person conducted the siege of this important place, and, having obtained possession, appointed three great barons to be its keepers. A very remarkable murder was committed here in the year 1357. James Lindsay was hospitably entertained and feasted in the Castle of Caerlaverock, by its proprietor, Roger Kirkpatrick: in the dead of night, urged by jealousy at the successful rivalship of his host in marriage, Lindsay arose, and poniarded the unsuspecting laird as he slept.

"He louted down-her lips he prest―

Oh! kiss foreboding woe!

Then struck on young Kirkpatrick's breast

A deep and deadly blow.

"Sair, sair, and meikle did he bleed;

His lady slept till day;

But dreamt the Firth flowed o'er her head,
In bride bed as she lay."

Lindsay mounted his horse, and rode off at full speed from the ruin his hand had wrought; but guilt, remorse, and fear so bewildered him, that, after riding all night, he was arrested at early dawn, not three miles from the castle gate, and executed soon after by order of king David.

This tragic tale is said to have been connected (prophetically) with the murder of the Red Cumine, regent of Scotland, by Robert Bruce, in the Dominican church of Dumfries, in the year 1305. Bruce, attended by two barons (Lindsay and Kirkpatrick) devoted to his cause, entered the church, plunged his dagger into the victim of his hatred, and, rushing out with the point still dropping blood, exclaimed, "I doubt I have slain the Red Cumine." "Doubtest thou?" said Kirkpatrick, "I mak sicker;" and accordingly the two barons and their adherents, forcing a passage into the sanctuary, completed the work of blood. The body of the murdered chieftain was watched all night by the friars, and the solemn rites and deep requiem usual in those ages of superstition celebrated over it: as midnight approached, however, their vigilance forsook the whole brotherhood, one aged father excepted, who heard a voice, weak yet clear, resembling that of a wailing infant, exclaim, "How long, Lord, shall thy vengeance be delayed?" to which a low and awful tone replied, "Endure with patience until the anniversary of this day shall return for the fifty-second time." That was the very day on which Lindsay slew Kirkpatrick in Caerlaverock Castle, and the slayer and the slain were the sons of the two barons whose respective names they bore, and who had aided in the death of the Red Cumine.

Caerlaverock was subjected to as many vicissitudes as usually befell the well-stored border castles, previous to the union of the crowns of North and South Britain. At length (1651) it was captured by Oliver Cromwell; and at that period, according to the inventory and receipt of furniture taken and acknowledged to his master by one Finch, the castle contained, amongst other articles of furniture, eighty beds. After this period it is no longer spoken of as a tenable fortalice; its treasures and furniture were speedily removed, and its unroofed but massive walls left to contend with the elements.

Jean Gordon, a sort of gipsy queen, has been discovered by the inquisitive, and acknowledged by the author, as the prototype of his Meg Merrilies. The traits and

propensities of the original, and of the fictitious character, establish an identity. They both possessed the virtue of fidelity, spoke in the same vehement didactic manner, assumed similar attitudes in addressing superiors, and both wore the gipsy costume. Jean Gordon was born at Kirkyetholm, in Roxburghshire, the metropolis of Scottish gipsies, about the year 1670, and was married to Patrick Faa, a gipsy chief, by whom she had twelve children. In the year 1714, one of her sons was murdered by a gipsy, named Robert Johnson, who had eluded the grasp of justice for ten years. Jean pursued the murderer, and, with a keenness more resembling the scent of a bloodhound than the acuteness of humanity, traced him first to Holland, and from thence to Ireland, where she caused him to be seized, and conveyed back to Jedburgh. There her vengeance was satisfied by seeing the murderer of her child executed on the Gallows-hill. Jean's earthly toils were not yet ended; a more bitter draught of misery was still preparing for her. It is said that all her sons were condemned to die at Jedburgh on the same day; the jury were equally divided, but a friend to justice, who had slept during the discussion, waking suddenly, exclaimed, "Hang them a'." Jean, who was present, only uttered these words, "The Lord help the innocent in a day like this!" Her own death was accompanied with circumstances of unusual brutality and unmanliness. Happening to be present at a fair in Carlisle, after the year 1746, when political partisanship was at the highest, she there confessed her Jacobite partialities in language loud and strong, to the unpardonable offence of the zealous rabble of that city, who, seizing poor Jean, inflicted on her the penalty of ducking her to death in the river Eden. During the performance of this dastardly deed, the hapless victim, though old yet stout, struggled desperately with her murderers, and, when at intervals she succeeded in getting her head above water, continued to exclaim, "Charlie yet! Charlie yet!"

BALLYBURGH-NESS.

"There is a cliff, whose high and bending head
Looks fearfully on the confined deep."

SHAKSPEARE.

[The Antiquary, Vol. I, p. 94, 99.

"The sun was now resting his huge disk upon the edge of the level ocean, and gilded the accumulation of towering clouds through which he had travelled the livelong day, and which now assembled on all sides, like misfortunes and disasters around a sinking empire and a falling monarch. Still, however, his dying splendour gave a sombre magnificence to the massive congregation of vapours, forming, out of their unsubstantial gloom, the show of pyramids and towers, some touched with gold, some with purple, some with a hue of deep and dark red. The distant sea, stretched beneath this varied and gorgeous canopy, lay almost portentously still, reflecting back the dazzling and level beams of the descending luminary, and the splendid colouring of the clouds amidst which he was setting." With a mind employed in admiration of this romantic scene, Miss Wardour advanced in silence by her father's side. Following the windings of the beach, they passed one rocky promontory after another, and found themselves under a huge and continued extent of the precipices that defend, in most places, that iron-bound coast,

when suddenly the disk of the sun became almost totally obscured ere he had sunk below the horizon, and a lurid shade of darkness blotted the serene twilight: the moaning sound of the rising storm was heard for some time before its effects on the bosom of the ocean became visible. The dark and threatening mass of waters began to lift itself in longer ridges, and sink in deeper furrows, forming waves that rose high in foam upon the breakers, or burst upon the beach with a sound resembling distant thunder.

While the raging waters were thus advancing, and claiming from Sir Arthur and his daughter the narrow space of beach that yet remained, Edie Ochiltree arrived, almost too late to guide them round the Halket Head, and save them from a death, the approach of which would have been, most probably, painfully prolonged; and without the guidance and encouragement of the sturdy mendicant, it would have been impossible for them to have found their way along these shelves. Edie himself acknowledged, that, although familiar with suffering and danger, he had never witnessed "sae awsome a night." "It was indeed a dreadful evening: the howling of the storm, mingled with the shrieks of the seafowl, sounded like the dirge of the three devoted beings, who, pent up between two of the most magnificent, yet most dreadful objects of nature—a raging sea and an insurmountable precipice-toiled along their painful and dangerous path, often lashed by the spray of some giant billow, which threw itself higher on the beach than those that had preceded it. Each moment did their enemy gain ground perceptibly upon them: still, however, loath to relinquish the last hopes of life, they bent their eyes towards the black rock pointed out by Ochiltree. The signal of safety was lost amongst a thousand white breakers, which, dashing upon the point of the promontory, rose in prodigious sheets of snowy foam as high as the mast of a first-rate man-of-war, against the dark brow of the precipice. . . . The countenance of the old man fell. Isabella gave a faint shriek; and God have mercy upon us!' which her guide solemnly uttered, was piteously echoed by Sir Arthur: My child! my child!—to die such a death!"

Amongst the characters introduced in this scene, the most interesting, as well as the most real, is Edie Ochiltree. His prototype, Andrew Gemmels, had been a soldier in his youth, and recounted the dangers he had undergone in a manner so agreeable as to ensure him a cordial welcome at every shepherd's cot or farm-shading that lay in the range of his extensive wanderings. He was usually borne on a high-bred steed, preferred sleeping in an out-house, stable, or byre, returned regularly once or twice in each year to the same house; and, although hung round with rags, used to attend the country fairs and race-courses, where he was seen to bet and dispute with the lairds and gentry with independence and pertinacity. He allowed that begging had been a good trade, but that it had sadly declined in his latter days. He was supposed to have saved and concealed some treasure; but, with the exception of a farm which he stocked for his nephew, no substantial proof of his wealth was ever afforded. He died at Newton in the year 1793, having attained the advanced age of 105 years, and was interred in Roxburgh kirk-yard.

H