Transactions. ie: 
fully carried out the rescue of the Covenanters at the pass of 
Enterkin so graphically described by Defoe in his ‘“‘ Memoirs of 
the Church of Scotland.” He long outlived the Revolution, and 
died December 6, 1723, in his seventy-second year. 
At Alan’s Cairn, at a spot where the parishes of Penpont and 
Tynron in Dumfriesshire and Carsphairn in Kirkcudbrightshire 
meet together, a stone that in time became a cairn has long 
marked the spot where rest the mortal remains of George Alan 
and Margaret Gracie. John Semple, the outed minister of 
Carsphairn, had been holding a conventicle in what has come to 
be called the Whig’s Hole, a deep hollow that seems as if it had 
been formed for a meeting place for the persecuted in troublous 
times. It suddenly sinks down on the Altry bill, not far from 
the water of Ken, and cannot be seen until its edge is reached. 
Here a large congregation was gathered, and Semple was in the 
midst of his sermon when the watcher gave the signal that the 
dragoons were approaching. The assembly at once broke up. 
Semple and a few of the older people were taken to a deep moss 
hag near at hand, while the younger folks fled in an opposite 
direction to reach another moss hag through which the dragoons 
could not pass. But they were too late. The dragoons inter- 
cepted them before they accomplished their purpose, and ‘fired. 
Several were wounded, and George Alan and Margaret Gracie 
were shot dead. On the evening of the following day friends 
stole under the covert of night to the spot and buried the dead, 
where they now lie. In 1857 a pillar with an inscription was 
erected over the grave. 
In Kirkmichael parish, on the high grounds that rise up on the 
west of Glenkilt Burn to the height of eleven hundred feet, and 
form a table land, the Ordnance Map has marked “ Gibb’s corse, 
Martyr's stone.” The stone is of some size, and makes one 
wonder how it got there. It is easily come upon in the moor. 
Who Gibb was, or how he came to be reckoned a martyr, I have 
not met any one able to tell me. 
IV. Notes on the Dumfriesshire Flora, with new Localities 
recewed from correspondents. By Grorce F. Scort-Extior, 
F.LS. 
I was enabled this summer to pay a short visit to some of the 
outlying districts of Dumfriesshire, and though my time was very 
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