WILSON'S TALES OF THE BORDERS

AND OF SCOTLAND.

HISTORICAL, TRADITIONARY, & IMAGINATIVE.

WITH A GLOSSARY.

REVISED BY

ALEXANDER LEIGHTON

ONE OF THE ORIGINAL EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS.

VOL. XV.

LONDON:

WALTER SCOTT, 14 PATERNOSTER SQUARE

AND NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE.

1885.

CONTENTS

The Recollections of a Village Patriarch, (John Mackay Wilson)

The Old Chronicler's Tales, (Alexander Leighton)
The Death of James I

The Curate of Govan, (Alexander Campbell)

Gleanings of the Covenant, (Professor Thomas Gillespie)
I.—The Grandmother's Narrative
II.—The Covenanters' March
III.—Peden's Farewell Sermon
IV.—The Persecution of the M'Michaels

The Story of Tom Bertram, (Oliver Richardson)

The Cottar's Daughter, (Anon.)

The Surgeon's Tales, (Alexander Leighton)
The Case of Evidence

The Warning, (Alexander Bethune)

Grizel Cochrane. A Tale of Tweedmouth Muir, (John Mackay Wilson)

Squire Ben, (John Mackay Wilson)

The Battle of Dryffe Sands, (Anon.)

The Clerical Murderer, (Alexander Leighton)

WILSON'S TALES OF THE BORDERS, AND OF SCOTLAND.

THE RECOLLECTIONS OF A VILLAGE PATRIARCH.

There is no feeling more strongly or more generally implanted in the human breast, than man's love for the place of his nativity. The shivering Icelander sees a beauty, that renders them pleasant, in his mountains of perpetual snow; and the sunburned Moor discovers a loveliness in his sultry and sandy desert. The scenes of our nativity become implanted on our hearts like the memory of undying dreams; and with them the word home is for ever associated, and

We cannot forget the place where our eyes first looked upon the glorious sun; where the moon was a thing of wonder, the evening companion of our childish gambols, joining with us in the race, and flying through the heavens as we ran! where we first listened to the song of the lark, received the outpourings of a mother's love upon our neck, or saw a father's eyes sparkle with joy as he beheld his happy children around him; where we first breathed affection's tale or heard its vows, and perchance were happy, wretched, blessed, or distracted, within a short hour. There is a magic influence about nativity that the soul loves to cherish. Its woods, its rivers, its hills, its old memories, fling their shadows and associations after us, and over us, even to the ends of the earth; and while these whisper of our early joys, or of what we fancied to be care ere we knew what care was—its churchyard tells us we have a portion there—that there our brethren and our kindred sleep. We may be absent from it until our very name is forgotten; yet we love it not the less. The man who loves it not hath his affections "dark as Erebus." It is a common wish, and it hath patriotism in it, too, that where we drew our first breath, there also we should breathe our last. Yet, in this world of changes and vicissitudes, such is not the lot of many. While I thus moralise, however, I detain the reader from the Recollections of the Village Patriarch; and as some of the individuals mentioned in his reminiscences may be yet living, I shall speak of the place in which he dwelt as the village of A——.

The name of the patriarch was Roger Rutherford. He was in many respects a singular old man. He was the proprietor of three or four cottages, and of some thirty acres of arable land adjoining to them. He was a man of considerable reading, of some education, and much shrewdness. His years, at the period we speak of, were fourscore and four. By general consent, he was a sort of home-made magistrate in the village, and the umpire in all the disputes which arose amongst his neighbours. It was common with them to say, instead of going to law, "We will leave the matter to old Roger;"