It is about thirty years since, or more, that the author met this
singular person in the churchyard of Dunnottar, when spending a day or
two with the late learned and excellent clergyman, Mr. Walker, the
minister of that parish, for the purpose of a close examination of the
ruins of the Castle of Dunnottar, and other subjects of antiquarian
research in that neighbourhood. Old Mortality chanced to be at the same
place, on the usual business of his pilgrimage; for the Castle of
Dunnottar, though lying in the anti-covenanting district of the Mearns,
was, with the parish churchyard, celebrated for the oppressions sustained
there by the Cameronians in the time of James II.
It was in 1685, when Argyle was threatening a descent upon Scotland, and
Monmouth was preparing to invade the west of England, that the Privy
Council of Scotland, with cruel precaution, made a general arrest of more
than a hundred persons in the southern and western provinces, supposed,
from their religious principles, to be inimical to Government, together
with many women and children. These captives were driven northward like a
flock of bullocks, but with less precaution to provide for their wants,
and finally penned up in a subterranean dungeon in the Castle of
Dunnottar, having a window opening to the front of a precipice which
overhangs the German Ocean. They had suffered not a little on the
journey, and were much hurt both at the scoffs of the northern
prelatists, and the mocks, gibes, and contemptuous tunes played by the
fiddlers and pipers who had come from every quarter as they passed, to
triumph over the revilers of their calling.
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