about three hundred and eighty tons were consumed annually, and that three men were employed in keeping the beacon, two of whom were always on watch during the night. In the edition of Sibbald's work published in 1803, it is mentioned that prior to 1790, but subsequently to the time when the dues had been fixed at three-halfpence per ton for Scottish ships, and threepence for foreign--including English--vessels, the revenue of the lighthouse was farmed at £280 per annum, that it then rose to £960, and that in 1800 it was further augmented to £1500--"a striking proof of the increase of trade in this country". To commemorate the erection of this earliest of the Northern Lights, and to indicate--not absolutely correctly, however--the date, a scholar of St. Andrews composed these two lines of Latin doggerel: Flumina ne noceant neu flumina lumina Maia PrebVIt et MeDIIs InsVLa LVX et aqVIS. There is a tradition that the architect who planned and built the tower perished, on his voyage to the mainland, in a storm which some old women, then supposed to be witches, were burnt for raising. In the description of the May contributed to the _Statistical Account of Scotland_ published in 1792, the Rev. James Forrester reports a very melancholy accident which happened whilst he was employed in drawing up his notice, and which he thinks ought to be recorded as a warning for future times. "The keeper of the lighthouse, his wife, and five children were suffocated. One child, an infant, is still alive, who was found sucking at the breast of its dead mother. Two men, who were assistants to the keeper, were senseless, but got out alive. This truly mournful event was owing to the cinders having been allowed to accumulate for more than ten years. The cinders reached up to the window of the apartments where these unfortunate people slept. They were set on fire by live coals falling from the lighthouse, and the wind blowing the smoke into the windows, and the door below being shut, the consequences were inevitable. These persons were the only inhabitants, and all of them lodged in the lighthouse. The families who formerly resided there lodged in houses detached from it. The old plan is to be again adopted, and houses are preparing for lodging the keeper and a boat's crew, which will be of advantage to all the coast, as they will be ready to give intelligence when the herrings come into the Firth."