116 Transactions. 



are to be found in secluded valleys, so that the popular saying 

 was " Bernard loved the valley and Benedict the hill." They 

 preferred the cultivation of the soil to the pursuit of literature, 

 and were excellent farmers and horticulturists. Their abbeys 

 were marked by plainness of architecture, and in having- either 

 no tower or a very short one. Their inmates passed a peaceful 

 life in these sequestered glens, and Sir W. JScott makes Abbot 

 Boniface, of St. Mary's, regret that he had ever left Dundrennan 

 Abbey. The Abbot says : " I fancy to myself the peaceful towers 

 of Dundrennan, where I passed m}^ life ere I was called to pomp 

 and trouble. I can almost fancy that I see the Cloister garden, 

 and the pear trees which I grafted with my own hands." 



Dundrennan Abbey was founded by Fergus, Lord of Gallo- 

 way, A.D. 1142 ; and Sweetheart A.D. 1284 (Fordun says 1275), 

 by Devorgilla, daughter of Allan, Lord of Galloway, and widow 

 of John Balliol, who died A.D. 1269, by whom she became the 

 mother of John Balliol, afterwards King of Scotland. She buried 

 her husband's heart at its high altar, and hence the name, which 

 was afterwards changed to New Abbey, as being of more recent 

 erection than Dundrennan. Devorgilla died A.D. 1289, and was 

 buried in the same spot as she had placed her husband's heart. 

 The last Abbot of Sweetheart was Gilbert Brown, who died in 

 Paris, to which he had been banished in 1612. 



Beyond the names of its founders and abbots no records or 

 • legends have been preserved. It and Dundrennan lay outside of 

 the world's busy thoroughfares, and no history of them has 

 survived. 



The habit of the monks of this Order was a white robe in the 

 form of a cassock, with black scapular and hood, and a black 

 woollen girdle ; of the nuns a white tunic, a black scapular and 

 girdle, a black veil, and white wimple. 



Within the ruins of Dundrennan are two sepulchral effigies 

 — one of an Abbot of this Cistercian Order, which the late Mr 

 Bloxam, the eminent ecclesiastical antiquary, described in a letter 

 to me as " the best effigy of a Cistercian monk I have seen any- 

 where." The other is an incised slab of a Nun, supposed to have 

 been the last Prioress of Lincluden ; but, at all events, of a Nun, 

 on the same high authority of Mr Bloxam, who thus wrote to me : 

 " I was much interested in the incised slab of a Nun, not, I think, 

 an Abbess. She appears clad in cowl, mantle, wimple, and veil ; 



