they are unknown.  Of these stories illustrative of Jacobite feelings and enthusiasm, many are of a character not fit for me to record.  The good old ladies who were violent partisans of the Stuarts had little hesitation in referring without reserve to the future and eternal destiny of William of Orange.  One anecdote which I had from a near relative of the family may be adduced in illustration of the powerful hold which the cause had upon the views and consciences of Jacobites.

A former Mr. Stirling of Keir had favoured the Stuart cause, and had in fact attended a muster of forces at the Brig of Turk previous to the ’15.  This symptom of a rising against the Government occasioned some uneasiness, and the authorities were very active in their endeavours to discover who were the leaders of the movement.  Keir was suspected.  The miller of Keir was brought forward as a witness, and swore positively that the laird was not present.  Now, as it was well known that he was there, and that the miller knew it, a neighbour asked him privately, when he came out of the witness-box, how he could on oath assert such a falsehood.  The miller replied, quite undaunted, and with a feeling of confidence in the righteousness of his cause approaching the sublime—­“I would rather trust my soul in God’s mercy than Keir’s head into their hands.”

A correspondent has sent me an account of a curious ebullition of Jacobite feeling and enthusiasm, now I suppose quite extinct.  My correspondent received it himself from Alexander, fourth Duke of Gordon, and he had entered it in a commonplace-book when he heard it, in 1826.

“David Tulloch, tenant in Drumbenan, under the second and third Dukes of Gordon, had been ‘out’ in the ’45—­or the fufteen, or both—­and was a great favourite of his respective landlords.  One day, having attended the young Lady Susan Gordon (afterwards Duchess of Manchester) to the ‘Chapel’ at Huntly, David, perceiving that her ladyship had neither hassock nor carpet to protect her garments from the earthen floor, respectfully spread his plaid for the young lady to kneel upon, and the service proceeded; but when the prayer for the King and Royal Family was commenced, David, sans ceremonie, drew, or rather ‘twitched,’ the plaid from under the knees of the astonished young lady, exclaiming, not sotto voce, ’The deil a ane shall pray for them on my plaid!’”

I have a still more pungent demonstration against praying for the king, which a friend in Aberdeen assures me he received from the son of the gentleman who heard the protest.  In the Episcopal Chapel in Aberdeen, of which Primus John Skinner was incumbent, they commenced praying in the service for George III. immediately on the death of Prince Charles Edward.  On the first Sunday of the prayer being used, this gentleman’s father, walking home with a friend whom he knew to be an old and determined Jacobite, said to him, “What do you think of that, Mr.——?” The reply was, “Indeed, the less we say aboot that prayer the better.”  But he was pushed for “further answer as to his own views and his own ideas on the matter,” so he came out with the declaration, “Weel, then, I say this—­they may pray the kenees[28] aff their breeks afore I join in that prayer.”