[11]. A recent visit to Kergilliack revealed nothing more than a large field behind Kergilliack upper farm, bounded by an unusually massive wall, and said to have been the prison exercising ground, and outside it a tumulus locally reputed to mark the prison burial-place, and held to be haunted.
An elaborately moulded plaster ceiling at Meudon Farm in Mawnan, five miles from Kergilliack, is said to have been the work of foreign prisoners of war.
[12]. To account for this extraordinary, and apparently quite unnecessary journey, during which Vanhille seems always to have had plenty of money, M. Pariset thinks it possible that he was really an emissary of the committee which was at this time earnestly considering the plan of a general rising of all the prisoners of war in England.
[13]. I give this as in M. Pariset’s original. I have not been able to find that Moore ever was thus employed. He made the offer at his trial, but the Government declined it.
[14]. For much pertaining to Kelso, as for other matters associated with prisoners of war on parole in Scotland, I have to thank Mr. J. John Vernon, Hon. Secretary of the Hawick Archaeological Society.
[15]. The above, and other Masonic notes which follow, are from the History of Freemasonry in the Province of Roxburgh, Peebles, and Selkirkshire, by Mr. W. Fred Vernon.
[16]. The rank of garde-marine in the French Navy corresponded with that of sub-lieutenant in the British Navy; there was no rank actually equivalent to our midshipmen.
The British midshipmen were sources of continued anxiety and annoyance to their custodians in their French prisons. They defied all rules and regulations, they refused to give their parole, and were ceaseless in their attempts to escape. ‘I wish to goodness’, said a French officer at Bitche one evening at dinner, ‘I knew what to do to keep those English middies within bounds!’
‘There is only one way, Sir,’ said a lady at the table.
‘What is that?’ asked the officer eagerly.