they rail at, murther they wink at, and blasphemy they laugh at; they think it impossible to lose the way to Heaven, if they can but leave Rome be 'hind them.

To be opposite to the Pope, is to be presently with God: To conclude, I am persuaded, that if God and his angels, at the last day, should come down in their whitest garments, they would run away, and cry, the children of the chapel are come again to torment us, let us fly from the abomination of these boys, and hide ourselves in the mountains.

For the Lords Temporal and Spiritual, temporizing gentlemen, if I were apt to speak of any, I could not speak much of them, only I must let you know, they are not Scotishmen, for as soon as they fall from the breast of the beast their mother, their careful Sire posts them away for France, where, as they pass, the sea sucks from them that which they have suckt from their rude dams, there they gather new flesh, new blood, new manners, and there they learn to put on their cloaths, and then return into their countries to wear them out; there they learn to stand, to speak, and to discourse, and congee, to court women, and to compliment with men.

1

They spared of no cost to honour the king, nor for no complimental courtesy to welcome their countrymen; their followers are their fellows, their wives their slaves, their horses their masters, and their swords their judges; by reason whereof, they have but few labourers, and those not very rich; their parliaments hold but three days, their statutes

three lines, and their suits are determined in a man ner in three words, or very few more.

The wonders of their kingdom are these: the Lord Chancellor, he is believed: the Master of the Rolls, well spoken of; and the whole council, who are the judges of all causes, are free from suspicion of corruption. The country, although it be mountainous, affords no monsters, but women, of which the greatest sort, (as countesses and ladies,) are kept like lions in iron grates. The merchants' wives are also prisoners, but not in so strong a hold; they have wooden cages, like our boar Franks, through which sometimes peeping to catch the air, we are almost choaked with the sight of them. The greatest madness amongst the men is jealousy, in that they fear what no man that hath but two of his senses will take from them.

The ladies are of opinion, that Susanna could not be chaste, because she bathed so often. Pride is a thing bred in their bones, and their flesh naturally abhors cleanliness; their breath commonly stinks of pottage, their linen of piss, their hands of pigs turds, their body of sweat, and their splay feet never-offend in socks. To be chained in marriage with one of them, were to be tied to a dead carcase and cast into a stinking ditch; formosity and a dainty face, are things they dream not of.

The ointments they most frequently use amongst them, are brimstone and butter for the scab, and oil of bays and stavesacre. I protest, I had rather be the meanest servant of the two to my pupils chamber-maid, than to be the master minion to the

T

fairest countess I have yet discovered. The sin of curiosity of ointments is but newly crept into the kingdom, and I do think will not long continue.

To draw you down by degrees from the citizens wives, to the country gentlewomen, and convey you to common dames in Sea-coal lane, that converse with rags and marrow bones, are things of mineral race; every whore in Houndsditch is an Helena ; and the greasy bauds in Turnbal-street, are Greekish dames, in comparison of these. And, therefore, to conclude, the men of old did no more wonder, that the great Messiah should be born in so poor a town as Bethlehem, in Judea, than I do wonder, that so brave a prince as King James, should be born in so stinking a town as Edinburgh, in lousy Scotland.

NEED-FIRE.

About thirty or forty years ago, (1814,) when the cattle of any considerable farmer was seized with the murrain, he would send for a charm doctor, to superintend the raising of a Need-Fire. It was done by friction, thus: upon any small island where the stream of a river or burn run on each side, a circular booth was erected of stone and turf, as it could be had, in which a semicircular, or Highland couple of birch, or other hard wood, was set; and, in short, a roof closed in on it. A straight

pole was set up in the centre of this building, the upper end fixed by a wooden pin to the top of the couple, and the lower end, in an oblong trink, in the earth or floor; and lastly, another pole was set across horizontally, having both ends tapered, one end of which was supported in a hole in the side of the perpendicular pole, and the other end in a similar hole in the couple leg. The horizontal is called the augre, having four short arms or levers fixed in its centre to work it by. The building having been thus finished, as many men as can be collected in the vicinity, (being divested of all kinds of metal in their clothes, &c.) set to work with the said auger, two after two, constantly turning it round by the arms or levers, and others occasionally driving wedges of wood or stone behind the lower end of the upright pole, so as to press it the more on the end of the augre. By this constant friction and pressure, the ends of the augre take fire, and thus the need-fire is kindled. The fire in the farm house is then quenched with water, and a new one lighted from the need.fire, both in the farm house and offices; the cattle are brought to feel the smoke of this new and sacred fire, which preserves them from the murrain.

In order to expedite kindling the need-fire, gimlet holes are previously bored in the ends of the augre, and filled with bruised gun-powder and tinder. It is handed down by tradition, that the ancient Druids practised a similar ceremony annually on the first of May, for the purpose of raising a sacred fire. That day is still, both in the Gaelis

and Irish dialects, called La-beal-tin, i. e. the days of Baal's fire, or the fire dedicated to Baal, or the

sun.

CHARTER OF MALCOLM KENMORE, TO HUNTER OF POLMOOD.

I, Malcolm Kenmure, King,

The first of my reign,

Gives to thee, Normand Hunter of Powmood,
The Hope, up and down,

Above the earth to heaven,

And below the earth to hell,
As free to thee and thine,

As ever God gave it to me and mine,
And that for a Bow and a Broad Arrow,
When I come to hunt in Yarrow.

And for the mair suith,

I byte the white wax with my tooth,
Before thir witnesses three,

May, Muld, and Marjorie.