Rev. T. Leishman on Customs and Superstitions. 331 



There are frequent references to the old families of the 

 district — the house of Roxburgh with its numerous cadets, 

 the Kers of Greenhead, Loch tour, Linton, Sunlavvs, Cavers, 

 Gateshaw, Graden, the earls of Home, the lairds of Riddell 

 and Mowe, the McDougalls, Pringles, and Rutherfords. 

 Sometimes family and national history are mingled, as in 

 the examination of those who took a prominent part in 

 Montrose's unsuccessful attempt to raise the eastern Borderers 

 for the King, immediately before the battle of Philiphaugh. 

 In 1656, there is recorded an application from Montrose's 

 son, when about to be married to Lady Roxburgh, to have 

 the banns proclaimed with his honours, "in the ordinarie way 

 of noblemen of his ranke." The difficulty caused by the 

 family attainder was avoided by a special permission to marry 

 without proclamation. Now and then we catch glimpses of 

 important contemporary events. The minister of Stitchell is 

 rebuked for having, on a certain Sunday, reported in his pulpit 

 "that there had ane fearfull destruction com upon our armie," 

 and the matter drops with his excuse that " the news cam 

 out of the Laird's house." But, on observing the date, we 

 find that it was the Sunday after Marston Moor, where a 

 defeat was turned into a victory. The earlier news, before it 

 reached the Border, had completely outstripped the later. 

 How aptly does this illustrate the scene in Rokeby, where 

 Bertram brings to WycliiFe the tidings of the royalist success, 

 and tells — 



"How many a bonny Scot, aghast, 

 Spurring his palfry northward, past, 

 Cursing the day when zeal or meed 

 First lured their Leslie o'er the Tweed." 



One might almost construct a census return for the year 

 1646 from the following lists of communicants in the different 

 parishes of the presbytery: — Kelso, 1500; Sprouston, 750; 

 Eduam, 340; Stitchell and Home, 560; Makerston, 240; 

 Roxburgh, 550; Linton, 260; Morebattle, 730; Yetholm, 

 300 ; with the neighbouring parishes of Crailing, 360 ; Eck- 

 ford, 520. In that age of universal and compulsory con- 

 formity, these numbers must have represented the whole adult 

 population. 



An act of Assembly in 1588, forbidding burials within 

 places of worship, was, as might be expected, long resisted by 

 a nation keenly alive to ancestral associations. Cases of dis- 

 cipline arising out of this were of frequent occurrence. In 

 one instance, the Davisons and Burnes, two families who 



