witches, and when the common pricker who pricked poor witches "with lang preins of thrie inches" to discover the marks of Satan, was specially busy in the vale of Devon, where in a record year no less than sixteen of the local "covin" were burned. In the Roll of Fugitives from kirk discipline drawn up by the Synod of Perth and Stirling in 1649, Glendevon was represented by a warlock, "Mart. Kennard, suspect of witchcraft," but of his fate we know nothing. In this connection it may be remarked that though the "Kirkyeard of Glendovan," immortalised by John Brughe's ghoulish visit, contains no epitaphs, humorous or otherwise, it possesses a "Plague Stone," a large rough slab, under which lie those who died of what is vaguely called the Plague (1645?), and the lifting of which was duly guarded against by a solemn curse pronounced over it on whoever would dare to remove it, for two hundred years ago a curse could break bones or "ryve the saull out of ye." Two years after John Brughe suffered at Edinburgh, the quiet of the usually peaceful valley of the Devon was broken by the clatter of cavalry and the skirling of the pipes, as Montrose, having in his usual brilliant fashion outwitted Baillie, marched through, burning and plundering as he passed, leaving Muckhart, Dollar, and, above all, Castle Campbell, the lowland hold of the detested Argyles, heaps of blackened ruins, a march which was to end in the bloody Battle of Kilsyth, that "braw day" when, as the Highlander with grim humour remarked, "at every stroke I gave with my broadsword I cut an ell o' tamn'd Covenanting breeks." When Chambers says[8] that "the Covenanting army marched close upon the track of Montrose _down Glendevon_, at the distance of about a day's march behind," he, of course, means down the Devon valley, and not down Glendevon proper, since it is pretty certain that Montrose, in making his descent from the north, entered the low country not by Gleneagles, but by the south-east end of the Ochils. Glendevon Castle--originally built, it is supposed, by the Crawfords[9] in the sixteenth century--thus escaped the fate which befel Castle Campbell[10] and Menstrie House, and other places in the Devon and Ochil district at this time, when the fierce strife was not merely between cavaliers and Covenanters, but quite as much, and specially during the Devon valley march, between the Ogilvies and Macleans on the one hand, and the Campbells and their friends on the other. It is, however, impossible, to say whether the Keep, which has been in the possession of the Rutherford family since 1766, was actually at this time in the hands of the Crawfords, and, indeed, the traditions regarding its ownership are so vague--one of them assigning it to the Douglases--that, in the absence of authentic records, it is impossible to make any really satisfactory statement regarding its origin and history. {195}