Note 26 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
Russell's account of Sharp's murder, Kirkton, p. 442. See also Creichton's Memoirs, though the captain was not present at the fight, having remained in garrison at Glasgow. In a Latin poem, "Bellum Bothuellianum," by Andrew Guild, now in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, are the following lines:
"Tum rabiosa cohors, misereri nescia, stratos Invadit, laceratque viros: hic signifer, eheu! Trajectus globulo, Græmus, quo fortior alter Inter Scotigenas fuerat, nec justior ullus: Hunc manibus rapuere feris, faciemque virilem Fœdarunt, lingua, auriculis, manibusque resectis Aspera diffuso spargentes saxa cerebro."
The passage is quoted at length in the notes to "Old Mortality." Sharpe, in his notes to Kirkton, says, on the authority of Wodrow, that Cornet Graham was shot by one John Alstoun, a miller's son, and tenant of Weir of Blackwood. This is not correct. There was a Cornet Graham so killed, but not till three years after Drumclog.