The Selkirk Grace place

On my way home from five very enjoyable days at the Wigtown Book Festival, where I pioneered an event called 'In the Fox's Den', I stayed overnight at the Selkirk Arms in Kirkcudbright. Hands up everyone who, like me, thought that Robert Burns's 'Selkirk Grace' was written in...Selkirk? Well, it wasn't. It was written during a stay by Scotland's national poet at the inn in Galloway for the Earl of Selkirk whose seat, confusingly, was in the southwest, not in the eponymous town in the Borders further east. The same of course could be said for Dumfries House which is in...Ayrshire.

Some hae meat and canna eat,

And some wad eat that want it,

But we hae meat and we can eat,

Sae let the Lord be thankit.