The rest has been lost, except the concluding stanza:
‘They wadna lie in Methven kirk-yard,
Amang their gentle kin;
But they wad lie in Dronoch Haugh,
To beek fornent the sin.’[116]
1646. Oct.
A set of ‘malignants’ intruded themselves into the magistracy of Glasgow, ‘and at the very same time did the pestilence arrive in the town.’ Spreull, the town-clerk, with Mr George Porterfield and Mr John Graham, had to go to Edinburgh to complain of this intrusion before the Estates. During the winter, while they were absent, the plague was so severe, that the malignants would fain have been quit of the magistracy. ‘In February 1648,’ says Spreull, ‘having carried the point at the parliament, we came home and were reponed; whereupon, though there were several hundreds of families shut up for the sickness, yet for twenty days after, there died not so much as one person thereof, and frae thenceforth it did abate till it evanished.’[118]
1647. Sep. 17.
A letter of this date, from James Morphie, tailor in Edinburgh, to the Earl of Airly, has been preserved, and is in its way a curious memorial of the past. When found a few years ago in Cortachie Castle, it contained five pieces of cloth, being, we may presume, those alluded to by the writer, and all as fresh as on the day they were cut.