A few days after this date, the prospect of the horrid end at the Gallowgreen induced one of the prisoners to commit suicide in the Tolbooth of Paisley. The final note in the tragedy is sounded in a minute of date June 9, when the Presbytery "did appoint the whole members to spend some time this night with the condemned persons who are to die to-morrow, and did allot to each one or two of the brethren one of the sentenced persons to be dealt with by them, AND WAITED UPON TO THE FIRE." The threatened sacrifice of six victims would not appear to have rid the country as yet of the Evil One. He was now at large-indeed, under form of law, more jubilant than ever, and in appearance not unlike the Bargarran invention-"a black, grim man." And yet the Kirk must not be made to bear all the blame. Belief in witchcraft was a feature of the age, and that too in highly accomplished circles, legal and medical, as well as clerical. Even in enlightened England, and fifty years after this Paisley case, Ruth Osborne, aged seventy, was drowned in Herefordshire by a disorderly mob for the imputed offence of bewitching her neighbours. One of the ringleaders was certainly hanged for his share in the riot, but the occurrence at Tring is sufficient to show how widely and recently the delusion prevailed. So far as the Renfrewshire case was concerned, the King's advocate would appear to have spoken as if he sincerely judged the stories in his brief to be capable of verification, and were in point of fact verified by the witnesses produced. Nor can it be said that, in comparison with other trials of the kind, he pressed unduly for a conviction. The law recognised the imputed offence, and it must therefore be held as capable of proof. Judging from such "Accounts" and "Abbreviates" as have been preserved, the Court may be said to have looked with clear enough eyes on the case, but unhappily with lesser light to guide them than shines in our better days. The most that may be inferred from the case is that no profession of faith, however orthodox, nor any form of belief, however sincerely entertained, can secure either just judgment or merciful conduct. From a case raised in the local courts soon after the trial, it would appear that Neil Snodgrass, writer, was subjected to some abuse for the part he had taken

in defending the witches. Trials for witchcraft, or at least a belief in the superstition, still exist in the Highlands. The last execution for witchcraft in Scotland took place at Dornock, Sutherlandshire, in 1727. Although the month was June, it has been handed down by tradition that the weather was very severe, and the poor old woman victim, after being brought out to get tied to a tar barrel, sat composedly warming herself by the fire prepared to consume her, while the other instruments of death were being made ready. The Acts of Queen Mary and King James authorising such executions were formally repealed by the Parliament of Great Britain, in June, 1736. It became from that time incompetent to institute any suit for "witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment, or conjurations,' and only a crime to pretend to exercise such acts, liable to be punished by imprisonment and pillory. So far as the Bargarran family is concerned, it is pleasant to know that they came to distinguish themselves more honourably in what is now one of the most extensive industries of the district, the Lady Bargarran and her daughters being the first to engage in the spinning of a fine linen thread, "cheap and white, and known by experience to be much stronger than the Dutch,” and the reputation of which they sought to protect by a trade-mark made up from the family armorial bearing of three covered cups.

PAISLEY ABBEY.

IN noticing the "Judicial Records of Renfrewshire," occasion was taken to point out how few of those gathered together by Mr. Hector bore in even an indirect way on the history of the grand old Clugniac Abbey so intimately associated with the ecclesiastical renown of the county. Soon after, a neat quarto volume was issued from the Paisley press (Parlane, 1876), dealing exclusively with the Abbey, and illustrating many noteworthy occurrences which took place within or around the monastic fabric reared and endowed by the piety of the early Stewarts in the

cradle of their race. While nothing but fair words need to be set down regarding either the design or execution of the work, it still leaves large spaces in the historic canvas to be filled in by some patient antiquary less intent on what records suggest than on what they describe. The author is mentioned as gathering some scanty lichens-antique, yellow, or gray, as they may happen, encrusted through seven centuries in the Gothic mouldings of the Abbey. To preserve some fragmentary leaves, too obscure it may be for the general historian, yet precious, because history is a mosaic, and composed in its finest pictures of infinitesimal details which are apt to be overlooked-to diverge where divergence is useful, to linger where delay is sweet; this, and no more, do these pages propose; no more do they offer to the reader; and, to avoid disappointment, for no more should the reader look. With the delicious ease of a practised writer, a hand at once firm and delicate, and an eye careless a little of things near or common, but fond of setting forth affinities or relations, dim at first, apt to be overlooked, but never quite inappropriate-the writer passes down through century after century of the Abbey annals, reflecting a very large portion of the country's ecclesiastical history. The rise of the first Stewards and the arrival on the White Cart of the monks from Wenlock are illustrated by the foundation and other charters of the Abbey. Of the founder himself much interesting information is given in a series of chapters relating to Walter the Steward and his wife Marjory, daughter of King Robert Bruce. In the early days of the Abbey, when the Cart stole softly among lilies and reeds, when the outer land waved with corn-fields, and the near land was white and red with orchard blooms, nothing, says the writer, could have been fairer or more sweet to see than the rich and low land set in its upland frame. But it is a picture of the past. Orchard and corn-fields are historical. "In the black and slow winding water a cress, or a lily, or a reed would now be as great an anachronism as if the Crusading Steward who gave gifts to the Abbey long ago were to appear with cross upon his armour in the dull, modern streets." Of Marjory it is remarked the people will have her a Queen-a monument of unknown origin must be "Queen

Blearie's Stane." Marjory (so the story is told) on an autumn day was following the sport she loved, chasing the fallow deer in her husband's oak forest of Paisley, when she was thrown from her horse, not far from her own castle, and lifted, with dead young face, from among the drifted leaves. They raised the cross of stone on the spot where the Princess fell. Long after every vestige of the oak forest was gone, among the low tufts of broom and wild roses stood this old solitary cross. If ever inscription was carved upon it, it was long worn away, but the fond tradition of its name lingered tenaciously around it, not to be dispelled by any reasoning that Marjory was not a Queen. After having been. preserved for four centuries the cross was demolished. Some hundred years ago, when Pennant wrote, part of it formed the lintel of a neighbouring barn-a vandalism not to be wondered at when the Abbey itself was despoiled, and its images, even then, lay broken in the open cloister among the rank neglected grass (p. 110). Imagination, it is mentioned elsewhere, can hardly realise the despoiling of the Abbey by commmand of the reforming lords-how the monks fled from their convent through the eager streets, gray old men who had almost forgotten how the outside world fared, whose grandfathers remembered Paul Crawar, the Bohemian, and his burning at St. Andrew's Cross; and men in their early prime, who were youths when Wishart, the gentle laird, preached on the Mauchline Moor among the broom and the May flowers; and as vainly, it may be asked, how the young Abbot Claude demeaned himself among his flying monks- how he brooked to see the crowd of townsmen assail his convent gates, and to hear his voice derided and ignored within his own Abbey walls— how he saw with helpless hands all the wealth of the shrines scattered, and scorned by the meanest there as an unholy thing-scorned by poor weak men and women who had often crept to the gate of the monastery, taken their dole from the hands of the monks, and asked their blessing and their prayer. The work of that August day laid choir and north transept in ruins, shattered the house of the abbot, the guestan-house, library, scriptorium, filled the cloister-court with the debris of the beautiful still retreat; but it left the nave entire, desolate,

profaned indeed, but with no mark of violence. It left a church for the people --a church for worship in the new form amidst the ruins of the old (p. 270). Under some such conditions were the sacred shrines thrown down, and the pleasant gardens laid waste. The splendour of the fabric may be inferred from the circumstance that the mason work was held in charge by the same craftsman who looked after Melrose and Glasgow-that Melrose, whose chroniclers gave their old abbot no undue praise when they wrote "Jocelinus episcopus sedem episcopalem dilatavit et Sancti Kentegerni ecclesiam gloriose magnificavit." The work of the despoiler in these days was authorised by a missive commanding certain of those to whom it was addressed to pass incontinent to the kirk, "and tak' doun ye haill images yrof, and bring furth till ye kirkyard, and birn them oppingly, and syklyk cast doun ye alteris and picturis, and purge ye said kirks of all kinds of monuments of idolatry." For much pleasant gossip concerning those who bore rule in the Abbey, Abbot Shaw among the rest, for the erection of the chapel dedicated to St. Mirren, and for the early burghal life of Paisley, the "lichens" themselves must be turned over and the old-world fragrance inhaled. Less is made of some of the Abbey benefactors than might have been expected-pre-eminently of the great House of Lennox-Saxon most likely in origin, but swarming in a century or two with Celtic Donalds and Gilchrists. In consideration of various pious motives set forth in charters, certain Earls of the first Lennox succession granted lands in different parts of their wide domain to the stately Abbey on the Cart, and gave the monks beside many valuable fishing rights within the rivers Clyde and Leven. By one charter, dated on the day of St Valentine the Martyr (14th February), 1273, Earl Malcolm granted to the Abbey and Convent of Paisley certain fishings in the Leven, with land adjoining the highway to Dumbarton; also wood from his grove of Bonhill, pasture for eight oxen, and such wood and stone as might be required to carry on the fishing. Other charters provide for the protection of the monks when passing through lonely places to look after their Leven or other fishings.