Lang Andrew
Highways and Byways in the Border
old bridge near at hand, (across which they say that the stones for building the Abbey were brought these many centuries agone), it is more of peace than of melancholy that the place speaks.
Yet there is sadness too, when one thinks of the – at least on this occasion – sorely maligned woman who lay there in grievous suffering in the darkening days of that October of 1566. "Would that I had died at Jedworth," she sighed in later years. She had been spared much, the Fates had been less unkind, if death had then been her part. And not least, she might have been spared the malignant slanders of the historian Buchanan, who, at any rate in this matter, showed himself a master of the art of suppressing the true and suggesting the false.
When, according to Buchanan, news was brought to Mary at Borthwick Castle of the wounding of Bothwell by "a poor thief, that was himself ready to die," – how, one wonders, would the famous "Little Jock Elliot" have relished that description of himself? – "she flingeth away in haste like a mad woman, by great journeys in post, in the sharp time of winter." As a matter of fact, when the news of Bothwell's mishap reached the Queen, she was already on her way to Jedburgh, to hold there a Circuit Court; and the time, of course, was not winter, but early October, not unusually one of the pleasantest times of the whole year in the south of Scotland.
Arrived at Jedburgh, says Buchanan, "though she heard sure news of his life, yet her affection, impatient of delay, could not temper herself, but needs she must bewray her outrageous lust, and in an inconvenient time of the year, despising all discommodities of the way and weather, and all danger of thieves, she betook herself headlong to her journey, with such a company as no man of any honest degree would have adventured his life and his goods among them." Buchanan's estimate of the Queen's escort on this occasion is not flattering to the Earl of Moray, (the "Good Regent," Mary's half-brother,) the Earl ol Huntly, (Bothwell's brother-in-law,) and Mr. Secretary Lethington, who formed part of that escort. These, one would suppose, were scarcely the men most likely to have been selected to accompany her had it been "outrageous lust" that prompted her journey. And as to this "headlong" dash to the side of the wounded Bothwell, of which Buchanan makes so much, they would call now by an ugly name such statements as his if they chanced to be made on oath. Buchanan must have known very well that the Queen transacted business for a week in Jedburgh before she set out to visit her wounded Warden of the Marches, – a visit which, after all, was official, and which under any circumstances it had been ungracious in her to refrain from making. There was no justification for speaking of her visit as "headlong," there is no warrant for such words as "hot haste," and "rode madly," which have been employed by other writers in speaking of her journey. If she made "hot haste" there, (at the end of a week devoted to business,) she made equally hot haste back again that same day. When one has to ride fifty or sixty miles across trackless hills and boggy moors in the course of a day in mid-October, when the sun is above the horizon little more than ten hours, there is not much time for loitering by the way; the minutes are brief in which one may pause to admire the view.
Suppose that she left Jedburgh soon after sunrise, (that is to say, at that time of year in Scotland, a few minutes before 7 o'clock) going, as she certainly must have done, across Swinnie Moor into Rule Water, thence across Earlside Moor and over the Slitrig some miles above Hawick, then up and between the hills whose broad backs divide Slitrig from Allan Water, up by the Priesthaugh Burn and over the summit between Cauldcleuch Head and Greatmoor Hill, thence by the Braidlee Burn into Hermitage Water, and so, skirting the Deer Park, on to the Castle, – she would do well, in those days when draining of swamp lands was a thing unknown, and the way, therefore, not easy to pick, if she did the outward journey in anything under five hours. Hawick local tradition claims that the Queen on her way to Hermitage visited that town, and rested for a time in what is now known as the Tower Hotel; and, as corroborative evidence, a room in that inn is said to be known as "Queen Mary's Room." It may be that she did pay a flying visit to Hawick, but the chances are against her having made such a detour. It would have considerably added to the length of her journey, and there can have been small time to spare for resting.
In mid-October the sun sets a few minutes after 5 o'clock. Therefore, in returning, the Queen and her escort must have made a reasonably early start; for to find oneself, either on horseback or afoot, among peat bogs and broken, swampy ground after dark is a thing not to be courted. As it was, Mary and her horse were bogged in what has ever since been called the Queen's Mire, where years ago was found a lady's spur of ancient design – perhaps hers. The day had turned out wet and windy, – it is a way that October days have, after fine weather with a touch of frost, – and the Queen and her escort were soaked to the skin, bedraggled, and splashed to the eyes with black peaty mud from the squelching ground through which their horses had been floundering.
Even in these days, when the Border hills are thoroughly drained, you cannot ride everywhere across them in "hot haste" without having frequently to draw rein. What must they have been like in the sixteenth century, when, in addition to the rough, broken surface, and the steep braes, every hillock was a soaking mossy sponge, every hollow a possibly treacherous bog, when spots such as the "Queen's Mire" were on every hand, and every burn brimmed over with the clear brown water that the heart of the ardent trout fisher now vainly pants after? Going and coming, between Jedburgh and Hermitage, a party in Mary's day, travelling as she travelled, could not well have done the journey in less that nine hours. Truly it does not leave much time for the dalliance suggested by Buchanan, – more especially as the Privy Seal Register of that date testifies that the Queen transacted a not inconsiderable amount of public business whilst at the castle. But, poor lady, she could do no right in the eyes of certain of her subjects. She was a Catholic; and that was sufficient; even her very tolerance of other people's religion was an offence, a trap set for the unwary. Every suggestion of evil with regard to her conduct was eagerly seized on and greedily swallowed by her enemies and ill-wishers. It is so fatally easy to take away character. Especially, for some reason, in the case of one high in rank are certain people prone to believe evil, strangely gratified if they may be the first to unfold to a neighbour some new scandal against their betters. Away to the winds with Christian charity! All is fish that comes to their net; to them every scandalous tale is true, and needs no enquiry, provided only it be told against one of exalted station.
Queen Mary rode that day in the wind and the wet a matter of fifty or sixty miles. She was used to long rides, no doubt, – there was indeed no other means for her to get about the country, – and she was never one who shrank from rough weather. But wet clothes, if worn for too long a time, have a way of finding out any weak spot there may chance to be in one's frame, and the exposure and the wetting dealt hardly this time with the Queen. She was never physically strong, and of late a world of anxiety, worry, and sorrow, caused by the conduct of her husband, had drained the strength she possessed. Moreover, ever since her confinement three months earlier, she had been subject to more or less severe attacks of illness, accompanied by much pain. In her normal condition, probably the fatigue and exposure might have affected her not at all; now, it brought on a serious malady. By the morning of the 17th – the day following her long ride – she was in a high fever, and in great pain. As the disease progressed, she was seized with violent paroxysms, vomiting blood; and day by day her condition gave rise to ever more grave fear. She herself, believing that her end was at hand, took leave of the Earl of Moray and of other noblemen, expressing at the same time great anxiety regarding the affairs of the kingdom and the guardianship of her infant son after her death. But never throughout the illness did her courage falter. Lack of courage, at least, is a thing of which not even her bitterest enemies can accuse Mary Stuart.
On the evening of the ninth day of this severe illness, after a particularly acute attack of convulsions, the Queen sank, and her whole body became cold and rigid. "Every one present, especially her domestic servants, thought that she was dead, and they opened the windows. The Earl of Moray began to lay hands on the most precious articles, such as her silver plate and jewels. The mourning dresses were ordered, and arrangements were made for the funeral." 1 John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, writing from Jedburgh at the time, says that on the Friday "her Majesty became deid and all her memberis cauld, her Eene closit, Mouth fast, and Feit and Armis stiff and cauld."
Buchanan's account is that, after leaving Hermitage, "she returneth again to Jedworth, and with most earnest care and diligence provideth and prepareth all things to remove Bothwel thither. When he was once brought thither, their company and familiar haunt together was such as was smally agreeing with both their honours. There, whether it were by their nightly and daily travels, dishonourable to themselves and infamous among the people, or by some secret providence of God, the Queen fell into such a sore and dangerous sickness that scarcely there remained any hope of her life." It would be hard to conceive anything more poisonous than this, or anything less in accord with the facts. Buchanan's zeal outran his love of the truth; with both hands he flung mud at the Queen. In his eyes, any story against her was worthy of credence – or at least he wished it to appear so. As a matter of fact, before Bothwell reached Jedburgh the Queen had been dangerously ill, and incapable of making any preparation to receive him had she wished to do so, for close on ten days, and the day after his coming she lay for several hours unconscious, and as one dead. Writing on 24th October to the Archbishop of Glasgow, M. Le Groc, the French Ambassador, can only say that he hopes "in five or six days the Queen will be able to sign" a dispatch; but on the following day her illness again took an unfavourable turn.
She left Jedburgh within fifteen days of the date of M. Le Croc's letter, not an excessive time in which to recover from an illness which admittedly had brought her to the point of death, and which must have left her in a condition of extreme weakness. Yet, according to Buchanan, this time of convalescence was devoted to "their old pastime again, and that so openly, as they seemed to fear nothing more than lest their wickedness should be unknown." His conscience must have been of an elastic nature, if, having any knowledge of the facts, he could so write; and if he had no knowledge of the farts, one wonders how it is possible that a man of his position and ability should commit himself to statements so foul and uncharitable.
But at any cost, and by any means, he wanted to make out his case; and he knew his audience.
Buchanan's bias against the unfortunate Queen was very great. It even caused him to lend himself here to the task of bolstering up the case of that petulant, contemptible creature, Darnley. In view of the latter's known degrading habits and evil practices, as well as of his general conduct towards the Queen, the following sentence from the historian's waitings is almost grotesque: "When the King heard thereof," [Mary's illness] "he hasted in post to Jedburgh to visit the Queen, to comfort her in her weakness by all the gentle services that he could, to declare his affection and hearty desire to do her pleasure." Of course Darnley did nothing of the sort. When he did come, (twelve days after her illness began,) he came most reluctantly and tardily from his "halkand and huntand" in the west country. He "has had time enough if he had been willing; this is a fault which I cannot excuse," wrote M. Le Croc on the 24th October.
According to Buchanan, Darnley, when he did reach Jedburgh, found no one ready to receive him, or "to do him any reverence at all"; the Queen, he says, had "practised with" the Countess of Moray to feign sickness and keep her bed, as an excuse for not receiving him. "Being thus denied all duties of civil kindness, the next day with great grief of heart he returned to his old solitary corner." A pathetic story, if it were wholly true; a heart-stirring picture, that of the "solitary corner." But all the King's horses and all the King's men could not have set Darnley back again in the place he had forfeited in the esteem of the Nobles, and in the esteem of the country at large. If the nobles were not pleased to welcome him, if he was forsaken of all friends, whose fault was that but Darnley's? "The haughty spirit of Darnley, nursed up in flattery, and accustomed to command, could not bear the contempt into which he had now fallen, and the state of insignificance to which he saw himself reduced." 2 Darnley was an undisciplined cub. It was the sulky petulance of a spoilt child, that delayed his visit to Jedburgh; it was the offended dignity of an unlicked schoolboy that took him out of it again so hurriedly. The Queen's sufferings were as nought, weighed in the scale against a petty dignity offended by the lack of "reverence" with which he was received in Jedburgh. Truly, Queen Mary at her marriage had "placed her love on a very unworthy object, who requited it with ingratitude and treated her with neglect, with violence, and with brutality." 3
Buchanan, the historian, Queen Mary's traducer, died in September, 1582. His contemporary, Sir James Melville of Halhill, in writing of him says he was "a man of notable endowments for his learning and knowledge in Latin poesy, much honoured in other countries, pleasant in conversation, rehearsing at all occasions moralities short and instructive, whereof he had abundance, inventing where he wanted. He was also religious, but was easily abused, and so facile that he was led by every company that he haunted, which made him factious in his old days, for he spoke and wrote as those who were about him informed him; for he was become careless, following in many things the vulgar opinion; for he was naturally popular, and extremely revengeful against any man who had offended him, which was his greatest fault." Truly these phrases: "he spoke and wrote as those who were about him informed him"; "inventing where he wanted"; "easily abused, and so facile that he was led by every company that he haunted"; "extremely revengeful against any who had offended him," seem to be not without application to much of what he wrote regarding Mary Stuart.
On 9th November Jedburgh saw its last of this most unfortunate among women. On that day the Queen and her Court set out for Craigmillar, travelling on horseback by way of Kelso, Home Castle, Berwick, and Dunbar. But the effects of that grievous sickness at Jedburgh long remained with her.
Many, in the days that are long dead, were the Burgh's royal visitors; but no figure more romantic in history has ever trod its streets than his who in 1745 passed one night there on his disastrous march southward. At no great distance from the house where Mary lay ill, stands a fine old building, occupied once by a being no less ill-fated than was the unfortunate Queen of Scots. In a "close" leading from the Castle gate you find the door of this house – on its weather-beaten stone lintel the date 1687. The sorely worn stone steps of a winding old staircase lead to rooms above, all panelled in oak. But as in the case of the "comfortable church" that once took away from the beauty and dignity of the grand old Abbey, so here the ruthless hand of modern "improvement" has been at work. The tenants of the building – there are several – presumably finding the sombre oak all too gloomy to meet their view of what is fitting in mural decoration, have remedied this defect by papering the panels, and in some instances by giving them what is call "a lick of paint." Sadly altered, therefore, is the interior of the building from what it was that night in November, 1745, when Bonnie Prince Charlie slept within its massive walls. But the outside, with its quaint double sun-dial set in the wall facing the Castle-gate, is no doubt now as it was then.
Of this visit, local tradition has not much to tell. There is the story that the advance guard of that section of the Prince's army which he himself led, marching from Kelso, reached Jedburgh on the Sunday when the entire community was at church, and it is said that a message was sent to the minister of the Abbey church requiring him to close the service and send his congregation home to prepare rations for the main body of the army. The order, if it were really given, was apparently not resented, for when the Prince himself marched in, the women of Jedburgh, at least, flocked into the street to kiss his hand. The regard and homage of the women he got here, as elsewhere, but of that of which he stood most in need, the swords of the men, he got none. As at Kelso, not a single recruit followed him. One, indeed, a neighbouring farmer, did ride in to join the Royal standard, but he was a day after the fair; the army had already marched. Did the sound that tradition says Jedburgh heard long ere the Prince's arrival, the sound as of an army on the march, the distant rumble of moving artillery, the tramp of innumerable feet, and the dull throb of drums pulsing on the still night air, scare Borderers away from his enterprise? Was it superstition, or was it a real lack of interest, or was it merely "canniness," that so effectually damped the ardour of recruits both at Kelso and at Jedburgh? Whatever the cause, no man followed him; only the blessings and good wishes of the women were his wherever he went.
After leaving Jedburgh, the Prince's army made over the hills in two divisions, one following the old Whele-Causeway (over which the main Scottish army marched on Carlisle in 1388, what time Douglas's flying column made a dash into England down the Rede valley from Froissart's "Zedon"); the other marching by Note o' the Gate, the neighbouring pass that runs between Dog Knowe and Rushy Rig. These were then the only two practicable ways over the hills into Upper Liddesdale. "Note o' the Gate" is a puzzle. What does the name mean? "Note" may be merely the Cumberland "Knot" or "Knote," a knob or projection on a hillside. I understand the term is common enough in that part of the country, as in Helmside Knot, Hard Knot, etc. But even if this word, though differently spelled, does bear the same meaning both in Cumberland and in Liddesdale, I do not know that it gets us any nearer the "Gate." There is no rugged pass here, no Gate between precipitous mountains. One explanation – for what it may be worth – comes from a tradition that the name was given by Prince Charlie himself, through his misunderstanding a remark made by one of his officers. As they tramped over the moorland pass, the Prince overheard this officer say to another: "Take note of the gait," i. e., "Take note of the way." That night, when they were at Larriston, the Prince puzzled everyone by referring to something that had taken place back at "Note of the Gate." The story seems far fetched.
Many a tale survives of the doings and iniquities of the Prince's wild Highlanders as they straggled over these lonely Border moors. "Straggled," seems to be a more appropriate term than "marched," for, according to the testimony of eyewitnesses, the men appear to have kept no sort of military formation. Or at least what formation they did keep was of the loosest, and no check on plundering. It is a lonely countryside at best; human habitations were few and widely separated, but from the infrequent cottages, property of an easily portable nature took to itself wings as the army passed, and sheep grazing on the hills melted from sight like snow before the softening breath of spring. Once they caught and killed some sheep in a "stell," and they cooked one of them in an iron pot that lay in the stell, Unfortunately, they did not take the precaution to cleanse the pot, and the resulting brew disagreed so sorely with one of the thieves that the spot is called the Hielandman's Grave to this day. Some others, that evening when they were encamped, forced a man to kill and cut up sheep for them, and for this work he was given a guinea. The pay did not benefit him much; for a part of Highlanders, as the man went towards home, put a pistol to his head and made him refund. They tried the same game on a man named Armstrong, down on the Liddel at Whit-haugh Mill. But Armstrong was too much for them; one who shared the old reiver blood was not to be intimidated, and he knocked the pistol out of the hand of the threatening Highlander, secured it himself, and turned the tables most unpleasantly.
One unlooked-for result of the Prince's march through those desolate regions, was a very great increase in the number of illicit stills, and in the consumption of whisky that had paid no revenue to King George. So impressed were the Highlanders with the wild solitude of the glens on all sides of their line of march, and with the facilities presented by the amber-clear burns that tinkle through every cleuch, that when the rebels were returning from Derby, numbers of the men got no farther north than the hills of Liddesdale and the Border, but entered there on the congenial pastime of whisky-making.
Though the proportion of Borderers who followed Prince Charlie down into England, or throughout his campaign, was so very meagre, yet there lived among those solemn Border hills many faithful hearts, whose King he was to the end.
"Follow thee! Follow thee! Wha wadna follow thee?
King o' our Highland hearts,
Bonnie Prince Charlie,"
They were not only Highland hearts that were true to him. In her Border Sketches, Mrs. Oliver mentions a Hawick man, named Millar, who accompanied his master, Scott of Gorrenberry, all through the campaign of 1745-46, and who to the end of his days had an undying devotion to his Prince, and till the day of the latter's death, an imperishable faith that he would come to his own again. Long after the '45, Miller became "minister's man" in one of the Hawick churches, and his grief, one Sunday morning in 1788, was overwhelming when the news was told to him that the Prince was dead. "E-eh! Doctor," he cried brokenly to his * reverend informant, "if I'll get nae good o' your sermon the day; I wish ye hadna telled me till this afternoon. If it had been the German Lairdie, now, there wad hae been little mane made for him But there'll be mony a wae heart forby mine this day." Indeed, who even now can read of Bonnie Prince Charlie's end, and not have "a wae heart"?
Few of the Scottish Border towns in 1745 showed open hostility, or indeed anything but a luke-warm friendship, for the gallant young Pretender. Dumfries, however, was an exception. The inhabitants of that town, with men from Galloway, Nithsdale, and Annandale, full of zeal for King George and secure in the belief that the fighting men of the Prince's army were all safely over the March into England, hurried to intercept the rebel baggage train as it passed near Lockerbie, and carried off thirty-two carts to Dumfries. The Highlanders, however, getting word of this affair before the army marched from Carlisle, detached a party to Dumfries to demand the return of the waggons or the payment of an indemnity, "the notice of which has put Dumfries in greater fear and confusion than they have since the rebellion broke out, and expect no mercy." But the Prinnce's party was recalled before it had reclaimed the lost baggage-carts or exacted this alternative sum of £2,000, and Dumfries imagined that now all was weil. They had the waggons; and for a little time they triumphed. So triumphant, indeed, were they, and so filled with confidence in their own warlike powers, that when false rumours reached them that the Highlanders had been utterly routed and cut to pieces at Lancaster, not only were there "great rejoicings in Dumfries by ringing of bells and illuminating their windows," but "a considerable party of our light horse were sent off immediately, after the Chevalier," and "about three hundred militia, composed of townspeople and the adjacent paroches… are to go to the water of Esk to stop their passing and to apprehend any small parcels of them flying." Dumfries was not so warlike a couple of weeks or so later, when Lord Elcho at the head of five hundred men of the Prince's advance guard marched in and demanded the immediate payment of £2,000 in money and the delivery of a thousand pairs of shoes, two hundred horses, and a hundred carts. Not all that the Prince demanded was paid before the northward march was resumed, but his visit cost the town something like £4,000 – irrespective of what the Highlanders took. Whilst he remained in Dumfries, the Prince lodged in the Market Place, in a private house which is now the Commercial Inn. It is said that when his army marched up Nithsdale, halting for the night at the Duke of Queensberry's property, Drumlanrig, the Highlanders in the morning, to show their loyalty to King James, slashed with their swords portraits of King William and Queen Mary which had been presented to the Duke by Queen Anne, – an inconvenient method of declaring allegiance.
Though of minor interest, there are other houses in Jedburgh besides Queen Mary's and that in which Prince Charlie lodged, in which the townsfolk take some pride. There is the building in which Sir David Brewster was born in 1781; that where Burns lodged when he visited Jedburgh in 1787; that in Abbey Close in which Wordsworth and his sister had lodgings in 1803, when Sir (then Mr.) Walter Scott visited them and read to them part of the then unpublished "Lay of the Last Minstrel"; there is the old Black Bull Inn, – no lunger an inn, – and interesting only as the place where in 1726 Sir Gilbert Eliott of Stobs stabbed Colonel Stewart of Stewartfield with his sword one evening as they sat at supper. Claret was plentiful and good in. Scotland in those days, and Colonel Stewart had not given his vote to Sir Gilbert, who was candidate for the county. Swords flew out on slender excuse in the eighteenth century. This particular sword was long kept in the family of Sir Gilbert Elliot's butler, and after passing through the hands of a resident in the village of Denholm, became the property of Mr. Forrest, the well-known gun-maker of Jedburgh, by whom it was finally deposited in the Marquess of Lothian's museum at Monteviot.
Jedburgh, of course, amongst other claims to distinction was famed for its witches – as what place was not, indeed, in times when harmless old women were adjudged innocent or guilty of the charge of witchcraft according as they sank or floated when thrown into deep water. If they sank – well and good, that meant that they were innocent, and they went to Heaven, having at any rate the satisfaction of knowing beforehand that, in such case, at least their memory would be cleared of the suspicion under which they had lain; if they floated – again well and good; that proved conclusively that the charge against them was a true one, and they were rescued from the water only to be burned alive. "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," was the text which our ancestors regarded as the Eleventh Commandment. We were not a whit better even at as late a date as the seventeenth century, than are those West African tribes of the present day whose medicine-men still "smell out" witches. Only, the West Africans practise the art now more or less in secret, and they are more humane in the death they inflict than were our ancestors; they do not burn.
Jedburgh's testing place for witches was a pool below the spot where now the Townfoot Bridge crosses the river. There is a story told of a notorious witch who was ducked here along with a batch of her sinful associates. No doubt they all floated right enough; their reputation as witches of the most mischievous description had long been almost too well established to need such a test as that of the river. But this is what led to their final overthrow. The chief witch of this "covine" had a husband, the village pedagogue, a man of repute for piety and for the rigour of his Sabbath keeping, and it was notorious that in season and out of season this good man would remonstrate with his wife – without doubt, people said, endeavouring to wean the woman from her sinful habits.
Now, one must of course admit that such continued efforts to save could not fail to be excessively irksome to any witch, and must goad not only her, but also her accomplices, as well as her Master, the Devil, to revenge. Hence, when the schoolmaster's dead body was found one fine morning floating in the river, the majority of the drowned man's neighbours had no hesitation in believing that his wife and her partners in iniquity had dragged him in the night from his hard-earned rest, and had thrown him into the deepest pool in Jed. And this was the more certain, because the deceased man had several times confided to friends a pitiful tale of how he stood in terror of his life, and how his wife and her "covine," had already more than once hauled him through the roughest streams of Jed. Sundry pious elders, moreover, affirmed that they had attended with him a sederunt of their church rulers the previous evening – when, perhaps, a trifle of something may have been taken in a quiet way to keep out the cold – and that at a late hour afterwards they accompanied him to his own door, whence, they admitted, they had come away in a hurry because of the wrathful and threatening tones in which they heard this witch addressing her husband. And this evidence was to some extent corroborated by the neighbours, who told how they had been awakened from sound sleep that night by the noise made by the poor victim loudly singing the twenty-third Psalm as the horrid troupe hurried him down the street towards the river – a rope about his neck, said some. Moreover, it was told, on evidence which people saw no reason to doubt, that at the time this poor man was being hurried to his death, a company of fairies was seen dancing on the top of the tower of Jedburgh Abbey, where after the drowning of the unfortunate schoolmaster by the witches, the whole company regaled themselves liberally with wine and ale. Certainly, both wine and ale were found to be missing from a neighbouring cellar the following day; and as the door of the cellar had been locked, obviously the loss could only be attributed to the schemes of fairies or witches. The one tale lent an air of truth to the others; therefore people were not backward in crediting both. He who accepted the story of the dancing fairies could have little difficulty in giving credence to that of the witches' "covine" dragging their unresisting prey through the streets. And so another wretched victim or two went to her long home by a fiery death. The schoolmaster was probably insane on some points, and trumped up the story of the witches having repeatedly ducked him. Our ancestors could swallow anything in the way of marvel. This story of the Jedburgh schoolmaster is told in "Historical Notices of the Superstitions of Teviotdale"; and it is added therein that popular tradition says that "a son of Lord Torpichen, who had been taught the art of witchcraft by his nurse," was of the party of witches, and that it was he who first gave information regarding the murderers.
