unlawful exercise; but when men and women mingled in sport, it
was then called promiscuous dancing, and considered as a scandalous enormity.
 
35 All various species of the great genus Cameronian.
 
36 This remarkable convocation took place upon 15th June 1682, and an account of
its confused and divisive proceedings may be found in Michael Shield's Faithful
Contendings Displayed (first printed at Glasgow, 1780, p.21). It affords a
singular and melancholy example how much a metaphysical and polemical spirit had
crept in amongst these unhappy sufferers, since amid so many real injuries which
they had to sustain, they were disposed to add disagreement and disunion
concerning the character and extent of such as were only imaginary.
 
37 The gallows.
 
38 Swearing.
 
39 Kissed the book.
 
40 Tobacco-pouch.
 
41 A kind of worsted gloves, used by the lower orders.
 
42 i.e. Was able to do.
 
43 i.e. The quieter.
 
44 Avoid the gallows.
 
45 The name of this officer is equivalent to the pronouncer of doom or sentence.
In this comprehensive sense, the Judges of the Isle of Man were called
Dempsters. But in Scotland the word was long restricted to the designation of an
official person, whose duty it was to recite the sentence after it had been
pronounced by the Court, and recorded by the clerk; on which occasion the
Dempster legalised it by the words of form, »And this I pronounce for doom.« For
a length of years, the office, as mentioned in the text, was held in commendam
with that of the executioner; for when this odious but necessary officer of
justice received his appointment, he petitioned the Court of Justiciary to be
received as their Dempster, which was granted as a matter of course.
The production of the executioner in open court, and in presence of the wretched
criminal, had something in it hideous and disgusting to the more refined
feelings of later times. But if an old tradition of the Parliament House of
Edinburgh may be trusted, it was the following anecdote which occasioned the
disuse of the Dempster's office.
It chanced at one time that the office of public executioner was vacant. There
was occasion for some one to act as Dempster, and, considering the party who
generally held the office, it is not wonderful that a locum tenens was hard to
be found. At length, one Hume, who had been sentenced to transportation, for an
attempt to burn his own house, was induced to consent that he would pronounce
the doom on this occasion. But when brought forth to officiate, instead of
repeating