ROBERT BURNS INTEREST: A GENTLEMAN’S WALKING CANE CIRCA 1800 Malacca, with a brown domed wooden knop, white-metal collar and brass/iron ferrule; the cane with a tassel-hole below the collar, retaining its brass grommets and enclosing a length of black silk ribbon, knotted in three places, the collar engraved ‘MR JOHN CAIRD, MONTROSE Died 11th Decr. 1790 Aged 73’ (Length: 88.5cm ) Footnote: Note: John Caird was an uncle by marriage of the poet Robert Burns. Born on 9th March 1717, he was a son of James Caird of Upper Gairie, Logie Pert, Forfarshire. On 29th August 1752, in Arbuthnott, he married Elspeth Burnes, or Burns, the second daughter of Robert Burnes/Burns and Isabella Keith and a sister of William Burnes/Burns, who became the poet’s father in 1759. At the time of his marriage, John Caird described himself as farming land at Denside, in the parish of Dunnottar, Kincardineshire. John Caird exchanged letters with the poet’s brother Gilbert and visited Robert and Gilbert Burns in Ayrshire after the death of their father, his brother-in-law, in February 1784. John Caird is recorded in one of Robert Burns’ letters when he and the poet met again, near Stonehaven on 10th September 1787, during Burns’ tour of the Highlands and North-East of Scotland, the year after the publication of ‘Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect’ had brought the poet wide acclaim. From Edinburgh a week later, Robert Burns wrote to Gilbert Burns of his uncle, ‘… John Caird, though born the same year as our father, walks as vigorously as I can; ….’. Under the circumstances, it seems likely that the poet Burns saw this cane in the hands of his ‘vigorous’ uncle on various occasions.