260 Field Meetings. 



easy matter keeping your feet, and if you slip you might just 

 as well go over a bona-fide mural precipice." Defoe, in his 

 account of his Tour in Scotland, has also described the glen 

 in a passage in which he uses many lurid adjectives regard- 

 ing the " horrible " and " terrifying " nature of the preci- 

 pices and " casms." In Covenanting times the Pass was 

 the scene of several rescues on the part of the Covenanters of 

 prisoners from the hands of the dragoons, and at least one 

 of these rescues has become famous in the history of the 

 period. In July or August, 1684, according to Wodrow's 

 narrative, on which all the subsequent accounts of the 

 incident are based, a number of prisoners from Nithsdale and 

 Galloway were being carried to Edinburgh under an escort 

 of twenty-eight soldiers, the prisoners tied two and two 

 together upon horses. Two brothers, James and Thomas 

 Harkness, farmers at Lockerben, in Nithsdale, planned a 

 rescue of the prisoners, and gathering between thirty and 

 forty men together, they waited under cover in the Enterkin 

 Pass, along the steep side of which the dragoons and their 

 charges were obliged to travel. Presently the cavalcade was 

 seen coming slowly up the Pass in single file, owing to the 

 narrowness of the path, and it is said that as they approached 

 the Covenanters the leader, Captain Kelte, was singing a 

 popular song which was particularly offensive to the Cove- 

 nanters, whereupon James M' Michael, the famous " Black 

 M' Michael," who killed the curate of Carsphairn, and 

 brother of Daniel, who was killed in Dalveen, deliberately 

 fired at the officer, shooting him through the head, his body 

 falling over into a ravine which still bears his name. The 

 dragoons were routed, and all the prisoners were set at 

 liberty except one, who afterwards died in prison in Edin- 

 burgh as the result of a neglected wound in his arm. 

 Another of the prisoners had the misfortune to be caught 

 again by the soldiers, who shot him in the face with small 

 lead, with the result that he became blind for life. The 

 rescue was followed by an inquisition throughout the whole 

 of the parishes in the vicinity of the Enterkin, lasting for six 

 weeks, so that, as Wodrow says, " it brought much trouble 

 to Nithsdale." Half-way down the Enterkin is a delightfully 



