New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1854-05-09
Scottish Traditions.

Mr. Hugh Miller, in his recent work entitled
My Schools and my Schoolmasters, SAYS q /
| have seen at least two men who fought ut Gull
ioden-one on the side of the King the other on,
that Of the Prince-and, with these, not A few
who witnessed the battle from distance. !
nave eonversed with an aged woman that had
conversed, in turn, with an aged man who had
attained to mature manhood when tie persec1l-
| tions Of Charles and James were at their heieht
and remembered the general regret excited nv
the death of Renwick. My eldest niaterral Il amt
the mother of fcousin George remembered Old
John feddes, turned Of ninety at the time and
John. s bHccaneering expedition could not have
dated later than the year 1887 I have known
many who remembered the abolition of the he
reditary jurisdictions; and have listened To
stories Of executions which took place on the
galloWs hills of burghs and sheriffdoms, and of
witch buildings perpetrated on town links and
haronial laws And / have felt strange inte
rest IN these glimpses of past so unlike the
present, when thus presented to the mind as
personal "reminiscences, or as we'll attested ira
ditions, removed from the original witnesses bv
but single stage. All, for instance, which /
have yet read of witch burnings has failed 10
impress me so strongly as the recollecti6ns of an
old lady who in % was carried in her t,rse,s
arms-for she was almost an infant at the time
to witness a witch execution in the neighbor
hood of Dornoeh-the last which took place in
Scotland. 5,rsqi,l 75557= - ~
6 The lady well remembered the awe struck
yet excited crowd, the lighting of the fire, and
miserable appearance of the poor fatuous crea-
ture whom it was kindled to consume, and who
seemed to be SO little aware of her situation,
that she held out her thin shriyeled hands to
warm them at the blaze Ihaye heard described.
too, by man whose father had witnessed the
scene, an execution which took place, after n
brief and inadequate trial, on the burgh gal-
lows OF Tain, The supposed cuIprit, Strath-
carron Highlander, had been found lurking
about the place, noting. as was supposed, where
the burghers kept their cattle, and was hung az
q spy; but they all, after the execution, came
to deem him innocent, from the circumstances
that. when his body was dangling in the wind,
white pigeon had come flying the way. and, ss
It passed over. half encirclsd the gibbet. = :
My grandfather's recollections of Cullodon were
merely those of an observant boy of fourteen,
who had witnessed the battle from a distance,
The day, he has told me, was drizzly ard thick
and on reaching the brow of the Hill of Cromar-
ty, where ne found many of his tow11sfolk
already assembled, he could scarce see the on
posite land. But the fog gradually cleared
away; first the hilltop came into view, and
then another, till at length the long range of
coast, from the open ng of the great Caledoniaui
valley to the promontory of Burghead, was dimly
visible through the haze. e 9ia@ ~
A. little after noon there suddenly rose a
round white cloud from the Moor of Culloden.
and then a second round white cloud beside it
And then the two clouds mingled together, and
went rolling slantways on the wind toward the
west; and he could hear the rattle of the smaller
firearms mingling with the roar of the artil-
lery. And then in what seemed an exceedingly
brief space of time, the cloud dissipated and dis
appeared, the boom of the greater guns ceased,
and sharp intermittent patter of musketry
passed on to Inverness. But the battle was pre-
sented to the imagination. in these old personal
narratives, in many diverse form have
been told by an ancient woman, who, On the
day Of the fight, was engaged in tending some
sheep on a solitary common near Manlochy
separated from the Moor of Culloden by the
Firth, and screened by lofty hill, that she sat
listening in terror to the boom of the cannon
bnt that she was still more scared by the CON
tinuous bowling of her dog, who sat upright on
its launches all the time the firing lasted, with
his neck stretched out to y ards the battle, and
looking as if he saw spirit ~ 4l7