that it is as welcoming as the Cross Keys was.
Yes, the Cross Keys has gone and I ought to go too. I mean, there's haggis to prepare and a malt whisky to select. This year I think I'll plump for the port-finished Tamnavulin.
Information on the New Cumnock History site certainly helped in pointing my searches in the right direction and thus saved me quite a bit of time, although it may contain the odd questionable date.
The Ordnance Survey map extract is copyright and has been reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland under the terms of this CC BY licence.
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