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"E eeos Oo ae mire" EP eye ia ans Ee ‘ oy eee Pdr fA Wee) + es oes tee eters Ist eset Rte Seats 4 BSF: ee Raed Oe My Meera vew rR | AA he Jolt ere Sy tee Frat otank, oe <= ae se s “ a ned anid mt va : PS r, ar Py eed We Mh ; \i¢. Ar ae t ] — aS ate ae oy a ee pee —.- a er Ss ~~ : > = Se ra , 4 , x* . ‘ ye DEBDK&Z ‘ Me / { ~ > Le » ; | \ ry ) DUMFRIESSHIRE AND GALLOWAY NATURAL HISTORY & ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY. FOUNDED 20th NOVEMBER, 1862. TRANSACTIONS AND POURNAL ORV PROCEEDINGS 1914-15, THIRD SERIES, VOLUME III. BURZAU op AMERICA PTHNOL OA MAK 27 1916 LIBRARY EDITOR: ea, 77S G. W.sSHIRLEY. DUMFRIES: Published by the Council of the Society. IQI5. hy ASRS Perea es er a ye ts Fa 6 ean =. Office-Bearers, 1914-15. -- ++ ——~-—-- President. Hueu 8. Guapstone of Capenoch, Thornhill, Dumfriesshire, F.R.S.E., F.Z.8., M.B.0.U., F.S.A.(Scot.). Hon. Vice-Presidents. S. Arnort, F.R.H.S., Sunnymead, Maxwellown. Writ1am Dickiz, Merlewood, Maxwelltown. G. F. Scorr Exxiot, F.R.G.S., F.L.S., Drumwhill, Mossdale. James Lennox, F'.S.A.(Scot.), Eden Bank, Maxwelltown. Dr J. W. Martin, Charterhall, Newbridge, Dumfries. Dr J. Maxwext Ross, Duntrune, Maxwelltown. Joun RutHerrorp of Jardington, Dumfries. Vice-Presidents. James Davipson, F.I.C., F.S.A.(Scot.), Summerville, Maxwelltown. T. A. Hatirmay, Parkhurst, Edinburgh Road, Dumfries. G. Mactzop Stewart, Catherine Street, Dumfries. ALEXANDER TuRNER, Glen Sorrel, Maxwelltown. Hon. Secretary and Editor of Transactions. G. W. Surrtey, Ewart Public Library, Dumfries. Hon. Treasurer. M. H. M‘Kerrrow., 43 Buccleuch Street, Dumfries. Hon. Librarian and Curator of Museum. G. W. Suirtry, Ewart Public Library, Dumfries. Hon. Departmental Curators. Antiquities—G. W. SHIRLEY. Coins and Tokens—Jsmes Davipson, Summerville, Maxwelltown. Natural History—Dr J. W. Martin, Charterhall. Geology—Rosert Watusace, Durham Villa. Herbarium—Miss Hannay, Langlands, and Dr W. Sempte, Mile Ash. Hon. Secretary Photographic Section. W. A. Mackinnetu, The Shieling, Maxwelltown. Members of Council. The President ; Vice-Presidents ; Secretary; Treasurer; Librarian ; Departmental Curators; Secretary of Photographic Section ; and Miss M. CartyLeE AITKEN, Rev. S. Duntop, Messrs J. ANDERSON, THOMAS HENDERSON, BERTRAM M‘Gowan. D, Manson, and J. P. Miziean, CONTENTS. SESSION 1914-15. Office-Bearers for 1914-15 Rules Annual Meeting Maria Riddell; The Friend of Burns—Hugh S. Gladstone Annan and Lochmaben: Their Burghal Origin—George Neilson, LL.D. Arms of the Burgh of Sanquhar—Rev. W. M‘Millan ... Strathspey Fencibles at Dumfries in 1795—G. W. Shirley Amber and Jet in Burials—Nona Lebour ... Archaic Sculpturings of Dumfries and Galloway—Ludovic MacLellan Mann Notes on the Topography of Dumfries—G. W. Shirley Two Irongray Traditions—Rev. S. Dunlop The Kirkos of Glenesland, Bogrie, Chapel, and Sundaywell— Sir Philip J. Hamilton-Grierson The Protocol Book (1566-1569) of Herbert Anderson, Notary in Dumfries—Si7 Philip J. Hamilton-Grierson Weather and Other Notes taken at Jardington during 1914— J. Rutherford _ Astronomical Notes for 1914—/. Rutherford J Accounts of the Treasurers of the Royal Burgh of Dumfries, 1633-4, 1634-5, 1636-8, 1638-9—R. C. Reid ... Field Meetings— Craigenputtock and Lettrick ... Hermitage Castle Dundrennan Abbey Presentations Purchase and Exhibits Abstract of Accounts... 121 166 213 222 241 291 345 350 355 357 358 360 EDITORIAL NOTE. It must be understood that as each contributor has seen a proof of his paper, the Editor does not hold himself respon- sible for the accuracy of the scientific, personal, or place names, or for the dates that are given therein. Where possible, errors have been corrected in the Index. The Editor thanks the Editor of the Dumfries and Galloway Standard for permission to reprint Dr Neilson’s ae article on ‘* Annandale Burghs.’’ Members working on local Natural History and Archeo- logical subjects should communicate with the Honorary Secretary. Papers may be submitted at any time. Preference is always given to original work on local subjects. Enquiries regarding purchase of Transactions and pay- ment of subscriptions should be made to the Honorary Treasurer, Mr M. H. M‘Kerrow, 43 Buccleuch Street, Dumfries. Exchanges, Presentations, and Exhibits should be sent to the Honorary Secretary, Ewart Public Library, Dumfries. GeWeos: RULES OF THE DUMFRIESSHIRE AND GALLOWAY NATURAL HISTORY AND ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY, 1914. 1. The Society shall be called ‘‘ THE DUMFRIESSHIRE AND Name of the GaLtoway NaturaL History AND ANTIQUARIAN SociETy.’”? Society. 2. The objects of the Society shall be to collect and publish aims. the best information on the Naturai Sciences and Antiquities (including History, Records, Genealogy, Customs, and Heraldry) of the three counties of Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, and Wigtown; to procure the preservation of objects of Natural Science and Antiquities relative to the district; to encourage local research and excavations by private individuals or public bodies and afford them suggestions and co-operation ; to prevent, as far as possible, any injury to Ancient Monuments and Records, etc., and to collect Photographs, Drawings, and Descriptions and Transcripts of the same. 3. The Society shall consist of Life Members, Honorary yempersnip. Members, and Ordinary Members. 4. Life Membership shall be gained by a composition tife fee of £5 5s, which shall entitle the Life Member to all the Members. privileges of the Society. 5. Honorary Members shall be limited to twenty or less gonorary in number. They shall be entitled to all the privileges of the Members. Society, without subscription, but shall be re-elected annually at the Annual General Meeting. | Honorary Membership Ordinary Members. Annual Subscription. Privileges of ' Members, Strangers. Overdue Subscrip- tions. Office-bearers. Council. Election. Quorum. Sub- Committees. 10 RULES. shall, as far as possible, be reserved (a) for those who have aided the Society locally, or (b) for those of recognised attainments in Natural History, Archeology, or kindred subjects. 6. Ordinary Members shall be proposed and elected at any meeting of the Society by a vote of the majority present. They shall contribute annually 7s 6d (seven shillings and sixpence) in advance, or such other sum as may be agreed upon at the Annual General Meeting. All Members shall be entitled to attend the Meetings of the Society, and shall receive gratis a copy of the Transactions of the Society on issue. When more than one person from the same family joins the Society, all after the first may pay half fee, and shall enjoy the privileges of the Society, except that they shall not receive gratis a copy of the Transactions. 7. A Member may introduce a friend to any Ordinary Meeting of the Society. 8. Members whose subscriptions are in arrears for one year shall not receive a copy of the current Transactions ; if in arrears for two years, and having received due notice from the Treasurer, they shall cease ipso facto to be Members of the Society. 9g. The Office-Bearers of the Society shall consist of a President, Honorary Vice-Presidents, Vice-Presidents, Secretary, Treasurer, Librarian, and Departmental Curators, who, together with ten other Members, shall constitute the Council, holding office for one year. They shall be elected at the Annual General Meeting, and shall be eligible for re-election. The Vice-Presidents shall be limited to four, and the Honorary Vice-Presidents to ten or less in number. Three members of the Council shall form a quorum. The Council shall have power to make arrangements for dis- charging the duties of any vacant office. 1o. The Council may appoint Sub-Committees for any specific purpose, and with such powers as may seem war- ranted by the occasion; any such Sub-Committee to be composed of not less than three Members of the Society, but with co-optive powers. RULES. 11 11. The Honorary Secretary shall keep a Minute Book Hon. of the Society’s Proceedings, shall conduct the ordinary ia i fe correspondence of the Society, and shall give in a Report at the Annual Meeting. He shall call all Ordinary Meetings, and shall be responsible for the publication of the Trans- actions. 12. The Honorary Treasurer shall collect the subscrip- gon. tions, take charge of the funds, and make payments there- Treasurer's from under the direction of the Council, to whom he shall da present an Annual Account made up to 30th September, to be audited for submission at the Annual Meeting. He shall be responsible that all the belongings of, or articles in charge of the Society be insured against fire and theft. 13. The invested funds of the Society shall be in the rnvestea name of the President, Honorary Secretary, and Honorary Funds. Treasurer, for the time being, conjointly. Life Membership fees are to be regarded as capital, and are to be invested at the discretion of the above-named three Office-bearers in any stocks known as Trustee Securities. 14. The Meetings of the Society shall be held as may Meetings. be arranged by the Council, and at such Meetings papers may be read and discussed, objects of interest exhibited, and other business transacted. 15. The Field Meetings shall be held as arranged by Field the Council, to visit and examine places of interest, and Meetings. otherwise carry out the aims of the Society. 16. The ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING shall be held in the annual third week in October, at which the Office-bearers and other see Members of Council, together with Two Auditors, shall be elected, reports (general and financial) submitted, and other business transacted. 17. The Honorary Secretary or the President shall at gyeciai any time call a Special Meeting of the Society on receiving Meetings. the instructions of the Council, or a requisition signed by six Members. Every Member of the Society must be in- formed of any such Special Meeting, of which not less than seven days’ notice must be given, Transactions. — Right to Publish Papers. Separate Copies of Papers. Loans. Rules. Alteration of Rules. 2 RULES. 18. The Council shall have the right to publish in the Transactions, or otherwise, the whole, or part, or a résumé of, any paper read by any member or person at a Meeting of the Society, and the Council shall decide what illustrations, plates, or diagrams shall be reproduced with any such papers. 1g. Contributors of papers to the Society shall be en- titled, if such papers be published in the Transactions, to receive ten copies gratis of such papers as ‘‘ separates’ in pamphlet form. 20. The Society is prepared to accept articles of interest for exhibition on loan, but they will not be responsible for their damage or loss by fire, theft, or any other cause. It is desirable that parties lending articles should state the value they put upon them, that the Society may insure the articles for a similar amount. The Council shall have the power to terminate, or to refuse, the loan of such articles as they may from time to time see fit. 21. These Rules cancel all other rules previously passed. They shall be printed in the Transactions of the Society for 1914-15, and shali take effect from the date of their being signed by the President and Hon. Secretary. 22. Alterations of these Rules, or the addition of any New Rule, shall only be made with the consent of three- fourths of the Members present at an Annual General Meeting, notice of the same having been given in writing to the Hon. Secretary fourteen days previous to such Meeting, who shall intimate to all members that a change is proposed in the Rules. The above twenty-two Rules were approved, due notice having been given in accordance with Rule 13 (1906), at a Meeting of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society, held in the Ewart Public Library on October 16, 1914. Hucu S. GLaDsTongE, President. G. W. Suirtey, Hon. Secretary. PROCEEDINGS AND I RANSACTIONS OF THE Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History & Antiquarian pociety. SHSSION 1914-15. 16th October, 1914. Annual Meeting. Chairman—H. S. Guiapstong, M.A., F.Z.S., F.R.S.E., F.S.A.(Scot.), President. The Office-Bearers and Members of Council for the Session were appointed (see p. 3). The Secretary and Treasurer submitted their reports, which were approved. The former showed that there were 15 life, 10 honorary, 15 corresponding, and 374 ordinary members. During the past session 10 indoor and 3 field meetings had been held; some of the former were very poorly attended. In submitting a copy of the Transactions, it would be noticed that although it was reduced by a quarter in size, it had yet cost them more to produce. The Transactions were the most valuable work the Society accomplished, and it was to be hoped that the members would support. the Council in the proposals, to be laid before them shortly, which would enable the standard of this work to be main- tained. Mr Hugh S. Gladstone, on accepting the office of President, said :—Let me thank you for the honour you have again done me in electing me your President for another session. I should like to take this opportunity of thanking Mr. M‘Kerrow and Mr. Shirley for their ever-ready support, and I can assure you that any duties I may have been called 14 ANNUAL MEETING. upon to perform have been made a great deal easier by the hearty co-operation which I have always received from those two gentlemen. In olden days, on occasions such as this, Sir William Jardine (the first President of our Society) used to give a brief review of the scientific and other events of the preceding year. I am certain, had Sir William been in office to-day, that he would not have failed to refer to the terrible state of affairs now existing in Europe. Germany has of late years been ostentatiously loud in the praise of culture and scientific advancement, but her recent acts of ruthless and barbaric destruction in the waging of a war, entirely of her own seeking, make us wonder if her past expressions were genuine and sincere. It is not for us to discuss the merits of the war, and though we are unanimous in wishing an all time victory to the Allies we, as a Society, must deplore the regrettable set-back to scientific research which the war will inevitably cause. Other societies, similar to our own, have decided not to hoid meetings during this momentous crisis. We, however, have decided to carry on as far as possible as in the past; in other words, we adopt the thoroughly British maxim :—‘‘ Business as usual.’’ During the past session we have lost several of our members: amongst others whose loss we mourn I would remind you of Provost Thomson, one of our oldest members and contributors; Mr William M‘Ilwraith, a still older mem- ber; Mr Thomas Watson, editor of the Dumfries Standard; Mr J. Symons, who for many years was one of our auditors; Miss Murphie, a member of Council; Dr. Christopher John- ston, the famous Assyriologist; and Lieutenant-Colonel Aymer Maxwell, who has just met a soldier’s death at Antwerp. As regards the present condition of our Society—the Honorary Secretary and the Honorary Treasurer have already furnished their reports. You are aware that the Council were instructed to draw up fresh rules for our Society, and the results of their labours have been distributed throughout the room in printed form. It will be for you to approve, or disapprove, of these new rules, but I may say that there has ANNUAL MEETING. 15 been but very little departure from the old rules previously in force. There is, however, one point which you may wish to have explained, and that is the proposed increase in the annual subscription from 5s to 7s 6d. This proposal is un- avoidable owing to the increased cost of printing. I must point out that our Transactions are this year some hundred pages shorter than they were last year and that this is the reason why we are now only slightly in debt. It seems a pity that we should not retain the high standard of our publica- tions, and it is therefore hoped that the additional half-a- crown on our annual subscriptions will be regarded as a necessity. As regards the numerical strength of our membership, I appeal to you once again to be always on the look out for new members: the greater our membership the better our financial position and the better are our chances of doing good work. I do not think I need say more; if there are any ques- tions you wish to ask about the affairs of our Society I am sure our two honorary officials will be only too glad to answer them. RULES OF THE SOCIETY. The President formally moved the approval of the new rules as drawn up by the Council in accordance with the remit made to them. Mr Robert Wallace suggested that they might approve of all the rules except that which proposed to increase the subscription. Considerable discussion followed, in the course of which Dr. W. Semple, seconded by Mr. James Davidson, Summer- ville, moved that the rule increasing the subscription be approved, as well as the others. Mr. Wallace, seconded by Mr T. Johnstone, Victoria Terrace, moved that consideration of the rule be delayed to a future meeting. The motion was carried by a large majority, three members only voting for the amendment. The new rules were accordingly approved of in their entirety. (See p. 9.) 16 Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. Presidential Address. By Hucu S. GiapstToneE of Capenoch, M.A., F.R.S.E., Be ZeS5 ght Se Ae Scots): Maria Riddell, the Friend of Burns. This time last year I took as the subject of my Presi- dential address ‘‘ The Addenda to The Statistical Account of Dumfriesshire and Galloway, by Robert Riddell of Glen- riddell.’’ This proved to be a much longer paper than was expected, and it was therefore arranged that it should be printed separately and not in our Transactions. In the course of my enquiries into the subject I naturally came across many details concerning other members of the Riddell Family, and the following remarks will, I hope, be interesting, since they eal with Maria Riddell, who was so great a friend of Robert Burns.! Maria Woodley, for such was the maiden name of my heroine, was the daughter of William Woodley,? who in- herited an estate in Antigua, and who was twice appointed Governor and Captain-General of the Leeward Islands. He married, at St. George’s, Hanover Square, London, on March 30th, 1758, Frances, only surviving daughter and heiress of Abraham Payne’ of St. Kitts, by whom he had four sons and three daughters. His wife’s mother was 1 Much of my information has been obtained from a copy of Maria Riddell’s MS. diary and other papers, made by Mr Stephen Wheeler at the request of her grandson, the late Dr de Noé Walker ; this copy is now (1914) in my possession. The copyist informs me that the diary was much mutilated, and that those pages which would probably now have been the most interesting had been torn out; the present whereabouts of Maria Riddell’s MSS. are unknown. 2 For a Pedigree of the Woodley Family see The History of the Tsland of Antigua; by Vere Langford Oliver, vol. 11. (1899), pp. 256-264. (See also Notes 7 and 41.) 3 The History of the Island of Antigua (Vere Langford Oliver), vol. ii. (1899), p. 256. For a pedigree of the Payne Family see tom. cit., pp. 8-18. See also Footnote 103. Marta RIppeLu. From a portrait by, or after, Sir Thomas Lawrence in National Burns Memorial Museum, Mauchline. Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BurRNs. 17 Frances Payne,** first cousin to Sir Ralph Payne, who was also at one time Governor of the Leeward Islands, and who on October ist, 1795, was created Lord Lavington. Of him one may read in old books of travel that when residing on his estate in the West Indies he was a great “ stickler for and a firm upholder of distinctions of rank and etiquette colour. He would never take a letter or parcel from the hands either of negro or half-bred; a pair of golden tongs being used for the better protection of his nobility. His family, for many years settled in Jersey, claimed descent from the Plantagenets, and he was justly vain of his lineage. His black servants were never allowed to wear shoes or stockings, and when he drove abroad in state the calves of the footmen behind his carriage, nicely polished with butter, shone like jet.4. In spite, however, of his haughtiness, the slaves on his estate seem to have been well treated, and this is more than could be said of a good many English slave- owning planters in the Leeward Islands. A traveller? who visited Antigua in those days writes that on Sir Ralph Payne’s estate “‘ out of upwards of five hundred as fine slaves as any in the island, ..... there is not even ten salt-water negroes ;’’® the meaning of which is that, the slaves being well cared for, there was little need of buying new stock to replenish losses. You will pardon this digression. Maria was, as I have already said, the daughter of William Woodley and Frances Payne; she was the third and youngest daughter of this union,’ and was born in England on November 4th, 1772, 5a See Footnote 103. 4 Antigua and the Antiguans [Anonymous], vol. 1. (1844), Pelor. 5 John Luffman, who was resident in Antigua from May 6th, 1786, till August Ist, 1788. 6 4 Brief Account of the Island of Antigua, by John Luffman [1788], p. 127. 7 Maria Woodley’s brothers and sisters were as follows :— William: b. January 23rd, 1762; d. 1809, in the West Indies; he married twice and had issue by both marriages. John: b. June 20th, 1766; Captain of the Leda frigate, which was 18 MarIA RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. where she was educated.® Her taste for literature must have betrayed itself early in life, for we find her writing poetry at the inconsiderate age of fifteen. Among her papers are some verses addressed to her by that once famous wit, Joseph Jekyll,9 and her reply to the same gentleman; the reply being dated ‘‘ London, March 17, 1788.’’ Jekyll at that time was well past thirty, and the year before had been elected, through the Marquis of Lansdowne’s! interest, member of Parliament for Calne. In spite of his political pursuits, he lost off Madeira, December 11th, 1795. (Metrical Miscellany (1802), p. 173.) Henry: b. January 10th, 1768; d. August 18th, 1777. Charles: 6. March 7th, 1776; married and had issue. Frances: b. November 6th, 1760; m. August 18th, 1784, Henry Bankes, M.P. for Corfe Castle, 1780/1826, and for Dorset, 1826/1831; she was a noted beauty and was painted by Romney ; her husband died 1835; she d. November 22nd, 1823, leaving issue. Harriet: b. June 13th, 1765; m. January 11th, 1788, Thomas Pickard of Bloxworth House, Dorsetshire, and d.s.p. (The above information has been obtained from Vere Langford Oliver’s The History of the Island of Antigua, vol. ui. (1899), pp. 256-257 ; John Hutchins’ History of Dorset, vol. i. (1868), p. 240; checked with the MS. pedigree put in with the ‘ Petition of Colonel Daniel Corrie Walker for service as Heir-in-General of Robert Riddell of Glenriddell’’; Sheriff Court, Dumfries, 1897; and also with information obtained from Maria Riddell’s papers. See foot- note 1.) ; 8 Article in The Standard by Mr S[tephen] W[heeler], August 18th, 1899. The fact that she has been termed a ‘‘ Creole’”’ would denote nothing more in West Indian patois than that she was a pure bred white person born in the West Indies; as a matter of fact, however, she was born in England as above stated. 9 Joseph Jekyll, 6. 1754, educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford; M.A., 1777; m. August 20th, 1801, Maria, daughter of Hans Sloane, M.P., a lady of considerable fortune and by whom he had two sons; reader at Inner Temple, 1814, treasurer, 1816; M.P., Calne, 1787-1816; contributed whig pasquinades to Morning Chronicle and Evening Statesman ; attacked in The Jekyll, a Political Eclogue, 1788; K.C. and Solicitor-General to Prince of Wales, 1805; master in chancery, 1815; d. March 8th, 1837. His portrait forms the frontispiece to Correspondence of Mr Joseph Jekyll with his sister-in-law, Lady Gertrude Sloane Stanley . . . by Hon. Algernon Bourke, 1894. 10 Sir William Petty, created Marquis of Landsdowne 1784. Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BuRNs. 19 had time to talk and write nonsense to his young friend. His ‘‘ Elegiac Epistle to Miss M. Woodley ’’ purports to have been composed after a farewell meeting at the Royalty Theatre ; he being about to start for the Western Circuit, and Maria for the West Indies. He upbraids her for the hard- ness of her heart :— “Yes, Miss Maria; at the Royalty Theatre, full of love and loyalty To your sway sovereign I bow’d prodigiously While you looked beautiful, perfidious, sly; And ’stead of tender valedictory, Assum’d a tone most contradictory To my pure passion—cruelly to jerk it Just as one got astride to ride a circuit. A proud disdain! a melancholy topic! For you’ll be to’ther side the tropic And sucking sugar-cane 1 the Leeward Islands Before I tramp it back from Cornish Highlands. Yes, fair Maria, ’twas a hard condition, And more impolitic than th’ abolition Of Slave Trade, thus with base Allegro To treat a Counsellor just like a negro.”’ This ingenuous effusion ends with an assurance that its author would be delighted to wed the fair Maria, were he rich enough to afford the luxury. As it turned out, the lively gentleman waited till the century was out, and then married a lady with a fortune.44 But Miss Maria’s reply, though she was only fifteen, is at least as well worth quota- which provoked it. She MS) tion as the ‘‘ Elegiac Epistle begins :— “When Jekyll mounted on the back Of Pegasus, his circuit hack, Does write such execrable dogged verse, He shows his brains are as empty as his purse. But this worthy subject of an Eclogue (Who, by the bye, deserves to be used like a dog!) Thinks that because he’s become Member of Parliament He’s a right to give his impertinence a free vent. But ’stead of letting him on the circuit prank it Oh how I would I had the tossing of him in a blanket !’’ 11 See Footnote 9. 20 Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. Mr. Jekyll had behaved, she proceeds, very badly at their farewell meeting :— ‘You know at the Royalty Theatre you offended me amazingly, For while you went on talking praisingly (If I may use the expression) and telling an intolerable set of fibs Your eyes were perpetually fixed on Mrs Gibbs 518 Nay, every time she crossed the stage, the Loon Kept his eyes rolling like two poch’d eggs in a spoon.” The metre of these last lines may not be above suspicion, but Mr. Jekyll got as good as he gave. His “‘ fair Maria ”’ ends with :— “‘ Sooner shall beaux St. James’s Street forsake Or village maids forbear the sprightly wake ; Sooner shall willing Landsdowne rule the State Or Jack-Daw Phoenixes forget to prate; Sooner shall lawyers honesty profess, Than Mr Jekyll shall my heart possess.’’ The Marquis of Landsdowne, as already noted, was Jekyll’s patron. The lucky barrister had been styled a “‘ Jack-daw Pheenix ’’ in a Politicai Satire, or Eclogue, as it was called ;¥ a fact which also explains the line in the first extract, where he is described as the “‘ worthy subject of an Eclogue.’’ On irth April, 1788, Maria Riddell left England with her father and mother for the Leeward Isles, and there is an account of her voyage in a little book she published four years afterwards.“ This forgotten volume is mainly in- 12 Celebrated actress, b. circa 1770; played at ‘‘ The Royalty ”’ as principal character in the serious pantomimes; described as of ““a plump figure, a light complexion, and blue-eyes’’; m. the actor George Colman (the younger), and after his death in 1836 lived in retirement at Brighton, where she d. circa. 1844. 13 “* Jekyll the wag of law, the scribbler’s pride, Calne to the senate sent when Townshend died ; So Landsdowne willed, the hoarse old rook at rest, A jackdaw phoenix chatters from his nest.’’ The Jekyll, a Political Eclogue, by the authors of The Rolliad, ete. J. Richardson, ete. 1788. 14 Voyages to the Madeira and Leeward Carribbean Islands, by MG ORME 3 eS.) os Kdinburgh: Printed for Peter Hill, and T. Cadell, London, 1792. (See Appendix A.) Marta RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. 21 teresting, perhaps, from the fact that Robert Burns found a publisher for it. Still there are some pleasing descriptions. After leaving Madeira, the ship in which the Woodleys sailed—‘‘ the Britannia, a merchantship commanded by Captain Woodyear ’’—was “‘ chaced by an Algerine pirate who did not give up his pursuit till we happened to fall in with another English ship, when the Corsair, fearful of en- countering a foe so much superior to his own, gave up the chace.’’ A week or two later, after passing Guadeloupe and Antigua, on the way to St. Kitts, the Britannia struck on a coral rock just under the lee of Nevis. ‘‘ The shock was far more violent,’’ the authoress writes, ‘‘ than any earthquake I ever experienced; but we sustained very little damage and found ourselves in deep water again almost as soon as we heard the crash.’’ After these perils they landed, on June ist, at Basseterre, the chief place in the island of St. Kitts, which the authoress proceeds to describe with painstaking minuteness. Amongst other things, she notes that in the previous year three hardy Scotsmen had boldly adventured to climb to the peak of Mount Misery, until this time deemed inaccessible. ‘“ They proceeded, as justly as they could ascertain, to the height of 3711 feet, by fastening ropes to the branches of trees, and the craggy points of the rocks, and climbing thus with a thousand hazards and difficulties, till they found it taper to a pinnacle of one immense solid rock; at the foot of which they erected a flag staff (which is now visible in a clear day with a telescope), and here con- cluded their perilous undertaking, finding it totally impos- sible to ascend any higher.’’ On November 4th, 1788, Miss Woodley attained the sentimental age of sixteen. The exact date is really of importance, because it was when she ‘ teen ’’ that she composed a poem, entitled ‘‘ Inscription written on an Hermitage in one of the Islands of the West Indies.’"5 Something further about the young lady’s tastes, was then but six- 15 The Metrical Miscellany (1802), p. 69; (2nd ed. 1803), p. 75. At the end of the eighteenth century there seems to have been a natural weakness for ‘‘ Hermitages’’; cp. The Natural History 22 Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. disposition, and culture may be gathered from the verses, even if they have no other merit. First we are told of a friend of her own sex :— ‘Within this rural cot I rest, With solitude to calm my breast ; And while beneath th’ umbrageous bow’r Content beguiles each roseate hour, And while with Anna oft I rove Soft friendship’s mutual sweets to prove, I scorn the pageants of the great, Nor envy pow’r and empty state.’’ wh, 2h} The “‘ pageants of the great’’ included possibly Sir Ralph Payne’s golden tongs, while “‘ the empty state ’’ may recall the afore-mentioned bare-legged footmen. To the young poetess in her West Indian retreat came visions of ““ distant Albion ’’ :— “‘Far, far remov’d, perhaps no more Destin’d to hail my natal shore: (Perhaps Horatio, thy dear form No more these languid eyes may charm, No more this faithful bosom warm !)”’ The dear ‘‘ Horatio ’’ has not been identified, unless indeed he was the sportive Joseph Jekyll; but ‘‘ Anna,’’ we learn from a manuscript note, was a Miss Richards. Maria goes on to speak of the books she had read :— ‘“ At eve, beneath some spreading tree I read th’ inspired Poesie Of Milton, Pope, or Spencer mild, And Shakespear, Fancy’s brightest child: To tender Sterne I lend an ear, And drop o’er Héloise the tear ; Sometimes with Anna tune the lay And close in song the chearful day.’’ But the Leeward Islands boasted a Laureate who read these artless lines, and was moved to send a fervent reply, which survives in the original manuscript, preserved by the of Selborne, by Gilbert White; Burns’ ‘‘ Lines written in Friars’ Carse Hermitage ”’ ; etc. Marta RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. 23 careful recipient among her treasures. Signing himself ‘* T. C., Poet Laureate of Montserrat,’’ he exclaims :— ‘* Maria, with a friend like you I could be happy in a cell; Especially if Anna too Would in our little cottage dwell.’’16 Maria came back to England, presumably for her edu- cation, but returned to Antigua in 1790 with her parents. It may have been on this occasion that she met her future husband, and she was not yet eighteen when, on September 16th, 1790, she married Walter Riddell!” in St. Kitts, as his second wife. His first wife had been Ann, only child and heiress of William Henry Doig!® of Antigua, whom he married at St. Marylebone Parish Church, London, on June ist, 1786,!8 and who died childless at Hampstead on May 5th, ‘ 1787, leaving him her Antiguan property known as “‘ Doig’s 16 Much of the foregoing information has been obtained from Maria Riddell’s papers. See Footnote 1. 17 Walter Riddell was born on March 4th, 1764. At the age of fifteen (April 21st, 1779) he was appointed Ensign in the 51st Regiment of Foot, then quartered at Minorca, and he became Aide- de-Camp to the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir William Draper, K.B. With the rest of the garrison Riddell was made a prisoner of war by the Spaniards in February, 1782. He subsequently received a Lieutenancy in the 8lst (Highland) Regiment of Foot (December 18th, 1782), but after the general peace in 1783 he was placed on half pay. ‘‘A miniature on ivory, Portrait of Walter Riddell, ascribed to Plimer, in gold locket frame’’; was part (lot 61) of the property of the late Dr A. de Noé Walker sold, by direction of his executors, by Messrs Foster, 54 Pall Mall, on December 13th, 1900; it was purchased by Mr E. M. Hodgkins, of 158b New Bond Street, for £78 15s, but cannot now be traced. Mr Hodgkins, how- ever, possesses another miniature of Walter Riddell with powdered hair, wearing dark blue coat, white waistcoat, and white cravat; signed and dated on the reverse ‘‘R. Cosway, 1791,’’ which was bought at Messrs Christie’s (lot 58) on November 26th, 1902, by Mr Hodgkins for £210. (See illustration, facing p. 24.) 18 For a pedigree of the Doig Family see The History of the Tsland of Antigua, by Vere Langford Oliver, vol. i. (1894), pp. 204-207. 19 Extract from the Parish Register of Marriages. 20 The Scots Magazine (1787), p. 258. 24 Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. estate.’’ Owing to the absence of Walter Riddell’s name from the Island Records we may conclude that he drew the income of these inherited sugar plantations while residing at his London House in Lower Berkeley Street, Portman Square, and that he was on a visit to his property in the West Indies when he met his second wife. Shortly after her mar- riage Maria Riddell, for so she must now be termed, sent a long account#! of her new home to her sister, Mrs. Pickard.” This is too long to quote, but the letter shows signs of dis- satisfaction and home-sickness. There is hardly any men- tion of her husband, whose estate is said to be ‘‘ above a 1000 acres,’’ and whose ‘‘ mansion ’’ is pictured by the writer as “‘ nothing but a neat little cottage, built with the greatest simplicity possible, of white stone and adorned with i) ‘no ornaments of architecture whatsoever. The drawing- room, which is 26 feet by 16,’’ contains ‘‘ the Harpsichord and other musical instruments, .... and is hung round with prints and drawings.’ Maria Riddell did not stay there long, for on August 31st, 1791, she gave birth to her daughter, Anna Maria, at her father’s house in South Audley Street, London. Early in 1792 Walter Riddell purchased the estate of Holm of Dalscairth, which he renamed Woodley Park™ in honour of his wife, and here they entertained many interesting persons, such as Francis Grose® the Antiquary, William Smellie the Naturalist,2° and Robert Burns. 21 See footnote 1. 22 See footnote 7. 23 See footnote 1. 24 The actual disposition of ‘‘ Woodley Park ’’ to Walter Riddell is dated May 14th, 1792. 25 On “3rd January, 1791, [? 1792] Grose writes to Burns “after the scene between Mrs Riddell, Junr., and your humble servant, to which you was witness, it is impossible I can ever come under her roof again.’? We do not know what was the cause of their quarrel, but it tends to show that Mrs Maria had a temper. 26 Smellie, William: 6. 1740, Edinburgh printer, naturalist, and antiquary ; printed and contributed to first edition of Encyclo- pedia Britannica, 1771; secretary to Newtonian Club, 1778, and of Scottish Antiquaries’ Society, 1793 (original member and keeper of natural history museum); noticed in Burns’s “ Crochallan Water RIDDELL. From a miniature in the possession (1914) of Mr. E. M. Hodgkins, 1588 New Bond Street, London, W. The miniature is signed and dated on the reverse by “ R. Cosway, 1791," and was purchased at Messrs Christie’s on November 26th, 1902. Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BurRNs. 25 The fame of Maria Riddell probably only exists to-day on account of the part she played in the life of Burns.2’ It will be remembered that ever since the poet set up as farmer at Ellisland, in 1788, he had enjoyed the friendliest hospitality from Captain Robert Riddell, the neighbouring laird of Friars’ Carse. Whether his brother, Walter Riddell, had known Burns prior to his going to the West Indies is not Fencibles’ ; published an account of Scottish Antiquarian Society (1782-4), The Philosophy of Natural History (1790-9), posthumous lives of Lord Kames, Hume, Adam Smith, and J. Gregory, M.D., and an edition of Buffon; d. June 24th, 1795. 27 A catalogue of the poems and letters addressed by Burns to Mrs Riddell will be found in Appendix B. Messrs Kerr and Richardson, of Glasgow (in a catalogue of second-hand books issued about 1890), state, when advertising a copy of The Metrical Miscellany, that: ‘‘ This volume was edited . . . by Maria Riddell, to whom Burns sent his own MS. copy of ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ with a quotation beginning ‘ How gracefully Maria leads the dance.’’’ I can find no confirmation of Burns having sent a copy of his ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ to Maria Riddell. The quotation is : — “How gracefully Maria leads the dance! She’s life itself: I never saw a foot So nimble and so elegant. It speaks, And the sweet whispering Poetry it makes Shames the musician.’’ Adriano, or, The first of June. “This elegant little fragment appears, in the poet’s holograph, on the back of an MS. copy of the ‘ Lament of Mary Queen of Scots’ that apparently had been presented by the author to ... Mrs Maria Riddell.’ (W. Scott Douglas, The Works of Robert Burns, vol. iii. (1877), p. 82.) The fragment has been photo-lithographed by William Griggs with an introductory note by H. R. Sharman, 1869. Adriano, or, The first of June, is ‘a poem by the author of the Village Curate’’ [James Hurdis], 1790, p. 94. The quotation by Burns is incorrect insomuch that in the third line of the original the word ‘‘ eloquent ’’ is used instead of ‘‘ elegant.”’ 28 Robert Riddell: b. October 3rd, 1755; educated at the Universities of Edinburgh and St. Andrews; entered the Army and retired with the rank of Captain, 1783; m. Elizabeth Kennedy, March 28rd, 1784; thereafter much of his life was spent in Anti- quarian and Literary pursuits at Friars’ Carse, which he had in- herited from his father. His intimacy with Burns is well known; on January 23rd, 1794, he received the hon. degree of LL.D. from the University of Edinburgh; he d. April 21st, 1794. 26 Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. known, but the fact that the poet was quick to appreciate Maria Riddell’s talents is evidenced by the letter which he wrote to his friend, William Smellie, on January 22nd, 1792 :— ‘* T sit down, my dear Sir, to introduce a young Lady to you, and a Lady in the first rank of fashion too.—Mrs. Riddell, who will take this letter to town with her, and send it you, is a character that, even in your own way, as a Naturalist and a Philosopher, would be an acquisition to your acquaintance.—The Lady, too, is a Votary of the Muses; and as I think myself somewhat of a judge in my own trade, I assure you that her verses, always correct and often elegant, are much beyond the common run of the Lady-Poetesses of the day.—She is a great admirer of your book ;?9 and hearing me say that I was acquainted with you, she begged to be known to you, as she is just going to pay her first visit to our Caledonian Capital.—I told her that her best way was, to desire her near relation and your intimate friend, Craigdarroch,®® to have you at his house while she was there; and, lest you might think of a lively West Indian girl of eighteen, as girls of eighteen too often deserve to be thought of, I should take care to remove that prejudice.—To be impartial, however, in appreciating the Ladys merits, she has one unlucky failing, a failing which you will easily discover, as she seems rather pleased with indulging in it; and a failing that you will as easily pardon, as it is a sin which very much besets your- self. Where she dislikes, or despises, she is apt to make no more a secret of it, than where she esteems and RESPeGiss so. 29 The Philosophy of Natural History, vol. i., 1790; vol. ii., edited after his death by his son, A. Smellie, was published in 1799. 50 Alexander Fergusson of Craigdarroch, Dumfriesshire; b. September 6th, 1746; d. 1796. His aunt Jean married her cousin Robert Riddell of Glenriddell, grandfather of Walter Riddell, Maria’s husband. 31 Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Correspondence of William Smellie, vol. ii. (1811), by Robert Kerr, pp. 353-354. ——— MarRIA RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BuRNs. 27 Maria Riddell has left an interesting ‘‘ Copy of a letter to Mrs. W.,’’ probably Mrs. Woodley, her mother :— ‘** Edinburgh, January 30th, 1792. . . . . We set out on Tuesday morning from Friars Carse, accompanied by our Caledonian bard, the celebrated Burns, on an expe- dition not very dissimilar, I think, to that of the memor- able Don Quixote in the Cave of Montesinos. It was nothing less than to explore the Lead Mines at Wanlock Head, reckoned one of the most curious in Scotland. I do not look upon rising a couple of hours before the sun in this dreary month of January, as one of the most trifling proofs of our Knight Errantry. We set off before day break, and arrived in time to breakfast at Sanquhar.”’ Here a postchaise for Wanlockhead was taken, and the beauties of the majestic scenery ‘‘ joined to the interesting remarks and fascinating conversation of our friend Burns, not only beguiled the tediousness of the road, but like- wise made us forget its danger; for it borders the edge of a profound precipice, at the bottom of which a clear brook guides its rapid course over a pebbly bed inter- sected with rocks. When we had attained (on foot for the most part) the summits of these hills, one of the principal miners conducted us across them to the foot of another mountain, where a dark and narrow cavern is carved in the solid rock. This we entered, each of us holding a taper and bidding Adieu for some hours at least to the fair light of day. The roof is so low, that we were obliged to stoop almost double, wading up to the mid leg in clay and water; and the stalactical fluid continually dropping from the rock upon our heads, contributed to wet us completely thro’. The roof is supported by beams of timber; these our conductors desired us to hold by, as the footpath is extremely narrow; but the beams were so wet and slimy that I found them of little service, and soon cut my gloves to pieces by clinging to the points of the rocks. After we had proceeded about a mile in the cavern, the damp and confined air affected our fellow adventurer Burns so much, that we resolved to turn back, 28 Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. after I had satisfied my curiosity by going down one of the shafts. This you will say was a crazy scheme— assailing the Gnomes in their subterranean abodes !— indeed there has never been before but one instance of a female hazarding herself thither.’’ The letter of introduction from Burns to Smellie had apparently been presented by Maria Riddell on January 2oth, 1792,2 and on March 7th she writes to Smellie sub- mitting some of her ‘‘ humble sketches of Natural History ”’ for his perusal, and asking him to have fifty or one hundred copies of them printed for distribution among her friends. He was delighted with the ‘‘ minute observation, accurate description, and excellent composition ’’ of her ‘‘ ingenious and judicious work,’’ and on his advice five hundred copies were printed and published in May, 1792.%% Smellie’s cor- respondence with Maria Riddell gives one the impression that she may have been somewhat of a flirt, or at anyrate that he (though a man of over fifty at the time) was ready to amuse himself with a flirtatious correspondence with her. ‘“ Why did you grapple with a soldier?’’ he writes on March a7th, 1792. “‘ Mr. Riddell I ever will revere, though not so much as yourself must do; but if I could have had the happiness of having the company of a lady so well qualified to assist me in my favourite study, we two should have made a COUPLE of figures in the literary world!’ The correspondence of Mrs. Maria Riddell and William Smellie is interesting to a student of Burns as containing more than one reference to the Poet, and it is clear that Smellie formed a high opinion of Mrs Maria Riddell’s abilities. On October 16th, 1792, she wrote to Smellie from Woodley Park that her little girl had “‘ got through the small-pox with a very slight eruption attended by a most trifling degree of fever.’’ 52 Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Correspondence of William Smellie, vol. ii. (1811), by Robert Kerr, p. 359. 53 See footnote 14 and Appendix A. 54 Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Correspondence of William Smellie, vol. ii. (1811), by Robert Kerr, p. 363. 35 Tom. cit., p. 367. Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. 29 The letter goes on to strengthen the impression we have formed of Smellie’s character :—‘‘ I saw a pretty girl this morning in town, who asked kindly after you, Miss......... whom you flirted with so much at the Assembly in Dum- fries.’’ On November 22nd, 1792, she again writes to Smellie, expressing her satisfaction at the Reviewers’ criticisms of her book,*6 and adding: ‘‘ We are in hourly expectation of my little girl’s acquiring another little play- fellow and relation.’’*7 Next day she gave birth to another daughter, who was christened Sophia. Burns, ever: since Walter Riddell purchased Woodley Park, had frequently been a guest there, and early in 1793 he had sent Maria Riddell a copy of his sonnet ‘‘ On hearing a Thrush sing in a Morning Walk in January,’’ as ‘‘ a small but sincere mark of respect.’’ In April he gave her a copy of his poems*® inscribed ‘‘ To Mrs. Riddell of Woodley Park. Un gage d’Amitié le plus sincére.’’ He also addressed an “‘ ” Impromptu ’’ to her on the twenty-first anni- versary of her birthday (November 4th, 1793). In eight lines of poetry, inspired by Lord Buchan’s vociferating in an argument that ‘‘ Women must always be flattered grossly or not spoken to at all,’’ Burns writes to Maria :—‘‘ But thee whom all my soul adores, There flattery cannot flatter !’’ It is not certain whether the poet addressed his ‘‘ Wandering Willie’? to Maria Riddell, but all his letters to her at this period evince the greatest admiration.*® He addressed her as ‘‘ my ever valued Friend;’’ ‘‘ thou first of Friends, and most accomplished of Women;’’ ‘‘ thou must amiable .and most accomplished of thy sex;’’ and in similar appreciative terms. It is ever to be regretted that none of these letters 36 See footnote 14 and Appendix A. 37 Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Correspondence of William Smellie, vol. ii. (1811), by Robert Kerr, p. 369. 38 Two vols. (Edinburgh), 1793, with twenty-six autograph additions, corrections, and alterations. This presentation copy of Burns’ poems is now (1914) in the possession of the Rt. Hon. the Ear] of Rosebery, K.T., ete. 39 Kight of these letters are printed in The Works of Robert Burns, . . . by Dr. James Currie, vol. ii. (1820). 30 Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. are dated except two, and the same deficiency marks most of the poems which Burns sent to her. In the summer of 1793 Walter Riddell returned to the West Indies to look after his estate. His wife did not accompany him farther than London, where, after a few months’ stay, she returned to Woodley Park. A letter from her to William Smellie, dated ‘‘ Woodley Park, 17 Nov., 1793,’"%9 besides mentioning the death of her father,* is of peculiar interest; here we have the first link in the chain of evidence which goes to prove that she was not the affronted hostess in the scene of ‘‘ The Rape of the Sabines,’’ in which Burns is said to have played a leading part. This letter states that her husband had been “‘ recalled ’’ to the West Indies in June or July, 1793,*2 and later correspondence with Smellie proves that he did not return home till between March 3rd and May 3rd, 1794. It has always been accepted that a drunken scene took place after a dinner party at Woodley Park, and Burns’ letter of apology written on the morrow to his hostess has always been supposed to have been addressed to Maria Riddell. As this letter, however, expressly mentions :—‘‘ Your husband, who insisted on my drinking more than I chose,’’ and as Walter Riddell was at the time in the West Indies, it is evident that his wife was not the recipient of this apology written ‘‘ from the regions OF Inieiil,”” Possibly the mise en scéne of ‘‘ The Rape ”’ should be changed from Woodley Park to Friars’ Carse, where Mrs. Robert Riddell may have been the offended heroine. There is, however, no doubt that a Mrs. Riddell was affronted in 40 Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Correspondence of William Smellie, vol. ii. (1811), by Robert Kerr, p. 370. 41 William Woodley, Governor of the Leeward Isles, d. at St. Christopher, June, 1793, his wife (Frances Payne) d. at Bloxworth, County Dorset, March 29th, 1813, aged seventy-five (The History of the Island of Antigua (Vere Langford Oliver), vol. iii. (1899), p. 256.) See also footnote 2. 42 In a letter to George Thomson, dated ‘‘ July, 1793,’ Burns writes:—‘‘ Walter Riddell, of Woodley Park, . .. is at present out of the country.’”’ (W. Scott Douglas, The Works of Robert Burns, vol. vi. (1879), p. 258.). Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. 3 some way, and that the whole Riddell Family showed their indignation by thereafter treating Burns with a frigid cold- ness. A poetical ‘* Remorseful Apology,’’ which has been thought to have been addressed to Mrs. Walter Riddell by Burns, after this incident, may therefore have been sent to the hostess (whoever she was) whom he had offended. It is certainly Mrs. Walter Riddell to whom the Poet writes on January 12th, 1794:—‘‘ I return your Common Place Book.—I have perused it with much pleasure, & would have continued my criticisms; but as it seems the Critic has for- feited your esteem, his strictures must lose their value.’’ The date of this letter’ is important as indicating that the rupture of their friendship must have been in the first fort- night of January, 1794, when, as has been stated, Walter Riddell was abroad. The evidence would therefore seem conclusive that Maria Riddell cannot have been the lady on whom the Poet is said to have ‘‘ laid rude hands,’’ and the coldness which arose between her and Burns was probably due to some after-dinner scene at which her sister-in-law had been offended, and which had aroused the indignation of the whole Riddell family. In a letter dated ‘‘ Dumfries, , 1794,’ Burns writes to Maria Riddell :—‘‘ I saw you once since I was at W[oodley] P[ark|; and that once froze the very life-blood of my heart. Your reception of me was such, that a wretch meeting the eye of his Judge, about to pronounce sentence of death on him, could only have envied my feelings and situation. But I hate the theme and never more shall write or speak of it.’’4 One would have wished that Burns might have adhered to his promise, and that he might, further, have accepted his position with more contrition, but in May, 1794, he must needs vituperate Maria Riddell in the following stinging epigram addressed to her carriage :— 45 A facsimile of this letter has been printed and appears opposite p. 18, of The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott (1866). 44 W. Scott Douglas, The Works of Robert Burns, vol. vi. (1879), p. 117. ae) Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. ““Tf you rattle along like your mistress’ tongue, Your speed will out-rival the dart ; But a fly for your load, you’ll break down on the road, If your stuff be as rotten’s her heart.’’ ce A few weeks later he wrote his ‘‘ Monody on a lady famed for her caprice.’’ A copy of this he sent to ‘* Clarinda ’’ (Mrs. Maclehose) on June 25th, 1794, with a note :—‘‘ The subject of the foregoing is a woman of fashion in this country, with whom at one period I was well acquainted. By some scan- dalous conduct to me, and two or three other gentlemen here as well as me, she steered so far to the North of my good opinion, that I have made her the theme of several ill-natured things.’’ It is possible that Burns felt the estrangement from Maria Riddell more severely than from the other mem- bers of the family, because a greater, a more sentimental, intimacy had existed between them. That she should alienate herself from him in a similar manner to her relations may have stung him to the exceptional vituperation in which he indulged. It is known that the poet’s verses commencing ‘““ Farewell, Thou Stream,’’ originally began. :— ‘The last time I came o’er the moor And left Maria’s dwelling What throes, what tortures passing cure Were in my bosom swelling ?”’ and that Maria Riddell was the heroine intended.*® In the copy which he had sent to her he had added :—‘‘ On reading over the song, I see it is but a cold inanimated composition. It will be absolutely necessary for me to get in love, else I shall never be able to make a line worth reading on the subject.’’ In July, 1794, however, Burns informed George Thomson, the publisher, that he had *‘ made an a!teration in the beginning ’’ of these verses, which he had previously sent him, and they were to run :— 45 Burns wrote to Maria Riddell, ‘‘ Friday, noon [ April, 1793] Mary was the name I intended my heroine to bear, but I altered it into your ladyship’s as being infinitely more musical.’’ (W. Scott Douglas, The Works of Robert Burns, vol. vi. (1879), p. 75.). Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BuRNS. 33 ‘* Farewell, thou stream that winding flows Around Eliza’s dwelling! O Memory spare the cruel throes Within my bosom swelling.”’ There is nothing to be objected to in the change of name of the heroine of this poem;** indeed, under the circumstances it was perhaps only natural, but Burns in October, 1794, showed his spite in a premature epitaph on Walter Riddell :— ‘* So vile was poor Wat, such a miscreant slave, That the worms even damned him when laid in his grave ‘In his scull there’s a famine,’ a starved reptile cries ; ‘And his heart, it is poison,’ another replies.”’ Burns’ poem, written on November 17th, 1794, and which is believed to have been sent to Mrs. Maria Riddell, runs :— ‘“Canst thou leave me thus, my Katie? Canst thou leave me thus, my Katie! Well thou know’st my aching heart, And canst thou leave me thus for pity? Is this thy plighted, fond regard: Thus cruelly to part, my Katie? Is this thy faithful swain’s reward: An aching broken heart, my Katie? Farewell! And ne’er such sorrows tear That fickle heart of thine, my Katie! Thou may’st find those will love thee dear, But not a love like mine, my Katie. Canst thou leave me thus, my Katie! Canst thou leave me thus, my Katie! Well thou know’st my aching heart, And canst thou leave me thus for pity >”? 46 Procedure, somewhat parallel to the above, is to be found in the case of Burns’ verses beginning ‘‘ Thine am I, my faithful Fair.’ A copy of these was apparently sent to Maria Riddell (see Appendix B, No. 482), but on August 2nd, 1795, being then ‘* very much on with Jean Lorimer,’’ Burns wrote to Thomson ordering him to change the first line to ‘‘ Thine am I, my Chloris Fair.’’ (Henley and Henderson’s The Poetry of Robert Burns, vol. iii. (1901), p. 479.). 34 Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. Maria replied with the following verses, about the authorship of which there was at one time some doubt :—*” ‘Stay, my Willie—yet believe me; Stay, my Willie—yet believe me; For Ah! thou know’st na’ every pang, Wad wring my bosom should’st thou leave me. Tell me that thou yet art true, And a’ my wrangs shall be forgiven; And when this heart proves fause to you Yon sun shall cease its course in heaven. But to think I was betrayed, That falsehood e’en our lives should sunder ! To take the flow’ ret to my breast, And find the guilefw’ serpent under. Could I hope thoud’st ne’er deceive, Celestial pleasures, might I choose ’em Id shght, nor seek in other spheres, That heaven I’d find within thy bosom. Stay, my Willie—yet believe me; Stay, my Willie—yet believe me; For Ah! thou know’st na’ every pang, Wad wring my bosom should’st thou leave me!’’48 One would have thought that after this exchange of pretty poetry a reconciliation could not have been far distant, but early in 1795 Burns wrote his lampoon ‘‘ From Esopus” to Maria,’’ an effort which has been described as an ‘‘inept and unmanly parody of Pope’s Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard,’’® wherein Burns describes her as :— (a3 pert, affected, vain coquette, A wit in folly, and a fool in wit! 47 Henley and Henderson, The Poetry of Robert Burns, vol. iii. (1901), p. 468. 48 P. Hately Waddell, Life and Works of Robert Burns (1867), p. 293. 49 James Williamson, actor and manager of the Dumfries Theatre. 50 Henley and Henderson, The Poetry of Burns (1901), vol. ii., p. 393. Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BuRNs. oo Who says that fool alone is not thy due, And quotes thy treacheries to prove it true !’’ However much one may appreciate the genius of the Poet, one must always regret his unmannerly conduct towards this lady who had been his friend, and whose patronage he had only lost on account of his rudeness to one of her family.°! Whatever may have been low and despicable in Burns’ nature is nowhere more clearly shown than in his attacks on Maria Riddell and her husband, who seem, however, to have treated these effusions with a silent disdain. Maria was much taken up with the ordinary duties of housekeeping, and she was wrapped up in the welfare of her two daughters, the younger of whom had also had small- pox. She took a delight in her harp, her piano, and her museum, to say nothing of reading, in which her taste ran the gamut from Voltaire’s Candide to Godwin’s Political Justice. Her husband, who has been described as ‘‘ some- thing of a wastrel,’’5 was often away from home, in London and elsewhere. That he was extravagant is apparent from the fact that early in 1794 he parted with Woodley Park (some say that it reverted, the purchase money not having been paid) to Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Goldie.54 On the death of his brother, Captain Robert Riddell of Friars’ Carse, 51 Auguste Angelier, who may be regarded as an impartial and unbiassed critic, has dealt with this episode (Robert Burns, vol. i., 1893, pp. 510-511), and his comment may be translated as follows :— *“ People from time to time have regretted that [Burns] wrote certain verses which were too free and gross. If a true friend of the poet had to make a choice, it would not be these verses which he would suppress but the spitefulness and insults against a woman whom he had offended.’’ It is only fair to point out that Burns lived to regret, and to apologise for, what he had done (see p. 39), and had he himself had the opportunity there can be no doubt that he would have suppressed these very insults. q 52 Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Correspondence of William Smellie, vol. ii. (1811), by Robert Kerr, p. 382. 53 Henley and Henderson, The Poetry of Robert Burns (1901), vol. ii., p. 421. 54 The actual disposition of Woodley Park to Lieutenant- Colonel Thomas Goldie is dated September 3rd, 1794. 36 Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. on April 21st, 1794, he inherited his property, but it was advertised for sale almost immediately. On February goth, 1795, Mrs. Maria Riddell writes to William Smellie from Tinwald House, which may have been taken on lease and a crazy, rambling, worm-eaten, ce which she describes as cobweb-hunting chateau of the Duke of Queensberry, which, God be thanked, I abandon and evacuate with all my house- hold next May.’’ The letter mentions that she had passed part of the preceding year in London, and she informs Smellie that she there ‘‘ picked up acquaintance with Boswell56 the biographer; and a stranger biped, yourself always excepted, I know nowhere.’’ Walter Riddell was in London, and she herself was much occupied in the education of her two daughters.®7 An incident occurred about this time which excited no little stir in Dumfries. The Strathspey Fencibles were quartered in the town in 1795, and in June of that year the local authorities made application to the officer in command of the regiment for a party to assist in apprehending some Irish tinkers who had taken up their abode at the Stoop. They as ‘‘ Vagrants and Idle persons ”’ had been fixed upon as suitable subjects for the exercise of the Comprehending Act, impressing men into the Navy. They resisted capture, however, and greeted the party with a volley of musketry from the house.®® Three of the soldiers were seriously wounded (one eventually died of his wounds), but the tinkers were taken. Their trial aroused great in- terest, and it was through Maria Riddell’s friendship with Henry Erskine®? that he was induced to defend the ringleader, John O’Neil, setting up as his defence that he was justified in resisting any attempt to enter his house. Notwithstanding 55 Wriars’ Carse was sold by the trustees to George Johnston, Merchant in India, April 25th, and May 5th, 1795. 56 James Boswell (6. 1740, d. 1795, son of Alexander Boswell, Lord Auchinleck), the biographer of Samuel Johnson. 57 Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Correspondence of William Smellie, vol. 11. (1811), by Robert Kerr, p. 389. 58 Dumfries Weekly Journal, 16th June, 1795. 59 Erskine, Hon. Henry: b. 1746, Lord Advocate (brother of the Hon. Thomas Erskine (see Note 94), d. 1817. ie ee i ke ee le Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BuRNs. 37 Erskine’s forensic abilities, O’Neil was found guilty and sen- tenced to be hanged, but Maria Riddell was instrumental in affecting, by means of the combined influence of her friends Henry Erskine and C. J. Fox,® a commutation of this sen- tence. ® ‘Early in 1795 Maria Riddell’s anger towards Burns had begun to cool, and the old broken friendship was gradually renewed. She sent him a book, Anacharsis,® previous to her presenting it to the Dumfries Public Library,® with a song of her own composition :— ““ For there he roved that broke my heart, Yet to that heart, ah, still how dear !’’64 69 Fox, Charles James: b. 1749, statesman, d. 1806. 61 The Honourable Henry Erskine, by Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Fergusson (1882), pp. 350-351. 62 Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Gréce dans le miliew du quatriéme siecle avant Vere vulgaire, by Jean Jacques Barthelemy, Paris, 1788, 1789, 1790, ete. 63 The Ewart Public Library, Dumfries, contains many volumes which originally belonged to the Dumfries Public Library ; among them is a set of Anacharsis (2nd English edition), 8 vols., 1794, which we may be almost certain was the actual set lent by Maria Riddell to Burns. 64 The poem, from which the above is an extract, runs :— “To thee, loved Nith, thy gladsome plains, Whence with careless thought I ranged, Though prest with care and sunk in woe, To thee I bring a heart unchanged. I love thee, Nith, thy banks and braes, Though Memory there my bosom tear, For there he roved that broke my heart, Yet to that heart, ah, still how dear! And now your banks and bonny braes But waken sad remembrance’ smart ; The very shades I held most dear Now strike fresh anguish to my heart: Deserted bowers! where are they now— Ah! where the garlands that I wove With faithful care each morn to deck The altars of ungrateful love? The flowers of spring, how gay they bloomed When last with him I wandered here! 38 Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. Doubtless that heart was softened by the pitiable condition of the Poet, whom “‘ distress had spited with the world.’’ Burns in a letter (dated by Cunningham, ‘‘ Dumfries, 1795 ’’)® thanks Mrs. Riddell, in the third person, for send- ing him the book, refers to her ‘‘ beautiful song,’’ and adds, in a postscript :—‘‘ Mr. Burns will be much obliged to Mrs. Riddell if she will favour him with a perusal of any of her poetical pieces which he may not have seen.’’ In August the Poet writes less formally about Shaw, a protégé of Mrs. Riddell’s, for whom she wanted to get a “‘ Tide waiter’s ”’ place. After advising her to use her influence with the Excise Commissioners, he proceeds :—‘‘ I was going to mention some of your female acquaintance, who might give you a lift, but on recollection your interests with the WOMEN is I believe a sorry business. So much the better ! ’tis God’s judgment upon you for making such a despotic use of your sway over the Men. You a Republican! You have an empire over us; and you know it too; but the Lord’s name be praised you have something of the same propensity to get giddy (intoxicated is not a lady’s word) with power; and a devilish deal of aptitude to the same blind undistinguishing Favoritism which makes other Despots less dangerous to the welfare and repose of mankind than they otherwise might be.’ On January 29th, 1796, the Poet, writing to The flowers of spring are passed away For wintry horrors dark and drear. Yon osiered stream, by whose lone banks My songs have lulled him oft to rest, Is now in icy fetters locked— Cold as my false love’s frozen breast !”’ (Chambers and Wallace, The Life and Works of Robert Burns, vol. iv. (1896), p. 191.). See also The Edinburgh Magazine, November, 1795, p. 384; and The Metrical Miscellany, by Maria R...... (1802), pp. 176-177, where a slightly different version of the above is given and two stanzas are added. 65 The Complete Works of Robert Burns, ed. by Allan Cunning- ham [1886, ete.], p. 416. 66 W. Scott Douglas, The Works of Robert Burns, vol. vi. (1879), p- 170. Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. 39 her of his ill-health, informs her that he is sitting to Reid® for his portrait in miniature, and a little later he sends her ”» ae this ‘‘ bagatelle ’’ asking for its return ‘‘ per first oppor- tunity.’ On June 4th, 1796, he writes, in response to Maria’s invitation to be present at the ball to be given in honour of the anniversary of King George III.’s birthday (June 4th) that he is *‘ in such miserable health as to be incapable of showing my loyalty in any way.’’ At her request he came to see her when he was at Brow, whither he had been ordered towards the end of June, 1796, to see what benefit he could derive from sea-bathing. The inter- view must have been a painful one; the sick man, so Maria states, greeted her with :—‘‘ Well, madam, have you any commands for the other world?’’ He expressed to her ‘“ great concern about the care of his literary fame;’’ regretted the existence of “‘ letters and verses written with unguarded and improper freedom;’’ and lamented ‘‘ that he had written many epigrams on persons against whom he entertained no enmity, and whose characters he would be sorry to wound. .... We parted on the evening of that day [July 5th, 1796]; the next day I saw him again and we parted to meet no more.’’® On July 18th, 1796, the Poet was brought back to his own house in Dumfries, where he died on July 21st. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, that gossiping and syste- matically ill-natured writer, has left a remarkable descrip- tion of ‘‘ a Lady was none other than Maria Riddell. This description is ” who, from the context, it would appear 67 “* All trace of this portrait has been lost’’ (Dictionary of National Biography). Alexander Reid, b. 1747, d. 1823 (loc. cit). P. Hately Waddell gives a plate and-also a long account of the *“ Kerry miniatures’’ which came into his possession in 1866 and which he identifies as the above-mentioned ‘‘ bagatelle.’’ (Pe Hately Waddell, The Life and Works of Robert Burns, 1867, pp. 67-71, and plate to face p. 2, part 2.). 68 The Works of Robert Burns (W. Scott Douglas), vol. vi., 1879, p. 189. 69 P. Hately Waddell, The Life and Works of Robert Burns (1867), p. 86. 40 Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. given in a ‘“‘ Memorandum by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe (written on the back of a Receipt from his father’s Dumfries agents, Messrs Walker and Gordon, dated 8th Jany., 1808),’’ and is as follows :— ‘“ There was a Lady—it is needless to outrage her ashes by recording her name—whose intimacy with B. did him essential injury—their connection was notorious—and she made him quarrel for some time with a connexion of her own, a worthy man, to whom her deluded lover lay under many obligations. She was an affected—painted— crooked postiche—with a mouth from ear to ear—and a turned up nose—bandy legs—which she however thought fit to display—and a flat bosom, rubbed over with pearl powder, a cornelian cross hung artfully as a contrast, which was bared in the evening to her petticoat tyings, this pickled frog (for such she looked, amid her own col- lection of natural curiosities) Burns admired and loved— they quarrelled once, however, on account of a strolling player™——and Burns wrote a copy of satirical verses on the Lady—which she afterwards kindly forgave, for a very obvious reason—amid all his bitterness he spared her in the principal point, which made her shunned by her own sex,’!4 and despised by the rest of the community.’’ The date which the memorandum bears is January 8th, 1808, but it must be noted that that date refers only to the receipt, on the blank reverse of which Sharpe, certainly at a subsequent date, but probably soon after the death of Maria Riddell (December 15th, 1808), wrote this caustic description of her. The Poet’s lampoons consequent on the Riddell quarrel are now seldom read, but it may be interesting to compare 70 This interesting document was first published in the Annual Burns Chronicle and Club Directory, No. 12 (January, 1903), pp. 96-102. 71 Probably James Williamson. See footnotes 49 and 50. 71a See Burns’ letter (dated by Cunningham, ‘‘ Dumfries, 1795 ’’), which confirms this statement (p. 38). Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BuRNS. 41 Burns in anger with Kirkpatrick Sharpe on the judgment seat. In the ‘‘ Monody ’’ the Poet says :— ‘“ How cold is that bosom which folly once fired, How pale is that cheek where the rouge lately glistened, Here lies, now a prey to insulting neglect, What once was a butterfly, gay in life’s beam.’’ In his lampoon ‘‘ From Esopus to Maria,’’ Burns’ language is even less flattering :— ‘‘ Prepare, Maria, for a horrid tale Will turn thy very rouge to deadly pale; Will make thy hair, tho’ erst from gipsy poll’d, By barber woven and by barber sold, Though twisted smooth with Harry’s nicest care, Like hoary bristles to erect and stare! Still she, undaunted, reels and rattles on, And dares the public like a noontide sun. What scandal called Maria’s jaunty stagger The ricket reeling of a crooked swagger ?”’ Maria Riddell at the time of her death was only thirty-six years of age, and it is therefore difficult to realise her as a ** pickled frog.’’ Moreover, her portraits,” unless unduly flattering, would seen to give the lie direct to Sharpe’s pen picture, though there is no apparent reason why he should have wilfully maligned Maria. He, however, confirms his 72 (1) Portrait (Kit-cat size), by Sir Thomas Lawrence; in possession (1914) of Mrs. Bankes, Kingston Lacy, Wimborne, Dorset- shire. (Maria Riddell’s eldest sister Frances Woodley (a noted beauty painted by Romney), married August 18th, 1784, Henry Bankes, M.P. (See footnote 7.) (2) Miniature, in possession (1914) of Miss Harriette Lloyd Fletcher of Gwernhaylod, Co. Flint. (Maria Riddell m. 2ndly Lieutenant-Colonel Philipps Lloyd Fletcher. (See footnote 99.) (3) Copy of (1) (by, or after, Sir Thomas Lawrence); presented to the Mauchline Burns Memorial Museum by Dr. Arthur de Noé Walker (Maria Riddell’s grand-son, who d. October 2nd, 1900), in February, 1849. (See frontispiece.) At the same time he gave the Museum three of her cups and saucers and a muffin dish of old Chelsea-ware bearing the Riddell crest and the letter R. 42 Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. opinion of her by an autograph note in his copy of The Metrical Miscellany :—‘‘ This collection was published by Mrs. Riddell, long the friend of Burns—her maiden name was Woodly [sic]; she was a sister of Mrs. Bankes, and a worthless profligate woman.’ Whatever may have been the cause of her quarrel with Burns, we know that Maria Riddell suffered severely from his merciless effusions. Five days after his funeral, however, she went by night to plant laurels on Burns’ grave,” nor was this the only service she rendered to his Manes, for it is to Maria’s lasting credit that none of the Poet’s contemporary critics have bequeathed us a more discerning or impartial essay on his character than she has done.” It need only be quoted, however, for one or two remarks which touch on the writer’s own relations with Burns. She writes :—‘‘ Much indeed has been said of his inconstancy and caprice; but I am inclined to believe they originated less in a levity of sentiment, than from an extreme impetuosity of feeling which rendered him prompt to take umbrage; and his sensations of Pique, where he fancied he had discovered the traces of unkindness, scorn, or neglect, took their measure of asperity from the overflowing of the opposite sentiment which pre- ceded them, and which seldom failed to regain its ascendency in his bosom, on the return of calmer reflection. He was candid and manly in the avowal of his errors and his avowal 78 Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe’s copy of The Metrical Mis- cellany (1802), offered for sale by Messrs Wright & Sons, 350 Fulham Road, London, S.W. 74 W. Scott Douglas, The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Burns, vol. 1. (1871), p. Ixxxviii. 75 This first appeared, shortly after Burns’ death, in the Dumfries Weekly Journai, from which it was copied into the Edin- burgh newspapers, and into various other periodical publications. Dr. James Currie in giving this essay at full length (The Works of Robert Burns, vol. i. (8th ed., 1820), pp. 257-264) states ‘‘it is from the elegant pen of a lady . . . . whose exertions for the family of our bard, in the circles of literature and fashion in which she moves, have done her so much honour.’’ The essay is dated August 7th, 1796. MariA RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. 43 was a reputation.’’ Maria Riddell tells us she once asked Burns why he had never taken the trouble to learn Latin, “* a language which his happy memory had so soon enabled him to be master of.’’ To this Burns had replied, somewhat in the graceless manner of the painter Lippo Lippi, that ““ he already knew all the Latin he desired to learn, and that ”? a phrase, Maria adds, ‘‘ he was ce was ‘‘ Omnia vincit amor; most thoroughly versed in.”’ One might have expected that Maria Riddell’s diary” would have contained some interesting references to Burns, but her original manuscript (so the copyist informs me) was so mutilated, whole passages being erased and even pages torn out, that it is impossible to say whether or no she kept any record of her acquaintance with the Poet. Moreover, the portion of Maria’s diary which has been rescued from oblivion only covers the period from January, 1797, to October, 1803. It is remarkable that there should be no mention whatsoever of her husband, unless, indeed, this was to have been found in the erased passages or the destroyed pages. Meagre as are the details still remaining, we learn that she now spent her life in the South of England (mostly in Dorsetshire) and in London, and we receive additional proofs that Maria was possessed of a highly cultivated mind and a fine sensibility. To quote her diary in extenso would prove but a tedious repetition of the names of the then leading figures” in Society whom Maria was in the habit of meeting at balls, suppers, parties, receptions, or at the theatre, and much of her diary is taken up with poetic and prose quota- tions, not only from English but from French and Italian authors. The following extracts are, however, especially in- teresting as giving us an insight into Maria’s character :— 76 See footnote 1. 77 Among many other names recorded in the diary are those of the King and Queen, the Prince of Wales, Duchess of Gordon, Lord Malmesbury, Marquis of Abercorn, Lord Hinchinbrook, ‘‘ Monk ”’ Lewis, William Spencer, Dr. John Moore, Mathias, Jerninghan, Fox, Sheridan, Henry Erskine, General Eustace, Lady Jersey, etc., ete., etc. 44 Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. ‘‘ Sat. 18th [February, 1797]. Sophia’ has relapsed. The whole system—physical as well as moral—is unhinged and miserable with me: exhausted by attendance round a sick bed by day, and watching it with little less assiduity even at night. All hope is yet not lost for her recovery ; but I somehow cannot help fancying this suspense and perturbation worse than almost a certainty of the impend- ing evil.’’ ‘* Sund: 26th [March, 1797]. Wrote to Cerjat.® I think it was on the 16th of last month I wrote last to you under great perturbation of spirits and fatigue both physical and mental. I will not dwell on the painful sub- ject, or talk to you of all I went thro’ for more than 3 weeks after I wrote you that last letter, because it can answer no one end but imparting very uncomfortable sensations to your mind, which I doubt not will continue sincerely to participate in the distresses of mine. I think my health is gradually recovering, the storm is past, and the violence of grief subsided with the extinction of hope, of fear, and all other passions that had for so long sup- ported my mind to an unusual pitch of energy. I do not allow myself to think; I am never alone; I fly to society, to variety of scene, to the dissipation of every affection it was lately a virtue to cherish, to recover from the imper- fection, the inconstancy of human nature what I sought for in vain from the firmness of my own character, or the resources I was wont to have successful recourse [| sic] to. The fact is my mind is so enervated with the scenes it has. lately witnessed, that it is barely susceptible of being diverted, and wholly incapable of any exertion.’’ 78 Maria Riddell’s eldest daughter; b. November 23rd, 1792 ; d. of whooping cough, March 1st, 1797. 79 The identity of this correspondent is uncertain, possibly it was George Cerjat; b. 1755; ‘‘of the Royal Cinque-port Dragoons, and aide-de-camp to General Garth,’’ who married on November 15th, 1798, the only daughter of William Woodley of Eccles, Norfolk (The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1798, p. 1150); he died 1801. MarIA RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BuRNsS. 45 ‘* Sund. gth July [1797]. Wrote to Lewis®... Since I wrote last all has passed here in the same tasteless monotony as what I probably mentioned then, in the course of my letter. It is not the dearth of society, I complain of, that I seldom find necessary, but it is the want of liberty for the enjoyment of one’s own. There is no cultivation for the mind, no épanchement for the heart. One inhabits neither the Woods of Egeria or the Groves of Cyprus. . . . How do I regret Scotland! its bold energy of landscape, the singular, romantic, and almost unique aspect of its Mountains, Glens, and Muirlands! there I disposed of my time on the only system calculated to exclude ennui or satiety. I qualified my domestic with my social engage- ments, I never involved myself in a discontinuous run of either for a sufficient length of time to find the one insipid or the other wearisome. I enjoy’d society with double zest after passing eight or ten days in solitude, and return’d to that again with additional relish after I had been engaged for any time in occasional dissipation.”’ ‘“Mond. 7th [August, 1797]... . Walked on the Esplanade [Weymouth] and to the Pier to see the Royal Family embark on board the St. Fiorenzo. Were again spoken to and took our leave of the King and Queen.’’® ““Thursd. 1oth [August, 1797]. Wrote to Gen. Eustace® . . . . I quite acquiesce in yr. monition as to the imprudence of too much precipitancy in forming a judgment of co-temporary public characters; yet Kos- cuisko’s® political and martial career may now be said to be closed, consequently he shd. seem exempt from the difident suspension of approbation you so prudently recommend. The fact is I am only a philosopher by 80 Lewis: Matthew Gregory; b. 1775; author of the ‘‘ Monk,”’ 1795; his writings are memorable on account of their influence on Sir Walter Scott’s early poetical efforts ; d. 1818. 81 King George III. and Queen Charlotte. 82 The identity of this correspondent is unknown. 83 Koscuiszko: Thaddeus; b. 1746; Polish general and states- man; d. 1817. 46 Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. halves; I love Knight-errantry too well to be thoroughly republican, and if I was by chance to ‘ find an Heroe’s nest ’ I do not think I shd. have the heart to “ break the eggs.’ The world in general is apt to be dazzled by the trophies of a conqueror, but I know not how it is, I feel interested in Koscuisko’s misfortunes to a degree that all the triumphs of successful heroism hardly ever yet excited Thay 1805” ‘‘ Tuesd. sth Septr. [1797]. Our party left us. I went in the morng. to Bloxworth.84 Wrote to Smyth.® A . Do you know—you may hate me for it but I cannot help it that I do not like Tragedies, and be they ever so moral I cannot conceive them to be of any utility to the mind, but much otherwise. A Tragedy, not to be insipid, must be wrought up to call forth and agitate the passions in an extreme degree; to very few constitutions this extra- ordinary degree of effervescence is at all necessary, it is applying a violent operative where a gentle stimulus had answered all the purpose and given less pain, and I do believe from my heart that the seldomer our passions are summon’d into energy, the more they are suffered to remain dormant, the better we shd. become, the wiser and the happier. I am always provoked at myself for allowing my feelings to be played upon in a theatre when if they are of a generous nature they wd. have been called forth to so much better purpose in the wider theatre of human life, of human woes, and human virtues. .... I cannot deny great chasteness of style, and considerable display of what is called Knowledge of the World, to Miss Burney’s® writings; but—I cannot suppress my deficiency of taste perhaps—I am not partial to them. Averse to novel reading in general, when I do relax from graver studies I love to lose sight of all that Roscoe terms—‘ the dull 84 The residence of Thomas Pickard, who married Maria’s sister Harriet. (See footnote 7.) 85 Probably Smyth: James Carmichael; b. 1741; one of George TIl.’s physicians; d. 1821. 86 Burney: Sarah Harriet; b. ?1770; novelist; d. 1844. Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. 47 realities of life ’—all the intrigues and fadeurs of modern society, and soar at once into the regions of sentiment and romance with , of fiction and fancy with Lewis®? and Anna Radcliffe.88 I delight excessively in a Knight Errant, with an enchanted wood, a haunted castle, a suit of blood-stained armour, and an apparition | am still child enough to be completely transported ! when I declaim against novels I except those of Le Sage.’ ’’8 ee [February, 1798] . . . .‘‘ ‘ minds have a certain in- trinsic dignity that fires at being trifled with, or lower’d or even too nearly approached.’—I am_ particularly delighted with this observation on the teazing officiousness of always arguing with those we love about their faults; it struck me the more perhaps from my having a few mornings ago very foolishly irritated one of the persons on earth that I most love and admire by telling him of a few censuring observations, perhaps merited, perhaps other- wise, but certainly unnecessarily, that I had happened to hear made on him, and whch. in the natural impetuous effervescence of his temper he repelled so warmly that we narrowly escaped a brouillerie, luckily I soothed, caressed, and flattered; he was pacified, but I have laid Burns’ maxim to my bosom, and vowed solemnly never to tell a friend that he has a fault again.”’ [May, 1798]. ‘‘I dislike the spectacle of suffering and misery whch. I cannot relieve, that of death is not half so disgusting or painful to me. To a mind harassed by a discontinuous chain of perverse circumstances, and agi- tated with strong and disappointed passions, perhaps a state of complete tranquility and calm (be it what it will) is less calculated to shock than to be envied. As to Anna,™ 87 See footnote 80. 88 Radcliffe: Ann; b. 1764; the founder of a school of romance in which terror and curiosity are aroused by events apparently super- natural, but afterwards naturally explained ; d. 1823. 89 Le Sage: Alain René; b. 1668; French novelist ; d. 1747. 9 Maria’s only surviving child and heiress, Anna Maria Riddell (b. August 31st, 1791), married on October 5th, 1811, Captain 48 Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. I am so solicitous to free her from the little weaknesses and delicacies that render women ‘ interesting ’—and miserable, 9 times out of 10 that I was not sorry to seize an opportunity [here the rest of the page is torn out of the diary ]. [i Minys auSoou) J Wrote to] die The dreadful fits of low spirits that sometimes last me for weeks together, always harass me; if not by their actual influence, at least in anticipation. My head was so thoroughly dis- ©o in the fever, that I think the effects & sometimes linger abt. me still.’’ ordered 18 months a ‘July [1800]. I have been too much occupied with the infantry at home to woo the Muse. Besides this gay, gaudy sunshiney season is totally unfavourable to her inspiration. Autumn, the fall of the leaves, the still, grey, gloomy evenings, are exclusively her’s and they are what I enjoy beyond all others in the country. When they return, perhaps she may accompany them; at least she is sure of finding me then in the right train of meditation.’’% [? July, 1800.] ‘‘ The letters (Burns’s) are the finest things of the kind in their own peculiar strong enthusiastic way, that have been given to the public for a long while. Charles Montagu Walker, R.N. (b. February 5th, 1780), one of Nelson’s Lieutenants (H.M.S. ‘‘Spencer,’’ 1803-1805). She died February 23rd, 1859; he died July 10th, 1833. Captain Walker’s father was Nathaniel Walker, and his brother was Sir George Townshend Walker, the distinguished Peninsular officer who was created a Baronet on March 28th, 18385, and who died November 14th, 1842. Anna Maria had, with other issue, two sons and four daughters ; her third son being Dr. Arthur de Noé Walker (see note 109). Her grandson, Colonel Daniel Corrie Walker, R.E., was in 1897 proved heir-in-general to his great-grandfather’s brother, Robert Riddell. (See footnote 28.) For a genealogy of the Walker Family, see Edmund Lodge’s Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage, and Companionage (1911), pp. 1879-1881. 91 That she continued to write poetry is evidenced by her con- tributions to The Metrical Miscellany, which was first published in 1802. (See Appendix A.) 92 These letters first appeared in print in The Works of Robert Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. 49 Some persons have preferred his prose to his poetry: | think the greater part of both excellent. But some letters and some verses and’’ [here the top of p. 108 of the original manuscript has been provokingly torn off]. As I have stated, the diary is much mutilated, and it is from another source that we learn that Walter Riddell, Maria’s husband, died at Rendezvous Bay, Antigua, on May 22nd, 1802.% In 1803 it was suggested by Thomas Erskine™ that she should take charge of the Princess Charlotte,® and she writes to him in November, ‘‘-if my services in the education of the young Princess can be rendered acceptible thro’ your testimony, to H.R.H., you may rest assured that so flattering an election will excite my ambition to justify the confidence reposed in me, by discharging to the utmost extent of my abilities so honorable but anxious a duty. You are now at liberty, therefore, to propose me to His R.H. and are sufficiently acquainted with my family, my situation in life, my conduct, and those acquirements I have cultivated (chiefly with a view to my own daughter’s education) to be able to afford perhaps every information H.R.H. may require.’’™ Erskine’s suggestion, however, was not realised. In the spring of 1807 Maria Riddell met Sir Walter Scott, and afterwards sent him some of Burns’ election songs with a complimentary letter to our ‘‘ latest Minstrel.’’" On March 3oth, 1808,% she married Colonel Philipps Lloyd Burns, edited by Dr. James Currie, 4 vols., 1800; Maria Riddell’s name is included among the list of subscribers. % He was buried in St. Paul’s Churchyard, Falmouth, Antigua (MS. Pedigree accompanying ‘“‘ Petition of Col. Daniel Corrie Walker, for service as heir-in-general of Robert Riddell of Glen- riddell,’ Sheriff Court, Dumfries, 1897.) % Thomas Erskine; b. 1750; politician and lawyer ; created Lord Chancellor, 1806; d. 1823. 9% Princess Charlotte Augusta; b. 1796; only child of George, Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.); was brought up by Lady Elgin, 1804-1815; the Princess m., 1816, Prince Leopold Saxe- Coburg, and d. November 19th, 1817. % See footnote 1. 9 Familiar Letters of Sir Walter Scott, vol. i. (1894), p. 113. % The Scots Magazine (1808), p. 315. 50 Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. Fletcher® of Gwernhaylod, in Flintshire. Writing of this marriage to Lady Abercorn, Sir Walter Scott says :—‘ Have you heard, by the bye, that little Mrs. Riddell of Hampton Court (Burns’ Mrs. Riddell) has married a young officer of Dragoons? My friend Mathias!™ (the author of the Pursuits of Literature) will in all probability break his heart upon this melancholy occasion. At the time of her second marriage, Maria Riddell is described as ‘‘ of Hampton Court ’’ in papers belonging to the Lloyd Fletcher family,1 so that it seems probable that after Walter Riddell’s death, though how soon after is not known, she went to live with her relative, Lady Lavington, who had been granted apartments by the Crown in Hampton Court Palace, in consideration of Lord Laving- ton’s distinguished services. Maria’s second marriage was of but short duration, for she died on December 15th, 1808.1 9 B. June 25th, 1782, served in the 16th Lancers (Light Dragoons), afterwards commanded Royal Flintshire Militia, d. April 13th, 1863, and was buried in Overton-on-Dee Churchyard (Parish Registers of Overton-on-Dee Church, Flintshire, and Correspondence with Mr. Ll. W. H. Tringham, grand-nephew of Colonel Phillips Lloyd Fletcher). 100 Thomas James Mathias, b. 1794? Satirist and Italian scholar, d. 1835. 101 Familiar Letters of Sir Walter Scott, vol. i. (1894), p. 113. 102 Auct. Mr. Ll. W. H. Tringham (vide supra note 99). 103 Francoise Lambertine de Kolbel (daughter of Frederick Maximilian, Baron de Kolbel, Major-General in Imperial Service), m. September 1st, 1767, at St. George’s, Hanover Square, Ralph Payne, who was created Baron Lavington, October Ist, 1795, and who was Governor of the Leeward Isles 1771-1775, and from 1801 till his death in August, 1807, when Lady Lavington was granted a suite of apartments in ‘‘The Principal Secretary of State’s Lodgings’’ in Hampton Court Palace, where she died May 2nd, 1830. (The History of the Island of Antigua, by Vere Langford Oliver, vol. iii. (1899), pp. 7-9, and History of Hampton Court Palace, by Ernest Law, vol. iii. (1891), p. 455.) Maria Riddell’s. mother, Frances Payne, who married William Woodley, was a second cousin of Ralph Payne, who was created Baron Lavington. An amusing account of Sir Ralph and Lady Payne is given in Sir R. Wrazall’s Posthwmous Memoirs of my own Time, ed. by Wheatley, vol. 11., p. 410. 104 She was buried in Overton-on-Dee Churchyard on December 20th, 1808 (Overton-on-Dee Burial Registers). MARIA RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. 51 Thus ends my story of Maria Riddell, the friend of Burns. Of her it has been stated by Dr. James Currie, a kindlier critic than ‘‘ the Scottish Walpole ’’ :—‘‘ The graces of her person were only equalled by the singular endowments of her mind, and her poetical talents rendered her an interesting friend to Burns, in a part of the world where he was in a great measure excluded from the sweet intercourse of literary society.’’ APPENDIX. A PUBLICATIONS BY Maria RIDDELL. Voyages / to the / Madeira, / and / Leeward Caribbean Isles: / with / Sketches / of the / Natural History of these fsiamds. | By MariaR...... / Edinburgh: / printed for Peter Hill, / and / T. Cadell, London, / 1792. 1 vol. (63 by 44 in. cut), pp. 1x. + 105. Voyages / to the / Madeira, / and / Leeward Caribbean Isles: / with / Sketches / of the / Natural History of these Islands. / By MariaR......./ Salem: / Printed by N. Coverly, jun: / 1802. 1 vol. (63 by 44 in. uncut), pp. v. + 75- Essay on Robert Burns, dated August 7th, 1796, and commencing ‘‘ The attention of the public seems to be much occupied at present with the loss it has recently sustained in the death of the Caledonian poet Robert Burns. ... . 2 ao the Dumfries Weekly Journal.1% Maria Riddell also contributed the following poems to The Metrical Miscellany! (1802, and second edition 1803). 105 The Works of Robert Burns . . . by Dr. James Currie, vol. ii. (1820), p. 440. 10 This first appeared in the Dumfries Weekly Journal, from which it was copied into the Edinburgh newspapers, and into various other periodical publications. (See footnote 75.) 107 Amongst other contributors were: Hon. Henry Erskine, William Roscoe ; Dr. Erasmus Darwin; Georgina, Duchess of Devon- shire; R. R. Sheridan; Mrs. Barbauld; T. J. Mathias; Richard Cumberland; Right Hon. C. J. Fox; Lord Palmerston; etc., etc. 52 MarIA RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. 1802 ed. 2nd ed. 1803. Lines to a Friend who had recom- mended the Precepts of the Stoic School to the Author's adoption ... Lesbia’s harp Epilogue to the Siraneer ee Inscription written on an Hermitage in one of the Islands of the West 49 oot Cnet ets wm Oru 0D 'D Den fe) Indies Bea Ob (SI) p--75 The Reverie sg js. p. 89 The Farewell eS p92 Sweet aéry dream 2 Pe.Q6 p- 109 Il perduto ben’ p- 149 May-Day Tepes p. 164 Corin’s Adieu 5 ob uae p- 163 The twilight shades are ela fae Pp: 143." — petss Nature and the Muses! ADs LOO p- 178 The Complaint a 2 (Os U5 pe 220 Elegy on the death of Gage le Woodley p- 173 p- 209 The Banks of Nith 4p 176) ipee2nee The Remembrance pe a78 Pp. 214 On a Red-breast a i. perso plete Farewell to Nithsdale ... op) fb ei p. 219 Carlos and Adeline [ob UCO p- 224 108 In a presentation copy of the 2nd edition (1803) of The Metrical Miscellany from Maria Riddell to ‘‘ Charles Devon’’ she has written in the names of many of the anonymous authors ; thus : — ‘Nature and the Muses”’ is attributed to ‘‘ Mrs. Riddell,” but this need not necessarily have been Maria Riddell. (This pre- sentation copy is now (1914) in the possession of Mr. Thomas Fraser, Dalbeattie.). Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BuRNS. 53 APPENDIX B. Extract from Sale Catalogue entitled :— AuToGRAPH LETTERS, POEMS, &C., OF ROBERT BuRNS TO CAPTAIN AND Mrs. RIDDELL. Sold by auction by Messrs Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, at No. 13 Wellington Street, Strand, W.C., on Saturday, February 9th, 1gor. The PROPERTY OF THE LATE A. DE NOE WALKER, ESQ., M.D.1% Who inherited them from his Grandmother, Mrs. Riddel, of Glen Riddel), late of 24, Carlyle Square, S.W. 478 479 480 481 Sold by order of the Executor. Burns (Robert) Scotch Poet, Song in his Autograph, 1 p. 4to, ‘‘ The blue-eyed lassie. Air by Cap. R.,’’ “‘ to Cap. Riddel with the author’s grateful compliments,”’ commencing ‘‘ I gaed a waefu’ gate yestreen.’’!° Burns (Robert) Copy of a Poem by Burns in another hand, ‘‘ O wat ye wha’s in yon town,’’ 1 p. 8vo—Copy of another poem, ‘‘ O sweet is she in yon town.”’ Burns (Robert) SONNET in his Autograph, 1 p. 4to, 1793, ‘‘ On hearing a thrush sing in a morning walk in January,’’ ‘‘ Sing on, sweet thrush, upon the leafless bough,’’ ** To Mrs. Riddel of Woodley Park, a small but ’ sincere mark of respect from the Author,’’ with facsimile added. Burns (Robert) Autograph Poem, 14 pp. 4to (1793), ‘“ The last time I came o’er the moor,’’ Burns has added the following note at the end, ‘‘ On reading over the song, I see it is but a cold inanimate composition. It will be 109 Arthur de Noé Walker; M.D.; b. 27th October, 1820; (third son of Captain Charles Montagu Walker by his wife Anna Maria Riddell, only surviving child of Maria Riddell) ; d. 2nd October, 1900. 28), 110 This item, although addressed to Captain Riddell (see note has been retained here as forming part of Dr de Noé Walker’s property. 54 Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. 482 absolutely necessary for me to get in love, else I shall never be able to make a line worth reading on the sub- feCE. 1 Burns (Robert) A.L. s. ‘‘ R. B.,” 2 pp. 4to, to Mxs> W- Riddel, including verses ‘‘ Light lay the earth on Billie’s breast,’’ and ‘‘ Thine am I, my faithful Fair,” “ I am - extremely sorry, dear Madam, that an equally unexpected 483 484 and indispensable bustle of business will deprive me of waiting on you to-day.”’ Burns (Robert) A; L.s. “RR. B.,'” 1 p: Gyoymiommate: Riddel, ‘‘ On Monday, my dear Madam, I shall most certainly do myself the honor of waiting on you, whether the Muses, ere then, will wait on me is I fear dubious. Please accept a new song which I have this morning recd. from Urbanis. It is a trifling present but—‘ Give alle enoulcannstares Burns) (Robert) A. Lis." ‘Ri B:, 7291 pp Sve mtommins. Riddel, ‘‘ I have often told you, nry dear Friend, that you had a spice of Caprice in your composition, and you have as often disavowed it, even perhaps while your Opinions were at the moment irrefragably proving it. Could anything estrange me from a Friend such as you? _ No. To-morrow I shall have the honor of waiting on 485 you. Farewell thou first of Friends, and most accom- plished of Women, even with all thy little caprices.’’ Burns, (Robert) A. L: si “* Ri B.,” 3 pp. Sve, touMins Riddel, ‘‘ I shall wait on you, my ever valued Friend, but whether in the morning I am not sure. Sunday closes a period of our curse, revenue business may pro- bably keep me employed with my pen until noon. Fine employment for a Poet’s pen! There is a species of the Human genus that I call the Gin-Horse Class, what enviable dogs they are. Round and round and round they go. Mundell’s ox that drives his cotton mill, their exact prototype—without an idea or wish beyond their own circle, fat, sleek, stupid, patient, quiet and con- tented, while here I sit, altogether Novemberish and melancholy.’’ 486 487 488 489 490 Maria RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. 55 Burns (Robert) ‘‘ Impromptu on Mrs. Riddel’s birthday, 4 Nov. 1793,’’ commencing ‘‘ Old Winter, with his frosty beard,’’ 1 p. 4to. Burns (Robert) Autograph Poem, ‘‘ Wilt thou be my > i Ds ALO. Burns (Robert) A. L. s. ‘‘ R. B.,’’ 2 pp. 4to, to Mrs. Riddel, ‘‘ I have been a grievous sinner against all eti- quette of correspondence, in not writing you long ere now, Tis now ten o’clock; too late to detain your poor fellow of a servant, untill I hawk up an apology. The following is new Scotch song.’’ He here gives the song commencing ‘‘ O, bonie was yon rosy brier.’’ Dearie,’ arms (xobert) A: LL. s..°* R. B.,”’ 2 pp. 4to, to Mrs. Riddel, ‘‘ I am in such miserable health, as to be utterly incapable of shewing my loyalty in any way. Rackt as I am with rheumatisms I meet every face with a greeting like that of Balak to Balaam ‘ Come curse me Jacob, and come defy me Israel!’ So say I, come curse me that East wind, and come defy me the North! ! ! | Would you have me in such circumstances copy you out a Love song? No! If I must write let it be Sedition, or Blasphemy, or something else that begins with a B, so that I may grin with the grin of iniquity, and rejoice with the rejoicing of an apostate Angel.’’ Burns (Robert) A. L. s. ‘‘ R. B.,’’ 3 pp. large folio, to Mrs. Riddel, with verses in his autograph, EXTREMELY FINE SPECIMEN. ‘“T cannot express my gratitude to you for allowing me a longer perusal of Anacharsis. In fact I never met with a book that bewitched me so much, and as a member of the library, must warmly feel the obligation you have laid us under. Indeed to me, the obligation is stronger than to any other individual of our Society, as Anacharsis is an indispensable desideratum to a Son of the Muses. Pleyel is still in statu quo. In a little time, however, we will have all the work. He is still in Strasbourg, but the Messrs. Coutts, the London bankers, have been so obliging as to allow my 56 MariA RIDDELL, THE FRIEND OF BURNS. friend Thomson, the Editor, the channel of their corre- spondence in Switzerland, through which medium the business is going forward. Thomson has enlarged his plan. The hundred pathetic airs are to be as proposed only he means to have four plates instead of two. He likewise has increased his number of facetious songs and lively airs and proposes adorning them here and there with vignettes. The following I wrote the day for an Irish air which IJ highly admire, and for the sake of my verses, he has obligingly adopted into his selection.” The song is given as follows, ‘‘ Scotch Song; Tune, Humors of glen (Irish).’? He also gives another song, ‘““A Scotch song; Tune, My Lodging is on the cold ground ;’’ and also a third song, ‘‘ English song; Tune, Roy’s Wife,’’ etc. 491 Burns (Robert) Autograph Verses, 14 pp. folio, ‘‘ For a’ that an’ a’ that,’’ commencing ‘‘ Is there for honest Poverty.’”’ 492 Burns (Robert) Printed Notice of the death of Robert Burns, dated Dumfries, 23 July, 1796. 493 Burns (Robert) Printed Verses, endorsed ‘‘ By Burns, 1795, ‘. Whom will we send to London Town "— Facsimile of a letter of Burns; and one other old manu- script. 11 111 Tt will be noticed that none of the letters or poems men- tioned in this sale catalogue are dated. The following notes, made by Mr. Stephen Wheeler some time before Dr. de Noé Walker’s death, show that he must have disposed of some Burns’ Manuscripts before he died. 481, Was sent to George Thomson in April, 1793; printed by William Scott Douglas; in his Burns’ Works (6 vols., 1877-1879), vol. i1., p. 127. 482, Printed, tom. cit., p. 177. 483, Printed, op. cit., vol. vi., p. 76, where it is dated April, 1793. 484, Printed, tom. cit., p. 76, where it is dated April, 1793. 485, Printed, tom. cit., p. 92, where it is dated November, 1798. 488, “‘Letter—R. Burns to Mrs. Riddell, containing song—‘O, bonie was yon rosy brier.’’’ Printed, op. cit., vol. i1., p. 288. 489, Printed, tom. cit., p. 192, where it is dated June 4th, 1796. The following items, noted by Mr. Stephen Wheeler as having belonged to Dr. A. de Noé Walker, do not appear to have been sold at this sale: —(1) ‘‘ Letter—R. Burns to Mrs. Riddell—Dum- BuRGHS OF ANNANDALE. 57 30th October, 1914. Chairman—G. Mac.Leop STEWART, V.P. Burghs of Annandale: Annan and Lochmaben— their Burghal Origins.* By Georce Neiison, LL.D. I.—BURGH OF ANNAN. THE MOTE AND THE TOWN. Annan of old had as stirring experiences as any town in the kingdom—a career dignified by connection with one of the greatest of the great Norman families accompanying David I., a municipal story tinged with romance by legend of Irish saint, a situation endowed with the early military importance due to a national outpost near a hostile border, and a community fated by the fortune of war to a renown for sturdy loyalty which cost much suffering to earn and sustain. The little town whose church belfry was made a guard-room by the troops of Edward I., and whose fortified steeple was battered down by the artillery of Protector Somerset in 1547, had sword and fire amply enough in its annals before the Union came, when his sovereign majesty James VI. and I. benignly gave over its fortress for pious uses to the inhabi- tants—‘‘ grantit and disponit to the said towne and parochin the hous callit ye castell of Annand, the hall and towre thairof, to serve for ane kirk.’’! Annan emphatically had a history : it may even be that an examination of its beginnings fries, January 12th, 1794. I return you your commonplace book,’’ etc. Printed, op. cit., vol. vi., p. 116. (2) ‘‘ Long Letter, 29th January, 1796. Printed, tom. cit., p. 179. Containing verses— (a) ‘‘ Their Groves 0’ sweet myrtle let foreign lands reckon.’’ (b) ‘My Chloris, mark how green the groves.’’ (c) ‘‘ Long, Long the night.’’ (d) ‘‘Canst thou leave me thus, my Katie!’’ . * This contribution is reprinted, by favour of the Editor, from the Dumfries and Galloway Standard, 26th July, 16th August, and 11th and 18th October, 1899. 1 Acts Parl. Scot., anno 1609, ch. 24. 58 BurRGHS OF ANNANDALE. will by contrast and suggestion shed some light on Scottish burghal evolution. How was it that Annan, undoubtedly of consequence in the days of William the Lion, did not become a royal burgh before the 14th century, if indeed the attainment of that status can even then be with certainty affirmed? Possibly we shall discover at Annan distinctions helpful to explain how Lanark, Ayr, and Dumfries were burghs royal, when Glas- gow and Paisley, Prestwick and Irvine, Annan and Loch- maben, ‘‘ burghs ’’ though they were, yet lacked the name and privilege of being royal. The latest historian of Scotland informs his readers that “« while he was still only Earl, David granted Annandale to de Bruce.’’ Dr. Hume Brown had surely forgotten that the charter still extant by David I. was granted by him as Rex Scotie. Its date was probably very soon after his accession to the Scottish throne in April, 1124, and its terms, as con- taining the earliest record of Strath Annan as a province, call for particular and textual examination. King David by it granted to Robert de Brus Strath Annan (Estrahanent) and the whole land from the march of Dunegal of Strath Nith (Stranit) as far as the march of Randulph Meschin. ‘‘ And I will and grant,’’ adds the royal giver, ‘‘ that he shall hold and have that land and his castle (suum castellum) well and honourably with all its customs (consuetudinibus suis)—viz., with all those customs which Randulph Meschin ever had in Carlisle (Carduill) and in the land of Cumberland on that day on which he ever had them best and freest.’’? Exegesis of early twelfth century charter- brevity has perils, which must, however, be encountered. What are we to make of suum castellum? His castle, or its castle-—which? Bruce’s original castle, no doubt, was 2 Acts Parl. Scot., i., 92. 3 The words concerning castle (it seems to me, after a revised scrutiny of the phrase) are best read to mean a license to castel- late, a royal sanction to Brus’s erecting a stronghold. The ambi- guous adjectival pronoun meaning his or its is doubly applied, first to castellum and next to consuetudinibus. Now it is obvious that in the latter case the reference is to future customs, for Ranulph BURGHS OF ANNANDALE. 59 the castle also ‘‘ of that land.’’ The ‘‘ castle ’’ of that period was not, unless under quite exceptional circumstances, the sort of structure we associate with the word—was very often not of stone. Anglo-Norman twelfth century Scot- land has, in fact, handed down to us in no single case stone- work remains of any castle or civil edifice. Work of the period we have in churches; in castles or dwellings none. The keep of Carlisle Castle is the only great stone structure not ecclesiastical which can be historically attributed to David I. And to his barons we can assign nothing to corre- spond, for Carlisle keep, built about 1140 (followed only in 1172 by that of Newcastle) was an example as far in advance of its time in the north as in the south had been the Tower of London, still unfinished in 1092. The primitive type of Angle-Norman fortress was the same as at the epoch of the English Conquest had vogue in Normandy, viz., the Mote. Especially may we believe this to have been the style of stronghold used by the barons, not of the first rank of feudal lords, and by cadets of great families in England going as, in a sense, emigrants into Scotland, settling there to aid Anglo-Norman kings to rule the land and keep down the native Celtic races. Hence, we may with considerable con- fidence locate the castellum of the Brus charter at the Moat of Annan. About thirty years had passed since I saw that mound, and I had long forgotten such characteristics of it as might then have impressed my boyish mind. But when on a recent occasion I climbed its high slope from the bottom of its wide and deep-cut fosse, and when on the top I looked westward down what once was the steep scarped bank of the river Annan, it was with feelings of no small satisfaction that Annan could boast of so admirable and, on the whole, so well preserved a work. The strength of the position natur- ally must have been considerable. The mound, tapering as Meschin (lord of Cumberland until about 1120. when he became earl of Chester) had nothing to do with Annandale; and the eustoms, constituted by the charter, are necessarily a new creation imported, by parity, from across the Esk and Solway. 60 BuURGHS OF ANNANDALE. it rises, has been formed by a vast ditch being dug round all sides except that towards the river. Probably the major part of the material of this ditch was utilised for the central mound, which cannot be under fifty feet in perpendicular height, and whose conical summit must have been of a circumference ample for the base of the defensive house, the palisaded hall forming the first Scottish home of the first Scottish Robert de Brus. Across the ditch, southward from the mound, too, there is along the old scarp of the river an elevated ridge which has some appearance of being in part artificial, and which, with a ditch behind it continued from the mound, conveys a strong suggestion that here was once a base court or site for outwork buildings and defences of the Mote proper. That Mote may well have been formidable in its day, and have been identical with that castellum de Anant which,* with the castellum de Loghmaban—described like it as belonging to Robert de Brus—was held on behalf of King William the Lion in the war of 1173-74 with the English King Henry II. Historically the “‘ castle ’’ of the Brus family in Annandale appears on record half a century at least before the appearance of the castle of Dumfries. The town of Annan—one cannot afhrm it positively, but one can well maintain it as by far the likeliest hypothesis—derived its origin as a town and grew into its relative importance in the 12th and 13th centuries under the shield of the Brus castie—the Mote with its wooden hall (aula) at first; followed, perhaps, by a building of stone. When the war of independence broke out Annan to all seeming had no castle. The stronger position of Lochmaben had secured for it a place as the premier stronghold of the later generations of the Brus family in Annandale—a place which was never lost under the royal dynasties of Bruce and Stewart. In helping 4 Tike so many motes elsewhere, that of Annan stood quite close to the parish church. The latter has long been shifted, though the burying-ground, now disused, remains to mark the older site. The church was gifted by Robert de Brus II., probably somewhere about 1170, to the monastery of Guisborough, in York- shire, founded by Robert de Brus (father of Robert de Brus I. and grandfather of Robert de Brus II.) about 1119. BURGHS OF ANNANDALE. 61 to establish the town of Annan, the Mote or castle had sufficiently served its turn by making possible municipal ideas unknown to the district before. Towns were not an element in the native economy of the country in pre-Norman days. The Celt liked them not. One of themselves, Girald, the Welshman, wrote in the twelfth century in his book® that the Irish would have nothing to do with civic life—a characteristic which their kinsmen in Scotland shared. It is not a little remarkable that those peoples amongst whom clanship is keenest elementary principle of cohesion which might be expected to be capable of great results from its expansion under favour- ing conditions—have been signally unsuccessful in the effort to unite themselves in the large and powerful combinations necessary to effective purpose on the grand scale. The rudimentary association somehow hinders that which is wider and more developed. If history establishes any distinctive national characteristic of the English race it is the power to sink minor differences and act on the joint compromise. The an country which can administer its law by getting twelve men to be unanimous has in that very fact the key to its great past. Pict, Scot, and Briton were not prone to be unani- mous; they were too individual even to live together in towns. Where the Celt was supreme there rose no burghs. EarLy STATUS. Annan’s status has been discussed by other pens than mine. George Chalmers, of amazing industry—alone of Scottish topographical antiquaries fit without absurdity of comparison to be ranked with the Englishman Camden— was content with meagre evidence for the conclusion® that Annan was chartered by Alexander II. In truth, the evi- dence is nil, for even if ‘‘ Thomas on An’”’ found on rare coins does mean Thomas of Annan, or Thomas at Annan— in itself no persuasive proposition—the burghal dignity would not necessarily follow, although assuredly the presence of a 5 Topography of Ireland, book 3, chapter 9. 6 Caledonia, New Edition, ii., 176. 62 BuRGHS OF ANNANDALE. mint would be a powerful fact. Elsewhere that unwearied author (in his account of the town)’ acknowledges the un- certainty of the early date by saying that ‘‘ Annan was certainly a royal burgh in 1306.’’ Again, however, the authority he cites’ is palpably insufficient, although the con- clusion is not impossibly correct. The question is intricate. To recapitulate a previous examination® it may be recalled that in early charters the town is usually referred to as a vill; once there is mention of a constable; in chronicle Brus’s house is styled a hall (aula), while the little town is dis- tinguished as the capital of its district—Anandia capitanea illius patriae villula; legend recorded by the same chronicle tells of Saint Malachi’s curse—a malediction pronounced perhaps in the year 1148—in consequence of which, according to a pious admirer of the saint, Annan fell from grace and lost the honour of a burgh—burgi amisit honorem. This strange narrative incidentally at different points applies to Annan the four designations of little vill, vill, burgh, and city—villula, villa, burgus, civitas. In supplement of the earlier disquisition referred to, it now falls to be pointed out that the mention of the constable is conceivably significant of the importance of the castle. The epithet civitas was no such gross misapplication as at first sight appeared. Professor Maitland! has demonstrated the true early sense of that word to have been practically a county town. Though Annandale never was a county it was a lordship and stewartry; and, in the words of the Lanercost Chronicle, Annan was the capital town of that district. When it is mentioned that in 1296 Annan figures as burgus in legal document? relative to the disposal of the rents of the place drawn by the Brus family, the last considerable T Caledonia, v., 140. 8 Old Stat. Acc., xix., 452. 9 Transactions, D. and G. Nat. Hist. and Antiq. Society ‘Old Annan,” 2-7, 22. 10 Lanercost Chron., 160-1. 1 Township and Borough, 42. 1@ Bain’s Cal., ii., 826. BURGHS OF ANNANDALE. 63 item in the case for Annan is adduced. It is true we have no fragment of early town records, no trace of a guild of any sort, no charter either by king or baron recognising a cor- poration or conceding corporate privileges; but the absence of such definite document is by no means final in Scotland. We have the castle, we have a sort of county-town, we have the title of burgh—what element is absent? One only: Annan and its castle are the property of the Brus family; they are not the king’s. UnperR BRUCE AND HIS NEPHEW; AND AFTERWARDS. Annan never figures as a royal burgh in the thirteenth century. The Exchequer accounts showing the upkeep of the castles of Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, and Wigtown, as a royal charge, at the close of the century, are silent concern- ing Annan and Lochmaben. What effect might follow the accession of Robert the Bruce to the Scottish throne, when the baronial demesne became the king’s, must form an in- quiry in which speculation is the more complicated because King Robert did not retain permanently in his direct posses- sion the ancient patrimony of his house. The earldom of Carrick he gave to his brother Edward; the lordship of Annandale was not in his hands for long after 1306, and when he recovered it he bestowed it upon Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, his nephew. The terms of that grant stir anew the vexed debate regarding the legality of King Robert’s charters conveying royal burghs to mesne lords. If by or upon the accession of Bruce Annan and Lochmaben did not become burghs royal our question scarcely arises. If they did, the constitutional issue is raised—what was their true position towards the Crown under the grant in Ran- dolph’s favour ? That grant, I believe unprinted—a transcript unfortu- nately not complete in detail of date and witnesses— ‘* Rospert, &c. Know that we, &c., HAVE CONFIRMED TO Our nephew THoMaAs RanpDoLpH, earl of Moray and lord of Man, 13 [ translate from the Haddington MS., Advocates’ Library, No. 34, 2, 1, p. 36b. 64 BurRGHS OF ANNANDALE. for homage and service rendered to us and our realm, THE WHOLE LAND OF THE VALLEY OF ANNAND with the pertinents without any reservation (sine aliquo retinemento), to be held and had by him and his heirs male of his body lawfully be- gotten, from us and our heirs in fee and heritage, with the homages and services of freeholders, advocations of churches, patronages of abbeys, fees and forfeitures, as well touching occasions of war as of peace, with bondmen and bondages, neyfs and their sequels, and with all liberties, commodities, easements, and pertinents as well unnamed as named per- taining to said land of the Valley of Annand. We grant also to him and to his heirs that they may have and possess the whole land foresaid with pertinents in free regality, with the four pleas of our crown and their appurtenants (appendentiis), as well in pleadable brieves (brevibus placitabilibus) as in all other complaints and pleas to the land belonging howsoever : Doing to us and our heirs, kings of Scotland, the service of ten knights in our army for all other earthly services (terrenis serviciis) and demands which from said land with its pertinents can be exacted or demanded by any one. In witness whereof, &c.’’ That this carried Annan may be inferred with certainty. The earl’s exercise of baronial rights over Lochmaben is matter of record.14*_ The inference might be drawn that under Bruce’s administration the union with the crown of these two baronial demesne burghs did not affect their constitutional position. True, they had been ‘‘ burghs;’’ true, they became royal property when the lord of Annandale became king; but the change might not make them royal burghs in a time when practical distinctions were of more moment than theoretical privileges. On the other hand, Bruce treated the indubitably royal burghs of Elgin, Forres, and Nairn in the same way, although by his charter of the earldom of Moray, in his nephew’s favour! he made express mention of these burghs in the grant. Still negative evidence, the absence of a reser- vation, does not go very far, and so sound an antiquary as 14 Hach. Rolls,-i., 99. 15 Robertson’s Index, p. xlix. BURGHS OF ANNANDALE. 65 the late Lyon King of Arms, Dr. George Burnett,!® speaking of Lochmaben, designated the transfer as ‘‘ a somewhat questionable exercise of prerogative.’’ In the war of inde- pendence the superior value of Lochmaben in respect of military position was quickly realised. The injuries inflicted upon the sister town of Annan by the English invasions at the close of the 13th century were probably hard to repair. Lochmaben suffered too, but being—alike whether the castle was in English or Scottish hands—a chief military centre of the south-west, it had as a town some enduring advantages over Annan, chequered, of course, by greater frontier risks throughout the fourteenth century. Yet one more complexity is fetched into the inquiry by the fact that Bruce was not in real possession of Annandale for a good many years after his first bold stroke for the throne. Edward I., having heard of the death of Comyn, lost no time in granting to Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, all the lands of Bruce in Annandale, as well as the castle of Lochmaben,!’ escheat because of the murder. Annandale appears to have still been in English hands until almost the eve of Bannockburn.!® The titular English lord- ship of the valley was not forgotten by the De Bohuns during the ascendancy of Bruce, and the claim to it re-emerged when once more the English came into possession in Edward Balliol’s time,!® a possession which lasted until the final expul- sion of the invaders in 1384. There were thus three periods subjecting both Annan and Lochmaben to alternating con- ditions—(1) from 1306 to 1314, (2) from 1314 until 1332, and (3) from 1332 until 1384. In the first there is no record of the burghal or other status of either Annan or Lochmaben; in the second, though the Earl of Moray’s ‘“‘ cocket ’’ or burghal seal of Lochmaben can be adduced, there is no cor- responding evidence for Annan; in the third, while Annan 16 Hech. Rolls, vol. i., pref. 1xxxi. 17 Bain’s Cal., ii., 1756. 18 Bain’s Cal., iii., 226, 336. 19 Rotuli Scotiae, i., 280, ete.; Bain’s Cal., iii., 1101. 66 BuRGHS OF ANNANDALE. is styled a burgh in 1347, both Annan and Lochmaben are treated as demesne vills of De Bohun in 1374.71. The latter year introduces a new fact: both vills are farmed to John Clerk of Annan, John Deconson, and William Tayllor, but as this happens in sundry other vills of the locality it 1s not possible to regard the transaction as a corporate lease of firma burgi, such as Dumfries first obtained in 1395.7 The English occupancy ends; and with the solitary exception of a jury’s finding in 1347, that William de Carlyle had died leaving ‘‘ lands in the burgh of Annan,’’ the end comes with surprisingly little light on the exact corporate position. Perhaps it is enough to warrant Annan in holding by the tradition of burghal erection by Bruce,* whether actively— which does not seem to admit of proof—or constructively— which is not so easily gainsaid. Certainly James V.’s declaration in the renewal charter of 1539,%* that its ancient charters of foundation and infeftments had been ‘‘ destroyed and burnt in sieges and fires by our enemies,’’ constitutes a most admirable title to the benefit of the doubt. Assuredly before 1539 Annan was a royal burgh, as is shewn by the “ Laird of Moriquhat’s Sesing ’’ of lands there in 1532, wherein Andrew Wilkin appears as bailie, giving seisin as use is in burgh. King James V., in his ’ 20 Bain’s Cal., iti., 1499. 21 Bain’s Cal., iv., 223. 22 Reg. Mag. Sig., 11., 635. 23 New Stat. Acct., Dumfriesshire, 522. 24 Reg. Mag. Sig., ui., 1919. S Mr William Murray, advocate, the present accomplished laird of Murraythwaite, was so obliging as to draw my attention to this valuable document, which he allowed me to transcribe, and of which a copy—unfortunately with one or two errors, due to misreading my not too distinct MS.—is printed by Mr John A. Moodie, with a very useful accompanying note, in the Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Anti- quarian Society for session 1897-98. The deed is one of several among Mr Murray’s ancestral titles, containing matter of import- ance for border history. Antiquaries would be grateful if Mr Murray should see his way to edit and print some of these family archives. ine) BurRGHS OF ANNANDALE. 67 historical compliments to the valour and steadfast loyalty of the Burgh and Town of Annan, which he of new granted to its burgesses and community as a free burgh for ever, made no mention of the amount of the burghal ferme payable to the Crown. When in 1612 a confirmation charter® was given by James VI. and I. there was inserted the following refer- ence®’ to the subject : ‘‘ In which charter and erection [i.e., of 1539], through the want of knowledge of those who obtained it, no certain annual rent is fixed payable to us, but only a reference is made to the old custom of payment, so that it happens that said burgh and the inhabitants of the same are uncertain what they were formerly accustomed to pay before they obtained said charter of erection in respect that the ancient evidents of said burgh were then by the commotions and perturbations of the realm burnt and de- stroyed as aforesaid.’’ Accordingly in the confirmation care was taken to remove all difficulty, and the annual payment was fixed to be 4o shillings, besides the wonted (but unde- fined) burghal services. Il.—BURGH OF LOCHMABEN. THE Brus CASTLE. That the burghal foundations of Lochmaben rested upon the Brus Castle is easily affirmed, although to establish the particular occasion of the actual municipal erection may be as trying a task as was found to exist in the case of Annan. The two places considered as incorporations had so much in common that the phenomena of each are helpful towards the 26 Duiy enrolled, Rey. Mag. Sig., 1609-20, No. 637. 27 In 1894 my friend Mr Macgregor Chalmers, architect. showed me for examination a parchment document belonging to Mr John Cumming, of Glasgow. Greatly to my surprise and pleasure, it proved to be the precept for the infeftment of the provost, bailies, burgesses, and community following upon the confirmation of 1612, directing ‘‘ seisin of the said burgh of Annand with all and sundry its lands, annual rents, fishings, and posses- sions whatsoever,’ to be delivered forthwith in terms of the charter. 68 BURGHS OF ANNANDALE. history of both. Probably not long after the settlement of the Brus family in Annandale they made themselves a castle, or strong house, guarded on more sides than one by water, with which nature has somewhat lavishly dowered Loch- maben. One etymology explains the name as either “* the loch of the cluster ’’ or ‘‘ the cluster of lochs.’’ Dubious this may be in point of demonstration—though Maibean is explained in the Highland Society’s Gaelic Dictionary (ed. 1827) as a bunch or cluster—yet nothing could well be more geographically apposite for the quiet old town which Burns with so much propriety named ‘‘ Marjory o’ the mony lochs.’’ The original Brus Castle is understood to have been that of which the site and foundations remain in the Castlehill, situated on the neck of land between the Castle Loch and the Kirk Loch. As usual at that time church and castle were near each other. |Lochmaben appears as presumably the Brus residence about 1166, when King William the Lion granted at Lochmaben a renewal charter of Annandale in favour of Robert de Brus.28 Probably a few years later the original grant of Lochmaben church to the canons of Gyse- burne, in Yorkshire, was made, a grant of which only the subsequent confirmation has been preserved.22 To St. Mary Magdalene” the church was dedicated,*! a fact explaining the subsequent importance of the Magdalene day as the fair day of Lochmaben, and further identifying for us the female figure on the town seal. The castle, like that of Annan, is on record in 1173 as the stronghold of Robert de Brus, a staunch adherent of William the Lion.52 Most probably it was this same Robert de Brus who gave to the Hospital of St. Peter at York a house in Lochmaben with 28 Bain’s Cal., i., 105; National MSS. Scot., i., plate xxxix. 29 Gyseburne Chartulary, No. 1176. 50 The fair day at Lochmaben in 1484 was on 22nd July, the Magdalen day. (Godscroft ed., 1748, p. 379.) By James VI.’s charter to the burgh this fair was one of the two which were re-authorised. 31 Reg. Glasg., 83. 32 Benedictus, i., 47-49. BURGHS OF ANNANDALE. 69 the mansura (perhaps meaning here the arable allotment) and land thereto belonging.» That grant is the first specific entrance of the town upon authentic record; but there is no appearance yet of town life or of municipal rights possessed by the townsmen. Vain is the search after any trace of guild or other corporate institution. A charter of William de Brus between 1194 and 1214 incidentally proves the existence of a market at Lochmaben.* The castle no doubt it was which, rather from its position than from any inherent power as a building, gave the little hamlet some consequence before the end of the thirteenth century. Not, however, until 1296 occurs any ascription to it of the burghal dignity. In spring of the year before, “‘ in his land of Annandale at Loghmaban,’’ Robert de Brus, the unsuccessful competitor for the Scottish throne, had died.* So there were domestic differences over the succession, and in 1296 Lochmaben is bracketed with Annan as a burgh in a legal document adjusting matters in litigation between members of the Brus family regarding the rents of ‘‘ the burghs of Annan and Lochmaben.’’56 Frequent as is the mention of the castle during the reign of Edward I., the allusions to the town are few and far between. TRADITIONAL SOURCE OF BURGHAL RANK. ‘“ The Towne off Louchmabane,’’ as Barbour in his poem of The Bruce’ designates it—what was its rank in the hier- archy of cities, burghs, vills, and hamlets, when Robert the Bruce, by his dagger-stab at the heart of John Comyn, endangered so terribly the continuance of the Brus lordship of Annandale and earldom of Carrick, and made the first effective step towards ascending the Scottish throne? Under the line of Brus, Lochmaben had not been a royal burgh—so much seems all but certain. Being the possession 53 Bain’s Cal., ii., 1606-9. 34 Buccleuch MSS., Hist. MSS., Com. 39. 55 Hemingburgh, ii., 69. 36 Bain’s Cal., ii., 826. 37 Book i., line 777. 70 BuRGHS OF ANNANDALE. of a subject lord it could not be royal without special erection, and of special erection, or of manifestations of the result of special erection, no traces have ever been discovered. When what is called tradition is invoked the vague answer comes that the town was made a royal burgh soon after the acces- sion of Bruce to the throne.4® George Chalmers in the Caledonia®® passes the comment: ‘‘ If this be founded it must have been before he granted the lordship of Annandale with the castle to his nephew Thomas Randolph.’’ The Rev. William Graham in his Lochmaben Five Hundred Years Ago” was more definite. ‘‘ Its original charter of erec- tion,’’ he wrote, ‘‘is said to have been granted by Robert the Bruce, but it was destroyed when the town was burned in the fifteenth century.’’ Elsewhere in the same volume?! he had written : ‘‘ In 1463 the town of Lochmaben was burnt in a raid made by the Earl of Warwick. On this occasion it is said that the original charter of the burgh, granted by Robert the Bruce, was destroyed.’’ As usual tradition is apt to grow more definite in its progress. In 1612 the authori- ties had not heard that the burning took place in 1463: they had only heard that ‘‘ the said burgh had been often burnt and plundered with all its ancient infeftments.’’42 Nor had they heard that the original charter of erection had been granted by Robert the Bruce. Slender stress, therefore, must be laid on the allegations of tradition about charters of erection. ADMINISTRATIVE CENTRE. The present is the proper stage to remark that the region, ‘of which through the military position Lochmaben was the governmental centre, came to be known in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and for some purposes down even into ‘our own period—as the Stewartry of Annandale. Under the 38 Old Statistical Account, vii., 234; New Statistical Account, Dumfriesshire, 391. 39 New edition, v., 142. 409 Page 137. 41 Page 109. 42 Reg. Mag. Sig., 1609-1620, No. 698. BuRGHS OF ANNANDALE. vig Brus lordship a steward or seneschal of Annandale occasion- ally occurs in the records.®. Under Randolph Earl of Moray’s tenure this officer appears also.44 In 1409 he re- appears,” and before very long the whole district took the general style of a Stewartry,*® though sometimes called a Bailiary.“”7 It would therefore appear that the Douglases as lords of Annandale had revived the intermitted office. Of the Stewartry thus constituted, as indeed of the lordship of Annandale throughout the 14th century, Lochmaben was what may be called the feudal capital. The courts of both the lordship and Stewartry were held there;*® there the justice eyre was held also,*9 and there the Crown rents were stipulated to be paid.°° One special item in these Crown revenues was the annual delivery of a fed ox or “‘Lardenare mart ’”’ Such cattle-payments at different times and places and under varying names occur during the 15th century more or less throughout Scotland. Stukmarts, Rynmarts, Larden- aremarts, Fodemarts, and Martfodalis were diverse names for cattle sent for the royal table or service by Crown tenants who were paid, or had deduction from rent allowed for them at fixed rates considerably below market prices. From the thirty-two parishes of Annandale there thus came to the representative of the Crown at Lochmaben Castle thirty-two Lardenare marts, with fowls, etc., in addition, all of which were passed over to the keeper of the Castle ultimately as a perquisite of his office.*! The institution suggests the ancient ‘“noutgeld ’’ or payment, by way of tenure, made in cattle. from each parish in Annandale. 43 Reg. Ep. Glasg., 64; Scots Lore, 127; Bain’s Cal., i., 1680. 44 Hrch. Rolls., vi., pref. cviii. 45 Reg. Mag. Sig., ii., 242. 46 Reg. Mag. Sig., ii., 299. 47 Buccleuch MSS., 46. 48 Bain’s Cal., iii., 1499; Reg. Mag. Sig., ii., 333. 49 Buccleuch MSS., 56. 50 Reg. Mag. Sig., i., 18; ii., 71. 51 Exch. Rolls, xi., 341. 52 Similar Lardenare marts were drawn from Galloway, and 72 BuRGHS OF ANNANDALE. Yet it is perhaps more like the ‘‘ kane of animals ’’ which is sometimes heard of in Celtic districts. When it began in Annandale it would be hazardous to say; the present writer has seen no proof of it being levied before 1500. On the constitutional side the importance is considerable of the asso- ciation it illustrates of the castle with the parishes; it shows the same connection of castle, town, and rural district as was earlier exhibited in the system of castle wards. After this rather digressive survey of the relation between Lochmaben as the military centre and legal capital on the one hand, and Annandale as the administrative district subject to government from it on the other, we may now return to follow the evolution of the corporate character under the dynasties of Bruce and Stewart. FLUCTUATING BURGHAL STATUS. A burgh owned by a baron undergoes a peculiar change in its position when the baron becomes king. When Robert the Bruce rose to the throne did he lift thereby Lochmaben to royal status? No charter tells of special erection. May not the elevation have been made automatically? Lochmaben had a castle and had become the head of an administrative district. When Bruce made himself master of his own again he is found stipulating that the gilt spurs deliverable annually as the blench rent for Mouswald are to be rendered “‘ at our manor of Lochmalban.’’®' Baronial possession has grown into royal. But then there comes into play the grant of Annandale to Randolph, and all the doubts relative to the actual degree of the town under the uncle are intensified by the further doubt as to the effect of the charter to the nephew. Yet at occur in the records considerably earlier than do those of Annan- dale, the first mention of which in the Hachequer Rolls (as above) is in 1500-1501. Galloway in 1456 sent 37 marts (Hxchequer Rolls, vi., 201); in 1473 and afterwards 32 marts (ib., vili., 163, 217, 287); in 1476 the number was 34 (7b., vill., 345, 421); and in 1488 and 1489, 14 were from supra Cree and 20 from subtus Cree (ib., x., 31, 80). 53 Reg. Mag. Sig., i., 18. BURGHS OF ANNANDALE. 73 this juncture important evidence is brought to bear on the problem. It consists of the Earl of Moray’s ‘‘ cocket of Lochmaben,”’ concerning which the uninitiated may well ask what is meant by the cocket of Lochmaben. A cocket was a certificate under seal that the great custom or duty on exported merchandise had been duly paid. One of the first requisites of a burgh was a cocket seal. Thus in the case of Tarbert, on Loch Fyne, a castle was erected by King Robert during 1325 and 1326; in 1328 the village has become a royal burgh, and gets a cocket seal made for it > and—perhaps more interesting still—Tarbert doubtless was the originating centre of the sheriffdom of Tarbert,°® an extensive territory embracing Kintyre and many of the Isles,” and having a hereditary sheriff.5® The castle, and the burgh with its cocket seal, were probably conditions favouring the creation of the county. At Lochmaben the case is different. The cockets are expressly recorded to have been ‘‘ the Earl of Moray’s cockets of Louchmaban,’’*? so that, with whatever reluctance, we are compelled to read the reference in a sense derogatory to royal tenure of burgh. There is no gainsaying it: King Robert’s grant of Annandale, though it did not expressly bear to be ‘‘ with burghs and the liberties of burghs ’”’ (as did the charter of Galloway-on-this-side-Cree by David II. in favour of Archibald the Grim), yet evidently was as effective by its general terms as more intimate specification would have made it. The burghal liberty, therefore, appears vested in the earl; the cocket is his—the cocket of a burgh which is or has become baronial. The fluctuating fortunes of the place after King Robert the Bruce’s death until near the end of the century, when after being in English hands for about fifty years it at last 54 Harch. Rolls, i., 52. 55 Hach. Rolls, i., 118. 56 Reg. Mag. Sig., ii., 1464. 57 Retours Argyll, 7, 8, 15, 16. 58 Reg. Mag. Sig., 1609-1620, No. 265. 59 Exch. Rolls, i., 99, 174, 175. 74 BurRGHS OF ANNANDALE. became irrevocably Scottish again, sufficiently and sadly explain the poverty of record touching the little town, while chronicles and State papers teem with detail about the unceasing attack and defence of the powerful fortress which had arisen there. In English hands Lochmaben appears designated merely as a “ vill.’ On the municipal question there is very little light, until the year 1447 brings a decisive revelation. Meanwhile, Annandale had descended from Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, to Black Agnes of Dunbar, his daughter, through whom it was transmitted to George, tenth Earl of March,® who in 1409 resigned it in favour of Archi- bald, Earl of Douglas, and his bodily heirs male, with remainder to the earls of March.®2 William, the sixth Earl of Douglas, and his brother David, who were both put to death in Edinburgh Castle in 1440, were the last bodily heirs male of earl Archibald, and, as the Earl of March, the heir in remainder, was attainted, Annandale was forfeited and reverted to the Crown, which assumed the place of the attainted Earl of March.® Status DEFINITELY ESTABLISHED. Now in 1447 there is in the books of the Exchequer an entry of a very satisfactory and complete character. It is as follows: ‘‘ The burgh of Lochmaben chargit xl s. be yeir of burrow maillis.’’6 This is absolute, proving that the burghal ferme had been in 1447 the determinate sum of 4os, although it is tantalising to get no hint whether this was a 60 Bain’s Cal., iv., 47, 231. 61 There was a grant made of the lands and lordship by David Il. to his stepson, John of Logie, in 1866—induced, no doubt, by the fondness of David II. for Margaret of Logie, who had become his Queen—but it seems doubtful whether the gift, which was ulegal, was allowed to take permanent full effect (Hxch. Rolls, u1., pref. lviii.; Red Book of Grandtully, 1382 ;* Riddell’s Peerage Law, 982), although John of Logie received seisin (Bain’s Cal., iv., 128). 62 Reg. Mag. Sig., i., 241. 63 Hach. Rolls, vi., pref. p. cvi.-cix. 64 Hach. Rolls, ix., 660, entry from Books of Responde. BURGHS OF ANNANDALE. (i. traditional figure or a new or fresh assessment of ferme. All doubt as to the full burghal status passes away when this entry is adduced. The steward of Annandale in his accounts does not name the burgh as included in the demesne lands of Lochmaben, the rents of which he draws and administers. Still the burgh makes no separate appearance at Exchequer until the year 1500, when a note is set down that in future the bailies are to make the return.® Interest gathers chiefly round the memorandum of 1447. It can scarcely be reckoned to indicate a new erection. All it says is that the burgh ferme is ‘‘ chargit’’ at 4os, a pro- position which naturally means only that the ferme had until then been an indeterminate quantity. So regarded, the memorandum sends us back to an anterior time for the burghal foundation. Retracing our steps through the pre- ceding century, we find no resting point so satisfactory as the reign of Robert the Bruce. History revised by the aid of the latest disclosures of charter snd manuscript seems unable to better the tradition that the royal burghal honour was given by the king whose Lochmaben statue asserts him to have been Lochmaben-born. Would that the injudicious . vaunt of the statue about the hero’s birthplace could stand criticism as well as does the simple tradition of the burgh’s origin ! On 3rd July, 1605, it appears from the Records of the Convention of Royal Burghs® that Lochmaben was enrolled by the Convention as one of the constituent burghs.§ William Maxwell, a bailie of the burgh, appeared, producing ““ane chartour of erection of the said brugh in ane free brugh,’’ granted and made by King James VI. at Stirling on 20th May, 1579. This writ is stated to have passed the great seal, but it has not been enrolled in the Great Seal 65 Hech. Rolls, xi., 341.* 66 Vol. ii., pp. 205-6. 67 Annan had been enrolled the year before—on 5th July, 1604 —when John Corsoune, provost of Dumfries, as procurator for John Johnstone of Newbie. provost, and George Bell and Robert Locke, bailies of the burgh, presented a petition on its behalf to be put upon the register. (Rec. Conv. Royal Burghs, ii., 178.) 76 BurRGHS OF ANNANDALE. Register. A later charter by the same monarch, however, is duly registered there—that of 1612, confirming the burgh in all its privileges and in its lands, which (as was the case at Annan also) embraced the bulk of the rural parish to which the town gave name. When King James in that year renewed the burgh rights by this Charter of Novodamus® his director of chancery made him express his understanding “that his progenitors beyond the memory of men had erected the Burgh of Lochmaben-——lying in the western marches of the kingdom of Scotland, in the Stewartry of Annandale— into a royal burgh.’’ Beyond the memory of men certainly ; beyond the exact memory even of history; yet the facts assuredly countenance the tradition which selected King Robert the Bruce as the particular progenitor by or through whom the erection was accomplished. Pre-Reformation Kirkmahoe. By R. C. Ret, Esq. of Mouswald Place. [A reprint of this paper, a portion of which forms an appendix to ‘‘ Galloway Records,’ vol. 1, by Mr G. M. Stewart, has been presented to the Society by Mr Reid, and is available in separate form. | 135th November, 1914. Chairman—G. MacLeop STEWART, V.P. The Arms of the Ancient and Royal Burgh of Sanquhar. By the Rev. Wa. M‘Mizian, of Hallside. Although there is still on the Statute Book of the Ancient Realm of Scotland a law enacted in the year 1592 which declares “‘ that nane of the common sort of people nocht worthie be the law of armes to beir ony signs armoriallis 68 Reg. Mag. Sig., 1609-1620, No. 698. ARMS OF THE ROYAL BURGH OF SANQUHAR. 77 presume or tak upon bh nd to leave or use ony armes in ” *vme cuming,’’ it is quite clear that from a date considerably earlier than 1592 organised bodies of the ‘‘ common sort of people ’’ had “‘ armes and signes armorial.’’ The arms of the Royal Burgh of Sanquhar are thus described by Cumming, a former custodier of the heraldic Records in the Lyon Office, Edinburgh :—‘‘ Azure, a double-leaved gate triple towered on an ascent of five steps or degrees, flanked by two towers all argent, the towers arch roofed and masoned sable.”’ Put into simple language, the description tells that the groundwork of the shield should be blue, the gateway and towers white, with the masonry lines black. When did Sanquhar first assume a coat-of-arms is a question which is more easily asked than answered. The Burgh records were all destroyed in 1714, and the records referring to our Burgh which have been preserved in other places are extremely scanty. The earliest impression of the burgh seal that I know of dates from the 17th century, and is attached to a deed of that time. A burgess ticket of 1730 with seal attached is still to the fore. There is a fine engraving of the arms, * which differs somewhat from the seal presently in use on the Insignia of the Royal Burgh of Sanquhar, 78 ARMS OF THE RoyaL BURGH OF SANQUHAR. back of the medal presented to the Sanquhar Curling Society in 1817 by William Broom, Esq., who was Preses of the Society in that year. The arms are also engraved on the ticket of membership of the Sanquhar Library founded in 1800. The old burgh seals have all disappeared. There was a new seal presented to the burgh fully a hundred years ago by Joseph Gillan, Esq. of Ellisland, who was Town Clerk from 1807 to 1810. This seal was still to the fore in 1880, but it has also disappeared, and the only one now in the Town Clerk’s Office is an embossing one. The finest example of the burgh arms that I have seen is that on the medal presented to the Sanquhar Bowling Club in 1875 by James R. Wilson, Esq., its first president. They are also engraved on the two new communion flagons recently pre- sented to Sanquhar Parish Church by the Rev. J. R. Wood, parish minister. In their proper colours the arms are to be seen above the platform of the new Public Hall. There is no doubt but that the Royal Burgh would have _a common seal from 1598, when King James VI. granted the Royal Charter; but Sanquhar was a Burgh of Barony long before that date. It was re-erected a Burgh of Barony, 20th October, 1484, by King James III., the charter of re-erection being granted to Robert Crichton (the title Lord had not yet been bestowed), probably because of the service which he rendered in repelling Albany and Douglas at Lochmaben, 24th July, 1484. The charter of re-erection distinctly states that Sanquhar had been from ancient times such a burgh (ex antiquis temporibus retroactis fuit liber Burgus in Baronia), and it is further stated that its charters had been destroyed in the wars and tumults of the Middle Ages (cartae ejusdem per guerras et alias destrutae sunt et combustae). Mr William Wilson in his excellent little book, Visitors’ Guide to Sanquhar, published some thirty years ago, says :— ““Tt is in every way likely that Sanquhar was made a Burgh of Barony by King Robert the Bruce if not before his time.”’ Mr James Brown (History of Sanquhar, page 155) states that the precise date of Sanquhar as a Burgh cannot be exactly fixed. Mr Tom Wilson, Burgh Cornet, in Dumfries and Galloway Notes and Queries, page 182, says :—‘‘ It was ARMS OF THE RoyAL BURGH OF SANQUHAR. 79 during the reign of William the Lion that Sanquhar is sup- posed to have had its first charter erecting the then town into a Burgh of Barony.’’ He further states in the same article that Sir Robert de Ross of Ryehill was married to a daughter of King William’s, and that in all probability the King would visit the locality. This, however, is certainly incorrect. It is quite true that Isabel, the natural daughter of King William and the widow of Robert Bruce 3rd Lord of Annandale, married a Sir Robert de Ros, but he was not Ros of Sanquhar. Isabel’s husband was the Sheriff of Cumberland, and afterwards received the English title of Lord Hamelock. Mr Wilson further states (page 184) :—‘‘ There is a tradition that the men of Sanquhar were at the Battle of Bannockburn and that for their services on that glorious 24th of June, that for ever secured the independence of Scotland, King Robert granted a charter to the Burgh, augmenting the privileges conferred by King William.’’ How far these traditions bear witness to the truth is a question which every one must settle for himself. Many times have I been told that Sanquhar was one of the oldest Royal Burghs in Scotland, whereas we know that it is among the youngest. Sir Walter Scott has warned us against accepting all we hear as history. ‘‘ It has been,’’ he wrote, ‘‘ the bane of Scottish literature and the disgrace of her antiquities that we have manifested an eager propensity to believe without enquiry.’’ Christopher North’s words, too, are worthy of being kept constantly in mind. ‘* Tradition it is easy to see must from many causes still stray further and further from the truth. What innumerable unintentional inaccuracies must occur in each successive narrator’s statement of the facts, from the gathering on them of obscurity through which they loom larger than life or sink into the shade and are only partially discerned or recede into oblivion.’’ Neither of the traditions mentioned by Mr Tom Wilson is recorded by any of the older writers of Sanquhar history. Whatever truth there may be then in those stories there is no doubt that Sanquhar is an old historical town. It is mentioned in the Exchequer Rolls of the reign of Alexander III. in 1264, when two men were beheaded there at the instance of Sir Edward Maccuswell, then Sheriff of 80: ARMS OF THE RoyAL BURGH OF SANQUHAR. Dumfries. The name of the town was then spelled Senewar. The account in question refers to the property (bona) found on the two men, who are said to have been put to death in the time of Stephen of Flanders (bona duorum hominum de collatorum apud Senewar tempore Stephani Flandrenris justicarii). Stephen Fleming was the King’s “‘justiciar ”’ for the Lothians. The men beheaded must have been of fairly high social standing since the property of the one amounted to £4 7s 6d, and of the other to 12s 6d, large sums at a time when a working man earned only a penny a day. The charter of 1484 is evidence too that from a time, then considered ancient, Sanquhar had been a free Burgh of Barony and that at least two charters had been granted to the overlord on her behalf by Scottish Kings. I am now able to put forward definite evidence that in the reign of David II. Sanquhar was a Burgh. In 1334 Edward Baliol had acknowledged Edward III. of England as overlord, and evidently the English monarch wished to claim the estates of all those who had refused to support the puppet King Baliol. One of those whose lands were claimed was Thomas Dickson, son of Thomas Dickson, who possessed fine Burgages of land in Sanquhar (Quinque Burgages), which were valued at 16s 8d in the time of peace, but which in 1334 were yielding no revenue, having been laid waste (Bain’s Calendar). A Burgage is land held from the King or other lord within a Burgh, and the use of the word here shows us that the town must have been a Burgh then. Thomas Dickson’s share of the Burgh lands must have been considerable when we take into account the fact that the rental of the whole Barony of Sanquhar at this time was only 200 merks. The rental given leads one to think that there may be some truth in the old stories of the large amount of land held by the Burgh in former days, stories which allege that the town lands went at one time far past its present boundaries. There seems little doubt, too, but that Bruce was in our neighbourhood on at least one occa- sion. We find in the accounts of Edward I. of England under date 1306 that there was a force under Sir John de Butetourte, consisting of among others 19 knights, 51 <¢ ARMS OF THE RoyAL BURGH OF SANQUHAR. 81 esquires, 180 archers, engaged in the valley of the Nith pur- suing Robert Bruce and his followers. Perhaps it was for assistance granted to him at this time by the Lord of the Barony—probably one of the Rosses—that our hero King gave him the right to have a Burgh of Barony on his land. We know that Richard Edgar, son-in-law to the last Ross of Sanquhar, was confirmed in his lands by Bruce, and appears also to have been made Sheriff of Dumfries by him. So we may take it, I think, that from the time of Robert the Bruce Sanquhar had Burghal privileges. But would a Burgh of Barony be likely to possess a common seal, which would be the form our arms would first take? A seal would be needed in those days if the Burgh had any corporate life at all. Such towns were, however, often ruled by an official called the Bailie, who was appointed by the Superior, and the seal of the latter was used for any purpose for which a seal was required. It was in this way that in later times the Burgh of New Dalgarno (Thornhill) Was governed. But such a rule was not universally followed, and some Burghs of Barony were allowed to choose their own magistrates. From the Royal Charter of 1598 we learn that the Burgh was previous to that date governed by Bailies and Councillors, which would seem to point to some form of representative government. Burghs of Barony which were so governed appear to have had common seals of their own, and at least one Burgh of Barony in Scotland has continued to use the same seal from the day of its erec- tion until the present time. ‘‘ Thurso was created a Burgh of Barony by King Charles I. and had as a Burgh of Barony a common seal dating from the foundation of the Burgh and bearing the same device as the present seal, viz., St. Peter vested proper ’’ (Marquis of Bute, Arms of Royal Burghs of Scotland). The city of Glasgow did not come into full possession of the rights of a Royal Burgh until the reign of William and Mary, vet long before that date a common seal with the burgh arms was in use. A common seal was, as I have said, the earliest form in which armorial bearings would be used by communities. Such were used in Scotland as early as 1140 by the Monks of Holyrood. By statutes of 82 ARMS OF THE RoyAL BURGH OF SANQUHAR. Robert III. and James I. every freeholder was obliged to have a seal of arms. So that I do not think we will be in error if we take it that from 1484, if not from the reign of - King Robert I., Sanquhar had her own seal with her own arms thereon. It is quite probable, too, that the common seal would be the only form in which the arms would appear, for while the burghers in many parts marched to battle under their own flag, e.g., those of Selkirk, Edinburgh, etc., Sanquharians would probably march under the Ross Bouggets, or the Crichton Lion. The device on Sanquhar Burgh Arms has been described by the late Marquis of Bute, who was also 14th Lord Crichton of Sanquhar, as ‘‘ a castle upon a rock,”’ and he further adds :—‘* There can be no doubt that the castle is intended to represent Crichton Peel at Sanquhar, the residence first of the Rosses of Sanquhar and then of the Lords Crichton of Sanquhar, although it in no way resembles that building.’’ That the arms represent the old castle or its gateway is the general belief among those Sanquharians who take any interest in such matters. Brown (History of the Sanquhar Curling Soeiety) says that the arms as shown on the back of the curlers’ medal represent “‘ the gateway of ) the old castle as it was in its pride and glory,’’ while James Kennedy, a former schoolmaster in Sanquhar, in a volume of poems which he published in 1823, calls the arms “ the castle of Sanquhar.’’ Dr. Simpson in his History of Sanquhar, on the other hand, says of its old castle :—‘‘ The form of this old ruin, even in its best days, had no connection at all with those engravings on seals and otherwise which have been thought to be a representation of its primitive form.’’ The Doctor does not, unfortunately, say what seals and engravings he refers to, but there is little doubt but that the seals he meant were those belonging to the burgh. The cldest engraving showing the castle that I know of is one in the possession of J. I. M‘Connel, Esq. of Eliock. It is shown in Mr Wilson’s Memorials of Sanquhar Kirkyard (page 69). It shows Eliock house with the castle and church of Sanquhar in the distance. The castle is shown as having four towers. The engraving is believed to date from about ARMS OF THE RoyAL BURGH OF SANQUHAR. 83 the middle of the eighteenth century. Other engravings of date 1790 appear in Grose’s Antiquities. A castle is one of the favourite devices in Scotland. It appears on the arms of Edinburgh and of a number of other Scottish burghs. Wade (The Symbolism of Heraldry) says : A castle is the emblem of grandeur and solidity and has been granted to one who has held one for his King or who has captured one by force or stratagem. It would be interesting to know whether Sanquhar Arms were granted by the King by reason of the capture of the castle from the English. In Blind Harry’s Wallace is an account of the capture of the castle. Some are inclined to think, however, that here Blind Harry is simply making a tale modelled on the capture of Linlithgow Castle in the time of Bruce. But in the poem Blind Harry mentions that Douglas men ‘‘ Lodged in a cleugh, By the Water of Crawick,’’ and tradition pointed to the deeply wooded cleugh of the Conrig Burn as the place in question. About thirty years ago there was picked up in that spot a silver coin of Edward I., and it is quite probable that it had been dropped then. Hume of Godscroft (1644) in his History of the House of Douglas tells us that a man named Anderson was in the habit of supplying the English garrison daily with wood for fuel and Lord William Douglas arranged with him that Thomas Dickson—a servant of Douglas should on a particular day take his waggon and drive it to the castle. Dickson did so, and when he had the waggon underneath the Portcullis he stabbed the porter, and, to quote Hume of Godscroft, “‘ gave the signall to his Lord who lay neere by with his companies set open the gates and received them into the court. They being entered killed the Captaine and the whole English garrison, and so remained master of the place. The captaines name was Beuford, a kinsman to his own Ladie, who had oppressed the country that lay neare to him very insolently.’’ In the Royal Charter of 1598 mention is made of the “good faithful and gratuitous services performed and afforded to us and our predecessors by the burgesses and inhabitants of the said burgh according to their power and ability,’’ and it is possible that the arms on the burgh seal 84 ARMS OF THE ROyAL BURGH OF SANQUHAR. may be connected with the capture of the castle in olden times. Others again are inclined to think, however, that in our burgh arms we have an example of what the French Heralds call ‘‘ Armes Pariantes’’ whereby a device explains itself. The name Sanquhar is generally derived from the Celtic words Saen Caer, old fort or old castle, and it may be that the castle on the shield has a reference to the name of the burgh. As depicted on our burgh seal the castle resolves itself into a gateway with a flight of steps leading thereto. Above the two closed doors of the gateway is an machiolated battlement that again is surmounted by three towers with cupolas or arch roofs, the centre tower being higher than the other two. Flanking the steps are other two towers, one on either side, springing from rocks and having, like the three above the gateway, arch roofs also. Though not mentioned in the blazon there are two slender spires above ”) the gateway, one on either side of the central tower, while another spire appears at the side of each of the flanking towers. The top of the gateway is supported by two doric pillars, symbolical of strength, as are also the rocks on which the castle is placed. | Above each of the towers is a flag, which points to the dexter side of the shield. In the representation of the arms given in the Marquis of Bute’s book the gateway is arched— it is square on all the other representations—there are nine steps while the four spires are awanting. The number of steps according to the Blazon and the oldest impressions of the seal is five, but only four appear on the seal at present in use and on the medal struck to commemorate the riding of the marches in 1910. The side spires appear as spears on the arms as given in the Book of Public Arms compiled by A. C. Fox Davies and M. E. B. Crookes. I do not know what authority the compilers have for so representing them, but before I con- sulted this work my own opinion was that the spires had been originally spears. Their appearance on the burgh seal gave me that impression. I find that in the Blazon of the arms of Charles IJ. as matriculated in 1672 there is no ARMS OF THE ROYAL BURGH OF SANQUHAR. 85 mention of spears, although two appear, one on either side of the arms as drawn by the Herald, and it has struck me that since the spires are not mentioned in the Blazon of our arms they may have been placed there as spears. There is a tradition mentioned by Mr Tom Wilson in Dumfries and Galloway Notes and Queries (page 413) that the smiths of Sanquhar in the 15th and 16th centuries were famous as armourers and were particularly skilful in the making of spears. In Colson’s History of the Incorporated Trades of Edinburgh it is stated that the Lorimers (makers of the metal parts of harness, etc.) usually came from Sanquhar, and that their essay or trial piece when admitted to the Edin- ane bit of small ribbit, sword gairds, ane oe burgh craft was bridle bit, ane pair stirrip irons, and ane pair of spurs, these all to be of the French fashion.’’ In the charter of 1484 mention is made of braziers or brass workers as if they formed one of the chief bodies of workmen in the place. It may be therefore that the spires which are now to be seen at the side of the castle had originally some connection with the chief industry of the town. The arms of Sanquhar are not recorded in the Lyon Office and in this they are in the same position as those of the most of the other burghs of Scotland. According to the strict letter of Scottish law no one may use arms which have not been so recorded, and quite recently the Treasury, act- ing on the advice of the Lord Advocate, authorised the prosecution of the Magistrates of a Scottish Royal Burgh who were using unrecorded arms. The five steps on our castle are said to represent the five Incorporated Trades of the burgh, viz., Hammermen, Squaremen, Weavers, Shoemakers, Tailors, and the fact that these five steps lead up to a closed door of two leaves was to indicate that only through the five trades could any- one obtain the privileges of trading in the burgh. While this may be so there is little doubt in my mind that the burgh had its arms long before any of the trades were incor- porated. In Notes and Queries, before referred to (page 15), there is given a transcript of the application for a seal of cause by the hammermen, from which it appears that in 1714 86 ARMS OF THE ROYAL BURGH OF SANQUHAR. ““ the craftsmen had not attained to such liberty and privilege as their craft had done in other burghs within the realm.’’ It has been suggested that the original *‘ seals of cause ’’ had been destroyed by the fire which, in 1714, consumed so many of the burgh papers. The language, however, that is used by the craftsmen in their application does not seem to bear that out. There is not a single word to indicate that they had ever had possessed anything in the form of a ‘‘ seal of cause’ before. It does not appear probable either that these ‘‘ seals of cause ”’ would be kept along with the burgh papers, for under date September 2oth, 1811, we find that Robert Cumming, Clerk to the Hammermen, was fined five shillings sterling for not attending the meeting, he having the ‘‘ seal of cause’’ and other books in his possession. (a9 There is no mention in the “sett’’ of the Royal Burgh in 1713 of Deacons of Craft having any seat in the Town Council, but from 1719 onwards the Deacons sit along with the rest of the Councillors. We may take it, I think, that though the trades would exist long before 1714 they were not incorporated until then. Sanquhar was, as the trades- men said, behind the other burghs. In Dumfries the trades were banded together by the year 1569, while in Kirkcud- bright they were incorporated in the year 1681. THe CoLtours ON Our BurGH SHIELD. We have now to consider the colours on our burgh shield. The ground is azure or blue, the castle is argent or ‘silver, while the masonry marks are sable or black. The ‘‘ blazon ’’ suggests that the arch roofs of the towers should be sable also. | Wade in his book on The Symbolism of Heraldry remarks that blue symbolises loyalty and truth, white peace and sincerity, and black constancy, but there can be no doubt, I think, that such colours were used long before such symbolism was thought of. The arms of the ‘Crichtons Lords of Sanquhar consist of a lion rampant azure on a shield argent, and it has been generally held that the colours on our burgh shield have simply been copied from them. It will be observed, however, that while the two colours are the same the way in which they are used is ARMS OF THE ROyAL BURGH OF SANQUHAR. 87 different, for the shield in the one case is blue and in the other it is white. The Crichtons of Sanquhar, too, during their connection with our district appear to have always quartered the Ross arms, viz., or three water budgets sable, along with their own. Such appear on the seal of Robert, Lord Crichton of Sanquhar, 1509, as well as on the seals of other members of the family. One would be inclined to think, therefore, that had the coat of arms of the Lord of the Manor been used as a model for that of the burgh that the colours of the older of the two families, the Rosses, would have found a place thereon, especially as the first burghal privileges must have been granted in their time. I am inclined to think, therefore, that the colours upon our burgh coat are simply the old national colours, and were suggested by the old blue banner of Scotland, the St. Andrews white cross on a blue field. When this flag was adopted as the national banner of Scotland we can- not tell definitely. | Hector Boece in 1520 tells us that it was adopted by King Hungus or Angus in the eighth century, who had a vision of St Andrew, who promised him victory. ‘‘ Ane shinand croce was seen in the lift,’’ says Bellenden, the translator of Boece, army of the Pichtis not unlike to the samin croce that the apostle died on. This croce vanist never out of the lift quhil the victory succeedit to the Pichtis. After this, says the old chronicler, ‘‘ the crose of St. Andro’’ was taken as ce straucht above the 9? the Picts ensign. The colours of the flag were, of course, suggested by the white shining cross against the blue sky. We find this legend duly recorded as early as 1165, and it may be taken, I think, that from that time the old blue banner would be more or less used by our Scottish fore- fathers, and, as I have said, I think that it is from here that our burgh colours are taken. The burgh colours are worn in uniform by the burgh and cornet’s officers in Sanquhar, their uniforms being blue with white facings. The uniform worn by the late respected burgh officer, James Stoddart, was of blue with black facings. These colours may have been suggested by the blue field and sable markings of the burgh ensign. From 88 ARMS OF THE ROYAL BURGH OF SANQUHAR. the burgh accounts it would appear that at one time part at least of the burgh officer’s uniform was red, for under date August 20th, 1779, we find that the Treasurer paid 3s 6d for a quarter yard of red cloth for livery to John M‘Call, officer. One feels that a quarter yard would not do much for the officer, unless he simply wished it for patching purposes. But if the officer did not get much in quantity, it should have been good in quality—14s a yard seems a fairly stiff price for cloth, when it is remembered that at the time in question a working man’s wages were about 1s 6d a day. John M‘Call’s salary for a whole year was only ros. Of course he had perquisites over and above. For instance, he got a guinea per annum for attending to the town clock. On February 27th, 1772, he is given six- pence for drink for his trouble in warning the people to pay teind, and on 11th April, 1774, he gets a shilling for warn- ing the publicans in the burgh to compete for the ale pre- miums. The colours of the first football club in Sanquhar were those of our burgh, and the present club keeps up the same. At the riding of the marches in 1910 the colours were in great evidence. Both the cornet and ensign wore sashes of blue and silver, as did others in the procession. Small flags of blue and white marked the boundaries of the burgh land, while the ribbons attached to the silver medals were of the same colours. The Marquis of Bute in his book, before referred to, suggested that the roofs of the towers and the flags surmounting them might be coloured yellow, so that with the blue and white of the Crichtons might be conjoined the yellow of the Rosses. No such change has, however, been made, but the pipers’ banner, on which the burgh shield and crest are embroidered, is of red fringed with yellow, these being the Royal colours in Scotland. THe BurcH CREST. No crest is mentioned in the blazon of our burgh arms, as given by the Marquis of Bute, but a thistle with leaves outspread appears on the burgh seal over the castle and also on the certificate of membership of Sanquhar ARMS OF THE RoyaL BuRGH OF SANQUHAR. 89 Library, which was founded in 1800. The first King of Scotland, so far as we know, to use the Thistle as a badge was James the Third. It was he who gave the charter of re-erection to Sanquhar in 1484, but whether there is any connection between the two things it is impossible to say. Crests are not often recorded as part of burgh arms in Scotland. Indeed they came into use much later than the other parts of arms. The first Scottish King to have a crest upon his arms was Robert III., 1371-1390. The thistle was a favourite badge with the old Scottish regiments. It is borne by quite a number still serving. The accoutrements of the Nithsdale local Militia, which was disbanded in 1814, had the thistle on them. It also ap- peared on those of the Royal Dumfries Yeomanry, which existed about the same time. In his Poems and Songs, 1823, James Kennedy has some spirited ‘‘ Lines addressed to the Scotch Thistle encircling the Castle of Sanquhar, as pourtrayed on the flag of the Incor- porated Trades of said burgh, 181g.’’ The opening lines are as follows :— “Hail, Emblem proud, to Scotia long endeared! Begirt with threatening spears which never failed; When England’s sons their thorn couched rose upreared Thou shook’st thy bearded head and still prevailed.’’ In this poem, however, Kennedy makes no reference to the thistle being the crest of the burgh, but only refers to it as the national emblem. Similarly, he takes no notice which appears ”” of the motto, ‘‘ Nemo me impune lacessit, on a ribbon at the foot of the flag. The seal used in Sanquhar Post Office over a hundred years ago showed the thistle with the word ‘‘ Sanquhar ”’ above. Built into the wall of Sanquhar Churchyard is part of what is believed to be a pre-Reformation tombstone. It bears what appears to be a thistle, but which may in reality be the crowned flying heart of the Douglas family somewhat defaced. At the last riding of the marches the thistle was in evidence, for while the Cornet carried a banner—or, more 90 ARMS OF THE ROYAL BURGH OF SANQUHAR. correctly, a gonfanon—with the burgh arms thereon, the Ensign carried a spear busked with thistles. On our coat of arms as depicted on the pipers’ banner the thistle is emblazoned proper, that is, the colouring is according to nature. On this banner the thistle sits upon a wreath placed immediately above the shield. According to the chief heraldic authority of the present day, the Lord Lyon, this is hardly correct. ‘‘ The wreath,’’ he says, “‘ on which a crest is placed represents the twisted pellet of silk which supported it, and which was itself laced into the helmet. A crest then, strictly speaking, should never appear without a helmet on which it is placed.’’ I notice that in Nisbet’s System of Heraldry—and Nisbet has been well termed ‘‘ the ablest and most scientific writer of heraldry in the English language ’’—all the representations of arms show the crest placed on the top of a helmet. The helmet | differs according to the rank and status of the person bear- ing the arms. The wreath should always be represented by a metal and a colour, being the principal metal and prin- cipal colour which appear in the coat of arms. In the case of Sanquhar the wreath is appropriately represented as blue and white. Tue Morro. No writing appears on the burgh arms as represented by the common seal of the burgh except the legend ““Sigillium commune Burgi de Sanquhar.’’ In the older seals the wording is in English. In the blazon as given by the Marquis of Bute there is no mention made of any motto. In the late Mr. Wilson’s book, Folklore and Genealogies of Uppermost Nithsdale, there is given (page 247) a descrip- tion of the ‘‘Arms of the Royal Burgh of Sanquhar.’’ The last paragraph of that description reads as follows :—‘‘ No motto appears upon the seal of the burgh but upon the flag of the ‘five incorporated trades of Sanquhar,’ in the possession of the writer, and upon which are emblazoned the burgh arms surrounded by a wreath of thistles there is given the proud legend, Scotland’s national motto, ‘Nemo me impune lacessit.’ ”’ ARMS OF THE RoyaL BurRGH oF SANQUHAR. 91 It will be observed that the writer does not say that this is the burgh motto but only that it appears on an old flag. The motto, however, now finds a place on the Provost’s chain of office and on the burgh piper’s heraldic banner, so that it may be held to have been adopted by the burgh. Sanquhar, it may be mentioned in passing, is one of the few, if not the only burgh in Scotland, to possess an official piper. Such an official was an important person in days gone past. Mr W. Wilson, in Folklore, has preserved some interesting informa- tion regarding those old time musicians. In the Records of the Privy Council for 1607 there is a complaint made that Lord Crichton of Sanquhar has mustered the men of the Barony and Sir Robert Dalyell, younger, the Provost, ‘‘ had convenit the haill inhabitants of Sanquhar, and with drum and pipe led them ”’ to the borders of Ayrshire with intent to commit crime. The present piper, Robert Brown, was > db appointed by the Town Council in 1910, and a _ heraldic banner was presented for his use in 1914. In Notes and Queries (page 38) Mr Tom Wilson makes the following in- teresting remarks on the motto and crest :—‘‘ Quite as dis- tinguished as the arms if not more so is the crest of Sanquhar burgh. The thistle is the national emblem of Scotland, the badge of our Kings, the symbol of freedom and independence. It is a crest that every son of Sanquhar may well be proud of. Nothing could more fitly represent the manly independence of our forefathers. Then the burgh motto, ‘ Nemo me impune lacessit,’ ‘ No one attacks me with impunity,’ or in the trans- lation favoured by the Sanquhar weavers, ‘ Dinna meddle wi’ me or I’ll bite ye,’ surely nothing could more appropriately accompany the castle and the thistle. It has for centuries been the motto of the Kings of Scotland and is the proud legend which encircles the St. Andrew’s Cross of the Knights of the Thistle. When or how Sanquhar got its grant of arms is not known. They are not recorded in the Lyon Office. But, as described above, they have been in use for the last two centuries. It is just possible that the thistle and royal motto have some connection with the memorable visit paid by King James the Sixth to Sanquhar on July 31st, 1617. We know that he had a right kingly welcome. It was an 92 ARMS OF THE RoyaL BURGH OF SANQUHAR. occasion of unprecedented rejoicing. . . . The King might well grant some extra honourable augmentation of arms to Sanquhar after that. His reception certainly deserved some special recognition.’’ I need hardly emphasise that the worthy Cornet is here making a conjecture and a most in- teresting one, but in July, 1914, there appeared a paragraph in our local papers, in which the conjecture was stated as if it were an absolute certainty. ‘‘ This motto,’’ it was said, ‘“has been the motto of the burgh since James VI. visited Sanquhar in 1617.’’ This statement was challenged, and the writer of the paragraph then stated that in the absence of written records one had to fall back on _ tradition, and that it had long been the proud tradition of San- quhar that the motto came to be used after the King’s visit. I never heard of such a tradition, although my boyhood was spent under circumstances well qualified to make me acquainted with the floating traditions of the district, for my father’s shop was frequented by many of the older generation of Sanquharians whose working days ca’ the crack.’’ Many an old ce were over and who came to tale I have heard there, but of the tradition in question never a word. Dr. Simpson, Dr. Moir Porteous, and Mr Brown, in their respective histories of the district, all deal with the visit of King James, but not one of them hints that the burgh metto had any connection therewith. The same may be said of Mr Wilson in Folklore and Mr Douglas Crichton in his Sangquhar and the Crichtons. In 1877 there was published a small work called The Sanquhar Monument, by an able though eccentric Sanquhar scholar, Alexander Weir. Sandy, as he was usually called, was a very well read man. He published at least three books, all of which show that he possessed a mind much above the average. In the little book I have mentioned Weir deals with the privileges and honours which Sanquhar received from her Kings. Indeed the whole argu- ment of his book is to show that since the town had received such honours from royalty her townsmen ought to have taken the King’s rather than the Covenanters’ side, but he does not even hint at any such honour as that now claimed. The Large Description of Galloway (1684) the old and new ARMS OF THE ROYAL BURGH OF SANQUHAR. 93 Statistical Accounts (1792-1845), have all descriptions of our burgh. All refer to her municipal privileges, but not in any one of them have we any reference to a royal grant of a motto. I have consulted two heraldic experts on this ques- tion, Mr John A. Stewart, convener of the Heraldry Com- mittee of the St. Andrew Society, Glasgow (who was also cenvener of the Heraldic Section of the Scottish National Exhibition in Glasgow in 1911), and Mr C. Cleland Harvey, author of Scottish Flags, and both gave me the same answer, viz., that they never heard of a grant of the motto by the King to a burgh, and that they thought it very unlikely that any such grant had ever been made. The fact that no motto appears on any of the seals of the burgh seems to me plain evidence that when the seals were made no such honour was known. The motto in question appears, as I have said, on the flag of the “‘ Five incorporated trades of the burgh.’’ It is said also to have been on the three drums of the old burgh band and also on the flag known as the town flag, which was similar to the trades’ flag but larger, and which, I am in- formed, was last flown in 1871. From the poem before men- tioned of James Kennedy it would appear that the trades’ flag dates from 1819, the drums would probably be later. The latter, I may say, have all disappeared, although I can remember seeing them. They were painted blue and white, but I cannot recall any lettering thereon. The presence of the motto on a flag cannot, I fear, be taken as an evidence of right thereto. On one of the Dumfries flags, dated 1815, preserved in the Observatory Museum, this very motto appears, and it seems to have been quite usual to put it on banners. It is looked upon by many as being a national motto in the same way as the thistle is regarded as the national emblem. It is now the motto of the Order of the Thistle, being made so in 1687, when that order was “revived ’’ by King James VII. It appeared on the accoutre- ments of quite a number of the old Scottish regiments, in- cluding the Nithsdale Local Militia, which was disbanded in 1814. It still has a place on the equipment of the Royal Scots and the Scots Greys. The flag bearing the motto 94 ARMS OF THE RoyAL BURGH OF SANQUHAR. would probably be made locally, and the presence of the motto may have been no more than an artist’s whim. According to the strict letter of the law the King alone can grant part of the royal arms, and as the motto in ques- tion was adopted by Charles II. as a royal motto it would appear that anyone using it without the King’s authority is breaking the law. It is true that some writers on heraldry have argued that there is no property in a motto taken by itself. Such may be the case in England, but hardly in Sectland, where the motto or ditton to give it its Scottish name is always registered as part of the escutcheon. The motto, ‘“ Nemo me impune lacessit,’’ appears for the first time in Scotland on coins of James VI. (the two merk and the one merk pieces) in 1578 along with a thistle. The motto is said to come from Italy. Nisbet (System of Heraldry) tries to give it a great antiquity in Scotland. He mentions that Franciscus Sforza Duke of Milan took as his device a grey- hound with the motto, Quietum nemo impune lacessit, but continues Nisbet, ‘‘ some allege that he borrowed it from the Scots.’’ There were two Dukes of Milan of the name given, the first ruling from 1450 to 1466, and the second from 1522 to 1535, being the first and the last of the house of Sforza. I think the reference in Nisbet is to the first although he does not say so. This motto is sometimes called the Roya, Motto OF SCOTLAND, but it is not entitled to that exclusive title though it is one of the royal mottoes and was registered as such by Charles II. as part of his royal arms in 1672. It is not, however, the original royal motto of Scotland. That is, ‘‘ IN DEFeEns,’’ which appears on the old representation of the royal arms of Scotland in the volume of ‘‘ Actis maid be James the Fift,’’ printed in Edinburgh in 1541. The wood- cut is said to have been designed by the well-known Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount, the then Lyon King at Arms. Stevenson in his Heraldry of Scotland states that its more ancient form is, “‘In my defence me God defend,’’ just as the full form of the royal motto of England was ‘‘ God and the right shall me defend.’’ A splendid photograph of the Royal Arms of the United Kingdom as used in Scotland, designed by Mr Graham Johnston, herald painter to the Lyon ARMS OF THE RoyAL BURGH OF SANQUHAR. 95 Office, lies before me as I write. The only motto thereon is the ancient one, ‘“‘In Defens.’’ When King Charles II. registered his arms in 1672 the motto we are considering was placed—as the second motto—below the shield. The motto, unless it is a second one, should always be placed above the crest in Scotland. In the case of the royal arms of Scot- land the first motto, ‘‘ In Defens,’’ is always placed there. The English custom, on the other hand, is to place the motto below the escutcheon, and it is to be regretted that there are Scotsmen who seem to prefer the method of the Southern Kingdom to that of their own. They do not seem to know that it is a national usage they are flouting. There can be no doubt as to what is the correct way since all Scottish heraldic authorities, both ancient and modern, are agreed as to this. Yet it unfortunately happens that on the Provost’s chain of office and on the piper’s official banner the motto has been placed according to the English rather than the Scottish fashion. On the medal struck to commemorate the riding of the marches in 1910 the motto is so placed that it is also read round the foot of the shield. There is still to be seen in Sanquhar a splendidly carved stone tablet bearing the Crichton crest, a dragon’s head crowned spouting fire. Above the crest is the motto, ‘* God send Grace.’’ This tablet, which bears the date 1751, is built into a house in Simpson Road. Another tablet bearing a shield of arms and dating from the 17th century is built into the churchyard wall. The motto, ‘‘ Spes,’’ is to be seen above the shield. Unfortunately, as I have said, the newer heraldic examples have not been so correctly made, and it would have been better had the old arms still to be seen in Sanquhar been more closely studied. One certainly would expect that the Royal Burgh of Sanquhar would show a closer regard for the heraldic customs of its own country. Perhaps it may not be too late yet to have the error rectified. I have now to thank those who have assisted me with this paper. I am indebted to Mr Forsyth, Town Clerk, and Mr R. Wilson, Burgh Fiscal, for information regarding the form of arms now in use. I have to thank Mr John A. Stewart, Mr C. Cleland Harvey, and Mr Graham Johnston, 96 ARMS OF THE RoyAL BURGH OF SANQUHAR. Herald Painter to the Lyon Office, for advice regarding the Heraldic Customs of Scotland; and last but by no means least I have to thank Mr Tom Wilson for much help cheer- fully given. Mr Wilson and I by no means see eye to eye with regard to much of our district’s history. Perhaps, as Whittier says, ‘‘ The truth lay doubtless twixt the two.”’ The Strathspey Fencibles at Dumfries in 1795. By G. W. SHIRLEY. A picture of the social life of Dumfries during the closing years of the 18th century would be greatly lacking in coni- pleteness if it omitted an account of the various regiments that, successively, were quartered in the burgh. The officers and men brought increased life, movement, and money to the town. In their different spheres they contracted friend- ships and made acquaintances, and their fortunes after their departure were followed with interest by the people. The officers were admitted to the considerable circle of old county families that then surrounded the town and gave its patron- age to the theatre, libraries, the races, the cock-fights, charities, and shops, and held there its social functions— its assemblies, dinners, and balls. The leading merchant and professional families in the burgh also made the officers welcome. The Magistrates, to evince their esteem, would admit them as honorary burgesses of the burgh and feast generously and gaily in consequence. The parades and marchings of the regiment added picturesque stir and bustle to the town, while at night—but perhaps we had better not specify what took place in the many inns of the town or record the intimacies that sprung up and found results in the police and church courts. Although there was talk in 1794 of the erecting of barracks the soldiers seem always to have been quartered on the inhabitants. Six or seven hundred men could not be added to the population of the town, then amounting to 5860 persons,! without effecting appreciable results. 1 Dr Burnside’s estimate in his MS. Account, fol. 98. STRATHSPEY FENCIBLES AT DUMFRIES IN 1795. 97 Two divisions of the 1st or Strathspey Fencibles arrived at Dumfries from Paisley on Saturday and Monday, 13th and 15th December, 1794. They succeeded the South or Lord Hopetoun’s Fencibles, a regiment raised largely in Annan- dale, and which had been stationed in the town since July 8th. Mention of the Hopetoun Fencibles recalls a remark- able circumstance which we may be forgiven for turning aside to record. On the 11th of September it was discovered that one of the company was a woman. She had been upwards of eighteen months in the service. The Dumfries Weekly Journal,? betraying no modern sophistication, says:—‘‘ The discovery was made by the taylor, when he was trying on the new cloaths. It is re- markable that she has concealed her sex so long, consider- ing she always slept with a comrade, and sometimes with two. She went by the name of John Nicholson (her real one being Jean Clark), and, strange as it may appear, was esteemed a wag among the lasses. It is even said that she had caused a lass in the Bridgend of this place to fall deeply in love with her; but who, since the discovery, is perfectly cured. Previous to her assuming the character of a soldier, we are informed, she had accustomed herself to the dress and habits of a man, having been bred to the business of a weaver at Closeburn, and employed as a man servant at Ecclefechan.”’ William Grierson (Dr. T. B. Grierson’s father) in his Diary says that Jean Clark had enlisted only seven or eight months previously, and refers also to her reputation as a wag. Her adventures by no means rival those of Christian Davies or Ross, who served through five strenuous cam- paigns with the Scots Greys, but yet may be regarded as worthy of record. The Strathspey Fencibles had been raised for home service by Sir James Grant of Grant in 1793, being finally inspected and embodied by Lieutenant-General Leslie at 2 16th September, 1794. 3 The Grierson Diary, from the Dumfries and Galloway Courier and Herald, 1890, p. 3. 98 | STRATHSPEY FENCIBLES AT DUMFRIES IN 1795. Edinburgh on June 5th. The regiment mustered nearly 7oo officers and men. The Colonel was Sir James Grant, but the real command of the regiment was in the*hands of the Lieutenant-Colonel, Alexander Penrose Cumming (who after- wards took the additional name of Gordon), Laird of Altyre, and Sir James’ brother-in-law. Whatever was the specific reason, the Laird of Altyre does not appear to have been a success as a commander, for the history of the Regiment was marred by two abortive mutinies, the second of which took place at Dumfries. The Regiment was at Linlithgow in 1794 when the first trouble occurred. An endeavour was made to pursuade the men to abandon their original agree- ment and volunteer for service outwith Scotland. The dis- content does not appear to have come to a head but resulted in a loss of: confidence that Sir James had to hasten to re-establish. * The mutiny at Dumfries occurred on the 11th of June, 1795, two days after an incident that we shall first detail but which appears to have had no connection with the revolt. On the oth the Magistrates of Dumfries applied to the com- manding officer of the Fencibles for a party to aid in appre- hending an Irish tinker, John O’Neil, and his two sons, ‘“who were deemed very proper objects for the compre- hending act,’’ and who dwelt at the Stoop. The ‘‘ comprehending act,’’ which had just been passed, authorised Magistrates ‘“‘to take up Vagrants and Idle Persons ’’ for service in the Navy. The demands of the Navy for men were met at this period by a series of Acts imposing responsibility, first, on the Ports, and, afterwards, on the Burghs and Counties, for a proportion of men accord- ing to their trade and valuation. The owners and masters of ships in Scotland had to furnish a total of 2601 men, and in our district the quotas were—Dumfries, 17; Kirkcud- bright, 19; Portpatrick, 9; Stranraer, 25; and Wigtown, 5a For these facts and others throughout this article I am in- debted to Mr J. M. Bulloch, who has favoured me with proof sheets. of his ‘‘ Territorial Soldiering in the North-East of Scotland, 1759-1814,”’ to be published by the New Spalding Club. STRATHSPEY FENCIBLES AT DUMFRIES IN 1795. 99 25. The Commissioners appointed by the Act advertised for men on April 7. They offered 20 guineas to Seamen and 15 guineas to Landsmen and secured their number, ‘‘ very good looking men,’’ by the beginning of May. On April 28th an Act compelling the Burghs and Counties to supply men was passed. The local proportions were as follows: County of Dumfries, 41; Burgh of Dumfries, 11; Annan, 2; Lochmaben, 1; Sanquhar, 1; the Stewartry of Kirkcud- bright, 27; Burgh of Kirkcudbright, 3; County of Wigtown, 49; Burgh of Wigtown, 2; Whithorn, 1; New-Galloway, 1; and Stranraer, 4. In consequence of this Act the Magis- trates of Dumfries on May 12th advertised a bounty of 15 guineas to Volunteers, stating that :— ‘“ As this expense falls ultimately on the Heritors and Traders of this burgh, who are in use of paying the supply, it is expected they will make every exertion to assist the Magistrates in procuring the complement of mén on the terms offered, because, in case these men are not obtained, they will be assessed at the rate of 251. for each man deficient.”’ This threat to the Heritors and Traders was entirely discounted, however, by the succeeding paragraph :— ‘“ N.B.—There is a Comprehending Act just passed authorising Magistrates to take up Vagrants and Idle Persons for the Service of the Navy and it would be ad- visable for persons falling within this description to avail themselves of the Bounty now offered—for this Act will cer- tainly be enforced and no Bounties allowed.’’ At the end of a month neither the genial persuasion of the heritors nor traders, the temptation of the bounty, nor the threat of losing it had had the desired effect, and John O’Neil and his sons, it was decided, were fit subjects for impressing. It may be that the burgh authorities had an old standing grudge against O’Neil, for he had given them trouble before in a manner singularly similar to his later offence. On Sunday, October 20th, 1793, a party of the Breadalbane Fencibles, which arrived in Dumfries on June gth, 1793, had been sent out to search for deserters. They wanted to search O’Neil’s house, and O’Neil promptly fired 100 STRATHSPEY FENCIBLES AT DUMFRIES IN 1795. at them, wounding two of the four soldiers, one of them severely. He was put in prison and remained there until the 20th of January following, being let out on his obtaining sureties. As the offence was a serious one it would appear that the soldiers must have exceeded their commission or John O’Neil would not have escaped so lightly.? ‘Late at night, to revert to the action of the Press-gang, on the 9th of June (1795) a party of constables and soldiers went out to the Stoop. But O’Neil had got wind of their intentions. He refused the party admission, and upon their breaking open the door,® received them with seven shots, wounding the serjeant® and two soldiers very severely. The O’Neils fired ‘‘ rugged slug, privates, had to have his leg amputated and ultimately died bie) and John Grant, one of the in Dumfries and Galloway Infirmary on 16th August, his unfortunate fate being matter of much regret to the regiment and townspeople. He was buried on the following evening (though why in the evening we are not told) in St. Michael’s ; ‘the Magistrates and a few of the inhabitants, the doctors, and a party of the Durham Rangers or the Princess of Wales Light Dragoons attended the funeral.’’ The serjeant who had been severely wounded in the head and groin and the other private, wounded in the arm, recovered. The party, despite their casualties, pushed on into the house and 4 The soldiers shot at were John Mahan, serjeant; John M‘William, corporal; Henry Gibson and Robert Walters, private soldiers in Capt. Erskine’s Company of the Second Battalion of the Breadalbane Fencibles. O’Neil’s cautioners, the amount being 200 merks scots, were Daniel M‘Queen, merchant in Dumfries, and Walter M‘Lean, miller at Dalgoner Mill. MS. Register of Bail Bonds—Burgh of Dumfries. 5 This is the account given by William Grierson. The Dumfries Weekly Journal says the O’Neils fired ‘‘ before the party could get to the house,’’ and Kay’s ‘‘ Contemporary Chronicle’’ says they fired ‘‘on the party’s approaching the house and requiring admittance.’’ 6 Serjeant Bateman, of the Grenadier Guards. The Grierson Diary, p. 4. Kay (Edinburgh Portraits, i., 278), gives the names as Serjeant Beaton, John Grant, a , Gr sandler. and ‘fone Fraser,’’ of the Light Company. ee STRATHSPEY FENCIBLES AT DUMFRIES IN 1795. 101 took ‘‘the old man’”’ prisoner. The two sons, however, had disguised themselves in women’s clothes and escaped. Arthur, after a long pursuit, was taken the next day, but Henry, though a vigorous search was made and a reward of five guineas offered for his discovery, got clear away. Detail is very precious in these matters, defining our vision, so we gratefully learn that Henry was, according to the ee ‘Escaped from Justice’’ advertisement, aged about twenty-two, five feet nine or ten inches high, a stout well- made man, with dark hair hanging loose, dark complexion, ee and a little pitted with the smallpox,’’ and he wore ‘‘ a blue jacket, striped vest, and white trousers, a small round hat, and tied shoes.’’ After the O’Neils’ departure the mob broke into their house and ‘‘ demolished and burnt it.’’ The ” ‘“ Gentlemen at their last County meeting ’’ and the Magis- trates of Dumfries each voted 15 guineas to the wounded soldiers, and Sir James Grant gave 1o guineas to the In- in testimony of the sense he entertained of the oe firmary usefulness of the Infirmary to the sick and hurt men of his regiment.”’ The O’Neils were brought before the Circuit Court in September, and. Henry was outlawed for not appearing. Owing to the absence of material witnesses the diet was deserted pro loco et tempore, and the prisoners were removed to Edinburgh for trial. We must quote Kay’s * ary chronicle ’’? for the remainder of our narrative: ‘‘ John O’Neill . . . was a Roman Catholic, and at this time a number of genteel Catholic families being resident in Dum- fries, they resolved to be at the expense of defending O'Neill on the ground that he was justified in resisting any attempt to enter his own house. With this view they prevailed on the late Mrs Riddell of Woodley Park to go to Edinburgh and procure counsel. . . . She found no difficulty in obtain- ing the services of Henry Erskine, without fee or reward; but notwithstanding, O’Neill was found guilty, and con- demned to be hanged. The good offices of Mrs Riddell, how- ever, did not terminate here. She applied to Charles Fox; contempor- 7 Edinburgh Portraits, i., 278. 102 SrraTHsSPEY FENCIBLES AT DUMFRIES IN 1795. and through him, obtained a commutation of his sentence.”’ O’Neil, however, was not done with the matter, and in the beginning of 1800 he raised an action in the Court of Session against the Magistrates and Council of Dumfries for damages on account of the destroying and burning of his house by the mob. The Council decided to defend this ‘‘ impudent and unfounded ’’ action at the public expense. It is mentioned occasionally until March, 1803, after which it disappears and was forgotten. I know nothing more of John O’Neil, but it occurs to one that though he suffered he rather had the best of it with the Magistrates of Dumfries. Two days after their exciting encounter with the O’ Neils the mutiny occurred. We quote the account in The Dum- fries Weekly Journal,’ received ‘‘ from authority ’’: ‘‘ One of the soldiers having been confined for impropriety on the field when under arms, several of his comrades resolved to release him; for which purpose they assembled round, and endea- voured to force the guardroom ; but they were repelled by the Adjutant [James Watson] and Officer on Guard, who made the ringleader a prisoner. The Commanding officer of the regiment immediately ordered a garrison court-martial, con- sisting of his own corps and the Ulster Light Dragoons {which had arrived in the beginning of June]. When the prisoners were remanded back from the court to the guard- room, their escort was attacked by 50 or 60 of the soldiers, with fixed bayonet. The escort, consisting of a corporal and six men, charged them in return, and would not have parted with their prisoners, but at the intercession of the Serjeant- Major, who thought resistance against such numbers was in vain. The mutineers then set up a shout, and a part of them ran away with the prisoners. The Lieutenant-Colonel and Major [John Grant] on hearing the noise, ran down to the street, and the former seeing the way the prisoners had gone, followed and retook them. They submissively agreed to go with him to confinement; but when he had reached the middle of the street, he was surrounded by a great number, who charged him with fixed bayonets in every direction. The 8 June 16, 1795. STRATHSPEY FENCIBLES AT DUMFRIES IN 1795. 108 Major did his utmost to beat down their bayonets on the left, and Captain John Grant, jun., was near him on the right equally exerting. The mutineers like cowards were encour- aging one another to push on, and had inclosed the three officers in a very narrow compass, when one of the most violent approaching the Lieutenant-Colonel’s breast, and ' threatening to be through him, he was under the necessity of pulling out a pistol, and presenting it at his head. The fellow immediately ducked, and the whole fell back, as if they had received the word of command. Many of the officers had by this time joined, and order was soon restored. They were paraded at the Dock, the mutiny articles read, and a forcible speech made to them by the Lieutenant-Collnell [s/c }. They were then ordered, as a mark of returning duty and allegiance to face to the right and march under the colours, which was immediately complied with. The ranks were then opened and six of the ringleaders picked out, sent to the guard-room under an escort, and the affair reported to the Commander-in-Chief.’’ Such is the officially inspired account. The Editor of the Journal concludes: ‘‘ It is but justice to add, that (this only unlucky business excepted) no corps, ever quartered in this place, behaved themselves with such pro- priety of conduct and demeanour, and so entirely conciliated the goodwill of the inhabitants—not a single complaint having yet been made against any individual of the regiment.’’ This testimony was not an afterthought, for only a week earlier, in describing the ceremony at the presentation of their colours to the Royal Dumfries Volunteers, the Editor had remarked that the First Regiments of Fencibles was ‘‘ one of the best corps we have ever seen,’’ while William Grierson states, on oe the departure of the regiment, “‘ The whole regiment deserve the highest praise for their behaviour ever since they came to town, being a remarkably sober and steady set of men and very handsome, well-looked young men.’’ The regiment received its marching orders immediately after the incident, and four days later, on the 16th, was on its way to the Military Camp at Musselburgh. Five of the men implicated were tried by court martial at Musselburgh on July 6th. The trial lasted four days, Colonel 104 SrratTHspEey FENCIBLES AT DUMFRIES IN 1795. William Wemyss, of the 2nd Fencible Regiment, officiating as President, and conducting it ‘‘ with much solemnity and precision and with great humanity to the unhappy prisoners.’’ The sentence was announced a_ week later. Four men, Lachlin M‘Intosh, Duncan M‘ Dougal, Alexander Fraser, and Charles M‘Intosh were adjudged to suffer death, and Cor- poral James M‘Donald to receive 500 lashes. The execution was carried out with satisfactory pomp and ceremony and a refinement of cruelty common at the time at Gullane Links on July 17th, 1795. ‘‘ The prisoners were on Friday last conveyed from Musselburgh Jail about six o’clock in the morning (note how the authorities drew out the agony as long as possible) in two mourning coaches, accompanied in the first by the Rev. Mr M‘Gregor, and in the second by the Rev. Mr [James] Grant, chaplain to the Strathspey Fencibles, escorted by a party of the 4th regi- ment of Dragoons, preceded by two troops of dragoons, the Strathspey, the Breadalbane, and a detachment of the Hope- toun Fencibles, and followed by the Sutherland Fencibles, with two field pieces and a party of artillery. The four coffins were conveyed in a cart immediately after the coaches.”’ ‘They arrived on Gullen [szc] Links about twelve o’clock, where they found three or four troops of dragoons and two battalions of the Scotch Brigade from the camp at Dunbar formed on the ground. After the troops were drawn up, and the detachment from the Grants destined to put the sentence in execution, being placed in their centre, and a company of the Scotch Brigade in their rear, the prisoners then walked up to the ground, accompanied by the two clergymen. Upon their arrival, General Hamilton, the Commander of both camps, ordered the sentence of the Court Martial to be read by Captain Taylor, one of his aids-de-camp; after which Mr Grant, chaplain of the regiment, sung psalms and prayed; that being finished, Captain Taylor read the approbation of the Commander-in-Chief of the sentence on Alexander Fraser and the three other prisoners under sentence of death, viz., Lauchlin M‘Intosh, Duncan Macdougall, and Charles STRATHSPEY FENCIBLES AT DUMFRIES IN 1795. 105 M‘Intosh, were to draw lots—the lot fell upon Charles M‘Intosh. The sentence was then put in execution—Fraser was a little turbulent, and was obliged to be bound hand and foot before the sentence could be executed. M‘Intosh submitted to his fate with the utmost calmness. We are happy to observe [remarks the complacent reporter] that everything was conducted with the utmost regularity and order. The crowd of sp[e]ctators from every quarter was very great.’’? The two lucky men were pardoned and drafted into regiments abroad, and Corporal Macdougall was also pardoned. We shall not now, I suppose, discover the real causes of the insubordination. It was evidently a trifling incident that set it aflame. D. Stewart in his Sketches of the Highlanders and the Highland Regiments, says it originated ‘‘ in a‘ re- mark by a soldier in the ranks, which might pass for a joke, ’ or a piece of wit, according as the affair was taken,’’ while William Grierson says the man was confined ‘‘ for speaking in the ranks,’’ and adds, ‘‘ no feeling heart but must lamers the fate of two such men, for the sacrifice of their lives for such a small fault was only supposed to gratify the pride and Who the officer was is not stated, but 9 spleen of an officer. the Laird of Altyre was evidently very proud of his share in the affair, for year after year in Burke’s Peerage it is stated that he received the thanks of the Commander-in-Chief ‘* for suppressing a mutiny at Dumfries, 1794.”’ Stewart could not specify the underlying cause of the incident. He wonders whether it was the severe code of punishment, which he strongly deprecated for Highlanders, or whether the men believed that they had been “* teased with long drills and fatiguing discipline, not required for soldiers who were never to meet an enemy, or perhaps not very neces- sary for any service, whether the individuals themselves were of a character different from, and inferior to,’* cases he had mentioned, ‘‘ or whether, as is most probable, some un- pleasant recollections of the affair at Linlithgow still existed.” 9 The Dumfries Weekly Journal, July 21, 1795 10 Vol. ii., 315, 416. 106 STRATHSPEY FENCIBLES AT DUMFRIES IN 1795. He was shocked at the treatment of the men, and concludes that it afforded ‘* another striking instance of the necessity of paying a due regard to the feeling of soldiers, and of treating them as men of good principles, whose culpability may pro- ceed more from mistaken notions than from depravity. It also affords a striking instance of the paramount call, on those under whose direction they are placed in their native country, that their treatment be not such as to loosen and destroy those finer feelings and render the people desperate, regardless of their own character, disaffected to the Govern- ment, and transplant a spirit of hatred and revenge, in place of the fidelity, confidence, and attachment of other times.”’ The Strathspey Fencibles after leaving Musselburgh was. quartered for varying periods in the towns of Dundee, Ayr, Edinburgh, Irvine, and, finally, Edinburgh, where it was. disbanded in April, 1799. Such is the history of these exciting couple of days in June, 1795, and their tragic consequences. There is one man whose opinion we would all like to have heard on these two incidents. He, apparently never recorded it. Yet what would we not have given to have seen the glint in those: wonderful eyes when he heard the facts recounted? 27th November, 1914. Chairman—G. MAcLEop STEWaRT, V.P. Amber and Jet in Ancient Burials: Their Significance. By Nona LeBour, Corbridge-on-Tyne. What could have been the reason that primitive man and his descendants, down to the present day, found such wonderful properties and virtues in the substances, Amber and Jet? Why have they been so frequently discovered in ancient graves of Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age periods, in Roman urns, in Greek tombs, and in different parts of Europe, and even as far as. China, the substances being sometimes found together side by side, often alter- AMBER AND JET IN ANCIENT BuRIALS. 107 nately in necklaces or other ornaments? How is it that in our own times still, we hear or read of Amber being worn for a particular purpose for luck, and used as a charm or remedy in certain ills? The Managing Director of Harrod’s Stores in London, Mr Richard Burbidge, has been good enough to inform me that his firm sell Amber at the present time, set as a jewel, to prevent cold and for the cure of rheumatism. It might be interesting in this paper first to see of what niaterials Amber and Jet are composed, and if there is any cause which would account for such a great and mysterious value being attached to these substances, also to show some of the uses to which they were put from earliest times, and to mention finds of them in various parts of Britain and elsewhere, and more especially in Galloway, where articles of Amber and Jet—but more especially Jet, or Lignite, as it is often called—have been found in the interesting Neolithic and Bronze Age burials so frequently met with. AMBER. Amber is a fossil resin or pitch, an exudation product, principally of the Pinus succinifer, a now extinct variety of pine of the Tertiary period. It has been found in varying amounts at numerous widely separated localities, but always under conditions closely resembling .one another. The better known localities are the Prussian coast of the Baltic, the coast of Norfolk, Essex, and Suffolk, and as far as Deal, the coasts of Sweden, Denmark, and the Russian Baltic provinces, in Galicia, Westphalia, Poland, Norway, Swit- zerland, France, Upper Burmah, Sicily, Mexico, the United States at Martha’s Vineyard and in New Jersey. Usually the pieces found are small, but large ones sometimes occur and ene of the largest on record weighed 18 Ibs., and is now in the Berlin Museum. Amber comes now, as for thousands of years, mainly from the Baltic, where it occurs in strata of Lignite-bearing sands of Oligocene Age.1| Amber was in Greek ‘‘ electron,”’ 1 The Non-Metallic Minerals, by George Merrill, 1904, p. 378. 108 AMBER AND JET IN ANCIENT BURIALS. the parent word of our term electricity. Pliny says that ‘‘elector’’ was a synonym for the sun. The prophet Ezekiel (chap. i., v. 4 and 27) describes im his Vision of God the fire which seemed to come from the Throne like the colour of Amber—the appearance of the like- ness of the glory of the Lord which caused Ezekiel to fall upon his face (B.c. 595). Schliemann found a considerable amount of Amber from the Baltic in the graves of Mycenz,? and the frequent allusions to it in the works of Latin writers of the first and succeding centuries testify to its popularity in the Roman world. Probably the very earliest allusion in literature to the ornamental use of Amber appears in Homer’s ‘Odyssey (xv., 460). It was brought through the Phoenician trade with Greece. In later times Amber was brought by the overland trade down from the Baltic to the mouth of the Po,’ and from thence further south. In the classical times it seems to have been only in exceptional cases that Amber was applied to the uses of art, and as Greek influence increased the taste for it disappeared in Italy. It was only towards the end of the republican age that it gradually came into favour again, and then as a material for ladies’ orna- ments, such as bracelets, pins, and rings, and for adorning ‘bedsteads and similar furniture. Under the Empire, it was more fashionable than it had ever been. The ruddy Amber, especially if transparent, was thought much of, but the bright yellow, of the colour of Falerian wine, was liked best of all.4 Amber was one of the first substances used by man for personal decoration, and was also employed at a very 2 Mycene, by Dr Henry Schliemann, p. 208, ‘‘an enormous quantity of Amber beads. . . All these beads had no doubt been strung on thread in the form of necklaces, and their presence in the tombs among such large treasures of golden ornaments seems to prove that Amber was very precious, and considered a magnifi- cent ornament in the time of the early Mycenian kings.” ‘‘ Pre- cious was the Amber, and worth a banquet of wine. sang a poet.’’ “‘An artistic golden necklace set with Amber, like the sun’’ (Odyssey, xvili.. 296). 3 ‘‘Myths of the Precious Stones,’ Cornhill Magazine, N:S., vol. i., 1883, pp. 590-91. 4 Dr Oskar Seyffert, Classical Antiquities, p. 208. : AMBER AND JET IN ANCIENT BurRIALs. 109 early period for amulets and medicinal purposes. More or less shapeless pieces of rough Amber, marked with circular depressions, have been found in Prussia, Schleswig-Holstein, and Denmark in deposits of the Stone Age. These depres-. sions are sometimes regularly disposed, at other times irre- gularly, and seem intended to imitate similar depressions found on large stones and rocks, often the work of man’s hand, but occasionally the result of natural causes. The former points to a religious significance connected with the cup and ring-marks in Stone Age Burials. Hoerne’s opinion is that they marked the resting place of the spirit or spirits believed to animate the stone, and hence it is probable that the Amber fragments were used as talismans and amulets.° To the ancient Greek poets the grains of Amber were the tears annually shed over the death of their brother Phaeton by the Heliades, after grief had metamor- phosed them into poplars growing on the banks of the Eridamus. In Norway Amber, carved into animal forms, has been found in tumuli at Indersoen. These curious objects were worn as amulets, and the peculiar forms were supposed to enhance the power of the material, giving it special virtues. It is interesting here to note what is said by Sir Thomas Brown in his Religio Medici on this subject :: ‘* A Roman urn preserved by Cardinal Farnése, whose family) was celebrated by the protection it gave to art, contained besides a great number of gems with heads of gods and goddesses, an elephant of Amber.’’ Ina previous paragraph he remarks :—‘‘ Now that they (the dead) accustomed to bury with them things wherein they delighted, or which were dear to them, either as farewells unto all pleasure or vain apprehension that they might use them in the other world, is testified by all antiquity.’’6 Walter Johnson in his Byways in British Archeology says he is inclined to put the Amber found in British barrows in the shape of beads in a special class. It shielded the living - 5 Curious Lore of Precious Stones, by George F. Kunz, Quebec, p. 376. 6 Browne’s Religio Medici, p. 142. Temple Classics Ed., 1897. 110 AMBER AND JET IN ANCIENT BURIALS. from evil, and it sped the departed on their long journey. Decoration, therefore, was not the sole reason for its selec- tion.? Elton tells us in his Origins of History that the sup- position that Amber beads were credited with occult virtues is strengthened by folk-lore. Such beads were probably believed to render the wearer proof against witchcraft and to preserve him from the influence of the evil eye. There is a superstition about the lammer beads of Tweedside which have been found in ancient barrows there. They were worn as charms for the cure of weak eyes and sprained limbs, and handed down as heirlooms from one family to another. “Black luggie lammer bead, Rowan tree red-thread, Put the witches to their speed.’’8. In the North of Scotland an amber bead is commonly used to remove a chaff from the eye of man or beast. The reason is that Amber sometimes contains insects, and attracts small particles if it is rubbed, and that the human eye that is troubled by an insect or particle flying into it finds relief by dropping a tear.® In olden time a present of Amber beads was given to a bride by her mother. The Macdonalds of Glencoe owned four Amber beads as a cure for blindness. A perforated stone having the appearance of Amber semi-transparent, red on the surface and water-worn, was in 1874 used in Lewis as curative for man and beast when serpent-bitten, and sent to villagers for miles round for that purpose. Quite lately there has been published in Dano-Norwegian an article, the title of which translated into English is “‘ Yellow Amber, what it is, and where it is found.’’!° It contains some in- teresting facts about the use of Amber in Norway. After mentioning the finding of Amber in Egyptian and Assyrian ce graves, the writer says that “‘ the Baltic peoples sent their 7 Byways of Archeology, by Walter Johnson, p. 391. 8 Wilson’s Scottish Archeology, p. 304. aan 2 Black’s ‘‘ Scottish Amulets,’”’ Proc. Scot. Ant. Scotland, 1898. 10 Aller’s Familie Journal, signed V. F., June, 1914. AMBER AND JET IN ANCIENT BURIALS. 111 Amber southward into Greece and Rome, and it is a curious fact that now, wherever the best Amber finds occur, Greek and Roman coins come to light [in Norway]. The trading with these peoples brought men into touch with the culture of more civilized lands, and helped the spread of geographical knowledge. The Scandinavians used Amber themselves as a decorative material, as exemplified by the grave-finds and the mention of it in the Sagas.’’ Amber mining is also described. ‘‘ The wearing of it is not much the fashion now, and the greater part is used by merchants for barter in Africa and Asia, or made into mouthpieces for smokers. Here and there among the country people one sees a little girl with a necklace of Amber beads, or one with a clear yellow heart of it hung round the neck." In olden days they thought the Amber beads prevented inflammation, cured pain, swollen glands, and sore throat. In Pliny’s time, shortly after the birth of Christ, it was believed that Amber beads relieved goitre and cretinisin, then, as now, prevalent in Southern Alpine districts. This belief is not quite for- gotten, as grandparents in Norway often put Amber beads round the baby’s neék so that it shall cut its teeth easilv. In Russia the nurse will wear an Amber necklace so thar sickness shall not fall on either nurse or child.!2 In China Amber is worn as an amulet against sickness of all kinds, and something of the same belief exists in Morocco and Algiers.”’ This summary of a very interesting article from a Scandinavian source helps to throw light on the feelings with which Amber was regarded in Norway and Sweden, and the last remark as to customs concerning its use in Morocco and Algiers may also apply to the Berbers, an offshoot of ll This reminds one of the almost universal custom in Rome, where the little girls nearly always wear an Amber necklace and the boys wear an Amber bead as an amulet. 12 At St. Monan’s, Grizzle . . ingeniously concealed in the folds (of the infant’s) inner garments a large lammer (amber) bead, ever famous for its mystic virtues in repelling the invisible opera- ‘tions of fairy influence supposed to have been exercised upon these defenceless being (J. W. Jack, Glenfarg and District, Past and Present, pp. 89-90). 112 AMBER AND JET IN ANCIENT BURIALS. the race who migrated through North Africa to our islands, and were the ancestors of the Picts of Galloway. We will now briefly enumerate the localities where Amber has been found in ancient burials of Great Britain and Ireland, as well as in other parts of Europe. First, as to England, it has been found in the East Riding of York- shire, in Norfolk, in Derbyshire, Brighton in Sussex—where a cup of solid Amber was found, 34 inches high—at Dart- moor in Devonshire, and in Wiltshire.’ In Wales we hear of barrows in the county of Flintshire in which Amber has occurred, and in many cases in several of these barrows Amber and Jet have been found together.4 In Ireland, in the Cave of Ballynamintra, Co. Waterford, in a Neolithic grave, was an Amber bead with a polished stone celt and the bone handle of a knife. In Scotland at Rothie in a _ Bronze Age barrow, and at Balonashanner, near Forfar, Jet and Amber beads were found. The best authentic example from Scotland is the Amber necklace found with two gold discs under a barrow at Huntiscarth, Orkney; in this case the beads are badly made. In Aberdeenshire Boece and Pennant both vouch to finds.!6 Dayell in his Darker Super- stitions of Scotland, p. 635, says that “‘ the virtues ascribed to Amber may be collected from its universal use in our own remembrance, especially among the more humble.’’ We now come to the actual finding of Amber in Galloway. Dr R. de Brus Trotter has, or had, an Amber bead got from Mrs Shaw, of Auchencairn, originally belonging to her father, a man named Carnochan, a famous smuggler, who affirmed that he took it from some adders who were busy making it at the Fort of Knockintal. Although he was on horseback, he was pursued by the adders, but they were all drowned in trying to follow him through a ford. He 13 Sir Richard Colt Hoare records 33 cases of Amber in Wilt- shire barrows, and strings of beads from 20 to 100, in one case 1000, mostly of red Amber. 14 Wilson’s Archeology of Scotland. 15 Sir John Evans, Stone Implements. 16 Dr Robert Munro, Palcolithic and Terramara Man, p. 344. AMBER AND JET IN ANCIENT BURIALS. 113 wore the bead on a ribbon round his neck until one day he lost it when digging for worms in his garden. Thereafter his luck all left him, his cargoes were taken, his boats lost, and he was reduced to penury. Many years after the bead was found again in the garden by one of his grand-children, but the luck did not return, and the curative properties of the bead seem to have been lost. The Rev. George Wilson, of Glenluce, gave a collection to the Scottish Antiquaries of objects from that district, including gt1 articles of Jet, Shale, and Cannel Coal, con- sisting of bracelets, circular and penannular, buttons, rings, beads, and a pendant. Some of the beads were found in urns near Stranraer, also Amber beads, one flat, much decayed, were found near a bronze chisel, probably part of an interment. Another Amber bead, remarkably small— three-sixteenths of an inch and reddish in colour, with a neat hole of about one-twentieth of an inch in diameter, was also found in the neighbourhood of Glenluce. Nillsson, in his Stone Age in Scandinavia, mentions the finding of small axes of Amber in Stone Age gallery graves containing skeletons of women, of a form mentioned by Horace in the Odes, iv., 4-20, and called by him and by Xenophon in the ‘‘ Anabasis,’’ iv., 1, Amazon Axes, found amongst other ornaments of Amber. It has the appearance of the double axe, and no doubt has a religious meaning, and indeed we are led by all the evidence brought forward to suppose that a very great deal of the superstitions con- nected with Amber and Jet in ancient burials has religion for its primary cause. Primitive man may have thought that these mysterious yellow stones were the dwelling of some benign spirit, who would act as a sort of guardian angel, and he would not be able to conceive a future life as being very different from the one here. So the amulet would be as much needed for his welfare and happiness as his spear for defence in the unknown world, and more especially on the perilous journey thither. It is also quite possible to believe that, finding that these substances of Amber and Jet attracted small objects of a material nature, they would assume the unseen would be attracted in a similar manner, 114 AMBER AND JET IN ANCIENT BURIALS. and that the extraordinary property of both substances of becoming electric when rubbed would seem to them to come direct from a spirit, to whose protection they were gladly committed by their relations and friends when placed in the tomb. Dr Robert Munro tells us of the objects of Amber found in the graves in the cemetery of Hallstadt. There were 171 in those of inhumation, and 106 in those of incineration, the latter had more abundant objects of luxury other than Amber.!” In the Marne district in France, where there were Neolithic interments in caves, among other objects referred to are beads and pendants of Amber.1® During the Stone Age in Prussia Amber was put to multifarious uses, beads, necklaces, buttons, studs, pendants, and pieces rudely formed into human figures having been found in graves in that district.!8 Baltic Amber has been found in abundance in the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland, chiefly beads, and similar beads have come from tombs in Central Italy. The fact that Amber attracted light sub- stances, and that it emitted a faint perfume, invested it with an essence of mystery.2° Pliny, xxxvii., 3, says in his time the peasant women in the regions west of the Po wore Amber necklaces for medical reasons, and he enumerates ailments for which it was a specific. A few years ago an interesting discovery of Amber was made in the island of San Domingo. It appears to exist in considerable amount, and often in pieces of good size suitable for making carved objects of much beauty. It possesses a florescence simiar to that seen in some of the Amber from Catania, Sicily. A tradition exists in the island that the natives used to burn a substance of this kind, probably this very Amber, and it is said they still do so, burning all they can find. A similar fluorescent Amber occurs in the interior of Mexico, asso- 1” Hastings’s Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ‘‘ Death and Disposal of the Dead,”’ vol. iv., p. 471. 18 Hastings’s Encyclopedia of * Religion, vol. iv., p. 467, ““Rambles and Studies in Bosnia.”’ 19 Hastings’s Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 8, p. 145. 2D Op. cits vol. i1-, p. 422: AMBER AND JET IN ANCIENT BURIALS. 115 ciated with the same tradition, and it is known that the Aztecs in some of their temple rites thus used Amber, and that it was also employed, probably for incense, in the early Catholic churches in Mexico by the Spaniards. The coin- cidence in the two cases is highly interesting.” It is impossible to leave the subject of Amber—especially when considered in connection with burials—without touch- ing upon what may be regarded as yet another, if quite distinet, of its sepulchral relations. I refer to its unique property as a perfect preserver through the ages of flies, spiders, reptiles, crustaceans, and plants of past geological times—a property which possibly was the first to fix atten- tion upon this strange and beautiful substance, and one which certainly adds to the curiously ‘‘ uncanny ’’ features likely to impress the untutored mind of early man with the supernatural character of Amber. In a paper written many years ago by the Rev. P. B. Brodie, M.A., F.G.S., a well-known geologist and specialist on fossil insects, he refers to ‘‘a wonderful collection of Amber belonging to Lady James Murray at Leamington, collected by the late Mr Fairholme on the coast of Ramsgate, where it is washed up after storms, but probably derived from the Baltic. One large piece was valued at £500. Most of the bits contained a variety of beautifully preserved insects, among which were many entire diptera, orthoptera, coleoptera, hymenoptera, and one lepidopteron. There were some plants, including a dicotyledonous leaf and stems, and a small shell, apparently a fresh-water mollusk, with a portion of the animal protruding from the interior. From the lucid clearness and beautiful transparency of Amber, and its soft yellow colouring, the insect remains can be most easily examined. It would seem thet they must have been caught suddenly by the liquid resin as it oozed out of the pines and were entombed alive, which will account for their wonderful state of preservation. Many of them no doubt were caught while on the trees, and even the cunning spider, 21 G. F. Kunz, Amber, St. Domingo, Gems and Precious Stones, p. 302. 116 AMBER AND JET IN ANCIENT BURIALS. while watching for his prey, was, like the biter bit, enveloped also Dr H. Conventz, of Dantzig, at the meeting of the British Association at Ipswich in 1895, gave an account of the Baltic and English Amber, and their vegetable contents. After describing the different forms of Tertiary Amber, he referred to the occurrence of succinite on the coasts of Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk; the specimens are usually found with seaweed thrown up by the tides. Dr Conventz described the method of examining the plant fragments enclosed in Amber, and compared the manner of preservation with that of recent plant sections mounted in Canada balsam. The Amber was originally poured out from the roots, stems, and branches of injured or broken trees in the form of resin, which on evaporation became thickened, and finally assumed the form of succinite or some similar substance. In addi- tion to the exceptionally well-preserved tissues of coniferous trees, the Baltic Amber has yielded remarkable specimens of monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous flowers.’’ Dr Con- ventz also says in his enlarged paper on the subject that the Geological Age of this Amber period may be assumed to belong to the Eocene period when the Amber forests flourished. According to the Mining Journal, the war is likely to have a serious effect on the Amber trade, as the great bulk of supplies is derived from the deposits in the neighbourhood of Dantzig and KGnigsberg. The production from the Royal Amber Mines in 1913 amounted to 427 metric tons, as com- pared with 400 tons in 1912. There is an increasing demand for raw material to the extent of 20 per cent., so much so that the price was advanced by the State factory at the beginning of 1914. 22 The Nature, Origin, and Geological History of Amber, with an Account of the Fossils which it contains, by the Rev. P. B. Brodie, M.A., F.G.S., Vice-President of the Warwickshire Naturalist Wield Club, pp. 2 and 7. : 23 Transaction of Section K, p. 855, British Association Report. Ipswich, 1895. AMBER AND JET IN ANCIENT BURIALS. 117 Ter. The Latin name for Jet is ‘‘ Gagates,’’ from Gages, a river and town in Lycia. It is a resinous coal-black variety of Lignite, belonging chiefly to the Upper Lias, sufficiently dense to be carved into small ornaments. According to Professor Phillips, it is simply a coniferous wood, and still shows its characteristic structure under the microscope. It has been known since early British times on the shores of Whitby, in Yorkshire. The largest piece found near there weighed 5180 lbs. The material is now regularly mined, both in the cliffs and inland, and is one of the most valuable productions of the Yorkshire coast.7* Jet has been found among the Palzolithic remains in the caves of the “‘ Kes- serloch,’’ near Thayngen, Canton of Schaffhausen, Switzer- land, shaped by flint chips. Quite possibly Jet, as well as Amber, was already regarded as possessing a certain talis- manic virtue. When worn as ornaments, they were believed to become a part of the very body and soul of the wearer, and were guarded with jealous care. In the Paleolithic cave deposits of Belgium Jet appears. The fragments had been rounded and pierced through the centre. This indi- cates their use as parts of a necklace or as pendants. Neck- laces, bracelets, and rings have been especially formed for the wearing of talismanic gems, since the stones could easily be so set that they would come in direct contact with the skin. | Sometimes impressions of Ammonites and other fossils appear on surfaces of Jet, and prove that it had passed through a condition of softness. The best Jet, a hard, compressed mass, occurs near the base of Upper Lias, and less plentifully in other parts of that rock. Soft Jet of less firm texture is obtained from the sandstone and shales of the Oolitic series. | Again, at Sandsend, on the Yorkshire coast, below the proper Alum shales, which are about 70 feet thick, the bold cliffs below present much the same series of hard shales with sub-calcareous and ferruginous balls and Jet beds with accompanying nodules as at Saltwick. 24 Non-Metallic Minerals, by George Merill, p. 348. 2 Curious Lore of Precious Stones, Kunz, pp. 22-24. 118 AMBER AND JET IN ANCIENT BURIALS. These cliffs, it is probable, furnished the Romans with the Jet which was employed in making ornaments, the station of ‘“Dunum Sinus,’’ Densley Bay, being conveniently near.* Jet has sometimes been called cannel coal, and this substance has often been used as the nearest approach to Jet, when it was not at hand at the time required. Bede, in his Ecclesiastical History, describes the Gagates as being in his time an important production of Britain, and he speaks of its quality when burnt of driving away serpents, and tells us how, when warmed by rubbing, it has the same attractive quality as Amber.?’ Solinus says :—‘‘In Britain there is a great store of Gagates or Geate, a very fine stone like a jewel; if the Quality, it is exceedingly light; if the Nature ‘of it, it burns in water, and is quenched with oil; if the Virtue, it has an attractive power when it is heated with rubbing.”’ ‘‘ The rare qualities of it authors thus describe ’” :— “‘ Black shining Jet like a gem is found Among the Britains on their rocky ground, *Tis smooth and light, and being rubbed to heat, Will draw, like Amber, straws of chaff and wheat; Sprinkled with water, it will fire take; But oil will quench it, and the heat quite slake.’’28 Sir John Evans says that Jet has been found in both Neolithic and Bronze Age graves in Wiltshire, Yorkshire, Northumberland, Derbyshire, Heathery Burn, Stanhope, Co. Durham, and at Little Cressingham, Norfolk, near the neck of a contracted skeleton, where Amber beads were mixed with those of Jet. Near Holyhead at Pen-y-Bonc a very: fine set of Jet beads, probably a necklace, was found with flat plates in between them. At Cruden, Aberdeenshire, Jet and Amber beads were found together, as also at Assynt, Ross. At Balcalk, Tealing, a beautiful Jet necklace was found, the most complete example ever found in Scotland, consisting of 140 26 Phillip’s Geology of the Yorkshire Coast, p. 150. 27 Bede’s History. lib. 1.. c. 1. 28 “Yorkshire Natural History 200 Years Ago,’’ from the Naturalist, November, 1914, p. 344. AMBER AND JET IN ANCIENT BURIALS. 119 bugle beads, 6 flat plates, and a pendant of Jet or Cannel Coal.28 At Houston, Renfrewshire, in a cist were many trinkets of a jet black substance, and more necklaces at Aberlemno, Forfarshire; also at Rothie, Aberdeenshire; at Rafford, Elginshire; Fordoun House, Kincardineshire; and Leuchland Toll, near Brechin. A very fine necklace of Jet was found at Mount Stewart, Bute, of more than one hun- dred pieces. Buttons of Jet appeared in a cist at Dundee Law, also on Crawford Moor, Lanarkshire. Jet beads have been found at Keith Marshall in East Lothian and at Aber- nethy, and a ring of Jet in a cairn in the parish of Inchinnane about the year 1753, and preserved in the parish of East Kilbride as an inestimable specific in diseases.” In this paper our chief interest lies in the finds of Jet in Galloway, and, above all, in the description of those dis- covered by the Rev. George Wilson, of Glenluce. He gave his collection from this district to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, where it may be seen in their museum. An entire Jet bracelet was found when digging in a crannog at Barnhapple Loch, Derskilpin, Glenluce, October, 1880. The beads found in a small clay urn, ‘we are told, were met with near Stranraer, where a railway cutting was being made in 1859-1860. Mr Wilson says :—‘‘ The Rev. Daniel Con- way, of St. John’s Chapel, Port-Glasgow, wrote to me as follows :—‘ Some navvies came upon a number of clay urns about the size of a coffee cup, and having the herring-bone design marked upon them near the rim on the outside. I had one of them in my hands, in which were found a number of Lignite beads. The urns were placed with mouth down- wards on a slate-like slab.’’’ He continues :—‘‘ The labourer to whom he referred me described the locality where they were found. It is a little to the east of the signal box at Stranraer Station, where a cutting runs through the march fence of Little Airds Farm. Father Conway promised to try and trace the beads for me, and in January, 1878, wrote to me :—‘ I herewith send you the beads, and give you 29 Proc. of Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. 14, p. 26. % Evans’ Ancient Stone Implements, p. 452. 120 AMBER AND JET IN ANCIENT BURIALS. every assurance that they are the very articles found at the railway cutting.. I have not any doubt that there were ten, but they have got broken, except one or so.’ The urns had crumbled to pieces, and I gave the beads to the Museum..’’ pun There is the record of the finding by Mr Beckett, of Stoneykirk, of a very beautiful Jet necklace in an urn in which were 188 finely wrought perforated pieces of Lignite, and Mr Ludovic M‘L. Mann thinks without doubt the lignitic beads were strung to form a necklace, and says the pieces were intensely black and in perfect condition, all the surfaces being beautifully smooth and possessing a subdued silken lustre. The mention of the beautiful Jet cross recovered from Lochrutton crannog when excavated by the Society must not be omitted. It consists of a circular central disc, two- eighths inch in diameter, with two arms, the other two arms being broken off and awanting. The disc is flat on each face and rounded on the edge, and the arms have the corners | rounded off and terminate in flat triangular ends with a moulding at base. When complete the cross would measure i4 inches between the points of the transverse arms. On the face of the cross the disc has been inlaid with a floriated Greek Cross, and with small discs between the outer ter- mination of the arms. The reverse is plain, except the disc which bears the letters J. H. C., with a mark of contraction over them. The form of the lettering on the cross suggests an early 13th century date.’’5! 31 Ancient and Hist. Mon. Com., Fifth Report, Kairkcud- bright. p. 177. ARCHAIC SCULPTURINGS. 121 The Archaic Sculpturings of Dumfries and Galloway ; being chiefly Interpretations of the Local Cup and Ring Markings, and of the Designs on the Early Christian Monuments. By Lupovic MacLettan Mann, F.S.A.(Scot.). The sculpturings in this district may be divided chrono- logically into eight sections, two of which belong to the Pre- historic or Pagan periods, two to the Transitional period, and four to the Early Christian centuries. I do not propose to touch upon any sculpturings later than the middle of the 12th century A.D. The sections are :— (a) Pagan—(1) Rock sculpturings of cup and rings and analogous designs of the late Neolithic and Bronze Age —say, 2000 B.C. to 300 B.C. ; (2) Designs on slate of the middle Bronze Age (b) Transitional Early lron Age or very Early Mediaeval Centuries Say, 1000 B.C. (3) Designs on lignite discs, probably of the say, 300 B.C. to 800 a.pd.; (4) Carved stone balls of the same period as No. 3. (c) Christian—(5) Earliest Christian Monuments, chiefly at Stoneykirk—say, 450 A.D. ; (6) Recondite Pictish Symbols on rock surface at Anwoth—say, 500 to 700 A.D.; (7) Christian Monuments of, say, 600-goo A.D.; and (8) Christian Monuments of the latest Pre-Norman period, such as the Ruthwell Cross From the above table it will be seen that the archaic Say, QOO-I1100 A.D. carvings and etchings on stones and rock surfaces of Dum- fries and Galloway extend back through the whole of the pre-Norman section of the Christian Era to the time of the birth of Christ. Yet further distant in point of time are designs cut on stone, belonging to the three or four cen- turies before Christ. Even before that era can be clearly perceived the relics 1 ARCHAIC SCULPTURINGS. of the Bronze Age stretching away into the chronological depths, divisible into phases, century by century, according to that era’s slowly changing art motives and the evolution of its domestic tools and pottery. The Bronze Age, with more than its dozen stages (if one reckons, for example, by the evolution of the most common of implements—the metal axe), possessed its rock and stone sculpturings. Beyond these very remote times, but with less clearness, a glimpse can be obtained of an era when metals were so scarce as to be almost unknown. Of this transitional period Galloway possesses perhaps the most important British site. On the site was discovered the débris of a village—its broken pots and dishes, beads, ornaments, axes, choppers, saws, scrapers, and a lavish variety of other tools and weapons.+ Behind that time again was the late Neolithic stage, also exceedingly well represented in Galloway by a semi-subter- ranean village in the Mye Plantation, Stoneykirk parish,? and an ordinary overground site near Glenluce.$ Of the easily perishable relics of these ancient civilisa- tions, such as wooden and textile objects, few survive, but of the imperishable things in granite, lignite, porphyry, grey- wacke, and other stones, there is still a goodly show. I have endeavoured above to marshal them in their chronological sequence and to value them in the fulness of their centuries, but only tentatively, for the science of pre- historic archeology is still in its infancy. le Cups AND RINGS. I shall now first of all deal with the earliest known | Scottish carvings (excepting those of the little known 1 Some thousands of the relics from this site have been ex- hibited and described (Scottish Exhibition of National History, 1911, Preh. Catalogue, pp. 820-822, items 1-42). 2 Report on the Excavation of Pre-historic Pile-Structures in Pits, in Wigtownshire (Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. xxxvii., 1903, pp. 370-415); and A Galloway Stone-Age Village (Trans. Dumfries and Galloway Soc., N.S., vol. xx., 1909, pp. 74-95); Scot. Hx., 1911, Cat., p. 817, items 4-6, and p. 869, items J and K. 3 Scot. Hx., 1911, Cat., p. 817, items 3 and 8. ~—_ ARCHAIC SCULPTURINGS. 123 ‘* Azilian ’’ or ‘‘ Oransay’’ period, having an antiquity of some 30,000 years, which is represented in the south-west of Scotland by a single relic, a bone harpoon-head found in the river Dee).* For several centuries curious carvings, beyond doubt the work of human hands, have been noticed with astonishment on boulders, cist-covers, stretches of living rock, and on standing stones. During these recent centuries they have been the subject of much speculation, and have hitherto been deemed to involve insoluble problems. They con- stitute an outstanding puzzle in pre-historic research. The markings are of great variety, the designs being scarcely ever repeated. They are placed upon the stone surface with- out any apparent system or order, and no investigator has been able to see any ment. The markings consist of small cups, usually circular and rarely oval. Sometimes cups alone are present, from ae rhyme or reason ”’ in their arrange- one or two up to several scores. Sometimes they are accom- panied by concentric rings round some of the cups. The rings are sometimes eccentric, and are occasionally penan- nular, or like broken rings. The rings vary in number, and often through their breaks gutters or ducts radiate from the centre. The gutters occasionally trail off in an apparently aimless fashion, and sometimes link themselves up to some other part of the carvings. The ducts may enlarge them- selves into broad channels, sometimes of longish ovoid form, and in some instances in the south-western district these broadened channels are natural fissures or hollows in the rock, which appear to have been utilised by the pre-historic sculptor to form part of his pattern. Sometimes there are seen rectangular figures with or without gutters connecting them up to other parts of the sculpturings. Rarely spirals 4 Scot. Ex., 1911, Cat., p. 811, item 17; An Oransay Shell- mound, etc., by Mr A. Henderson Bishop, in P.S.A.S., vol. x