River Nith

Today's the day ....................... for tight lines

How lovely, Nith, thy fruitful vales,
Where bounding hawthorns gaily bloom;
And sweetly spread thy sloping dales,
Where lambkins wanton through the broom.
 
So wrote the poet Robert Burns about the beautiful River Nith.  That's where we were today at Friars Carse, watching the fishermen casting their lines into the smoothly-flowing water.  It was downstream from here that Burns had the neighbouring farm of Ellisland. 

The landowner of Friars Carse, Robert Riddell, was a great admirer of Burns' work - and offered him the use of a summer house on the estate in which to meditate and write, away from the demands of the farm.  This little house is known as the Hermitage. 

It was around this time in the late 1780s that Burns was at his most prolific and perhaps it was there that he penned his epic poem Tam O' Shanter ........................