Biggar and the House of Fleming

G BIGGAR AND THE HOUSE OF FLEMING.
And quhan we shoot thes arrowes we say, —
I shoot yon man in the Divel's name,
He sail nott win heall hame;
And this sal be alswa tru,
Thair sail not be an bit of him on lieiw.
We hau no bow to shoot with, but spang them from the naillis
of our thowmbes. Som tymes we misse, bot, if they twitch,
be he beast, or man, or woman, it will kill tho' they had a
jack upon thaim." This, of course, is the declaration of a
poor creature made mad by prolonged insults and torture, and
deserves no consideration, further than it shows the strange
hallucinations into which persons charged with witchcraft
could be driven, and the gross absurdities which men, even of
.the highest rank and intelligence, could be led to entertain and
believe.
The annexed cut represents part of an ancient stone quern,
or hand-mill for grinding corn, which was found at Coulter.
The quern is an article of very great antiquity. The use of
it would, no doubt, be almost
coeval with the existence of
the human race. Some rude
contrivance of the kind was
evidently requisite ere the
grain furnished by the boun-
tiful Creator could, to any ex-
tent, be converted into food. One of them would therefore be
found in every household. The people were attached to their
use, and, after the introduction of water-mills, were decidedly
averse to give them up. The Government, who wished to
encourage the water-mills, therefore, in 1284, during the
reign of Alexander III., passed the following enactment : —
' That na man sail presume to grind quheit, maislhock, or rye,
with hand mylnes, except he be compelled be storm, or be
lack of mylnes, quhilk sould grind the samen. And in this
case, gif a man grinds at hand mylnes, he sail gif the threttein
measure as multer ; and gif anie man contraveins this our pro-
hibition, he sail tine his hand mylnes perpetuallie.' This law
failed to some extent to effect the end contemplated, and in
some remote districts of Scotland the querns continued in use
almost to our own times. At nearly all the old farm towns in