Report of Meetings for 1886. By J. Hardy. !305 



in vain, inexorable judgment having overtaken him (a.d. 1581). 

 It thus never became, like Dalkeith, "the Lion's Den." 



When we had crossed Lyne, the largest tributary hereabouts 

 of the Tweed, we had ou our left a fir wood with some good 

 Scotch pines in it ; and on the right near some cottages, a 

 cultivated flat " a kind of peninsula between the Tweed and the 

 Lyne," very stony and not well clad with grass. It had been 

 spoiled by cultivation. At the upper end, six feet distant from 

 each other, were two large, upstanding, subtriangular blocks of 

 rock, three feet in height, and not very impressive to look at. 

 Some one had been attempting to split them. This is thu 



Standing Stones. Sheriff Mui 



Sheriff Muir, and here the Militia were mustered and trained. 

 Whether the weapon-shaws were ever held here I cannot at 

 present determine. In the " Scottish Nation," where the in- 

 formation is not always reliable, the last great demonstration of 

 the kind, 15th June 1627, is said to have been held by James 

 Naesmyth of Posso, the sheriff, on "the Sheriff's Muir." (vol. 

 in., p. 246.) Mr W. Chambers however (Peeblesshire, p. 149) 

 quotes the original document which specifies the " Borrow Muir 

 of Peebles called the King's Muir." Professor Veitch, after a 

 scrutiny of the names of those who fell at Plodden (a.d. 151o), 

 thinks that the Lairds of Peeblesshire, on being summoned to 



