 the monuments which were the
objects of his care are hastening, like all earthly memorials, into ruin or
decay.
    My readers will of course understand, that in embodying into one compressed
narrative many of the anecdotes which I had the advantage of deriving from Old
Mortality, I have been far from adopting either his style, his opinions, or even
his facts, so far as they appear to have been distorted by party prejudice. I
have endeavoured to correct or verify them from the most authentic sources of
tradition afforded by the representatives of either party.
    On the part of the Presbyterians, I have consulted such moorland farmers
from the western districts, as, by the kindness of their landlords or otherwise,
have been able, during the late general change of property, to retain possession
of the grazings on which their grandsires fed their flocks and herds. I must
own, that of late days I have found this a limited source of information. I have
therefore called in the supplementary aid of those modest itinerants, whom the
scrupulous civility of our ancestors denominated travelling merchants, but whom,
of late, accommodating ourselves in this as in more material particulars, to the
feelings and sentiments of our more wealthy neighbours, we have learned to call
packmen or pedlars. To country weavers travelling in hopes to get rid of their
winter web, but more especially to tailors, who, from their sedentary
profession, and the necessity, in our country, of exercising it by temporary
residence in the families by whom they are employed, may be considered as
possessing a complete register of rural traditions, I have been indebted for
many illustrations of the narratives of Old Mortality, much in the taste and
spirit of the original.
    I had more difficulty in finding materials for correcting the tone of
partiality which evidently pervaded those stores of traditional learning, in
order that I might be enabled to present an unbiassed picture of the manners of
that unhappy period, and at the same time to do justice to the merits of both
parties. But I have been enabled to qualify the narratives of Old Mortality and
his Cameronian friends, by the reports of more than one descendant of ancient
and honourable families, who, themselves decayed into the humble vale of life,
yet look proudly back on the period when their ancestors fought and fell in
behalf of the exiled house of Stuart. I may even boast right reverend authority
on the same score; for more than one non-juring bishop, whose authority and
income were upon as apostolical a scale as the greatest abominator of Episcopacy
could well desire, have deigned, while partaking of the humble cheer of the
Wallace
