"They raved," says Peden's historian, "like fleshly devils, when the mist shrouded from their pursuit the wandering whigs." One gentleman closed a declaration of vengeance against the conventiclers with this strange imprecation, "Or may the devil make my ribs a gridiron to my soul!"—MS. Account of the Presbytery of Penpont. Our armies swore terribly in Flanders, but nothing to this!
In truth, extremes always approach each other; and the superstition of the Roman catholics was, in some degree, revived, even by their most deadly enemies. They are ridiculed by the cavaliers, as wearing the relics of their saints by way of amulet:—
"She shewed to me a box, wherein lay hid
The pictures of Cargil and Mr Kid;
A splinter of the tree, on which they were slain;
A double inch of Major Weir's best cane;
Rathillet's sword, beat down to table-knife,
Which took at Magus' Muir a bishop's life;