"Fear prevented her from breaking her pledge, but as one by one the dames paid the debt of nature, she would mysteriously exclaim 'There's anither of the gang gone!' She outlived them all, and then divulged the secret, adding that on that dreadful night, after getting to her bed, she lay entranced in an agony as if she had been roasting between two fires."(3) The name of Michael Scott of Balwearie (Fife), scholar and alchemist, who lived in the thirteenth century, is traditionally associated with the Abbey of Glenluce. Regarded by the peasantry as a warlock, he was supposed to be here buried with his magic books, and there is a story extant to the effect that a man in the district who daringly disinterred his skeleton, found it in a sitting position confronting him, and that the sight drove him stark mad. Whilst in the neighbourhood of Glenluce, "Michael the Warlock" is credited with having exercised strong discipline over the witches of the district. One task he assigned them to keep them from more doubtful work, was to spin ropes from sea-sand, and it is yet said that some of the rope fragments may be seen to this day near Ringdoo Point, near the mouth of the Luce, when laid bare by wind and tide. Another equally profitless and endless task set for the same purpose of keeping them from unsanctioned, mischievous deeds, was the threshing of barley chaff. There is a quaint reference in MacTaggart's _Gallovidian Encyclopædia_ to the "Library of Michael Scott." He says, "One of these (vaults) at the Auld Abbey of Glenluce contains the famous library of Michael Scott, the Warlock. Here are thousands of old witch songs and incantations, books of the 'Black Art,' and 'Necromancy,' 'Philosophy of the Devil,' 'Satan's Almanacks,' 'The Fire Spangs of Faustus,' 'The Soothsayers' Creed,' 'The Witch Chronicle,' and the 'Black Clud's Wyme laid open,' with many more valuable volumes." It may be noted in passing that the Abbey of Holm-Cultram, in Cumberland, has also been associated as the burial-place of the Wizard Michael; but it is with Melrose Abbey, as depicted by Sir Walter Scott in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," that the most cherished associations linger, even if only in the romance of poetry:-- "With beating heart to the task he went; His sinewy frame o'er the grave-stone bent; With bar of iron heaved amain, Till the toil-drops fell from his brows like rain; It was by dint of passing strength, That he moved the massy stone at length." * * * * * "Before their eyes the Wizard lay, As if he had not been dead a day." The religious house of Tongland may be said to have some slight connection here, for in Dunbar's poem of "The Dream of the Abbot of Tungland" (the "frenziet" Friar) there is reference to a witch--"Janet the widow, on ane besome rydand."