132 A Covenanter's Narrative. 



10th January, 1913. 



Chairman — Mr G. Macleod Stewart. 



A Covenanter's Narrative — James Grierson of Dalgoner 

 and his Imprisonment at Ayr, 1666=7. 



By Sir Philip J. Hamilton-Grierson. 



The document which is reproduced in the following- pages 

 is entitled " Ane memorandum of the progress of James 

 Grierson of Dalgoner when it came to his knowledge that he 

 was proclaimit rebell at the Cross of Dumfries amongst that 

 partie that tuik Sir James Turner out thereof, who was inocent 

 and free in that engagement as after follows. "^ 



In order to make the memorandum intelligible, it is neces- 

 sary to explain who and what manner of man the writer was ; 

 and it may be not without interest to give a short account of 

 the family to which he belonged. 



From the narrative of a Crown charter, dated 27th 

 January, 1591, in favour of William Greir, " now of Dal- 

 goner," eldest son of John Greir deceased, we learn that the 

 lands of Dalgoner and Poundland had previously belonged to 

 the Monastery of Melrose,^ and had been possessed by 



1 I have not been so fortunate as to find the original among 

 James Grierson' s papers. The copy which I have made use of 

 appears to have been written towards the close of the eighteenth 

 century by the then proprietor of Dalgoner and custodier of the 

 family documents. The memorandum was printed in the Juridical 

 Review, June, 1912, and I am indebted to the courtesy of the pub- 

 lishers, Messrs William Green & Sons, Edinburgh and London, for 

 permission to reprint it here. 



2 These lands formed part of the gift by Affrica, daughter of 

 Edgar, to the Abbey of Melrose, in the reign of Alexander II. 

 (Liber sancte Marie de Metros, Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh, 1873, 

 i., pp. 181, seq.). Some of the boundaries of the lands given by 

 Afirica are capable of identification. The stream, " quod dicitur 

 poUogan," is plainly the Laggan Burn, and the cross of Cross 

 Garrieoch " quod est meta inter terram canonicorum de Dercongal 

 et Darrengorran " is, no doubt, "the cross of Meiklewood " (A. 

 Crichton, Memoirs of Bev. John Blackader, Edinburgh, 1823, p. 215), 

 marked in Thomson's Atlas of Scotland, published in the year 1831. 

 The name "Dalgoner" occurs in a Papal Commission (in the pos- 



