Six north country diaries - The MAN & Other Families

31
And the dark of the church there thouirht hee had done well too,
when hee wrote this following of his wife and sonne :
An epitaph^i upon Ester late the wife of Edmond Breareclift'e
'
of Halyfax who died Jun 16, 1629, [and] upon Favour
their sonne who dyed Mar. 5, 1628, and were heere under
buried.
'
Heere rest three saints, the one a little brother
'
The Favour of his scarce surviving mother,
'
Then shee expir'd and bore unto her toome
'An unborne infant coffin'd in her woombe.'
In passing betweene Bai-wick and Dunce over the bouude'^^ roade,
there is close upon it, Mornington,^^ a small towne Sir James
Dowglasse his (sic) and bee hath a prettie house by it, which was
uUmost right against our campe.
\eere the roade betwixt it and the Tweede is Etherington,^* or
Cawe Milnes,*^^ a small little house remarkable for noethiug, but that
(as I was tould) it was taken from the Scotts the same day that
Cales^^ was lost.
Next there is the hall of Comelidge^^ (as they call it) little better
than a good farmer's, yet it is the habitation of a laird : and well it
may bee accounted stately comparatively with husbandmen's houses,
which resemble om" swine coates ; few or none of them have more
stories to their building than one, and that veiy low and covered
usually with clodds of earth : the people and habit are suitable to their
dwellings. Theire woemen (who at this present were onely visible)
goe without linnen, clad in a kinde of white flannion, and petti-coate
bodies, and upon there heads a kercher with the corner behinde
hanging loose and unpinnd.
I was with my landlord, where I lav in Barwick, at a place called
Fleck, "^^ where a prime kinsewoeman of his, the Lady Williamson, a
" These two epitaphs have been collated with the originals, still remaining
in Halifax church, by Mr. E. W. Crosslej', who has publislaed a valuable volume
dealing with the monumental inscriptions of Halifax.
Berwick-bounds-road, still periodically' ridden by the Mayor and Corporation
'-
of Berwick, when they ride the bounders.
" Mordington, the first parish in Scotland to be enteied on leaving the
liberties of Berwick.
•'
Edrington (still locally pronounced Ethrington) in the parish of Mordington.
" This name survives in Cadderstanes, close by. '® Calais.
''
Cumledge, a small estate on the Whitadder, two miles from Duns.
"''
No such place as Fleck is now known, nor is it noted either on Font's or
Armstrong's m;ip of Berwickshire. The small estate of Oxendean was held by
a family named Authinleck (Scottish pronunciation Atlieck) in the ISth century,
and there is a wood near by called Flecks or Flecksie to this day. L\v iii/. Mr,
John Ferguson.