G4 Report of Meetings for 1887. By J. Hardy. 



of the Gala, of which only a part is left built into one of the out- 

 houses of the farm steading. Habituated to the use of arms, the 

 old lairds hereabouts had a read}' means of settling their disputes. 

 To this purport a story is told of two lairds of Torsonce and 

 Lugate Castles. They quarrelled and fought together on horse- 

 back at Lugate. Torsonce prevailed and Lugate fled, but was 

 so hotly pursued that he could not gain admittance to his own 

 fortress, but passed it, and Torsonce slew him at a thorn-tree 

 above Lugate Castle. The " Rabble Road " connecting Stow 

 with the Edinburgh road, was so called because a rabble once 

 broke out in Stow, and those found guilty were as a reparation 

 obliged to construct this road. It is now called the " Rammel 

 Road." There is perhaps here a play upon words ; but it shows 

 that the people till recent times were in want of commodious 

 public roads ; and in their conversation with strangers they are 

 stiil anxious to point out the old ways. 



Above Killochyett, the suburb of Stow, looking up from the 

 Edinburgh road, on the right hand going northwards, is a road 

 leading up to a hill-top under culture. There are at the summit 

 traces of a British camp, and opposite to it, on the high steep 

 stretching upwards, like a mountain side, is another similar camp 

 on a level with this. The people believe that the warriors who 

 garrisoned these were so strong, although a broad valley inter- 

 venes, that they could shoot arrows from the one camp into the 

 other. 



Miss Dunlop, in an article in the Scotsman, signed " Old Edin- 

 burgh," says: "In 1770, the cordiners of Edinburgh were in 

 the habit of selling their shoes at Stow fair. Stow was then 

 regarded as the first-meeting place between the capital and the 

 Borders. The size and importance of its market is evinced by 

 the fact that the head tailor in Selkirk, at the beginning of the 

 present century, held it to be his duty in his patrons' interest to 

 go to Stow Fair annually to get the fashions." Two fairs were 

 established at Stow in 1669, each for two days, the first to begin 

 on the 1st July, and the other on the 20th September. (Hist, of 

 Selkirkshire, i. p. 452). "In 1778, Robert Boyd commenced 

 making woollen cloth, the only manufacture before that period 

 being ' Stow Struntain ' made of the coarsest wool, and wrought 

 by a woman on a loom like a bed-heck. For working 144 yards 

 a woman got 6d with meat, 9d without. It was used for garters 

 or bindings, and fetched from 9s to lis per gross." (Ibid). 





