"O lone St. Mary of the waves,
In ruin lies thine ancient aisle."
It was destroyed about the year 1557, and was never rebuilt. A Cranstoun, flying from the Scotts, sought sanctuary in the holy building, and the Scotts, heedless of the terrors of excommunication, burnt it down. "They burned the Chapel for very rage," says The Lay, because Cranstoun escaped them. The churchyard is little used now, but a few privileged families do still, I understand, bury their dead in that quiet spot. It is an enviable place in which to lie at rest, where the lark sings high in air, and the free wind comes soughing over the hill.
Near to the burial ground is the mound called Binram's Coise, the grave, they say, of a wizard priest, whose bones might not find rest in hallowed ground.
"Strange stories linger'd in those lonely glens,—
Of that weird eve when wizard Binram old,
Was laid in drear unrest, beyond hallow'd ground;
How, at bell-tolling by no mortal hand,
And voices saying words which no man knew,
There rose such shrieks from low depths of the lake,