Grampian Club > Monuments and monumental inscriptions in Scotland > Volume 1

PARISH OF AYK. 361
" Here lye seven martyrs for our covenants,
A sacred number of triumphant saints,
Pontius Mac Adam tli' unjust sentence past;
AVbat is his own the world shall know at last.
And Herod Drummond caused their heads affix ;
Heav'n keeps a record of the sixty-six.
Boots, thumbkins, gibbets, were in fashion then ;
Lord, let us never see such days again."
On a tombstone at the place of execution Andrew Mac Gill, who
there suffered in 1684, is commemorated in these lines : —
" Near this abhorred tree a sufferer lies
Who chus'd to fall, that falling truth might rise.
His station could advance no costly deed.
Save giving of a life the Lord did need.
When Christ shall vindicate his way, he'll cast
The doom which was pronounced in such a haste.
And in corruption shall forget disgrace,
Design'd by the interment in this place."
In the parish churchyard Charles Abercrombie, civil engineer,
who died in 1817, has the following epitaph : —
" A noble Abercrombie's dust lyes here,
A name to Britons dear ;
But to you.
Ye poor of Ayr, St. Cyrus, and Maybole,
And you in Glasgow Infirmary district.
With gratitude his mercy record.
Who on you thought, in your sad state forlorn,
Like him of IJz ;
And made your widowed hearts to sing.
Can you this first and best of men forget ?
That were strange.
Ah, I want words !
And language fails to sing
Of such matchless worth ;
Worth which now ripens in a happier clime,
And brighter sun beyond the bounds of time."
By her husband and children a woman is thus commemorated : —
" Our tears and sighs did flow amain,
In such distress accumulated woe,