Robert Burns’ Secret Lover

Agnes Maclehose

Robert Burns is a well known womaniser, with a long list of ladies that he wooed with his pro’s.

But few held the attention of the Bard more than Agnes Maclehose.

Devout in her faith, but also a fellow poet, Agnes officially leaves her abusive slave owning husband in 1780 and moves to Edinburgh from Glasgow.

In 1787 she meets Robert Burns at a tea party and they are both quickly smitten. Secretly writing love letters and love poems back and forth, using the pseudonyms ‘Sylvander’ and ‘Clarinda’

Burns tries to consummate the relationship, but through wisdom, and guilt that she was indeed still married, she never took it any further. She even writes to him;

“Talk not of Love, it gives me pain,
For Love has been my foe;
He bound me with an iron chain.
And plunged me deep in woe….
Your Friendship much can make me blest,
O, why that bliss destroy!
Why urge the odious, one request
You know I must deny!”

Family Pressure

In January 1791, after pressure from her family, Agnus sets sail to Jamaica to reunite with her husband. Before she leaves she implores Burns to go back to his wife Jean Armour. When she arrives in Jamaica, she finds that her husband has taken a slave mistress for a wife, and she returns home soon after. The 6th of December of the same year, Agnus and Robert meet for the last time. 40 years later, on the same day she writes in her journal;

"This day I can never forget. Parted with Burns, in the year 1791, never more to meet in this world. Oh, may we meet in Heaven!"

She passed on the 22nd October 1841 and buried here, at Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh.

So when you are celebrating Burn’s night and you make a toast to Sylvander, remember to hold a dram up for Clarinda too.