118 TRANSACTIONS. 
old extent, of Gibbinstone alias Macolvistoun, within the barony of Holy- 
wood, dated the 6th of May, 1678.” 
In the year 1685 there is the service of a Mary Welsh as 
heir to her father in the 20s land of Collistoun, the merk land of 
Larg, the 20s land of old extent of Nether Whiteside, and the 40s 
land of old extent of Craigenputtock. In the local records of the 
town and county of Dumfries towards the middle and close of the 
sixteenth century there are numerous fragmentary incidental 
notices of the actual existence of the family of Collistoun and other 
Welshes, which owe any interest they possess rather to their 
historic associations than to any intrinsic merits of their own. At 
the era of the Reformation the very antique royal burgh of Dum- 
fries, then still the one great “ provisioned town” of the marches, 
its Provost M‘Brair, when called to Edinburgh by the authorities, 
in his evidence characterised the burgh, in its then past history of 
at least three centuries, as “a town aft brunt and harriet.” This 
statement history fully corroborates, even in such details as have 
survived. At this period the native inhabitants of Dumfries, as 
you may discern, had been a vehemently daring race of men, 
actuated by the old chivalric spirit of the Borderer, with tempers 
and swords almost equally sharp and shrill, on supposed just 
occasion, and seemingly altogether without fear in some of their 
undertakings. The periodical meetings of the “Justices of the 
Peace of the Shire” seem to have been the known “ gala days” 
for the settlement of old grudges and feuds, wherein they pricked 
at each other in the true old Border fashion, this popular institu- 
tion and usage lasting in one form or other until after the period 
of the Union of 1707. Under such conditions it is the less 
surprising to find war-gear of all kinds still figuring so largely in 
the necessary requirements and furniture of existence as it was 
here as elsewhere in the Marchlands. In the interior of the 
burgher household you may discern bows and arrows, steilbonnets. 
lant-staves, guns, “ pistolets,” swords, long and small, in consider- 
able variety ; coats of mail, big and little, known generically as 
“ Jacks ;” grey-gowns, “‘ riding-tippats,” or hoods, for warmth and 
protection, while the staigs, or “ Galloway Nags,” are covered over 
with certain trappings and war-gear, the rider blowing his own 
“ slogan” upon his ‘‘ blowing-horn” in tones that if not sweet were 
terrific and loud enough. Froissart gives an amusing account of the 
infernal echoes of the hollow and middle of the night as raised in 
the Scottish camp in repose by such “ blowing of horns” as was in 
