_The Cameronian Tooth.--Pennycuick's Poems,_ p. 110.

The militia and standing army soon became unequal to the task of
enforcing conformity, and suppressing conventicles In, their aid, and to
force compliance with a test proposed by government, the Highland
clans were raised, and poured down into Ayrshire.[A] An armed host
of undisciplined mountaineers, speaking a different language, and
professing, many of them, another religion, were let loose, to ravage
and plunder this unfortunate country; and it is truly astonishing to
find how few acts of cruelty they perpetrated, and how seldom they added
murder to pillage[B] Additional levies of horse were also raised, under
the name of Independent Troops, and great part of them placed under the
command of James Grahame of Claverhouse a man well known to fame, by
his subsequent title of viscount Dundee, but better remembered, in the
western shires, under the designation of the bloody Clavers. In truth,
he appears to have combined the virtues and vices of a savage chief.
Fierce, unbending, and rigorous, no emotion of compassion prevented his
commanding, and witnessing, every detail of military execution against
the non-conformists. Undauntedly brave, and steadily faithful to his
prince, he sacrificed himself in the cause of James, when he was
deserted by all the world. If we add, to these attributes, a goodly
person, complete skill in martial exercises, and that ready and decisive
character, so essential to a commander, we may form some idea of this
extraordinary character. The whigs, whom he persecuted daunted by his
ferocity and courage, conceived him to be impassive to their bullets,[C]
and that he had sold himself, for temporal greatness, to the
seducer of mankind. It is still believed, that a cup of wine,
presented to him by his butler, changed into clotted blood; and
that, when he plunged his feet into cold water, their touch
caused it to boil. The steed, which bore him, was supposed