If their doctrine there get rooting,
  Then, farewell theift, the best of booting,
  And this ye see is very clear,
  Dayly experience makes it appear;
  For instance, lately on the borders,
  Where there was nought but theft and murders,
  Rapine, cheating, and resetting,
  Slight of hand, fortunes getting,
  Their designation, as ye ken,
  Was all along the Tacking Men. 
  Now, rebels more prevails with words,
  Then drawgoons does with guns and swords,
  So that their bare preaching now
  Makes the rush-bush keep the cow;
  Better than Scots or English kings,
  Could do by kilting them with strings. 
  Yea, those that were the greatest rogues,
  Follows them over hills and bogues,
  Crying for mercy and for preaching,
  For they’ll now hear no others teaching.”

Cleland’s Poems, 1697, p. 30.

The poet of the whigs might exaggerate the success of their teachers; yet, it must be owned, that their doctrine of insubordination, joined to their vagrant and lawless habits, was calculated strongly to conciliate their border hearers.

But, though the church, in the border counties, attracted little veneration, no part of Scotland teemed with superstitious fears and observances more than they did.  “The Dalesmen[48],” says Lesley, “never count their beads with such earnestness as when they set out upon a predatory expedition.”  Penances, the composition betwixt guilt and conscience, were also frequent upon the borders.  Of this we have a record in many bequests to the church, and in some more lasting monuments; such as the Tower of Repentance in Dumfries-shire, and, according to vulgar tradition, the church of Linton[49], in Roxburghshire.  In the appendix to this introduction.  No.  IV., the reader will find a curious league, or treaty of peace, betwixt two hostile clans, by which the heads of each became bound to make the four pilgrimages of Scotland, for the benefit of the souls of those of the opposite clan, who had fallen in the feud.  These were superstitions, flowing immediately from the nature of the Catholic religion:  but there was, upon the border, no lack of others of a more general nature.  Such was the universal belief in spells, of which some traces may yet remain in the wild parts of the country.  These were common in the time of the learned Bishop Nicolson, who derives them from the time of the Pagan Danes.  “This conceit was the more heightened, by reflecting upon the natural superstition of our borderers at this day, who were much better acquainted with, and do more firmly believe, their old legendary stories, of fairies and witches, than the articles of their creed.  And to convince me, yet farther, that they are not utter strangers to the black art of their forefathers, I met with a gentleman in the neighbourhood, who shewed me a book of spells, and magical receipts, taken, two or three days before, in the pocket of one of our