8. For a' but Wallace, wha ance spent a night. The author of the ar ticle Lanark in the Statistical Account, W. Lockhart of Baronald, Efq; who seems to be a learned and ingenious man, tells us that "We are informed by Fordun that, in the year 1297, Sir W. Wallace began at Lanark his first great military attempt, by defeating the English fheriff of Lanarkshire, and putting him to death. Blind Harry relates this event at greater length, affixing the fame date to it. He tells us, that Wallace having married a lady of the name of Braidfoot, the heiress of Lammington, lived with her privately at Lanark that, while there, a fcuffle enfued in the street between Wallace, accompanied by a few friends, and a body of Englifhmen: that Wallace being overpowered, fled firft to his own houfe, and thence made his escape to Cartlane-Craigs: that the fheriff Hefilrig, or, as Fordun calls him, Heliope, seized upon his wife, and put her to death; to revenge which, Wallace gathers a few friends, attacks Hefilrig in the night, and kills him and 240 Englishmen.-Tradition tells us, that the house where Wallace refided was at the head of the Caftlegate, oppofite the church, where a new house has lately been erected. It also acquaints us, that a private vaulted arch led from this house to Cartlane-Craigs on the river Moufs, but without the fmalleft probability."

Befides a cave on a steep precipice on the banks of this laft romantic river, called Wallace Cove, and fuppofed to be a place of refuge for that patriot, there is on the Clyde, below the Corra Fall, a rock called Wallace Chair. Innumerable places in Scotland are fuppofed to have been dignified by the prefence of that illuftrious hero.

Each rugged rock proclaims great WALLACE' fame,
Each cavern' wild is honour'd with his name;
Here in repofe was ftretch'd his mighty form, '
And there he shelter'd from the night and storm.
So the grim lion, lash'd with hiffing showers,
Seeks fome huge cave, and flumbers out the hours:
But when the tempefts cease, he shakes his mane,
And stalks tremendous o'er the fandy plain;
With living flames his flashing eye-balls glow,
And horror fits upon his wrinkled brow.

9. She's frefer than the bloom in May. --We learn from the old poets that the Queen of Fairies was eminently beautiful. In the Faithful Shepherdess, the Satyr says to that character,

Brighteft! if there be remaining
Any service, without feigning
I will do it---were I fet

To catch the nimble wind, or get
Shadows gliding on the green;

Or to steal from the great Queen

Of the Fairies, all ber beauty.—A& 5. fc. loft.

So too in the fong of Tamlane, published in the Minfirely of the Scon tifb Border:

On we lap, and away we rade,

Down to a bonny green;
We lighted down to bait our steed,
And we faw the fairy queen,

With four and twenty at her back,

Of ladies clad in green :

Though the king of Scotland had been there,

The worst might hae been his queen.

Spenfer makes his principal hero, King Arthur, perform all his deeds in order to be rewarded with the love of the Queen of Fairies. Alfo in Chaucer's Rime of Sir Thopas, the knight, like Spenfer's Arthur, goes in fearch of the Fairy Queen.

Grata quies patriae, fed et omnis terra fepulchrum.--Sannazarius,

Gg

11. Farewell, where we did refide,

Rocky caves of Moufs

Of the Moufs we have spoken in another note. It runs through the parish of Lanark, which it separates. Its banks are every where steep and woody; which steepness increases to an awful height not far from Lanark, where it makes a fweep before entering the Clyde. Here the banks are about 400 feet in height, and are finely varied by the different appearances of rocks, wood, and precipice. To those who have not feen it, the steep banks of the Esk at Roflin will give an imperfect idea. At the bottom runs the river Moufs, in the bed of which one must walk in order to traverfe this den. At every turn of the Moufs the fcene varies; and wherever there is a prominent rock on the one fide there is a correfponding recefs on the other. In one of the most dreadful of thefe rocks is the cave which, tradition fays, fheltered Wallace.

In Cririe's Scotish Scenery there are fome very poetical lines relative to the Moufs, and an engraving from a fine view by Walker.

12. The cave in the round rocky wa'.-In the immenfe circular rocks facing the Fall of Corra, beneath the pavilion, there is feen a small cave, above a bush or small tree growing from the rock. This is probably that here alluded to by the fairies.

13. Hemton! Hamton !-Reginald Scott tells us, " Our grandams maides were wont to fet a boll of milke before Incubus and his coufin Robin Goodfellow, for grinding of malt or mustard, and sweeping the house at midnight; and that he would chafe exceedingly if the maid or goodwife of the houfe, having compaffion of his nakednefs, laid afide clothes for him, besides his meffe of white-bread and milke, which was his standing fee. For in that cafe he faith, What have we bere? Hemton! Hamten! here will I never more tread nor · flampen.”—Difcoveries of Witchcraft, 1585, p. 85.

15. On Douglas' wild and favage fiream.---The water of Douglas flows into the Clyde above the Fall of Bonniton. The country is very

wild towards the mouth of it; but about nine miles up becomes beau. tiful, where the village of Douglas and the Caftie are. This is the the wing of a large new house built, where the principal feat was of the most warlike and illuftrious private family in Europe.

16. Down Stonebyres at midnight hour.---The Fall of Stonebyres is about two miles and a half below the Corra Lin, and is fo called from the adjacent estate of Stonebyres. This fall is about eighty feet high, having, like the Corra Lin, three distinct stages. The cataract is best feen from a point a little below it, and its wild impetuofity contrasts finely with the placidity of the river beneath. The Bonniton Fall contrafts with the calm flow of the Clyde above; in the Corra there is nothing of this. The hanging rocky banks on each fide of the Stonebyre Lin are skirted with coppice wood; and upon the whole there is feldom to be seen so grand a scene,

16. And paffing Bothwell's massy tower.---This castle, a few miles be low Hamilton, is accounted by fome the noblest decayed ftructure in Scotland. Its ruins are two hundred and thirty-four feet in length, and ninety-nine in breadth. The river Clyde here makes a fine sweep, and immediately oppofite the old castle are the ruins of the Priory of Blantyre. On both fides of the river the banks are steep and fringed with wood.

17. Never up the Leven take.---This river, celebrated by Smollet, who was born on its banks, flows from Lochlomond, and enters the Clyde at Dumbarton Castle.

18. Native land, farewell ! farewell !---From a fong in Percy's Reliques of Antient Poetry, written by Bishop Corbett, and entitled, A proper new ballad, entitled the Fairies Farewell, or God-a-mercy Will; to be fung or whistled to the tune of The Meadowes Brown, by the learned;

by the unlearned, to the tune of Fortune." We learn that the fairies did actually disappear about this time, though the good Bishop did not know the true reason.

Witnefs thofe rings and round-e-lays

Of theirs, which yet remain,
Were footed in Queen Mary's days,
On many a graffy plain :
But fince of late Elifabeth,

And late James came in ;
They never danc'd on any heath,
As when the time hath been.

END OF THE NOTES.

ERRAT A.

Page 139, line 3. For cherry bushes read cherry blushes,

10. For inform'd read informed.