The Reverend John Dennistoun, in his once-famous work, Satan’s Artifices¹ against the Elect (written in the year 1719, but not published till 1821, when the manuscript came into the hands of Sir Walter Scott), has a chapter on the disturbances² in Woodilee. In his pages can be found the tradition which established itself during the next fifty years. He has heard of the doings in Melanudrigill, but he lays no blame for them on the parish. The power of the Kirk has been sufficient to sanctify Chasehope; in Mr. Dennistoun’s pages he appears as an elder of noted³ piety⁴, who was the chief mark for the enmity of the Adversary⁵, and who was, as that Adversary’s last resort, driven crazy by hellish assaults on his person till his life ended in a fall from the rocks in the Garple Linn. There is no mention of Reiverslaw, and Amos Ritchie is treated with respect, for Amos carried his grandfather’s matchlock to Rullion Green, played a notable part in the Killing⁶ Time, was an ally of the Black Macmichael, and has a paragraph to himself in Naphtali. Mr. Dennistoun represents the trouble as a deliberate campaign of the Devil against a parish famed for its godliness, and David as an unwitting instrument. The minister of Woodilee he portrays⁷ as a young man of good heart but of small experience, unstable⁸, puffed⁹ up in his own conceit¹⁰. He records that there was a faction¹¹ in the place that took his side, and that his misfortunes, justly deserved as they were, were not unlamented. He mentions as a foolish

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