“The reader will probably feel the interest of this affecting story considerably increased, by his being informed that it is founded on facts. The particulars, which have been variously reported, are given in a foot-note to Mr. Sharpe’s edition of ‘Law’s Memorialls,’ p. 226; but are understood to have been sometimes told in conversation by the celebrated Poet to whom public opinion assigns these Tales. The ingenious author, whoever he is, has adopted that account of the circumstances which Mr. Sharpe deems less probable. The prototype of Lucy Ashton was one of the daughters of James, first Lord Stair, by his wife Margaret, daughter of Ross of Balneil, County of Wigton, a lady long reputed a witch by the country people in her neighbourhood, and considered as the cause, _per fas et nefas_, of the prosperous fortunes of the Dalrymple family. However this may have been, there was also ascribed to her supposed league with Satan, or her extreme obduracy, the miserable catastrophe now alluded to. The first version of the story in Mr. Sharpe’s note decidedly and directly implicates the old lady and her potent ally in the murder of her daughter on the night of her marriage, which had been contracted against the mother’s will; and, according to this account, it is the bridegroom who is found in the chimney in a state of idiocy. The other edition, which is that of the Tale, seems to require nothing beyond the agency of human passions wrought up to derangement. According to it, the young lady, as in the case of Lucy, was compelled to marry contrary to her inclination, her heart having been previously engaged elsewhere. After she had retired with her husband into the nuptial chamber, and the door, as was customary, had been locked, she attacked him furiously with a knife, and wounded him severely, before any assistance could be rendered. When the door was broken open, the youth was found half dead upon the floor, and his wife in a state of the wildest madness, exclaiming, ‘Take up your bonnie bridegroom.’ It is added, that she never regained her senses; and that her husband, who recovered of his wound, would bear no questions on the subject of his marriage, taking even a hint of that nature as a mortal affront to his honour. The coincidence of circumstances, and the identity of expression used by the bride, are much too striking to be purely accidental, and altogether deserved to be noticed, though at the hazard of making a long note. Lady Stair, it may not be irrelevant to state, was conspicuous in her time for what Mr. Sharpe denominates, ‘her violent turn towards Conventicles, and the fostering of silenced preachers in her house,’—peculiarities quite of a piece with the attachments and habits of Lady Ashton. Of the prejudices and malignity of her enemies, we may form some opinion from the satiric lines upon her long-wished-for and timely death, which Mr. Sharpe very justly denominates most unchristian. Let the _epitaph_