Boston Public Library - Electric Scotland

EETllEAT OF CLAVERHOUSE. 25
"well Bridge. Annie Swan in one of her novels called " Adam
Hepburn's Vow," alludes to Windyedge as their place of
meeting, and in " Old Mortality," by Sir Walter Scott, we
find that it was there that Graham of Claverhouse obtained
refreshments as
received them,
he fled from his defeat at
too, from a widow who
Drumcloy,
had three
and
sons
•engaged in the battle. In the account given of the engagement
at Drumcloy, Archibald Alison is mentioned by name,
the same that was seized as a prisoner at Airsnioss, and suffered
martyrdom at the Grass Market in Edinburgh, and
whose dying testimony is recorded at great length in the
volume called " The Cloud of Witnesses."
In a letter, dated Oct. 8, 1892, my informant says,—"
I
think almost all the Alisons of Scotland and Ireland are descendants
of Cairnduff Alisons planted there in 1310."
In Scott, it is Lord Evandale who is mentioned as the per-
son who received refreshments, yet
the traditions of the
Alisons say it was Claverhouse, and although two of her sons
are only said to have been at Drumcloy, yet three were with
the Covenanters at the time, namely, John Alison banished
to Virginia, Michael Alison of Londonderry, Ire., and Archibald
Alison, the martyr.
On the farm of Kilwakening, owned by Matthew Alison,
1893, occurred some incidents connected with the Covenanting
times, which are worthy of notice. On this farm was
killed the horse of the notorious Claverhouse, and where he
narrowly escaped. At the head of Capernaum Park there is
a bush planted on the spot where a small cottage once stood
called by this name. It is about a mile from the battlefield
of Drumcloy, where Claverhouse retreated with his men. He
was passing this little cottage where several of the Covenanters
were standing, who, seeing Claverhouse, wounded his
liorse with a scythe, hoping thereby to capture the defeated
persecutor, but the horse continued to run for two hundred
yards, and fell at the garden of Kilwakening. Claverhouse
instantly dismounted his trumpeter, and mounted his horse
and continued his flight.
By Sir Walter Scott, the trumpeter is described as fleeing
away on foot through the Gill and Beemoss, marshy places
where cavalry could not go, but localities now drained and
made fertile, though still known by these names. In endeavoring
to join the retreating army of Claverhouse he came
npon the Covenanting victors returning from the pursuit,
and there near the house of Joseph Alison of Hillhead, in
Avondale, Lanarkshire, he was killed and buried, while over