[279]. Alluding to a controversy between two of the Aberdeen professors on a question which we have seen revived in great fervour in our own day.
[280]. Privy Council Record.
[281]. Alexander Duff was descended from a race of gentry in Morayshire—the Duffs of Muldavit—and it stems to have been by saving, prudence, and good management that he was enabled to increase his share of the family possessions, and so far advance the prospects of his house, that it was ennobled in the next generation, and now ranks among the eight or ten families of highest wealth in Scotland. There is a characteristic story about Braco surveying one day an extensive tract of country containing several tolerable lairdships, when, seeing the houses in various directions all giving out signs of being inhabited by their respective families, he said: ‘A’ that reek sall come out o’ ae lum yet!’ and he made good his word by ultimately buying up the whole of that district.
[282]. The above narration appeared in the Dumfries Journal (newspaper).
[283]. The system of culreach or repledgiation was one of great antiquity in Scotland, but last heard of in the Highlands. So lately as 1698, George Earl of Cromarty obtained a charter, giving him this among other powers: If any of the indwellers and tenants of his lands should happen ‘to be arrested or attached before any judge or judges, spiritual or temporal, in any time coming, to repledge and call them back to the privilege and liberty of the said court of bailiery and regality of Tarbat.’
[284]. Documents of the process in Spalding Club Miscellany, iii. 175.
[285]. Burns’s fine ode on Macpherson will be remembered:
Sae rantingly, sae wantonly,
Sae dantonly gaed he,
He played a spring and danced it round,