9–15 May 1831

The weather uncommonly beautiful and I am very eager to get on thinning woods while the peeling season lasts. We made about £200 off wood last season, and this is a sum worth looking at.

Some repairs on the mill-dam still keep the people employed, and we cannot get to the thinning. Yet I have been urging them for a month. It's a great fault of Scottish servants that they cannot be taught to time their turns.

By old practice I should be going into town to-day, the Court sitting to-morrow. Am I happier that I am free from this charge? Perhaps I am; that is certain, time begins to make my literary labour more precious than usual. Very weak, scarce able to crawl about without the pony—lifted on and off—and unable to walk half a mile save with great pain.

Resolved to lay by Robert of Paris, and take it up when I can work. Thinking on it really makes my head swim, and that is not safe. Miss Ferrier comes out to us. This gifted personage, besides having great talents, has conversation the least exigeante of any author, female at least, whom I have ever seen among the long list I have encountered,—simple, full of humour, and exceedingly ready at repartee; and all this without the least affectation of the blue stocking.

Mr., or more properly Dr., Macintosh Mackay comes out to see me, a simple learned man, and a Highlander who weighs his own nation justly—a modest and estimable person. I was beat up at midnight to sign a warrant against some delinquents. I afterwards heard that the officers were pursued by a mob from Galashiels, with purpose of deforcing them as far as St. Boswell's Green, but the men were lodged in Jedburgh Castle. Reports of mobs at all the elections, which, I fear, will prove too true. They have much to answer for who in gaiety of heart have brought a peaceful and virtuous population to such a pass.

Rode with Lockhart and Mr. Mackay through the plantations, and spent a pleasanter day than of late months. Story of a haunted glen in Laggan:—A chieftain's daughter or cousin loved a man of low degree. Her kindred discovered the intrigue and punished the lover's presumption by binding the unhappy man, and laying him naked in one of the large ants' nests common in a Highland forest. He died in agony of course, and his mistress became distracted, roamed wildly in the glen till she died, and her phantom, finding no repose, haunted it after her death to such a degree that the people shunned the road by day as well as night. Mrs. Grant of Laggan tells the story, with the addition, that her husband, then minister of Laggan, fixed a religious meeting in the place, and, by the exercise of public worship there, overcame the popular terror of the Red Woman. Dr. Mackay seems to think that she was rather banished by a branch of the Parliamentary road running up the glen than by the prayers of his predecessor. Dr. Mackay, it being Sunday, favoured us with an excellent discourse on the Socinian controversy, which I wish my friend Mr. Laidlaw had heard.

Dr. M. left us early this morning; and I rode and studied as usual, working at the Tales of My Grandfather. Our good and learned Doctor wishes to go down the Tweed to Berwick. It is a laudable curiosity, and I hope will be agreeably satisfied.