Agnews of Lochnaw

I49 1 -] L °UP THE BULLOCKS. 107
gentlemen having less extent of land, or unlanded, to be armed
at their gudlie power at the discretion of the Sheriff." Any
honest persons that wished it, might, at the discretion of the
Sheriff, be equipped as men-at-arms ; " and all other yeomen of
the realm between sixty and sixteen shall have sufficient bows
and schieves, sword, buckler, knife, spear, or a good axe, instead of
a bow . . . and after the faculty of his lands and goods," every
man was to be " furnished and harnessed in his body with white
harness, brigantines, or good jaiks, with splentes and grooves of
plate ; and well-horsed, according to his lands and goods, at the
discretion of the Sheriff."
Parliament was again called upon to grapple with the in-
veterate attachment of the commonalty to foot-ball, and re-
enacted that " in no place of the realm there be used foot-ball or
golfe, and other sik unprofitable sports." Under this sweeping
law the Sheriff might even, if he pleased, cry down so classical
a diversion as " Loup the Bullocks," an old Galloway game, some-
thing like the English leap-frog, but played more roughly, in
which " that bullock," says a native author, " was considered the
most famous of the herd, who, by heaving up his rump smartest
as the leaper was going over, could launch him on his nose and
draw blood !" 1
This was at his discretion ! But it was his bounden duty to
ascertain that bow-marks were set up in each parish, under a
penalty of forty shillings ; each parish to be fined anew, each year
that the bow-marks were not standing, and in which shooting
was not regularly practised.
The Sheriff had now very largely extended his estates. In a
decree of the Lord Auditors, dated 1491, "the Lands of Lochnaw,
Marslaugh, Clanery, the Aird, Culhorn, the Boreland of Soulseat,
Glencaple, Carnerzan, and Dunragit, in the parishes of Kirkcolm,
Leswalt, Inch, and Glenluce," are all enumerated as parts of " the
property of the Sheriff of Wigtown, and Marian Agnew, his.
spouse."
In 1489, James IV. founded a Chapel Boyal at Stirling, and
1 M'Taggart, Gallovidian Encyclopaedia.