78 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 275. 



Justinian, by a constitution made at the time of 

 the fifth general council of Constantinople, or- 

 dained that the writings of heretics should be 

 burnt. Especial reference is made to Anthimus, 

 Severus of Antioch, Zoaras, &c. 



Justinian, by another edict against Severus, 

 forbad " that the sayings or writings of Severus 

 should remain with any Christian man ;" and 

 ordered that " they should be burnt with fire by 

 their possessors. Whoever disobeyed was to have 

 his hands cut ofF." 



In 1120, a council at Suessa condemned a book 

 by Abailard, and compelled him to put it into the 

 fire with his own hands. 



By will, Virgil required his own poems to be 

 burnt; but Augustus prevented it from being 

 effected. (Pliny, Nat. Hist. vii. 30.) 



The first Roman libraries were burnt when the 

 city was set on fire by Nero. (Sueton., Nero, ^c.) 



The library adjoining the Temple of Peace at 

 Rome was burnt under Commodus. Compare 

 Herodian, i. 44. B. H. Cowper. 



(Zb he continued.) 



" Christie's will," or " crtistiswoll." 



Every one acquainted with Scott's Border 

 Minstrelsy is aware that " Christie's Will " is the 

 name of a famous border reiver of the seventeenth 

 century : 



" Traquair has ridden up Chapelhope, 



And sae has he down by the Gray Mare's Tail ; 

 He never stinted the light gallop, 

 Until he speer'd for Christie's Will. 



" Now Christie's Will peep'd frae the tower, 

 And out at the shot-hole keeked he ; 

 * And ever unlucky,' quo' he, ' is the hour, 

 That the warden comes to speer for me ! ' 



" • Good Christie's Will, now, have na fear ! 

 Nae harm, good Will, shall hap to thee ; 

 1 saved thv life at the Jeddart air. 



At the Jeddart air frae the justice tree. 



" ' Bethink how ye swore, by the salt and the bread, 

 By the lightning, the wind, and the rain, 

 That if ever of Cliristie's Will I had need, 

 He would pay me my service again.' 



" ' Gramercy, my lord,' quo' Christie's Will, 

 ' Gramercy, my lord, for your grace to me I 

 When I turn my cheek, and claw my neck, 

 I think of Traquair, and the Jeddart tree.' 



" And he has open'd the fair tower yett, 

 To Traquair and a' his companie; 

 The spuile o' the deer on the board he has set. 

 The fattest that ran on the Hutton Lee. 

 " ' Now, wherefor sit ye sad, my lord ? 

 And wherefor sit ye mournfullie? 

 And why eat ye not of the venison I shot 

 At the dead of night on Hutton Lee? ' 

 " ' weel may I stint of feast and sport, 

 And in my mind be vexed and sair! 

 A vote of the canker'd Session Court, 

 Of land and living will make me bare. 



" * But if auld Durie to heaven were flown. 

 Or if auld Durie to hell were gane. 

 Or ... if he could be but ten days stoun. 

 My bonnie braid lands would still be my ain.' 



" ' mony a time, mj' lord,' he said, 



' I've stoun the horse frae the sleeping loun ; 

 But for you I'll steal a beast as braid. 



For I'll steal Lord Durie frae Edinburgh town ! ' " 



As the ballad goes on to relate, and as Sir "Walter 

 Scott's notes explain, Christie's Will was as good 

 as his word. He kidnapped the " auld lurdane " 

 near the sands of Leith, and enveloping him in a 

 cloak, carried him to the Tower of Grahame, in 

 Annandale, where he was detained in close con- 

 finement until the lawsuit in which Traquair was 

 concerned had been decided in his favour. Lord 

 Durie, it was understood, would have voted ia 

 fiivour of the opposite party. Various other 

 daring deeds are recorded by the freebooter, 

 which well entitle him to distinction in Border 

 history. 



But who was Christie's Will ? Sir Walter 

 states, on the authority of a somewhat ambiguous 

 tradition, that his real name was Armstrong, and 

 that he was the son or grandson of Cristopker, 

 son of " the famous John Armstrong of Gilknockie, 

 executed by James V. ; " hence called Christie's 

 Will by way of distinction. 



The "Johnnie Armstrong" alluded to was ex- 

 ecuted, it is believed, in 1529. His son Christo- 

 pher appears to have been an infant at the time : 



" And God be with thee, Klrsty, my son, 

 Wliere thou sits on thy nurse's knee." 



If this was the Christopher, as Sir Walter sup- 

 poses, who grants a bond of man-rent to Lord 

 Maxwell in 1557, he would then be about twenty- 

 nine years of age, and could not well have been 

 the father of Christie's Will, who kidnapped Lord 

 Durie ; which circumstance must have occurred 

 nearly eighty years afterwards. Alexander Gib- 

 son, Lord Durie, the well-known collector of 

 Durie's Decisions, was promoted to the bench 

 10th July, 1621, and died in July, 1646.* As he 

 is described as " Auld Durie " in the ballad, the 

 probability is that his abduction took place to- 

 wards the close of his life, about 1640. At all 

 events Christie's Will, who is represented as 

 having performed certain dexterous feats during 

 the troubles of Charles I., must have been in the 

 prime of life at the time, and was more likely, if 

 an Armstrong at all, to have been the grandson 

 than the son of Kirsty ; hence, unless Christopher 

 had continued as a family name for two or three 

 generations, the designation of Christie's Will is 

 inexplicable. 



We have been led into these remarks by the 

 fact, not generally known, perhaps, that Cryistis- 



• Another authority mentions his death as occurring 

 10th June, 1644. 



