"Take my compliments to Dalyell, your master," said Baton, tauntingly, as he rode off; "tell him that I am not going home with him to-night."
John Nesbit, of Hardhill, a tall and powerful Covenanter, fell on the field, covered with wounds, but was found to be alive next day, when he was stripped and about to be interred with the dead. He was a brave man, and had served in foreign wars, for which he was made a captain of Musketeers at Bothwell some years after.
The gloom of the November night, and a sentiment of chivalry—of pity, perhaps, for their poor and persecuted countrymen—inspired the Life Guards to spare the fugitives, the mass of whom escaped and dispersed; but eighty prisoners—among whom was Neilson, the unfortunate Laird of Corsack—were taken, and these were next day marched in triumph through the streets of Edinburgh, while cannon thundered a salute from the castle, and the bells rang in every steeple; while the streets resounded with the tramp of the cavalry, who, with standards advanced and kettle-drums beating, escorted them to prison. "It is recorded that Andrew Murray, an aged Presbyterian minister, when he beheld the ferocious Dalyell in his rusted head-piece, buff coat, and long waving beard, riding at the head of his cavalier squadrons, who, flushed with victory, surrounded the manacled prisoners with drawn swords and cocked carbines—and when he heard the shouts of acclamation from the people, was so overpowered with grief for what he deemed the downfall for ever of God's Covenanted Kirk, that he became ill, and expired."
The dead were buried on the field, and there may yet be seen, within a small and rude enclosure, which is overshadowed by a few trees, a monument bearing an inscription to the memory of Crookshanks, MacCormick, and others who lie where they fell. At the back of the Pentland Hills runs a rivulet named the Deadman's-grain, from the circumstance of a wounded Covenanter falling there when pursued by a cavalier trooper. Drawing a pistol from his holsters, he fired it at his pursuer underneath his bridle arm, but, missing, shot his own horse in the flank. The animal fell, and his rider was immediately slain, where his green grave is yet shown by the side of the mountain burn.
At Easton, in Dunsyre, there was long visible a lonely grave, in which, according to a tradition transmitted from father to son, there lay a Covenanter who had expired of wounds received at Rullion Green. It was opened in 1817, and found to contain the skeleton of a tall man, with two silver coins dated 1620. On being touched, the bones crumbled to dust.
Colonel Wallace, on seeing all lost, left the field, accompanied by Mr. John Welsh, and, favoured by the darkness, took a north-westerly direction among the hills, and escaped. After long concealment and enduring many privations, he reached the Continent, and died in penury, at Rotterdam, in 1678.
It is a strange circumstance that, after the rout of his followers, many of them were slain by the Lothian peasantry.
Of the unfortunate prisoners, the servile and barbarous Scottish Privy Council made a severe example. Twenty were executed at Edinburgh, ten being hanged upon the same gibbet at once; seven were executed at Ayr, and many were hanged before their own doors in other parts of the country. The heads of those who perished at Edinburgh were fixed above the city gates, and their right arms and the hands with which they subscribed the Covenant were affixed to the Tolbooths of Lanark and other towns.
When Gordon, of Knockbreck, and his brother were hanged on the same gibbet, they clasped each other in their arms, that together, and at once, they might endure the pangs of death.