vee 
THE VENDACE. 127 
people assembled at its annual fishing, and athletic sports were 
engaged in after the fishing was over for the day. 
This article would be incomplete were I to omit mention of 
the curious legends that linger about Lochmaben in reference to 
the early history of the Vendace. There are three main stories 
presented in numerous forms:—(1) That the fish was introduced 
from the continent by those belonging to some of the monastic or 
religious establishments of the neighbourhood; (2) that Queen 
Mary’s courtiers brought it with them from France ; (3) an intro- 
duction by King Robert Bruce, or, as occasionally stated, by 
one of the James’s. All of these stories may be dismissed. The 
Vendace does not occur on the continent, and so could not have 
been brought. The name Vendace is undoubtedly French, and 
as our old Scottish Court was much Frenchified, especially in 
(Queen Mary’s time, there may have been a demand for the fish 
for table on great occasions. 
16th February, 1906. 
Chairman—Mr Ropert Murray, V.P. 
THE KirK-Sess1on REcoRDs OF JRONGRAY, 1691-1700. By the 
Rev. SAMUEL Duntop, B.D., Minister of the Parish. 
I am sorry to say we have no records of the heroic age of 
Trongray, when the redoubtable John Welsh was minister of the 
parish (1661-1681). The times did not lend themselves to such 
superfluities. It was with swords and pistols and the terrible 
word of his mouth that John Welsh and his elders wrote parish 
history, and made it glorious in the annals of the Covenant. _ If 
the two curates who succeeded him kept records, they are lost. 
Perhaps they perished in the rabbling which followed the revolu- 
tion, or perhaps their successors did not consider such prelatical 
documents worthy of preservation. From our records we learn 
that in the neighbouring parish of Lochrutton they were not kept 
in “the time of the prelacy,’’ as there was “no public record or 
evidence ’’ of Janet Crokat having given satisfaction for her faults 
and scandals, 
