Kirk and kingdom. My mother was a minister's daughter, and she and her
father and mother were among the persecuted for the sake of the true
Reformed and Covenanted Church of Scotland. My mother had a burn in
her cheek. It was put there, when she was a young lass, by order of
Grierson of Lagg. She was set among those to be sold into the
plantations in America. A kinsman who had power lifted her from that
bog, but much she suffered before she was freed.... When I was little
and sat upon her knee I would put my forefinger in that mark. 'It's a
seal, laddie,' she would say. 'Sealed to Christ and His true Kirk!'
But when I was bigger I only wanted to meet Grierson of Lagg, and
grieved that he was dead and gone and that Satan, not I, had the
handling of him. My grandfather and mother.... My grandfather was
among the outed ministers in Galloway. Thrust from his church and his
parish, he preached upon the moors--yea, to juniper and whin-bush and
the whaups that flew and nested! Then the persecuted men, women and
bairns, gathered there, and he preached to them. Aye, and he was at
Bothwell Bridge. Claverhouse's men took him, and he lay for some
months in the Edinburgh tolbooth, and then by Council and justiciary
was condemned to be hanged. And so he was hanged at the cross of
Edinburgh. And what he said before he died was '_With what measure ye
mete, it shall be measured to you_' ... My grandmother, for hearing
preaching in the fields and for sheltering the distressed for the
Covenant's sake, was sent with other godly women to the Bass Rock.
There in cold and heat, in hunger and sickness, she bided for two
years. When at last they let her body forth her mind was found to be
broken.... My father and mother married and lived, until Glenfernie
came to him, at Windygarth. I was born at Windygarth. My grandmother
lived with us. I was twelve years old before she went from earth. It
was all her pleasure to be forth from the house--any house, for she
called them all prisons. So I was sent to ramble with her. Out of