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are recorded, with quaint circumstantiality, the erimes and 
punishments of men and women whose graves in our quiet 
churchyard have been wet with the showers of a hundred and 
fifty springs. Assaults were very common, for the fierce old 
Border spirit was easily roused, and furious blows avenged the 
slightest wrong with startling swiftness. Even the excellent 
man who occupied the office of town-clerk had been fined for 
“blooding and stryking.” At times people were attacked in 
their own houses by aggrieved neighbours. In minutes dated 
6th January, 1702, we read :— . 
‘¢ The which day Herbert Wilkin, maltmaker, in the said burgh, being 
accused of going under cloud of night unto the house of Robert Johnstone, 
tailor in said burgh, and of grievously beating and striking of Jean Gass, 
his wife, and the same being proven by witnesses and the said Herbert’s 
own confession, was decerned in ten pounds Scots for an battery com- 
mitted upon the said Jean Gass, conform to the Act of Parliament, and in 
forty pounds money foresaid to the party damuified and fiscal of court for 
the violence done, and ordains him to be imprisoned till he pay the same.” 
Offences against property were much less common than assaults. 
“‘Bairns, herds, and servants, were sometimes guilty of destroy- 
ing and away taking of peas, beans, and potatoes, and stealing 
and cutting of neighbours’ grass,” but serious cases of theft rarely 
occurred. <A case of unusual gravity is recorded in the following 
extract :— 
“94th July, 1701.—The which day James Linton, carpenter in Annan, 
being accused of taking ane salmont fish from Christopher Irving, stepson 
to Matthew Ferguson in Annan, alleging the said fish was taken out of his 
nets, and it being proven ly witnesses that the said fish was taken in the 
said Matthew Ferguson’s nets, and that the said James Linton did away 
take the same from the said Christopher Irving. Therefore decerned and 
ordained to give back the said fish, and fined for the said crime in ten 
pounds Scots money, and ordained to be imprisoned till he pay them.” 
The punishments ordered by the Court were not exceptionally 
severe. The town boasted of stocks, but these were very seldom 
used. I know of only one case in which “putting in the stocks” 
was included in the sentence pronounced. Whipping was rarely 
inflicted, though, curiously enough, fishermen guilty of contraven- 
ing the “‘mercat regulations” of the burgh were liable to personal 
chastisement, as well as to a pecuniary penalty. ining was the 
common mode of punishment, and no doubt the “ groates ” and 
“pounds Scots” wrung from offending burghers constituted a 
large portion of the revenue of the town. 
