Poor Maillie's Elegy' was written as an accompaniment to The Death and Dying Words of Poor Maillie and first appeared in the Kilmarnock Edition of Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786).

This is actually a mock-elegy and the subject is Burns himself. Ruisseaux is French for brooks, streams – or, burns, and is therefore a play on his surname.

On Mother’s Day weekend, Jill Bialosky, acclaimed editor and writer of “History of a Suicide” and “Poetry Will Save Your Life ...