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Hom a Va r i ations
OXFORD RITUAL STUDIES

Series Editors
Ronald Grimes, Ritual Studies International
Ute Hüsken, University of Oslo
Barry Stephenson, Memorial University

THE PROBLEM OF RITUAL EFFICACY THE DYSFUNCTION OF RITUAL IN

Edited by William S. Sax, Johannes Quack, EARLY CONFUCIANISM
and Jan Weinhold Michael David Kaulana Ing
PERFORMING THE REFORMATION A DIFFERENT MEDICINE
Public Ritual in the City of Luther Postcolonial Healing in the Native
Barry Stephenson American Church
Joseph D. Calabrese
RITUAL, MEDIA, AND CONFLICT
Edited by Ronald L. Grimes, Ute Hüsken, NARRATIVES OF SORROW AND
Udo Simon, and Eric Venbrux DIGNITY
Japanese Women, Pregnancy Loss, and
KNOWING BODY, MOVING MIND
Modern Rituals of Grieving
Ritualizing and Learning at Two Buddhist
Bardwell L. Smith
Centers
Patricia Q. Campbell MAKING THINGS BETTER
A Workbook on Ritual, Cultural Values, and
SUBVERSIVE SPIRITUALITIES
Environmental Behavior
How Rituals Enact the World
A. David Napier
Frédérique Apffel-Marglin
AYAHUASCA SHAMANISM IN THE
NEGOTIATING RITES
AMAZON AND BEYOND
Edited by Ute Hüsken and Frank Neubert
Edited by Beatriz Caiuby Labate and
THE DANCING DEAD Clancy Cavnar
Ritual and Religion among the Kapsiki/Higi
HOMA VARIATIONS
of North Cameroon and Northeastern Nigeria
The Study of Ritual Change across the
Walter E. A. van Beek
Longue Durée
LOOKING FOR MARY MAGDALENE Edited by Richard K. Payne and
Alternative Pilgrimage and Ritual Creativity Michael Witzel
at Catholic Shrines in France
Anna Fedele
i

Homa Variations
The Study of R itual Cha nge across the
Longue Dur ée
Edited by Richard K. Payne
and Michael Witzel

i

1
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of
Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research,
scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

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in the UK and certain other countries.

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ISBN 978–0–19–935158–9

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Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To my daughter, Alise Spinella, who accompanied me on our journey of
discovery to Japan
— Richard K. Payne
i


Contents

Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
Contributors xiii

Introduction 1
Richard K. Payne

Symbolic and Compar ative Studies

The Ritual Interplay of Fire and Water in Hindu and Buddhist Tantras 47
Holly Grether
Buddhist Permutations and Symbolism of Fire 67
Tadeusz Skorupski
The Structure of Japanese Buddhist Homa 126
Musashi Tachikawa

Textual Studies
The Vedic Homa and the Standardization of Hindu Pūjā 143
Timothy Lubin
Oblation, Non-conception, and Body: Systems of Psychosomatic Fire Oblation in
Esoteric Buddhism in Medieval South Asia 167
Tsunehiko Sugiki
The Three Types of Fire Sacrifice According to Kāṇha’s Śrīcakrasaṃvara-homavidhi 214
David B. Gray
Fire Rituals by the Queen of Siddhas: The Aparimitāyur-homa-vidhi-nāma in the
Tengyur 225
Georgios T. Halkias

vii
viii i Contents
Homa Rituals in the Indian Kālacakra-tantra Tradition 246
Vesna A. Wallace
Ritual Subjects: Homa in Chinese Translations and Manuals from the Sixth through
Eighth Centuries 266
Charles D. Orzech

Descriptive Studies
Newar Buddhist Homa Ritual Traditions 291
Todd Lewis and Naresh Bajrachrya
The Navarātra Homa: Liver, Enchantment, and Engendering the Divine Śaktis 314
Nawaraj Chaulagain
Fire on the Mountain: The Shugendō Saitō Goma 337
Richard K. Payne
Agnihotra Rituals in Nepal 371
Michael Witzel

Index 407
 Preface

i
In October 2010 a conference entitled “Homa Variations: From Vedic to Hindu and
Buddhist” was held at Harvard University. For three days, a dozen scholars presented
their work as it relates to the homa ritual. Over the course of that time, about two dozen
others were in attendance as well. One of the high points of the conference was the per-
formance of a Newari homa by Naresh Bajracharya, one of the conference participants.
Following the conference, additional papers were solicited to provide greater depth to
this collection.

ix
 Acknowledgments

i
Generous support for the conference was provided by Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai
(BDK), who have also provided support for the production of this collection, including
copyediting by Marianne Dresser. Particular thanks go to Rev. Dr. Toshihide Numata,
Chairman of Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai, for his continuing support of this and other proj-
ects of the Institute of Buddhist Studies, Rev. Brian Nagata of the Moraga office of BDK
America, and to Rev. Naoyuki Ogi of the Tokyo office of BDK for their support and
encouragement.
My thanks also go to Michael Witzel for organizing the activities. Michael first
expressed interest in my work at the 2005 meeting of the International Association of
the History of Religions in Tokyo. I knew his name from my own teacher, Frits Staal,
who had spoken of him with high regard. Over the course of this project he has been
supportive and has validated the importance of studying the homa. Thanks also go to
Harvard University’s Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, now renamed the
Department of South Asian Studies, which provided both the venue for the conference
meetings and more importantly the student assistants, who worked on the website that
allowed for preconference communications with participants, prepared a bound copy of
the abstracts for the participants’ use, and provided the requisite logistic support during
the conference itself. The Department also assisted with making arrangements for travel
and lodging, and for refreshments during the course of the conference.
I am humbled by the interest the scholarly community has shown in this project. For
myself, it fulfills one part of the research plan that I conceived while writing my disserta-
tion. Inspired by Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, I imagined a three-dimensional
xi
xii i Acknowledgments
approach to the study of the homa. The first was my own dissertation, published as The
Tantric Ritual of Japan, that located the homa along the axis of the four Shingon train-
ing rituals. The second, still underway after all this time, is an examination of the variety
of homas found in the Shingon ritual corpus. The third axis, as represented here, is the
homa found across a variety of religio-cultural settings. Having long ago been faced by
the fact that this third dimension would be far beyond my own limited abilities, I am
grateful that others have assisted in its realization.
R.K.P.
 Contributors

i
Naresh Man Bajracharya is the founding Chair of the Central Department of
Buddhist Studies at Tribhuvan University and was the first Nepali appointed as
Professor of Buddhist Studies. In addition to completing his PhD in Buddhist Studies
at Delhi University in 1998, Bajracharya is also a tantric lineage holder and one of the
leading priests in the Newar Buddhist sangha of Kathmandu. Author of many articles
and books on Newar Buddhism, he was a Fulbright Scholar in Residence at Virginia
Commonwealth University in 2009‒10. Professor Bajracharya over the last decade has
played a pioneering role in introducing the discipline of Buddhist Studies to Nepal
and in revitalizing the spiritual traditions of Newar Buddhism across the Kathmandu
Valley. He is currently engaged in organizing the construction of a Vajrayana Monastery
in Lumbini. In late 2014, he was appointed Vice Chancellor of Lumbini Buddhist
University in Lumbini.

Nawaraj Chaulagain is Assistant Professor in religious studies at Illinois Wesleyan

University, Bloomington, Illinois, where he teaches courses such as Religions of the World,
Hindu Religious Traditions, Asian Religious Practice, Islam from Mecca to Malcolm X,
and Peace & War in the Modern World. His research interests include Hindu kingship
rituals, yoga and meditation, and comparative religions and literature in South Asia. He
is particularly interested in the questions of how religions and politics intersect and inter-
act, and how they influence the ways people construct their religious worldviews.

David B. Gray is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University.

His research explores the development of tantric Buddhist traditions in South Asia, and
xiii
xiv i Contributors
their dissemination in Tibet and East Asia, with a focus on the Yoginītantras, a genre
of Buddhist tantric literature that focused on female deities and yogic practices involv-
ing the subtle body. He is the author of both The Cakrasamvara Tantra: A Study and
Annotated Translation (2007) and The Cakrasamvara Tantra: Editions of the Sanskrit
and Tibetan Texts (2012).

Holly Grether currently serves as an Assistant Teaching Professor at Montana State

University. Her teaching interests include Buddhism, gender and religion, and theories
of sacrifice. She received a PhD in Religious Studies from University of California, Santa
Barbara, with specializations in South Asia and History of Religions. Under the tutelage
of David Gordon White, her dissertation traced historical origins of various elements of
homa sacrifices in South and Central Asia. Other research interests include religions of
the Silk Road, Hindu and Buddhist tantra, religion and law, and ritual studies.

Georgios T. Halkias obtained a DPhil in Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford

and is currently an Assistant Professor at the Centre of Buddhist Studies, the University
of Hong Kong. He specializes in Tibetan and trans-Himalayan Buddhism and history
and has held research posts and fellowships in the United Kingdom (Warburg, SOAS,
and Oxford), Germany (Ruhr University), and Japan (Otani-ha Foundation). His pub-
lications include Luminous Bliss: A Religious History of Pure Land Literature in Tibet.
With an Annotated Translation and Critical Analysis of the Orgyen-ling Golden Short
Sukhāvatīvyūha-sūtra (University of Hawai’i Press) and several articles on Tibetan and
Central Asian Buddhism, Himalayan history, and interdisciplinary studies of religion.

Todd Lewis is the Murray Distinguished Professor of Arts and Humanities in the
Religious Studies Department at the College of the Holy Cross. His primary research
since 1979 has been on Newar Buddhism in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. He is the
author of many articles on this tradition, co-author of World Religions Today (5th ed.,
2014), and editor of the new course book Buddhists: Understanding Buddhism Through
the Lives of Practitioners (2014). His most recent translation, Sugata Saurabha: A Poem
on the Life of the Buddha by Chittadhar Hridaya of Nepal, received awards from the
Khyentse Foundation and the Numata Foundation as the best book in Buddhist Studies
published in 2011.

Timothy Lubin is Professor of Religion at Washington and Lee University. He has

degrees from Columbia and Harvard, and earlier taught at Harvard and at the University
of Virginia. He publishes on a wide range of topics in Sanskrit religious and legal lit-
eratures and epigraphy, teaching courses on Asian traditions, the comparative study of
religion, and the Sanskrit language. His research deals with Indic legal traditions and
Brahmanical Hindu ritual codes, the connections between them, and their reception in
modern India. He co-edited Hinduism and Law: An Introduction (2010) and is at work
on a study of Brahmanical authority in the history of South and Southeast Asia.
 Contributors j xv
Charles D. Orzech is Reader in Religion, Conflict and Transition in the School
of Critical Studies at the University of Glasgow and Professor Emeritus of Religious
Studies at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. He teaches a variety of courses,
from introductory Buddhism and Chinese religion to seminars on theories of myth
and on semiotics and religious images. He currently convenes the MLitt core course
on Contemporary Perspectives on Religion and Theology at the University of Glasgow.
His research has focused on the translation and transformation of late Mahāyāna
Buddhism in eighth- through thirteenth-century China. He is the author of Politics
and Transcendent Wisdom: The Scripture for Humane Kings in the Creation of Chinese
Buddhism (1998) and more recently was the general editor of Esoteric Buddhism and the
Tantras in East Asia (2011). He is currently writing a monograph on vision and liturgy in
Chinese Esoteric Buddhism.

Richard K. Payne is Yehan Numata Professor of Japanese Buddhist Studies at the Institute
of Buddhist Studies, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, where his teaching focuses on
methodology in the study of Buddhism, Buddhist psychology, and tantric Buddhism. As a
member of the GTU’s Core Doctoral Faculty, he directs dissertations in Buddhist studies
and related topics. He edited Tantric Buddhism in East Asia (2005), and the Japan section
of Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia (2011). Currently he also is the Editor in
Chief of the Buddhism section of the Oxford Bibliographies, and Co-Editor in Chief of the
Oxford Encyclopedia of Buddhism. He initiated and is Chair of the Editorial Committee
for the Pure Land Buddhist Studies series, University of Hawai’i Press, and is Chair of the
Editorial Committee for Pacific World: Journal of the Institute of Buddhist Studies. His
research on the homa continues, as does his work on a survey of tantric Buddhism.

Tadeusz Skorupski is Emeritus Reader in Buddhist Studies, School of Oriental and

African Studies, University of London. Academic interests and research include
Buddhist philosophy and doctrine, literature, iconography, rituals, and history. His
publications include the comprehensive study of the Sarvardurgatispariśodhana Tantra
(1983), a key yoga tantra. He was editor of The Buddhist Forum, and his recent publica-
tions include The Six Perfections (2002) and Kriyāsaṃgraha: Compendium of Buddhist
Rituals, an Abridged Version (2002).

Tsunehiko Sugiki is Professor in the Department of Global and Regional Studies,

Faculty of Liberal Arts, Kaichi International University (since April 2015). He holds
a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Tokyo (October 2000). He was for-
merly Specially Appointed Researcher in Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology
in the University of Tokyo (January 2003‒February 2007), Assistant Professor, Associate
Professor, and so on in Waseda Institute for Advanced Study in Waseda University
(March 2007‒March 2011), and Lecturer and Professor in Nihonbashi Gakkan
University (April 2011‒March 2015). His specialization is Philology of Indian Buddhism
(Buddhist Tantrism in particular) and Religious Studies.
xvi i Contributors
Musashi Tachikawa is Professor Emeritus of the National Museum of Ethnology
(1992–2004) and taught at Aichi Gakuin University (2004–2011). He earned his PhD
in Sanskrit and Indian studies from Harvard (1975), and a DLitt from Nagoya (1985). He
has authored many studies of homa, ritual, esoteric iconography, and Buddhist thought.
These include Pūjā and Saṃskāra (with Shoun Hino and Lalita Deodhar, 2006), Indian
Fire Ritual (with Shrikant Bahulkar and Mdhavai Kolhatkar, 2001), Essays in Buddhist
Theology (2012), Buddhist Fire Ritual in Japan (with Madhavi Bhasker Kolhatkar, 2013),
and several other works.

Vesna A. Wallace is a Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Religious

Studies at the University of California in Santa Barbara. Her two areas of specialization
are Indian Buddhism, particularly Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna traditions, and Mongolian
Buddhism. She has authored and translated four books related to Indian Buddhism,
three of which pertain to the Kālacakra tantric tradition in India and edited a book on
Mongolian Buddhism. She has published numerous articles on Indian and Mongolian
Buddhism.

Michael Witzel is the Wales Professor of Sanskrit, Harvard University. He studied at

the University of Tübingen, Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany), and Tribhuvan University,
Kathmandu, receiving his PhD in 1972 at Erlangen. He has taught at Tübingen (1972),
Leiden (1978‒1986), and Harvard since 1986. He was the director of the Nepal-German
Manuscript Preservation Project and the Nepal Research Center at Kathmandu
(1972‒1978). He has held six visiting positions at Paris, Kyoto, and Tokyo. He is the edi-
tor of the Harvard Oriental Series (since 1993), HOS Opera Minora (since 1995), and the
Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies (since 1995). He specializes in Vedic, Old Iranian,
and Nepalese studies, Indian/Iranian prehistory and substrate studies, old and medi-
eval Indian and Nepalese history and manuscriptology, as well as in ritual studies and
comparative mythology. His most recent publications include: Das Alte Indien (2003,
2nd ed. 2010), The Origins of the World’s Mythologies (2012), and two volumes of Der
Rig-Veda: I–II, and III‒V (2007, 2013).
Hom a Va r i ations
 Introduction
Richard K. Payne
i
This collection of essays is intended to place the study of the homa—a votive ritual
employing fire, which is found throughout the tantric world—within a framework that is
both cross-cultural and historically longitudinal. This placement thus expands the study
of ritual change across two axes—temporal and cultural. The temporal dimension that we
seek to establish for the study of ritual change is the longue durée. For the most part, work
on ritual change has had a relatively narrow temporal dimension, which severely limits
the possibility of drawing conclusions regarding patterns or types of change that may be
regular or consistent. Changes noted over narrow historical spans are subject to being
produced by idiosyncrasies of their particular situation.1 Second, the essays included
make it possible to examine the effects of translocating rituals from one religious culture
to another. Thus, the changes that this collection as a whole seeks to examine are ones that
extend over time and across the boundaries between religious cultures. This collection
addresses two audiences that appear to be largely disjunct from one another—scholars
of ritual studies and scholars of Asian religions. For scholars of ritual studies we will first
briefly introduce the homa, the ritual that provides the unifying theme for this collection.
For scholars of Asian religions, we will then introduce the key theoretical issue of ritual
change that informs the construction of this collection as a whole.

INTRODUCING THE HOMA

Since research on the homa is important for both ritual studies and the study of Asian
religions, it is a nexus of interaction for these two fields of study. It is important for ritual
studies because this one ritual, despite particular sectarian inflections, has a history of
1
2i Introduction
more than two millennia, and the Indo-Iranian and Vedic rituals that form an impor-
tant part of the source material for its development, extends that history to as much as
four millennia. Over the course of its history, the homa has spread out from the Indian
subcontinent into several different religious cultures, and in addition to South Asia, it is
also found in Central Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, as well as now in Europe and the
Americas. It is, therefore, one of very few instances of a ritual that can be studied over
the longue durée, having undergone repeated ritual change and cultural adaptation while
at the same time retaining an extensive and detailed textual record, and a clearly identifi-
able continuity of ritual practice.2
The homa employs a fire into which offerings are made. Although sometimes spoken
of—rather loosely—as a sacrificial ritual, since the offerings are destroyed in the fire, it is
more appropriate to consider it a votive ritual. That is, the offerings are being conveyed
to the deities in expectation of a quid pro quo. One of the unifying factors for homas
in almost all traditions is that the fire is identified as Agni, the Vedic fire god. Agni is
central to Vedic fire rituals and those that derive from them because by consuming the
offerings, Agni makes them pure and only then conveys them to the gods. Additional
sets of offerings to other deities may be added into a ritual performance of the homa, but
Agni is almost invariably the first deity evoked.3
Other similarities uniting the homa as performed across the range of traditions in
which it is practiced include the kinds of offerings made, the altars upon which the
ritual is performed, and the implements employed in the performance of the ritual.
The offerings frequently include both material and symbolic offerings, such as clari-
fied butter or oil, grains and beans of various kinds, lights, incense, water for wash-
ing the deities’ feet, music, and so on—the specific combination of offerings and the
specific kinds of offerings varying according to ritual culture. Such variations at times
further reflect material culture as well, such as in the kinds of substitutions made for
the substances offered.4 There are also consistent similarities in the shapes of the altar
hearths employed for the performance of homas having different purposes. While sev-
eral traditions homologize the altar with a mandala, for the performance of a homa
the altar is the hearth that contains the fire, and such hearths usually take one of a
limited number of shapes. The shapes of hearths include circles, demilunes, stars, and
so on, and specific shapes are employed for different ritual ends. Likewise, the imple-
ments employed in the performance of a homa are similar across various ritual cul-
tures. A widely shared instance of the implements employed are the ladle and a spoon
used to make offerings. Although the sizes and shapes of these implements also vary
across ritual cultures, the use of those two paired implements is also consistent and is
one of the ritual details significant for demonstrating continuity from Vedic through
to tantric ritual practice.
By comparison, implements are also important for the study of the history of the
Zoroastrian fire ritual, the yasna. Michael Stausberg has noted that there are limita-
tions on what one can conclude regarding the antiquity of the yasna on the basis of
 Introduction j3
archaeological evidence, specifically mortars and pestles found in both performance of
the yasna and in ancient sites such as Persepolis. Although the existence of mortars and
pestles dating from the fifth century b.c.e. indicate the possibility that the yasna was
performed that early, “the fact that similar or even identical implements have been used
in a ritual context does not in itself constitute a valid proof for the hypothesis that it was
‘the Yasna’ that has been performed with the help of these vessels.”5 In the case of the
spoon and ladle used in the homa, however, the implements are not isolated from other
ritual elements. In other words, the implements form part of a network of interrelated
ritual elements, including other ritual implements, the shapes of altars, and the kinds of
offerings made.
Other specific ritual elements found in performances of the homa also point to the
historical continuity with Vedic ritual culture. One telling instance is the ritual con-
struction and destruction of the altar as found for example in the Japanese esoteric
Buddhist tradition of Shingon. A defining characteristic of Vedic ritual culture is that
ritual spaces are temporary constructions, usually interpreted as a consequence of the
nomadic character of Vedic society. This is a clear difference from the fixed ritual sites of
temples in Brahmanic and Hindu religious cultures. As temporary constructions, Vedic
ritual action includes the construction and destruction of the ritual enclosures.6
Today in the Shingon tradition of Japanese esoteric Buddhism, the same
actions—ritualized as symbolic ones—remain part of homa performance. As the final
of the four rituals in the training sequence (shidō kegyō 四度加行) of a Shingon priest,
the sequence of homa performances starts with the ritual construction of the altar and
ends after several days of practice with its ritual destruction as well—it is dissolved into
the five elements of the cosmos.7 Thus, although for probably centuries Shingon ritual
practice has been done inside temple buildings at permanent altars, we find an almost
vestigial remnant of the outdoor, temporary ritual enclosures of Vedic ritual practice.
Other kinds of continuities and adaptations took place across the history of the homa.
Adaptations are found in the religious cultures of China and Japan where interactions
between the practices of the homa and other ritual practices were created. For example,
Christine Mollier has discussed the development in China of a homa devoted to the
seven stars of the Great Dipper.8 Similarly, in medieval Japan a Shintō version of the
homa and other rituals based on tantric Buddhist prototypes were also developed.
As indicated by this brief description, the homa has been transmitted across the
boundaries between several religious cultures, as well as having retained elements that
point to a continuity of history extending over millennia. With roots in the rituals of
Indo-Iranian and Vedic religious practices, and branches extending across the entire tan-
tric world, it has been adapted to a variety of different purposes and cultural settings. In
addition, it is a very well documented ritual, including canonic descriptions, manuals
for performance, polemical discussions, and the like. This makes it one of the best pos-
sible rituals for studying ritual change over a long period of time and across religious
cultures.9 Before moving on to the issues involved in the study of ritual change per se, it
4i Introduction
will be useful to consider the category of ritual and how it has been distinguished from
other related phenomena, such as ceremonial and festival. Examining how categories are
formed reveals either explicit or implicit theoretical commitments.

RITUAL, CEREMONIAL, FESTIVAL

As described in the essays that comprise this collection, the homa can be performed in a
variety of different settings. In one case, for example, it is found as one element within a
much larger complex of religious activities, such as the Navarātra described by Nawaraj
Chaulagain in his chapter. In other cases, the homa is performed as a stand-alone ritual,
such as in the Shugendō saitō goma discussed by Richard Payne. Such wide-ranging
differences in the context of a homa performance may raise for some readers categorial
concerns—what are we talking about when we say that the homa is a ritual, or that it is
an element of a larger ceremonial sequence, or that it is performed as part of a festival?
In contrast to some other approaches, we assert that it is not in fact possible to draw
clear distinctions between these kinds of activities. While the categories are inherently
fuzzy, the reflections of some earlier scholars helps us to discern a conceptual landscape
within which to negotiate our path between homa as stand-alone ritual and as element
in ceremonies or as part of a festival.10
Raymond Firth, for example, makes the distinction between ritual and ceremonial
on the basis of conceptions of ritual efficacy. In his now classic studies of the Tikopia,
Firth defines ritual as “a formal set of procedures of a symbolic kind, involving a code
for social communication, and believed to possess a special efficacy in affecting techni-
cal and social conditions of the performers or other participants.”11 Ceremonial is in his
view a subset of ritual, but

the emphasis is more upon symbolic acknowledgement and demonstration of a

social situation than upon the efficacy of the procedures in modifying that situa-
tion. Whereas other ritual procedures are believed to have a validity of their own,
ceremonial procedures, while formal in character, are not believed in themselves to
sustain the situation or effect a change in it.12

Elsewhere he notes that such a “compressed distinction is not wholly satisfactory … [as]
in practice they may merge into or alternate with one another.”13 Our purpose here,
however, is not to develop a definitive way of distinguishing between the ritual and cer-
emonial, but rather the opposite—to emphasize the complexity of the overlapping cat-
egories of ritual, ceremonial, and festival.14 Attempts to formulate classificatory systems,
typologies, or taxonomies for such forms of human behavior as ritual, ceremonial, and
festival are necessarily stipulative, rather than corresponding to either an objective dis-
tinction, or to a conceptual structure that can be reliably applied universally. The utility
 Introduction j5
of such category systems depends upon and is limited to the objects of study. William
Sax expresses a similar concern with the category of ritual as such. He describes it as the
problem of reifying ritual so that scholars and others “mistake an analytic category for
a natural kind.”15
One of the characteristics that many scholars call attention to when identifying ritu-
als is that rituals are performed repeatedly. In addition to being (at least potentially16)
repeatable, rituals are contained performances intended to effect some end.17 We take
these three characteristics—repeatability, marked limits in space and time, and teleo-
logical intent—as a kind of minimalist set of indicators of how we are using the term
“ritual” here.
Many scholars have offered more expansive definitions or characterizations. For
example, a partial list of characteristics is given by Bruce Lincoln, drawing on Catherine
Bell’s work. “Bell identifies formality, tradition, invariance, rule-governance, and sacral
symbolism as some of the marks by which ritual is regularly distinguished, and to these
we might add repetition, solemnity, and countless factors that vary with cultural con-
text.”18 Similarly, although not offered explicitly as a definition, Sheldon Pollock lists
“formalized, conventionalized, ceremonial, and symbolic behavior” as the character-
istics of ritual.19 As Lincoln suggests in the quotation above, such a list is not closed,
and while the individual items on such a list may constitute elements of a family resem-
blance, the more strands one attempts to bind together to form a polythetic definition,
the more diffuse that definition becomes and the less heuristic value it has. It is for this
reason that we prefer a more minimalist approach, which serves the same ends of inclu-
sivity at least as well.
Further, there appears to be no general consensus about the various categories or ter-
minology that may be used in describing other related categories of activity, such as fes-
tival, ceremonial, and so on—and perhaps that is just as well. However, what such lack
indicates is twofold. First, the categories are reflections of social practices, and second
are themselves the product of other social practices. As a consequence, they are formed
by existing preconceptions as well as by the fluidities of the objects of study. As social
constructs the categories not only do not have, but cannot have clear boundaries. As
intellectually satisfying as definitional clarity may be, it is always at best a limited accom-
plishment, one constrained by some delimited field of inquiry for which such clarity is
possible. Beyond that field the categories formed to describe it lose their sharp edges,
with marginal cases and increasingly fuzzy boundaries20 emerging. Thus, for example,
we find some versions of the homa as examined in this collection to be part of the cer-
emonies marking a festival. While we can distinguish between them terminologically in
this fashion, all three—ritual, ceremony, festival—are mutually implicative. Each cat-
egory informs the significance of the others, and to these three several others might be
added as well.21 Rather than claiming that any specific form or function identifies ritual
as a discrete category, or taking refuge in stipulating it as a scholarly category, Catherine
Bell’s emphasis on ritualizing points up the fuzzy boundaries and ambiguities of the
6i Introduction
category. She argues that “ritualization is a way of acting that specifically establishes a
privileged contrast, differentiating itself as more important or powerful. Such privileged
distinctions may be drawn in a variety of culturally specific ways that render the ritual-
ized acts dominant in status.”22 With this purposely minimalist indication of how we
are using the term “ritual,” we can now consider the central theoretical issue for this
collection, ritual change.

STUDYING THE DYNAMICS OF RITUAL CHANGE: THE LONGUE DURéE

The theoretical movement away from functionalist explanations, which emphasized sta-
bility and the return to the norm, has opened consideration of change and disruption
as the normal state of affairs. As Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern put it, “stud-
ies of ritual practices today take into account not only variation but also creativity and
innovation. This is in line with a general shift towards the study of change as distinct
from continuity.”23 Many of the studies of ritual change that have appeared following
this movement away from functionalist presumptions of stability and homeostasis have
examined a particular ritual as it changes over a relatively short period of time. This
has involved rethinking the status of ritual as historical, rather than as part of an eter-
nal, unchanging religious reality. John D. Kelly and Martha Kaplan have suggested that
“Nowhere more than in the study of ritual has the turn to history raised fundamental
questions for anthropology.”24 While ritual is frequently now discussed as process, prac-
tice, or performance, this needs to be qualified by a conception of any particular ritual
as a historical entity.

The Historicality of Ritual

The study of ritual has changed dramatically over the period extending from the last
quarter of the twentieth century to the present. The effects of those changes are still,
however, being integrated into broader areas of study, such as religious studies. Reflective
and critical studies have shown that in the nineteenth century ritual was one of the
dichotomizing concepts around which the formation of conceptions of modernity, that
is, the distinction between us and them, was crystallized. The tendency to define ritual as
unchanging allowed it to be consigned if not to the dustbins of history, then to a childish
stage of cognitive development. This evaluation reflects the self-image of Enlightenment
modernism, boldly throwing off the shackles of tradition, freeing the individual from
outdated and stultifying social impediments.

The Image of Ritual as Unchanging and Meaningless

A common conception of ritual in contemporary Western popular religious culture has

been—and apparently continues to be despite changes in the academic community—that
 Introduction j7
ritual comprises a set of rigidly codified actions performed without reflection or inten-
tional involvement. In this view ritual is performed simply out of rote memorization and
continues to be performed despite being meaningless. No doubt the idea that rituals are
unchanging—performed by rote—has several sources. One important source, however,
is the common equation of tradition and authority. As Monica Wilson noted, “Ritual
is commonly validated partly by its supposed antiquity … real or supposed.”25 This strat-
egy for claiming authority is no doubt one of the reasons that ritual has been seen as
unchanging—in order to be meaningful, valid, or effective, ritual needed to be socially
understood as partaking in a continuity of action going back beyond current memory.
In such matters, however, current memory seems to be very short, such that “within a
short space of time new forms are accepted as ‘traditional’ in ritual.”26 In addition to this
common strategy employed within religious traditions, however, theoretical and meth-
odological commitments of academic studies of ritual also contributed to the image of
ritual as unchanging.
For almost a century, for example, anthropology was defined as methodologically
distinct from history, choosing to focus on the “anthropological present.” Although
not necessarily intended to do so, such “snapshots” generally reinforced the image of
the “primitive Other” as existing in a timeless, that is, unchanging social reality.27 This
imagery both reinforced and was reinforced by the theologically informed rhetoric of
distinction made in the early development of religious studies between Christianity
as vital and changing, in contrast with other religions portrayed as ossified, outdated,
stultifying impediments to social and material progress, ready to be supplanted by the
“Good News.”28 More broadly, these images, presumptions, and rhetorics were part of
the modernist justification for colonialism and imperialism. The twin benefits of the
steam engine and the Gospel were to be brought to all the world’s people.
Christiane Brosius and Ute Hüsken have pointed out that this popular image of ritual
as meaningless29 is also of the rhetoric of “high modernity.” Citing the founding work of
figures such as William Robertson Smith (1846–1894), James George Frazer (1854‒1941),
Arnold van Gennep (1873‒1951), and Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), they point out that
the term “ritual”

was imbued with stereotyping connotations referring to the odd, obsolete, primi-
tive, timeless and thus unchanging, opposed to the notions of modern, civilised
and progressive. Rituals were tied to religion, and according to a secular worldview,
deemed an inappropriate form of action in a civilised, “enlightened” society.30

This rhetoric of high modernity equating progress with secularization31 has itself come
into question, for example, by Eric Wolfe32 and more recently by Robert Bellah.33
Similarly, focus on the anthropological present has increasingly given way to a recogni-
tion that because of colonialism putatively “traditional” societies available for anthro-
pological study were actually themselves undergoing significant changes created by the
8i Introduction
stresses resulting from the very colonial status that made research possible.34 Such reflec-
tions contributed to what Philippe Buc has described as the “crossbreeding of history
and anthropology—an encounter that began before World War II and picked up speed
in 1970s.”35 Kelly and Kaplan note that in addition to the image of ritual as static,

the anthropological images of ritual have always existed in complex relations with
a reservoir of images of ritual in Western culture more generally, relations of dis-
placement, usurpation, inversion, subversion, incorporation, and transformation,
of images authored by missionaries, travelers, conquerors, and others, such as jug-
gernaut, suttee, yogic asceticism, vedic mystery, human sacrifice, cannibalism,
head-hunting, firewalking, charlatan priests, and natives dancing in firelight.36

Particularly in the last quarter of the twentieth century, the field of religious studies has
been expanded by scholars whose background training lay in fields other than theology,
and as a consequence such tropes as “the timeless East,” “eternal truths,” and “the Asian
mind” have been questioned.37
Despite these and other critiques, such preconceptions of ritual comprise a deeply
embedded cultural residue, a residue formed out of the theological debates dating at least
back to the period of the Protestant Reformation. As found in contemporary American
popular religious culture, they evidence the triumph of broadly Protestant understand-
ings of the nature of ritual. Commonly, usage of the very term “ritual” in that religious
culture carries a dismissive tone or pejorative connotation.38 Consonant with the chal-
lenges to the rhetoric of high modernity that presumed secularization as an inevitable
historical process, increasingly frequent challenges to this stereotypical image of ritual as
unchanging and meaningless are now also to be found in the academic study of religion,
including religious studies per se, and also the social scientific studies of religion such as
history, anthropology, and archeology.
According to Brosius and Hüsken, this stereotypic image of ritual as outmoded religi-
osity and inadequate science began to change in the late 1970s. The concept of ritual was
applied to secular and political dimensions of society, and from there began to be applied
more widely.39 Running throughout these new valorizations of ritual as a social process,
“ritualizing” as Catherine Bell40 called it, much of the emphasis has been on ritual as
historically located, although perhaps not explicitly theorized as such. In other words,
ritual is treated as something that occurs at a particular time and place for a particular
reason.
In Buddhist studies, despite the long-standing imagery of the tradition as the arche-
typal expression of enlightened spontaneity, even Chan and Zen have recently come
under examination as ritual traditions.41 For many Western converts to Buddhism,
the representation of the tradition as rational, humanistic, in accord with science, and
opposed to ritualism has become a modern dogma.42 That representation, however, has
been overdetermined by apparent congruence of the “rhetoric of immediacy” of the
 Introduction j9
Chan and Zen tradition43 and the neo-Romantic religious conceptions of immediate
perception and spontaneous realization. Concomitant with this has been attention to
embodiment as an important theme.44 Hopefully this latter will facilitate an intellec-
tual awareness that Buddhist meditation, despite claims of exceptionalism, is located
on a spectrum of yogic practices, themselves highly ritualized, and deriving from Indic
sources—and not a unique marker of Buddhist identity.
The issues related to such a revisioning of yogic practice require an awareness of ritual
as a historical entity, which is what is meant here by its “historicality.”45 Although the
claim that ritual is historical may on the face of it seem unproblematic, many studies of
ritual have tended to examine ritual as a particular instance, sometimes in the idiom
of the “ethnographic present,” and at other times from a short-term perspective, that is
histoire événementielle. Such short-term perspectives, however, tend to obscure the his-
toricality of any particular ritual as a social phenomenon. Many social phenomena have
been studied historically, such as, to take some arbitrary examples, the book, democracy,
fashion, and domesticated plants. There is, therefore, no inherent reason that rituals
should not also be considered as historical entities.
The historicality of ritual is demonstrated in this collection. Examining a variety of
different instances of the homa over a period of more than two and a half millennia
shows a variety of changes in the ritual’s performance. As suggested earlier, in the course
of that history, the homa has been adapted into several different religious cultures, being
transformed in identifiable ways. The homa retains an identity that makes it recogniz-
ably the “same” ritual, despite having been transmitted across both temporal expanses
and cultural boundaries.

Ritual Change/Ritual Invariance

Despite the resistance of popular religious culture, the preconceptions embedded in

ordinary language about ritual, and the theological foundations of religious studies,
that rituals change is no longer a radical observation. Bruce Lincoln has suggested that
a shift in intellectual climate—from one regarding ritual as static to one that regards
ritual as a historical entity subject to change like any other historical entity—took place
around 1980.46 Similarly, Michael Stausberg asserts that “the discovery that rituals are
mechanism[s]‌of world making in their own right and hence merit an independent
inquiry was one of the starting points for the recent take-off of ‘ritual studies’ since the
1970s.”47 Since that time, a substantial body of scholarship has been created examining
not only ritual per se but also ritual change.
On the other hand, the idea that ritual is invariant, that is, stable or
unchanging—sometimes to the degree of being synonymous with pathology—also
remains strong. Some scholars working in the area of cognitive theories of ritual con-
tinue to theorize while holding an a priori conception that ritual is invariant, and that
ritual practitioners hold concomitant attitudes. For example, Robert N. McCauley
10 i Introduction
summarizes work by Pascal Boyer and Pierre Liénard suggesting that cultural construc-
tion of certain

evolved dispositions of the human mind is responsible for everything about reli-
gious rituals from the fact that they must be carried out just right each and every
time, to the fact that at each step they require concentration on particular compo-
nents of the action at hand, to their focus on a comparatively small set of recurrent
themes. Those themes have to do with such things as managing problems of con-
tamination, hence the focus on cleaning and washing, and creating and maintain-
ing order and boundaries.48

Boyer and Liénard in turn point to Roy Rappaport as the source of this list of charac-
teristics.49 According to Boyer and Liénard, Rappaport had “enjoined” anthropologists
to explain “the ‘obvious’ (i.e., obvious to all anthropologists) aspects of ritual—those
frequent features that a decent model should explain.”50 They summarize these aspects
under six rubrics. First, “no obvious empirical goals: ‘meaningless’ acts” within which
they distinguish between the meaninglessness of specific acts within the ritual and the
purpose for which a ritual is performed. Second, compulsion, which they describe in
terms of a feeling that one “must perform a specific ritual, that it would be dangerous,
unsafe, or improper not to do it.” Third, literalism and rigidity, which indicates that
despite variation between ritual performances, “people strive to achieve a performance
that matches their representation of past performances, and that they attach great emo-
tional weight to any deviation from that remembered pattern.” Fourth, “repetition, reit-
eration, redundancy,” that is, doing the same action several times, the exact number of
repetitions and the exactness of the repetition being important. Fifth, “order and bound-
aries,” which both distinguishes ritual from “the relatively unpredictable patterns of
nonritual environments,” and distinguishes the ritual space from “the other, unmarked
space.” And, sixth, a set of “specific concerns” in exemplification of which they identify
as common themes: “pollution and cleansing, protection against invisible dangers, and
the creation of a special space and time.”51
Liénard and Boyer develop this characterization of ritual in order to identify the
cognitive processes formative of ritual practices. They point to Freud’s “tantalizing
observation that obsessive neurosis should be seen as a private cult and religion as a col-
lective form of neurotic obsession.”52 While Freud’s conception of “ritual as pathology”
has been thoroughly critiqued to the point that it is no longer a viable explanation,53
Liénard and Boyer do explore the similarities between such behaviors as children’s
rituals, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and life-stage-relevant intrusive thoughts that,
although “clearly different” manifest “a common set of cognitive processes.”54 That there
are consistent similarities between rituals and that such similarities may result from cog-
nitive processes shared by ritual practitioners and others does not, however, establish
Another random document with
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 Chapter II.
At that time horses were used as a mode of conveyance so much
more than carriages, that almost every gentlewoman had her own
steed, and Miss Cochrane, being a skilful rider, was possessed of a
well-managed palfrey, on whose speed and other qualities she had
been accustomed to depend. On the morning after she had bid her
father farewell, long ere the inhabitants of Edinburgh were astir, she
found herself many miles on the road to the Borders. She had taken
care to attire herself in a manner which corresponded with the
design of passing herself off for a young serving-woman journeying
on a borrowed horse to the house of her mother in a distant part of
the country; and by only resting at solitary cottages, where she
generally found the family out at work, save perhaps an old woman
or some children, she had the good fortune, on the second day after
leaving Edinburgh, to reach in safety the abode of her old nurse, who
lived on the English side of the Tweed, four miles beyond the town of
Berwick. In this woman she knew she could place implicit
confidence, and to her, therefore, revealed her secret. She was
resolved, she said, to make an attempt to save her father’s life, by
stopping the postman, an equestrian like herself, and forcing him to
deliver up his bags, in which she expected to find the fatal warrant.
Singular as such a determination may appear in a delicate young
woman, especially if we consider that she was aware of the arms
always carried by the man to whose charge the mail was committed,
it is nevertheless an undoubted fact that such was her resolve. In
pursuance of this design, she had brought with her a brace of small
pistols, together with a horseman’s cloak tied up in a bundle, and
hung on the crutch of her saddle; and now borrowed from her nurse
the attire of her foster-brother, which, as he was a slight-made lad,
fitted her reasonably well.
At that period, all those appliances which at this day accelerate the
progress of the traveller were unknown, and the mail from London,
which now arrives in about ten hours, took eight days in reaching the
Scottish capital. Miss Cochrane thus calculated on a delay of sixteen
or seventeen days in the execution of her father’s sentence—a space
of time which she deemed amply sufficient to give a fair trial to the
treaty set on foot for his liberation. She had, by means which it is
unnecessary here to detail, possessed herself of the most minute
information with regard to the places at which the postmen rested on
their journey, one of which was a small public-house, kept by a
widow woman, on the outskirts of the little town of Belford. There
the man who received the bag at Durham was accustomed to arrive
about six o’clock in the morning, and take a few hours’ repose before
proceeding farther on his journey.[19] In pursuance of the plan laid
down by Miss Cochrane, she arrived at this inn about an hour after
the man had composed himself to sleep, in the hope of being able, by
the exercise of her wit and dexterity, to ease him of his charge.
19. Lest it should appear at issue with probability that the postman should
thus “take his ease at his inn,” it may be mentioned, as a fact defying all question,
that this official, at a period much later, used sometimes to dismount on a muir,
near the place here mentioned, and partake of a game at quoits, or other sports
which might be proceeding by the wayside.
Having put her horse into the stable, which was a duty that
devolved on the guests at this little change-house, from its mistress
having no ostler, she entered the only apartment which the house
afforded, and demanded refreshment.
“Sit down at the end of that table,” said the old woman, “for the
best I have to give you is there already; and be pleased, my bonnie
man, to make as little noise as ye can, for there’s ane asleep in that
bed that I like ill to disturb.”
Miss Cochrane promised fairly; and after attempting to eat some of
the viands, which were the remains of the sleeping man’s meal, she
asked for some cold water.
“What!” said the old dame, as she handed it to her; “ye are a water-
drinker, are ye? It’s but an ill custom for a change-house.”
“I am aware of that,” replied her guest; “and therefore, when in a
public-house, I always pay for it the price of the stronger potation,
which I cannot take.”
“Indeed!—well, that is but just,” said the landlady; “and I think the
more of you for such reasonable conduct.”
“Is the well where you get this water near at hand?” said the young
lady; “for if you will take the trouble to bring me some from it, as this
is rather warm, it shall be considered in the lawing.”
“It is a good bit off,” responded the landlady; “but I cannot refuse
to fetch some for such a civil, discreet lad, and will be as quick as I
can; but, for any sake, take care and don’t meddle with these pistols,”
she continued, pointing to a pair of pistols on the table, “for they are
loaded, and I am always terrified for them.”
Saying this, she disappeared; and Miss Cochrane, who would have
contrived some other errand for her, had the well been near, no
sooner saw the door shut, than she passed, with trembling eagerness,
and a cautious but rapid step, to the place where the man lay soundly
sleeping, in one of those close wooden bedsteads common in the
houses of the poor, the door of which was left half open to admit the
air, and which she opened still wider, in the hope of seeing the mail-
bag, and being able to seize upon it. But what was her dismay when
she beheld only a part of the integument which contained what she
would have sacrificed her life a thousand times to obtain, just
peeping out from below the shaggy head and brawny shoulders of its
keeper, who lay in such a position upon it as to give not the smallest
hope of its extraction without his being aroused from his nap.
A few bitter moments of observation served to convince her that
possession of this treasure must be obtained in some other way; and,
again closing the door of the bed, she approached the pistols, and
having taken them from the holsters, she as quickly as possible drew
the loading, which having secreted, she then returned them to their
cases, and resumed her seat at the foot of the table. She had barely
time to recover from the agitation into which the fear of the man’s
awakening during her recent occupation had thrown her, when the
old woman returned with the water; and having taken a draught, of
which she stood much in need, she settled her account much to her
landlady’s content, by paying for the water the price of a pot of beer.
Having then carelessly asked and ascertained how much longer the
other guest was likely to continue his sleep, she left the house, and
mounting her horse, set off at a trot, in a different direction from that
in which she had arrived.
Making a compass of two or three miles, she once more fell into
the high road between Belford and Berwick, where she walked her
horse gently on, awaiting the coming up of the postman. Though all
her faculties were now absorbed in one aim, and the thought of her
father’s deliverance still reigned supreme in her mind, yet she could
not help occasionally figuring to herself the possibility of her
tampering with the pistols being discovered, and their loading
replaced, in which case it was more than likely that her life would be
the forfeit of the act she meditated. A woman’s fears would still
intrude, notwithstanding all her heroism, and the glorious issue
which promised to attend the success of her enterprise. When she at
length saw and heard the postman advancing behind her, the strong
necessity of the case gave her renewed courage; and it was with
perfect coolness that, on his coming close up, she civilly saluted him,
put her horse into the same pace with his, and rode on for some way
in his company. He was a strong, thick-set fellow, with a good-
humoured countenance, which did not seem to Miss Cochrane, as
she looked anxiously upon it, to savour much of hardy daring. He
rode with the mail-bags (for there were two—one containing the
letters direct from London, and the other those taken up at the
different post-offices on the road) strapped firmly to his saddle in
front, close to the holsters. After riding a short distance together,
Miss Cochrane deemed it time, as they were nearly half-way between
Belford and Berwick, to commence her operations. She therefore
rode nearly close to her companion, and said, in a tone of
determination,—
“Friend, I have taken a fancy for those mail-bags of yours, and I
must have them; therefore, take my advice, and deliver them up
quietly, for I am provided for all hazards. I am mounted, as you see,
on a fleet steed; I carry firearms; and, moreover, am allied with those
who are stronger, though not bolder than myself. You see yonder
wood,” she continued, pointing to one at the distance of about a mile,
with an accent and air which was meant to carry intimidation with it;
“again, I say, take my advice; give me the bags, and speed back the
road you came for the present, nor dare to approach that wood for at
least two or three hours to come.”
There was in such language from a stripling something so
surprising that the man looked on Miss Cochrane for an instant in
silent and unfeigned amazement.
“If you mean, my young master,” said he, as soon as he found his
tongue, “to make yourself merry at my expense, you are welcome. I
am no sour churl to take offence at the idle words of a foolish boy.
But if,” he said, taking one of the pistols from the holster, and
turning its muzzle towards her, “ye are mad enough to harbour one
serious thought of such a matter, I am ready for you. But, methinks,
my lad, you seem at an age when robbing a garden or an old woman’s
fruit-stall would befit you better, if you must turn thief, than taking
his Majesty’s mails upon his own highway, from such a stout man as
I am. Be thankful, however, that you have met with one who will not
shed blood if he can help it, and sheer off before you provoke me to
fire.”
“Nay,” said his young antagonist, “I am not fonder of bloodshed
than you are; but if you will not be persuaded, what can I do? for I
have told you a truth, that mail I must and will have. So now
choose,” she continued, as she drew one of the small pistols from
under her cloak, and deliberately cocking it, presented it in his face.
“Then your blood be upon your own head,” said the fellow, as he
raised his hand, and fired his pistol, which, however, only flashed in
the pan. Dashing this weapon to the ground, he lost not a moment in
pulling out the other, which he also aimed at his assailant, and fired
with the same result. In a transport of rage and disappointment, the
man sprung from his horse, and made an attempt to seize her; but by
an adroit use of her spurs she eluded his grasp, and placed herself
out of his reach. Meanwhile his horse had moved forward some
yards, and to see and seize the advantage presented by this
circumstance was one and the same to the heroic girl, who, darting
towards it, caught the bridle, and having led her prize off about a
hundred yards, stopped while she called to the thunderstruck
postman to remind him of her advice about the wood. She then put
both horses to their speed, and on turning to look at the man she had
robbed, had the pleasure of perceiving that her mysterious threat
had taken effect, and he was now pursuing his way back to Belford.
Miss Cochrane speedily entered the wood to which she had
alluded, and tying the strange horse to a tree, out of all observation
from the road, proceeded to unfasten the straps of the mail. By
means of a sharp penknife, which set at defiance the appended locks,
she was soon mistress of the contents, and with an eager hand broke
open the Government dispatches, which were unerringly pointed out
to her by their address to the council in Edinburgh, and their
imposing weight and broad seals of office. Here she found not only
the warrant for her father’s death, but also many other sentences
inflicting different degrees of punishment on various delinquents.
These, however, it may be readily supposed, she did not then stop to
examine; she contented herself with tearing them into small
fragments, and placing them carefully in her bosom.
The intrepid girl now mounted her steed, and rode off, leaving all
the private papers as she had found them, imagining—what
eventually proved the case—that they would be discovered ere long,
from the hints she had thrown out about the wood, and thus reach
their proper places of destination. She now made all haste to reach
the cottage of her nurse, where, having not only committed to the
flames the fragments of the dreaded warrant, but also the other
obnoxious papers, she quickly resumed her female garments, and
was again, after this manly and daring action, the simple and
unassuming Miss Grizel Cochrane. Leaving the cloak and pistols
behind her, to be concealed by her nurse, she again mounted her
horse, and directed her flight towards Edinburgh, and by avoiding as
much as possible the high road, and resting at sequestered cottages,
as she had done before (and that only twice for a couple of hours
each time), she reached town early in the morning of the next day.
It must now suffice to say that the time gained by the heroic act
above related was productive of the end for which it was undertaken,
and that Sir John Cochrane was pardoned, at the instigation of the
king’s favourite counsellor, who interceded for him in consequence
of receiving a bribe of five thousand pounds from the Earl of
Dundonald. Of the feelings which on this occasion filled the heart of
his courageous and devoted daughter, we cannot speak in adequate
terms; and it is perhaps best at any rate to leave them to the
imagination of the reader. The state of the times was not such for
several years as to make it prudent that her adventure should be
publicly known; but after the Revolution, when the country was at
length relieved from persecution and danger, and every man was at
liberty to speak of the trials he had undergone, and the expedients by
which he had mastered them, her heroism was neither unknown nor
unapproved. Miss Cochrane afterwards married Mr Ker of Moriston,
in the county of Berwick; and there can be little doubt that she
proved equally affectionate and amiable as a wife, as she had already
been dutiful and devoted as a daughter.—Chambers’s Edinburgh
Journal.
 THE FATAL PRAYER.

The village of Gourock is situated on the shore of a fine bay, about

two miles from the town of Greenock. I was taken with the
pleasantness of its situation, when one day viewing it at a little
distance on the Greenock road, and sat down on the dyke by the
roadside to enjoy the prospect at my leisure.
Presently an elderly man, of a grave aspect and a maritime
appearance, passing slowly along the road, came and sat down near
the same place. I guessed him to be one of the better class of
fishermen, who had purchased, with the toil of his youth and his
manhood, a little breathing-time to look about him in the evening of
his days, ere the coming of night. After the usual salutations, we fell
into discourse together, and I found him to be a man who had looked
well about him in his pilgrimage, and reasoned on things and
feelings—not living as the brutes that perish. After a pause in the
conversation, he remarked, to my thinking, in a disjointed manner—
“Is it not strange, sir, that the thoughts that sometimes come into
the brain of a man sleeping or waking—like a wind that blows across
his bosom, coming he knows not whence, and going he knows not
whither—leave behind them an impression and a feeling, and
become the springs of human action, and mingle in the thread of
human destiny?”
“Strange, indeed,” said I. “What you say has more than once
occurred to me; but being unable to reason satisfactorily on the
subject, I set down altogether such ideas as having no better
foundation than the fears and superstitions of the ignorant. But it
seems to me that your remark, though of a general nature, must have
been made in mental reference to some particular thing; and I would
fain crave to know what it is.”
 “You are right,” said he; “I was thinking at the moment of
something which has sat, for some days past, like a millstone on my
mind: and I will tell it to you with pleasure.”
So I edged myself closer to him on the stones, that I might hear the
better; and without more ado he began to discourse as follows:
“About six months ago, a wedding took place in the village, and a
more comely and amiable couple never came together. Mr Douglas,
though the son of a poor man, had been an officer in the army,—an
ensign, I believe,—and when his regiment was disbanded, he came to
live here on his half-pay, and whatever little else he might have.
Jeanie Stuart at the time was staying with an uncle, one of our own
folk, her parents having both been taken away from her; and she
made up, as far as she could, for her board, by going in the summer
season to sew in the families that come from the great towns for the
sea-bathing. So gentle she was, and so calm in her deportment, and
so fair to look on withal, that even these nobility of the loom and the
sugar-hogshead thought it no dishonour to have her among them;
and unconsciously, as it were, they treated her just as if she had been
of the same human mould with themselves.
“Well, they soon got acquainted,—our Jeanie and Mr Douglas,—
and drew kindly together; and the end of it was they were married.
They lived in a house there, just beyond the point that you may see
forms the opposite angle of the bay, not far from a place called
Kempock; and Mr Douglas just employed himself, like any of us, in
fishing and daundering about, and mending his nets, and such like.
Jeanie was the happy woman now, for she had aye a mind above the
commonality; and, I am bold to say, thought her stay long enough
among these would-be gentry, where she sat many a wearisome day
for no use, and would fain have retired from their foolishness into
the strength and greenness of her own soul. But now she had a
companion and an equal, and indeed a superior; for Mr Douglas had
seen the world, and had read both books and men, and could wile
away the time in discoursing of what he had seen and heard tell of in
foreign lands, among strange people and unknown tongues. And
Jeanie listened, and listened, and thought her husband the first of
mankind. She clung to him as the honeysuckle clings to the tree: his
pleasure was her pleasure—his sorrow was her sorrow—his bare
word was her law.
 “One day, about two weeks ago, she appeared dull and dispirited,
and complained of a slight headache; on which Mr Douglas advised
her to go to bed and rest herself awhile; which she said she would do;
and having some business in the village he went out. On coming
back, however, in the forenoon, he found her just in the same spot,
leaning her head on her hand; but she told him she was better, and
that it was nothing at all. He then began to get his nets ready, saying
he was going out with some lads of the village to the deep-sea fishing,
and would be back the next day. She looked at him, but said nothing;
long and strangely she looked, as if wondering what he was doing,
and not understanding anything that was going on. But finally when
he came to kiss her and bid her good-bye, she threw her arms round
him, and when he would have gone she held him fast, and her bosom
heaved as if her heart would break; but still she said nothing.
“‘What can be the matter with you, Jeanie?’ said Mr Douglas.
“‘Stay with me to-day,’ said she at last; ‘depart not this night, just
this one night—it is not much to ask—to-morrow you may go where
you please, and I will not be your hindrance a moment.’
“But Mr Douglas was vexed at such folly, and she could answer
nothing to his questions, except that a thought had come into her
head, and she could not help it. So he was resolved to go, and kissing
her fondly, he threw his nets on his shoulders and went away.
“For some minutes after his departure Jeanie did not move from
the spot, but stood looking at the door whence he had gone out, and
then began to tremble all over like the leaf of a tree. At length,
coming to herself with a start, she knelt down, and throwing back her
hair from her forehead, turned her face up towards heaven, and
prayed with a loud voice to the Almighty, that she ‘might have her
husband in her arms that night.’ For some moments she remained
motionless and silent in the same attitude, till at length a sort of
brightness, resembling a calm smile, passed over her countenance
like a gleam of sunshine on the smooth sea, and bending her head
low and reverently, she rose up. She then went as usual about her
household affairs, and appeared not anything discomposed, but as
tranquil and happy as if nothing had happened.
“Now the weather was fine and calm in the morning, but towards
the afternoon it came on to blow; and indeed the air had been so
sultry all day, that the seafarers might easily tell there would be a
racket of the elements before long. As the wind, however, had been
rather contrary, it was supposed that the boats could not have got far
enough out to be in the mischief, but would put back when they saw
the signs in the sky. But in the meantime the wind increased, till
towards night it blew as hard a gale as we have seen in these parts for
a long time. The ships out there, at the Tail of the Bank, were driven
from their moorings, and two of them stranded on their beam ends
on the other side; every stick and stitch on the sea made for any port
they could find; and as the night came on in darkness and thunder, it
was a scene that might cow even hearts that had been brought up on
the water as if it was their proper element, and been familiar with the
voice of the tempest from their young days. There was a sad
lamenting and murmuring then, among the women folk especially—
them that were kith or kin to the lads on the sea; and they went to
one another’s houses in the midst of the storm and the rain, and put
in their pale faces through the darkness, as if searching for hope and
comfort, and drawing close to one another like a flock of frightened
sheep in their fellowship of grief and fear. But there was one who
stirred not from her house, and who felt no terror at the shrieking of
the night-storm, and sought for no comfort in the countenance of
man—and that was the wife of Mr Douglas. She sometimes, indeed,
listened to the howling of the sea that came by fits on her ear like the
voice of the water-kelpie, and starting would lay down her work for a
moment; but then she remembered the prayer she had prayed to
Him who holds the reins of the tempest in His hands, and who says
to the roaring waters, ‘Be still,’ and they are still—and the glorious
balm she had felt to sink into her heart at that moment of high and
holy communion, even like the dew of heaven on a parched land. So
her soul was comforted, and she said to herself, ‘God is not a man
that He can lie;’ and she rested on His assurance as on a rock, and
laughed to scorn the tremblings of her woman’s bosom. For why?
The anchor of her hope was in heaven, and what earthly storm was
so mighty as to remove it? Then she got up, and put the room in
order, and placed her husband’s slippers to air at the fireside; and
stirred up the fuel, and drew in the arm-chair for her weary and
storm-beaten mariner. Then would she listen at the door, and look
out into the night for his coming; but she could hear no sound save
the voice of the waters, and the roar of the tempest, as it rushed
along the deep. She re-entered the house, and walked to and fro in
the room with a restless step, but an unblenched cheek.
“At last the neighbours came to her house, knowing that her
husband was one of those who had gone out that day, and told her
that they were going to walk down towards the Clough, even in the
mirk hour, to try if they could not hear some news of the boats. So
she went with them, and we all walked together along the road—
women and men, it might be, some twenty or thirty of us. But it was
remarked, that though she came not hurriedly nor in fear, yet she
had not even thrown her cloak on her shoulders, to defend her from
the night air, but came forth with her head uncovered, and in her
usual raiment of white, like a bride to the altar. As we passed along, it
must have been a strange sight to see so many pale faces by the red
glare of the torches they carried, and to hear so many human
wailings filling up the pauses of the storm; but at the head of our
melancholy procession there was a calm heart and a firm step, and
they were Jeanie’s. Sometimes, indeed, she would look back, as some
cry of womanish foreboding from behind would smite on her ear,
and strange thoughts would crowd into her mind; and once she was
heard to mutter—if her prayer had but saved her husband to bind
some other innocent victim to the mysterious altar of wrath! And she
stopped for a moment, as if in anguish at the wild imagination.
“But now as we drew nearer the rocks where the lighthouse is
built, sounds were heard distinctly on the shore, and we waved the
torches in the air, and gave a great shout, which was answered by
known voices—for they were some of our own people—and our
journey was at an end. A number of us then went on before, and
groped our way among the rocks as well as we could in the darkness;
but a woful tale met our ear; for one of the boats had been shattered
to pieces while endeavouring to land there, and when he went down
they were just dragging the body of a comrade, stiff and stark, from
the sea. When the women behind heard of this, there was a terrible
cry of dismay, for no one knew but it might be her own husband, son,
or brother; and some who carried lights dropped them from fear, and
others held them trembling to have the terrors of their hearts
confirmed.
“There was one, however, who stood calm and unmoved by the
side of the dead body. She spoke some words of holy comfort to the
women, and they were silent at her voice. She then stepped lightly
forward, and took a torch from the trembling hand that held it, and
bent down with it beside the corpse. As the light fell one moment on
her own fair face, it showed no signs of womanish feeling at the sight
and touch of mortality; a bright and lovely bloom glowed on her
cheek, and a heavenly lustre beamed in her eye; and as she knelt
there, her white garments and long dark hair floating far on the
storm, there was that in her look which drew the gaze even of that
terrified group from the object of their doubt and dread. The next
moment the light fell on the face of the dead—the torch dropped
from her hand, and she fell upon the body of her husband! Her
prayer was granted. She held her husband in her arms that night,
and although no struggles of parting life were heard or seen, she died
on his breast.”
When the fisherman had concluded his story—and after some
observations were made by us both, touching the mysterious
warning, joined with a grateful acknowledgment that the stroke of
death might be as often dealt in mercy as in wrath—we shook hands;
and asking one another’s names, as it might so fortune that we
should once more, in the course of our earthly pilgrimage, be within
call of one another, the old man and I parted, going each his several
way.—Literary Melange.
GLENMANNOW, THE STRONG HERDSMAN.

By William Bennet.

Duke James of Queensberry, like others of our nobility and gentry,

resided during a part of the year in London; and on one of his visits
to the metropolis, he and a party of friends happened to have a
match at discus, or, as it is more commonly called, “putting the
stone.” Several adepts happened to be of the party, who boasted
much of their superior strength and adroitness, and after making one
of their best throws, offered to stake a large sum that not one of their
companions knew of or could find a person to match it.
“The throw is certainly a good one,” said the Duke of Queensberry;
“yet I think it were easy to find many champions of sufficient muscle
to show us a much better. I myself have a homely unpractised
herdsman in Scotland, on whose head I will stake the sum you
mention, that he shall throw the quoit fully two yards over the best of
you.”
“Done! produce your man!” was the reply of all; and the duke
accordingly lost no time in dispatching a letter to one of his servants
at Drumlanrig, ordering him to set out immediately on its receipt for
Glenmannow, and to come with honest John M‘Call to London
without delay.
The duke’s letter with Glenmannow was not less absolute than the
order of an emperor. He wondered, but never thought of demurring;
and without any further preparation than clothing himself in his
Sunday’s suit, and giving Mally his wife a few charges about looking
to the hill in his absence, he assumed his large staff, and departed
with the servant for “Lunnun.”
 On his arrival, the duke informed him of the purpose for which he
had been sent, and desired that on the day, and at the hour
appointed, he should make his appearance along with one of his
servants, who knew perfectly the back streets and by-lanes of
London, and who, after he should have decided the bet, would
conduct him immediately in safety from the ground, as it was not
improbable that his appearance and performance might attract a
crowd and lead to unpleasant consequences. When the day arrived,
the party assembled and proceeded to the ground, where, to the
duke’s surprise, though not to his terror, his crafty opponents chose a
spot directly in front of a high wall, and at such a distance that the
best of their party should pitch the quoit exactly to the foot of it; so
that their antagonist, to make good the duke’s boast of “two yards
over them,” should be obliged to exceed them those two yards in
height, instead of straight forward distance. This implied such an
effort as amounted in their minds to a physical impossibility; and as
the duke, from having neglected to specify the particular nature of
the ground, could not legally object to this advantage, they looked
upon the victory as already their own.
The quoit chosen was a large ball of lead, and already had the
champion of the party tossed it to the wall, and demanded of the
duke to produce the man appointed to take it up. His grace’s servant,
who fully comprehended the instructions given to him, entered at
this crisis with the ‘buirdly’ and, to them, uncouth Glenmannow. His
appearance attracted no small notice, and even merriment; but the
imperturbable object of it regarded the whole scene with the
indifference peculiar to his character; and, with his mind fixed only
upon the great end for which he was there, requested to be shown the
quoit, and the spots from which and to where it had been thrown.
This demand was soon complied with, and while he assumed his
station, with the quoit in his hand, the duke whispered in his ear the
deception which had been practised, and urged him to exert his
whole force in order to render it unavailing.
“Will you throw off your coat? It will give you more freedom,” said
his Grace in conclusion.
“My coat! Na, na; nae coats aff wi’ me for this silly affair,” replied
he. “I thocht it had been some terrible I throw or ither that thae
chaps had made, when I was ca’ed for a’ the way to Lunnun to see to
gang ayont them; but if this be a’, I wadna hae meaned ye to hae
done’t yoursel.” Then poising the ball for a little in his hand, and
viewing it with an air of contempt, “There!” said he, tossing it
carelessly from him into the air, “he that likes may gang and fetch it
back.”
The ball, as if shot from the mouth of a cannon, flew on in a
straight line completely over the wall, and alighted on the roof of a
house at some distance beyond it. Its weight and velocity forced it
through the tiles, and with a crash which immediately caused the
house to be evacuated by its inmates, it penetrated also the garret
floor, and rolled upon that of the next storey. An instantaneous
hubbub ensued,—the party staring at each other in silence, and the
crowd swearing it was the devil! but the servant knew his duty, and
in a twinkling Glenmannow was no longer amongst them.
His Grace, after paying for the damage done to the house,
conducted the whole party to his residence, there to discharge their
forfeit, and to gaze upon the prodigy by whom they were vanquished.
Glenmannow was well rewarded for his trouble and loss of time in
journeying to London; and, over and above the immediate bounty of
his Grace, he returned to his honest Mally with a discharge for one
year’s rent of the farm in his pocket.
One summer, during his Grace’s residence at Drumlanrig, his
friend the Duke of Buccleuch, who was at that time colonel of a
regiment of fencibles, happened to be passing between Dumfries and
Sanquhar with a company of his grenadiers; and having made
Thornhill a station for the night, he went and billeted himself upon
his Grace of Queensberry, by whom he was received with a hearty
welcome. The two friends deeming one night’s intercourse too short,
and Buccleuch’s marching orders not being peremptory in regard to
time, it was agreed between them that they should spend the two
succeeding days together, and that the soldiers, during that period,
should be distributed among the tenantry around the castle.
Buccleuch, though a personal stranger to Glenmannow, was no
stranger to his fame; and it was contrived between them, that a few
of the grenadiers should be dispatched to beat up his quarters, and
endeavour to force themselves upon him as his guests. Six of the
stoutest were accordingly selected for this purpose, and after being
told the character of the person to whom they were sent, and the joke
which was intended to follow it, they received a formal billet, and set
out for their destination. Their orders were to enter the house in a
seemingly rough manner, to find fault with everything, to quarrel
with Glenmannow, and endeavour, if possible, to overpower and
bind him; but not on any account to injure either his person or
effects in even the slightest degree. The soldiers, their commander
knew, were arch fellows, and would acquit themselves in the true
spirit of their instructions.
In those days few roads, excepting footpaths,—and those
frequently too indistinctly marked to be traced by a stranger,—
existed in the interior parts of the country. The soldiers, therefore,
experienced no small difficulty in marshalling their way around the
slope of the huge Cairnkinnow, in evading bogs and brakes, leaping
burns and march dykes, and in traversing all the heights and hollows
which lay between them and their secluded bourne. But the toils of
their journey were more than compensated by the pleasures of it, for
the pilgrim must possess little of either fancy or feeling, who could
wander without delight amid the wild scenery of that mountainous
district. When the top of Glenquhargen is reached, and the bottom of
the Glen of Scaur is beheld far, far beneath your feet; when the little
river, which gives to the glen its name, is seen, descending from the
hills, like an infant commencing the journey of life, into the long level
holm which spreads its bosom to receive it; when, after descending,
the eyes are cast around on its amphitheatre of Alpine hills, arrayed
in “the brightness of green,” and on the clouds that slumber, or the
mists that curl along their summits; and when the head is thrown
backward to contemplate the rocky peak of Glenquhargen, with the
hawk, the gled, and the raven whirling, screaming, and croaking
around it, that individual were dull and despicable indeed whose
spirit would not fly forth and mingle, and identify itself, as it were,
with the grand and the beautiful around him.
In a truly picturesque situation, on the side of one of the most
northern of those hills, the soldiers beheld the house of
Glenmannow. It was a low, thatchroofed building, with a peat-stack
leaning against one gable, and what might well be denominated a
hut, which served for barn, byre, and stable, attached to the other;
while a short way farther up the hill stood a round bucht, in which,
upon occasion, the sturdy tenant was in the habit of penning his
flock. A more modern structure has now been reared in the
immediate vicinity of Glenmannow’s domicile; yet in the beginning
of the present century some vestiges of the ancient one were still
remaining.
It was nearly noon when the party arrived in the “door-step;” yet at
that late hour they found Mally busied in making a quantity of milk
porridge for her own and her husband’s breakfast, who had not yet
returned from his morning visit to the hill. The appearance of
soldiers in so sequestered a spot was to her a matter of scarcely less
surprise than was that of the Spaniards to the simple Indians, on
their first landing upon the shores of the New World. Soldiers, too,
are generally objects of terror in such places, where their names are
associated in the minds of the peasantry only with ideas of
oppression and of slaughter; and at the period referred to, this
feeling was in much greater force than at present. Poor Mally
endeavoured as much as possible to conceal her fears and
embarrassment, and with all the politeness she was mistress of,
desired the party to be seated. Her artifice, however, was far from
equalling their penetration: they soon remarked her timorous side—
glances and hesitating manner, as she walked backward and forward
through the house; and they therefore resolved to divert themselves a
little by working upon her prejudices.
“That bayonet of mine,” said one of the fellows, “will never be as
clear again, I am afraid. The blood of that old herd, whom we did
away with as we came, sticks confoundedly to it.”
Mally was at this moment dishing the porridge in two goans, one
for herself and another for John, and on hearing this horrible
annunciation, she made a dead pause, and letting go the foot of the
pot, suffered it to fall to its perpendicular with a bang which forced
the cleps out of her hand, and precipitated the whole, with a large
quantity of undished porridge, to the floor.
“If we do any more such tricks to-day,” continued another wag, “I
shall wipe mine well before the blood dries upon it, and then it will
not rust as yours has done.”
Mally, regardless of the porridge she had spilt, now stepped with
cautious, but quick and trembling steps to the door. Before she had
reached the threshold—
 “Come,” cried the soldier who had thus spoken, “let us taste this
food which the mistress has been preparing. Good woman, return
and give us spoons. No flinching! We won’t harm you, unless you
provoke us to it. Why do you hesitate? Are you unwilling to part with
your victuals? By my faith! the walk we have had this morning has
given us such appetites, that if you are not active, we shall have a
slice off yourself!”
“O mercy!” cried Mally, staring wildly, “hae patience a wee, an I’se
gie ye ocht that’s in the house; but dinna meddle wi’ that goanfu’ o’
porridge, I beseech ye. They’re our John’s; and if he comes frae the
hill, and finds them suppet, he’ll brain some o’ ye, as sure as I’m
livin’.”
She then made for the cupboard, and began to draw from thence
bread, butter, and cheese; but the rogues, on hearing that John was
so partial to his porridge, deemed this opportunity of arousing his ire
too favourable to be lost, and they therefore insisted on being
accommodated with spoons in order to “scart the coggie.” Mally was
obliged reluctantly to hand each a spoon from the wicker-creel which
hung in the corner, and the six fellows were just in the act of
devouring the contents of the goan, when honest Glenmannow made
his appearance.
“What’s a’ this?” were his first words, on entering and perceiving
such a bevy of red-coats.
“Why, honest man, we have got a billet upon you,” said one of
them.
“A billet! Wha frae?”
“From the Duke of Queensberry, with whom our colonel, the Duke
of Buccleuch, is stopping at present. We are just arrived; it was a
deuced long walk; we were very hungry, and are just making free
with your breakfast, until something better be prepared for us.”
“Ye’re makin’ mair free than welcome, I doubt, my lads. I hae nae
objection, since our juke has sent ye, to gie ye a nicht’s quarters, an’
to let ye live on the best we can afford; but I think ye micht hae haen
mair mense than to fa’ on my parritch that way, like a wheen collies.”
“Like what? Hold your peace, sir,” thundered the whole at once.
“We are upon the king’s service, and have a right to what we please,
wherever we are billeted.”
 “For a’ sakes, John, let them alane!” cried Mally, who saw the
tempest that was gathering on her husband’s brow. “We hae plenty o’
meal in the house, and canna be mickle the waur o’ what they’ll tak
for ae day an’ nicht. Ye’se get something else to your breakfast
directly.” Then she went close to his side, and whispered into his ear
the fearful conversation she had heard. Glenmannow, though he
never knew what it was to fear, was of a disposition too quiet and
mild not to be easily pacified, and the soldiers saw with regret his
looks beginning to brighten under the influence of Mally’s eloquence.
“Egad! there’s a fine calf before the window,” cried one of them,
whom a new thought had opportunely struck; “Tom, go out and put a
ball through it. We shall have a fine roast of veal, if this old lady
knows how to manage it.”
“Ye’ll hae a fine roast deevil!” roared Glenmannow, now provoked
beyond sufferance; “I’ll gie ye” ——
“Down, down with him!” cried the whole party at once, springing
up, and endeavouring to surround him. But in this they resembled a
posse of mastiffs attacking some lordly bull, which the enraged
animal shakes from his sides and tramples in the dust. In one instant
Glenmannow’s plaid was flung from him upon the bed; his staff also,
which was too long for use at such close quarters, was relinquished,
and seizing by the collar and thigh the first of the fellows who
attacked him, he used him against the others, both as a weapon and
shield, with such fury and effect, that they were all glad to provide for
their safety by an instant retreat. Fortunately for them, the door
chanced to be open, so that they reached the bent with comparatively
little injury. But the poor fellow who was trussed in Glenmannow’s
grasp, and dashed against this and the other of them with such
violence, had his body beaten almost to a mummy, and kept howling
and calling for mercy in a most lamentable manner. By
Glenmannow, however, he was totally unheard, until, on rushing to
the door, his eye chanced to fall upon one of his own cars placed on
end, and leaning against the side of the house. Tossing the soldier
from him upon the grass, he immediately seized this rude vehicle,
and, wrenching from it a limb, cast the huge weapon upon his
shoulder, and bounded off in pursuit of his enemies.
By this time the soldiers had gained a hundred yards in advance,
and were stretching away like greyhounds toward the summit of