Various reports went abroad on this mysterious affair, many of them very inaccurate, though they could hardly be said to be exaggerated. It was difficult at that time to become acquainted with the history of a Scottish family above the lower rank; and strange things sometimes took place there, into which even the law did not scrupulously inquire.The credulous Mr. Law says, generally, that the Lord President Stair had a daughter, who “being married, the night she was bride in [that is, bedded bride], was taken from her bridegroom and harled [dragged] through the house (by spirits, we are given to understand), and soon afterwards died. Another daughter,” he says, was “possessed by an evil spirit.”My friend, Mr. Sharpe, gives another edition of the tale. According to his information, it was the bridegroom who wounded the bride. The marriage, according to this account, had been against her mother` in-clination, who had given her consent in these ominous words: “You may marry him, but soon shall you repent it.”I find still another account darkly insinuated in some highly scurrilous and abusive verses. They are docketed as being written “Upon the late Viscount Stair and his family, by Sir William Hamilton of Whitelaw. The marginals by William Dunlop, writer in Edinburgh, a son of the Laird of Househill, and nephew to the said Sir William Hamilton.” There was a bitter and personal quarrel and rivalry betwixt the author of this libel, a name which it richly deserves, and Lord President Stair; and the lampoon, which is written with much more malice than art, bears the following motto:“Stair` neck, mind, wife, sons, grandson, and the rest,Are wry, false, witch, pests, parricide, possessed.”
Law` Memorials
This malignant satirist, who calls up all the misfortunes of the family, does not forget the fatal bridal of Baldoon. He seems, though his verses are as obscure as unpoetical, to intimate, that the violence done to the bridegroom was by the intervention of the foul fiend to whom the young lady had resigned herself, in case she should break her contract with her first lover. His hypothesis is inconsistent with the account given in the note upon Law` Memorials, but easily reconcilable to the family tradition.“In al Stair` offspring we no difference know,They doe the females as the males bestow;So he of` daughter` marriage gave the ward,Like a true vassal, to Glenluce` Laird;He knew what she did to her suitor plight,If she her faith to Rutherfurd should slight,Which, like his own, for greed he broke outright.Nick did Baldoon` posterior right deride,And, as first substitute, did seize the bride;Whate`er he to his mistress did or said,He threw the bridegroom from the nuptial bed,Into the chimney did so his rival maul,His bruised bones ne`er were cured but by the fall.”
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