TRANSACTIONS. 23 
COMMUNICATIONS, 
I. Dumfries 250 Years Ago. By Mr James S. Thomson. 
I intend in these few notes to call up a few of the characteris- 
tics of society as it existed here 250 years ago. The features are 
strongly akin in many particulars to those existing in our own 
time—the same failings are here portrayed and the same virtues, 
and the names are often those of dwellers in our midst. The 
notes are mainly taken from past records of old session-books, 
the:truth of which I have taken pains to ascertain. In reading over 
the old records of the town—both municipal and sessional—one is 
taken back to the time of intense religious feeling and hard fight- 
ing that then existed in Scotland. Let me briefly recall the 
position of affairs during the period from 1635 to 1654. The 
National Covenant was signed in 1638, and the General Assembly 
had become rather than Parliament the power of the land, and, as 
has been justly observed, ‘‘ Church and State were not convertible 
terms, but the former permeated the latter so thoroughly that the 
Government wore quite a Theocratic aspect. What the Assembly 
resolved upon the estates readily assented to.” The remembrance 
of this has to be borne in mind when the various penalties enforced 
are mentioned here. Various matters are touched upon that have 
an aspect almost comic in the light of the present, showing history 
to be repeating itself in small as well as great events. There is 
an impression that life at this time was painfully austere, but from 
these records we gather that people’s daily life was somewhat like 
what exists in the present. Concurrent with deep religious feeling 
there existed amongst the better class the weak brother whose life 
was not all that the minister could have wished. Dealing first 
with the social habits of the town, we find a set of roystering 
blades who carried their drinking to the extent of having the town 
drummer to assist them in their orgies, and it is ordained ; “ Nov. 
1, 1649. That the session, resenting the great dishonour done to 
the Lord by sundry persons in this burgh in the height of their 
cups, not only abusing the creature to the excess of riot through 
drinking of healths, but likewise by calling the drummer to beat 
the drum at every health, do therefore discharge the drummer to 
answer any persons in such ungodly demand under pain of 
inflicting upon him the sharpest measure of kirk discipline and 
extruding him from his place withal. Margaret D., spouse to 
James L. D., to be rebuked in sackcloth for the sin of drunken- 
