ule,
Still asking the nearest to old Auchtertool.

At length I arrived at the edge of the town,
As Phoebus, behind a high mountain, went down;
The clouds gather'd dreary, and weather blew foul,
And I hugg'd myself safe now in old Auchtertool.

An inn I inquired out, a lodging desired,
But the landlady's pertness seem'd instantly fired;
For she saucy replied, as she sat carding wool,
"I ne'er kept sic lodgers in auld Auchtertool."

With scorn I soon left her to live on her pride;
But, asking, was told there was none else beside,
Except an old weaver, who now kept a school,
And these were the whole that were in Auchtertool.

To his mansion I scamper'd, and rapp'd at the door;
He oped, but as soon as I dared to implore,
He shut it like thunder, and utter'd a howl
That rung through each corner of old Auchtertool.

Deprived of all shelter, through darkness I trode,
Till I came to a ruin'd old house by the road;
Here the night I will spend, and, inspired by the owl,
My wrath I 'll vent forth upon old Auchtertool.

[43] We have ventured to omit three verses, and to alter slightly the
last line of this song. It was originally published at Paisley, in 1790,
to the tune of "One bottle more." Auchtertool is a small hamlet in
Fifeshire, about five miles west of the town of Kirkcaldy. The
inhabitants, whatever may have been their failings at the period when
Wilson in vain solicited shelter in the hamlet, are certainly no longer
entitled to bear the reproach of lacking in hospitality. We rejoice in
the opportunity thus afforded of testifying as to the disinterested
hospitality and kindness which we have experienced in that
neighbourhood.

CAROLINA, BARONESS NAIRN.

Carolina Oliphant was born in the old mansion of Gask, in the county of
Perth, on the 16th of July 1766. She was the third daughter and fifth
child of Laurence Oliphant of Gask, who had espoused his cousin Margaret
Robertson, a daughter of Duncan Robertson of Struan, and his wife a
daughter of the fourth Lord Nairn. The Oliphants of Gask were cadets of
the formerly noble house of Oliphant; whose ancestor, Sir William
Oliphant of Aberdalgie, a puissant knight, acquired distinction in the
beginning of the fourteenth century by defending the Castle of Stirling
against a formidable siege by the first Edward. The family of Gask were
devoted Jacobites; the paternal grandfat