“It was formerly the custom for the magistrates of Edinburgh on the king’s birthday to get upon the Cross, which was hung with carpets and busked (drest) with flowers for the occasion, and before all the citizens to drink the health of the day, &c. The glasses used to be filled before they arrived. One day it was a very heavy rain, so that as the glasses overflowed there was at last hardly the colour of wine in them. On this occasion the same Mr. Brown wrote these lines:— ‘At Cana once heaven’s Lord was pleased Amongst blithe bridle folks to dine, And for to countenance their mirth He turned their water into wine. ‘But when for joy of Brunswick’s birth Our tribunes mounted the theatre, Heaven would not countenance their mirth, But turned their claret into water.’” LORD AUCHINLECK. * * * * * “The bonnie Earl of Moray,[206] he might ha’ been a queen, used to be ludicrously said of the late James, Earl of Moray. He might ha’ been a queen was, however, a serious compliment to express handsomeness in Regent Moray’s time, of whom it was said, ‘The noble earl,’ &c., and even of late date it was a serious expression in Scotland. My father told me that Taylour, the hill minister, speaking to him of Johnston of Wamphray, who was a very handsome man, said gravely, ‘He might ha’ been a queen.’” “McIlvaine of Grümet (pronounced Grimmet), in Carrick, was a very great original. My father knew him well. He was a tall stately man, quite erect, with a long sword at right angles with his body, so that when he was going in or out at a door he stuck. All the old anti-revolutioners, of which number he was in a very zealous degree, were much in his style. He was offered a troop of horse at the Revolution, but refused it, as his conscience would not allow him to take the oaths to a _new_ government. He had something of the old Spanish rhodomontade and a great deal of curious humour. He wrote to Mr. Charles Cochrane, with a present of solan geese, thus,—‘Worthy peer, I send you four solan geese to defeat the quadruple alliance, and all alliances, leagues, and covenants that have been made repugnant to religion, honour, and honesty. What we cannot do by works let faith supply, being fortified with the juice of the generous grape, which makes a little pitiful fellow as great as any accidental forte monarch.’” LORD AUCHINLECK. * * * * *