Burghmuir.] THE PEST. 29
sf old horse-shoes were dug up, where a farrier?s
forge is supposed to have stood; and another
relic of that great muster was removed only in
1876, a landmark known as King James?s knowe, a
small knoll, evidently artificial and partly built of
freestone, from which he is said to have reviewed
and addressed his army on the eve of its departure
for Flodden.
Close by, when digging the foundation of the
furth of the samyn, as they had done in tymes
past.?
In I 568, when a pest again appeared, the infected,
with all their furniture, were lodged in huts built
upon the muir, where they were visited by their
friends after 11 am.; ?any one going earlier was
liable to be punished with death.? Then their
clothes were cleansed in a huge caldron in the
open air, under the supervision of two citizens,
? Item : ?or cords to bind the man that wes (be)
heiddit for the slauchter of the sister of the Sennis
man.?
In the same year, under the Regency of Mary of
Guise, that part of the muir ?? besyde the sisters of
the Sciennes,? was appointed for the weapon-shaws
of the armed burghers, with ?? lang wappinnis, sic
as speiris, pikis, and culveringis ; ? and about the
same time, in the ?Retours,? we find that rising
citizen George Towers, heiring his father George
Towers, in the lands of Bnsto, and twenty acres
in ? Dalry and Tolcroce.?
In 1556, by order of the magistrates, a door
was made to the gallows on the Burghmuir, to
be the height of the enclosing wall, ?sua that
doggis sall nocht be abill to carry the carrionis
In April, 1601, John Watt, Deacon of the Trades
in Edinburgh-the same gallant official who raised
them in arms for the protection of James VI. in the
tumult of 15g6-was shot dead on the muir ; but
by whom the outrage was perpetrated was never
known.
One of the earliest notices we find of the name
by which the open part of the muir is now known
occurs in Balfour?s ?Annales,? when in 1644, the
Laird of Lawers? troop of horse is ordered by
Parliament to muster on ?Brountoune Links tomorrow,?
and the commissary to give them a
month?spay.
In this part many deep quarries were dug, from
which, no doubt, the old houses of Warrender
and other adjacent edifices were built, These
