Elizabeth Bishop (Burns)

The headstone of Elizabeth Bishop.

Elizabeth Bishop (22 May 1785 – 8 January 1817) was Robert Burns's first child following an affair with Elizabeth Paton (1760 – c. 1799).

Expressing warm tenderness to his Love-begotten Daughter and welcoming his child, Robert Burns wrote the following lines:

Welcome! lily bonie, sweet, wee dochter,

Tho' ye come here a wee unsought for,

And tho' your comin' I hae fought for,

Baith kirk and queir;

Yet, by my faith, ye're no unwrought for

That I shall swear!...

Lord grant that thou may ay inherit

Thy rnither's person, grace, an' merit,

An' thy poor, worthless daddie's spirit,

Without his failins,

'Twill please me mair to see thee

Than stocket mailens...^[1]

She lived as a child at Mossgiel Farm, under Burns's mother's care, until Robert Burns's death. She then returned to her own mother, who was by this time married to John Andrew, a ploughman.^[2] At the age of twenty-one, Elizabeth received two hundred pounds from the money raised for the support of Burns's family.

She married John Bishop, factor to the Baillie of Polkemmet, also recorded as an innkeeper, and had seven children. Elizabeth died aged only 32, possibly during childbirth.

When Burns contemplated emigration to Jamaica he made over his heritable property and the profits from the 'Kilmarnock Edition' of his poems to his brother, Gilbert Burns, to enable him to bring up Elizabeth as if she was one of his own.^[3]

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