east occasion to all mobs, kept us
from tearing off their gowns.

"Their graceless Graces went quickly off, and there was neither bishop
nor curate seen in the street--this was a surprising sudden change not to
be forgotten. Some of us would have rejoiced near them in large sums to
have seen these Bishops sent legally down the Bow that they might have
found the weight of their tails in a tow to dry their tow-soles; that
they might know what hanging was, they having been active for themselves
and the main instigators to all the mischiefs, cruelties, and bloodshed
of that time, wherein the streets of Edinburgh and other places of the
land did run with the innocent precious dear blood of the Lord's
people."--_Life and Death of three famous Worthies_ (Semple, etc.), by
Patrick Walker. Edin. 1727, pp. 72, 73.

NOTE Q.--Half-hanged Maggie Dickson.

[In the Statistical Account of the Parish of Inveresk (vol. xvi. p. 34),
Dr. Carlyle says, "No person has been convicted of a capital felony since
the year 1728, when the famous Maggy Dickson was condemned and executed
for child-murder in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh, and was restored to
life in a cart on her way to Musselburgh to be buried . . . . . She kept
an ale-house in a neighbouring parish for many years after she came to
life again, which was much resorted to from curiosity." After the body
was cut down and handed over to her relatives, her revival is attributed
to the jolting of the cart, and according to Robert Chambers,--taking a
retired road to Musselburgh, "they stopped near Peffer-mill to get a
dram; and when they came out from the house to resume their journey,
Maggie was sitting up in the cart." Among the poems of Alexander
Pennecuick (who died in 1730), is one entitled "The Merry Wives of
Musselburgh's Welcome to Meg Dickson;" while another broadside, without
any date or author's name, is called "Margaret Dickson's Penitential
Confession," containing these lines referring to her conviction:--

"Who found me guilty of that barbarous crime,
And did, by law, end this wretched life of mine;
But God . . . . did me preserve," etc.

In another of these ephemeral productions hawked about the streets,
called, "A Ballad by J--n B--s," are the following lines:--

"Please peruse the speech
Of ill-hanged Maggy Dickson.
Ere she was strung, the wicked wife