therefore, of the footmen, that are to give warning to the people to meet for the battail, run fiercely and swiftly; for no snow, no rain, nor heat can stop them, nor night hold them; but they will soon run the race they undertake. The first messenger tells it to the next village, and that to the next; and so the hubbub runs all over till they all know it in that stift or territory, where, when and wherefore they must meet."-OLAUS MAGNUS' History of the Goths, englished by J. S. Lond. 1658, book iv. chap. 3, 4.

NOTE G.

That monk, of savage form and face.-P. 118.

The state of religion in the middle ages afforded considerable facilities for those whose mode of life excluded them from regular worship, to secure, nevertheless, the ghostly assistance of confessors, perfectly willing to adapt the nature of their doctrine to the necessities and peculiar circumstances of their flock. Robin Hood, it is well known, had his celebrated domestic chaplain, Friar Tuck. And that same curtal friar was probably matched in manners and appearance by the ghostly fathers of the Tynedale robbers, who are thus described in an excommunication fulminated against their patrons by Richard Fox, Bishop of Durham, tempore Henrici VIII. "We have further understood, that there are many chaplains in the said territories of Tynedale and Redesdale, who are public and open maintainers of concubinage, irregular, suspended, excommunicated, and interdicted persons, and withal so utterly ignorant of letters, that it has been found by those who objected this to them, that there were some who, having celebrated mass for ten years, were still unable to read the sacramental service. We have also understood there are persons among them who, although not ordained, do take upon them the offices of priesthood; and, in contempt of God, celebrate the divine and sacred rites, and administer the sacraments, not only in sacred and dedicated places, but in those which are prophane and interdicted, and most wretchedly ruinous; they themselves being

attired in ragged, torn, and most filthy vestments, altogether unfit to be used in divine, or even in temporal offices. The which said chaplains do administer sacraments and sacramental rites to the aforesaid manifest and infamous thieves, robbers, depredators, receivers of stolen goods, and plunderers, and that without restitution, or intention to restore, as evinced by the act; and do also openly admit them to the rites of ecclesiastical sepulchre, without exacting security for restitution, although they are prohibited from doing so by the sacred canons, as well as by the institutes of the saints and fathers. All which infers the heavy peril of their own souls, and is a pernicious example to the other believers in Christ, as well as no slight, but an aggravated injury, to the numbers despoiled and plundered of their goods, gear, herds, and chattels." 1

To this lively and picturesque description of the confessors and churchmen of predatory tribes, there may be added some curious particulars respecting the priests attached to the several septs of native Irish, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. These friars had indeed to plead, that the incursions, which they not only pardoned, but even encouraged, were made upon those hostile to them, as well in religion as from national antipathy; but by Protestant writers they are uniformly alleged to be the chief instruments of Irish insurrection, the very well-spring of all rebellion towards the English government. Lithgow, the Scottish traveller, declares the Irish wood-kerne, or predatory tribes, to be but the hounds of their hunting-priests, who directed their incursions by their pleasure, partly for sustenance, partly to gratify animosity, partly to foment general division, and always for the better security and easier domination of the friars.2 Derrick, the liveliness and minuteness of whose descriptions may frequently apologize for his doggerel verses, after describing an Irish feast, and the

1 The Monition against the Robbers of Tynedale and Redesdale, with which I was favoured by my friend, Mr Surtees of Mainsforth, may be found in the original Latin, in the Appendix to the Introduction to the Border Minstrelsy, No. VII., vol. i. p. 274 of this Edition.

? Lithgow's Travels, first edition, p. 431.

encouragement given, by the songs of the bards, to its termination in an incursion upon the parts of the country more immediately under the dominion of the English, records the no less powerful arguments used by the friar to excite their animosity:

"And more t'augment the flame,

and rancour of their harte,

The frier, of his counsells vile,

to rebelles doth imparte,

Affirming that it is

an almose deede to God,

To make the English subjects taste

the Irish rebells' rodde.

To spoile, to kill, to burne,
this frier's counsell is;

And for the doing of the same,

he warrantes heavenlie blisse.

He tells a holie tale;

the white he tournes to blacke;

And through the pardons in his male,

He workes a knavishe knacke."

then de

The wreckful invasion of a part of the English pale scribed with some spirit; the burning of houses, driving off cattle, and all pertaining to such predatory inroads, are illustrated by a rude cut. The defeat of the Irish by a party of English soldiers from the next garrison, is then commemorated, and in like manner adorned with an engraving, in which the friar is exhibited mourning over the slain chieftain; or, as the rubric expresses it,

"The frier then, that treacherous knave; with ough ough-hone lament, To see his cousin Devill's-son to have so foul event."

The matter is handled at great length in the text, of which the following verses are more than a sufficient sample:

"The frier seyng this,

lamentes that lucklesse parte, And curseth to the pitte of hell

the death man's sturdie harte

Yet for to quight them with

The frier taketh paine,
For all the synnes that ere he did
remission to obtaine

And therefore serves his booke,

the candell and the bell;

But thinke you that such apishe toies

bring damned souls from hell?

It 'longs not to my parte

infernall things to knowe;

But I beleve till later daie,

thei rise not from belowe.

Yet hope that friers give

to this rebellious rout,

If that their souls should chaunce in hell
To bring them quicklie out,

Doeth make them lead suche lives,

as neither God nor man,

Without revenge for their desartes.

permitte or suffer can.

Thus friers are the cause,

the fountain, and the spring,

Of hurleburles in this lande,

of eche unhappie thing.

Thei cause them to rebelle

against their soveraigne quene, And through rebellion often tymes, their lives doe vanishe clene.

So as by friers meanes,

in whom all follie swimme,

The Irishe karne doe often lose

the life, with hedde and limme." I

As the Irish tribes, and those of the Scottish Highlanders, are much more intimately allied, by language, manners, dress, and customs, than the antiquaries of either country have been willing to admit, I flatter myself I have here produced a strong warrant for the character sketched in the text. The following picture, though of a different kind, serves to establish the existence of ascetic religionists, to a comparatively late period, in the Highlands and Western Isles. There is a great deal of simplicity in

1 This curious picture of Ireland was inserted by the author in the republication of Somers' Tracts, vol. i., in which the plates have been also inserted, from the only impressions known to exist, belonging to the copy in the Advocates' Library. See Somers' Tracts, vol. i. pp. 501, 594.

the description, for which, as for much similar information, I am obliged to Dr John Martin, who visited the Hebrides at the suggestion of Sir Robert Sibbald, a Scottish antiquarian of eminence, and early in the eighteenth century published a description of them, which procured him admission into the Royal Society. He died in London about 1719. His work is a strange mixture of learning, observation, and gross credulity.

"I remember,” says this author, "I have seen an old lay-capuchin here (in the Island of Benbecula), called in their language Brahir-bocht, that is, Poor Brother; which is literally true; for he answers this character, having nothing but what is given him: he holds himself fully satisfied with food and rayment, and lives in as great simplicity as any of his order; his diet is very mean, and he drinks only fair water; his habit is no less mortifying than that of his brethren elsewhere: he wears a short coat, which comes no farther than his middle, with narrow sleeves like a waistcoat he wears a plad above it, girt about the middle, which reaches to his knee: the plad is fastened on his breast with a wooden pin, his neck bare, and his feet often so too; he wears a hat for ornament, and the string about it is a bit of a fisher's line, made of horse-hair. This plad he wears instead of a gown worn by those of his order in other countries. I told him he wanted the flaxen girdle that men of his order usually wear: he answered me, that he wore a leathern one, which was the same thing. Upon the matter, if he is spoke to when at meat, he answers again; which is contrary to the custom of his order. This poor man frequently diverts himself with angling of trouts; he lies upon straw, and has no bell (as others have) to call him to his devotions, but only his conscience, as he told me."-MARTIN'S Description of the Western Highlands, p. 82.