History and traditions of the land of the Lindsays in Angus and Mearns

MENMUIR — THE KIRKYARD. 245
conduct, and for his military attainments, was made K.C.B.
in 1837. His relatives are traceable in the Parish Register
so far back as 1698, when his direct progenitors, " David
Leighton and Jean Mathers, were married." Sir David, how-
ever, was not a native of Menmuir, but of the parish of Brechin,
and the clay-built cottage in which he was born in the year
1774, still remains on the farm of Cookstone, where his father
carried on the trade of a wheelwright. In early youth, Sir
David was a banker's clerk in Montrose, but having a penchant
for military service, through the influence of his uncle (the late
Mr. Leighton of Bearehill's father), he received a cadetship in
the East India service, on 20th January 1797, and rose step by
step until he attained his present important position.
The following, though remarkable neither for sublimity of
thought nor orthographical accuracy, is worthy of transcription,
as pointing out the burial place of a family surnamed Guthrie,
one or other of the members of which have borne an active part
in the management of the municipal affairs of the city of Brechin,
as councillors and chief magistrates, for the past seventy years.
As a family, they are still the most considerable traders of that
city, and the present Provost, and the Rev. Dr. Thomas Guthrie
of Edinburgh, famous as the advocate of ragged schools, are
sons of the late chief magistrate. The principal farms of Men-
muir were once tenanted wholly by Guthries, and the small estate
of Burnside was owned by one of them; — still, the name (save
in the female line) is now almost unknown in the parish. The
tablet, from which these lines are copied, was erected in 1795,
and is profusely decorated with mortuary emblems : —
" All passhengers as you go by,
And chance to view this stone,
To mind you of Mortality,
Behold the scull and bone :
Likewise the darte, that wounds the hart,
And syath that cuts the Threed
Of life, and coffin for to hold,
The bodie when its dead."
At Tigerton, the only hamlet in the parish, the Episco-
palians had a meeting house down to a late date, in which the
service was conducted by the minister of the Brechin chapel.