The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments ....
Baird, John,1790-1820,former owner.
Edinburgh : Printed by Sir D. Hunter Blair and J. Bruce, Printers to the King's most Excellent Majesty,
1813-1814.
New Testament has individual title page, dated 1814, but register is continuous with the preceding leaves of the Old Testament in vol. 2; Psalms of David in metre and Translations and paraphrases also have individual title pages, dated 1813, but with separate register which runs through both parts.
Old Testament -- New Testament -- Psalms of David in metre -- Translations and paraphrases, in verse, of several passages of sacred scripture.
The property of John Baird, one of the leaders of the Condorrat weavers at the 'Battle of Bonnymuir,' an armed skirmish with the Stirlingshire Yeomanry near Bonnybridge during the Radical War of 1820. Baird was subsequently captured and sentenced to death for treason. On 8 September 1820 he was hanged at Stirling Castle, along with fellow radical leader Andrew Hardie, and then decapitated in front of the watching crowd. He inscribed this book as a present to his nephew John Walker on the front pastedown, and on the front free endpaper wrote a message to his nephew. On the rear free endpaper there is a quote from Psalms 85:8 in what appears to be a different 19th-century hand, "I will hear what God the Lord will speake for he will speake peace unto his people and to his saints but let them not turn again to folly". The volume appears to have passed down through  generations of the Walker family. A wooden box, dating from the late 19th or early 20th century was made to house it, and press clippings, dating from the late 19th and 20th centuries, relating to Baird and the Radical War, were stored in the box. According to one of the press clippings, from an unidentified Scottish newspaper from c. 1885, Baird had this volume with him during his final days in Stirling prison and was carrying it with him to the scaffold. There are numbers 1-20 written by Baird in the top left hand corners of the pages in the Old Testament in vol. 2, which may indicate his planned reading each day during his final days.
In publisher's red leather binding with an extended envelope flap.
Scotland Edinburgh.