McAdam of Craigengillan, John

McAdam wrote to Burns, who replied with 'To Mr McAdam of Craigengillan, in answer to an obliging letter he sent in the commencement of my poetic career.' The second stanza

"Now deal-ma-care about their jaw,
The senseless, gawky million.
I'll cock my nose aboon them a',
I'm roos'd by Craigengillan !"

shows that Burns was by no means always averse from being noticed by the gentry.

Writing to Dr Mackenzie from Edinburgh on 11th January 1787, Burns told him that Sir John Whitefoord's son, John: 'who calls very frequently on me, is in a fuss today like a coronation. This is the great day — The Assembly and Ball of the Caledonian Hunt — and John has had the good luck to pre-engage the hand of the beauty-famed and wealth-celebrated Miss McAdam, our Country-woman.' She was Craigengillan's daughter.

McAdam, together with William Chalmers, was also the recipient of a humorous mandate ordering them to have destroyed 'a certain [bawdy], nefarious, abominable and wicked Song or Ballad, a copy whereof We have here inclosed'. The 'Mandate' was dated Mauchline, 20th November 1786.

Burns referred to the McAdam girls as 'loosome kimmers' in the 'Epistle'.