1615, and it has happened, by a strange chance, to be verified by the battle of Preston, in September 1745. To compensate, however, for this lucky shot, it is certain that many rhymes professedly by our hero were promulgated in consequence of particular events. The long uninterrupted line of male heirs who have possessed the estate of Bemerside, near Dryburgh, has evidently caused the following stanza to be placed to the credit of the Rhymer :

'Tide, tide, whate'er betide

There'll be a Haig in Bemerside;'

which, it seems, was in some danger of failing about a century ago, in consequence of the lady of Bemerside bringing her husband twelve daughters before any son, who, however, luckily came at last, to the saving of Thomas's character. Of the same sort is

'There shall a stone wi' Leader come,

That'll make a rich father, but a poor son;'

an allusion to the supposed limited advantage of the process of liming. The Highlanders have also found, since the recent changes of tenantry in their country, that Thomas predicted

That the teeth of the sheep shall lay the plough on the shelf.' One of Thomas's supposed prophecies is of a safer kind

When Dee and Don shall run in one,

And Tweed shall run in Tay,

The bonnie water o' Urie

Shall bear the Bass away.'

The Bass is a conical mound rising from the bank of the Urie, in Aberdeenshire; and we may confidently conclude that it will remain intact by the river, so long as the Tweed and Tay shall continue separate.

The mention of an Aberdeenshire rhyme reminds us of a very interesting tradition of that country respecting the subject of our memoir. It is said that the walls of Fyvie Castle had stood for seven years and a day, wall-wide, waiting for the arrival of True Tammas, as he is called in Aberdeenshire. At length he suddenly appeared

before the fair building, accompanied by a violent storm of wind and rain, which stripped the surrounding trees of their leaves, and shut the castle gates with a loud clash. But while this tempest was raging on all sides, it was observed, that, close by the spot where Thomas stood, there was not wind enough to shake a pile of grass, or move a hair of his beard. He denounced his wrath in the following lines :

'Fyvie, Fyvie, thou'se never thrive,

As lang's there's in thee stanes three:
There's ane intill the highest tower,
There's ane intill the ladye's bower,
There's ane aneath the water yett,

And thir three stanes ye'se never get.'

The usual prose comment states that two of these stones have been found, but that the third, beneath the gate leading to the Ythan, or water-gate, has hitherto baffled all search.

By far the most notable of all the prophecies of Thomas, is one which he is said to have uttered in anticipation of the accidental death of Alexander III., and which is related in more than one of our early historians. Alexander, it is well known, perished by a fall from his horse at Kinghorn, and, by the failure of his heirs, opened the way for a long and most disastrous war. On the day before the accident, Thomas, in conversation with the Earl of March, remarked that, fine as the weather seemed at present, there should be such a blast next day as Scotland had never before known. At noon, accordingly, on the ensuing day, while the earl was mocking him for the failure of his prediction, intelligence arrived of the death of the king, which the seer then explained to be the blast he had meant.

We shall now conclude with two or three additional anecdotes, which the late Mr Galt, the well-known author of the Annals of the Parish, had the kindness to furnish us with. It will be observed that they are related in the manner of one of those homely and old-fashioned personages whom this gentleman has rendered so famous by his pen..

'One day as King Alexander III. was hunting in the woods which anciently covered the country near Kinghorn, and of which, in the names of different places, some memorial is still preserved, Thomas the Rhymer met him. The king's highness was riding on a skeigh horse, ill to bridle and perilous to guide, and Thomas said to him: "I redde you, sir, beware of that horse, for he'll be your death." "That he ne'er shall," cried the king, and louping off the saddle-tree, he commanded the gavalling horse to be slain on the spot, and laughed, when the deed was done, at the seer's prophecy.

It came to pass, however, that exactly at the end of a twelvemonth and a day, the king was again hunting near the same spot, and the horse he was upon, seeing the white bones of the one that had been so unrighteously put to death, standing up ragged in his way, like the grinning and gumless teeth of death, boggled at them, and fled beyond the power of curb or rein, snorting and terrified, to the cliff, over which he sprang with the king, whose neck was broken by the fall, as is recorded in the vernacular chronicles of the time.

Few, indeed, are the prognostications of Thomas the Rhymer that have not been fulfilled, and happy it is for Scotland that the number of his outstanding prophecies are now drawing to an end. The last fulfilled happened in our own time. In the days of antiquity, Thomas said that

"When the Forth and Clyde shall meet,
Scotland shall begin to greet."

Now, no man in those days could have said that this was not rank nonsense; for how could two rivers, one running east and another running west, and high hills between their heads, ever forgather? But we have seen it come to pass. The Forth and Clyde Canal has married them, and no sooner was that done than came on the war against the French revolution, by which poor auld Scotland, "my respected mither," has had mair than sufficient cause to utter her plaints.'

A FAMILY OF CRUSOE S.

Ir may not be generally known to the people of Scotland, that within the verge of this northern kingdom there exists, or very lately existed, a family of human beings in an almost desert island, removed out of sight of land, and holding communication with the rest of their species but twice in the twelve months. The name of this desolate isle is Rona, or more correctly North Rona, and is situated in the Northern Ocean, at the distance of sixteen leagues west from the Butt of Lewis, one of the largest of the Hebridean Isles. This island, which measures about a mile in length, and half a mile in breadth, where widest, has been rarely visited either by ships or travellers, and has been the subject of a variety of fanciful descriptions. It might have remained much longer in this almost undiscovered' condition, had it not been visited a few years ago by Dr John Macculloch, who made it the object of one of his mineralogical excursions, and who has presented us with a description of the island and its inhabitants. The doctor, it seems, found great difficulty in landing, in consequence of the most accessible point being the face of a precipitous cliff, fifty or sixty feet in height. The disembarkation of himself and boat's crew did not pass unobserved by the chief inhabitant, who, like his prototype Robinson Crusoe, in spying the landing of the savages, took care to keep aloof from the strangers; and who, on their surmounting the cliff, fairly took to his heels. Being, however, brought to by means of a well-directed blast of Gaelic, sent after him by one of the boatmen, and his friendship purchased by a roll of tobacco, the doctor found himself at liberty to inspect the territory in all its parts, and to extract an account of the mode of living of the single family by which it was tenanted. The southern cliffs,' says he, 'range from thirty to sixty feet in height, running

out into flat ledges at the western extremity; but on the north side they reach to 500 feet, and present a formidable aspect, whitened by the tremendous breach of the sea as it rolls on from the northward. Here, among other openings, there is an immense cave, with a wide aperture, into which the waves break with the noise of thunder. Over a large space, the whole ground, at an elevation of 200 feet, is washed away to the bare foundation; large masses of rock being frequently thrown up, and carried high along the level land, as if they were mere pebbles on a sea-beach. Rona can be no peaceful solitude, when the half of it is thus under water, and the solid dash then made against it must cover the whole, in gales of wind, with a continual shower of spray. From the lower western angle, the land rises with a gentle and even swell towards the north and east; but having no inequality of ground to afford the least shelter, it is necessarily swept by every blast. The surface is, nevertheless, green, and everywhere covered with a beautiful compact turf, except where broken up for cultivation, for the space of a few acres in the middle and elevated part. The highest point is near the north-eastern end; and hence, in clear weather, the lofty hills of Sutherland are visible in the horizon. It is the total seclusion of Rona from all the concerns of the world, which confers on it that intense character of solitude with which it seemed to impress us all. No ship approaches in sight, and seldom is land seen from it. A feeling of hope never leaves the vessel while she can float, and while there is a possibility of return to society; but Rona is forgotten, unknown, for ever fixed immovable in the dreary and waste ocean. There was at one period, according to doubtful tradition, a chapel in the island dedicated to St Ronan, the patron saint of seals, which was fenced by a stone-wall, but of this there are now no remains. Whatever was the number of families once resident-and it is said there were always five-there is now but one. The tenant is a cotter, as he cultivates the farm on his employer's account. There seem to have been six or