214 Lag's Elegy and Other Chap Books. 



another of his tales, ' The Marvellous History of Major Weir 

 and his Sister.' 



" ' The Laird o' Coul's Ghost' purports to be an account by 

 the Rev. William Ogilvie (16), Minister of lunerwick, East 

 Lothian, from 1715 to 1729, of four conferences with the ghost 

 of Thomas Maxwell of Coul, or Cuil, an estate in the parish of 

 Buittle, and near Castle-Douglas. 'Coul,' after gratifying the 

 minister's curiosity as to the state of the dead, &c., asks him to 

 call on Mrs Maxwell and beg her to do justice to some persons 

 who had been cheated by her husband. 



" Reflecting how difficult it would be to convince the lady 

 that he had really heard a voice from beyond the grave, the 

 clergyman declines to undertake Maxwell's commission. The 

 tale ends abruptly with this sentence : — ' But dropping these 

 matters till our next Interview ; give me leave to enter upon 

 some more diverting subject ; and I do not know, Coul, but thro' 

 the Information given to me, you may do as much service to 

 mankind, as the Redress of all the Wrongs you have mentioned 

 would amount to,' &c. 



'• I am informed by Mr Macmath that Thomas Maxwell was 

 a 'man of business' with a bad reputation, and that his wife was 

 Isobel Neilson, daughter of a Dumfries merchant. 



" The chap-book is said to have been first printed in 1750. 

 A few years ago an edition from the original MS., in the posses- 

 sion of the Rev. Dr Gordon, Glasgow, was published by Mr Elliot 

 Stock, London. 



" Ogilvie's account of the appearances of Thomas Max- 

 well after death is in parts as circumstantial as Defoe's ' True 

 Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs Yeal,' which I suspect 

 suggested it. The following paragraph is full of touches fitted 

 to compel the unsophisticated reader's belief in the whole matter 

 as related: — ' LTpon the 5th of March, 1722, being at Blarehead 

 baptizing the Shepherd's Child, I came off at Sunsetting-, or a very 

 little after. Near Will White's March the Laird of Coul came up 



16. William Ogilvie, A.M., studied and was graduated at the Univer- 

 sity of Edinburgh, 30th December, 1706, ordained at London in 1712 

 as chaplain to the 7th Dragoons, presented by the Laird of Dirleton 

 on October, 1714, and admitted 26th January following ; died Januarj', 

 1729, aged 40, in I7th ministry. — "Fasti Ecclesite Scoticana;," part 1, 

 p. .S75. 



