Constable, Lady Winifred Maxwell (1736 — 1801)

Lady Winifred, on her return to Scotland after a protracted absence, rebuilt her ancestral home, Terreagles, in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright. Burns occasionally visited her there, and his 'Nithsdale's Welcome Hame' was written for her return. In a letter to her from Ellisland, dated 16^th Dcember 1789, he remarks: '... with your Ladyship I have the honor to be connected by one of the strongest and most endearing ties in the whole Moral World — Common Sufferers in a Cause where even to be unfortunate is glorious, the Cause of Heroic Loyalty'. Burns then repeated his cherished belief that his ancestors were 'out' in the Jacobite rising: 'Though my Fathers had not illustrious Honors and vast properties to hazard in the contest; though they left only their humble cottages only to add so many units more to the unnoted croud that followed their Leaders; yet, what they could they did, and what they had they lost: with unshaken firmness and unconcealed Political Attachment, they shook hands with Ruin for what they esteemed the cause of their King and their Country.' With this letter, Burns sent a copy of his verses, 'To William Tytler Esq. Of Woodhouselee'.

"Revered defender of beauteous Stuart
Of Stuart, a name once respected;
A name which to love was the mark of a true hert,
But now 'tis despised and neglected..."
(Incidentally the second stanza begins with what was surely Burns's worst line:
"Tho' something like moisture conglobes in my eye!")

When Burns was laid up with a broken right arm in the spring of 1791, he received from Lady Winifred the present of a snuff box containing on the lid an inlaid miniature of Queen Mary. (Chambers wrote that: 'Many years after, one of the poet's sons, having taken this box with him to India, had the misfortune to damage the portrait irreparably in leaping on board a vessel.') Burns replied to Lady Winifred on 25^th April 1791, thanking her for the gift: 'I assure your Ladyship, I shall set it apart: the symbols of Religion shall only be more sacred. In the moment of Poetic composition the Box shall be my inspiring Genius.'