Career
Nelly is a nickname for "Helen." Nelly Blair is sometimes suggested as being Burns"s first love. Burns himself did not identify his "Handsome Nell" by name. Nelly Kilpatrick has been suggested as being Burns"s first romantic love, but some significant doubts exist about the true identity of this individual.
lieutenant was thought 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 of Burns"s association with Nelly and some doubt must be cast on her recollections at this stage in her life.
Burns stated that Nelly had a sweet voice and was wont to sing songs as she worked in the fields. She sung delightfully, and he wrote a copy of verses to her favourite air or reel."
Several other children were born in subsequent years.
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. Nelly Bone, is better known as Nelly Kilpatrick.
They are first recorded to have met when William Burns hired some extra help to bring in the harvest while they were at nearby Mount Oliphant Farm and Burns came to be paired with her, following the Ayrshire custom of that time.
He wrote a poem to Nell, unpublished during his life, but it appeared in his Commonplace Book and set to the tune of Nelly"s favourite reel.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 lairds 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" –
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, "Halloween"
and the verse:.
