Sep.
About this time the commencement of a standing army was made in Scotland, in the raising of two regiments of foot and five troops of horse, under the command of General Sir Thomas Dalyell.—Lam.
Nov.
In this month, while the poor west-country Presbyterians were engaged in their hopeless expedition, ‘there was sundry fresh, caller, ungutted herring taken upon the north side of the water of Forth ... like Dunbar herring, but smaller ... a thing rare and wondrous to the haill people.’—Nic. He notes that, all this winter, all kinds of fish, including herring, abounded, ‘whilk was very ominous.’
1666.
The defeat of the insurgents at Rullion Green (November 27), and the subsequent execution of upwards of fifty persons, made it a dreary yet exciting time. ‘I have,’ says Wodrow, the Presbyterian historian, ‘met with several prodigies seen in the air about this time; and persons who lived then, of good information, have left behind them a very strange passage, that several people about Pittenweem made public faith upon, that the night after the battle, and after some of these [subsequent] executions, they heard the voice of a multitude about Gilston Mount praising and singing psalms with the sweetest melody imaginable.’
‘In the year 1668 or 1669—in these places where the gospel was most frequently preached afterwards [fields and desert places], how surprising and astonishing was the sight, both by night and day, of brae-sides covered with the appearance of men and women with tents, and voices heard in them! Particularly the first night that Mr John Dickson preached in the fields in the night-time, east from Glasgow upon Clyde-side ... several people together, before they came to the appointed place, saw upon their way a brae-side covered with the appearance of people, with a tent, and a voice crying aloud: “This is the everlasting gospel; if ye follow on, to know, believe, and embrace this gospel, it shall never be taken from you.” When they came to join them, all disappeared. Other companies of people, in another way going there, heard a charming sweet sound of singing the 93d psalm, which obliged them to stand still till it was ended. Other people, who stayed at home, in several places, some heard the singing of the 44th psalm, others the 46th psalm. When the people who were there came home, they who stayed at home said: “Where have you been so long? for the preaching was near by, for we heard the psalms sweetly sung, and can tell you a note of the sermon”—which was the foresaid note. Worthy Mr John Blackadder, who ... used to call these years the Blink, was at all pains to examine the most solid Christians in that bounds, upon their hearing and seeing these things; who all attested the truth of the same.
‘Before the gospel came to that known place Craigmad [Stirlingshire] ... one day Alexander Stirling, who lived in the Redden, near that place, a solid, serious, zealous Christian, who told this several times to some yet alive, worthy of all credit, who told me of it. That he, with some others, one day was in that desert place, and saw that brae-side, close covered with the appearance of men and women, singing the 121st psalm, with a milk-white horse, and a blood-red saddle on his back, standing beside the people; which made that serious, discerning, observing Christian conclude that the gospel would be sent to that place, and that the white horse was the Gospel, and the red saddle Persecution.