An inn I inquired out, a lodging desired,
    But the landlady’s pertness seem’d instantly fired;
    For she saucy replied, as she sat carding wool,
    “I ne’er kept sic lodgers in auld Auchtertool.”

    With scorn I soon left her to live on her pride;
    But, asking, was told there was none else beside,
    Except an old weaver, who now kept a school,
    And these were the whole that were in Auchtertool.

    To his mansion I scamper’d, and rapp’d at the door;
    He oped, but as soon as I dared to implore,
    He shut it like thunder, and utter’d a howl
    That rung through each corner of old Auchtertool.

    Deprived of all shelter, through darkness I trode,
    Till I came to a ruin’d old house by the road;
    Here the night I will spend, and, inspired by the owl,
    My wrath I ’ll vent forth upon old Auchtertool.

[43] We have ventured to omit three verses, and to alter slightly the last line of this song.  It was originally published at Paisley, in 1790, to the tune of “One bottle more.”  Auchtertool is a small hamlet in Fifeshire, about five miles west of the town of Kirkcaldy.  The inhabitants, whatever may have been their failings at the period when Wilson in vain solicited shelter in the hamlet, are certainly no longer entitled to bear the reproach of lacking in hospitality.  We rejoice in the opportunity thus afforded of testifying as to the disinterested hospitality and kindness which we have experienced in that neighbourhood.

CAROLINA, BARONESS NAIRN.

Carolina Oliphant was born in the old mansion of Gask, in the county of Perth, on the 16th of July 1766.  She was the third daughter and fifth child of Laurence Oliphant of Gask, who had espoused his cousin Margaret Robertson, a daughter of Duncan Robertson of Struan, and his wife a daughter of the fourth Lord Nairn.  The Oliphants of Gask were cadets of the formerly noble house of Oliphant; whose ancestor, Sir William Oliphant of Aberdalgie, a puissant knight, acquired distinction in the beginning of the fourteenth century by defending the Castle of Stirling against a formidable siege by the first Edward.  The family of Gask were devoted Jacobites; the paternal grandfather of Carolina Oliphant had attended Prince Charles Edward as aid-de-camp during his disastrous campaign of 1745-6, and his spouse had indicated her sympathy in his cause by cutting out a lock of his hair on the occasion of his accepting the hospitality of the family mansion.  The portion of hair is preserved at Gask; and Carolina Oliphant, in her song, “The Auld House,” has thus celebrated the gentle deed of her progenitor:—­

    “The Leddy too, sae genty,
      There shelter’d Scotland’s heir,
    An’ clipt a lock wi’ her ain hand
      Frae his lang yellow hair.”