Abacuck Bisset’s _Rolment of Courtis_ exists in manuscript in the
Advocates’ Library, only a portion of it, containing _A Short Form of
Process_ for civil cases, having been printed. It was composed in the
old age of the author, after the commencement of the reign of Charles
I., and seems to have been designed for immediate publication, as it is
prefaced with sundry of those complimentary verses with which authors
used to gratify each other in days while as yet reviews were not. One
set of these, by Mr Alexander Craig of Rose Craig, and which appears in
his _Poetical Exercises_ (Raban, Aberdeen, 1623), is not without some
feeling:
[Sidenote: 1587.]
’Twixt _was_ and _is_ how various are the odds!
What one man doth another doth undo;
One consecrates religious works to gods,
Another leaves sad wrecks and ruins new.
This book doth shew that such and such things were,
But would to God that it could say, They are!
‘When I perceive the south, north, east, and west,
And mark, alas! each monument amiss,
Then I confer times present with the past,
I read what was, but cannot tell what is:
I praise thy book with wonder, but am sorry
To read old ruins in a recent story.’
Abacuck himself appears to have had a turn for verse, and in this form
he gives his poetical friends notice of the contents of his book, that
they may address him regarding it. After a great deal of very dry prose
matters about decreets, suspensions, exceptions, &c., he either makes
or quotes the following:
CERTAIN AULD RULES CONTEINED IN THE ANCIENT REGISTER OF SCOTLAND ANENT
THE MEITHIS AND MERCHES OF LAND.
All landis, wherever they be
In Scotland partis, has merches three,
Headroom, water, and montis borde,
As eldren men has made record.
Your headroom to the hill direct,
Frae your haugh tilled in effect.
Betwixt twa glenis ane montis borde,
Divides thae glenis, I sall stand for’t.
Water comand frae ane glen head,
Divides that glen, and stanches feid.
Thortrom[151] burnis in montis hie
Sall stop nae headroom, though they be.
The meaning of all this is, that ancient custom in Scotland recognised
three natural divisions or boundaries for land--1. Headroom, the
termination of a piece of territory on the summit of the slope of the
adjacent hill; 2. The line of hills between two glens; 3. The river
passing through a glen. A water crossing the headroom on the summit of
the mountains made no difference.[152]
‘The pest brake up in harvest in Leith, by opening up of some old
kists, and in Edinburgh about the 4th of November. It continued in
these two towns this winter till Candlemass.’--_Cal._
This pest ‘strake a great terror in Edinburgh and all the coast-side,’
says James Melville. He adds: ‘By occasion thereof, we began the
exercise of daily doctrine and prayers in our kirk, whilk continues
to this day with great profit and comfort, baith of the teachers and
hearers.’ The kirk-session of Perth appointed a fast ‘with great
humiliation’ for eight days. In those days, there was scarcely any
other recognised method of averting pestilence. The same simple diarist
tells us: ‘This winter the king was occupied in commenting of the
Apocalypse, and in setting out of sermons thereupon against the Papists
and Spaniards: and yet, by a piece of great oversight, the Papists
practised never more busily in this land, and made greater preparation
for receiving the Spaniards nor [than] that year.’
In October 1588, the town-council of Glasgow was in great apprehension
of a visit of the pest, as it was then in Paisley. They made
arrangements for guarding the ports to prevent the entrance of people
from the infected district.--_M. of G._
[Sidenote: 1587-8.