he left her
bubbling and greeting, and came to an outer court, where her Lady Maries were
fyking and dancing, he said, O brave ladies, a brave world, if it would last,
and heaven at the hinder end! But fye upon the knave Death, that will seize upon
those bodies of yours; and where will all your fiddling and flinging be then?
Dancing being such a common evil, especially amongst young professors, that all
the lovers of the Lord should hate, has caused me to insist the more upon it,
especially that foolish spring the Cameronian march!« - Life and Death of three
Famous Worthies, etc., collected and printed for Patrick Walker, Edin. 1727,
12mo, p. 59.
It may be here observed, that some of the milder class of Cameronians made a
distinction between the two sexes dancing separately, and allowed of it as a
healthy and not unlawful exercise; but when men and women mingled in sport, it
was then called promiscuous dancing, and considered as a scandalous enormity.
 
21 This custom of making a mark by folding a leaf in the party's Bible, when a
solemn resolution is formed, is still held to be, in some sense, an appeal to
Heaven for his or her sincerity.
 
22 Nichol Muschat, a debauched and profligate wretch, having conceived a hatred
against his wife, entered into a conspiracy with another brutal libertine and
gambler, named Campbell of Burnbank (repeatedly mentioned in Pennycuick's
satirical poems of the time), by which Campbell undertook to destroy the woman's
character, so as to enable Muschat, on false pretences, to obtain a divorce from
her. The brutal devices to which these worthy accomplices resorted for that
purpose having failed, they endeavoured to destroy her by administering medicine
of a dangerous kind, and in extraordinary quantities.
This purpose also failing, Nichol Muschat, or Muschet, did finally, on the 17th
October 1720, carry his wife under cloud of night to the King's Park, adjacent
to what is called the Duke's Walk, near Holyrood Palace, and there took her life
by cutting her throat almost quite through, and inflicting other wounds. He
pleaded guilty to the indictment, for which he suffered death. His associate,
Campbell, was sentenced to transportation for his share in the previous
conspiracy. See MacLaurin's Criminal Cases, pp. 64 and 738.
In memory, and at the same time execration, of the deed, a cairn, or pile of
stones, long marked the spot. It is now almost totally removed,