Isle of Man Arms or in Dawney's Tavern in the Anchor Close. These
groups included such shining lights as Robert Fergusson the poet,
and Adam Ferguson the historian and philosopher, Gavin Wilson, Sir
Henry Raeburn, David Hume, Erskine, Lords Newton, Gillies, Monboddo,
Hailes, Kames, Henry Mackenzie, and the Ploughman Poet himself, who
has kept alive the memory of the Crochallans in many a jovial verse
like that in which he describes Smellie, the eccentric philosopher
and printer:-

`Shrewd Willie Smellie to Crochallan came,
The old cocked hat, the grey surtout the same,
His bristling beard just rising in its might;
`Twas four long nights and days to shaving night';

or in the characteristic picture of William Dunbar, a wit of the
time, and the merriest of the Fencibles:-

`As I cam by Crochallan
I cannily keekit ben;
Rattlin', roarin' Willie
Was sitting at yon boord en';
Sitting at yon boord en',
And amang guid companie!
Rattlin', roarin' Willie,
Ye're welcome hame to me!'

or in the verses on Creech, Burns's publisher, who left Edinburgh
for a time in 1789. The `Willies,' by the way, seem to be
especially inspiring to the Scottish balladists.