involved in the Construction of Artillery. 323 



" When the Act of Forfeiture against the Douglas was passed by the Scottish Parliament, 

 in 1455, and the castle of Threave was the last stronghold of that family, King James II. 

 marched into Galloway, and taking up a position near where the town of Castle Douglas 

 now stands, besieged it. Amongst the country-people who came to witness the siege were a 

 blacksmith and his sons, named M'Kin, or M'Kew. Seeing that the royal artillery produced 

 no eifect, old M'Kin offered, if furnished with proper materials, to make a more efficient 

 piece of ordnance. The King gladly accepted the proposal, and the people of Kirkcud- 

 bright each contributed a bar of iron, out of which M'Kin produced the gun called Mons 

 Meg. It was made at Buchan's Croft, close to the ' Three Thorns of Carlin Wark,' where 

 the King had encamped. Its weight was 6-J tons, and its caliber 19i inches; the charge of 

 powder was a peck; and in a short time the garrison surrendered. The king gave M'Kia 

 the forfeited lands of MoUance as a reward: IM'Kin soon became called (as was the custom) 

 Mollance, after his lands. The cannon was named after him, with the addition of Meg, 

 his wife's name, whose voice was said to rival that of her namesake. Thus the original 

 name of the gun, Mollance Meg, was soon shortened into Mons Meg." 



All this may possibly be true, but it looks most improbable, so far as the name is con- 

 cerned; it is but a sample of that loose sort of vapid fable with a circumstance, with which 

 antiquaries are apt to be satisfied. It will have been remarked that the Gantois gun is a 

 Meg, too, as are many other large guns popularly throughout Germany. The truth seems to 

 be — "Grcte,""Gretchen,"is familiarly applied by the vulgar, in Germany and Flanders, to 

 any huge machine that does " virago" work, just as "Jenny" is with us applied to any one that 

 performs drudgery, as in " spinning-jenny," or, as the old Scottish guillotine was called, "The 

 Maiden," and the " Mons" was probably nothing more than an abbreviation of monster. The 

 whole tale, moreover, is rendered improbable by the statement of Pennant ("Northern 

 Tour"), who says that the sister gun to Mons Meg proved fatal to James II. of Scotland, by 

 bursting near his person. This was at the siege of Roxburgh Castle, which had remained 

 in the hands of an English garrison from the time of the Battle of Durham, in 1460. 



However, it is quite possible the iron was forged and the gim made in Scotland by 

 M'Kin, and that he was a craftsman of some of the blacksmiths' guilds in Scottish burghs; 

 but the design of the gun came from the Continent, — at least is identical with that pre- 

 viously adopted in various parts of Europe and in Asia, from a remote antiquity. The 

 ancient and celebrated fabricators of cutting weapons in Scotland, it will be recollected, 

 were not natives, but foreign artisans from the north of Italy and from Spain. 



Mons Meg was used at the siege of Dumbarton, in 1489 ; was then brought back to 

 Edinburgh, and reposed there for eight years; was next brought to Norham, in 1497; was 

 afterwards used to fire a salute, in 1548, when Queen Mary married the Dauphin of France ; 

 and in 1682, when firing a salute in honour of the Duke of York, the iron rings, which 

 are now partly wanting near the breech, were blown away, though without much distui-bing 



