IT WAS ON THE SLOPES OF Mossgiel Farm, Mauchline, that Robert Burns's plough overturned a rodent home in one of the most fortuitous farming accidents ever on a Scottish holding. The incident, of course, inspired the famous poem of November 1785, To a Mouse, in which Burns apologises to the timorous beastie for his lack of diligence.
On Sunday 29 March, the Mauchline Burns Club is inviting people back to that very acreage for a special ploughing match to mark the 250th anniversary of the bard's birth.
If the preceding event of 1996 is anything to go by, more than 10,000 specta
tors will line the perimeter, many eager to spy an absconding rodent.
"We wanted to do something special which would entice visitors here," says Andrew Cooper, the club's secretary.
"It will be held in the field where Burns upturned the mouse. There are 15 pairs of horses taking part. You can't get any closer to the real thing than that.
"Everyone has seen Burns's cottage in Alloway but 90 per cent of the poems which appeared in the Kilmarnock edition were written while he lived here in Mauchline."
Burns is more renowned for his turn of phrase than the turning of furrows. However, he was an agricultural innovator and an advocate of metal ends on ploughs for better purchase in the ground. Rantin' Rovin' Robin was dreamed up at Mossgiel as Burns tended the crops with brother Gilbert, as was Holy Willie's Prayer.
He was proud of his skills, reading tome after tome on germination and tilling. But what would he think of the Scottish ploughmen motoring up and down the same fields today?
He would certainly have little cause for complaint. Scotland currently boasts the world reversible ploughing champion. As in the time of the poet, the ability to draw a straight furrow is a prized ability in Caledonia.
Andrew Mitchell, from Haughs of Ballinshoe near Forfar, lifted the world title for the second time last year in Austria and defends his crown in Slovenia this year. He reckons the Scottish scene is as healthy as ever, even if the machinery has changed markedly from Burns's day.
"It is very, very competitive," says the ploughman, whose son, also Andrew, was the 2006 conventional ploughing world champion. "In terms of the world championships, there are 30 countries competing and Russia is due to come into the reckoning as well. Scotland has only competed as an independent country since 1991.
"Before, we were always part of GB. However, since then, David Carnegie won in 1996 and two brothers, Andrew and Willie Morrison, have been runners-up. Our record is quite good."
The machinery spectators at Mauchline will see is more akin to that Burns himself would have used. The poet would have harnessed a pair of horses and turned the furrows with a wooden plough. The soil would have been heavier and the implement more troublesome, certainly hazardous to anything with a tail and four legs.
"Burns was not ploughing in a competition sense, he would have been ploughing only to cultivate the land," says Allan Thomson of Perthshire, who, at 77, still competes with two cross-bred Clydesdale horses and swing plough in the traditional way, and hopes to participate at Mauchline.
"The plough he used would not have made the best of jobs and the ground would have been tougher because it didn't have big tractors and ploughs turning it over every year. It would be more like a lea field. It is interesting because I ploughed once at Ellisland, the farm Burns went to after Mossgiel. The stones and the gravel were unbelievable. It is little wonder he took to the drink."
For those unacquainted with the fascinating but dying art of ploughing with horses, the idea is simple. Firstly, the horses must be kept as steady as possible and someone can be deployed to lead them. If the horses are consistent and not jumpy, success will then rest upon the ploughman's skill in keeping the metal plough straight. "The furrows should be tight," says Thomson. "The whole idea is that, if they weren't, the seed would disappear too deep between the furrows. Ploughing these days may involve big tractors but the concept is exactly the same as in Burns's time."
Mossgiel Farm is still owned by the same family, Wylie, who moved in six years after Burns left it. The farmhouse and most of the original outbuildings are intact. Go along to Mauchline on the 29th and you might still imagine he was there, turning the soil, courting Jean Armour, scaring mice.
• Adult entry costs £5, including souvenir programme; children go free. For more information on the contest, visit the website at
www.mauchlineburnsclub.com