son and three daughters by his wife, Lady Margaret Douglas,
eldest daughter of William, first Marquis of Douglas.
Margaret, the second of these daughters, married Sir Robert
Sinclair of Longformacus in the Merse, to whom she bore two
daughters, Anne and Jean. Jean Sinclair, the younger
daughter, married Sir John Swinton of Swinton; and Jean
Swinton, her eldest daughter, was the grandmother of the
proprietor of this volume."]

The race had been celebrated, however, long before his {p.053} day,
by a minstrel of its own; nor did he conceal his belief that he owed
much to the influence exerted over his juvenile mind by the rude but
enthusiastic clan-poetry of old _Satchells_ who describes himself _on
his title-page_ as

"Captain Walter Scot, an old Souldier and no Scholler,
And one that can write nane,
But just the Letters of his Name."

His True History of several honourable Families of the Right
Honourable Name of Scot, in the Shires of Roxburgh and Selkirk, and
others adjacent, gathered out of Ancient Chronicles, Histories, and
Traditions of our Fathers, includes, among other things, a string of
complimentary rhymes addressed to the first Laird of Raeburn; and the
copy which had belonged to that gentleman was in all likelihood about
the first book of verses that fell into the poet's hand.[36] How
continually its wild {p.054} and uncouth doggerel was on his lips to
his latest day all his familiars can testify; and the passages which
he quoted with the greatest zest were those commemorative of two
ancient worthies, both of whom had had to contend against physical
misfortune similar to his own. The former of these, according to
Satchells, was the immediate founder of the branch originally designed
of Sinton, afterwards of Harden:--

"It is four hundred winters past in order
Since that Buccleuch was Warden in the Border;
A son he had at that same tide,
Which was so lame could neither run nor ride.
John, this lame son, if my author speaks true,
He sent him to St. Mungo's in Glasgu,
Where he remained a scholar's time,
Then married a wife according to his mind....
And betwixt them twa was procreat
Headshaw, Askirk, SINTON, and Glack."

[Footnote 36: His family well remember the delight which he