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The Ettrick Shepherd must have known this story well. Perhaps it suggested some of the verses in "The Witch of Fife," in "The Queen's Wake."

 
"Where have ye been, ye ill woman,
These three lang nichts frae hame?
What gars the sweit drap frae yer brow, '
Like clots o' the saut sea faem?
 
 
"It fears me muckle ye have seen
What guid man never knew;
It fears me muckle ye have been
Where the grey cock never crew."=
"Sit down, sit down, my leal auld man,
Sit down and listen to me;
I'll gar the hair stand on yer crown
And the cauld sweit blind yer e'e.
 
 
"The first leet nicht, when the new moon set,
When all was douf and mirk,
We saddled our naigs wi* the moon fern leaf,
And rode frae Kilmorran Kirk.
 
 
"Some horses were of "the broom-cow framed,
And some of the green bay tree:
But mine was made of a hemlock-shaw,
And a stout stallion was he.
 
 
"We rode the tod doon on the hill,
The martin on the law;
And we hunted the hoolit out o' breath,
And forcit him doon to fa'."
 
 
"What guid was that, ye ill woman?
What guid was that to thee?
Ye wad better have been in yer bed at hame
Wi' yer dear little bairns and me."
 
 
"And aye we rade and sae merrylie we rade,
Through the merkist gloffs o' the night;
And we swam the flood, and we darnit the wood,
Till we cam to the Lommond height.
 
 
"And when we cam to the Lommond height,
Sae blythlie we lighted down;
And we drank frae the horns that never grew
The beer that was never brewin.
 
 
"And aye we danced on the green Lommond
Till the dawn on the ocean grew,
Nae wonder I was a weary wicht
When I cam hame to you.
 
 
And we flew ow'r hill, and we flew ow'r dale,
And we flew ow'r firth and sea,
Until we cam to merry Carlisle,
Where we lightit on the lea.=
"We gaed to the vault beyond the tow'r
Where we entered free as air,
And we drank, and we drank of the Bishop's wine,
Until we could drink nae mair."
 

If, however, our forbears were drastic in their manner of dealing with witches and warlocks, and rigid in the infliction of capital punishment on criminals guilty of very minor offences, they were extraordinarily lax as regards the condition in which they kept their prisons. It is told that, sometime during the eighteenth century, the chief magistrate of Jedburgh was waited on by the burgh gaoler, who complained that the main door of the gaol had parted company with its hinges – which, in fact, had long been eaten through with rust. He had no means of securing his prisoners. What was he to do? It was a question calculated to puzzle any ordinary person. But the magistrate was a man of resource. "Get a harrow," said he. "And set it on end in the doorway, wi' its teeth turned inwards. If that winna keep them in, – 'deed then they're no worth the keepin'." To as late a date as 1833, Selkirk also was not much better off than this, as regards its prison. The writer of the Statistical Account of the Parish at that date complains that prisoners "have been frequently in the practice of coming out in the evening, and returning again before the jailor's visit in the morning."

If by chance there was ever a period of his life when the Poet Burns was not susceptible, it certainly was not at the time when he visited Jedburgh in 1787. Regarding that visit he has left in his diary some very characteristic notes. He was "waited on by the magistrates and presented with the freedom of the burgh," he records; he meets and dines with "a polite soldier-like gentleman, a Captain Rutherfurd, who had been many years in the wilds of America, a prisoner among the Indians," and who apparently rather bored the poet. Captain Rutherfurd's adventures were assuredly such as could not fail to be well worth listening to, but what between Burns' respectful admiration of an armchair that the old soldier possessed, which had been the property of James Thomson, author of "The Seasons," and his latest attack of love's sickness, host and guest do not seem to have been quite in accord. Perhaps the old soldier prosed, and told his battles o'er again to too great an extent – it is a failing not unknown in old gentlemen; perhaps the poet wanted to compose a sonnet to his new mistress's eyebrows. – or whatever may have been Burns' equivalent. (He had just met by the "sylvan banks" of Jed a young lady possessed of charms that ravished his too tender heart). Anyhow, he left the district in a very despondent frame of mind, relieved only by such consolation as might be gleaned from presenting the lady with a copy of his latest portrait. In his diary is the following entry: "Took farewell of Jedburgh with some melancholy, disagreeable sensations. Jed, pure be thy crystal streams and hallowed thy sylvan banks! Sweet Isabella Lindsay, may peace dwell in thy bosom uninterrupted, except by the tumult throbbings of rapturous love! That love enkindling eye must beam on another, not on me; that graceful form must bless another's arms, not mine." Burns' loves were almost as many in number as the birds of the air, and scarcely less trammelled.

As one proceeds up Jed from the ancient royal burgh, probably the first thing that forces itself on the mind is that the old coach road was not constructed for present-day traffic. In less than a couple of miles the river is crossed no fewer than four times by bridges which are curiously old fashioned, turning blindly across the stream in some instances almost at right angles to the road, and in the steepness of their ascent and descent conveying to the occupant of a motor car a sensation similar to that given to a bad sailor by a vessel at sea when she is surmounting "the league-long rollers." Nor are some of the gradients on the road a few miles farther out such as entirely commend themselves to motorists, two or three of them being as abrupt as one in twelve, and one in thirteen. Nevertheless the beauties of road and country are great, especially if it should chance that a visit is paid to the district when the tender flush of early Spring lies sweet on Jed's thick-wooded banks, and the trout have begun to think at last of rising again freely to the natural fly. Or better still, perhaps, when the green and gold, the russet and yellow, the crimson of Autumn combine with and melt into the crumbling red cliffs, – surely more generous tinted than ever were cliffs before. Above, a sky of tenderest blue, an air windless yet brisk, and just a leaf here and there fluttering leisurely into the amber clear water that goes wandering by; and from the hushes the sweet thin pipe of a robin, or the crow of pheasant from some copse. That is the Indian Summer of Scotland, her pleasantest time of year, – if it were not for the shortening days, and the recollection that trout fishing is dead till another season.

It was a heavily wooded district this in former days, and one or two of the giants of old still survive, – the widespreading "Capon tree," for instance, that you pass on the road a mile from Jedburgh (but why "Capon" it passes the knowledge of man to decide); and the "King of the Woods," near Fernihirst, a beautiful and still vigorous oak, with a girth of 17 feet, four feet from the ground.

On the right, across the river, as you begin to quit the precincts of the town, there hangs the precipitous red "scaur" over which, that grim night in 1523, Surrey's horses came streaming, an equine cascade. Farther on, a mile or so, there perches Douglas's camp at Lintalee. But his "fair manor" is gone, and that great cave in the face of the cliff where he kept stock of provisions "till mak gud cher till hys men"; a fall of rock swept away that, or most part of it, in 1866. It was to this cave, within Douglas's camp, that in 1317 a priest named Ellis brought a body of three hundred English soldiers, whilst Douglas was elsewhere, dealing with Sir Thomas Richmond and his men. But, (as the song says), Father Ellis "had better have left that beggar alone." Douglas returned while yet the holy man and his unruly flock were feasting in the cave. And "then" – it is needless to say, – "there began a slaughter grim and great," and whatever else Father Ellis and his men had feasted on, at least they got now a bellyful of fighting. It was the last meal of which the most part of those Englishmen partook. The cave is gone, but there still remain, guarding the neck of the promontory – ruined indeed, and partially filled up, but still prominent to the eye – the double wall and fosse that Douglas threw across it six hundred years ago.

Of caves, such as this Douglas cave at Lintalee, there is a vast number scattered along the cliffy banks of Jed and Teviot, and by some of their tributary waters or burns. At Mossburn-foot, on Jed, there is a cave, others are at Hundalee, and elsewhere. Near Cessford Castle, on a small affluent of the Kale there is one, Habbie Ker's Cave, the same wicked Habbie – "a bloodie man in his youth" – whose ghost to this day walks by the old draw-well at the ruined castle of Holydene; on Kale itself there are several of considerable size; in the cliff overhanging Oxnam, near Crailing, are others, and at Ancrum, on the Ale; whilst at Sunlaws, near Roxburgh, in the red sandstone cliffs of Teviot, is a group of five caves, arranged in two tiers, some of them of fair dimensions, the largest about twenty six feet long, with a height of eight feet and a width of eight and a half feet. Another in the upper tier has a length of twenty three feet, but at the mouth is no more than three feet in height. In the lower tier, in one of the caves it is said in the Statistical Account that horses were hid in 1745, to save them from being taken for the use of the rebel army, when the detachment under Prince Charlie's own command marched from Kelso to Jedburgh. Many of the caves in different parts of the country are so well concealed that a stranger might pass very near to the mouth without suspecting their existence; some, on the other hand, force themselves on the eye. But probably in olden times thick undergrowth shut them from view. There is no doubt that most of them at various times have been used as places of concealment; probably during the cruel old English wars they were much resorted to; certainly some of them were places of refuge in Covenanting times. Very efficient places of refuge no doubt they were, so long as the entrance was not discovered, but many of them would probably be easy enough to smoke out. It is mentioned in Patten's "Account of Somerset's Expedition into Scotland," how "a gentleman of my Lord Protector's… happened upon a cave in the grounde, the mouth whereof was so worne with fresh printe of steps, that he seemed to be certayne thear wear some folke within; and gone doune to trie, he was redily receyved with a hakebut or two. He left them not yet, till he had known wheyther thei wold be content to yield and come out, which they fondly refusing, he went to my Lord's grace, and upon utterance of the tbynge, gat licence to deale with them as he coulde; and so returned to them with a skore or two of pioners. Three ventes had that cave, that we wear ware of, whereof he first stopt up one; another he fill'd full of strawe, and set it a fyer, whereat they within cast water apace; but it was so wel maynteyned without, that the fyer prevayled, and thei within fayn to get them belyke into anoothur parler. Then devysed we (for I hapt to be with him) to stop the same up, whereby we should eyther smoother them, or fynd out their ventes, if thei hadde any mor: as this was done at another issue, about XII score of, we moughte see the fume of their smoke to come out: the which continued with so great a force, and so long a while, that we coulde not but thinke they must needs get them out, or smoother within: and forasmuch as we found not that they did the tone, we though it for certain thei wear sure of the toother."

Who first made and used those caves, one wonders. The stone is soft, and easy to work, and I do not think it was beyond the skill and the tools of our very remote forbears to have patiently hollow'ed them out, in suitable places, from the solid face of the cliff. Tool marks may yet be plainly seen in some of them, marks not such as would be made by anything in the nature of a chisel, but such as are more suggestive of a pick, of sorts, an implement – single pointed – not unknown to even very primitive races.

Scattered all over the Jedburgh district are many ancient camps – hoary even in the day when Douglas fortified Lintalee; many old castles and peel-towers, all, or nearly all, now in ruins, some indeed with very little left save tradition to indicate where once they stood; and here and there are found vestiges of chapels or shrines, of which possibly there may remain hardly more in some instances than the green mounds which cover their fallen walls. The monks wandered far up this pleasant vale of Jed, carrying the Gospel of Peace through a land that knew of little save war, but the history of their resting places is even more vague than is now the outline of their chapel walls. At Old Jed ward, however, five miles up stream from Jedburgh, you may still in some measure trace the line of foundations of that venerable little building which is said to have been built here away back in the ninth century. Of camps, the number is legion. That near Monklaw, the writer has not seen, but it is said to be Roman, and its measurements are something like one hundred and sixty yards each way. At Scraesburgh there is a circular camp, with a diameter of about one hundred and eighty feet, and with ramparts still nearly twenty feet in height, – surely that "Skraysburgh, the greatest towne in all Teviotdale," which, according to the English version, seems in 1544 to have fallen almost as fell Jericho of old, when the enemy shouted and blew their trumpets.

Of castles and peel-towers the most are utterly ruined, but Fernihirst (to which we come presently), still stands, and, over the hill towards Teviot, Lanton Tower, the latter now incorporated with a comfortable modern dwelling. Lanton in the twelfth century was the property of Richard Inglis, who also owned the adjacent tower of Hunthill. Both these towers were sacked and burned in 1513, after Flodden, by an English flying column under Sir Roger Fenwicke, and its existence at the present day Lanton Tower may owe to the fact that when Evers swept the country side in 1544, and Hertford brought fire and sword in the following year, it had possibly neither been repaired nor was inhabited. It was over near Jedburgh, too, to have escaped the notice of Surrey in 1523. Hunthill was burned again in 1549, and had Lanton then been anything but dismantled, it could scarcely have escaped the attentions of the party sent from Jedburgh by the Earl of Rutland to attack d'Essé's rear-guard at Ancrum ford. A force coming over the hill from Jedburgh and making for Ancrum would necessarily pass within easy hail of Lanton. In any case, however, there it stands, its solid walls of a tenacity not shared by buildings put together with modern mortar. Strange are the vicissitudes of places and of people. Over this Forest of Jedworth, and here at Lanton, where of old too often were heard the blast of trumpet, shouts and oaths of fiercely striving men, the roar and crackle of burning houses, you will hear now no sound more startling than the "toot-toot" of the Master's horn and the babble of fox hounds; for at Lanton Tower are the kennels of the Jedforest Hunt, and many a glorious run is had with this pack, sometimes in enclosed country, sometimes among the great round backed Border hills towards Carterfell, over country that will tail off all but the best of men and horses.

CHAPTER V JED (continued), FERNIHIRST, RAID OK THE REDESWIRE, OTTERBURNE

Across Jed, on a high and leafy bank nearly opposite to Lintalee, stands the picturesque old stronghold of Fernihirst. The original castle was erected by Sir Thomas Ker probably about the year 1476, and the present building dates only from 1598. Its predecessor "stode marvelous strongly within a grete woode," as Daere and Surrey found to their cost in 1523; yet they took it, after "long skirmyshing and moche difficultie," as Surrey reported. Brief and stormy was the existence of this original Fernihirst, stirring, and in some instances horrible, the deeds done within and around its walls. In 1548 the English held it, Shrewsbury, when he returned to the south in that year, having left there a garrison of something like eighty or ninety men. At this period Scotland, still dazed and stricken under the stunning blow of Pinkie in 1547, was in a deplorable, and apparently a very helpless, condition. Most of her strongholds were in English hands; her chief men for the greater part had come in and made submission to Somerset; the poorer sort in most parts of the Border were at the mercy of the hated invader. Here, at Fernihirst, the English garrison was under the command of one whose oppression and cruel lust were devilish, and whose treatment of unprotected country-folk was such as would justify almost any conceivable form of revenge on the part of the men of Jedforest. M. de Beaugué, a French officer who was then in Scotland, and who in his "Histoire de la Guerre d'Ecosse" chronicles the campaigns of 1548, 1549, says that during all the time this savage licentious devil remained near Jedburgh "he never came across a young girl but he outraged her, never an old woman but he put her to death with cruel torture."

And, as the proverb has it: "Like master, like man"; where their captain forgot his manhood, and disgraced the name of Englishman, how were the men under his command likely to conduct themselves? The people of the Forest of Jedworth thus had ghastly wrongs to wipe out; and when their chance came, they seized on it with avidity.

The cruelties inflicted on each other by both nations at this period were detestable and revolting. "Put men, women, and children to fire and sword without exception, when any resistance shall be made against you," wrote Henry VIII. to Lord Hertford in 1544, instructions which were most faithfully carried out. Here at Femihirst our countrymen went, if possible, "one better," and their treatment of prisoners was of the most inhuman and savage nature. Yet if their wrongs were such as are depicted by de Beaugué, can one wonder that, like wild beasts, they tore and mangled?

Early in 1549 there came to Jedburgh a large body of French troops under the Sieur d'Essé, sent to recapture that town, which at the moment was held for the English by a force chiefly composed of Spanish mercenaries. The Spaniards made no great stand, and for the moment the Sieur and his little army were left with time on their hands. To the Sieur went Sir John Ker, then laird of Fernihirst, suggesting that the French general should aid him in recapturing the castle. French and Scots – a small body of the latter, the personal following of Sir John Ker – accordingly made a combined attack and quickly carried the outwork, the garrison retreating to the keep. Here, whilst a party laboured hard to effect a breach in the wall, French arquebusiers were so planted that no man of the garrison could show his face with impunity, or dared to attempt to interfere with the working party, who already in little over one hour had made a practicable breach, large enough at least to admit a man's body. About this time the main French force had come up, and the English garrison could not but see that their position was now desperate. Accordingly they showed a flag of truce, and the English commander, on receiving assurance that he would be allowed to return, came out through the hole in the wall and offered to give up the castle, provided that the lives of the garrison were spared. The Sieur d'Essé, however, would listen to no conditions; the surrender, he said, must be unconditional, and the Englishman therefore returned to his men.

Meantime, news of the attack on Fernihirst had flown abroad over the countryside, and men of Jedforest came hurrying to the scene, breathless with the lust of slaughter, panting with unquenchable thirst for a bloody vengeance. Letting their horses go, and, regardless of everything, rushing in, they burst open and swarmed through the doors of the lower court. And now the bowels of the English leader turned indeed to water, for well he knew what fate would be his were he once to fall into the hands of those frenzied men. Therefore once more hurriedly pressing through the breach, he surrendered himself to two French officers, MM. Dussac and de la Mothe-Rouge. Scarcely, however, had he done so, and even as they led him away, a prisoner, there rushed up a Scot, a dweller in the neighbouring forest of Jed, one who had only too terrible a reason to remember the face of this fiend who had outraged his wife and his young daughter. He said no word, but with a roar as of a wounded beast that charges, he smote with all his strength. And the head of a man went trundling and bumping loosely over the trampled grass, as the knees doubled under a headless trunk that sank almost leisurely to the ground. Then those Scots who most had foul reason to execrate the memory of this treacherous brute, joyfully plunged their hands into his blood as it gushed, and with shouts of exultation seizing his head, they placed it on a long pole and stuck it up by a stone cross that stood by the parting of three ways, that all might see and rejoice over their vengeance.

That was but the beginning of a scene long drawn and terrible in its ferocity. Prisoners were ruthlessly butchered, and when the Scots had murdered all whom they themselves had taken, their lust for blood was so far from slaked that they brought others from the Frenchmen – bartering even some of their arms in exchange – and slew these also with extreme barbarity. "I myself," writes M. de Beaugué, "sold them a prisoner for a small horse. They tied his hands and feet and head together, and placed him thus trussed in the middle of an open space, and ran upon him with their lances, armed as they were and on horseback… until he was dead and his body hacked in a thousand pieces, which they divided among them and carried away on the iron points of their spears."

"I cannot," naively adds the chronicler, "greatly praise the Scots for this practice, but the truth is the English tyrannised over the Borders in a most barbarous manner, and I think it was but fair to repay them, as the saying goes, in their own coin."

So Sir John Ker got back his strong castle. But it did not long remain undisturbed in the family possession. In 1570 there came into Scotland that English expedition under the Earl of Sussex and Lord Hunsdon which played such havoc in the Border, and once more the Merse and Teviotdale were burned and laid waste. "Apon Monday last," writes Lord Hunsdon from Berwick to Sir W. Cecil, under date 23rd April, 1570, "beyng the 17th of thys ynstant, we went owt of thys towne by 6 a cloke at nyght and rode to Warke, where we remayned tyll three or four yn the mornyng; and then sett forward the hole army that was with us att that present, ynto Tyvydale bernyng on bothe hands at the lest two myle; levyng neythercastell, towne, nortowerunburnt tyllwecametojedworth. Many of the townes beyng Bukklews, and a proper tower of hys, called the Mose Howse, wythe three or four caves, wheryn the cuntrey folk had put such stufe as they had: and was very valyantly kept by serten of the cuntrey for two or three owars, but at last taken… The next day we marchyd to Hawyke; wher by the way we began with Farnhurst and Hunthylle, whose howsys we burnt, and all the howsys about them. We could nott blow up Farnhurst, but have so torne ytt with laborars, as ytt wer as goode ley flatt." The building must have been of remark able solidity, for in spite of its being burnt, and left roofless and dismantled, "torne with laborars," in 1570, there can belittle doubt that in less than two years it was again at least tenable, for in 1572 Lord Ruthven, after dispersing at Hawick the forces of Buccleuch and Fernihirst, (who supported the cause of the abdicated Queen,) on his return march to Jedburgh "tuik the housses of Pherniherst, and put men in them," and the place was held for some time after this by the King's troops. Possibly it was more thoroughly knocked about in 1593 than it had been at any other period of its existence. Sir Andrew Ker, then head of the house, when summoned to appear before James and his Privy Council at Jedburgh to answer for his part in aiding the schemes of the Earl of Both well, and for other acts, had failed to put in an appearance, and had consequently been outlawed and declared a rebel. It was also proposed to render him homeless, for on 16th October of that year Carey reports to Burghley that "the King has proclaimed to remain at Jedworth fifteen days, and summoned the barons, gentlemen and freeholders to attend him, minding this day or tomorrow to pull down the lairds of Fernhirst and Hunthill's houses, and all others who have succoured Bothwell." Probably the threat was carried into execution, to a greater or less extent. In any case, 1598 saw a renovated Fernihirst, much as it stands at the present day, when, according to "Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland," it presents "a charming example of a Scottish mansion of the period." Built into the wall above the main doorway of the mansion, (as may be seen in Mr. Hugh Thomson's sketch,) are two panels, that to the left showing the armorial bearings of the Kers, and above, on a scroll, the words:

S. SOLIDEO

"forward in y" name of god"; at the foot, a.k. 1.5.9.8 On the panel to the right is the word "forward"; in the centre of the panel the arms of Sir Andrew's wife, Dame Ann

D. SOLIDEO

Stewart, and beneath, a.s. 1.5.9.8.

As late as 1767 the house seems to have been occasionally used by the Lord Lothian of that day, but it was even then showing signs of dilapidation. It was, however, occupied by farming tenants down to a recent date, as late, I believe, as 1889. About that year extensive repairs were carried out; the ivy which – however picturesque it may have been – was slowly throttling the old walls, was removed, the panels were refaced, the roof made wind and weather proof, and the interior to a great extent restored.

At Smailcleuchfoot, a little higher up the river, and nearly opposite to Fernilhirst Mill, almost, as one might say, within a stone's cast of the castle, stood once the house of a man greatly famed in Jedforest, – Auld Ringan Oliver. No vestige of the house now remains, but the memory of Ringan and the story of the siege he stood within his cottage here still live in Border lore, and were sung of in James Telfer's "Border Ballads" close on a century ago.

 
"The crystal Jed by Smailcleuchfoot
Flows on with murmuring din;
It seems to sing a dowie dirge
For him that dwelt therein."
 

Ringan's forebears, men of mark all of them in their day, dwelt here at Smailcleuchfoot for many a generation. They were there, no doubt, when the Sieur d'Essé recaptured Ferni-hirst for Sir John Ker; there when Dacre stormed it in 1523; there perhaps, helping Douglas, when Father Ellis and his Englishmen were caught feasting on the good fare at Lintalee in 1317. With ancestors such as these, whose whole lives were passed in the midst of endless strife, men ever ready, and glorying in their readiness, to turn out against invading Southern bands, or to slip over Carterfell into Redesdale to plunder those same Southrons, how could Ringan fail to be, what he was, a born fighter! With his enormous frame, immense personal strength, and dauntless courage, there was none in the Border so famed as he. Endless were the tales told of him, – how he could take "a ten half-fou boll of barley in the wield of his arm and fling it across a horse's back with the utmost ease"; how in his youth he raided Newcastle Jail, and rescued two of his friends, who had been, as he thought, unjustly imprisoned therein. The stories of him are endless. Ringan lived in the stirring times of the Covenant, and with a disposition such as his, dourly religious, it is almost needless to say that he was prominent among the more militant section of the Covenanters of the seventeenth century. He was probably present at Drumclog, and he was certainly present at Both well Brig, in 1679, fighting as few fought that bloody day. His home was in caves and among rocks, beneath dripping peat-hags, and in holes in the ground, for many a day after this, but in 1680 he joined the outlawed Hall of Haughhead, and was in the tussle when that Champion of the Covenant was taken at Queensferry what time "those two bloody hounds the Curates of Borrowstonness and Carriden smelled out Mr. Cargill and his companion." Hall was killed, or at least died of his wounds before he could be brought to Edinburgh; but Ringan Oliver and "worthy Mr. Cargill" escaped the net of the fowler. Then, in 1689, he was with Mackay at Killicrankie; and the following day though exhausted with the precipitate flight from the battlefield, he fought at Dunkeld his famous duel with the Highland champion, Rory Dhu Mhor, whom he slew after a most desperate and bloody fight. Bleeding from half a score of wounds, Ringan had been beaten to his knees, and the affair seemed a certain victory for the Highlander. But the latter was over-confident; he thought he had a beaten man at his mercy, and one instant's carelessness gave Ringan his chance. Before his adversary could recover, the point of the Borderer's sword was out between the Highlander's shoulders, and with a roar of astonishment and wrath he fell dead.

But perhaps it was for the siege he stood at Smailcleuchfoot when he was now an old man, that Ringan is best remembered. After a stormy youth and middle age, he had at length settled down in his ancestral home, where he was leading the quiet life of a farmer. As the story is told, it seems that Ringan's strict integrity and high sense of honour had gained for him the respect and friendship of his powerful neighbour at Fernibirst – probably either the first or the second Marquess of Lothian. Perhaps, too, there may have been something in the mutual belief and manner of thought of the two men that drew them together. (There was a Ker of about that date, or a little earlier, who was a zealous Covenanter.) In any case, the friendship was of such a nature that when Lord Lothian found himself, towards the close of his life, compelled to undertake what was then the long and trying journey to London, he left Ringan in charge of his private papers, and entrusted him with the key of a locked room in which valuable documents were kept, and into which he desired that no one should be permitted to enter whilst he himself was absent in the south. As it chanced, after Lord Lothian had started on his journey, his heir, considering, as a matter of course perhaps, that the old lord's prohibition did not apply to him, sent to Ringan demanding the key of the room, into which he had, or said he had, occasion to go. Ringan naturally, but perhaps not very deferentially or even politely, refused to give it up. Thereupon arose hot words, and bitter enmity on the part at least of the younger man, who, with that rather irrational form of vanity not uncommon in youth, imagined himself to be slighted.