Till the occurrence of the tumult this month, there was, according
to the confession of Clarendon, so little curiosity felt in England,
either in the court or country, ‘to know anything of Scotland, or what
was done there, that, when the whole nation was solicitous to know what
passed weekly in Germany, Poland, and other parts of Europe, no man
ever inquired what was doing in Scotland, nor had that kingdom a place
or mention in one page of any gazette.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: OCT. 3.]
[Sidenote: 1637.]
This day began a fall of rain in Moray-land, of ten days’ continuance,
and attended by effects which remind us of the celebrated flood of
1829; ‘waters and burns flowing up over bank and brae; corn-mills and
mill-houses washen down; houses, kilns, cots, faulds wherein beasts
were keipit, all destroyed. The corns, weel stacked, began to moch[75]
and rot till they were casten over again. Lamentable to see, and
whereof the like was never seen before.... There were four ships lying
at anchor in the harbour of Aberdeen; in one of which ships Major Ker
and Captain Lumsden had a number of soldiers. Through a great spate[76]
of the water of Dee, occasioned by this extraordinary rain, thir haill
four ships brake loose, for neither tow nor anchor could hold them, and
were driven out at the water mouth, upon the night, and by a south-east
wind were driven to the north shore, where thir ships were miserably
bladded [beaten] with leaks by striking upon the sands. The soldiers,
sleeping carelessly in the bottom of the ship upon heather, were all in
a swim, to their great amazement and dread. They got up, with horrible
crying and shouting; some escaped, other some pitifully perished. About
the number of fourscore and twelve soldiers were wanting, drowned or
got away.’--_Slightly altered from Spalding._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: OCT. 19.]
A quantity of gold had been brought into the kingdom by ‘the
adventurers of Guinee.’ It was ordered to be formed into coin by
Nicolas Briot and John Falconer, masters of the cunyie-house, according
to the arrangements ordered by the Privy Council in April 1625.--_P. C.
R._ Some gold subsequently brought from the same country to England by
the African Company, ‘administered the first occasion,’ as Clarendon
tells us, ‘for the coinage of those pieces which, from thence, had the
denomination of _guineas_.’[77]
The digging of gold in Guinea is connected in a melancholy way with
Scotland, for fifteen hundred of the Scottish prisoners taken at
Worcester in September 1651, were granted to the Guinea merchants, ‘to
be transported to Guinea to work in the mines there.’[78]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: DEC. 4.]
In the night arose ‘ane horrible high wind,’ which blew down the
rafters of the choir of Elgin Cathedral, left without the slates eighty
years before. This fact reminds us how much of the destruction of our
ancient ecclesiastical buildings was owing, not to actual or immediate
damage at the Reformation, but to neglect afterwards.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: DEC. 26.]
[Sidenote: 1637.]
This day, in consequence of the late inundation and storms, a bar made
its appearance athwart the mouth of the river Dee, ‘mixed with marble,
clay, and stones.’ The contemplation of so fatal a stoppage to their
harbour threw the citizens of Aberdeen into a state of the greatest
anxiety. ‘They fell to with fasting, praying, preaching, mourning, and
weeping all day and night. Then they went out with spades, shools,
mattocks, and mells, in great numbers, men and women, young and old,
at low-water, to cast down this dreadful bar; but all for nought, for
as fast as they cast down at a low-water, it gathered again as fast at
a full sea.’ The people had resigned themselves to despair, when ‘the
Lord, of his great mercy, without help of mortal man, removed and swept
clean away this fearful bar, and made the water mouth to keep its own
course, as it was before.’--_Slightly altered from Spalding._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1637-8.]
On the hill of Echt, in Aberdeenshire, famous for its ancient
fortification called the Barmkyn of Echt, there was heard, almost every
night, all this winter, a prodigious beating of drums, supposed to
foretell the bloody civil wars which soon after ensued. The parade and
retiring of guards, their tattoos, their reveilles, and marches, were
all heard distinctly by multitudes of people. ‘Ear-witnesses, soldiers
of credit, have told me,’ says Gordon of Rothiemay, ‘that when the
parade was beating, they could discern when the drummer walked towards
them, or when he turned about, as the fashion is for drummers, to walk
to and again, upon the head or front of a company drawn up. At such
times, also, they could distinguish the marches of several nations;
and the first marches that were heard there were the Scottish March;
afterwards, the Irish March was heard; then the English March. But
before these noises ceased, those who had been trained up much of their
lives abroad in the German wars, affirmed that they could perfectly,
by their hearing, discern the marches upon the drum of several foreign
nations of Europe--such as the French, Dutch, Danish, &c. These drums
were so constantly heard, that all the country people next adjacent
were therewith accustomed; and sometimes these drummers were heard off
that hill, in places two or three miles distant. Some people in the
night, travelling near by the Loch of Skene, within three mile of that
hill, were frighted with the loud noise of drums, struck hard by them,
which did convoy them along the way, but saw nothing; as I had it often
from such as heard these noises, from the Laird of Skene and his lady,
from the Laird of Echt, and my own wife then living in Skene, almost
immediately after the people thus terrified had come and told it.
Some gentlemen of known integrity and truth affirmed that, near these
places, they heard as perfect shot of cannon go off as ever they heard
at the battle of Nordlingen, where themselves some years before had
been present.’[79]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1638.