The Kindly Tenants. 73 



2. The Kindly Tenants of the Four Towns of Lochmaben. 

 By Rev. J. H. Thomson, Hightae. 



The four towns of Lochmaben (said the essayist) are Hightae, 

 the Heck, Greeahill, and Smallholm. They form a large part of 

 the south of the parish. Their occupants are the kindlie tenants 

 of Robert the Bruce. The tradition of the district is that their 

 ancestors were originally the followers who kept by King Robert 

 the Bruce during his long struggles against the English invader 

 until after the battle of Bannockburn, and that the lands of the 

 Four Towns were conferred upon them by him as a reward for 

 their faithful services. 



"Kindly," or "kindlie tenants," is explained by Jamieson in 

 his dictionary as a designation given to those tenants whose 

 ancestors have long resided on the same lands ; but this explana- 

 tion does not tell why "kindlie " rather than some other epithet 

 more descriptive of their long services should not have been used. 

 Jamieson has " kindlie " not only as an adjective but as a 

 substantive, and his explanation is — " A man is said to have 

 been kindlie to a farm or possession which his ancestors have 

 held, and which he has himself long tenanted." 



Since Jamieson's time it has been held that " kindlie " is allied 

 to our Anglo-Saxon word " kin," and that it denotes a relation 

 by consanguinity or alEnity to the person that first gave the 

 land ; thus the kindlie tenants would be the far-off or the poorer 

 relations of King Robert the Bruce. But of this relationship we 

 have no positive evidence. 



There is no manner of doubt, however, that the ancestors of 

 the kindly tenants have held their lands from a remote period. 

 What was the original number of the kindly tenants there are 

 no written documents to tell. About the beginning of the 

 century, it is said, there were upwards of seventy of them, but 

 originally they must have been far more numerous in order to 

 have given the effective service that the grant of the lands 

 supposes them to have rendered. In the present day their 

 number is not more than forty. 



Sir Walter Scott, in his " Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," 

 first published in 1802, has a note to the ballad of the Loch- 

 maben Harper in which he gives an account of the kindlie 

 tenants. He had evidently taken pains to inform himself about 



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