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fountains, etc. in Scotland. He was, according to Camerarius, an abbot of Pittenweem, in Fife, from which situation he retired, and died a hermit in the wilds of Glenurchy, A. D. 649. While engaged in transcribing the Scriptures, his left hand was observed to send forth such a splendour, as to afford light to that with which he wrote; a miracle which saved many candles to the convent, as St Fillan used to spend whole nights in that exercise. The 9th of January was dedicated to this saint, who gave his name to Kilfillan, in Renfrew, and St Phillans, or Forgend, în Fife. Lesley, lib. 7, tells us, that Robert the Bruce was possessed of Fillan's miraculous and luminous arm, which he inclosed in a silver shrine, and had it carried at the head of his army. Previous to the battle of Bannockburn, the king's chaplain, a man of little faith, abstracted the relic, and deposited it in some place of security, lest it should fall into the hands of the English. But, lo! while Robert was addressing his prayers to the empty casket, it was observed to open and shut suddenly; and, on inspection, the saint was found to have himself deposited his arm in the shrine, as an assurance of victory. Such is the tale of Lesley. But though Bruce little needed that the arm of St Fillan should assist his own, he dedicated to him, in gratitude, a priory at Killin, upon Loch Tay.

In the Scots Magazine for July, 1802 (a national periodical publication, which has lately revived with considerable energy), there is a copy of a very curious crown-grant, dated 11th July, 1487, by which James III confirms to Malice Doire, an inhabitant of Strathfillan, in Perthshire, the peaceable exercise and enjoyment of a relic of St Fillan, called the Quegrich, which he, and his predecessors, are said to have possessed since the days of Robert Bruce. As the Quegrich was used to cure diseases, this document is, probably, the most ancient patent ever granted for a quack medicine. The ingenious correspondent, by whom it is furnished, further observes, that additional particulars concerning St Fillan are to be found in BALLENDEN'S Boece, Book 4, folio ccxiii, and in PENNANT's Tour in Scotland, 1772, pp. 11, 15.

THE EVE OF SAINT JOHN.

is a ruined chapel. Brotherstone is a heath, in the neighbourhood of Smaylho'me Tower.

This ancient fortress and its vicinity formed the scene of the author's infancy, and seemed to claim from him this attempt to celebrate them in a Border tale. The catastrophe of the tale is founded upon a well-known Irish tradition.

THE Baron of Smaylho'me rose with day,
He spurr'd his courser on,
Without stop or stay, down the rocky way

That leads to Brotherstone.

He went not with the bold Buccleuch,
His banner broad to rear:

He went not 'gainst the English yew
To lift the Scottish spear.

Yet his plate-jack' was braced, and his helmet was laced,
And his vaunt-brace of proof he wore;
At his saddle-gerthe was a good steel sperthe,
Full ten pound weight and more.

The baron return'd in three days' space,
And his looks were sad and sour;

And weary was his courser's pace,

As he reach'd his rocky tower.

He came not from where Ancram Moor'
Ran red with English blood;
Where the Douglas true, and the bold Buccleuch,
'Gainst keen Lord Evers stood.

Yet was his helmet hack'd and hew'd,
His acton pierced and tore;

His axe and his dagger with blood embrued,
But it was not English gore.

He lighted at the Chapellage,

He held him close and still;
And he whistled thrice for his little foot-page,
His name was English Will.

<< Come thou hither, my little foot-page;
Come hither to my knee;

Though thou art young, and tender of age,
I think thou art true to me.

<< Come, tell me all that thou hast seen,
And look thou tell me true!
Since I from Smaylho'me tower have been,
What did thy lady do?»

My lady, each night, sought the lonely light,
That burns on the wild Watch fold;
For, from height to height, the beacons bright
Of the English foemen told.

SMAYLKO ME, or Smallholm Tower, the scene of the fol-
lowing ballad, is situated on the northern boundary of
Roxburghshire, among a cluster of wild rocks, called
Sandiknow Crags, the property of Hugh Scott, Esq. of
Harden. The tower is a high square building, surround-
ed by an outer wall, now ruinous. The circuit of the
outer court, being defended, on three sides, by a pre-
cipice and morass, is accessible only from the west, by«
a steep and rocky path. The apartments, as is usual in
a Border keep, or fortress, are placed one above another,
and communicate by a narrow stair; on the roof are
two bartizans, or platforms, for defence or pleasure,
The inner door of the tower is wood, the outer an iron
grate; the distance between them being nine feet, the
thickness, namely, of the wall. From the elevated si-Yet the craggy pathway she did cross,
tuation of Smaylho'me Tower, it is seen many miles in
every direction. Among the crags, by which it is sur-
rounded, one, more eminent, is called The Watchfold;
and is said to have been the station of a beacon, in the
times of war with England. Without the tower-court

<< The bittern clamour'd from the moss,
The wind blew loud and shrill;

To the eiry beacon hill.

1. The plate-jack is coat-armour; the vaunt-brace, or wambrace, armour for the body; the sperthe, a battle-axe.

2 See an account of the battle of Ancram Moor, subjoined to the ballad.

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'Yet there sleepeth a priest in the chamber to the That lady sat in mournful mood;

east,

'And my footstep he would know.'

<< O fear not the priest, who sleepeth tothe east! 'For to Dryburgh2 the way he has ta'en; 'And there to say mass, till three days do pass, 'For the soul of a knight that is slayne.'

<< He turn'd him round, and grimly he frown'd; Then he laugh'd right scornfully

'He who says the mass-rite for the soul of that knight 'May as well say mass for me.

The black rood of Melrose was a crucifix of black marble, and of superior sanctity.

* Dryburgh Abbey is beautifully situated on the banks of the Tweed. After its dissolution, it became the property of the Haliburtons of Newmains, and is now the seat of the right honourable the Earl of Buchan. It belonged to the order of Premonstratenses.

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The King of England had promised to these two baróns a feudal grant of the country, which they had thus reduced to a desert; upon hearing which, Archibald Douglas, the seventh earl of Angus, is said to have sworn to write the deed of investiture upon their skins, with sharp pens and bloody ink, in resentment for their having defaced the tombs of his ancestors, at Melrose.-Godscroft. In 1545, Lord Evers and Latoun again entered Scotland with an army, consisting of 3000 mercenaries, 1500 English Borderers, and 700 assured Scottishmen, chiefly Armstrongs, Turnbulls, and other broken clans. In this second incursion, the English generals even exceeded their former cruelty. Evers burned the tower of Broomhouse with its lady (a noble and aged woman, says Lesley), and her whole family. The English penetrated as far as Melrose, which they had destroyed last year, and which they now again pillaged. As they returned towards Jedburgh, they were followed by Angus, at the head of 1000 horse, who was shortly after joined by the famous Norman Lesley, with a body of Fife-men. The English, being probably unwilling to cross the Teviot while the Scots hung upon their rear, halted upon Ancram Moor, above the village of that name; and the Scottish general was deliberating whether to advance or retire, when Sir Walter Scott'

1 The editor has found no instance upon record of this family having taken assurance with England. Hence they usually suffered dreadfully from the English forays. In August, 1544 (the year preceding the battle), the whole lands belonging to Buccleuch, in West Teviotdale, were harried by Evers; the out-works, or barnkin of the tower of Branxholm, burned; eight Scots slain, thirty made prisoners, and an immense prey of horses, cattle, and sheep, carried off. The lands upon Kale Water, belonging to the same chieftain, were also plundered, and much spoil obtained; thirty Scots slain, and the Moss Tower (a fortress near Eckford) smoked very sore. Thus Buccleuch had a long account to settle at Ancram Moor.MURDIN'S State Papers, pp. 45, 46.

Fair maiden Lylliard lies under this stane,
Little was her stature, but great was her fame;
Upon the English louns she laid mony thumps,
And when her legs were cutted off, she fought upon her stumps.
Vide Account of the Parish of Melrose.

It appears, from a passage in Stowe, that an ancestor of Lord Evers held also a grant of Scottish lands from an English monarch. << I have seen,» says the histo

of Buccleuch came up, at full speed, with a small but chosen body of his retainers, the rest of whom were near at hand. By the advice of this experienced warrior (to whose conduct Pitscottie and Buchanan ascribe the success of the engagement), Angus withdrew from the height which he occupied, and drew up his forces behind it, upon a piece of low flat ground, called Panier-heugh, or Peniel-heugh. The spare horses, being sent to an eminence in their rear, appeared to the Eng-rian, «< under the broad seale of the said King Edward glish to be the main body of the Scots, in the act of flight. Under this persuasion, Evers and Latoun hurried precipitately forward, and, having ascended the hill, which their foes had abandoned, were no less dis

mayed than astonished to find the phalanx of Scottish spearmen drawn up, in firm array, upon the flat ground below. The Scots in their turn became the assailants. A heron, roused from the marshes by the tumult, soared away betwixt the encountering armies: «O!» exclaimed Angus, « that I had here my white goss-hawk, that we might all yoke at once!»-Godscroft. The English, breathless and fatigued, having the setting sun

I, a manor called Ketnes, in the countie of Ferfare, in Scotland, and neere the furthest part of the same nation northward, given to John Eure and his heirs, an

cestor to the Lord Eure that now is, and for his service

done in these partes, with market, etc. dated at Lanercost, the 20th day of October, anno regis 34.»STOWE'S Annals, p. 210. This grant, like that of Henry, must have been dangerous to the receiver.

Stanza xlviii.

There is a nun in Dryburgh bower.

The circumstance of the nun, « who never saw the

and wind full in their faces, were unable to withstand day,» is not entirely imaginary. About fifty years ago, the resolute and desperate charge of the Scottish lances. in a dark vault, among the ruins of Dryburgh-Abbey, an unfortunate female wanderer took up her residence No sooner had they begun to waver, than their own al-which, during the day, she never quitted. When night lies, the assured Borderers, who had been waiting the fell, she issued from this miserable habitation, and event, threw aside their red crosses, and, joining their went to the house of Mr Haliburton, of Newmains, the countrymen, made a most merciless slaughter among editor's great-grandfather, or to that of Mr Erskine, of the English fugitives, the pursuers calling upon each Shielfield, two gentlemen of the neighbourhood. From other to << remember Broomhouse!»- Lesley, p. 478. their charity she obtained such necessaries as she could In the battle fell Lord Evers, and his son, together with be prevailed upon to accept. At twelve, each night, Sir Brian Latoun, and 800 Englishmen, many of whom she lighted her candle, and returned to her vault; aswere persons of rank. A thousand prisoners were suring her friendly neighbours that, during her abtaken. Among these was a patriotic alderman of Lon-sence, her habitation was arranged by a spirit, to whom don, Read by name, who, having contumaciously re- she gave the uncouth name of Fatlips; describing him fused to pay his portion of a benevolence, demanded as a little man, wearing heavy iron shoes, with which from the city by Henry VIII, was sent by royal autho- he trampled the clay floor of the vault, to dispel the rity to serve against the Scots. These, at settling his damps. This circumstance caused her to be regarded, ransom, he found still more exorbitant in their exacby the well-informed, with compassion, as deranged in tions than the monarch.-REDPATH's Border History, her understanding; and by the vulgar, with some dep. 553. Evers was much regretted by King Henry, gree of terror. The cause of her adopting this extrawho swore to avenge his death upon Angus; against ordinary mode of life she would never explain. It was, whom he conceived himself to have particular grounds however, believed to have been occasioned by a vow, of resentment, on account of favours received by the that, during the absence of a man, to whom she was earl at his hands. The answer of Angus was worthy attached, she would never look upon the sun. of a Douglas. << Is our brother-in-law offended,»1 said lover never returned. He fell during the civil war of he, « that I, as a good Scotsman, have avenged my ra1745-6, and she never more would behold the light of vaged country, and the defaced tombs of my ancestors, day.

upon Ralph Evers? They were better men than he, and I was bound to do no less-and will he take my life for that? Little knows King Henry the skirts of Kirnetable: I can keep myself there against all his English host.»-Godscroft.

Such was the noted battle of Ancram Moor. The spot on which it was fought is called Lyliard's Edge, from an Amazonian Scottish woman of that name, who is reported, by tradition, to have distinguished herself in the same manner as Squire Witherington. The old people point out her monument, now broken and defaced. The inscription is said to have been legible within this century, and to have run thus:

Her

The vault, or rather dungeon, in which this unfortunate woman lived and died, passes still by the name of the supernatural being, with which its gloom was tenanted by her disturbed imagination, and few of the neighbouring peasants dare enter it by night.

CADYOW CASTLE.

ADDRESSED TO THE

RIGHT HON. LADY ANNE HAMILTON.

THE ruins of Cadyow, or Cadzow Castle, the ancient baronial residence of the family of Hamilton, are situ

1 Angus had married the widow of James IV, sister to king ated upon the precipitous banks of the river Evan,

Henry VIII.

2 Kirnetable, now called Cairntable, is a mountainous tract at the head of Douglasdale.

about two miles above its junction with the Clyde. It was dismantled at the conclusion of the civil wars,

during the reign of the unfortunate Mary, to whose during the night, in a house not far distant. Some incause the house of Hamilton devoted themselves with a distinct information of the danger which threatened generous zeal, which occasioned their temporary ob-him had been conveyed to the regent, and he paid so scurity, and, very nearly, their total ruin. The situ- much regard to it, that he resolved to return by the ation of the ruins, embosomed in wood, darkened by same gate through which he had entered, and to fetch ivy and creeping shrubs, and overhanging the brawling a compass round the town. But, as the crowd about torrent, is romantic in the highest degree. In the im- the gate was great, and he himself unacquainted with mediate vicinity of Cadyow is a grove of immense fear, he proceeded directly along the street; and the oaks, the remains of the Caledonian Forest, which an- throng of people obliging him to move very slowly, ciently extended through the south of Scotland, from gave the assassin time to take so true an aim, that he the Eastern to the Atlantic Ocean. Some of these trees shot him, with a single bullet, through the lower part measure twenty-five feet, and upwards, in circumfe- of his belly, and killed the horse of a gentleman, who rence, and the state of decay, in which they now ap- rode on his other side. His followers instantly endeapear, shows, that they may have witnessed the rites voured to break into the house whence the blow had of the druids. The whole scenery is included in the come; but they found the door strongly barricaded, magnificent and extensive park of the Duke of Hamil- and, before it could be forced open, Hamilton had ton. There was long preserved in this forest the breed mounted a fleet horse,' which stood ready for him at a of the Scottish wild cattle, until their ferocity occasion-back-passage, and was got far beyond their reach. ed their being extirpated, about forty years ago. Their regent died the same night of his wound.»-History of appearance was beautiful, being milk-white, with black Scotland, book v. muzzles, horns, and hoofs. The bulls are described by ancient authors, as having white manes; but those of latter days had lost that peculiarity, perhaps by intermixture with the tame breed.'

In detailing the death of the Regent Murray, which is made the subject of the following ballad, it would be injustice to my reader to use other words than those of Dr Robertson, whose account of that memorable event forms a beautiful piece of historical painting.

2

<< Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh was the person who committed this barbarous action. He had been condemned to death soon after the battle of Langside, as we have already related, and owed his life to the regent's clemency. But part of his estate had been bestowed upon one of the regent's favourites, who seized his house, and turned out his wife, naked, in a cold night, into the open fields, where, before next morning, she became furiously mad. This injury made a deeper impression on him than the benefit he had received, and from that moment he vowed to be revenged of the regent. Party rage strengthened and inflamed his private resentment. His kinsmen, the Hamiltons, applauded the enterprise. The maxims of that age justified the most desperate course he could take to obtain vengeance. He followed the regent for some time, and watched for an opportunity to strike the blow. He resolved, at last, to wait till his enemy should arrive at Linlithgow, through which he was to pass, in his way from Stirling to Edinburgh. He took his stand in a wooden gallery,3 which had a window towards the street; spread a feather-bed on the floor, to hinder the noise of his feet from being heard; hung up a black cloth behind him, that his shadow might not be observed from without; and after all this preparation, calmly expected the regent's approach, who had lodged,

Then were formerly kept in the park at Drumlayrig, and are still to be seen at Chillingham Castle in Northumberland. For their nature and ferocity, see Notes.

2 This was Sir James Ballenden, Lord-justice-clerk, whose shameful and inhuman rapacity occasioned the catastrophe in the text.Spottiswoode.

3 This projecting gallery is still shown. The house to which it was attached was the property of the Archbishop of St Andrews, a natural brother of the Duke of Chatellerault, and uncle to Bothwellhaugh. This, among many other circumstances, seems to evince the aid which Bothwellhaugh received from his clan in effecting his purpose.

The

De

Bothwellhaugh rode straight to Hamilton, where he was received in triumph; for the ashes of the houses in Clydesdale, which had been burned by Murray's army, were yet smoking; and party prejudice, the habits of the age, and the enormity of the provocation, seemed to his kinsmen to justify his deed. After a short abode at Hamilton, this fierce and determined man left Scotland, and served in France, under the patronage of the family of Guise, to whom he was doubtless recommended by having avenged the cause of their niece, Queen Mary, upon her ungrateful brother. Thou has recorded, that an attempt was made to engage him to assassinate Gaspar de Coligni, the famous admiral of France, and the buckler of the Huguenot cause. But the character of Bothwellhaugh was mistaken. He was no mercenary trader in blood, and rejected the offer with contempt and indignation. He had no authority, he said, from Scotland, to commit murders in France; he had avenged his own just quarrel, but he would neither, for price nor prayer, avenge that of another man.―Thuanus, cap. 46.

The regent's death happened 23d January, 1569. It is applauded, or stigmatized, by contemporary historians, according to their religious or party prejudices. The triumph of Blackwood is unbounded. He not only extols the pious feat of Bothwellhaugh, «< who,» he observes, << satisfied, with a single ounce of lead, him, whose sacrilegious avarice had stripped the metropolitan church of Saint Andrews of its covering;» but he ascribes it to immediate divine inspiration, and the escape of Hamilton to little less than the miraculous interference of the Deity.-Jebb, vol. ii, p. 263. With equal injustice it was, by others, made the ground of a general national reflection; for, when Mather urged Berney to assassinate Burleigh, and quoted the examples of Poltrot and Bothwellhaugh, the other conspirator answered, << that neither Poltrot nor Hambleton did attempt their enterprise, without some reason or consideration to lead them to it: as the one, by hyre, and promise of preferment or rewarde; the other, upon desperate mind of revenge, for a lytle wrong done unto him, as the report goethe, accordinge to the vyle trayterous disposysyon of the hoole natyon of the Scottes.>> -MURDIN'S State Papers, vol. i, p. 197.

1 The gift of Lord John Hamilton, commendator of Arbroath.

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