BIB

RODLET

"They wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth."

EDINBURGH:

JOHN JOHNSTONE, 15, PRINCES STREET.

LONDON R. GROOMBRIDGE & SONS.

MDCCCXLVI.

1489.

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.

THE Collecting of the following anecdotes respecting our persecuted ancestors was at first purely incidental. The editor of the "Weekly Christian Teacher" having requested of the author a communication for his miscellany, there was sent to him a paper containing two or three anecdotes, entitled "Reminiscences of the Covenanters," and after its transmission no more was contemplated. At the further solicitation of the conductor of that periodical, however, a second paper was prepared, and then a third. At length the idea was entertained that something more than a few stray notices of the worthies of the Covenant might, perchance, be gleaned in the neighbourhood of the author's residence, as the locality is well known to have been the frequent resort of the suffering wanderers during the dark and protracted period of the Church's affliction in Scotland. The attempt was successful, and resembled the striking of the enchanted ground with the mystic wand, when innumerable elfins, formerly invisible, started up all around. The writer, though fully aware that the memory of not a few incidents which happened in those trying times was still retained by the peasantry among the mountains and glens of the district, had yet no idea of the vast number of traditional stories that really existed. Having been made aware of the fact, therefore, his object was to collect and arrange them in the best manner he could, and then to publish them in a serial form.

The sources from which these Traditions are drawn are chiefly the descendants of the persons themselves to whom the incidents refer. They have been retained as heirlooms in the families of the worthy men who suffered so much in the cause of truth and righteousness. This circumstance affords a strong guarantee for the fidelity and correctness of the narratives as a whole, although some attendant circumstances may probably, in the lapse of three generations, have varied in the telling. They are all of them precisely in keeping with the times to which they refer. In some cases the same anecdote has been communicated by different persons in places widely separate, and yet the story, with a slight variation, was exactly the same—a further proof that the Traditions are, in the main, faithful. It would seem, however, from the complexion of many of them, that the occurrences related took place mostly after the seventy-nine, the year of Drumclog and Bothwell, and of the archbishop's death, the consequent severities of which being heightened by the Sanquhar Declaration, and the skirmish at Airs

moss.

The locality which it has been attempted to glean, is that chiefly in the midst of which Sanquhar is situated, assuming this place as a centre, and stretching out in a radius of twenty or thirty miles in extent on all sides. It was to this locality, as Wodrow informs us, that great numbers of the wanderers from the more level and exposed parts of the country resorted. "Multitudes," says the historian, were hiding and wandering in mountains and caves, and not a few from other places of the kingdom had retired to the mountainous parts of Galloway and Nithsdale."

It was not the design of the writer to compose tales founded on the incidents, but simply to present the Tradition in its native simplicity and truth. It would be an easy matter to invest these anecdotes with imaginative interest; but then this would destroy their character as traditionary realities.

It is the design of this collection to preserve the memory of some of those good men in the inferior ranks of society, whose worth and whose sufferings have not hitherto been recorded. Their names, though those of plain, unlettered men, do not deserve to perish; and their posterity may, by contemplating the virtues of their ancestors, be stimulated to emulate their godliness.

That the work may be the means of exciting those who read it to a special care about their best interests, and to a stedfast and consistent adherence to the cause of the Redeemer, is the sincere prayer of

Their servant in the Gospel,

R. S.