s sometimes took
place there, into which even the law did not scrupulously inquire.

The credulous Mr. Law says, generally, that the Lord President Stair had
a daughter, who, "being married, the night she was bride in, was taken
from her bridegroom and harled through the house (by spirits, we are
given to understand) and afterward died. Another daughter," he says,
"was supposed to be possessed with an evil spirit."

My friend, Mr. Sharpe, gives another edition of the tale. According
to his information, ti was the bridegroom who wounded the bride. The
marriage, according to this account, had been against her mother's
inclination, who had given her consent in these ominous words: "Weel,
you may marry him, but sair shall you repent it."

I find still another account darkly insinuated in some highly scurrilous
and abusive verses, of which I have an original copy. They are docketed
as being written "Upon the late Viscount Stair and his family, by Sir
William Hamilton of Whitelaw. The marginals by William Dunlop, writer in
Edinburgh, a son of the Laird of Househill, and nephew to the said Sir
William Hamilton." There was a bitter and personal quarrel and rivalry
betwixt the author of this libel, a name which it richly deserves, and
Lord President Stair; and the lampoon, which is written with much more
malice than art, bears the following motto:

Stair's neck, mind, wife, songs, grandson, and the rest, Are wry, false,
witch, pests, parricide, possessed.

This malignant satirist, who calls up all the misfortunes of the family,
does not forget the fatal bridal of Baldoon. He seems, though his verses
are as obscure as unpoetical, to intimate that the violence done to the
bridegroom was by the intervention of the foul fiend, to whom the young
lady had resigned herself, in case she should break her contract with
her first lover. His hypothesis is inconsistent with the account given
in the note upon Law's Memorials, but easily reconcilable to the family
tradition.

In all Stair's offspring we no difference know,
They do the females as the males bestow;
So he of one of his daughters' marriages gave the ward,
Like a true vassal, to Glenluce's Laird;
He knew what she did to her master plight,
If she her faith to Rutherfurd should slight,
Which, like his own, for greed he broke outright.
Nick did Baldoon's posterior right deride,
And, as first substitute, did seize the bride;
Wh