Mons Meg, with a breach in her side, still adorns the ancient battlements of Edinburgh Castle, ‘to the great admiration of people,’ being upwards of thirteen feet long, and of twenty inches bore; formed of longitudinal bars of iron, hooped with rings fused into one mass. It is an example of a colossal kind of artillery which the sovereigns of Europe had a craze for making in the middle and latter half of the fifteenth century—this specimen being probably prepared at the command of James II. of Scotland.
Nov.
An elephant which had been bought for £2000 sterling, and brought to England for exhibition, was shewn in Scotland, being the first of the species ever seen in the country. It was a male, eleven years old, ‘a great beast, with a great body and a great head, small eyes and dull, lugs like two skats (?) lying close to its head; having a large trunk coming down from the nether end of the forehead, of length a yard and a half, in the undermost part small, with a nostril; by which trunk it breathed and drank, casting up its meat and drink in its mouth below it; having two large and long bones or teeth, of a yard length, coming from the upper jaw of it, and at the far end of it inclining one to another, by which it digs the earth for roots ... it was backed like a sow, the tail of it like a cow’s: the legs were big, like pillars or great posts, and broad feet with toes like round lumps of flesh. When it drinks it sucks up the water with its trunk, which holds a great deal of water, and then putting the low end in its mouth, by winding it in, it jaws in the water in its mouth, as from a great spout. It was taught to flourish the colours with the trunk of it, and to shoot a gun, and to bow the knees of it, and to make reverence with its big head. They also rode upon it.... Let this great creature on earth and the whale at sea be compared with a midge or minnow, and behold what great wisdom and power is with the great God, the creator and preserver of both!‘—Law.
It appears that Alexander Deas and others farmed this elephant from its owners for several months at £400, in order to shew it through the country. They refused to pay in full, on the ground of several failures as to the terms of the contract, alleging, for instance, that the owners had not shewn all it might do—namely, its drinking, &c. It was replied, ‘it could not drink every time it was shewn.’ How the litigation ended does not appear.—Foun.
Dec. 10.
1680.
A great comet, which had been observed in Germany a month earlier, was first seen in Scotland this evening, ‘the night being clear and frosty; between five and seven at night, it set in the west, and was seen in the south-east in the morning of the following days.[279] [It] had a great [tail] blazing frae the root of it, was pointed as it came from the star, and then spread itself; was of a broad and large ascent up to the heavens ... the stream of it all the night over is seen.... [It] had its recess from the west every night by degrees, as the moon has from the sun after her change, and being every night more elevate by degrees in its first after daylight was gone, then the stream of it mounted to our zenith, and beyond it, very wonderfully. No history ever made mention of the like comet ... and [it] is certainly prodigious of great alterations and of great judgments on these lands and nations for our sins; for never was the Lord more provoked by a people.... [It] continued till the 16th or 17th day of January, growing smaller and smaller to its end.’—Law.
‘When Mr M‘Ward, who was then a-dying, heard of it, he desired Mr Shields and other friends to carry him out, that he might see it. When he saw it, he blest the Lord that was now about to close his eyes, and was not to see the woful days that were coming upon Britain and Ireland, especially upon sinful Scotland.’—P. Walker.