ings,
learnt, in the abbey at Paisley, the salutary virtues of many herbs, and
how to decoct from them their healing juices; and he instructed Dame
Lugton to prepare an efficacious medicament, that not only mitigated the
anguish of the pain, but so suppled the stiffness that my grandfather
was up by break of day, and ready for the march, a renewed man.

In speaking of this, he has been heard to say, it was a thing much to be
lamented, that when the regular abolition of the monastries was decreed,
no care was taken to collect the curious knowledges and ancient
traditionary skill preserved therein, especially in what pertained to
the cure of maladies; for it was his opinion--and many were of the same
mind--that among the friars were numbers of potent physicians, and an
art in the preparation of salves and syrups, that has not been surpassed
by the learning of the colleges. But it is not meet that I should detain
the courteous reader with such irrelevancies; the change, however, which
has taken place in the realm in all things pertaining to life, laws,
manners and conduct since the extirpation of the Roman idolatry, is,
from the perfectest report, so wonderful, that the inhabitants can
scarcely be said to be the same race of people; and, therefore, I have
thought that such occasional ancestral intimations might, though they
proved neither edifying nor instructive, be yet deemed worthy of
notation in the brief spaces which they happen herein to occupy. But
now, returning from this digression, I will take up again the thread and
clue of my story.

The Earl of Glencairn, after the abbey of Kilwinning was sacked, went
and slept at Eglinton Castle, then a stalwart square tower, environed
with a wall and moat, of a rude and unknown antiquity, standing on a
gentle rising ground in the midst of a bleak and moorland domain. And
his Lordship having ordered my grandfather to come to him betimes in the
morning with twenty chosen men, the discreetest of the force, for a
special service in which he meant to employ him, he went thither
accordingly, taking with him Dominick Callender and twelve godly lads
from Paisley, with seven others, whom he had remarked in the march from
Glasgow, as under the manifest guidance of a sedate and pious temper.

When my grandfather with his company arrived at the castle yett, and he
was admitted to the Earl his patron, his Lordship said to him, more as a
friend than a master,--

"I am in the hope, Gil