20 Antiquities of Eskdalemuir. 



was told to pull his bonnet over his face. He refused, and stood 

 confronting his murderers with the Bible in his hand. " I can 

 look you in the face," he said ; " I have done nothing- of which I 

 need be ashamed, but how will you look on that day when you 

 shall be judged by what is written in this book ?" He fell dead, 

 and was buried where yonder slalj keeps the memory of his heroism 

 green for ever. 



But now, to pass from " grave to gay," let me tell you some- 

 thing about the far-famed " Bogle at the Todshawhill." Todshaw- 

 hill is a farmhouse on the Black Esk about three miles in a south- 

 westerly direction distant from the Parish Church. According to 

 Dr Brown, one of the Bogle's biographers, this creature made a 

 stay of a week less or more at Todshawhill farmhouse, disappear- 

 ing for the most part during the day only to reappear towards 

 evening : its freaks and eccentricities very naturally attracted a 

 number of people to the neighbourhood, and among the number 

 Thomas Bell from West Side, the neighbouring farmer, who, in 

 order to assure himself that it had flesh and blood like other folks, 

 took it up in his arms and fully satisfied himself that it had its 

 ample share of both. In appearance it resembled an old woman 

 above the middle with very short legs and thighs, and it affected a 

 style of walk at once so comical and undignified that the Eev. Dr 

 aforesaid was compelled to pronounce it " waddling." The first 

 intimation or indication of its presence in these parts was given, I 

 understand, at the head of the Todshawhill bog, where some young 

 callants who were engaged in fastening up the horses of the farm 

 heard a cry at some little distance off. " Tint, Tint, Tint," to 

 which one of the lads, William Nichol by name, at once replied 

 " You shall not tine and me here," and then the lads made off, 

 helter skelter, with the misshapen little creature at their heels. 

 In his terror one of the lads fell head foremost into a hole or moss 

 hag, and the creature " waddling " past him to get at the rest, 

 came into violent contact with a cow, which naturally resenting 

 such unceremonious treatment, pushed at it with its horns, where- 

 upon the creature replied — " God help me, what means the cow ?" 

 This expressioTi soothed, if it did not wholly allay, the fears of all 

 concerned, for they at once concluded that if the creature had 

 been a spirit it would not have mentioned the name of Deity in 

 the way it did. 



