Grierson, SIR ROBERT

Grierson, SIR ROBERT, of Lag, persecutor of the Covenanters, was born about 1655, and succeeded his cousin in the family estates in 1669. He acted for some years as steward of Kirkcudbright, and carried out the infamous work of harrying the peasantry with such zest and vigour as to leave his name after two hundred years a byword in Galloway for ferocious cruelty. And his brutal speech to Kenmure about a martyr's body which he had denied the decency of burial: 'Take him, if you will, and salt him in your beef-barrel,' shows the popular tradition to be in harmony with fact. He was brother-in-law to the Duke of Queensberry, and through his influence was made a Nova Scotia baronet in 1685, and awarded a pension of £200. He was one of the judges of the Wigtown martyrs, and his name survives in infamy upon their tombstone. After the Revolution he was heavily fined and imprisoned for his obstinate opposition, and later was charged with coining false money when experiments in stamping linen alone were in question! He died 31st December 1733. A rough but really vigorous piece of verse, Lag's Elegy, was current in Dumfriesshire soon after his time, and was admired in the next century by Carlyle. The popular imagination wove many a gloomy and awful fancy around Lag's memory, and all the most effective of these Scott worked with marvellous art into 'Wandering Willie's Tale'—a magnificent phantasy of genius. Old Redgauntlet, with the horseshoe frown upon his brow, and his pre-eminence among the damned in hell, is but a creative realisation of the Laird of Lag traditional in Galloway. See Colonel Fergusson's book, The Laird of Lag: a Life Sketch (1886).