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occur with a correspondent of the novelist in the district so exact and enthusiastic as Train. Endless scenes and incidents in the romances are associated with Galloway. That "Young Lochinvar, who came out of the West," belonged to the gay Gordons of Kenmure line. Helen Walker, who practised in real life the virtues with which fiction has invested the imaginary character of Jeanie Deans, lies buried in Irongray churchyard, with a memorial-stone set up by the novelist to mark her humble grave. On a tragical incident in the history of the Stair family Scott founded "The Bride of Lammermoor." Robert Paterson, prototype of "Old Mortality," was a Galloway wanderer, and set up his first stone at Caldons, Wigtownshire. The creeks of Warroch often sheltered Dirk Hatteraick; and at Ravenshall the Smugglers' Cave is still pointed out. Still earlier associations of importance are rife in the district. At Tongland lived the Italian friar whose ridiculous attempt at flying drew down the satire of Dunbar; and there, too, within the old castle of Comstone, Montgomery is supposed to have written his famous "Cherrie and Slae." Grounds now included within the Maitland property are thought to be referred to in the verse

How every blossom, branch, and bark,

To pen the pleasures of that park,
Against the sun did shyne.

I pass to poets to compile

In high, heroic, stately stile,

Whase muse surmatches myne.

But as I looked myne alane

I saw a river rin

Out owre a steepy rock of stane,
Syne lighted in a lin,

With tumbling and rumbling

Among the rocks around,

Devalling and falling

Into a pit profound.

To the Kenmure family mentioned above an interesting reference is made in the form of a letter to John Gordon, seventh Viscount, son of William, attainted, written by the Young Pretender during his short stay at Holyrood, Oct., 1745:—

"The continued loyalty of your family, with your father's unhappy suffering in 1715, and the repeated assurances I have received from all hands of zeal and attachment to my family, leaves me no room to doubt you will take the first opportunity to appear in the cause of your King and country. Being determined to make no longer stay in these parts than to give time to some friends who are now on their way from the Highlands to join me, I judge it proper you may repair to the army with what men you can get together, without delay, when you may be assured of meeting with particular marks of my favour and friendship." It was the old story:

At length the news ran through the land

The Prince had come again;

That night the Fiery Cross was sped

O'er mountain and through glen;

And our old baron rose in might,

Like a lion in his den,

And rode away across the hills
To Charlie and his men.

In 1824 the Kenmure dignities were restored in the person of Viscount William's grandson, to the great joy of the family bard, who exultingly

wrote

The Gordon hath his father's name, renowned in love and war;

Hail him, Kenmure's noble Viscount, and Lord of Lochinvar.

The title became extinct in 1847 on the death of Adam, eighth Viscount. Church matters, especially such as relate to the Covenanting period, but suggested, naturally enough, by graves in lone moorland places, or, as at Wigtown, indicating a great judicial crime, appear frequently in Mr. Harper's volume. For the earliest settlement of all, St. Ninian's at Whithorn, he cautiously follows the excellent memoir prepared by Bishop Forbes. Dedicated to St. Martin of Tours, from whom craftsmen were obtained to shape its walls after the Roman fashion, the White House on the promontory became the burying-place of St. Ninian himself, and was for ages famous as a sanctuary not only in North Britain, but throughout the whole Anglo-Saxon Kingdom, and among the races of

Ireland.

Even from Gaul, Alcuin, the counsellor of Charlemagne, sent epistles to the brethren at Whithorn, while in later times the ancient shrine continued renowned as a pilgrimage whither princes, churchmen, and warriors came from distant parts by sea and land to pay their devotions. In days nearer our own, and for another form of piety, a second shrine was found at Anwoth, in the church of the "Godly Rutherford." "Blessed birds" he described the sparrows and swallows to be who built their nests there. On removing to St. Andrews, and when known to be on his death-bed, he was summoned with impotent malice to appear before the Privy Council. "Tell them," he said, "I have got a summons already before a superior judge and judicatory, and it behoves me to answer that summons first. Ere your day arrives I will be where few kings and great folks come." When the messengers returned to the Council and intimated that the author of "Lex Rex" was dying, Parliament, with a few dissenting voices, voted that he should not be allowed to die in the College. "Yes," remarked Lord Burleigh, "you have voted the honest man out of his College, but you cannot vote him out of heaven." Crocketford, near Dalbeattie, has an interest of a different kind-an interest centering not in piety but in delusion-possibly fraud. Here Luckie Buchan and her crazed followers set up their camp on being removed from Closeburn parish, and here the cunning old prophetess died (1791), and so late as 1846 was buried in the same grave with the last of her followers. In expectation of her direct translation to heaven, the body had for many years been secretly kept above ground among her own people. She described herself, as most readers know, to be the Woman clothed with the Sun mentioned in the Revelation, and blasphemously pretended to have brought forth, in the person of the Rev. Hugh White, the manchild who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. “I never heard (wrote Scott in St. Ronan's Well'), of alewife that turned preacher except Luckie Buchan in the West." According to Mr. Harper, their fame as wheelwrights and spinners extended all over the South of Scotland. Buchanite women introduced into Galloway the two-handed spinning-wheel,

The

and found employment in preparing linen yarn for families in the neighbourhood. They possessed a community of goods, and appeared to live comfortably and peaceably together, each in turn, as they paid the debt of nature, being interred within a small plot of ground behind their dwelling-house in the village of Crocketford. On visiting the spot, fourteen graves were pointed out to our author by an old woman now occupying the premises, still owned, he was given to understand, by a descendant of this strange sect of Buchanites. Among the old ecclesiastical foundations within the Stewartry, Mr. Harper gives short but appreciative notices of Dundrennan, the last resting-place in Scotland of Queen Mary after her flight from Langside; of Sweetheart, or New Abbey, the burialplace of the munificent Devorgilla, daughter of Alan, Lord of Galloway, and mother of John Balliol, for a short time King of Scotland; and of Lincluden, now more emphatically than even in Burns' time a "roofless tower, where the wa'flower scents the dewy air.” Here the rambler may recall scenes associated with the most stirring periods of Scottish history; and here, too, he is brought in presence of the last resting-place of Lady Margaret, eldest daughter of Robert III., Countess of Douglass and Lady of Galloway and Annandale. She died at Threave Castle about 1440, and was interred in a magnificent tomb built into the north wall of the choir, near the altar, when that part of Lincluden Abbey was erected by Archibald the Grim. The fabric, with lands around, has for generations formed part of the patrimonial inheritance of the old Catholic house of Terregles, but munificent supporters, as they have always been, of the new foundation of St. Andrews, at Dumfries, only little was laid out, and that at distant intervals, to keep up a ruin so intimately associated with the ancient faith as the Abbey of Lincluden. Drawings, however, are now (1876) being made with the view of something being done to prevent the fine choir at least from crumbling to dust. Mr. Harper, our readers may be informed, does not enlarge unduly upon, far less confine himself in rambling to what is old or ecclesiastical. Threave and Bombie, Maxwells and MacLellans, Kircudbright Castle and Town, Black Morrow Wood and Buchan Forest-from Nith to Dee, from Dee to

Portpatrick-all places, families, and customs, are made to render up their quota of entertaining matter. About things new and industrial he has also much pleasant gossip. At Arbigland, the birth-place of Paul Jones, and at St. Mary's Isle, which he plundered, the rover of the Solway naturally turns up in the character of an American privateer. In his own neighbourhood of Dalbeattie, again, the author has many fresh and informing notes to set down about the granite works carried on there, and the important part such industry has played in the erection of docks at Liverpool and embankments on the Thames. We could have wished even more about that wandering minstrel, William or "Wull" Nicholson. M'Diarmid's edition of his pieces is not very widely known nowadays; and when insipid watery versifiers are so rife it is not desirable, however odd or thriftless he may have been, to let writers like the author of "The Brownie of Blednoch" slip into forgetfulness.

THE HERRIES PEERAGE.

ONE of the three noblemen recently (April, 1884) called to the Upper House as a Peer of the United Kingdom is Marmaduke Constable-Maxwell, known in the Peerage of Scotland as Baron Herries of Terregles. The new Peer, who was born in 1837, is eldest son of that William Constable-Maxwell of Everingham, Yorkshire, declared by the House of Lords, in 1858, entitled to the Barony of Herries of Terregles (Kirkcudbrightshire) as lineal heir of the body of Agnes Lady Herries, daughter and co-heir of William Lord Herries, son of Andrew, who sat as a Lord of Parliament in Scotland, 1505-6, and was slain at Flodden 9th September, 1513. Agnes, Lady Herries, became the wife of Sir John Maxwell, afterwards called of Terregles, second son of Robert, fifth Lord Maxwell. Judged to have claimed the dignity of a Peeress in her own right,

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