The Highland Mary Monument in Ayrshire

It was travelling en route to Mauchline on the Ayr road that I first saw the sign to the Highland Mary Monument. This was in the hamlet of Failford. On retracing my steps a few days later, I duly parked up with no difficulty just beyond the Failford Inn and walked down to the path which led up to the monument.

Robert Burns had met ‘Highland Mary’ (Mary Campbell (1763-1786)) in April 1786 and they parted company on the second Sunday in May (14th) of the same year, probably at a spot close by the monument. This was likely on the banks of the scenic River Ayr where the Water of Coil joins it.

Burns had plans to transport himself into the West Indies, and it is likely that he encouraged Mary to join him in this venture. Burns would later write that Mary had taken leave of him to arrange affairs with friends and family for their ‘projected change of life’ and with an intention to meet up in the autumn in Greenock, though soon after her arrival there she is thought to have contracted Typhus and died around 20th October 1786. There is an account of her nursing her brother in Greenock who was unwell.

Burns had an on-going relationship with Jean Armour of Mauchline and who would subsequently be delivered of twins in September that year. Jean Armour’s father, however, opposed their intended marriage and Burns had for a time thought that their relationship had foundered. The subsequent success of his Kilmarnock edition of his ‘Poems, Chiefly in the Scots Dialect’ allowed him to remain in Scotland. Jean Armour gives a revealing account of how Burns later struggled to cope on the anniversary of the death of Mary Campbell some three years later and after Jean Armour and Burns had eventually married.

On a recently installed panel behind the monument itself is a detailed account of the historical associations involved and which gives an account of the threads of history based on local lore and tradition.

Mary was originally buried in the cemetery of the original site of the Auld West Kirk in Greenock. An illustration in the McLean Museum in Greenock shows the church straddled by the shipyard that would eventually occupy the church site.

Her grave was removed with significant ceremony to the Greenock Cemetery in 1920 due to expansion of the Hartland and Wolfe shipyard, under the monument created previously by John G. Mossman.

The associations of Burns and ‘Highland Mary’ are often the subject of debate in an effort to obtain ‘the real story’ of their involvement. The poem ‘To Mary in Heaven’ by Robert Burns, however, conveys his enduring thoughts long after their parting.