242 DURISDEER CHURCH-YARD. tion with his Grace's awkward attitude, make it absolutely impossible to survey this elaborate piece of art with any emotions other than those of ridicule. The church-yard of Durisdeer contains some plebeian monuments worthy of attention. Upon one, commemorating the Master-of-works at Drumlanrig, and dated 1685, there is a good effigy of that important personage, affording a very fair specimen of the costume of the middle ranks in the reign of Charles II. The man is represented in a wide-skirted coat, buttoned up the sides of the skirts, and having very large cuffs also buttoned, -with a cravat hanging down his breast,-and with a broad Lowland bonnet,* from beneath which his hair descends in a full flow upon his shoulders. He very much resembles the Covenanters upon Archbishop Sharpe's monument at St Andrews, whose dress refers to the same period. In order to show the prevalence of cravats about a century ago, there is an effigy on another old grave-stone in Durisdeer church-yard, representing a child of two years, who wears round his short little neck as good a cravat as that of James Lukup, the master-of-works; though, by the way, he looks as if the thing was only accustomed to strangle him on Pace-andYule occasions, and was not a daily wear. At another part of the burial-ground there is a monument of a different sort from any of the above-namely, to the memory of a Cameronian who was shot by General Dalyell at the neighbouring farm of Nether Dalveen. This man's name was Daniel M'Michael; and in the autobiographical epitaph which has been inscribed on his tomb, he says that as his celebrated name-sake was cast into the Den of Lions, so was he devoured by the lions All the rustic people of Scotland, except Lairds, used to wear bonnets till less than a century ago; and it is not above three hundred years since noblemen, and even the king himself, wore nothing else. A curious fashion connected with this subject still obtains amongst that respectable corporation, the Butchers of Musselburgh. Upon some particular festival day, they all wear broad flat blue bonnets, and meet in that guise to dine together. Nobody knows the origin of the custom. PASS OF DALVEEN. 243 of tyranny, perjury, and prelacy-a strangely incongruous triumvirate of bad things, yet by no means uncommon in the writings of the party to which Michael belonged. In the awfully wild glen behind Durisdeer, may still be seen the remains of a Roman Castra Estiva, as well as the traces of a vast rampart formed by the natives of this country between Lochmaben and Lochryan. The banks of the Carron between Durisdeer and Thornhill, being lined with natural copse-word, afford some fine scenery; and at a particular place, where the bank is very steep, there is a cave, supposed to have been originally a place of refuge for the Druids, latterly for the Covenanters. To this cave, it is reported, Gay the poet, during his residence at Drumlanrig Castle, used to resort, to woo the Muses; loving, it is said, the delicious coolness of the retreat, so much more favourable to his studies than the tepid and noisy atmosphere of the castle. A little to the westward of Durisdeer, the barrier of hills is penetrated by the Pass of Dalveen, the principal thoroughfare between the vales of the Nith and Clyde, and celebrated on account of its romantic and impressive scenery. The Pass of Dalveen is a narrow, tortuous strath, with a rivulet running along a stripe of pastoral haugh at the bottom, and high hills rising on each side with almost perpendicular precipitousness. As the line of the Pass is extremely crooked, and the hills are closely indented into each other, the aspect of the scenery is perpetually changing to the eye of a traveller; but nowhere is the general characteristic of grandeur awanting The road winds along half-way down the hills on the east side of the Pass, and some part of it is never lighted by the sun. That luminary casts a gigantic, massive shade from the hills on one side against those of the other-not the least magnificent thing about the scene. But rarely are any travellers seen moving along the dark hill-sides, and were it not for a solitary farm or two, a toll-house, and the few sheep straggling about the faces of the braes, there is no object that tells of life or civilization anywhere to be seen. Nor is there any sound to disturb the infinite stillness and repose of the scene; save perhaps the battling of the burn and its chasm-descended accessories, or the trickling of a pebble from the artificial scaur above the road, brought down, it may be, by the slight disturbance it has received from the foot-fall of the passing traveller. The upper part of Nithisdale contains no object of interest besides the town of Sanquhar, which is a royal burgh, with a carpet-manufactory. Sanquhar Castle is a ruin of some interest, having been taken by Edward I, but afterwards retrieved by a stratagem. The castle of Elliock, about a mile from the town, is supposed to have been the birth-place of the Admirable Crichton, whose father was Sir Robert Crichton of Elliock. Galloway, COMPRISING THE STEWARTRY OF KIRKCUDBRIGHT AND COUNTY OF WIGTON. At length he to a winnock cam, Through it was seen ilk fertile neuk The Ken, the Cree, the darling Dee, The THE Stewartry of Kirkcudbright forms the eastern, From its remote and peninsular situation, the early 246 ANCIENT CONDITION OF GALLOWAY. history of Galloway is involved in greater obscurity than that perhaps of any other part of Scotland. It has, however, been generally represented, and probably with truth, as a region where primeval barbarity long and powerfully opposed the progress of civilization. At a period when Galloway included the southern division of Ayrshire, it formed in some sort an independent kingdom or lordship, and was engaged under its native princes and barons in almost perpetual war with the monarchs of Scotland. At one time it was attached to England, and Fergus, a Lord of Galloway, signed the Great Charter in this character. At a later period Galloway sided, in the wars of the competition, with its native master Baliol; and in the reign of David the Second, the Representative of that unfortunate family found protection, and established a Court in this remote corner of his nominal kingdom. Galloway was at length entirely subdued, and brought to acknowledge the authority of the Scottish King, by William, Lord Douglas, about the year 1353. Its long-maintained independence is yet indicated by the popular phrase,-the fremit Scoto Gallowa,—while the rude and barbaric character of the early inhabitants may be traced in similar local traditionary expressions, or gathered from the concurring testimony of all our historians. A still more convincing proof of the late period at which the native wildness of the inhabitants of Galloway yielded to civilization, is supplied by the undoubted fact, that persons were recently alive, within whose memory the Celtic language was spoken in the higher and more sequestered districts of the Glenkens, which separate the Stewartry from Ayrshire. It is but fair to mention that to these unfavourable views of the character of the early inhabitants of Galloway, stands opposed the veracious authority of that amusing traveller William Lithgow, whose Rare Adventures were published in 1632. He assures us that he found in the road-way inns of Galloway as good cheare, * Not a-kin. |