8 Anniversary Address. 



to " Friendship's Offering " for 1829, and reprinted in 

 Chambers's Journal, hi , 331. It was afterwards made the 

 subject of one of Wilson's Border Tales, under the title of 

 " Midside Maggie, or the Bannock of Tollies Hill." Both 

 versions are largely embellished by the fancy of the writers, but 

 divested of fiction, the simple story is sufficiently romantic. 

 Thomas Hardie rented a portion of Tollies-hill in the skirts 

 of Lammermoor, known as the Midside Farm. An unusually 

 late winter told disastrously on his flocks. Many sheep 

 perished in the snow ; the survivors, weakened by starvation 

 and hardship, contracted disease, and were still further 

 diminished by deaths. Hardie was unable to make up his 

 rent, and in their extremity his young and handsome wife 

 went to Thirlestane and laid their unhappy case before the 

 Earl, which she attributed mainly to the snows and frost of so 

 high and exposed a situation as Tollies-hill. The Earl, to 

 get rid of her importunity, promised to consider her petition 

 if, as snow seemed so plentiful at Midside, she brought him 

 a snowball in the month of June. She took him at his word, 

 returned home, collected a large snow-heap in one of the 

 secluded cleughs of Tollies-hill, beat it into a hard mass, and 

 carefully covered it over to exclude air and sun. When the 

 appointed time came round a goodly mass of snow remained, 

 although it had disappeared from the surrounding hills. 

 With this she repaired again to Thirlestane, and reminded 

 her landlord of his promise. Surprised and pleased with her 

 ingenuity and engaging address, he granted the necessary 

 relief, by which Hardie recovered his prosperity and became 

 a thriving and well-to-do tenant. Meantime, Lord Lauder- 

 dale, a determined royalist, espoused the cause of Charles II., 

 and attended him to the fatal field of Worcester, where he 

 was taken prisoner in 1651, and languished in confinement 

 for nine years. During all this time the Hardies carefully 

 laid by the rents, and at last Maggie resolving to show her 

 gratitude, bethought her of a mode of conveying the accumu- 

 lation to her benefactor by baking the gold pieces into a 

 bannock, which she carried to London, and obtaining access 



