Vol 13 - Dumfriesshire & Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian ...

20 Antiquities of Eskdalemuir.
was told to pull his bonnet over his face. He refused, and stood
confronting his murderers with the Bible in his hand. " I can
look you in the face," he said ;
" I have done nothing- of which I
need be ashamed, but how will you look on that day when you
shall be judged by what is written in this book ?" He fell dead,
and was buried where yonder slalj keeps the memory of his heroism
green for ever.
But now, to pass from " grave to gay," let me tell you something
about the far-famed " Bogle at the Todshawhill." Todshaw-
hill is a farmhouse on the Black Esk about three miles in a south-
westerly direction distant from the Parish Church. According to
Dr Brown, one of the Bogle's biographers, this creature made a
stay of a week less or more at Todshawhill farmhouse, disappear-
ing for the most part during the day only to reappear towards
evening : its freaks and eccentricities very naturally attracted a
number of people to the neighbourhood, and among the number
Thomas Bell from West Side, the neighbouring farmer, who, in
order to assure himself that it had flesh and blood like other folks,
took it up in his arms and fully satisfied himself that it had its
ample share of both. In appearance it resembled an old woman
above the middle with very short legs and thighs, and it affected a
style of walk at once so comical and undignified that the Eev. Dr
aforesaid was compelled to pronounce it " waddling." The first
intimation or indication of its presence in these parts was given, I
understand, at the head of the Todshawhill bog, where some young
callants who were engaged in fastening up the horses of the farm
heard a cry at some little distance off. " Tint, Tint, Tint," to
which one of the lads, William Nichol by name, at once replied
" You shall not tine and me here," and then the lads made off,
helter skelter, with the misshapen little creature at their heels.
In his terror one of the lads fell head foremost into a hole or moss
hag, and the creature " waddling " past him to get at the rest,
came into violent contact with a cow, which naturally resenting
such unceremonious treatment, pushed at it with its horns, where-
upon the creature replied— " God help me, what means the cow ?"
This expressioTi soothed, if it did not wholly allay, the fears of all
concerned, for they at once concluded that if the creature had
been a spirit it would not have mentioned the name of Deity in
the way it did.