ancient times the house of Douglas had a stronghold in the vicinity of this mountain, and at that period the population in this wild and bleak district was surprisingly great. The hamlets and clusters of cottages in this locality had their origin from the castle or stronghold on the skirts of the mountain, to which the Douglases occasionally resorted in time of danger, and there set their enemies at defiance. "Little knows King Henry the skirts of Cairntable," said the Earl of Angus; "I can keep myself there from all his English host." The tale of the poor cotters is touching. All of them, with a few exceptions, had received notice to quit their habitations, and remove from the lands at the first term. Tradition says that " thirty chimneys ceased to smoke on Whitsunday at noon, on the fair lands of Carmacoup." At a meeting which had been held a few days prior to their removal, the cottagers agreed to convene on the morning of the day of their departure, at a place called the Bottoms, near the foot of Cairntable, where they purposed to engage in devotional exercises before they separated to seek other residences. The eventful morning came; it was clear and beautiful-the sun rose in a cloudless sky. The lark was carolling his song high in the air; the lambs were gambolling on the grassy knolls; and the curlew, with his loudest scream, was sweeping over their heads in rapid gyrations, as they moved slowly and mournfully to the place of meeting. It was a solemn assembly; sorrow was depicted on every countenance-a sleepless night was passed by all-the eyes of some were red with weeping, and the warm tears bedewed many a fair cheek-the father contemplated with a yearning heart his helpless family, and the mother stood sobbing with her smiling babe cradled on her arm. When all were convened, they formed themselves into a circle on the bent; and a venerable father being placed, by universal consent, in the middle of the ring, they began the devotional exercises by singing a psalm. The aged man read a portion of Scripture adapted to their circumstances, and then, kneeling down on the brown heath, poured forth a prayer full of holy fervour and childlike confidence in God, and committed the helpless and destitute company of worshippers to the particular care of that Saviour, for attachment to whose cause they were now called to suffer hardships, and to submit to banishment from their native place. It was interesting to see a company of honest peasants, who had not now a place in the world which they could call their home, invok ing Him who, when on earth, had not where to lay his head. The spirits of the party were refreshed by means of this heavenly communion, and by means of the Christian converse they had together; and having girded up the loins of their minds, they were prepared to follow the leadings of Providence, and to submit in all things to the disposal of their heavenly Father. When they arose to separate, it is said that the aged saint stood up in the midst of the company, and, with a loud and firm voice, pronounced the following prayer: "May He who was with the patriarchs in their wanderings, even the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, go with us! Amen." The attachment which the inhabitants of the hilly districts and of the deserts cherish for the homes of their fathers is remarkable; and we may easily conceive with what reluctance this little band of witnesses would leave their native moorlands. They would, no doubt, cast "many a longing, lingering, look behind" to the lowly cottages in which they had been reared, to the rugged mountains and the dark heath which they had traversed from their infancy, and to the kindly neighbours with whom they had lived in friendly intercourse, and whose faces, in all likelihood, they would never more see on earth. Tradition has retained no further notice of these simplehearted occupants of the wilderness. Not even a single name has been transmitted to posterity, and the history of their after-wanderings cannot now be ascertained; but it is not at all improbable that the blood of some of them stained the purple heath, or streamed on the scaffold. Such, then, is the story of the flitting of the Covenanters, the cotters of Carmacoup. CHAPTER XXXVI. Andrew Forsyth of Kirkowan. THE annals of our nation can furnish no period so dismal, and so deeply stained with crime, as that which is denominated "the persecuting period." Some of the years of this lawless time were styled, by way of eminence," the killing-time," or "the slaughter years," on account of the vast number of murders that were committed by the soldiers in the fields; for wherever they found a man whom they suspected to be a religious character, but who, in their style, was designated a rebel, they, without trial, and frequently without warning, shot him dead on the spot. The south and west of Scotland was converted into a spacious hunting-field, on the wide arena of which the blood of God's saints was made to run like water. The Cavaliers of those days engaged with heart and hand in the ungodly crusade against their country's liberties, and were guilty of acts of cruelty at the bare recital of which we feel a cold shuddering creep over our frame. The heart bleeds painfully when we think on the hardships to which our virtuous ancestors were subjected, in following what they conceived to be the plain line of their duty, and in maintaining their privileges as Christians, and their rights as citizens. They dared not, as the poet says "They dared not, in the face of day, To worship God, nor even at the dead of night, They counted themselves particularly privileged when they were allowed to hold even one Sabbath-day, from morning till night, without being scattered by the savage troopers, whom the spirit of a bigoted and intolerant age had let loose on the unoffending peasantry of Scotland. These troopers traversed the country in every direction for the purpose of hunting down, under the sanction of tyrannical authority, the peaceful subjects who simply claimed the common birthright of every man-the privilege of worshipping God according to the dictates of their own conscience. They "suffered," says Bishop Burnet, "extremities that tongue cannot describe, and of which the heart cannot conceive, from the dismal circumstances of hunger, nakedness, and the severity of the climate, lying in damp caves, and in hollow clefts of the naked rocks, without shelter, covering, fire, or food. None durst harbour, entertain, relieve, or even speak to them, upon the pain of death. Many, for venturing to receive them, were forced to fly to them, and several were put to death for no other offence. Fathers were persecuted for supplying their children, and children for nourishing their parents; husbands for harbouring their wives, and wives for cherishing their husbands. The ties and the obligations of nature were no defence, but it was made death to perform natural duties, and many suffered death for acts of piety and charity in cases where human nature could not bear the thoughts of suffering it. To such an extent was the rage of the persecutors carried." "Thus," as the Rev. Mr Gilmour remarks in his "Voice of Warning" to the inhabitants of Greenock, "thus, according to the hitherto unquestioned, and we believe unquestionable, testimony of this learned, and pious, and impartial historian, a mere profession of religion exposed our forefathers to proscription and ruin, but it brings honour and reputation to their sons. For them to be men of piety and prayer was to fix them to the stake and the scaffold, while it fixes our personal worth, and stamps us with the public approbation. For them to meet upon the Sabbath-day was to put their lives in jeopardy, and to peril all that was dear to them; while the same principles and practice are esteemed reputable by the great mass of society at the present day. We are not exposed to civil proscription, because we exercise the right of private judgment in matters of religion-we are in no fear of military executions, because we maintain the principles of the Reformation-we are not threatened with the displeasure of an earthly sovereign, because we advocate the Mediator's universal supremacy in opposition to everything like Erastian usurpation and unscriptural magisterial power -we have no fear of the stake, or the tree, or the scaffold, because we openly avow our attachment to civil and religious liberty-we have no necessity for planting sentinels on the surrounding hills to warn us of a cruel, mercenary, and unprincipled soldiery, because we take the liberty of worshipping the God of our fathers. These days of ecclesiastical domination, and of arbitrary political power, are no more. Tyrants and tyranny are equally an abomination in our land." Our ancestors were eminent alike for their patriotism and their Christianity, and having been so, they have transmitted to us the invaluable boon of freedom, civil and religious. The tree of liberty, that fair and stately tree that was planted by the hands of a still more remote ancestry, our fathers in the late persecution watered with their blood, and it has grown, and spread its branches far and wide; and now underneath its goodly boughs it affords a spacious shelter from the scorching heat of persecution, and from the storms of tyrannical misrule. We may think that, with all our advantages, we have many things to complain of; and so perhaps we have, but then the causes of our complaints are not once to be named with those of our forefathers. We enjoy the full protection of the three great privileges for which all civil government is instituted, namely, that of life, liberty, and property; and no citizen who enjoys this can say that he is hardly dealt with. But these our persecuted ancestors did not enjoy; they were plundered of every one of them, and their names cast out as evil. Andrew Forsyth, the subject of the following interesting anecdotes, belonged to the parish of Kirkowan in Galloway. His father was a respectable farmer, whose property consisted chiefly in sheep, which he reared on the dark heathy mountains. Galloway was, in those times, famous for the goodly number of adherents to the cause of the covenants, who lived in its glens and moorlands. The ministry of Samuel Rutherford in Anwoth, of Peden in Glenluce, of Semple of Carsphairn, and of Werner of Balmaclellan, brought forth a host of witnesses for the truth, who grew up in the solitudes at first unnoticed, but who afterwards created a great deal of annoyance to the rulers of the period, to whom religion and Presbyterianism were alike offensive. Galloway formed a considerable section of that spacious field which Mr Renwick cultivated, and many a day did he spend in its wilds, preaching the Gospel, and watering God's weary heritage in its lonely deserts. Many and striking were the in |