[Illustration: CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. Fourth Series CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS. NO. 745. SATURDAY, APRIL 6, 1878. PRICE 1½_d._] BORLUM. Long ago—you may say in 1808—when I was a boy at Peebles, the school-children, as a variety in their boisterous amusements, occasionally bombarded with stones a grievously defaced effigy built into the walls of a ruinous old church in the neighbourhood. With savage significance, the unfortunate piece of sculpture was called Borlum, and as Borlum it had been pelted by several successive generations. From the dearth of historical knowledge at the spot, no one could explain who or what was meant by Borlum; and not till some years afterwards, in the course of reading, did I find out that by Borlum was meant Brigadier Mackintosh of Borlum, who commanded a resolute party of Highlanders in Mar’s rebellion of 1715, and who, by their masterly audacity in marching towards the Border, threw the southern counties of Scotland into a state of indescribable alarm. To Borlum, as he was familiarly termed, was thus assigned the character of a bugbear along the whole course of the Tweed; and long after he had passed away, and when the political events in which he was concerned were forgotten, the original terror of his name survived in the vengefully destructive recreations of school-children. In a vicarious capacity, a harmless piece of sculpture, which had nothing at all to do with Borlum, was doomed to suffer for a popular scare nearly a hundred years previously.