 are bound up with the Tripatriarchicon (1705), a religious poem from the
Biblical History, by the same author.
 
7 Hauds out. Holds out, i.e. presents his piece.
 
8 President of the Court of Session. He was pistolled in the High Street of
Edinburgh, by John Chiesley of Dalry in the year 1689. The revenge of this
desperate man was stimulated by an opinion that he had sustained injustice in a
decreet-arbitral pronounced by the President, assigning an alimentary provision
of about £93 in favour of his wife and children. He is said at first to have
designed to shoot the judge while attending upon divine worship, but was
diverted by some feeling concerning the sanctity of the place. After the
congregation was dismissed, he dogged his victim as far as the head of the close
on the south side of the Lawnmarket, in which the President's house was
situated, and shot him dead as he was about to enter it. This act was done in
the presence of numerous spectators. The assassin made no attempt to fly, but
boasted of the deed, saying, »I have taught the President how to do justice.« He
had at least given him fair warning, as Jack Cade says on a similar occasion.
The murderer, after undergoing the torture, by a special act of the Estates of
Parliament, was tried before the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, as high sheriff, and
condemned to be dragged on a hurdle to the place of execution, to have his right
hand struck off while he yet lived, and finally, to be hung on the gallows with
the pistol wherewith he shot the President tied round his neck. This execution
took place on the 3d of April 1689; and the incident was long remembered as a
dreadful instance of what the law books call the perfervidum ingenium, Scotorum.
 
9 Wind him a pirn (reel), proverbial for preparing a troublesome business for
some person.
 
10 i.e. Let him pay with his person who cannot pay with his purse.
 
11 Drinking cups of different sizes, made out of staves hooped together. The
quaigh was used chiefly for drinking wine or brandy; it might hold about a gill,
and was often composed of rare wood, and curiously ornamented with silver.
 
12 That is, absolute rights of property for the payment of a sum annually, which
is usually a trifle in such cases as are alluded to in the text.
 
13 Burke's Speech on Economical Reform. - Works, vol. iii. p. 250.
 
14 i.e. To act as may be
