nes of the Covenanters who
had died while imprisoned in the Castle of Dunnottar, to which many of
them were committed prisoners at the period of Argyle's rising. Their
place of confinement is still called the Whigs' Vault. Mr. Train,
however, procured for me far more extensive information concerning
this singular person, whose name was Patterson, than I had been able
to acquire during my own short conversation with him. [See, for
some further particulars, the notes to Old Mortality, in the present
collective edition.] He was (as I think I have somewhere already
stated) a native of the parish of Closeburn, in Dumfriesshire; and it
is believed that domestic affliction, as well as devotional feeling,
induced him to commence the wandering mode of life which he pursued
for a very long period. It is more than twenty years since Robert
Patterson's death, which took place on the highroad near Lockerby, where
he was found exhausted and expiring. The white pony, the companion of
his pilgrimage, was standing by the side of its dying master the whole
furnishing a scene not unfitted for the pencil. These particulars I had
from Mr. Train.

Another debt, which I pay most willingly, I owe to an unknown
correspondent (a lady), [The late Mrs. Goldie.] who favoured me with the
history of the upright and high-principled female, whom, in the Heart
of Mid-Lothian, I have termed Jeanie Deans. The circumstance of her
refusing to save her sister's life by an act of perjury, and undertaking
a pilgrimage to London to obtain her pardon, are both represented as
true by my fair and obliging correspondent; and they led me to consider
the possibility of rendering a fictitious personage interesting by mere
dignity of mind and rectitude of principle, assisted by unpretending
good sense and temper, without any of the beauty, grace, talent,
accomplishment, and wit to which a heroine of romance is supposed to
have a prescriptive right. If the portrait was received with interest by
the public, I am conscious how much it was owing to the truth and force
of the original sketch, which I regret that I am unable to present to
the public, as it was written with much feeling and spirit.

Old and odd books, and a considerable collection of family legends,
formed another quarry, so ample that it was much more likely that the
strength of the labourer should be exhausted than that materials should
fail. I may mention, for example's sake, that the terrible catastrophe