Burns, Robert Autograph letter signed ("Robt. Burns")

asking for a favour, not for himself, but for a strolling player to whom he has been introduced, Mr Guion, "Now Sir, is there any periphrasis of language, any circumlocution of phrase, in which I could convey a request, without at the same time seeming to convey it, that your amiable Lady & lovely Daughters, would grace my friend Guion's boxes ?" and in return making a charming and mock solemn undertaking "I hereby promise & engage, that when you are made a commissioner of the Customs, I will write a congratulatory Ode on the subject; that every one of your charming girls as she is married, shall have an Epithalanium, & that your Lady shall command my Muse on any theme she pleases...", 3 pages, Thursday Nov. 7, 24 x 39.5cm., framed and double glazed, one page laid down, obscuring address panel, some splits and short tears at folds, some repaired
Note: David Staig (1740-1824), became Provost of Dumfries in 1783, and frequently thereafter, occupying the office for a total of twenty years. In another letter to Staig, Burns had suggested as to how the Provost and Magistrates of Dumfries could remedy a defect in their "twa pennies" tax levied on ale brewed within the town, but not on ale brewed elsewhere and imported. It was one of David Staig's charming daughters referred to here, Jessie Staig, for whom Burns wrote the poem "True-hearted was he, the sad swain o' the Yarrow", which was published in Thomson's Scottish Airs , 1798.