Ayrshire > Volume 2

THE EARLDOM OF GLENCAIRN 321
Don of Newton, and had issue ; the younger, Lady
Elizabeth, died unmarried. The thirteenth Earl died
in 1775.
The marriage of the thirteenth Earl is associated
with an episode in family history that illustrates how
true it is that truth is stranger than fiction. Early in
the year 1725 there returned to Ayr, after a long sojourn
in India, " Governor Macrae," who, while yet young,
had left the house of his mother, a poor washerwoman
in the county town, to pursue his fortune upon the sea,
and beyond it. Like many another Scot who has
attained to eminence in the world, James Macrae was
of lowly origin, but, as events proved, this did not deter
him from evincing his worth of character and of manhood.
As the years went on he rose to the position of a captain
in the nautical service of the East India Company, and
a desperate and gallant encounter that he waged with
two heavily armed and manned pirate ships in a bay on
the seaboard of Madagascar so commended him to the
directors that they advanced him to a position of
importance on shore. By the exercise of his gifts and
native talent, and by shrewd administration and capacity
to formulate and carry out schemes of reform, he
ultimately became Governor of the Madras Presidency,
and amassed a fortune, great for those days, of over a
hundred thousand pounds. On his return to Ayr he
sought out and found a married cousin, Isabella Gairdner,
the wife of Hugh M'Guire, a carpenter, and a famous
fiddler at kirns and at weddings. The fiddler's musical
gifts did not always avail to keep the wolf from the
door ; and the story is told of his wife being under the
necessity of borrowing a loaf from a neighbour to stay
the hungry cravings of one of her daughters who after-
wards became the Countess of Glencairn. With the
Nabob's homecoming fortune smiled on the MacGuires,
and the elated father and mother demonstrated their
joy by sending out for a new loaf and a bottle of brand}?,
digging a cavity in the loaf and filling it up with brandy
and sugar, which they supped out with spoons.