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. XVI.

LONDON:

WALTER SCOTT, 14 PATERNOSTER SQUARE

AND NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE.

1885.

CONTENTS.

The Leveller, (John Mackay Wilson)

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

Gleanings of the Covenant. (Professor Thomas Gillespie)
V.—The Rescue at Enterkin
VI.—The Fatal Mistake
VII.—Bonny Mary Gibson
VIII.—The Eskdalemuir Story
IX.—The Douglas Tragedy

The Countess of Cassilis, (Alexander Campbell)

The Happy Conclusion, (Anon.)

Mr Samuel Ramsay Thriven: A Tale of Love and Bankruptcy, (Alexander Leighton)

The Man-of-war's Man, (John Howell)

The Angler's Tale, (Oliver Richardson)

Perseverance; or, the Autobiography of Roderic Gray, (John Mackay Wilson)

The Irish Reaper, (John Mackay Wilson)

Grace Cameron, (Alexander Campbell)

The Mysterious Disappearance, (Anon.)

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

THE LEVELLER.

How far the term, "A Leveller," is provincial, or confined to the Borders, I am not certain; for before I had left them, to become as a pilgrim on the earth, the phrase had fallen into disuse, and the events, or rather the cause which brought it into existence, had passed away. But, twenty-five or even twenty years ago, in these parts, there was no epithet more familiar to the lips of every schoolboy than that of a Leveller. The juvenile lovers of mirth and mischief displayed their loyalty, by smeeking the houses or burning the effigies of the Levellers; and he was a good subject and a perfect gentleman, who, out of his liberality and patriotism, contributed a shilling to purchase powder to make the head of the effigy go off in a rocket, and its fingers start away in squibs. Levellers were persecuted by the young, and suspected by the old. Every town and village in the kingdom had its coterie of Levellers. They did not congregate together; for, as being suspected individuals, their so doing would have been attended with danger; but there was a sympathy and a sort of brotherhood amongst those in the same place, and they met in twos and threes, at the corners of the streets, in the fields, or the workshop, and not unfrequently at the operating rooms of the barber, as though there had been a secret understanding in the growth of their beards. Some of them were generally seen waiting the arrival of the mail, and running across the street, or the highway, as the case might be, eagerly inquiring of the guard—"What news?" But if, on the approach of the vehicle, they perceived it decorated with branches, or a flag displayed from it, away turned the Levellers from the unwelcome symbols of national rejoicing, and condoled one with another in their own places of retirement. They were seldom or never found amongst rosy-faced country gentlemen, who walked in the midst of their fellow-mortals as if measuring their acres. Occasionally they might be found amongst tradesmen; but they were most frequently met with at the loom, or amongst those who had learned the art and mystery of a cordwainer. The Leveller, however, was generally a peaceful and a moral man, and always a man of much reading and extensive information. Many looked upon the Leveller as the enemy of his country, and as wishing the destruction of its institutions: I always regarded them with a more favourable eye. Most of them I have met with were sincerely attached to liberty, though they frequently took strange methods of showing it. They were opposed to the war with France, and they were enthusiastic admirers, almost worshippers, of Napoleon and his glories. They could describe the scene of all his victories—they could repeat his speeches and his bulletins by heart. But the old Jacobins of the last century, the Levellers of the beginning of this, are a race rapidly becoming extinct.

I shall give the history of one of them, who was called James