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Literary Passion · Dumfries, Dumfriesshire

The Globe Inn, Dumfries (Burns & Anna Park)

Burns called the Globe his 'favourite howff'; here he had a passionate affair with barmaid Anna Park that inspired the song 'The Gowden Locks of Anna'. Their daughter was raised by Burns's wife Jean Armour. The inn preserves Burns's chair and diamond-etched windowpane verses.

StatusDocumented history
Dateaffair c.1790–91
The peopleRobert Burns, Anna Park, Jean Armour
The siteThe Globe Inn, 56 High Street, Dumfries — Burns's bedchamber
Coordinates55.06758, -3.60970 (confidence 5/5)

The story

Down a close off the Dumfries High Street, the Globe Inn (established 1610) was Robert Burns's self-described "favourite howff" from 1789 until his death in 1796. He drank here, wrote here, and scratched verses into the bedroom windowpanes with a diamond stylus — two panes survive, along with his chair, in which visitors are still made to recite a line of Burns. It was here he had an affair with Anna Park, the landlady's niece and a barmaid in her early twenties. Their daughter Elizabeth "Betty" Burns was born on 31 March 1791 — nine days before Burns's wife Jean Armour bore him a legitimate son. Anna is thought to have died young, and Jean took the baby in and raised her as her own, reportedly saying "our Robin should hae had twa wives" (a much-loved line that survives through family tradition rather than contemporary record). Burns wrote the song "The Gowden Locks of Anna" for her. The Globe is still a working pub and restaurant with Burns rooms open to visitors.

More stories at this spot

The cutty stool

Scotland's kirk sessions punished fornicators by making them sit on the "cutty stool" — the stool of repentance — before the whole congregation to be rebuked by name. Burns endured this at Mauchline. In "The Fornicator" he refuses to be humbled, describing standing at the stool beside his lover with his eye already back on her figure. The surviving session minutes record the national poet as a repeat offender.

Clarinda and "Ae Fond Kiss."

During a passionate but reportedly unconsummated correspondence with Agnes McLehose — "Clarinda" to his "Sylvander" — Burns wrote one of the great songs of parting, "Ae Fond Kiss," in 1791. It was Clarinda's servant, Jenny Clow, whom Burns got pregnant; she bore his son and died young and poor.

Verses cut in glass — and near-sedition

At the Globe, Burns used his diamond stylus to scratch not just love verses but political ones — lines that, given the loyalist panic of the 1790s, could have seen an exciseman of the Crown dismissed or worse for sedition. He scratched his opinions on sex and war into windowpanes in a building where his own employers might read them.

Sources

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