THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES HISTORICAL TALES AND LEGENDS OF AYRSHIRE HISTOKICAL TALES AND LEGENDS OF AYRSHIEE BY WILLIAM ROBERTSON Author of " The Kennedys: Kings of Carriole" etc., etc. LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO GLASGOW : THOMAS D. MORISON 1889 PREFACE. THE County of Ayr is rich in Story and Tradition. And no wonder. Before the days of the Romans it was inhabited ; and from the time that these early progenitors in the march of civilization left these shores never to return, a succession of races have either dwelt on its plains or in its towns, and by its river mouths, or have left unmistakable traces of their presence. Pict, and Scot, and Briton ; Danish rover and Scandinavian Viking; English invader from beyond the Tweed, coming and going at intervals 724875 6 PREFACE, down to the days when Oliver Cromwell was in the Fort of Ayr, and stabled his steeds under the shadow of St. John's all have been here in turn. The Roman has left his roads and his camps, the Pict his dykes, the Celtic lake-dweller his crannogs, the Briton his tumuli, to tell the tale of a hardly recoverable past. Great national movements have inwrought them- selves with the history of the Shire. On the streets of the county town and in the country surrounding, Sir William Wallace first seriously measured strength with the invader. Robert the Bruce was Earl of Carrick. He stormed Turnberry, the home of his youth, and he wrought wondrously among the hills of Dailly, on the uplands of Cumnock and of Dalmel- lington, and by the base of Loudoun hill. And in a less degree, down to the days of the Revolution, Ayrshire men were prominent in the wars and in PREFACE. 7 the counsels of the period. It was to Ayrshire the Lollards came, with the leaven of a new faith. And the Reformation found many of its most ardent promoters among the gentry, as well as among the peasantry, of Kyle, Cuninghame, and Carrick. In the centuries when feudal strife was rampant the great families of Kennedy, of Cuninghame, of Craufurd, of Montgomerie, of Campbell, of Boyd, maintained ceaseless activity in their warrings with one another. Their horsemen scoured the country- side; their yeomen went down in the encounter; their castles blazed intermittently from the borders of Renfrew in the north, to the waters of Stinchar in Southern Carrick, and from the moorlands adjacent to the march of Lanark to the shores of the Firth of Clyde. Their intrigues, their plots, their raids, their wiles, their machinations are they not written on the creation of the existing social life of Ayrshire ? 8 PREFACE. My main purpose has been to endeavour to present a series of historical pictures of the national and feudal history of the Shire. It will remain with the reader to say how far I have succeeded. I have not thought fit to give chapter and verse for all the historical facts recorded, but the reader may rest assured that these have been amply and care- fully verified. The chapters dealing with the social conditions are founded on the data of the periods treated ; and the traditions recorded are those which, a hundred years ago and more, were universally accepted in the districts where they had their birth. CONTENTS. PAGE THE FEUD OF GLENCAIRN AND EGLINTON, ------- 13 THE ROASTING OF THE COMMENDATOR OF CROSSRAGUEL IN THE BLACK VA ULT OF DUNURE, 30 KING HACO'S BATTLE WITH THE SCOTS AT LARGS, - 45 THE PRE-HISTORIC SIRES OF AYRSHIRE, (52 THE TETHERING OF THE SOW ON THE LANDS OF KERSE, - - 72 io CONTENTS. PAGE THE RAID OF LOUDOUN, - - 83 THE BURNING OF THE AYR AND THE DALRY WITCHES, - 93 THE DEATH OF OLD KING COIL, 111 THE STORY OF THE TOWER OF ST. JOHN'S IN AYR, - 123 HOW THE LAIRD OF CHANGUE THRASHED THE DEIL, - - 140 KING ROBERT THE BRUCE HIS UPS AND DOWNS IN AYRSHIRE, - - 147 THE ROVER'S DOOM ON THE CARRICK SHORE,- - .-- 165 KING ALPIN SLAIN IN THE GLEN OF DUNASKIN, . . . . 177 CONTENTS. ii PAGE THE TRIAL OF THE FEUDALISTS AT AYR IN 1507, - - 185 THE RAID OF BARBIESTON GLEN, - - 194. JOHNNY FAA AND THE EARL OF CASSILLIS' LADY, - 201 THE STORY OF KYLE AND CARR1CK FOUR HUNDRED YEARS AGO, - - 216 HOW A SHEEP'S HEAD BEGAT STRIFE BETWEEN AUOHINLECK AND OGHIL- TREE, - - 232 THE WRAITH OF LORD LYNE, - 239 THE KIRK OF AYR RULING THE PEOPLE, 247 A DAUGHTER OF THE HOUSE OF DUN- DONALD, - 261 THE LADY OF HESSILHEAD OUTRAGED, AND GABRIEL MONTGOMERIE OF THIRDPART SLAIN, 273 12 CONTENTS. PAGE A FOUL FIEND RECLAIMS A CUNINGHAME DRUNKARD, 287 SIR ROBERT B07D OF DEAN CASTLE AND HIS LAST COMBAT WITH STEWART OF DARN LEY, - - 295 THE BLOOD TEST; OR, MURDER ON THE CARRICK SHORE REVEALED, 306 THE EARL OF EGLINTON'S ENCOUNTER NEAR ARDROSSAN,- - 324 "THE TERROR OF THE WHIGS" EXORCISES THE BEANSCROFT DE1L,- 332 THE FAITHLESS BRIDE OF AIKET, - 340 AND OF AYRSHIRE. THE FEUD OF GLENCAIRN AND EOLINTON. THE district of Cuningname was long the chosen battle ground of the rival families of Glencairn and Eglinton. Both were of high renown, both eminent in the service of their country, both produced men who gave their lives to the national cause, and both, at crises in the history of Scotland, came nobly to her aid. But for many long years in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there ran through their own personal history a deadly and a bitter and a relentless feud a feud which sent the flames curling from the roof-tree of Eglinton Castle itself, which fired many a homestead and hall besides, and in which scores, if not hundreds, of brave men went down before the exigencies cf family rivalry and pride. 14 HISTORICAL TALES OF AYRSHIRE. The Montgomeries of Eglinton held court at their castle on the banks of the Lugton. The castellated mansion of to-day, sitting quietly in the midst of a beautiful and exten- sive park, is built upon the spot occupied by at least two of its predecessors that which was fired by the followers of the Earl of Glencairn in 1528, and to which Sir Hugh de Eglinton bore the pennon of Henry Hotspur from the field of Otterburn, and that which was demolished in the closing years of the eighteenth century to make room for the noble building which now dominates a scene of great beauty and refined taste, but which in the days of three or four centuries agone was too frequently a veritable Aceldama. The Cuninghames hailed from the parish of Kilmaurs, to which in the latter half of the fifteenth century, Sir William had brought home the co-heiress of many fair lands in Renfrew, Dumbarton, and Midlothian, as well as Glencairn in Dumfries, from which the title to the Earldom was acquired. With growing power came a corresponding growth of rivalry, until the jealousy and mistrust culminated in the series of tragedies which make memorable the story of northern Ayrshire throughout the long years in which they transpired. Both houses were possessed of numerous vassals and retainers, who espoused the rival causes with the intensity invariably begotten of the feud, and no Corsican vendetta was ever more inexorable in its decrees than were the Cuninghames and the Montgomeries in their work of extir- pation. The feud passed on from man to man and from generation to generation, and it rolled, practically unchecked, until the power of the Scottish Crown was sufficiently con- solidated to check the outrages of the rude lords who were a law unto themselves. To follow the feud in all its devious windings would be an impossibility within anything like compact limits. Let us therefore rather select one or two of its outstanding incidents and endeavour to recall the actors to the scenes in THE FEUD OF GLENCAIRN. 15 which they played their part. And suffice it to say by way of explanation that it was because the hereditary Bailieship of Cunninghame was transferred from the Glen- cairn family to that of Eglinton that the strife which had long been intermittent or smouldering, broke out into active and persistent hostility. Kerelaw Castle is a picturesque ruin in the parish of Stevenston, massive in its decay, ivy mantled, stoutly standing up against the inroads of Time and of the elemen- tary warfare which rages around its walls. As long ago as 1488 it stood in all its pride and glory. It was a stronghold of the Cuninghames, and behind its defences its lord could afford to look out with some complacency upon the broad lands and the strengths of the Montgomeries. Eglinton Castle was but a few miles distant in the one direction, and in the other, within easy ken, was the keep of Ardrossan, with its heavy battlements and its solid masonry. Kerelaw, strongly held, might have resisted a siege ; and had its walls been tenanted -by the men of Glencairn when the retainers of Egliuton came down upon it, it might have laughed their efforts to scorn. But they chose their own time for coming ; and descending upon it when it was at their mercy, they set fire to it and went their way. Up into the blue sky rose the smoke of the burning pile ; and when the night came the clouds were reddened with its glare. The fire was slow to take hold, for the floors were oaken and so were the beams and the furniture. But the quaint old wainscotting caught up the conflagration and hastened on the doom of the castle. The fire spread gradually but surely. From basement to turret it crept, peering out of the windows, darting from the loopholes, and accompanied as it rose with the crashing of masonry and the falling in of floors, until finally the flames dominated the keep and proclaimed themselves masters of Kerelaw. The Cuninghames could see the glare and the smoke from more than one of their strongholds ; and we can 16 HISTORICAL TALES OF AYRSHIRE. well imagine with what feelings they beheld the destructive handiwork of their foes, and how they resolved on retalia- tion. The conflagration died away and the walls cooled ; but there was no dying away of the wrath in the breast of Glencairn, and no cooling of the ardour for revenge within the vassals of the house of Cuninghame. The Montgomeries had had their day ; that of the Cuninghames was in the future. Kerelaw was the first keep to blaze ; Eglinton Castle was doomed. But it was not to be fired just yet. The Cuuinghames nursed their wrath as the days lengthened out into months, and these again into years. Individual members of both houses were slain by the wayside. Attempt upon attempt was made to wreak vengeance upon the leaders in the feud, the heads of the different families who allied themselves with the rival fortunes of the opposing chiefs. William Cuninghame of Craigens was the first of note to feel the heavy hand. He was the King's coroner for the shire of Renfrew, a relative of the lord of Kilmaurs; and in 1505 he was waylaid and attacked by the Master of Montgomerie. Cuninghame resisted as stoutly as he was attacked, and suc- ceeded in effecting his escape, though not until he was grievously wounded. He made complaint to the Scottish Parliament of the outrage; but the Master of Montgomerie did not obey the summons, and the affair was forgotten by the State. But not by the Cuninghames. Finding they could not obtain redress save at their own hand, they mus- tered their followers in January of 1507, and came upon Lord Montgomerie. The latter was not unprepared to receive them, and a hot conflict ensued. Hand to hand was the issue contested, until Lord Montgomerie was wounded, and lives were lost on both sides. Two years later a temporary peace was patched up, and there was cessation awhile, for the national affairs demanded the energy and the daring of every patriot within the Scot- THE FEUD OF GLENCAIRN. 17 tish realm. But when Flodden had been fought and lost ; when Glencairn had recovered from the temporary eclipse of his fortunes which he suffered for having been concerned in the abortive attempt of Arran, who aspired to the Regency, to depose Albany ; and when the Earl of Eglinton and Lord Montgomerie had welcomed the youthful monarch after his escape from Falkland to Stirling in the guise of a yeoman, there was time enough to attend to their own concerns in the west. In the interim, at the period when the country's cause called both Eglinton and the lord of Kilmaurs from local to national strife, Glencairn had still time left to slay three of the followers of the Montgomeries, and to wound the son and heir to the Earl himself; but so little thought of was the affair in the face of the graver events of the period, that no penal consequences of any kind whatever are known to have followed. A second peace was agreed upon on the instigation of Albany ; but that neither side had any intent to abide by its terms was speedily made manifest. The Earl was blessed with a long memory. For nine years he remem- bered the attempt on the life of his son and the death of his followers, one of whom, Matthew Montgomerie, was a scion of the house, nor did he cry quits for that event until he and his had taken the life of Edward Cuninghame of Auchen- harvie. He was proceeded against according to law ; but not only did he escape the consequences of his deed, save by the imposition of a nominal sum for non-appearance, but he followed up the slaughter of the laird of Auchenharvie by that of another Cuninghame, Archibald of Waterstown, whom his dependents slew in pursuance of the blood feud. Then came the revenge of the Cuninghaines. In his abode in the adjacent shire of Renfrew the Master of Glencairn heard tell how the Montgomeries had slain the Laird of Waterstown. Old memories flashed upon him. He called to mind the burning of Kerelaw, and all the misdeeds of the enemy which he had done since then. He remembered how 2 i8 HISTORICAL TALES OF AYRSHIRE. Eglinton had dispossessed the Cuninghames of the Bailie- ship of the division, which was their's by right, and how their bands had roamed hither and thither, making it all but im- possible for the most remote connection of the family of Glencairn to be abroad within sight of one of the castles of the Montgomeries. He had a long score to settle. Hitherto, though the fortunes of the feud had wavered, now inclining to the one side and now to the other, they had on the whole befriended the foe ; but the Fates that had frowned on him might also must also be compelled to smile on his enter- prise. He planned retribution. Over all his lands in Ren- frew he sent his couriers, and he called in his dependents from his estates in . North Ayrshire as well. They came gladly. The revenge prompted in the mind of the master was not confined to himself. Every man on his domains had heard tell the story of the unlimited treachery of the Montgomeries ; and as the tales spread from hamlet to hamlet, from castle to castle, from mouth to mouth, they were magnified in the telling, until it seemed a solemn duty to each Cuninghame, and to each individual who followed in the train and fought under the banner of Glencairn, to wipe out in foray, in blood, and in retributory conflagration, the long series of misdeeds of the hated Eglinton. The Master found himself at the head of a large body of men, trained to arms, fit for troublous times, and for desperate adventure. They were as eager as he to march into the heart of the enemy's country, and they set forth on their expedition into Ayrshire, resolved to strike at the very centre of the enemy's strength. Their destination was the Castle of Eglinton. Their preparations had been made as far as possible in secret. No warning was sent before them, else the Earl might have been ready to give them greeting in force. No sooner had they entered the lands of the Montgomeries than the Master of Glencairn encouraged his followers to slaughter and to depredation. Eglinton estate stretched THE FEUD OF GLENCAIRN. 19 near and far ; it had many fine homesteads, beeves fed on many a field, and the corn was ripe in the fields for the harvest. The farm houses sat peacefully in the autumn sun, their inmates all unconscious of what awaited them. The Cuninghames broke upon the scene with the fury of a winter's torrent, and as they passed on from point to point, and farm to farm, and from corn field to corn field, they left in their track the traces of rapine and of ravage. Before them waved the golden corn, or stood up cut by the patient reaper, in the fields. Before them grazed the cattle on the holms and in the meadows, or lay placidly ruminating under the grateful shelter of the autumn-tinted trees. Before them were the houses of the peasantry, their dwellers either inno- cent of the coming storm, or, warned by the columns of smoke that rose up into the blue, or the glare that reddened the night sky, fleeing for their lives into places of refuge and of security. Before them rose up the Castle of Eglinton, with its stout, heavy walls looking down on the placid waters of the Lugton, running free from its birthplace in the beautiful little Loch Libo in Renfrewshire. Behind them what a scene ! The corn fired in the fields, the staff of life destroyed on its stem ; the cattle slaughtered on the grass, and the sheep on the braes ; the farm houses afire or smouldering in their ruins ; and many a peasant slaughtered beside his once happy home ! The Earl of Eglinton heard the news. He was in his house by the Lugton. Down by the coast was the Castle of Ardrossan, looking out across the Firth of Clyde to the Cumbraes, to the long stretch of the yellow sands of the Ayrshire coast, to the rugged mountain tops of Arran, and the peaks serrated and riven and jagged by the omnipotent forces of Nature in her earlier and her wilder forms, to the conical summit of Ailsa, and to the gateway by which the waves of the Atlantic roll up to the higher shores of Ayr- shire. The chief of the Montgomeries gathered his retainers, 20 HISTORICAL TALES OF AYRSHIRE. as many as he could muster, around him. He called his wife and family to make haste and tarry not, and without draw of bridle or breathing space he hurried across the few intervening miles, across the flat, level country, to that stronghold by the sea. There was no time to lose. From the turrets of Eglinton he could trace the coming, the avenging Cuninghames. The rising smoke told him where they were and what they were doing, and he knew that their destination was his abode. As he galloped off he cast one longing, lingering look at the all-unconscious, slum- bering keep wherein he dwelt, and he knew that when next he saw it, if ever he saw it again, it would be defaced, black- ened, charred, and in ashes. Nearer and nearer came the Master of Glencairn and his men, spreading destruction in their pathway. They were eager to be at the heart of the citadel, inflamed in their passions, and all but satiated with their revenge. Ah, but there was still a greater revenge in store for them ! Along the way they came where Lugton meanders, and their horse hoofs woke the echoes not unaccustomed to the clattering of irate horsemen, or the tread of men prepared for the battle. And there, before them at last, was the Castle of Eglinton, the ancestral home of the Montgomeries. They drew rein at its gates. No warder challenged them, no bowmen ap- peared on its walls, no spearsmen defended its battlements. All was silent and deserted. The birds had flown. The gates were driven in, the entrance was forced, and the Cuninghames ran riot over the castle. Materials were hastily gathered together with which to ignite the conflagra- tion. The light was applied to them, the flames began to curl and to flicker, and to catch hold and to ascend. The woodwork was ablaze. It was indeed a goodly sight for Glencairn and his men, and one that was well worth watch- ing. As the smoke filled the castle they retired to the park, amid whose trees it stood, and watched the play of the con- THE FEUD OF GLENCAIRN. 21 flagration. Here was a glorious revenge for the burning of Kerelaw. Kerelaw never made a blaze like that. The wind fanned the fire ; but it needed no fanning. It caught hold wherever there was footing for its scorching couriers. They licked the walls, they crackled on the oaken floors, they caught on the tapestry, on the paintings, on the ornaments, on the furniture. They plunged into recesses where valuables were hidden, and cleared them out as if they had been swept by the besom of destruction. They burst through the windows, and crept up the stairs. They spread from floor to ceiling, and from ceiling to floor. They ransacked the muniment room ; and the records of the family of Eglinton back to the very days of the Norman Conquest, and before them, and the Charter to the lands of Montgomerie, given under the Great Seal, were changed into tinder. Crash went the floors, down fell the intermediate walls, and high above the housetops rose the infernal furnace. It roared in the air. Its heat made Glencairn and his watching followers stand back. And when the darkening came on, the castle glared in its own embers, its walls growing black upon the night, and within them a huddled, charred mass of debris. That was the Cuninghames' vengeance. Was it not worth their while ? Did it not obliterate many a savage memory, and kindle a sense of wrong done to them rectified ? And when the fire had done its work the Master of Glen- cairn retraced his footsteps ; and, plundering, ravaging, burning as he went, he returned into Renfrewshire. From his Castle of Ardrossan the Earl of Eglinton saw the smoke ascend into the sky. It was his turn to vow vengeance, and vow it verily he did. He took an oath to exact satisfaction against Glencairn, against the Cuning- hames, for the day's doings. He promised himself that he would leave no stone unturned ; that life would be sacrificed for life, and home for home. If his roof-tree had blazed, so 22 HISTORICAL TALES OF AYRSHIRE. would those of the enemy. If his retainers had fallen, so would those of Glencairn. And his spirit he infused into the retainers, who, by his side, watched with him the tokens of the revenge of Glencairn. But the revenge was not to be theirs ; for the Earl died, and with him all that generation. Fifty years sped away fifty years of rancour and of alternating fortunes in the rivalry of the feudalists, and it was not until the April of 1586 that an act of savagery on the part of the Cuninghames awoke to the full the slumbering fury in the breasts of the Montgomeries. It was another Glencairn, too, by this time, and other Cuninghames, but the blood feud was the same, passing on, handed down, irrespective of the flight of time and the changes of the actors in the tragedy. It was in the spring-time of the year that the young Earl of Eglinton set out on a journey to Stirling, where the Scottish Court was sitting. He apprehended no danger. The feud, he knew, still ran ; but not for many years not, indeed, during his lifetime had it broken out in anything like a virulent form. Scotland was gradually settling down to a condition of comparative rest and quiet, and the embers of the burning castles and farm-houses had grown cold long ere Earl Hugh had entered the scene he was destined to leave that April day that saw him on his way to meet his Sovereign. He was not backed by his men. None were with him save his immediate attendants, and when he set forth it was in the confident assurance that he would reach the heights of the City of the Rock, and see the gleaming Forth as it flowed along to the sea. April month; the vernal influences were upon nature; but, though they coaxed the buds to open and to unfold, they could not coax the malig- nity and the memory from the revengeful Cuninghames. The Earl came to the house of Langshaw, and there he dined. The Lady of Langshaw was a Cuninghame. So was one of her maids. They knew beforehand that the Earl was THE FEUD OF GLENCAIRN. 23 coming, and they had consulted with David Cuninghame of Robertland, Alexander Cuninghame of Corsehill, Alexander Cuninghame of Aiket, and John Cuninghame of Clonbeith a quartette of feudalists sworn by the ties of relationship, and by the remembrance of the past, to pay back upon the Montgomeries the deeds which had eventuated half a cen- tury agone. These concealed themselves in proximity to Langshaw, and waited the signal agreed upon between them and their fellow, or sister-conspirators within. To assure them that the Earl was really there, the Lady or her maid was to display a tablecloth from one of the upper windows. They were to accomplish the rest. As soon as they saw the tablecloth flutter, they took their measures accordingly. Gathering around them a band of thirty followers, they rode towards a bridge spanning the Annick burn, in the parish of Stewarton, and there they concealed themselves. The Earl suspected nothing. No kindly monitor warned him that impending fate awaited him by the moorland burn. He bade his host and hostess good-bye, and rode off. It is not easy to comprehend the condition of the lady's mind when Lord Eglinton shook her by the hand and said fare- well. She knew it was a long farewell that he spoke, and that ere the evening sun had set his soul should have gone out into the darkness of the future and the unknown. The party travelled easily, and reached the bridge without inci- dent. Unhappily, danger unforeseen does not mean danger non-existent, and this the Earl found to his cost, for, as he arrived at the spot selected by the conspirators, he was suddenly brought face to face with a company of armed and desperate men. They were behind him, before him, and on either side. The young chief of the Mont- gomeries did not need to be told that there was danger. He saw it. It encircled him. He would have given his horse the spur, but there was no exit by which he could hope to ride into safety ; so, perforce, he had 24 HISTORICAL TALES OF AYRSHIRE. to draw his sword and defend himself. His servants were unable to render him assistance, and those who could do so saved themselves by flight. The Cuninghames pressed in upon the Earl, striking at him with their swords and endeavouring to unhorse him. He grimly contested for his life one man against a score. The odds was too powerful. He was wounded and bleeding, and as he reeled in his saddle John Cuninghame of Clonbeith drew his pistol and shot him dead. It was a cruel murder. Having accomplished their purpose, the conspirators and their retainers fled the scene. They had done the deed ; they had struck a deadly blow at the House of Montgomerie ; and, though they knew that the men of Eglinton would ere long be in the saddle and scouring the country on their mission of vengeance, they were gratified at having wiped out many a bitter memory in the life-blood of the young chief from the banks of the Lugton. When they bore Earl Hugh lifeless home, dire was the rage that filled the halls of the Montgomeries. The tidings spread like wild-fire. No messenger bearing the fiery cross ever sped faster across the straths and hills of the High- lands to call the clansmen to the battle. The broad lands which looked inwards upon Eglinton rang with the story and with the names of the murderers, and there were hurried consultations and ominous meetings, which boded no good to the Cuninghames. These resulted in a gathering of the heads of the various branches of the house and in the ex- change of oaths and of resolutions to do by the foe as the foe had done by them. A life for a life was not the order of the day. The war must be pushed to closer quarters than that. Kelentlessly, pitilessly, and with the tenacity of the sleuthhound, they must hunt down, not one Cuninghame, but many. Every man who had taken part in the tragic , scene by Annick's bridge must be slain ; and the false lady who had fluttered the signal in response to which the THE FEUD OF GLENCAIRN. 25 Cuninghames had awaited the coming of the Earl, must be denied the mercy usually accorded, even by the angriest of angry men, to women. She was the traitress. But for her the Laird of Montgomerie had not been slain. She was the Jael who had indirectly, if not directly, handled the hammer which had driven the nail into the temple of the young chief. And there was recalled many a deed done by the Cuninghames for which no atonement had yet been made. The long roll of their red-handed transactions was gone over, and with stern-set faces the Montgomeries ad- dressed themselves to their task. The Cuninghames heard the tidings and sprang to arms. The Earl of Glencairn denied all knowledge or intent of the murder. He knew nothing of it, and as proof that he spoke in all sincerity he permitted the law to take its own course against his friends. But the law in those days and among the western lairds moved slowly, and its mills did not even grind small when they did grind. Its processes were too sluggish for the Montgomeries, and they preferred to redress their wrongs by the old rough-and-ready methods of their forefathers. Then was a reign of terror begun in the country of the Cuninghames. No man's life was his own. As, half a century before, they had gathered around the Master of Glencairn and marched across the lands of their rivals, spreading death and destruction whithersoever they turned themselves, so now the Montgomeries were everywhere abroad, and all with the same fateful intent. Their horse- men rode by the waters of Corsehill and Lugton and Glazert; they skirted the Halket Loch and the base of the rocky knolls of Dunlop ; they passed by the Annick burn and by the bridge where the murdered Earl had lain ; they crossed the uplands on the borders of Renfrewshire and hasted on their raids upon the strongholds of the foe. Robertland Castle saw them and shut its gates; Langshaw's warders watched them from the battlements of their tower, but they 26 HISTORICAL TALES OF AYRSHIRE. left the keep behind and went forward on their errand; they skirted grey Corsehill, and the walls of Auchenharvie gave back the echoes of their horse-hoofs. The command had been given to slay, and to slay utterly ; and it was fulfilled to the letter. Houses were fired and their inmates put to the sword ; men were killed in the open fields for no other reason than that the fields were those of the Cuning- hames; innocent rustics passing along the highways, and unable to satisfy the marauders that they had no connec- tion with Glencairn, were ruthlessly sacrificed. The Cuning- hames retaliated as best they could, but so rapidly had the raid been determined upon, and so speedily the resentment put into realisation, that no time was given them for con- centration. The most, therefore, they could do was to offer a species of isolated defence, and that availed them little in the face of an enemy who had tasted blood, and who was almost as inexorable in the work of annihilation as were the chosen race when they marched to their heritage amid a succession of hecatombs. " In the heat of their resent- ment," says the manuscript history of the Eglintou family, " the} 7 killed every Cuninghame without distinction that they could come bye, or even so much as met with on the highways, or living peaceably in their own houses." With the aid of the Secret Council, the Earl of Eglinton obtained power to take into his keeping the Castles of Robertland and Aiket, and for the space of five } 7 ears he retained possession of these houses. All the while the garrisons whom he ordered to hold them levied supplies from the surrounding country, and wrought their will upon the tenants who had survived the first cruel slaughter. Poor Lady Aiket, the wife of Alexander Cuninghame, complained bitterly of the destruction of her property. Everything was laid in ruins. Her houses were overthrown ; her orchards and growing trees were destroyed ; doors, windows, locks, were wrenched and broken. And while the Mont^omeries were thus THE FEUD OF GLENCAIRN. 27 wanton, they were rigorous in insisting on the exaction of fines and duties to such an extent, indeed, that her lady- ship added to her complaint a clause setting forth the grievous wrongs that were done upon the tenants. Nor was her's by any means an isolated case ; it only differed from the majority of the others in that her retribution lasted the longer. The Laird of Corsehill made haste to escape, for the Montgomeries were upon his track. He disappeared from the district and purchased his life at the cost of perpetual banishment from the country of his sires. Cuninghame of Robertland followed his example. Scotland was too small to afford him shelter ; and thinking that in whatever part of the British realm he might secrete himself, the tenacious avenger of blood, ever on his track, might find him, he crossed the seas to Denmark, where he found protection at the court of Queen Ann. There he remained until the storm had exhausted itself, nor did he return to Ayrshire until the Danish Queen became the wife of James VI. By her influence his peace was made with the irate lord of Eglinton, and he was permitted to return to Robertland, and to spend the evening of his days at home. No such happy issue attended on Cuninghame of Clonbeith. His was a double share of guilt aye, a treble share for it was his hand that drew the pistol which put an end to the sufferings of the Earl of Eglinton by the bridge across the Anuick. He was the direct murderer of the chief of the Montgomeries, and the Master of Montgomerie took reprisal in his case into his own hands. Collecting a well mounted body of retainers about him he rode to Clonbeith. Cuninghame heard of their coming and escaped. He travelled across the country in the hopes of throwing his pursuers off the scent ; but no blood- hound ever more truly followed up a trail than they did his. From Ayrshire to Renfrewshire they tracked his goings, and from Renfrewshire into Lanark. He fled to 28 HISTORICAL TALES OF AYRSHIRE. Hamilton ; they pursued him. They were told where he lay concealed, in a house in that town, and thither they directed their course. The man in whose dwelling he was hidden was naturally anxious to befriend him, and artfully hid him in one of the wide chimneys of the house. The Montgomeries lost no time in making their appearance, and in demanding that he should be handed over to them and to justice. They were informed that he was not there. " In that case," said the Master of Eglinton, " let them search the house and satisfy themselves as to the truth of the assertion." To this no demur could be offered, the less that the avenging force was strong enough to storm the dwelling, and deter- mined enough to brook no opposition. The door was accordingly opened, and the Montgomeries made a rigid search of every room and of every corner in which a man might be hidden. One of the searchers, John Pollock of that ilk, a connec- tion by marriage with the Cuninghames of Langshaw and yet a sympathiser with the enemy, one of the most deter- mined of the band, was not to be balked. His eye lighted on the chimney. He examined it and discovered the fugitive. There was no hope for him now. Reaching up, the Mont- gomeries dragged him down to the floor, and without a moment's respite they cut him in pieces on the spot. And then, having obtained the satisfaction they sought, they retraced their march into Ayrshire. It will be remembered that the presence of the Earl of Eglinton in Langshaw was made known to the Cuninghames by the Lady of the house, and that the fluttering of a table- cloth, waved either by her own hands or by those of her sympathetic maid, was the signal for doom. This was not forgotten by the Montgomeries, and they vowed her death ; but when they came to put their threats into execution, they found that she had disappeared. Asking her where- THE FEUD OF GLENCAIRN. 29 abouts they were told that she had fled the country, and this they were forced to believe when they had sought for her and found her not. She had not taken refuge, however, across the seas. In the house of one of her lord's tenants, who remained staunch and true to the most rigid secrecy, she lay concealed for years. She durst not venture abroad by the light of day ; and though no doubt, when night fell, she walked amid the scenes of happier days and more pleasurable associations, her wearisome servitude must have proved irksome and depressing. Time passed on, and the animosities of the Montgomeries either were satisfied or died away ; and the Lady returned to Langshaw. The Eglinton family heard of it, but they let her live. She remained to the close in comparative seclusion, and never, until the day of her death, did she look a Montgomerie in the face. Another victim to the feud was the Commendator of Kil- winniug, Alexander Cuninghame of Montgreenan, the Earl of Glencairn's brother, who was shot dead at his own gate; and there were many more of less note who were offered up on the altar of the Montgomeries' revenge. With the passing away of the actors in the tragedy, the gradually extending power of the civil and the criminal authority, and the solidifying of the authority of the Scottish monarch, the great feud of the Montgomeries and the Cuning- hames died out. There is still an Earl in Eglinton ; but the Earldom of Glencairn has, in the meantime, been allowed to lapse. But the Cuninghames are not extinct ; and there is still a hope that the fortunes of Sir William Cuninghame, Bart., of Corsehill, or of his descendants, may culminate in the restoration to them of the once great name of Glencairn. 30 HISTORICAL TALES OF AYRSHIRE. THE ROASTING OF THE COMMENDATOR OF CROSSRAGUEL IN THE BLACK VAULT OF DUNURE. PART I. THE EARL COOKS THE COMMENDATOR. EARL GILBERT, the feudal chief of the Kennedys, had set his eye upon the lands of Crossraguel. The abbey, fair even in its ruins, stands by the wayside some two miles south- west of Maybole, the steep-streeted capital of Carrick. It is older than the Kennedys themselves. Tradition, indeed, ascribes to the great Carrick family a more remote genesis ; but reliable history does not instal them in the Castle of Dunure at an earlier period than the battle of Largs. When Alexander beat back Haco and his Norsemen on the shore of Largs in 1263 a portion of the invading army took refuge iu Dunure, whither they were pursued by a strong body of the Scots, led by the progenitor of the Earls of Cassillis and the Marquises of Ailsa. The keep was stormed, the original Kennedy entered into possession, and from that day to this vast stretches of country in Ayrshire have been in possession of the descendants of the doughty warrior. By policy, by conquest, by marriage, they gradually extended their domains, until they became the greatest individual force in the south-west of Scotland. ROASTING OF THE COMMENDATOR. 31 Crossraguel Abbey had rather more than attained its majority when the first of the Kennedys entered into posses- sion of Dunure. Abbey, and Castle, and Kennedys, they kept on together, growing older and older. Centuries passed over their heads. Nature and its ravages assaulted the walls of Crossraguel and of grey Dunure ; but, after three hundred years had gone, each, after its own fashion, still opposed itself to the great destroyer. Father Time had touched them lightly. At no period of its existence did Crossraguel rise into any importance as a monastic institution. Its lands were not extensive ; its wealth was small ; it never tried to stem the restless current in the world without. It sat in the midst of an open country, and the holy fathers of these good old times had at all events not only every opportunity of communing with Nature in her solitudes, but, if so inclined, of admiring her in her beauty. To-day the ruin looks over a well-cultivated country, diversified with woodland, backed by rising hills, and intersected by streams. Three hundred years ago the greater part of Carrick was woodland; but there is no reason to doubt that when Earl Gilbert cast his covetous eyes upon the grain-bearing fields and fat beeves of the abbey, the development of agriculture had reached a higher point around Crossraguel than it had in the surround- ing country, which, harried by rival Kennedys and raided by lesser barons and squires of every degree, was without the security necessary to the encouragement of the Carrick farmers of these unsettled and stormy times. The Earl's character is best read in the light of what eventuates later on ; but history describes him as a man of stern aspect, of unbending, inflexible will, and of pride which could not bear to be brooked. He was the terror of Carrick, from the border of Kyle to the banks of the Stinchar, and beyond the hills of Galloway he was hardly less supreme. The smaller barons, save in combination, were powerless to 32 HISTORICAL TALES OF AYRSHIRE. oppose him ; and during all his life-time he was, so far as they were concerned, practically unchecked. When, there- fore, in 1570, his covetous soul went out to the lands of Crossraguel, he little dreamt that in the Commendator of the Abbey, Allan Stewart, he should find a man as stubborn as himself, and as resolved to maintain his rights as the Earl was to abrogate them. Earl Gilbert was the nephew of Quintin Kennedy, the last and the best known of the Abbots of Crossraguel. It was he who, in 1562,- contended for three successive days in a house in Maybole with John Knox. The abbot was the author of a work in defence of the mass, nor was he slow to fulminate against those to whom the mass was an abomina- tion. One Sunday of that year, preaching in the chapel of Kirkoswald, a village adjacent to the abbey, he publicly announced his determination to defend his views against anybody who would impugn them. Knox was in the neigh- bourhood, and, hearing of the challenge, he repaired the following Sunday to Kirkoswald to take up the ecclesias- tical glove which the abbot had thrown down. Apparently the reformer did not wish to have a scene in the church, so he called upon the abbot privately to tell him his inten- tion. It cannot be said that the abbot lacked courage, but, not wishing to have any disturbance in the church, he decided to remain at home. This he accordingly did, and Knox, doubtless glad of the opportunity to expose the sins of Rome, occupied his pulpit, and declaimed to the congrega- tion concerning the errors adherent to the mystic woman of the Apocalypse. The abbot immediately afterwards challenged him to open debate. Knox responded. There were some preliminary difficulties in the way, the abbot desiring the disputation to take place in presence of a limited number of persons on both sides ; Knox, on the other hand, being anxious to. have the question of the mass thrashed out in open meeting. Ultimately the reformer ROASTING OF THE COMMENDATOR. 33 gave way, and the dispute was carried on in Maybole in presence of forty adherents of each of the rival champions of faith. There is no record of the argument, save that left by Knox ; but it may be doubted whether any good resulted from the controversy. Even in the times in which we live religious disputation tends mainly to acrimony, and there is no reason to believe, though both claimed the victory, either that the Scottish reformer touched the heart or understand- ing of the abbot, or that the abbot quenched by one single degree the fiery zeal of the reformer. Knox, however, admits that Quintin Kennedy and his " flatterers and collatoralles, bragged greatly " of their triumph. The good abbot Quiutin rested from his controversies, and with his life went out that of Crossraguel as a monastic institution. Allan Stewart was appointed Commendator. The Commendator was, nominally, the trustee of a benefice during a vacancy ; but not unfrequently, through the influence of the Pope, he was granted, for his own behoof, the revenues of the benefice in life-rent. This seems to have been the case with Allan Stewart. The Earl of Cassillis had exerted all the influence which he was capable of wielding, in order to secure the Commendatorship, with its very substantial advantages, on his own behalf. His efforts were, however, in vain ; so he resolved to accomplish his aim by other and more direct means. He could not bear to be thwarted ; and he formed a resolution to obtain by force or by fraud what his influence had failed to secure for him. What follows partakes so much of the horrible that one would gladly, if at all possible, relegate it to the limbo of legend or of tradition. Unfortunately, however, for the sake of so much humanity as was incorporated in the person of Earl Gilbert, every detail is vouched for to the letter. Having then, through the influence of his relative, Captain James Stewart of Cardonald, near Paisley, been appointed Commendator of the Abbey and its lands, Allan Stewart, in 3 34 HISTORICAL TALES OF AYRSHIRE. the early autumn of 1570, went down to Ayrshire to visit what was practically, so far as his lifetime was concerned, his own property. He was the guest of his biother-in-law, the Laird of Bargany also a Kennedy, and the nearest appi'oach to a dangerous rival in Carrick whom the Earl of Cassillis had. The feud, which subsequently broke out into open hostility between Cassillis and Bargany, was as yet only smouldering ; but the newly appointed Commendator could not well have more greatly incensed the Earl against him than by his residence in the house of his hostile kinsman on the banks of the Girvan. The Earl noted the movements of the Commendator ; and on a day late in the month of August, when Stewart was in the wood of Cross- raguel, he took him prisoner. He was careful, however, not to use violence ; but the moral compulsion which he em- ployed was certainly not far removed from actual force. In the complaint which Stewart lodged with the Privy Council the following year he says that the Earl of Cassillis, the Earl's brother Thomas, the Master of Cassillis, and their accomplices, to the number of sixteen or thereby ' : came to me and persuadit me be their flatteries and deceatful wordis to pas with thame to his Castle and place of Dunure ; being always myndit, gif I had made refusal to pass with them, to have taken me perforce." Making a virtue of necessity, the hapless Commendator yielded to the exigencies of the situation. He accompanied the Earl and his followers to Dunure. The Castle of Dunure stands in its ruins on a rock about seven miles south-west of Ayr. It may have been it un- doubtedly was a stronghold in the days when Allan Stewart passed within its ramparts ; but at its very best and strongest it has never, save from its associations, been worthy to be put in comparison with many of the other strong square peels and castles which stud the south-west of Scotland. It was impregnable from the sea for the waters of the Firth ROASTING OF THE COMMENDATOR. 35 of Clyde wash the base of the crag on which it stands. The land behind, at no great distance from it, dominates it; and in these days of heavy ordnance it would be easily demolished. It was, in the period of its strength, protected by heavy ramparts and by a deep fosse ; and held by a determined garrison, it was quite capable of resisting any- thing short of a sustained siege. When, therefore, the heavy gates closed on the unfortunate Commendator, he must have felt himself powerless in the grasp of his captor. Six of the Earl's retainers were ordered to watch him, so that escape was impossible. His horse was taken from him, he was relieved of his weapons of defence, and for that and the two following days he was left to realise his helplessness and to borrow such strength as he could obtain from the conscious- ness of the injustice that was being done him. Without the walls of the keep everything was suggestive of unrestrained freedom. The boundless, fetterless sea rolled in its majesty before him ; the wind whistled at will in the great chimneys and turrets and caught up the sprays of the restless breakers which broke upon the rocks beneath ; and the sea-birds, strong and unfettered of pinion, flew and screamed and dived as they listed, amid the foam. On the first day of September the Earl returned to Dunure from Cassillis House, where, as a rule, he resided, and placed his demands before his captive. In the interval he had evidently consulted his agent, for he brought with him " made in parchment," " a five-year tack and a nineteen-year tack, and a charter of feu of all the lands of Crossraguel," which he called upon the Commendator to subscribe. This Stewart refused to do, pointing out to him that his demands were unreasonable, the more so that the Abbey lands were already " disponit " to the tenants and possessors thereof. The Earl used all his powers of persuasion and of cajolery in vain, so he resorted to other and sterner means. There are two narratives of what followed, one in " The History of the 36 HISTORICAL TALES OF AYRSHIRE. Kennedys," the other the complaint of the Commendator to the Privy Council. The latter perhaps being the more accurate, though not the more detailed, is subjoined. I have taken the liberty of anglicising a word here and there that the reader may have no difficulty in following Stewart's remarkable story : The Earl, " after long boasting and bullying of me, caused me to be carried by John Kennedy, his baker; John M'Leir, his cook ; Alexander Ritchard, his pantryman ; Alexander Eccles, and Sir William Todd, to the Black Vault of Dunure; where the tormentors denuded me of all my clothes perforce, except only my sark and doublet ; and then bound both my hands at the wrist with a cord, as he did both my- feet; and bound my soles betwixt an iron grate and a fire ; and, being bound thereto, could in no way stir or move, but had almost died through my cruel burning. And seeing 'no other ap- pearance to me but either condescend to his desire or else to continue in that torment until I died, took me to the longest life, and said, ' I would obey his desire,' albeit it was sore against my will. And, to be relieved of rny said pain, subscribed the foresaid charter and tack, which I never yet read nor knew what therein was contained ; which being done, the said Earl caused the said tormentors of me swear upon a Bible never to reveal one word of this my unmerci- ful handling to any person or persons. Yet he, not being satisfied with these proceedings, came again upon the seventh day of the foresaid month, bringing with him the same charter and tack, which he compelled me to subscribe and required me to ratify and approve the same before a notary and witnesses, which altogether I refused. And therefore he, as of before, bound me, and put me to the same manner of tormenting, and I said notwithstanding, 'he should first get my life ere ever I agreed to his desire ' ; and being in so great pain, as I trust man was never in with his life, I cried, ' Fie upon you ! will you (not) ding whingaris (thrust a short ROASTING OF THE COMMENDATOR. 37 sword) in me and put me out of this world ! or else put a barrel of powder under me rather than to be used in this unmerciful manner'! The said Earl, hearing me cry, bade his servant, Alexander Ritchard, put a table-napkin in my throat, which he obeyed, the same being performed at eleven o'clock at night ; who then, seeing that I was in danger of my life, my flesh consumed and burned to the bones, and that I would not condescend to their purpose, I was relieved of that pain, where-through I will never be able nor well in my life-time." Though the Commendator in his complaint affirms that he did not ratify the documents, there can be no doubt that he did. Probably the pain which he underwent in the Black Vault was so intense as to drive from his memory any recollection of his having subscribed the obnoxious feu charter. The element of the grotesque is added to that of the horrible in the narrative given of the occurrence in " The History of the Kennedys," where it is entitled " The Erie of Cassillis Tyranny against a Quick l Man." It may seem rather a strange thing to find the historian of the Kennedy family revel in such a scene; but all through his work, indeed, he brings forward events which a sycophantic nar- rator would studiously have kept in the background. The author is unknown. It is supposed by some that the history is the work of Mure of Auchendrane, probably in many respects the most dangerous and unscrupulous enemy that the Kennedys had ; by others that it was written by a schoolmaster in Ayr, who likewise rejoiced in the name of Mure, and who must either have been exceptionally faithful as a chronicler, or, like his namesake of Auchendrane, must have been animated by deadly rancour against the Kings of Carrick. Here, as above, I give the story in the quaint, 1 Living. 38 HISTORICAL TALES OF AYRSHIRE. graphic language of the narrator, again anglicising it for the behoof of the reader : " After that certain days were spent, and that the Earl could not obtain the feus of Crossraguel according to his own appetite, he determined to prove if that a collation could work that which neither dinner nor supper could do of a long time. And so the said Master (Stewart) was carried to a secret chamber, and with him passed the honourable Earl, his worshipful brother, and such as were appointed to be servants at that banquet. In the chamber there was a great iron chimney, under it a fire; other great provision was not seen. The first course was " ' My Lord Abbot,' said the Earl, ' it will please you con- fess here that with your own consent you remain in my company, because you dare not commit yourself to the hands of others.' " The Abbot answere'd " ' Would you, my lord, that I should make a manifest false- hood for your pleasure ? The truth is, my lord, that it is against my will that I am here ; neither yet have I any plea- sure in your company.' "'But you shall remain with me at this time,' said the Earl. " ' I am not able to resist your will and pleasure,' said the Abbot, ' in this place.' " ' You must then obey me,' said the Earl. "And with that there were presented unto him certain letters to subscribe, amongst which there was a five-years' tack and a nineteen-years' tack, and a charter of feu of all the lands of Crossraguel, with all the clauses necessary for the Earl to haste him to hell ! For if adultery, sacrilege, oppression, barbarous cruelty, and theft heaped upon theft deserve hell, the great King of Carrick can no more escape hell for ever than the imprudent Abbot escaped the fire for a season, as follows : ROASTING OF THE COMMENDATOR. 39 " After that the Earl espied repugnance, and that he could not come to Iris purpose by fair means, he commanded his cooks to prepare the banquet. And so, first, they fleeced the sheep that is, they took off the abbot's clothes, even to his skin ; and, next, they bound him to the chimney, his legs to the one end and his arms to the other ; and so they began to apply the fire, sometimes to his hips, sometimes to his legs, sometimes to his shoulders and arms. And that the roast should not burn, but that it might roast in sop, they spared not to anoint it with oil. (Lord, look Thou to sic cruelty !) And that the crying of the miserable man should not be heard, they closed his mouth that his voice might be stopped. In that torment they held the poor man, while that ofttimes he cried ' for God's sake to despatch him, for he had as much gold in his r^vn purse as would buy powder enough to shorten his pain j.i^ famous King of Carrick and his cooks, perceiving the roast to be enough, commanded it to be taken from the fire, and the Earl him- self began the grace in this manner ' Benedicite Jesus Maria! You are the most obstinate man that ever I saw ! If I had known that you would be so stubborn, I would not for a thousand crowns have handled you so ! I never did so to man before you !' And yet he returned to the same practice within two days, and ceased not until he had attained his foremost purpose ; that is, he had gotten all his deeds subscribed as well as a half-roasted hand could do it ! " It is little wonder that the narrator adds, in the bitterness of his soul, that " in that time God was despised and the lawful authority was contemned in Scotland." PART II. THE ROAST DOTH NOT AVAIL THE EARL. Having attained his object, the Earl left the Castle of 40 HISTORICAL TALES OF AYRSHIRE. Dunure in the hands of a body of his servants, with strict injunctions that the suffering Commendator was to be kept a close prisoner. But the dark deed could not, and did not, hide. Tidings of what had occurred reached Bargany, and incited the natural and the righteous ire of the rival Kennedy on the banks of the Girvan. It needed but a spark to enkindle a conflagration ; and, in place of a spark, here was a veritable fire itself. Bargany knew with whom he had to deal, and he acted swiftly and decisively. He at once despatched ten or twelve of his servants under cloud of night to Dunure, under the leadership of " David Kennedy of Maxweltown, who had been his page before." These men, skilfully led and evidently well acquainted with the weak- nesses of Dunure, entered the chapel, which was outside the moat at the end of the drawbridge, but which, nevertheless, was connected with the main body of the castle. In the morning, when the keepers were opening the outer gate, they sallied forth, sword in hand, entered the house, made captive the domestics, whom they confined for safety in the keep, and brought encouragement to the half-roasted Com- mendator. The deed was a daring one, and might have proved fatal to those who did it ; for the Master of Cassillis and the Laird of Culzean, Sir Thomas Kennedy, learning what had befallen, speedily mustered a strong body of the Earl's retainers, marched across the country from Cassillis, crossing the shoulder of Carrick Hill, and at once proceeded to active operations. By piercing the chapel walls, they would have obtained entrance to the dungeons, and this they immediately attempted ; but the small garrison man- fully held them at bay, threw large stones down from the battlements upon them, and, breaking the roof of the chapel, compelled them to stay their housebreaking operations. The Master of Cassillis was foremost in the attack. He did not incite or direct his followers to attempt a deed in the execu- tion and danger of which he did not share. Seeing, however, ROASTING OF THE COMMENDATOR. 41 that a forcible entrance was not to be obtained, he resolved to adopt other and more active measures, and he threatened the defenders that if they did not yield up the castle he would set fire to the chapel and burn them out. But they were not to be thus daunted. On the contrary, they advised him to be more moderate in his determination. Whether he set about firing the chapel or not it is impossible to say ; but at all events his efforts came to naught, and he finally desisted from the attack when " the wind of ane hacquebute blasted his shoulder." This mishap excited his" wrathful " furie " ; but, irate though he was, he suspended operations and left the Bargany men in possession. Bargany himself was meanwhile rousing the West Country to indignation, and stirring it to revenge. The Earl had plenty of foes in Ayrshire, and to these Bargany either went in person or sent messengers to apprise them of what had taken place, and to request their assistance. He was backed by letters from the Privy Council. His posts rode over the hills of Carrick, the broad lands of Kyle, and the fields of Cunninghame ; and ere long, at the head of a strong force, bent on vengeance, he appeared in front of the grey keep of Dunure, and relieved the small garrison who had so effectu- ally surprised it. The Earl would fain have dared the combat, but the odds were too sreat ; and without let or hindrance the Commend- O ' ator, still bearing manifest traces of his cruel treatment, was conveyed to the Market Cross of Ayr, where he denounced his persecutor, and exhibited his scars and his burns to an in- dignant population. Ayr was at all times more friendly to Bargany than it was to his kinsman of Cassillis; and it can well be believed that the burghers promised their aid in having justice done upon the headstrong "King of Carrick." The Privy Council summoned the Earl into its presence; and he had the boldness, not only to obey the summons which, perhaps, he could not well have refused to do but to 42 HISTORICAL TALES OF AYRSHIRE. question the legitimacy of the tribunal. The offence, he had committed, he said, if offence it was, was either civil or criminal. In either case it was a matter for the regularly constituted courts of the realm ; and therefore he demanded to be taken "before the judges competent." The Regent and the Council dealt very leniently with the Earl. He had doubtless his friends at Court; and it may be presumed that, in the disturbed state in which the country was, they were by no means anxious to incur the pronounced, and in all probability the active, hostility of the powerful chief of the Kennedys. They accordingly declined to view the unholy transaction in its criminal capacity, or to remit it to the Court of Justiciary, before which, by right, the Earl ought to have appeared. Falling back on their function to secure the quietness of the realm, they ordained him to find caution in the amount of two thousand pounds not to molest the Commendator anew or to interfere with his rights over Crossraguel, its fruits, rents, profits, or duties. Bargany was dissatisfied with the leniency of the Council, and made preparation for taking practical revenge ; but mutual friends interposed to prevent the outbreak of hostilities. The Earl, if not ashamed of his action, was wise enough to comprehend the strong feeling of hostility to him which it had created in the Westland ; and, by way of making such amends as he could, and stilling the popular tumult, he gave the " brunt " Commendator a certain sum annually by way of solatium. On the whole, it may be con- ceded that he escaped the just consequences of his misdeed very easily ; though from that day to this the memory of the cruel wrong which he did in the Black Vault of Dunure has remained the darkest stain on the by no means un- chequered annals of the Kennedys of Cassillis. The following year Earl Gilbert obtained by payment what he had failed to obtain by fraud and cruelty combined, and he lived to enjoy as best he could the fruits of the ROASTING OF THE COMMENDATOR. 43 Abbacy until, five years later, he was thrown from his horse and fatally injured. Naturally, his treatment of the Abbot took a strong hold upon the superstitious peasantry of the country-side ; and many a weird story floats over Carrick to this day concerning the unhallowed intercourse which he had with the powers of darkness. The same story, for instance, is told concerning his death as is narrated concern- ing the final leave-taking with this world of " the biuidy Dalziel" how that one night as the master of an Irish coaster was sailing down the Firth of Clyde under the lee of Ailsa Craig, he espied coming over the waters to meet him a chariot of fire and horses of fire ; how the skipper, nerving himself in face of the extraordinary and terror-inspiring spectacle, put his speaking-trumpet to his mouth and shouted to the spiritual driver, " Whence, and whither bound " ? how the driver replied in a voice of thunder, "From hell to Cassillis for the soul of the Earl" ! and how, later on the same night, the same shipmaster beheld the diabolic equipage return with another passenger, who wailed and howled above the storm which blew in sympathy with the occasion. There was also the familiar crow, which, as the remains of the King of Carrick were being borne in pomp to their last resting-place in. Maybole, flew on heavy pinion towards the procession, and lighted on the coffin. So long as the evil bird sat above the body of the Earl, the horses could not move the carriage on which it rested ; but no sooner had the Satanic emissary if not the Great Spirit of Darkness himself resumed his flight, than the horses pi-oceeded without the slightest difficulty. It is told, too, how that in the Black Vault of Dunure the Earl had a raven for his " familiar," and that the bird of ill omen encouraged him nay, urged him to the roasting of the Commendator. Education and enlightenment, however, are rapidly driving these baleful traditions into oblivion. Sir Walter Scott has not suffered the scene to escape 44 HISTORICAL TALES OF AYRSHIRE. immortality ; for in " Ivanhoe" he has gone far in the direc- tion of reproducing its horrors. " In these very scales," said the Norman Baron, Front-de-Boeuf, to the trembling Jew, Isaac of York, " in these very scales shalt thou weigh me out a thousand silver pounds after the just measure and weight of the Tower of London." The demand was spoken in the dungeon of Torquilstone Castle ; and it was made by the Baron to the Jew in the presence of two Saracen slaves ready to obey the slightest nod of their imperious lord. Isaac protested his inability to tell down such a ransom. "This dungeon," retorted the Norman, " is no place for trifling. Prisoners ten thousand times more distinguished than thou have died within these walls, and their fate hath never been known ! But for thee is reserved a long and lingering death, to which theirs were luxury." On a given signal the Saracens disposed a quantity of charcoal in a large rusty grate, and exercised the bellows until the fuel came to a red glow. " Seest thou, Isaac," said Front-de-Boauf, " the range of iron bars above that glowing charcoal ? On that warm couch thou shalt lie stripped of thy clothes as if thou wert to rest on a bed of down. One of these slaves shall maintain the fire beneath thee, while the other shall anoint thy wretched limbs with oil, lest the roast should burn. Now choose betwixt such a scorching bed and the payment of a thousand pounds of silver ; for, by the head of my father, thou hast no other option." It was in vain that the Jew appealed to the humanity of the 'Norman nobleman; he was inexorable. The furnace was all aglow, the Saracens had seized their victim, and were ready to lay him on the bars, when the covetous heart of Isaac gave way before the, terrible torture with which he was threatened. More fortunate he than the tortured Com- mendator of Crossra