1856 FIELD-WORK IN A YRSHIRE AND NITHSDALE 249 



subject of his thoughts and his conversation. 1 He was a 

 welcome guest too at Dalquharran Castle, in the Girvan 

 valley, where his love of the past was amply gratified, 

 where his host could retail many reminiscences of men, 

 manners, and customs that had long passed away, and 

 where his hostess threw over the household the inexpres- 

 sible charm of her own gentle and gracious presence. 



In the eastern part of the district where the 

 infant Nith turns southward into the dale which 

 bears its name, he was much struck with these 

 local associations, as may be seen in the following 

 passages from a letter to Miss Johnes : * The low bit 

 of country in which I now write [New Cumnock] 

 is 700 feet above the sea. "The wind is howling in 

 turret and tree," or would do so if there were either 

 turrets or trees here for it to howl in. We are in a 

 great plain, once a lake, now filled with peat-moss, 

 through which slowly flows the winding Nith near its 

 sources. Great rounded green hills rise all around, 

 some of them more than 2000 feet in height, and 

 beyond and among them are vast moors and mosses, 

 swelling and undulating for miles and miles, amid 

 which " the hill-folk " took refuge in the days of Claver- 

 house and the " bluidy Dalzell." Two days ago I was 

 at Kirkconnel, on the Nith, some six miles from here. 

 Old Kirkconnel, now desolate, is but a ruined church, 

 mere foundations, with a churchyard full of mouldering 

 tombstones, at the foot of the desolate hills. I 

 searched them all, and removed the grass and moss 

 from some, in hopes of finding thereon " Hie jacet 

 Adamus Fleming," but in vain. 2 



1 Auchendrane was the prototype of a sketch of ' Balbraith ' which he after- 

 wards wrote for The Saturday Review. 



2 There is another Kirkconnel farther south, on the Kirtle Water, which 

 claims to be the true scene of the ballad, and where Helen's grave is pointed out 



