EBENEZER BAIN OF EDINBURGH AND MONTREAL

EBENEZER BAIN, born on the 28th of February, 1838 at 9 St. James Place, Edinburgh, was one of five children born to Thomas Bain [Custom House Officer] (1813, Forres-1892, Forres) and Jessie Russell (1811, Knockando -1875, Leith).

Thomas Bain, Ebenezer’s father, was one of fourteen children born to John Bain [Shoemaker] (1875, Forres-1855, Forres) and Jane Brander (1778, Elgin-1835, Forres).

John Bain, Ebenezer’s grandfather, was one of three children born to Alexander Bain (Shoemaker) and Emelia Jenkins, both of Forres, who married there on the 12th of March, 1767.

In the 1861 Scottish Census, Ebenezer is seen to be employed as a Tinsmith in Edinburgh, but in 1863 he emigrated to Montreal, Canada, where, in 1865, he married a Margaret Adamson who had been born in Peebles on the 31st of October, 1838 to James Adamson [Quay Porter in Leith] (1794, Stobo-1875, Edinburgh) and Margaret Smeal (1810, Peebles-1869, Leith). However, it is clear that Ebenezer and Margaret had met in Leith prior to her subsequent emigration to Montreal in 1865, as the Adamson family had moved from Peebles to Leith around 1840. Margaret Adamson’s grandparents were William Adamson [Farmer] and Jane Baird; and, William Smail (Merchant) and Agnes Wilkie - all four from Peebles.

Ebenezer and Margaret had nine children,
Margaret Smeal Bain -1 May 1866 – died 18 May 1956, Montreal.
Thomas Bain – 9 January 1868 – died 9 January 1868
James Russell Bain – 1870 – died 1870
Henry Russell Bain – 10 May 1871 – died 18 April 1947, Ottawa.
Alan Stanley Bain – 20 December 1872 – died 9 November 1954, Montreal.
Alexander (Sandy) Stevenson Bain – 28 November 1874 – Vancouver, date unknown.
Archibald Douglas Bain – 2 February 1877 – died 1950, Winnipeg, Manitoba.
James Tweed (Jack) Bain – 3 May 1879 – Montreal, date unknown.
Robert Gordon Bain - 24th November 1882 – died 8 December 1964, Montreal.

Ebenezer and Margaret raised their family at a house in Cadieux Street in Montreal. The name of Cadieux Street was changed during the nineteen-thirties, but a house of the type they had in that location still stands at 3460 de Bullion Street. Ebenezer worked for a time with a firm of plumbing wholesalers in Montreal, and then spent forty years in the insurance business.

He served with the Montreal Garrison Artillery for five years, and was present with them when the ‘Fenian’ raid at Trout River, near Huntingdon, Quebec, was repelled in 1870.

He took a keen interest in the Caledonian Society of Montreal, and his recital of Rabbie Burns' "Tam O' Shanter" at a family Christmas party, when he was eighty-eight, is remembered as an outstanding occasion.

He also enjoyed writing poetry, and some of these efforts appeared in the Montreal press from time to time. Then, later, a collection from his verses, "Ramblings in Rhymeland", was published in 1918 to mark his upcoming eighty-first birthday in 1919. It is a small volume of just over one hundred pages of delightfully unpretentious poems and song lyrics; and it also contains four photographs, including one of himself and a much beloved grand-daughter, Molly.

Ebenezer Bain died in Montreal on October 7, 1929, in his ninety-second year.

DEDICATED TO MY RELATIVES AND FRIENDS AND ALL LOVERS OF TRUTH, NATURE, BEAUTY, HARMONY AND HUMANITY.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I beg to tender my sincere thanks to such kind friends as the Hon. R. S. Weir, Messrs. W. D. Lighthall, Harcourt Farmer, William Drysdale and T. H. Warren, for their valuable assistance and counsel in the preparation of these selections for the press.

Ebenezer Bain - 1918

PREFACE

THE author thinks that a long introduction to this small volume of poems would be much out of place; therefore will, with the kind reader's indulgence, briefly recount in explanation apology, if you will the circumstances attending its publication.

That one now over eighty years of age should venture, for the first time, to launch a book, and more especially a book of poems, and the further fact that he had reached the half- century mark before sending his first contribution to the press, seems like flying in the face of the famous dictum of that eminent man, Professor Osier.

I must confess that the dominant feeling that suggested offering my poems in book form (a feeling I believe shared by many who, like myself, have devoted much of their time to the Muse) was a reluctance to consign to oblivion what I had come to consider my progeny.

Notwithstanding this feeling, I had abandoned the idea of publishing, and had consigned my manuscripts to my son's care, with instructions concerning them. And it was only recently, at the request and promptings of several friends, and letters from persons I had never seen, but who had read some of my contributions in the papers and thanked me for the pleasure they had obtained in the perusal of my verses, that I felt impelled to reconsider my original intention.

These, then, are the motives that have prompted me to issue this little book, in which I am cognizant of many infirmities, and as being in my own estimation simply "ramblings" in various by-ways of "rhymeland."

Ebenezer Bain.

TO EBENEZER BAIN

ON LEARNING THAT HE PROPOSED TO PUBLISH HIS POEMS AT THE
AGE OF EIGHTY-ONE IN 1918

Your torch was lighted at the Golden Flame;
Then, turning to the shining hills, you said:
"I may not from my fellows win acclaim,
And I may be forgotten when I'm dead:

But I shall sing that earth tho’ old is fair,
For fresh comes every sunset, every dawn;
That it is ever good to breathe the air,
And good a child or rose to look upon.

To age, as youth, the world is ever new,
But, of all earthly things, the most divine
Is love, that falleth on the heart like dew,
And kindness cheering like Falernian wine.

So you have sung, as, with your torch alight,
Long years ago you to the uplands turned
A pilgrim singing comfort in the night,
While still beyond the stars eternal burned.

R. Stanley Weir.

CONTENTS

War Poems and Songs

01 Victory
02 The Calling Voice
03 Inhumanity
04 William the Brute
05 Sir Douglas Haig – (ILLUSTRATION on this page)
06 The Standard
07 “Peace Without Victory.. Never"
08 Freedom's Combine
09 Kruger and the Boer War
10 The March of the Highland Brigade

Sentimental Poems

11 Home Longings
12 Canada
13 Patriotism
14 Mount Royal Park
15 The Stormy Tryst
16 Molly – (ILLUSTRATION on this page)
17 The Lovers
18 Bannockburn
19 A Lowland Lassie's Courtship
20 To the Month of May
21 Wild Flower Emblems of Scotland
22 "I'm Growing Old"
23 Annie Laurie
24 Lines to Ebenezer Bain, by T. H. Warren
25 Time is on the Wing, Robbie
26 Burns' Anniversary
27 The Impatient Lover
28 In Memoriam (King Edward VII)
29 Edinburgh – (ILLUSTRATION on this page)
30 Admonitions
31 Scotland
32 Canada (A Song)
33 A Song of Empire
34 A Highland Beauty
35 Memories Dear
36 My Mither's Sangs
37 The Lass that Danced Wi' Me
38 The Highland Soldier's Farewell
39 Some Philosophy
40 Sympathy
41 Annie
42 Truth
43 Anniversary of Burns' Birthday
44 On Receiving a Bunch o' Heather
45 The Tide will Turn By and By
46 The Egotist
47 Sympathy
48 Hope
49 Nearing the End
50 To a Favorite Canary Bird
51 Religion
52 The Old Songs
53 Sing the "Auld Scots Sangs"
54 Epistle to a Young Poet Friend
55 The Young Friend's Reply … Friendship
56 Additional lines from the Young Friend
57 England
58 Old Friends or Chums
59 English or British which?. . .
60 To My Granddaughter Hilda, in Vancouver

Sonnets

61 Nature
62 Misconceptions
63 Winter in Canada
64 Spring, 1918

Humorous

65 There's Nothing Too Good for The Scotch
66 Sandy McCraw
67 That's Montreal, or Lights and Shades of Montreal
68 Reciprocity
69 Domestic Squabbles
70 Proud Margery
71 Care
72 Cogitations on Animals (biped and quadruped)