Two Iroxgrav Traditions. 217 



1640. Mr James Gutlirie, of Irongray, died in 1756. Now, 

 if he is the hero of this tale, he lived to be i 16 years of age. 

 In Scott's Fasti I fiiid his age stated to be 81 at his death. 

 I don't know Scott's authority, but I am inclined to think 

 he understates it a little. The Presbytery of Dumfries would 

 iundly have ordained a youth of 19 to the ministry. There 

 is H) trace of his having reached such a patriarchal age as 

 116. This is enough to condemn the story. But it bristles 

 with minor inaccuracies, inaccuracies which surprise me, 

 coming as they do from a man like Edw-ard Irving, who 

 could have checked them by opening W'odrow's History or 

 by simply using a little common-sense. 



1. Irving's informant was, indeed, the daughter of 

 James (iuthrie, the minister of Irongray, and wife of the 

 Rev. Archibald Lawson, minister of Kirkmahoe from 1750 

 till 1797. On June 27th, 1752, he married Mary Guthrie, 

 who survived him, dying in Glasgow in March, 1820. Irving 

 was assistant to Dr Chalmers at St. John's, Glasgow, from 

 i8ig till 1822. Did Irving believe it possible he was talking 

 to a woman whose father had reached man's estate 160 

 vears before he met her? If anyone in this year of grace 

 1915 were to tell me his father taught Burns to hold a 

 plough, I would think a good deal, but I trust I would be 

 polite enough not to say what I thought. Yet this event is 

 more probable than Irving's story. 



2. If Irving had opened his edition of W'odrow (the new 

 edition of 1830) he would have seen James Guthrie's portrait 

 in the first volume, and found under it not " Professor of 

 Divinity in Edinburgh," as he states, but " minister of 

 Stirling." If he had read the account of the martyrdom, he 

 would have found that the head of James Guthrie was not 

 placed on a pole over the " West Port," " which lies imme- 

 diately under the guns of the Castle and looks towards the 

 south and west, the quarter of Scotland where the Church 

 ever rallied her distressed affairs," but over the " Nether Bow 

 Port,"* which looks in the opposite direction, and is as far 



* Exfrart from the MS. lipcords nf the Old Tolhooth nf Edin- 

 hunih. "Relief Book." "First Jinie 1661. VA^ 28 May 1661. 



