Burns Cottage Museum, Alloway

Built in 1900, and extended over the years, Burns Cottage Museum now houses the world's most important collection of Burns manuscripts and artefacts. Several hundred original manuscripts of Burns' poems, songs and letters are complemented by a fascinating collection of personal items belonging to the Poet and his family.

The museum also has a wide collection of so-called 'Burnsiana', mementoes of Burns and his work which demonstrate his continuing popularity, and a library stocked with thousands of books by or about Robert Burns. The names of the rooms; Alloway, Tarbolton and Mauchline are taken from those places in Ayrshire where Burns lived, worked and wrote.

The betrothal of Burns and Highland Mary - W. H. Midwood

Burns’ affair with Margaret Campbell, his ‘Highland Mary’, was a secretive and ill-fated episode during an anxious period for the young poet. The pair are pictured here pledging their troth over running water, a Gaelic marriage ritual. Burns altered his plans to emigrate to the West Indies with Mary following the publication of his first book; Mary died later that year.