executive power in Scotland, were severe in enforcing the
statutory penalties against the crown-vassals who did not appear at the
periodical wappenschaw. The landholders were compelled, therefore, to send their
sons, tenants, and vassals to the rendezvous, to the number of horses, men, and
spears, at which they were rated; and it frequently happened, that
notwithstanding the strict charge of their elders, to return as soon as the
formal inspection was over, the young men-at-arms were unable to resist the
temptation of sharing in the sports which succeeded the muster, or to avoid
listening to the prayers read in the churches on these occasions, and thus, in
the opinion of their repining parents, meddling with the accursed thing which is
an abomination in the sight of the Lord.
    The sheriff of the county of Lanark was holding the wappenschaw of a wild
district, called the Upper Ward of Clydesdale, on a haugh or level plain, near
to a royal borough, the name of which is no way essential to my story, on the
morning of the 5th of May 1679, when our narrative commences. When the musters
had been made, and duly reported, the young men, as was usual, were to mix in
various sports, of which the chief was to shoot at the popinjay,7 an ancient
game formerly practised with archery, but at this period with firearms. This was
the figure of a bird, decked with party-coloured feathers, so as to resemble a
popinjay or parrot. It was suspended to a pole, and served for a mark at which
the competitors discharged their fusees and carabines in rotation, at the
distance of sixty or seventy paces. He whose ball brought down the mark, held
the proud title of Captain of the Popinjay for the remainder of the day, and was
usually escorted in triumph to the most reputable change-house in the
neighbourhood, where the evening was closed with conviviality, conducted under
his auspices, and, if he was able to sustain it, at his expense.
    It will, of course, be supposed, that the ladies of the country assembled to
witness this gallant strife, those excepted who held the stricter tenets of
puritanism, and would therefore have deemed it criminal to afford countenance to
the profane gambols of the malignants. Landaus, barouches, or tilburies, there
were none in those simple days. The lord lieutenant of the county (a personage
of ducal rank) alone pretended to the magnificence of a wheel-carriage, a thing
covered with tarnished gilding and sculpture, in shape like the vulgar picture
of Noah