442 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
Sir Walter Scott, who, moreover, evidently writes with an imperfect recollection of what he had heard ; whereas
Mr Sharpe’s own grandfather was proprietor of Dalry at the period, and he has himself often heard the facts
related by his father, who was present when the discovery was made. The reader, however, has now both
versions of the story, and may adopt which of them pleases him best :-
a DEAR SIR,-~ return the curious and particular account of Sir George Lockhart’s murder by Chiesley of
Dalry. It is worthy of antiquarian annotation, that Chiesley was appointed to be gibbetted, not far from his
own house, somewhere about Drumsheugh. As he waB a man of family, the gibbet was privately cut down, and
the body carried off. A good many yean since, some alterations were in the course of being made in the house
of Dab, when, on enlarging a closet or cellar in the lower story, a discovery was made of a skeleton, and some
fragments of iron, which (were) generally supposed to be the bones of the murderer Chiesley. His friends had
probably concealed them there when they were taken down from the gibbet, and no opportunity had occurred
for removing them before their existence was forgotten. I was told of the circumstance by Mr James Walker,
then my brother in office, and proprietor of Dalry, I do not, however, recollect the exact circumstance, but I
dare say Francis Walker Drummond can supply my deficiency of memory.-Yonrs truly, WALTERS COTT.
Shandwick Place, 15th Januky 1829. To E. W. A. Drummond Hay, Esq.”
.
XII. SIR DAVID LINDUY.
IN the quotation from Sir David Lindsay’s Complaynt (page 39), the text of Chalmers has been followed.
Slight as the change is that its punctuation requires to render it correct, the alteration in its sense is very con-
- siderable. It should be read thus :-
‘‘ The first sillabia that thow did mute
Was pa, dn, Lyn.
Then playit I twentie springis perqueir,
Quhilk was greit plesour for to heir.”
Upon the lute
‘‘ Any old woman in Scotland,” says Sir Walter Scott, in his notes to Marmion, will bear witnesfl that pa,
da, Lyn, are the first efforts of a child to say where’s David findsay?” A still better reading of it has been
suggested, and the true one, as we think, viz., Play Davy Lindsay. The poems of Lindsay have now ceased to
occupy the place they so long held in the library of the Scottish cottage, yet some trace of their former study
is still preserved in the common rustic expression of scepticism-It ’8 no between th brocls o’ Davy Limdsay!-
implying that not even Lindsay, whom nothing escapes, has noticed the thing in queation.
XIII. UMFRAVILLE’S CROSS.
A FEW additional notices of the Scottish Umfrafilles may perhaps help to suggest a clue ta the date of erection
of the ancient cross that formerly stood on the boundary of the Borough Muir, at St Leonard’s Loan (page 293.)
In the year 1304, Edward, Longshanks, granted an indemnity to the Scots under certain conditions, one of
which imposed a graduated scale of fines on the Scottish clergy and nobles, proportioned in ita aeve~tyto the
opposit.ion h.e ha d encountered from them, and the tardiness of their submission to his power. The heaviest of
