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

362
This trifling tribute to her shrine is due,
From us, her widower and children dear.
A victim sure to our distress she fell.
Fate, drop the curtain, we can weep no more :
' Eeligion then, lend thy heavenly aid,'
As Young in his ' Night Thoughts ' immortal sung
By his family a father is commemorated in these lines
" Faith and philosophy
The parent's honour warm'd his breast,
Greatly resign'd with ills opprest.
He linger'd long, sure now is bless'd."
These quaint lines are from a tombstone in the old churchyard : —
" Life is a voyage on a sea,
Where tempests, rocks, and shipwrecks be ;
Eeligion pilots, as sure guide.
To the far distant other side ;
The harbour's death, and heaven the land
Where we for ever hope to stand.
AVhat though we're dash'd upon the shore?
The cargo's safe and ventur'd o'er.
As he when this the moral shows.
Safe now beneath each wind y' blows.
Who left his house, his memorie,
Example and weel won' supply."
The churchyard of Alloway, on the banks of the Doon, is asso-
ciated with the " auld haunted kirk," celebrated by Burns in " Tarn
o' Shanter." Alloway Kirk is the burial-place of Crawford of
Doonside, and of Cathcart of Auchendrane. The Hon. David
Cathcart, a senator of the College of Justice, by the title of Lord
Alloway, has an elegant mausoleum. Son of Elias Cathcart, a
Virginian trader, and sometime chief magistrate of Ayr, he studied
at Edinburgh University, and passed Advocate in July, 1785. He
became a judge in 1813, and was appointed Lord of Justiciary in
1826. By his marriage he acquired the estate of Auchendrane.
He died on the 27th April, 1829, aged sixty-five.