inburgh to renew the Solemn League and Covenant; and the ministers
of our neighbourhood having conferred together concerning the same, it
was agreed among them, that the people should be invited to come forward
on a day set apart for the purpose, and that as the kirk of Irvine was
the biggest in the vicinage, the signatures both for the country and
that town should be received there. Mr Dickson, the minister, than whom
no man of his day was more brave in the Lord's cause, accordingly made
the needful preparation, and appointed the time.

In the meanwhile the young men began to gird themselves for war. The
swords that had rested for many a day were drawn from their idle places;
and the women worked together, that their brothers and their sons might
be ready for the field; but at their work, instead of the ancient
lilts, they sung psalms and godly ballads. However, as I mean not to
enter upon the particulars of that awakening epoch, but only to show
forth the pure and the holy earnestness with which the minds of men were
then actuated, I shall here refer the courteous reader to the annals and
chronicles of the time,--albeit the truth in them has suffered from the
alloy of a base servility.

CHAPTER XL

The sixteenth day of June, in the year of our Lord 1638, was appointed
for the renewal at Irvine of the Solemn League and Covenant. On the
night before, my five elder brothers, who were learning trades at
Glasgow and Kilmarnock, came home that they might go up with their
father to the house of God, in order to set down their names together;
me and my four sisters, the rest of his ten children, were still biding
with our mother and him at the mailing.

From my grandfather's time there had been a by-common respect among the
neighbours for our family on his account; and that morning my brother
Jacob, who happened to be the first that went, at break of day, to the
door, was surprised to see many of the cotters and neighbouring farmer
lads already assembled on the lone, waiting to walk with us to the town,
as a token of their reverence for the principles and the memory of that
departed worthy; and they were all belted and armed with swords like men
ready for battle.

Seeing such a concourse of the neighbours, instead of making exercise in
the house, my father, as the morning was bright and lown, bade me carry
the Bible and a stool to the dykeside, that our friends might have room
to join us in worship,--which I did