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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9< s. m. MAY 27,
his own supernatural machinery. One of the reasons
we dislike many of his heroes is that they talk like
nineteenth-century philosophers at a period when
there was no man whatever so enlightened as to
doubt the efficacy of charms and witchcraft. In
' The Betrothed ' Scott goes a step further, and
makes Rose Flammock refuse belief in superstitions
against which it would have been impossible for her
to struggle. Fancy a girl in the twelfth century
saying or a portent, " It bodes nothing, dearest
lady, it is our own fears that are prophets, not
those trifles which we take for augury. It is things such as this which are anachronisms in Scott, and not antedating by two to three hundred years, as Mill, the historian of the Crusades, rebuked him for doing, the establishment of the bishopric of Gloucester. ' The Talisman ' escapes this class of condemnation, and as a gallery of pictures may challenge competition with any novel of Scott. King Richard and Saladin are genuinely heroic. The illustrations to the earlier work are wholly by W. Paget, to the later principally by Le Bland.
The Annalx of Auchterarder and Memorials of Strathearn. By Alexander George Reid. (Crieff, Philips.)
AMONG books dealing with local history, the aug- menting number of which is a matter for congratu- lation, few are better in arrangement or intrinsically more readable and interesting than these ' Annals of Auchterarder and Memorials of Strathearn.' Some inkling of the pleasures in store for them must have been obtained by those of our readers who have noticed Mr. Reid's recent contributions to our columns. Much of the matter he now sends casts a bright light upon important epochs in history, and all of it has a delightful antiquarian flavour. Not in present days a place of great importance is this pleasantly situated Perthshire town, the ruined castle of which was once a royal seat, having been built, according to tradition, in the eleventh century as a hunting seat by Michael Canmohr, or, as Mr. Reid spells it, Canmore. It has had eccle- siastical edifices of some importance, and signs of Roman occupation may still be traced. Unfor- tunately the town, which, owing to its situation, was always exposed to Highland ravage, was on 25 January, 1716, after the battle of Sheriffmuir, entirely consumed by fire by the Earl of Mar. In connexion with the revolutionary movement of 1715, Auchterarder was a place of some importance, and the period is still recalled as Mar's year. Lament- able accounts are given of the sufferings of the townsfolk. At Blackford, a country town two miles to the westward of Auchterarder, William Davidson, schoolmaster, was one of the sufferers : "After he was gone the Highlanders broke into his house, where, tho' his wife was bigg with child, they fell a plundering, and when she seem'd but to murmur at it, they knock't her down with the butt-end of a gun, and left her lying dead upon the ground, blooding at mouth and nose." Not less harrowing are the accounts of destruction at Duning, Dalreoch, Crieff, and other spots. Subse- quently we have an account of the compensation paid in 1721 to the sufferers. An account of salmon fashing on the Earn reads like a chapter out of ' Redgauntlet.' Many trials for witchcraft are given, the most curious being that of a woman who was charged with attempting the life of the Earl of Morton, Regent of Scotland. Unfortunately, though the woman, who pleaded guilty, was duly
" convict," we are not informed whether the sen-
tence was carried out. John Brugh, otherwise
the Warlock of Fossoway, was strangled and burnt
on the Castle Hill of Edinburgh. An account of a
holocaust of witches is given under the heading
"Witch Coyin at the Crook of Devon," a covin
consisting of thirteen, otherwise a " deil's dozen "
Thirteen is also, as is well known, a " baker's
dozen," another instance of the supposed connexion
between "deils" and bakers, on which our readers
may ruminate. Mr. Reid seems to establish that
Kinkell in Strathearn is "the Terrible Parish"
celebrated in rime :
Was there e'er sic a parish, a parish, a parish,
Was there e'er sic a parish as that o' Kinkell ? They 've hangit the minister, drooned the precentor,
Dang[d ?] doon the steeple and drucken the bell. Dunkeld has sometimes been given for Kinkell. Fact, however, is on the side of the place now mentioned, where all those misfortunes occurred. Mr. Reid's book is a capital specimen of Crieff printing, and is admirable in all typographical respects. It has four good illustrations. Its anti- quarian merits cannot easily be overpraised, and Mr. Reid a not too common thing in an antiquary has a style at once animated and picturesque.
MR. ELLIOT STOCK will publish shortly ' A Hyp- notic Experience in the Fair Maid's House at Perth,' by Alfred Beauchamp. It will give an account of a remarkable experience of the author, who passed | the night in the house of the Fair Maid, and will contain twelve photographs of the interior and exterior of the dwelling.
to
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H. T. C. D. (" When Greek meets Greek," &c.). N. Lee's ' Alexander the Great,' IV. ii.
MYDDELTON (" Blessed is he who expecteth nothing"). This has been traced to Pope in a letter to Gay, dated 16 Oct., 1727. See also ' N. & Q.,' 4 th S. iii. 310, 415, 446; iv. 277; 6 th S. v. 234; 7 th S. xii. 228.
JONATHAN BOUCHIER. We have always under- stood it to be soft.
CORRIGENDUM. P. 366, col. 2, 1. 34, for "Bar- basan " read Barbasan's.
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