Bairds of Gartsherrie:   page 5.

My father used often to repeat the words of Burns's song :-

"To plough and sow, to reap and mow,
My father bred me early, O;
For one, he said, to labour bred,
Was a match for fortune fairly, O."

In these labours I was never satisfied so long as I found that anyone else could do a thing better than I could; and by the time I was eighteen years of age, I knew of very few who could excel me in similar work. By this time my father had taken Newmains farm, and I was sent there, and lived at the house in the spring of the year, before the family came to it. This was the spring of 1820, when Cross's muir was in stubble, and Daniel Nelson and I were sent to plough it with three grey horses-driving and holding the plough time about- and we frequently turned over six roods in a day. My father, who was not easily pleased with a darg, said he had never had it done before.
"Burns, addressing his "Auld Mare Maggie," says-

"Aft thee and I, in aught hours, gaun,
In guid March weather,
Hae turn'd sax rood beside our han'
For days thegither."

We took more than eight hours to do our six roods, but it was well ploughed. After my father came to live at Newmains, I had the management of the farm under him. My brother Robert was attending the College at Glasgow then; and he brought home books to me on the Saturday nights.



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