 The accounts of the trials for witchcraft
form one of the most deplorable chapters in Scottish story.
 
27 Although canting heraldry is generally reprobated, it seems nevertheless to
have been adopted in the arms and mottoes of many honourable families. Thus the
motto of the Vernons, Ver non semper viret, is a perfect pun, and so is that of
the Onslows, Festina lente. The Periissem ni per-iissem of the Anstruthers is
liable to a similar objection. One of that ancient race, finding that an
antagonist, with whom he had fixed a friendly meeting, was determined to take
the opportunity of assassinating him, prevented the hazard by dashing out his
brains with a battle-axe. Two sturdy arms brandishing such a weapon form the
usual crest of the family, with the above motto - Periissem ni per-iissem - I
had died, unless I had gone through with it.
 
28 A creagh was an incursion for plunder, termed on the Borders a raid.
 
29 Sorners may be translated sturdy beggars, more especially indicating those
unwelcome visitors who exact lodgings and victuals by force, or some thing
approaching to it.
 
30 Mac-Donald of Barrisdale, one of the very last Highland gentlemen who carried
on the plundering system to any great extent, was a scholar and a well-bred
gentleman. He engraved on his broadswords the well-known lines -
 
Hæc tibi erunt artes - pacisque imponere morem,
Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos.
 
Indeed, the levying of black-mail was, before 1745, practised by several chiefs
of very high rank, who, in doing so, contended that they were lending the laws
the assistance of their arms and swords, and affording a protection which could
not be obtained from the magistracy in the disturbed state of the country. The
author has seen a memoir of Mac-Pherson of Cluny, chief of that ancient clan,
from which it appears that he levied protection-money to a very large amount,
which was willingly paid even by some of his most powerful neighbours. A
gentleman of this clan hearing a clergyman hold forth to his congregation on the
crime of theft, interrupted the preacher to assure him, he might leave the
enforcement of such doctrines to Cluny Mac-Pherson, whose broadsword would put a
stop to theft sooner than all the sermons of all the ministers of the synod.
 
31 The Town-guard of Edinburgh were, till a late period, armed with this weapon
when on their police duty. There was a hook at the back of the axe, which the
ancient Highlanders used to assist them to climb over walls, fixing the hook
upon
