90 A Scorrisn Ipyt. 
played her old headack upon us several times too, but I can’t by 
any means prevail upon her to take her bed. We are very few 
in number now. Mrs Hume, Betty Stuart and Sweetest of 
Winnies are all gone. Winnie beg’d to be remember’d to you 
in the kindest manner. We had a letter from my sister Lawrie 
last week who beg’d us when we writ to Miss Johnston to make 
her compliments to her and tell her she hop’d she would not look 
upon her as a Moffat acquaintance. Farewell my Dr. 
MoFRFAT, Oct. 6. 1746. J. ERSKINE. 
Grissell—my grandmother’s sister, of a peevish ridiculous temper— 
‘© sweetest of Winnies,” Miss Winifred Hairstanes, whose sister married 
my greatgrandfather, and was mother of the late Ladies Sutherland and 
Glenorchy.—C.K.S. 
The first reflection which naturally occurs to one’s mind on 
reading this humorous chronicle of high jks and promiscuous 
flirtation, is that the gallant officers of Blankeney’s regiment must 
have had reason to congratulate themselves upon their lot, as 
compared with that of their comrades in active service in the 
Highlands, hunting down unhappy Jacobite fugitives, and eradi- 
cating nests of caterans in gloomy glens and inaccessible straths, 
as remote and savage as the Carpathians or the Khyber are now. 
But it seems as if the young ladies themselves, representatives 
for the most part of the best Scottish families, were at least 
equally well pleased with their military partners, and the narrative 
of their proceedings helps us to appreciate the force of the remark 
recorded by Sir Walter Scott in his Irish journal, that probably 
few occupations of territory by an invading army have been totally 
devoid of the alleviations due to the interference of Cupid and 
Hymen. It is not quite easy to understand why the “bold 
baron ” should have prefaced his impromptu entertainment, ‘“ rug’d 
with the fingers” of his fair guests, by the rude assault upon his 
own sister, poor “ blind Harry ;” but the result appears to have 
been highly satisfactory in obliterating the recollection of the 
previous passages of high defiance between the rival claimants 
for the hand of the fair Maguire. One would be glad to ascertain 
the exact nationality of the gallant brothers who shared the not 
very euphonious name of Makad, and to speculate upon the after 
career of Cornet Smith, who, though his rank, in a military point of 
view, scarcely entitled him to the prominence which he claims, 
