extremely prevalent; and means were resorted to in their composition far too abominable to be related here: I do not, however, find ginger mentioned as an ingredient in any of those satanic nostrums, of which the component parts have been committed to writing; but from its peculiar qualities, it probably was in request. The unfortunate lady was also assailed by the power of Glamour, which the stoutest chastity proved quite unable to resist, if unaided by a morsel of the mountain ash tree, an amber necklace, a stone forced by stripes from the head of a live toad, or the prudent recollection of keeping both thumbs close compressed in the hand, during the presence of the malevolent charm er. Glamour, according to Scottish interpretation, is that supernatural power of imposing on the eye-sight, by which the appearance of an object shall be totally different from the reality. Mr Scott, describing the wonderful volume of Michael of Balwearie, says, "It had much of Glamour might See the note to that passage, and the Border Minstrelsy, Vol. III. p. 119, for many illustrations of the subject; but the most extraordinary instances of Glamour that I have met with, are collected by Delrio, in his citations from Dubravius's History of Bohemia. Winceslaus, son to the Emperor Charles IV. marrying the Duke of Bavaria's daughter,-the Duke, who understood that his son-in-law delighted in feats of conjuration, sent to Prague for a waggon-load of magicians to enliven the nuptials. While the most scientific of these were puzzling for some new illusion, Winceslaus's family conjuror, Zyto by name, who had slid privately in among the crowd, of a sudden presented himself, having his mouth, as it seemed, enlarged on both sides, open to his very ears; he goes straight to the Duke's chief conjuror, and swallows him up with all that he wore, saving his pantoufles, which being dirty, he spit a great way from him; after this, feeling himself uneasy with such a load upon his stomach, he hastens to a great tub that stood full of water, voids the man into it, and then brings him back to the company, dripping wet, and overwhelmed with confusion; on which the other magicians would show no more tricks. This same Master Zyto, who, par paranthese, was himself carried off bodily by the devil at last, could appear with any visage he chose. When the king walked on the land, he would seem to swim on the water towards him; or, if his majesty was carried in a litter with horses, Zyto would follow in another borne up by cocks. He made thirty fat swine of so many wisps of hay, and sold them to a rich baker, at a high price, desiring him not to allow them to enter into any water; but the baker, forgetting this injunction, found only the wisps of hay swimming on the surface of a pool and in a mighty chafe seeking out Zyto, who was extended upon a bench, and seemingly asleep, he seized him by one leg to awake him, when lo! both the leg and thigh seemed to remain in his hands; which filled him with so much terror, that he complained no more of the cheat. Zyto, at the banquet of the king, would sometimes change the hands of the guests into the hoofs of an ox or horse, so that they could not extend them to the dishes to help themselves to any thing; and if they looked out of the windows, he beautified their heads with horns; a trick, by the by, which perhaps John Faa could have played to Lord Cassillis with infinitely greater significance. * It is not now possible to fix the precise date of Lady Cassillis's elopement with the Gypsie laddie. She was born in the year 1607, and is said to have died young; but, if she ran off with her lover during her hus The * Two magicians, says Delrio, met in the court of Elizabeth, Queen of England, and agreed that in any one thing they should certainly obey each other. one, therefore, commands the other to thrust his head out of the casement, which he had no sooner done than a huge pair of stag's horns were seen planted on his forehead, to the no small delight of the spectators, who laughed at and mocked him extremely; but, when it came to the horned magician's turn to be obeyed, he made his adversary stand upright against a wall, which instantly opening, swallowed him up, so that he was never afterwards seen. band's first journey to England, in quality of ruling elder deputed to the assembly of divines at Westminster, 1643, to ratify the solemn league and covenant, she could not even then have been in her first youth; and it is certain that she lived long enough in her confinement at Maybole to work a piece of tapestry, still preserved at Colzean House, in which she represented her unhappy flight, but with circumstances unsuitable to the details of the ballad, and as if the deceits of Glamour had still bewildered her memory; for she is mounted behind her lover, gorgeously attired, on a superb white courser, and surrounded by a groupe of persons who bear no resemblance to a herd of tatterdemalion Gypsies. But it appears, from the criminal records of Edinburgh, that, in January 1624, eight men, among whom were Captain John Faa, and five more of the name of Faa, were convicted on the statute against Egyptians, and suffered according to sentence. I am strongly tempted to think that this was the Johnnie of the ballad, whom Lord Cassillis wisely got hanged, in place of slaying him in the field. Indeed, a stanza of the song, as it is sometimes recited, states that eight of the Gypsies were hanged at Carlisle, and the rest at the Border. If this conjecture be right, the lady's lover was married as well as herself; for, a few days after John's trial, Helen Faa, relict of the Captain, Lucretia Faa, and nine other female Gypsies, were brought to judgment, and condemned to be drowned; but this barbarous sentence was afterwards commuted to that of banishment, under pain of death to them and all their race should they ever return to Scotland. The Earl of Cassillis divorced his lady a mensa et thoro, and confined her, as has been already said, in a tower at Maybole, where eight heads The family of Cassillis, in early times, had been so powerful, that the head of it was generally termed the King of Carrick. Sympson, in his description of Galloway, (MS. Adv. Lib.) tells us that "the Earls of Cassillis had long since great power in Galloway, which occasioned the following rhyme : ""Twixt Wigton and the town of Air, carved in stone, below one of the turrets, are still pointed out as representing eight of the luckless Egyptians. It ought to be remembered, that this frail fair one did not carry on the noble family into which she married ; for she bore only two daughters to the Earl, of whom one became the wife of Lord Dundonald, and the other, in the last stage of antiquated virginity, bestowed her hand, and what was still better, her purse, upon the youthful Gilbert Burnet, then the busy intriguing inmate of Hamilton Palace, where Lady Margaret Kennedy generally resided, afterwards the well-known Bishop of Salisbury. The print here given of Lady Cassillis is taken from a picture, the original of which is at Colzean House. There is another portrait, said to be of this Countess, in the Duke of Hamilton's apartments at Holyroodhouse; but it is evidently a picture of Dorothea, Countess of Sunderland, copied from Vandyke, and naturally enough in the possession of the noble family of Hamilton, as Lady Sunderland's grand-daughter, Lady Anne Spencer, was the first wife of James, Earl of Arran, afterwards Duke of Hamilton. It would surely much annoy the disdainful spirit of the fair Sacharissa, were spirits conscious of worldly disgrace, to have her picture pointed out as that of a woman who could condescend to elope with a base-born gypsey; she who was deaf to all the charms of plebeian song, and treated her tuneful admirer with unqualified contempt, merely because he had the ill fortune to be sprung from ignoble ancestry. The copy of the ballad subjoined was transferred to paper from the recitation of a peasant in Galloway, and will be found to vary from the poem as it is commonly printed. Some lines have been omitted on account of their indelicacy, but it is comfortable to conclude, from the last stanza save one, that the lady, though she thought fit to elope, had not been actually criminal, when her lord overtook the gang, and secured his rambling moiety. It is to be regretted that he seems not to have taken her word on that subject, albeit he cannot justly be much blamed, considering his wife's giddir ss, the wicked powers of glamour and the enterprising spirit of fiftee valiant men,black but very bonnie." The gypsies they came to my Lord Cas- They wandred high, they wandred low, sillis' yett, And O! but they sang bonnie; They sang sae sweet, and sae complete, She came tripping down the stairs, They wandred late and early, And by this time she was weary. "Last night I lay in a weel made bed, And my noble Lord beside me, And the black crew glowring owre me." "O hold your tongue, my hinny and my heart, O hold your tongue, my dearie, "Will ye go with me, my hinny and my They wandred high, they wandred low, heart, Will ye go with me, my dearie, "Gar take from me my silk manteel, "I could sail the seas with my Jockie Faa, dearic." They wandred late and early, And my Lord Cassillis beside me, And carry the Gypsie Laddie."" A ford, by which the Countess and her lover are said to have crossed the river Doon, from a wood near Cassillis House, is still denominated the Gypsies' Steps. By and by came home this noble Lord, And asking for his ladie, She is gone with the Gypsie Laddie. "Go saddle to me the black, he says, "O wilt thou go home, my hinny and my heart, O wilt thou go home, my dearie, And I'll close thee in a close room Where no man shall come near thee?" "I will not go home, my hinny and my heart, I will not go home, my dearie, If I have brewn good beer I will drink of the same, And my Lord shall nae mair come near of this article; but I hope to evince, from the very concessions of a dissenter, that he was a native of Scotland. The Latin life of John of Dunse, by Wading, an Irishman, historiographer of the Friar's Minors, (Mons, 1644, 8vo,) is an uncommon book. Í have read it with great patience and attention, and the most rigid impartiality. Wading is anxious, in the mistaken notions of these times, tó make our literary hero an Irishman, but is not a little embarrassed to find a town called Duns in Ireland. He takes a wide field when he supposes some town called Dun in the "northern part of Ireland." The English advocates have little more plausibility when they speak of a place called Dun stane in Northumberland; for why contract such a short name into Duns, as they pretend? Truth is always simple, and what more simple than to assume Duns or Dunse, a well known town in the south of Scotland? What more clear when our first authentic notices represent him as a boy conducted by two friars to Dumfries, a town in an adjoining county? But the importance and singularity of the question demand further illustrations. The reader will remember the former fame of our hero thus trumpeted and drummed by a learned cardinal :—“ Among all the scholastic doctors, I must regard Johannes ANECDOTES, HISTORICAL, LITERARY, Duns Scotus as a splendid sun ob AND MISCELLANEOUS. [This series of Anecdotes, collected by an eminent literary character now abroad, will be continued in our following Numbers.-Edit.] I.-Joannes Duns Scotus. THE literary world has its fashions and follies as well as the ethical. It was once the fashion to publish catalogues of imaginary or borrowed authors, in order to glorify one's country by those vain banners which the first sharp gale of criticism tore in pieces. The writers did not perceive, that, far from conferring honour on their country, they only excited doubts concerning its just pretensions, as the stars of truth were concealed by the clouds of falsehood. In this way Dempster and others have rather obscured the literary merits of Scotland, and even the learned continue to doubt concerning the birth-place of the celebrated subject scuring all the stars of heaven, by the piercing acuteness of his genius; by the subtlety and the depth of the most wide, the most hidden, the most wonderful learning, this most subtle doctor surpasses all others, and, in my opinion, yields to no writer of any age. His productions, the admiration and despair even of the most learned among the learned, being of such extreme acuteness, that they exercise, excite, and sharpen even the brightest talents to a more sublime knowledge of divine objects, it is no wonder that the most profound writers join in one voice, that this Scot, beyond all controversy, surpasses not only the contemporary theologians, but even the greatest of ancient or modern times, in the sublimity of his genius and the immensity of his learning. This subtile doctor was the founder of the grand and most noble sect of the Scotists, which, solely guided by his doctrine, has so zealously taught, defended, amplified, and diffused it, that, being spread all over the world, it is regarded as the most illustrious of all. From this sect, like heroes from the Trojan horse, many princes of science have proceeded, whose labour in teaching has explained many difficulties, and whose industry in writing has so much adorned and enlarged theological learning, that no further accession can be expected or desired." It is unnecessary to add the other testimonies of cardinals and divines to be found in Wading's work; and it is more essential, in these days, to add, that Julius Caesar Scaliger acknowledges, that it was in the perusal of John of Dunse that he acquired the subtlety of discussion which he displays. Nay Cardan, among the earliest of modern philosophers, and who, free from the yoke of Aristotle, displays an independent spirit of investigation, confers on our hero the high honour of classing him among his chosen twelve masters of profound and subtle sciences. As this morsel is one of the most interesting in his great work De Subtilitate, it is no digression (nor is digression foreign to our desultory design) to abstract it. 1. Archimedes, writings and machines. 2. Ptolemy, astronomy and grand system of the world. 3. Aristotle, exact logic, natural history of animals, written with wonderful sagacity. 4. In this rank stand as equals Euclid, John of Dunse, and Suinshed, the English author of the Calculator, of which there are many editions in the early age of printing. 5. John of Dunse, called Scotus, says Cardan, from his country, whose learning only yields to his subtle genius, 6. Of the same island, he adds, that is, Great Britain, was Suiñshed, the great calculator, who is said to have weeped in his old age, because he could not understand his own chapter De Actione Mutua, and whose solution has embarrassed succeeding ages." Thus, under a wintry climate, has Britain produced two men of surprising talents.' " 7. Apollonius Pergæus, conic ele ments. Lib. xvi. 8. Archytas of Tarentum, mathematics. 9. Mahmud Ben Musa, algebra. Such being the fame of our countryman, it is no wonder that even divine honours were accorded. For, though Dempster be a bad authority, yet he may surely be credited, when he repeats a respectable testimony, and in which he was liable to the instant contradiction of many living witnesses. He produces Gilbert Brown, abbot of Sweetheart, (a monastery of which there are considerable remains in a romantic situation under the granitic mountain of Criffel, near Dumfries,) as his informer, that at Dumfries John of Dunse was reputed a saint, and had his day and office in the ecclesiastical kalendar. It is well known, that many bishopricks, and even churches, had distinct rituals and observances. But to proceed to our positive testimonies concerning the native place of our hero. They are candidly added by the friars of Mons in Hainault, in this edition of Wading's Life, originally published, as appears in his Annals of the Minors, Vol. III. under the years 1304, 1308. These additions (p. 137) shall be translated literally, that the reader may judge for himself. "Some infer that the acute genius of Scotus was inborn. Father Ildephonsus Brizenus, (in Appar. § 2.) from Ferchius, (Vita Scoti, c. 20.) and the latter from Gilbert Brown, (Hist. Eccles.) relate, that Scotus occupied on a farm, and, though the son of a rich man, employed in keeping sheep, according to the custom of his country, that youth may not be come vicious from idleness, was met by two Franciscan friars begging as usual for their monastery. Being favourably received by his father's hospitality, they began to instruct the boy by the repetition of the Lord's Prayer, as they found him ignorant of the principles of piety; and he was so apt a scholar as to repeat it at once. The friars, surprised at such docility, which they regarded as a prodigy, prevailed on the father, though the mother warmly and loudly opposed, to permit them to lead the boy to Dumfries, where he was soon after shorn as |