sunshine behind, it is now almost impossible for the youth of the present generation to imagine the state of the public mind at the time referred to; yet in a time of peace and prosperity, it may not be unseasonable to remind the aged, and to inform the young, of a period when Wealth, holding bank-notes as the dust of the earth, busied himself in collecting and concealing well-marked crown and half-crown pieces-when Old Age prayed that he might be permitted to resign his breath in peace, ere he met death in a more dreadful form-and when Maternal Affection clasped her infant to her breast with more than ordinary solicitude, and thought how, by sacrificing herself, she might purchase safety to her beloved charge.

The following refers to the tree from beneath the shade of which the Rhymer delivered his predictions: :

At Eildon-tree, if you shall be,

A brig owre Tweed you there may see.

'This rhyme seems to have been founded in that insight into futurity possessed by most men of a sound and combining judgment. The spot in question commands an extensive prospect of the course of the river; and it was easy to see that, when the country became in the least degree improved, a bridge would be somewhere thrown over the stream. In fact you now see no fewer than three bridges from the same elevated situation.'-Minst. Scot. Bord. iii. p. 210.

Another verse, referring to the future improvements of the country, may be taken as even a more curious specimen of the same sort of wisdom. Learmont had the sagacity to discover that the ground would be more generally cultivated at some future period than it was in his own time; but also knowing that population and luxury would increase in proportion, he was enabled to assure the posterity of the poor that their food would not consequently increase in quantity. His words were

The waters shall wax, the woods shall wene,

Hill and moss shall be torn in;

But the bannock will ne'er be braider.

Of rhymes foreboding evil, one of the most remarkable is a malediction against the old persecuting family of Home

of Cowdenknowes-a place in the immediate neighbourhood of Thomas's castle

Vengeance, vengeance! When, and where?

Upon the house of Cowdenknowes, now and evermair! This anathema, awful as the cry of blood, is said to have been realised in the extinction of a persecuting family, and the transference of their property to other hands. But some doubt seems to hang on the matter, as the present Earl of Home—' a prosperous gentleman'--is the lineal descendant of the Cowdenknowes branch of the family, which acceded to the title in the reign of Charles I., though, it must be admitted, the estate has long been alienated.

A rhyme to the effect that

Between Seton and the sea,

Mony a man shall die that day,

Scottes and we We cal it Mustowne (and yet

is introduced into Patten's account of the Duke of Somerset's expedition, printed in 1548. This battell and felde,' says the writer, alluding to Pinkie, 'the are not yet agreed how it shall be named. kelborough felde, because that is the best bad inough) nigh the place of our meeting. Sum of them call it Seton felde (a towne thear nie too), by means of a blynde prophecy of theirs, which is this or sum suche toye -Betwene Seton and the sey, many a man shall dye that dey.' The rhyme is also incorporated in the long, irregular, and mystical poems which were published as the prophecies of Thomas in 1615. It may be said, without much stretch of the record, to have been fulfilled by the battle of Preston, in September 1745. To compensate, however, for this lucky shot, it is certain that many rhymes professedly by our hero were promulgated in consequence of particular events. Of this character is—

There shall a stone wi' Leader come,

That'll make a rich father, but a poor son;

* Birrel, in his Diary, narrating events which happened in Edinburgh in the reigns of Mary and James VI., tells that on the day when the Castle of Edinburgh was surrendered to Cockburn of Skirling for the queen, the weathercock of St Giles's church was blown away, fulfilling an old prophecy'Quhen Skirlin shall be captain, The cock shall lose his tail.'

an allusion to the supposed limited advantage of the process of liming. The Highlanders have also found, since the recent changes of tenantry in their country, that Thomas predicted

That the teeth of the sheep shall lay the plough on the shelf.

I have been assured that the name of Thomas the Rhymer is as well known at this day among the common people in the Highlands, nay, even in the remoter of the Western Islands, as it is in Berwickshire. His notoriety in the sixteenth century is shown in a curious allusion in a witch trial of that age; namely, that of Andro Man, which took place at Aberdeen in 1598. In his Dittay, Andro is charged with having been assured in his boyhood by the Queen of Elphin, that thow suld knaw all thingis, and suld help and cuir all sort of seikness, except stand deid, and that thow suld be wiell intertenit, but wald seik thy meit or thow deit, as Thomas Rymour did―[that is, be a beggar].' Also, 'Thow affermis that the Quene of Elphen hes a grip of all the craft, but Christsondy [the devil] is the guidman, and hes all power vnder God, and that thow kennis sindrie deid men in thair cumpanie, and that the kyng that deit in Flowdoun and Thomas Rymour is their.'-Spalding Club Miscellany, i. p. 119-121.

The common people at Banff and its neighbourhood preserve the following specimen of the more terrible class of the Rhymer's prophecies:

At two full times, and three half times,

Or threescore years and ten,

The ravens shall sit on the Stanes o' St Brandon,

And drink o' the blood o' the slain!

The Stones of St Brandon were standing erect a few years ago in an extensive level field about a mile to the westward of Banff, and immediately adjacent to the Brandon How, which forms the boundary of the town in that direction. The field is supposed to have been the scene of one of the early battles between the Scots and Danes, and fragments of weapons and bones of men have been dug from it.

An Aberdeenshire tradition represents that the walls of Fyvie Castle had stood for seven years and a day, wall-wide, waiting for the arrival of True Tammas, as he is called in

that district. At length he suddenly appeared before the fair building, accompanied by a violent storm of wind and rain, which stripped the surrounding trees of their leaves, and shut the castle gates with a loud clash. But while this tempest was raging on all sides, it was observed that, close by the spot where Thomas stood, there was not wind enough to shake a pile of grass, or move a hair of his beard. He denounced his wrath in the following lines :

Fyvie, Fyvie, thou'se never thrive,
As lang's there's in thee stanes three:
There's ane intill the highest tower,
There's ane intill the ladye's bower,
There's ane aneath the water-yett,
And thir three stanes ye'se never get.

-

The usual prose comment states that two of these stones have been found, but that the third, beneath the gate leading to the Ythan, or water-gate, has hitherto baffled all search.

There are other curious traditionary notices of the Rhymer in Aberdeenshire; one thus introduced in a View of the Diocese of Aberdeen, written about 1732. 'On Aiky brae here [in Old Deer parish] are certain stones called the Cummin's Craig, where 'tis said one of the Cummins, Earls of Buchan, by a fall from his horse at hunting, dashed out his brains. The prediction goes that this earl (who lived under Alexander III.) had called Thomas the Rhymer by the name of Thomas the Lyar, to show how much he slighted his predictions, whereupon that famous fortune-teller denounced his impending fate in these words, which, 'tis added, were all literally fulfilled :

Tho' Thomas the Lyar thou call'st me,

A sooth tale I shall tell to thee:

By Aikyside

Thy horse shall ride,

He shall stumble, and thou shalt fa',
Thy neck bane shall break in twa,
And dogs shall thy banes gnaw,
And, maugre all thy kin and thee,
Thy own belt thy bier shall be.'

It is said that Thomas visited Inverugie, which, in latter times, was a seat of the Marischal family, and there, from a

high stone, poured forth a vaticination to the following effect:

Inverugie, by the sea,

Lordless shall thy lands be;

And underneath thy hearthstane
The tod shall bring her birds hame.

This is introduced in the manuscript before quoted, at which time the prophecy might be said to be realised in the banishment and forfeiture of the last Earl Marischal for his share in the insurrection of 1715. The stone on which the seer sat was removed to build the church in 1763; but the field in which it lay is still called Tammas's Stane.

One of Thomas's supposed prophecies referring to this district appears as a mere deceptive jingle

When Dee and Don shall run in one,

And Tweed shall run in Tay,

The bonnie water o' Urie

Shall bear the Bass away.

The Bass is a conical mount, of remarkable appearance, and about forty feet high, rising from the bank of the Urie, in the angle formed by it at its junction with the Don. The rhyme appears in the manuscript collections of Sir James Balfour, which establishes for it an antiquity of fully two hundred years. It is very evident that the author, whoever he was, only meant to play off a trick upon simple imaginations, by setting one (assumed) impossibility against another. The joke, however, is sometimes turned against such persons. It is pointed out very justly that the Dee and Don have been joined in a manner by the Aberdeenshire Canal. Nor, when we consider the actual origin of the Bass, is its demolition by the Urie an event so much out of nature's reckoning as a rustic wit might suppose. This mount undoubtedly belongs to a class of such objects-of which the Dunipace Mounts are other examples-which are to be regarded as the remains of alluvial plateaux, once filling the valley to the same height, but all the rest of which has been borne away by the river during the uprise of the land. Little did the conceiver of this quatrain think by what a narrow chance the Bass had escaped being carried away in the early age when the valley took its present form.