Nelly Kilpatrick

Nelly or Nellie Kilpatrick, Helen Kilpatrick or later Nelly Bone (1759–1820). Nelly (usually short for "Helen") was possibly Robert Burns's first love and muse as stated by Isabella Burns. the miller and his wife Jane Reid She was baptised on 1 March 1759. Nelly married William Bone, coachman to the Laird of Newark. Jean, the Sister of James Smith of Mauchline, Burns's close friend, married James Candlish.

A parish record at St. Quivox in Ayrshire states that a William Kilpatrick Bone was born to William Bone and his wife Helen Kilpatrick Bone on 12 May 1798.

Nelly had a brother, William, who erected her parents' tombstone in the old Low Coylton Kirkyard.

Family origins

At the beginning of the eighteenth century Millmannoch Mill was occupied by a family called Kilpatrick, who also carried on the trade of blacksmithing, because at that time milling lasted around seven months of the year, usually September to April, and as a result millers had to look for alternative work during late spring and summer. Part of the smithy at Millmannoch was still standing in the early 20th century and, it is recorded in front of it there was a large boulder of granite sunk to the level of the ground with a "dog" fixed into it for cart wheel , the metal band or ring on a cartwheel.

Mount Oliphant is only about one and a half miles away, an easy walk for Nelly to help with the harvest.

The true identity of Nell Burns himself did not identify her by her surname. Some significant doubts exist about the true identity of Burns's first romantic love. It was thought at first to be a Nelly Blair until Burns's sister Isobel gave the name Nelly Kilpatrick, however Isobel was only three years old at the time and some doubt must be cast on her recollections at this stage in her life.

Association with Robert Burns

When Robert Burns was 15 he met "Handsome Nell", his first young love, a "bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass", although he apparently never told her of his love.

He wrote a poem to Nell, unpublished during his life, but it appeared in his Commonplace Book and set to the tune of Nelly’s favourite reel.

He had heard her singing a song by a local country laird's son who was courting her and felt that he could do better, so it was with Nelly in mind that he wrote his first song "Handsome Nell", given the tune "I am a Man Unmarried" in his first Commonplace Book -

"O once I lov'd a bonnie lass, Aye, and I love her still; And whilst that virtue warms my breast, I'll love my handsome Nell."

The tune to the song has not come down to us. Some years later Burns wrote of this song, saying -

"I never had the least thought or inclination of turning poet till I got once heartily in love, and then rhyme and song were, in a manner, the spontaneous language of my heart. I remember I composed it in a wild enthusiasm of passion, and to this hour I never recollect it but my heart melts, and my blood sallies at the remembrance."

Nelly has been said to figure in Burns's poem,

"The lasses staw frae 'mang them a'''To pou their stalks of corn:But Rab slips out, and jinks about,Behint the muckle thorn:He grippet Nelly hard and fast;Loud skirl'd a' the lasses;But her tap-pickle maist was lost,When kitlin' in the fause-houseWi' him that night."

and the verse :

"Nell had the fause-house in her min', She pits hersel and Rob in; In loving bleeze they sweetly join, Till white in ase they're sobbin'; Nell's heart was dancin' at the view, She whisper'd Rob to leuk for't: Rob, stowlins, prie'd her bonny mou', Fu' cozie in the neuk for't, Unseen that night."