It was long before the natives could get used to certain peculiarities in the Frenchmen’s diet, particularly frogs. A noted Dumfries character, George Hair, who died a few years ago, used to declare that ‘the first siller he ever earned was for gatherin’ paddocks for the Frenchmen’, and an aged inmate of Lanark Poorhouse, who passed his early boyhood at Dumfries, used to tell a funny frog story. He remembered that fifteen or sixteen prisoners used to live together in a big house, not far from his father’s, and that there was a meadow near at hand where they got great store of frogs. Once there was a Crispin procession at Dumfries, and a Mr. Renwick towered above all the others as King. ‘The Crispin ploy, ye ken, cam frae France, an’ the officers in the big hoose askit the King o’ the cobblers tae dine wi’ them. They had a gran’ spread wi’ a fine pie, that Maister Renwick thocht was made o’ rabbits toshed up in some new fangled way, an’ he didna miss tae lay in a guid stock. When a’ was owre, they askit him how he likit his denner, an’ he said “First rate”. Syne they lauched and speered him if he kent what the pie was made o’, but he said he wasna sure. When they tell’t him it was paddocks, it was a’ ane as if they had gien him a dose of pizzen. He just banged up an’ breenged oot the hoose. Oor bit winnock lookit oot on the Frenchmen’s backyaird, an’ we saw Maister Renwick sair, sair forfochen, but after a dainty bit warsle, he an’ the paddocks pairtit company.’ It is recorded that the French prisoners considered a good fat cat an excellent substitute for a hare. At a fire, two French surgeons who distinguished themselves in fighting it, were, on a petition from the inhabitants to the Transport Board, allowed to return immediately to France. But another surgeon who applied to be sent to Kelso as he had a relative there, was refused permission—a refusal, which, it is quite possible, was really a compliment, for the records of parole life in Britain abound with evidence of the high estimation in which French prisoner-surgeons were held in our country towns. Between thirty and forty officers tried to escape from Dumfries during the three years of its being a Parole Town; most of these were recaptured, and sent to Valleyfield Prison. Four officers took advantage of the fishing-licence usually extended to the officers on parole here, by which strict adherence to the mile limit was not insisted upon, and gradually got their belongings away to Lochmaben, eight miles distant, where were also parole prisoners. One of them actually wrote to the Colonel of the Regiment stationed in Dumfries, apologizing for his action, explaining it, promising that he would get an English officer-prisoner in France exchanged, and that he would not take up arms against her, and that he would repay all the civilities he had received in Scotland. But all were recaptured and sent to Valleyfield.