Than Hector’s were at Troy—
I never love to see the face
That gazed on Gilderoy.’
A various version of this doleful ditty appears in A Collection of Old Ballads (London, printed for J. Roberts, &c., 1724). It contains some stanzas not quite consistent with modern taste, and takes such a view of the offences of the hero as might be expected from a woman and a mistress:
‘What kind of cruelty is this,
To hang such handsome men!’
As it breathed, however, a strain of natural feeling, it attracted the attention of Lady Wardlaw, the authoress of the fine ballad of Hardiknute, and by her was put into such an improved form as may be said to have rendered the name of Gilderoy classical.
July 28.
A petition given in to the Privy Council by the parishioners of Denny, craving assistance to rebuild a bridge which had been carried away by a ‘speat’ of the Carron, stated the circumstances of the accident in terms which illustrate the power of running-water in a remarkable manner. The tempest, it was said, exceeded all that could be remembered, ‘by the violence whereof not only houses, with men, wives, and bairns, were pitifully carried away and drowned, but great craigs and rocks were rent, and huge parts of the same, of forty foot of length and above, carried with the violence of the speat, above four or five pair of butts length from the craig, within the water of Carron, to the dry land.’—P. C. R.