The worthy Welch's spectacles, who saw,
That windle-straws would fight against the law;
They, windle-straws, were stoutest of the two,
They kept their ground, away the prophet flew;
And lists of all the prophets' names were seen
At Pentland Hills, Aird-Moss, and Rullen Green.
"Don't think," she says, "these holy things are foppery;
They're precious antidotes against the power of popery."
The Cameronian Tooth.—Pennycuick's Poems, p. 110.
The militia and standing army soon became unequal to the task of enforcing conformity, and suppressing conventicles In, their aid, and to force compliance with a test proposed by government, the Highland clans were raised, and poured down into Ayrshire.[[A]] An armed host of undisciplined mountaineers, speaking a different language, and professing, many of them, another religion, were let loose, to ravage and plunder this unfortunate country; and it is truly astonishing to find how few acts of cruelty they perpetrated, and how seldom they added murder to pillage[[B]] Additional levies of horse were also raised, under the name of Independent Troops, and great part of them placed under the command of James Grahame of Claverhouse a man well known to fame, by his subsequent title of viscount Dundee, but better remembered, in the western shires, under the designation of the bloody Clavers. In truth, he appears to have combined the virtues and vices of a savage chief. Fierce, unbending, and rigorous, no emotion of compassion prevented his commanding, and witnessing, every detail of military execution against the non-conformists. Undauntedly brave, and steadily faithful to his prince, he sacrificed himself in the cause of James, when he was deserted by all the world. If we add, to these attributes, a goodly person, complete skill in martial exercises, and that ready and decisive character, so essential to a commander, we may form some idea of this extraordinary character. The whigs, whom he persecuted daunted by his ferocity and courage, conceived him to be impassive to their bullets,[[C]] and that he had sold himself, for temporal greatness, to the seducer of mankind. It is still believed, that a cup of wine, presented to him by his butler, changed into clotted blood; and that, when he plunged his feet into cold water, their touch caused it to boil. The steed, which bore him, was supposed to be the gift of Satan; and precipices are shewn, where a fox could hardly keep his feet, down which the infernal charger conveyed him safely, in pursuit of the wanderers. It is remembered, with terror, that Claverhouse was successful in every engagement with the whigs, except that at Drumclog, or Loudon-hill, which is the subject of the following ballad. The history of Burly, the hero of the piece, will bring us immediately to the causes and circumstances of that event.