Note 285 — REIGN OF WILLIAM III.: 1695–1702. (continued 4)
Reading edition
Burns’s fine ode on Macpherson will be remembered:
Sae rantingly, sae wantonly,
Sae dantonly gaed he,
He played a spring and danced it round,
Beneath the gallows tree.
There was, however, an earlier celebration of the robber’s hardihood on a broadside, a copy of which will be found in Herd’s Collection of Scottish Songs (1776). See also a curious volume, entitled Scottish Ballads and Songs (Edinburgh, T. G. Stevenson, 1859).
A long two-handed sword is shewn in Duff House, the seat of the Earl of Fife, as that of Macpherson. It is a formidable weapon, 4 feet 3 inches long, and having a wavy-edged blade. It is obviously a mediæval weapon, yet, of course, may have been used in a later age.
March 4, 1701.—There was a petition to the Privy Council from Peter and Donald Brown, prisoners in the Tolbooth of Banff, representing that they had been condemned solely as ‘repute vagabond Egyptians,’ to be hanged on the 2d April. They claimed a longer day, ‘either for their relief or due preparation;’ and the Lords granted reprieve till the second Wednesday of June.