"Stay for me there!  I will not fail To meet thee in that hollow vale."   Poe's epigram of "The Assignation"  INTRODUCTORY REMARKS and site overview...        MODIFIED Friday, 22Janurary 2012, in Foster City, California, these pages are an on-going project. The Register.com word processing program is a constant learning curve, so  be patient with this process!  However, this site contains but "samples" of photographs and commentary from a manuscript of many research trips to Ayrshire, Scotland.  As pointed out by some, these pages need considerable editing of spelling, text, information, and formating.  As time allows, I revisit my text to make such corrections.  Students, regardless of age, who have learning and reading problems will find a home with my work.  These pages, and my manuscript about our research, are meant for the young student or working person who likes Poe, but can not quit understand what he was saying, or what he meant with this or that symbol or word.  Realize that  you are not alone!                     Meanwhile, because the information in this site is so extraordinary and original, many visitors without the basic background of Edgar Allan Poe's life and work will be more confused by what this writer posts on this site than are Poe scholars.  The reason is that this biographer does not follow traditional scholarship designs, and certainly does not follow other Poe scholars.  Consequently, one is asked to suspend judgement until one has made an overall review of our material.  All of our research and developed information take place in Scotland. This student of Edgar Allan Poe was completely overwhelmed by so much new information, and Poe's connections with it.   Get what you can out of these pages, and then rely on your own mind for analysis and judgement of any poem or other work by Edgar Allan Poe.  He bedazzles even the professors and teachers of our American Literature.   The quote, below, copied and pasted 17 January 2012, is courtesy: Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - The Works of Edgar Allan Poe “Ye who read are still among the living, but I who write shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows. For indeed strange things shall happen, and many secret things be known, and many centuries shall pass away, ere these memorials be seen of men. And, when seen, there will be some to disbelieve, and some to doubt, and yet a few who will find much to ponder upon in the characters here graven with a stylus of iron.” — from Edgar Allan Poe’s “Shadow — a Parable” (1835).  This prophecy of Poe's is largely why our findings, and very limited publications and releases, have been rebuffed by scholars in America. Others around the world have been gracious in their acceptance!  Most Poe publications and scholarship are written for professors and scholars, while I have had "the average person" with an interest in Poe's writing as my intended audience.  This objective began when my fellow employees of United Airlines suggested that I write a magazine article about our work.        The people and places in these pages have no connection to any place or person in the United States, save the Allans and Poe before leaving Richmond, Virginia.  There is no connection in or to the United States with David Poe and his son, Edgar Allan Poe, discussed in our information, unless stated.   Edgar Allan Poe and his two siblings had no offspring.   Collateral blood and legal relatives of the original Poes to Pennsylvania, nor others in America are relevant to my study, and so on.  The following pages are of their Allan, Burns, Galt, and Poe connections with Ayrshire, Scotland, and The United Kingdom.                   THIS IS THE SITE for information and updates about my research and manuscript project of Edgar Allan Poe in Scotland.   Since the site administrators, Register.com, have provided analytical data of hits and visitors, our "visit list" grows every month.  I am pleased that Poe enthusiast in Communist China, and many other unexpected countries, have been directed to our site and its information.  One is not "graded" on the nature or quality of a question or opinion, so do let me know of your views.   I have a translation program; therefore, please write in your own language.        Most recently there have been many visitors from Iceland.  Those of you there will be interested to know that I had wanted to go to Iceland, but went to Scotland, as United Airlines, my employer at the time, did not fly to that country.  As a consequence of that limitation of our travel, we have developed this project.        Please look at the following web site, sent to me my Grace Kenmotsu.  It is a game site, but this game is one of the most impressive creative renderings of a Poe short story that I have ever seen.  The company is headquartered and operating in the Seattle area of Washington, but almost all of the names of the contributors are, to me, Russian!  Have a look.  I wanted to buy the game, but my dyslexia would not allow me to penetrate the purchase process.  For those of you with left-lope-controlled brains, you will love the graphics, the vocals, and the creative interpretation of Poe's tale.  My very first scholarly publication, in the Atlantic Journal, featured later, was my interpretation of what Poe was actually saying in this story, both his literal and hieroglyphic levels.  The creative effort in the "game" is so special.  http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/14919/dark-tales-edgar-allan-poes-premature-burial/index.html?channel=mktg&identifier=000000000253#          STUDENTS of Edgar Allan Poe:  There are now wonderful sites, as given above, with some of the most profound essays and explications of Poe's fiction, not available to students of my generation: the Sixties!  I shall share them when and where I can, so that you do not have to struggle with the ignorance of scholarly methods and findings that we older students did.  I will create a special page of those sites' URLs.   It is relevant to state that there are hundreds of scholars of Edgar Allan Poe around the world.  Some do not have e-mail, web sites, or any other availability or outreach to other interested fans of Poe.  My entire objective with this site is to show that one need not be enrolled in, or teach in, an academic setting to maintain an interest in our literary icon.  Raymond Foye, author of The Unknown Poe, correctly states that someone like Poe only comes along once in an epoch.       One surprise that I got when submitting a Poe-created noun to Google Search was: the bipart soul (also written as bi-part).  An understanding of Poe's concept and use of his "figure of speech," his coinage of a new term, might help one understand Poe's anathema of his Scots' heritage and genealogy.  Unfortunately, I cannot share my insights of that concept, and the story in which Poe used it ("The Murders in the Rue Morgue"), until our book is published!  Please look at the site, however.       I am now also on Facebookas Bob Brill.       Poespective.  This original word was given to the author during a visit to an old book store in Hilo, Hawaii, Basically Books.  Christine Reed said it means, "one has insight of the valuable concept."     Visitors are invited to learn some of what we have found in Scotland on our subject.  However, this is not the place nor time to make analysis of Poe' works, or make comments of influences of Ayrshire, Scotland, or its inhabitants upon Poe's developing personality and mind, as others do.  Effective commentary would take more space than we have here.  We leave that to each visitor, to the papers and essays which I write for brief publication or present at international conferences, and to  the future publication of our book.  However, as a graduate of the United States Navel Academy, whom we met at a bar in San Jose, Costa Rica, informed us, "Poe! ...If you want know!"        In that context, U. S. Navy Captain, Professor Smith's 1926 book on Poe is written of in our manuscript, but not here.  I will say here that what critics, professors, and writers of Poe biographies have said, including Professor Smith, that Poe's works were "autobiographical," and demonstrated his mental and physical deterioration, is so off the mark, that I am impatient to inform the unbiased, unbigoted, unpretentious fan of Poe that I am not here to rebut such errors of analysis.  Professor T. O. Mabbott, has pointed out in his "Introduction" to Selected Poetry and Prose of Edgar Allan Poe, in 1951, that Poe, "...did not, however, create while he was drunk..." and other correct statements of these libalous falsehoods. Nevertheless, years will pass before my material is published, and opens an entirely new controversy about the man and his works.  I am emboldened as I travel, present papers, or give independent lectures, that most everyone knew of Poe.  In that regard, they were delighted to learn of our independent research and findings.            Poe's uncle, John Galt, and Galt's descendant, Lou Greaves, of England, informed me that she has acquired the death certificate of Galt's cousin, Dr. Black, that completes her genealogical data of John Allan's niece, Jane Galt's family tree, in which Edgar Allan Poe exists.  Jane Galt was the age-equal cousin of Poe, who lived at the Flowerbank Estate, in the village of Newton Stewart, on the Cree River.  See Hervey Allen's Israfel for more details of this family.                  SECONDARY AND collage students are encouraged to perform Google Searches of specific nouns found in Edgar Allan Poe's works, as well as these pages, for in-depth information of Poe and his life.  Moreover, students should purchase the volume of Allen's biography, Israfel, made available and inexpensive on the Internet (I have 30 copies!), as well as that of Raymond Foye's, The Unknown Poe, from abebooks.com.  Other books of singular value are Dr. Moran's Edgar Allan Poe A defense of Edgar Allan Poe as well as Dr. John Robertson's Edgar A. Poe A psychopathic Study.  These, and other books, help one form opinions of Poe and his works without the incorrect conclusions and opinions of judgmental 'scholars' who did not know, "what Poe was saying."  Both volumes validate my independent conclusions and opinions of Poe and his works before I had the opportunity of reading them.   I am always offended when I read, even in 2011, the scholars who try to make their mark by writing something blatantly false about Poe's "vices."  One would think educated teachers would have given up on this effort at sensationalism.       I have finally acquired all of the genealogical data of the Edgar Allan Poe-to-John Poe, of Fenwick, data, beyond that mentioned only in Hervey Allen's biography of Poe, Israfel.  For example, Kilmarnock Standard staff reporter, Frank Beattie, sent the Hearth Tax records of David Poe, of Pokelly Hall, Parish of Fenwick.  Moreover, The document to which Hervey Allen makes reference in his biography is kept in the Archives' Department of the Library of the Military Academy at West Point.  I have included a copy of that document in our pages on "Cadet Poe," as permitted by the West Point Library.   The more detailed of our own Poe genealogy information goes back in time to approximately 1655, from that held in the Military Academy at West Point's Archive file of Poe, and other Poe Family Trees, and will be in our book.  That information, as well as genealogy for the Allans, Burns, and Galts is also included in our book.  I share in our text, over many chapters, how we went from Kenmotsu's first attempts at creating a "Poe" Family Tree, while at the James Watt Memorial Library, in Greenock, Scotland, and then increasing that Tree with information obtained about the blood, family, and legal lines of their connections from completely unrelated data.   Nevertheless, neither our study, nor these pages, are meant as an authority of the genealogical histories of our subjects.  I sought them as a contradiction of the known and presumed Poe genealogy, which asserts the family were from Ireland.   Most important, Poe's behavior and works do not originate in Ireland.  To the effective investigator, Ireland is not relevant to anything about understanding Edgar Poe, and his acquired, foster father's, family name, Allan.        Nevertheless, there were those in academia who discounted my findings of the Poe-Allan connection at Saltcoats, as announced to the PSA, by the Senior Museum Director, Mark Strachan, without their having so much as a peek at the evidence!  I was told not to submit anything more to the PSA about Poe in Scotland.  Nevertheless, American members of the Poe family are cordially invited to visit Scotland themselves, for a "look 'round."   Any living American with the name Poe, but not Edgar Allan Poe, or listed in our Index, is of absolutely no relevance to our study, nor of interest to us.  Moreover, anyone in America who has even a little common sense must know that if the Historical Societies of Ayrshire, Scotland, and the Robert Burns World Federation, Ltd., members know of Edgar Allan Poe's connections with Ayrshire, local Council members do as well!  It is the mark of Americans to believe that they know more about the people of Scotland than the Scots.  Moreover, a Ph. D. in anything does not confer upon the holder an authority to speak on every subject.  Edgar Poe himself made such an observation and comment in his own letters when he stated that in America every man is a monarch, each is entitled to one's opinion, and has them on every subject!  Fortunately, American Courts of Law separate the man from the monarch.
The image of Poe is from The Edgar Allan Poe Review's Spring 2000, Volume 1, Number 1 edition, Professor Barbara Cantalupo, Editor.  This year is important as it is the year during which I finishede my manuscript, but for subsequent editorial work.  Information regarding membership in the Poe Studies Association can be obtained by the "Links" menu in future. Other than The Scots Magazine artist's rendering with Gracie's article, there is no known representation of Edgar Allan Poe in his pre-teen years, while in The United Kingdom, as it was known at that time, and since.      The book, The Portraits and Daguerreotypes of EDGAR ALLAN POE, by Michael J. Deas, The University Press of Virginia, Copyright 1988, by the Rector and Visitors of the University, contains several versions of the above portrait. Poe's forehead hair, and the right tail of Poe's black tie, exist in identical location in plates 22 (p. 55), 23, (p. 59), 36, (p. 81) 73 (p. 161), 74, and plate 75 (p. 165). Our guess is that it is the "Stuart engraving," in which Poe's eyes are similar to those in the Review, plate 36, on page 81. The following narrative is lifted from our original website at American Online's free Hometown pages, that I named at the time, "Searching for Poe in Scotland."      Since 1996, we (Bob Brill and Grace Kenmotsu) have frequently traveled to Ayrshire, Scotland, on her western coast of the Atlantic. We have recorded and photographed places which Hervey Allen reported in his 1926 biography of Edgar Allan Poe,ISRAFEL. Allen's work is the most comprehensive statement of a "Poe in Scotland connection." He mentions wherever Edgar Allan Poe was known to have lived and visited until that time. Kilmarnock, Glasgow, Fenwick, Irvine, Greenock, Newton Stewart all have connections to Poe.      Our research and findings in these venues (cities, towns, villages, and hamlets) became "books" within our book, that we call "Surveys." Therefore, for information of Poe in Kilmarnock area we call it, "The Kilmarnock Survey," and so on. Only the "sleepy little village" of Stoke Newington, London, England had any indication of a Poe connection. There, we found placards mounted on buildings to mark the Poe connection. The local research library of Hackney Stoke Newington and The Fox Reformed Pub and Inn.      Now, as a consequence of giving talks on our subject, historical societies and others in Ayrshire--Dundonald, Kilmarnock, Irvine, Saltcoats, and Newton Stewart--have exhibits, documented placards, plaques, and relics in their records of Poe's connections. We have others to install as funding and time allow. This website is meant to link other Poe enthusiasts to a few relevant sites in Scotland that we have found and established. Our facts and findings have existed nowhere else before our research project, except as noted.      However, the North Ayrshire Council's Saltcoats Museum, where David Poe and Ann Allan and family are buried, is centrally located to all points of interest, and the only public exhibit of its kind in Scotland (and the world!). Our pages here are but samples of what exists in our forthcoming book, The Mystery of "Mar'se Eddie" in the Shire, Edgar Allan Poe's Scottish Connections.  This title is a creation of Kenmotsu's suggestion.   For additional narrative information, go to page 3, "Poe in Scotland."   This student just did a spell-check of this section of our web site, and it is to be noted that all of the words that originate and exist in Scotland are foreign to the American lexicon.
Map of the Ayrshire area. In the above map are seen such towns as Stranraer, Girvin, Ayr, Kilmarnock, Glasgow, and to the east, Edinburgh.  We include the areas of both Edinburgh and Belfast, Ireland, as the Allan and Poe families during the 18th and 19th Centuries had common shipping activities and interests in the North Channel and the Firth of Clyde, from Stranraer, in Scotland's south-west coast, to Belfast, and north to Greenock. Information of the Poe Shipping Company is courtesy of local Burnsian and historian, Thomas Hutton, of Dunfirmline, Scotland. Consult other maps for enlargements. Link to maps: http://www.mapquest.com/maps/main.adp?country=GB  Unfortuantely, I failed to make a note of the source of this unknown fact when with Mr. Hutton, and we have never been able to find it again since.       Seen in the garden, of what Hervey Allen correctly described as, "the Edgar Allan Poe Museum and Shrine," are Grace Kenmotsu and Mr. John English, the former Director of the Museum. This photograph is from our (Bob and Grace Brill's) first success in California of finding something of an organization, structure, or beginning of where to look for more information about Poe. As with all with whom we came in contact during our project, we were expected, and presumed, to know that they exist, and where and how to find them! It is well enough for those in education and Poe scholars to be thoroughly aware of library and social repositories of such information; however, to "outsiders" of the "Poe Community," such as Brill and Kenmotsu, his existence and such information were not evident. When we did find a "first" site, such as that given by Hervey Allen, we made every effort to locate it. Incredibly, neither the Richmond, Virginia telephone Information Directory nor local Chamber of Commerce stated they had any such listings! Some months later we flew to Richmond, Virginia, and found "The Poe Museum and Shrine." Mr. English was very delighted to accommodate our questions. Our first visit to Richmond, in 1997, was but three days. Our return visits were even shorter. Thereafter, we followed this visit from Pacifica, California, to other sites and literature of, or connected to, Poe, such as the University of Virginia, Charlottesville's Room 13, and Baltimore, Maryland.  Elsewhere in Mr. Allen's book, Israfel, and most in the bibliographies of Poe biographies, thereafter, we were able to construct an "outsider's" understanding of Poe biographical information.  Our goal is to help other lay fans and students of Poe find places in America and Scotland which took us considerable effort and expense to locate.	The logical place to begin research in Scotland for Poe would be the only place of which we had any knowledge, Glasgow. In a footnote Hervey Allen mentions John Allan having gone to Glasgow, nothing more! However, at the time, I believed that it was the only city near Ayrshire that had an airport. We, therefore, went to the University of Glasgow in an effort to speak with academics who might already know of the information which we sought. In the above photograph, taken by Grace Kenmotsu during our 1997 visit, the Chair of the Department of English, renowned F. Scot Fitzgerald scholar, Professor Andrew Hook, with his Professor of American Literature, Susan Castillo are seen. They graciously spoke with us in the faculty lounge of the University. Professor Hook has since retired. Professor Castillo, originally from Virginia, had visited Poe's Room 13 on the West Range of the campus. She remains at the University of Glasgow.  Our next stop into the unknown was Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, about an hour to the west.       Our 13 visits to Ayrshire, Scotland, have been noticed, but often without citation or credit.  One example is the following that Brill learned of by conducting a Google Search of his topic, Poe's concept of the bi-part soul.   At least one candidate for the Ph. D. in Scotland has used one of my ideas that I presented at the Symbiosis Conference in Greece in 2004, and copyrighted their use of it in a dissertation, without citation or credit of its source.  As a consequence I, too, have applied for a copyright of our book,  The Mystery of "Mar'se Eddie" in the Shire, Edgar Allan Poe's Scottish Connections.  The material in our website remains free of such restriction, however.  The "doctor," above, fortunately, shall remain ignorant of the why Poe wrote about that concept!   But she joins the Communist Chinese in their pirating American ideas, without citation or compensation!  Maybe that's why the Scots were so active in the slave trade, that I bring to my readers' attention, only in my book.  Conduct a Google Search of bi-part soul, and review the results.  Especially: "The influence of duality and Poe's notion of the 'bi-part ..." Jan 12, 2011 ... This dissertation examines the meaning, origin, and influence of Edgar Allan Poe's notion of the 'Bi-Part Soul', and the associated theme of duality, ...researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/4051/ - Similarto The influence of duality and Poe's notion of the 'bi-part ... (From Google Search)       I have been careful since not to share such unique contents of my project and manuscript.  Moreover, I share with students and professors outside of the United States only.  In this regard I have just returned from India, where I met with bias-free scholars and students, who are not inmates of American academic bigotry.  Our visits to Ayrshire disclosed the very frustrating culture to which Poe was subjected, and thereafter, spent much time writing of in hieroglyphic language of his creation.  Only at universities outside of the United States do I venture any honest discussions of what we found and write of in our own manuscript for the project.