“Ae dreary, windy, winter night,

The stars shot down wi’ sklentin light,

Wi’ you, mysel’ I gat a fright.”

– Robert Burns, Address to the Deil (1785)

The first Saturday after I arrived at Mersehead, I made the short journey sixteen miles north to Dumfries: the town probably best known as the final resting place of Robert Burns. I though had not come to visit the Burns Mausoleum, nor the small sandstone house in which he lived out the final years of his life. I had come to visit the town’s camera obscura. Continue reading →