E-text prepared by David Clarke, Anne Storer, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) Transcriber's note: In the THE ROTHESAY FISHERMAN, Charles' brother is referred to both as Harry and Henry on numerous occasions. WILSON'S TALES OF THE BORDERS AND OF SCOTLAND. Historical, Traditionary, & Imaginative. With a Glossary. Revised by ALEXANDER LEIGHTON, One of the Original Editors and Contributors. VOL. VI. London: Walter Scott, 14 Paternoster Square. and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. 1885. CONTENTS. Page THE GUIDWIFE OF COLDINGHAM, (_John Mackay Wilson_), 1 THE SURGEON'S TALES, (_Alex. Leighton_)-- THE SOMNAMBULIST OF REDCLEUGH, 22 THE ROTHESAY FISHERMAN, (_Oliver Richardson_), 47 LEAVES FROM THE DIARY OF AN AGED SPINSTER, (_John Mackay Wilson_), 80 GEORDIE WILLISON, AND THE HEIRESS OF CASTLE GOWER, (_Alexander Leighton_), 93 THE SNOW STORM OF 1825, (_Alexander Campbell_), 117 GUILTY, OR NOT GUILTY, (_Anon._), 149 THE SERGEANT'S TALES, (_John Howell_)-- THE PALANTINES, 181 THE PARSONAGE: MY FATHER'S FIRESIDE, (_Alexander Peterkin_), 213 THE SEERS' CAVE, (_William Hethrington, D.D._), 245 THE LAIDLEY WORM OF SPINDLESTON HEUGH, (_John Mackay Wilson_), 260 THE SABBATH WRECKS, (_John Mackay Wilson_), 276 WILSON'S TALES OF THE BORDERS, AND OF SCOTLAND. THE GUIDWIFE OF COLDINGHAM; OR, THE SURPRISE OF FAST CASTLE. Near where St. Abb stretches, in massive strength, into the sea, still terrible, even in ruins, may be seen the remains of Fast Castle, one of the most interesting in its history--as it is the most fearfully romantic in its situation--of all the mouldering strongholds which are still to be traced among the Borders, like monuments of war, crumbling into nothingness beneath the silent but destroying touch of time. After the death of the bluff Harry the Eighth of England, who had long kept many of the corruptible amongst the Scottish nobility and gentry in his pay, the ambitious Somerset, succeeding to the office of guardian of the young king, speedily, under the name of Protector, acquired an authority nothing inferior to the power of an absolute monarch. He had not long held the reins of government when he rendered it evident, that it was a part of his ambition to subdue Scotland, or the better portion of it, into a mere province of England.