styled traitor and excommunicate rebel, did cry out and called him as honest ane nobleman as was in this kingdom. The magistrates of that town, being informed of his speeches, was forced to take and apprehend him, and carried him to Edinburgh by ane guard of the town’s officers, presented him to the Committee of State then sitting there; wha, by their order, was casten into the Thieves’ Hole, wherein he lay in great misery by the space of many weeks.’--_Nic._ * * * * * [Sidenote: MAR.] Throughout this and the ensuing two months, there ‘fell out much unseasonable weather, the like whereof was not usual, for weets, cold, frosts, and tempests.’--_Nic._ The same writer informs us that on the 28th of May, ‘there rained blood the space of three miles in the Earl of Buccleuch’s bounds, near the English Border; whilk was verified in presence of the Committee of State.’ In the ensuing month there was an epidemic called the _Irish Ague_, ‘which was a terrible sore pain in the head, some saying that their heads did open. The ordinary remedy was the hard tying up of their head. A disease not before this known to the inhabitants of this kingdom.’ Gerard Boate, physician to the parliamentary forces in Ireland, who wrote about this time his _Natural History of Ireland_, specifies agues among the _Endemii Morbi_ of that country, evidently alluding, in the opinion of a living medical authority,[139] to the well-known Irish typhoid fevers. This ailment, the flux, and plague, had prevailed to a deplorable extent in Ireland during the time of the civil war. * * * * * [Sidenote: MAY 15.] [Sidenote: 1650.] ‘The new Psalm-books were read and ordained to be sung through all the kingdom.’--_Nic._ This was the translation of the Psalms which is still used by the Church of Scotland and all Presbyterian congregations in the kingdom. It was based on a homely version produced originally in 1643, by Francis Rous, a member of the Long Parliament, who ultimately became provost of Eton, and died in 1658. What was rather odd, Rous was at this time joined to the sectaries, against whom the Scotch church entertained so bitter a feeling. It must be admitted that his version underwent great improvements in the hands of the committees of the General Assembly appointed for its revision. As now finally set forth, it was in many respects most felicitous. The general strain and metre is that of the old homely native ballad. It is occasionally harsh and obscure, has a few Scottish idioms, and sometimes requires an obsolete pronunciation to make out the prosody; yet, with all these obvious faults, it perhaps comes nearer to the simple archaic beauty of the original than any other metrical translation.[140] * * * * * [Sidenote: MAY 21.] [Sidenote: 1650.]