rise to the sentiment: "Down wi' the Merse to the Deil." In his letter of 1793, referred to above, Mr. Plummer says: "At election dinners, etc., when the Selkirk folks begin to get _fou'_ they always call for music, and for that tune in particular. At such times I never heard a Souter hint at the football, but many times speak of the battle of Flodden." So far as it goes, there is nothing in the evidence to suggest a football origin for "The Souters of Selkirk." It has always seemed to me, (who, being a native, am on that account possibly no impartial witness,) that the people of Selkirk have ever possessed in greater degree than their neighbours the true Spirit of the Sportsman. Of the inhabitants of Yarrow and Selkirk, a seventeenth-century writer recorded that "they are ingenuous, and hate fraud and deceit; theft or robbery are not heard among them, and very rarely a Ly to be heard in any of their mouths, except among them of the baser sort." There has always been in them, I think, little of that "win, tie, or wrangle" disposition which is usually to be found among small communities; and they were never of the sort who "heave half a brick at the head" of the outland wayfarer. In their dealings with the French officers, prisoners of war on parole, who were quartered in the old town from 1811 to 1814, the Selkirk people displayed an admirable generosity and a gratifying amount of good feeling,--though in that respect none of our Border towns can be said to have been lacking. One of these French prisoners afterwards, when an old man, published most interesting reminiscences of his stay, and he writes of his involuntary hosts with appreciation, and almost with affection. In 1811, when the accumulation of prisoners of warm England had become very great, it was decided to distribute a large part of them throughout Scotland. To Selkirk, as its share, came a hundred and ninety men.