130 NOTES ON COLDINGHAM 



Oairncross seems to have been styled Cairncross Hall in 

 the 17th century. The Fishers' brae is, in a deed of 1760, 

 called Cadgershill, and " the yeard and houses to which it 

 refers are holden immediately of and under Alexander, Earl of 

 Home, in feu form fee and hostage for payment and delivery 

 yearly of the sum of Gs. 8d. Scots money, at two times in 

 the year. Whits, and Marts., by equal portions with two 

 kain hens and four days work, or 5s. Scots money, for each 

 hen and the like sum for each day's work." 



Godsmount or Gosemount is the name of the ground 

 on which is the steading of Mr Robert Cormack, near 

 Bogangreen. 



"Bonner dubs" may have taken its name from a former 

 proprietor. There are Bonners mentioned by Mr Dysart in 

 1701, and headstones in the churchyard couimemorate Bonners 

 of dates 1787, 1807, 1813. and 1847. 



After the sale of Burnhall, about 1798, Sir James Home 

 repaired and fitted up a house in Coldingham for his mother, 

 called "the Castle"; where this was situated no one seems 

 now to know. 



Coldingham Manse in Mr Dysart's time had a thatched 

 roof, and in 1698, four years after Mr Dysart's entrance as 

 minister of the parish, the house and offices were re-thatched 

 by George Blair, thatcher, for the sum of £66 14s. 



It was the custom in Coldingham that when a woman 

 died in childbed the coffia was covered with a pair of sheets 

 instead of the usual mortcloth. I have heard that a woman 

 at the shore named Wilson was the last on whose coffin 

 "the sheets" were laid. 



In 1616 to 1621, during the period of Sir Alexander Home's 

 sheriffship of Berwickshire, he caused several unfortunate 

 women to be burnt for witchcraft, and so strong was the 

 belief in the power of suspected witches that many persons 

 in Mr Dysart's time were brought before the session for 

 employing them to use charms to cure disease, and also for 

 scratching or wounding them "above the breath," in the 

 hope, by drawing blood from them, of averting their evil 

 designs. 



One of the customs of the witches was to run nine times 

 withershins — that is, contrary to the sun — round "the grey 



