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 Ioannis Kompatsiaris · Jonathan Cave
Anna Satsiou · Georg Carle
Antonella Passani · Efstratios Kontopoulos
Sotiris Diplaris · Donald McMillan (Eds.)
LNCS 10673

Internet Science
4th International Conference, INSCI 2017
Thessaloniki, Greece, November 22–24, 2017
Proceedings

123
Lecture Notes in Computer Science 10673
Commenced Publication in 1973
Founding and Former Series Editors:
Gerhard Goos, Juris Hartmanis, and Jan van Leeuwen

Editorial Board
David Hutchison
Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
Takeo Kanade
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Josef Kittler
University of Surrey, Guildford, UK
Jon M. Kleinberg
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
Friedemann Mattern
ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
John C. Mitchell
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Moni Naor
Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
C. Pandu Rangan
Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India
Bernhard Steffen
TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany
Demetri Terzopoulos
University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Doug Tygar
University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
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Max Planck Institute for Informatics, Saarbrücken, Germany
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/7409
Ioannis Kompatsiaris Jonathan Cave
•

Anna Satsiou Georg Carle

•

Antonella Passani Efstratios Kontopoulos

•

Sotiris Diplaris Donald McMillan (Eds.)

•

Internet Science
4th International Conference, INSCI 2017
Thessaloniki, Greece, November 22–24, 2017
Proceedings

123
Editors
Ioannis Kompatsiaris Antonella Passani
CERTH T6 Ecosystems
Information Technologies Institute Rome
Thessaloniki Italy
Greece
Efstratios Kontopoulos
Jonathan Cave CERTH
University of Warwick Information Technologies Institute
Coventry Thessaloniki
UK Greece
Anna Satsiou Sotiris Diplaris
CERTH CERTH
Information Technologies Institute Information Technologies Institute
Thessaloniki Thessaloniki
Greece Greece
Georg Carle Donald McMillan
Technical University Munich Stockholm University
Garching Stockholm
Germany Sweden

ISSN 0302-9743 ISSN 1611-3349 (electronic)

Lecture Notes in Computer Science
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 Preface

This volume contains the papers presented at INSCI 2017, the 4th International
Conference on Internet Science, held during November 22–24, 2017, in Thessaloniki,
Greece.
This year the conference featured work that used a range of technical and social
approaches to shed light on the path toward a more open, interoperable, human-centric,
democratic, and trustworthy Internet. This provides a glimpse of an Internet more
conducive to social innovation and services, with more intelligence, and with greater
involvement and participation across the board.
In order to provide this insight, INSCI 2017 brought together researchers from
around the world and across disciplinary boundaries. Together we are able to explore
the sociotechnical nature of the Internet through the lenses of computer science,
sociology, art, mathematics, physics, complex systems analysis, psychology, eco-
nomics, law, political sciences, and more. The interdisciplinary nature of Internet
science as a field offers the opportunity to develop a holistic understanding of the
Internet, from the technical innovations, through their policy implications, to the
combined impacts on society.
This conference was built on the success of the First and Second International
Conferences on Internet Science, which both took place in Brussels, Belgium, orga-
nized by the FP7 European Network of Excellence in Internet Science (EINS) project,
with the support of the European Commission. In its third year, the conference moved
to Florence, Italy, with a theme in line with, and support from, the Collective
Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation (CAPS) initiative.
A continued interest in sustainability and social innovation can also be seen reflected in
many of the submissions received this year.
In its fourth year, the theme of the International Conference on Internet Science was
“Technical and Social Approaches for a Human-Centric, Democratic, and Trustworthy
Next-Generation Internet.” This theme aimed to further explore the goals of the
Next-Generation Internet Initiative, and to support the overarching goal of the field of
Internet Science — to provide the sociotechnical means to exploit the full potential
of the Internet for society and the economy. The fourth edition of the conference was
organized with the support of the EU CAPS and Next-Generation Internet
(NGI) initiatives.
The papers presented in this volume fall into five thematic topics that align with the
aforementioned goals:
Next-Generation Community Engagement
Online Policy, Politics, and Co-creation
Understanding and Empowering Digital Citizens
Data-Driven Research and Design
Social Media and Online Interaction
VI Preface

The organizers of the 4th International Conference on Internet Science wish to thank
their organizing partners (The Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, University
of Warwick, Technical University of Munich, T6 Ecosystems, Nokia Bell Labs,
University of Stockholm, University of Southampton, University of Florence,
University of Bologna, Winchester University, University of Athens, Centre for
Research on Direct democracy) for their help and support.

October 2017 Ioannis Kompatsiaris

Jonathan Cave
Anna Satsiou
Georg Carle
Antonella Passani
Efstratios Kontopoulos
Sotiris Diplaris
Donald McMillan
 Organization

Program Committee
General Chairs
Ioannis Kompatsiaris Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece
Jonathan Cave University of Warwick, UK

Technical Program Committee Chairs

Georg Carle Technical University of Munich, Germany
Anna Satsiou Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece
Antonella Passani T6 Ecosystems, Italy

Workshops and Sessions Chairs

Sotiris Diplaris Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece
Vishal Kapadia Wikirate Project e.V., Germany

Demos and Experimental Showcases Chairs

Dimitri Papadimitiou Nokia Bell Labs, Belgium
Efstratios Kontopoulos Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece

Proceedings Chair
Donald McMillan Stockholm University, Sweden

Sponsorships Chair
Theodora Tsikrika Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece

Local Arrangements Chair

Maria Papadopoulou Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece

Website Chair
Katerina Katmada Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece

Steering Committee
Thanassis Tiropanis University of Southampton, UK
Laura Sartori University of Bologna, Italy
Yanina Welp Centre for Research on Direct Democracy, Switzerland
Ioannis Stavrakakis University of Athens, Greece
Franco Bagnoli University of Florence, Italy
VIII Organization

Olessia Koltsova St. Petersburg School of Social Sciences and Humanities,

Russia
Caroline Wilson University of Winchester, UK

Technical Program Committee

Panayotis Antoniadis Nethood, Switzerland
Dimitrios Greek Association of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related
Bekiaridis-Moschou Disorders, Greece
Antonis Bikakis University College London, UK
Theologos Dergiades University of Macedonia, Greece
Karmen Guevara Independent, UK
Clare Hooper OpenRoad Communications, Canada
Georgios Iosifidis Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Konstantinos Kafetsios University of Crete, Greece
Merkouris Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece
Karaliopoulos
Eirini Karapistoli Democritus University of Thrace, Greece
Ioannis Katakis National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Katerina Katmada Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece
Iordanis Koutsopoulos Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece
Nikolaos Lagos Naver Labs Europe, France
Ioulietta Lazarou Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece
Alessandro Mantelero Politecnico di Torino (Nexa Center), Italy
Chris Marsden University of Sussex, UK
Meryem Marzouki LIP6 - CNRS and UPMC Sorbonne Universités – Paris,
France
Richard Mills University of Cambridge, UK
Theodoros Moysiadis Centre for Research and Technology Hellas/Institute
of Applied Biosciences, Greece
Hermann De Meer University of Passau, Germany
Federico Morando Nexa Centre for Internet and Society, Italy
Heiko Niedermayer Technical University of Munich, Germany
Spiros Nikolopoulos Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece
Nasrine Olson University of Borås, Sweden
Manos Panaousis University of Brighton, UK
Symeon Papadopoulos Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece
Thomas Papadopoulos University of Cyprus, Greece
Ioannis Partalas Viseo Group, France
Albert Meroño Peñuela Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Alessandra Prampolini T6 Ecosystems, Italy
Mark Rouncefield Lancaster University, UK
Simona De Rosa T6 Ecosystems, Italy
Kave Salamatian University of Savoie, France
Andrea Scharnhorst Royal Netherland Academy for Arts and Science,
The Netherlands
 Organization IX

Anthoula Tsolaki Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and Neurology

Clinic G.H. Agios Pavlos, Thessaloniki, Greece
Ziga Turk University of Ljubljana, FGG, Slovenia
Stefanos Vrochidis Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece
Jean-Yves Vion-Dury Naver Labs Europe, France
Simon Waddington King’s College London, UK
Peter Wittek Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), Spain
Bendert Zevenbergen Princeton University, USA
 Contents

Next Generation Community Engagement

WeMake: A Framework for Letting Students Create Tangible, Embedded

and Embodied Environments for Their Own STEAM Learning. . . . . . . . . . . 3
Anastasios Karakostas, George Palaigeorgiou,
and Yiannis Kompatsiaris

Onboarding Communities to the IoT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Mara Balestrini, Gui Seiz, Lucas L. Peña, and Guillem Camprodon

Citizen Science Is in the Air – Engagement Mechanisms

from Technology-Mediated Citizen Science Projects
Addressing Air Pollution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Gavin McCrory, Carina Veeckman, and Laurence Claeys

Community Based Initiatives and New Communication Technologies:

A Preliminary Analysis Towards an Overall Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Alessandra Prampolini and Antonella Passani

Diversity in FabLabs: Culture, Role Models and the Gendering of Making. . . 52

Christian Voigt, Elisabeth Unterfrauner, and Roland Stelzer

InSPIRES: Science Shops 2.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Giovanna Pacini and Franco Bagnoli

Science Cafés in the Internet Era. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Giovanna Pacini and Franco Bagnoli

Online Policy, Politics and Co-creation

Conceptualizing ICT-Enabled Co-creation of Public Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Aelita Skaržauskienė and Monika Mačiulienė

Designing a Digital Social Innovation Platform: From Case Studies

to Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Ines Dinant, Jacqueline Floch, Thomas Vilarinho, and Manuel Oliveira

Connecting Citizens: Designing for Data Collection and Dissemination

in the Smart City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Donald McMillan
XII Contents

Politicians Driving Online Discussions: Are Institutionalized Influencers

Top Twitter Users? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Anna S. Smoliarova, Svetlana S. Bodrunova, and Ivan S. Blekanov

The STEP Project: Societal and Political Engagement of Young People

in Environmental Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Maria Vogiatzi, Christodoulos Keratidis, Manos Schinas,
Sotiris Diplaris, Serdar Yümlü, Paula Forbes, Symeon Papadopoulos,
Panagiota Syropoulou, Lazaros Apostolidis, Ioannis Kompatsiaris,
and Machi Symeonidou

Understanding and Empowering Digital Citizens

A Study of Ride Sharing Opportunities in the City of Santiago de Chile . . . . 159

Emanuele Massaro

Smart Cities in Stars: Food Perceptions and Beyond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

Maria Pontiki, Panagiota Koltsida, Dimitris Gkoumas, Dimitris Pappas,
Haris Papageorgiou, Eleni Toli, and Yannis Ioannidis

Improvement of the Workers’ Satisfaction and Collaborative Spirit

Through Gamification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Evdoxia Eirini Lithoxoidou, Stefanos Doumpoulakis,
Athanasios Tsakiris, Stelios Krinidis, Dimosthenis Ioannidis,
Konstantinos Votis, and Dimitrios Tzovaras

Online Grocery Shopping: Identifying Change in Consumption Practices . . . . 192

Jo Munson, Thanassis Tiropanis, and Michelle Lowe

Open Data as a New Commons. Empowering Citizens to Make

Meaningful Use of a New Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Nicola Morelli, Ingrid Mulder, Grazia Concilio, Janice S. Pedersen,
Tomasz Jaskiewicz, Amalia de Götzen, and Marc Arguillar

Involving Users in the Design of Sharing Economy Services . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

Asbjørn Følstad, Dimitra Chasanidou, Ida Maria Haugstveit,
and Ragnhild Halvorsrud

A Qualitative Methodology for the Validation of a Common Information

Space to Improve Crisis Management: Results from the SecInCoRe Project . . . 231
Simona De Rosa

Data-Driven Research and Design

Ewya: An Interoperable Fog Computing Infrastructure

with RDF Stream Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Eugene Siow, Thanassis Tiropanis, and Wendy Hall
 Contents XIII

Large-Scale Open Corporate Data Collection and Analysis as an Enabler

of Corporate Social Responsibility Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
Vasiliki Gkatziaki, Symeon Papadopoulos, Sotiris Diplaris,
and Ioannis Kompatsiaris

Serendipity by Design? How to Turn from Diversity Exposure

to Diversity Experience to Face Filter Bubbles in Social Media . . . . . . . . . . 281
Urbano Reviglio

Information Mining from Public Mailing Lists: A Case Study

on IETF Mailing Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
Heiko Niedermayer, Nikolai Schwellnus, Daniel Raumer,
Edwin Cordeiro, and Georg Carle

Evaluation of Linked, Open Data Sources for Mining Adverse

Drug Reaction Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
Pantelis Natsiavas, Nicos Maglaveras, and Vassilis Koutkias

A Data-Driven Model for Linking Open Economic Information . . . . . . . . . . 329

M. Vafopoulos, A. Koukourikos, G. Vafeiadis, D. Negkas, I. Skaros,
and A. Tzani

Unsupervised Keyword Extraction Using the GoW Model

and Centrality Scores. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
Elissavet Batziou, Ilias Gialampoukidis, Stefanos Vrochidis,
Ioannis Antoniou, and Ioannis Kompatsiaris

Implicit Interaction Through Machine Learning: Challenges

in Design, Accountability, and Privacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
Donald McMillan

Social Media and Online Interaction

Open-Source Monitoring, Search and Analytics Over Social Media . . . . . . . . 361

Manos Schinas, Symeon Papadopoulos, Lazaros Apostolidis,
Yiannis Kompatsiaris, and Pericles A. Mitkas

“Reputational Heuristics” Violate Rationality: New Empirical Evidence

in an Online Multiplayer Game. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
Mirko Duradoni, Franco Bagnoli, and Andrea Guazzini

Why People Use Chatbots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377

Petter Bae Brandtzaeg and Asbjørn Følstad

Cascades on Online Social Networks: A Chronological Account . . . . . . . . . . 393

Nora Alrajebah, Thanassis Tiropanis, and Leslie Carr
XIV Contents

Semantic Social Networks: A New Approach to Scaling

Digital Ethnography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412
Alberto Cottica, Amelia Hassoun, Jason Vallet, and Guy Melançon

A Topic Detection and Visualisation System on Social Media Posts . . . . . . . 421

Stelios Andreadis, Ilias Gialampoukidis, Stefanos Vrochidis,
and Ioannis Kompatsiaris

Towards Suicide Prevention: Early Detection of Depression

on Social Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
Victor Leiva and Ana Freire

Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437

Next Generation Community
Engagement
 WeMake: A Framework for Letting Students
Create Tangible, Embedded and Embodied
Environments for Their
Own STEAM Learning

Anastasios Karakostas1(&), George Palaigeorgiou2,

and Yiannis Kompatsiaris1
1
Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Thessaloniki, Greece
{akarakos,ikom}@iti.gr
2
Department of Primary Education, University of Western Macedonia Florina,
Florina, Greece
gpalegeo@uowm.gr

Abstract. This paper presents the principles and the design of the WeMake
framework. The goal of the WeMake framework is twofold: firstly, to create an
interdisciplinary team of experts that together with students/teachers and a new
participatory design methodology adapted to embodied interactions will develop
low cost and easily reconstructable embodied interaction environments for
STEAM domains; and secondly to invite students, teachers and schools across
the world to build, exploit, share and assess their own versions of these
embodied learning environments. The ultimate goal is to create an infrastructure
that will motivate all stakeholders (from researchers to students) and maintain a
perpetual cycle of embodied STEAM learning environment proposals and their
deployment in the educational practice.

Keywords: Embodied learning
STEAM
Mixed reality environments

Wearables
Tangibles
Participatory design

1 Introduction

Embodied cognition theory and several relevant frameworks suggest that thinking and
acting (or else mind and body) are intertwined in nature and that tangible engagement
with objects or exploring spaces affects the way we think about them and vice-versa.
Grounded Cognition describes that mental representations are grounded in motor areas
of the cortex and that the perceptual and motor states acquired through experience are
reactivated through simulation when knowledge is needed [9]. Similarly, the Embodied
Metaphor theory suggests that abstract concepts and conceptual metaphors are based on
image schemas that derive from physical actions [3]. And many more theoretical
frameworks propose that full-body interaction has the potential to support learning by
involving users at different levels such as sensorimotor experience, cognitive aspects
and affective factors; the physical world seems to underpin one’s internal mental

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017

I. Kompatsiaris et al. (Eds.): INSCI 2017, LNCS 10673, pp. 3–18, 2017.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70284-1_1
4 A. Karakostas et al.

representations [35]. The embodied framework of learning seems a promising one

especially for STEAM disciplines since in order to understand STEAM content stu-
dents must adjust their unmediated perceptions and actions with the mediated structures
of disciplinary practice. The design rationale is that having learners act out and
physicalize the systems processes, relationships, etc., will create conceptual anchors
from which new knowledge can be built [32].
New interaction technologies can prove an excellent guide for students to perform
physical actions that serve as “conceptual leverage” [32]. Under the umbrella of terms
like embodied interaction, full-body interaction, motion-based interaction, gesture-
based interaction, tangible interaction, bodily interaction, and kinesthetic interaction,
several interactive learning environments based on novel interaction modalities have
been developed. Following similar theoretical underpinnings, these interactive envi-
ronments try to facilitate an embodied experience of a certain concept, to represent an
abstract concept as a concrete instance or operationalize actions as means to express
specific content, or try to use space as a semiotic resource or even try to become
embodied metaphors. The new mediated environments seem to increase learner
engagement since body-based experiences are more perceptually immersive and learners
may feel that they are in a more authentic and meaningful educational space [19].
However, designing learning activities that promote conditions for embodied
learning is an emerging and not yet systematized area of research. Some studies have
indicated that binding knowledge with physical interactions has a strong effect on
learning but nevertheless it is undoubtedly not the case, that any body movement will
stimulate learning. Recent studies of embodied learning have focused on the notion of
congruency ([1]): the condition under which movements or body positioning map are
related to a particular conceptual domain. Further research is required for researchers to
learn how to cue the body to enact certain actions and create physical representations
that facilitate conceptual understanding.
Existing research on embodied learning technologies has been disparate, driven
largely by specific technical innovations and constraints, and often lacking a clear focus
on establishing their efficacy in educational contexts. The design space for ideating
relevant interactive learning environments is chaotic and most of the proposed envi-
ronments are polarized either towards the technological or the pedagogical view on the
basis of the team members that produce each learning environment. How can we
combine all these different opportunities, the different theoretical frameworks and the
various technological enablers, the various scientific perspectives, the experience in
each separate learning domain in order to construct effective, efficient and enjoyable
embodied interactive environments? It is more than evident that designing systems that
enable physically immersive and responsive pedagogical activities requires interdis-
ciplinary collaboration between a plethora of experts with different backgrounds, and
not only computer experts and learning experts. For example, practices of embodied
doing and thinking through action are central to the arts and related to STEAM edu-
cation. In arts, intelligent practice subtly draws upon and orders materiality – with
 WeMake: A Framework for Letting Students Create Tangible 5

gestures, breathing, and the artful manipulation of instruments, tools and materials,
each with its own qualities. The Arts can offer a lot to embodied STEM education
through different perspectives.
Another significant drawback of current embodied interactive technologies is that
their mass deployment in schools seems infeasible since they are usually developed
only for research purposes, are customized with expensive technologies, do not follow
the curriculum while teachers also do not have confidence in using them. Interestingly,
this embodied technological approach to STEAM happens to coincide with the recent
enthusiasm for the “maker movement” [24]. Low cost rapid prototyping together with
the uprising trend of arts and crafts fairs, tinkering and inventing, can enable students to
recreate such embodied interactive technologies and concurrently empower creativity
and problem solving, brainstorming, sustained perseverance and a lot more. This
approach also provides the motivational aspect often missing in traditional STEAM
curricula that sometimes serves to disengage students from STEM subjects taught in
formal educational settings. Would it be possible for students and teachers to construct
their own STEAM learning tools?
In this manuscript, we will present the framework WeMake which proposes a series
of steps in order to combine different opportunities, the different theoretical frameworks
and the various technological and pedagogical enablers in order to trigger students and
teachers to construct their own STEAM learning tools.

2 WeMake: Students Create Tangible, Embedded

and Embodied Environments for Their Own STEAM
Learning

WeMake is based on two pillars: firstly, it underlines the need to create an interdis-
ciplinary team of experts that together with students/teachers and a new participatory
design methodology adapted to embodied interactions, will develop low cost and easily
reconstructable embodied interaction environments for STEAM learning domains; and
secondly, to invite students, teachers and schools across the world to build, exploit,
share and assess their own versions of these embodied learning environments. The
ultimate goal is to create an infrastructure that will motivate all stakeholders (from
researchers to students) and maintain a perpetual cycle of embodied STEAM learning
environment proposals and their deployment in the educational practice beyond the
duration of the project.
There are 2 prerequisites:
• The creation of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary team of experts that will
synthesize creatively for the first time an extensive range of different perspectives of
interactive embodied learning in STEAM. Expertise is needed in the learning
domain (STEAM learning domains), child-computer interaction, cognitive psy-
chology, educational technology, interactive installations, arts, prototyping and
participatory design.
6 A. Karakostas et al.

• The development of a new participatory design methodology that will leverage this
symmetry of ignorance and help the participants negotiate their different perspec-
tives of embodied interactions and also enable them to develop common exter-
nalizations of embodied performances that will mediate their collaboration.
In order to explore systematically the design space of interactive embodied learn-
ing, the design team will focus on three widely exploited types of interactive embodied
learning environments for STEAM:
– mixed reality spaces where physical and digital objects co-exist and where the body
is situated in the environment and interacts with it. Mixed reality environments offer
a large vivid and immersive audiovisual interface for eliciting body activity (in-
teractive floors, interactive walls etc.).
– tangibles, digital manipulatives that become objects to think and act with (building
bricks and balls, interactive physical objects, tools, etc.).
– e-textiles are wearables at the intersection of physical, digital and artful media and
which will help students to “embody” new conceptualizations and representations.
The three different interfaces have been selected as they provide multiple means of
engagement, multiple means of representation, and multiple means of action and
expression.
The design team will offer some first iterations of technologically supported
embodied learning (in Maths for example the design team may work on spatial rep-
resentations of number magnitude and basic arithmetic operations while in Science, the
design interactive object may be related to gravity or light).
However, the design products of the interdisciplinary team must comply with two
design constraints
• they must be low-cost by using mainstream prototyping hardware and software
• they should be easily reconstructable by students and teachers. In order to be highly
populated, the products should be accompanied by construction guides and learning
scenarios in order to help students to create them and teachers to embrace them.
Afterwards, all the products will be shared through an online STEAM makerspace
platform which will enable researchers, teachers and students to share designs with
each other and more specifically to
• to present new embodied interactive learning environments
• to provide learning scenarios and instructional guides for the proposed learning
environments
• to present personal variations and improvisations on the proposed learning
environments
• to view anonymous learning usage data for each learning environment.
The online STEAM makerspace will promote the maker culture which provides an
effective mechanism for K12 students, particularly women and multicultural students,
in pursuing STEAM fields.
 WeMake: A Framework for Letting Students Create Tangible 7

3 Three Types of Embodied Interaction on Focus

3.1 Embodied STEAM Learning and Mixed Reality Spaces
Mixed Reality (MR) environments merge the digital with the physical and offer a vivid
and immersive audiovisual interface for eliciting body activity. In these environments,
authentic and expressive physical activity can be augmented with digital displays that
emphasize the metaphor and tools for feedback and reflection [30]. Mixed reality
technologies allow students to become part of the system they are trying to familiarize
with, and give them the advantage of the insider who can monitor and evaluate the
mechanisms and relationships that define the domain [30]. In the review of [35] for
learning abstract concepts through Full-Body Interaction, the authors identify seven-
teen learning projects where the physical interface is based on the use of vertical
screens or wall projections, requiring users to interact in the space in front of the
display and twelve projects which are based on floor projections, which allow the user
to move around the periphery of or directly on the visual output. Most of them concern
Maths and Science projects. For example, in [21] elementary school students partici-
pated with their bodies in simulations of force and motion that allowed them to suc-
cessfully connect their physical activity with formal representations of these
phenomena. Using the Kinect sensor, [33] also pursued the idea of students walking
along an up to 3 m long line to explore continuous number line. The MEteor simulation
game [31], identify middle school students with asteroids and lets them build insights
about how objects move in space. Students are provoked to predict the route of an
asteroid as it comes into the vicinity of gravitational forces (e.g., nearby planets).
Situated Multimedia Arts Learning Lab (SMALLab) is a 15-foot-by-15-foot space with
an interactive floor display that supports simulations and learning modules ranging
from language arts and science to technology, engineering, and mathematics education
[25, 52].
Up to this point, there has been little research examining outcomes for students
learning the same content in the same simulation environment, differing only in the
degree of immersion and physical interaction with the interface. Also, the duration of
the interventions in the various studies is limited (from 20 min up to 1 week) while
relatively few empirical studies have investigated learning in authentic classroom
settings [30]. WeMake framework suggests to focus on large interactive floors and will
try to exploit varying degrees of sensorimotor activation, gestural congruency and
immersion and also explore the collaborative perspective of mixed reality spaces since
it is of paramount importance for realistic classroom settings.

3.2 Embodied STEAM Learning and Tangibles

[26], early on, proposed the idea of the ‘tangible bits’ and argued that tangible user
interfaces serve the function of making “digital information directly manipulatable with
our hands, and perceptible through our peripheral senses by physically embodying it”.
Many researchers have suggested that tangible user interfaces (TUIs) have potential for
supporting children’s informal and formal learning and that they are highly suited to the
design and development of learning activities because they leverage both familiar
8 A. Karakostas et al.

physical artifacts and digital computation. Tangibles are frequently used to teach
children abstract concepts, in STEAM [36]. For example, Button Matrix [16] uses
coupled tactile, vibration and visual feedback to highlight features of a physical
experience with arithmetic concepts and cue reflection on the links between the
physical experience and mathematical symbols. Tangible Interactive Microbiology
environment [29] offers to students an interface with microbiological living cells and
tries to promote artistic expression and scientific exploration. Fractangi is an interactive
tangible number line which functions as a conceptual metaphor for helping students to
understand and exploit fractions by acting with their hands [37] while in FingerTrips
students learn about geography by travelling across Europe over an augmented 3D map
with the use of their fingers [40].
Tangibles are able to offer a natural and immediate form of interaction that is
accessible to learners, promote active and hands-on engagement, allow for exploration,
expression, discovery and reflection, provide learners with ‘tools to think with’ and
offer opportunities for collaborative activity among learners (e.g. [4, 44, 45]). However,
there is also another stream of research which indicates that “physicality is not
important” and rather “their manipulability and meaningfulness make them [manipu-
latives] educationally effective” [46]. In many situations, children do not transfer
performance with physical to symbolic representations of problems. Indeed, it has been
suggested that previously identified virtues of physical manipulatives—“learning
through concrete and perceptually rich physical practices ”—are not the drivers of
learning (e.g., [55] and can even be detrimental to learning (e.g., [48]). However, a
recent meta-analysis found that the use of physical manipulatives in math education
tends to improve retention, problem solving, and transfer [13]. Additionally, the con-
text of use seems to also have detrimental effects. For example, unconstrained physical
manipulation has also been shown to be suboptimal for learning [43, 50] or high
interactivity can be overwhelming and may lead to a lower learning performance
embedded learning (e.g., [50]). Hence, the design of tangibles still holds great diffi-
culty. Tangibles may differ in terms of the metaphorical relationship between the
physical and digital representation. Small representational differences may have great
effect on performance differences [22].
In order to achieve the goal of designing efficient and effective learning tangibles,
designers and researchers have to bring together specific knowledge about children’s
cognitive, physical, emotional, and social skills, the idiosyncratic characteristics and
prior experience on each field domain and the opportunities provided of tangibles
environments. WeMake suggest to investigate the cueing possibilities of tangible
representations by exploiting a range of material properties (e.g., size, shape, texture,
temperature, weight), by putting emphasis on multiple output modalities of the
designed products and by identifying ways to transfer performance from physical to
symbolic representations of problems. Although metaphorical relations are promoted in
tangible and embodied interaction research, little is known about how to identify and
select embodied metaphors, or how to transform them effectively into interaction
models [6]. WeMake also proposes to develop and share design tools, similar to
Developmentally Situated Design card set [6] for designing tangibles for STEAM
learning.
 WeMake: A Framework for Letting Students Create Tangible 9

3.3 Embodied STEAM Learning and E-Textiles

Wearable technologies can incorporate a wide variety of sensors for measuring
mechanical information (i.e. position, displacement), acoustic information (i.e. volume,
pitch), biological information (i.e. heart rate, temperature), optical information (i.e.
refraction, light wave frequency) and environmental information (i.e. temperature,
humidity) [8] but they can also offer multimodal output by providing haptic feedback,
integrating screens, producing sounds [11]. Wearables have been used in education in
several forms, i.e. wearable GPS devices in afterschool clubs [51], augmented reality
glasses in educational psychology and organizational behaviour classes [14], wearable
video cameras for classroom teachers [47], accelerometer enhanced gloves into
immersive and interactive museum simulations [34], e-textiles for representing the body
internals [38]. Wearables technologies offer several affordances for learning such as
in-situ information, recording and feedback [14], communication and distribution of
resources [18]. There is also a shift from individuals using wearable technologies in
isolation to more socially oriented uses of data [11]. For example, wearable technologies
may empower users to exchange fitness data, play games together in real-time, or even
see an event from someone else’s viewpoint [54]. Another example of a social oriented
use of data is using wearable “thinking tags,” with which students were able to explore
how diseases spread through a population during an interpersonal interaction [15].
WeMake framework proposes to focus more on e-textiles which are conceived as
aesthetically compelling designs, at the intersection of physical, digital and artful media
and which will help students to “embody” new conceptualizations and representations.
E-textiles address excellently the challenge of designing STEAM activities which must
authentically engage participants in both STEM fields and the arts. E-textiles have
already demonstrated its capacity in the professional realm to invite and sustain par-
ticipation from women [12]. Electronic textile (e-textile) toolkits have been successful
in empowering users to engage in meaningful design that is creative, self-expressive,
and personal and concurrently seem to offer greater transparency into STEM disci-
plinary content i.e. for exploring circuitry [41], or physiology [38]. E-textiles have a lot
to offer to students during their construction since students have to garner expertise in
several content areas as well as develop the skill sets to think across traditional dis-
ciplinary boundaries. Based on this reasoning MakerShoe [27] was constructed as an
e-textile construction kit aiming at engaging young children (K-4) in wearable design.
As most researchers suggest [41], there is a need to work on the efficacy of e-textile
integration in schools and home as pathways to learning. As it appears from the
previous section, wearables, and more specifically e-textiles have been rarely used in
the context of embodied learning and usually without exploiting the output modalities
that they can offer. WeMake recommends the wearables to be designed by an extended
multidisciplinary team of experts together with students and teachers, with the aim of
exploring different ways of creating representations with the body. The design of
wearable interfaces should identify the preconditions for delivering open-ended
exploration, a high degree of personal expression, and aesthetically compelling pos-
sibilities with the e-textiles. The design team has to understand the tradeoffs between
guiding a child’s attention, simplifying concepts, and allowing for the accurate
10 A. Karakostas et al.

construction of knowledge. Additionally, it has to envision new materials to support

embodied learning with e-textiles that is more open to expressive ways of participating
in the classroom.

4 The WeMake Phases

4.1 The Overall Approach

As indicated previously, the WeMake aim is to enhance STEAM educational practice
by applying interdisciplinary embodied interaction/learning paradigms and by inviting
students and teachers to design, develop and exploit their own mixed reality spaces,
learning e-textiles, and learning tangibles.
Its structure has been developed having in mind the following goals:
• To develop and study innovative embodied learning artifacts that address significant
STEAM learning obstacles
• To provide playful and effective learning interactions to students by integrating
museum-inspired digital installations, wearables and learning tangibles in the daily
learning practice inside the school
• To make accessible such learning experiences to all schools by exploiting the new
wave of low cost prototyping platforms, by addressing curriculum needs and by
providing teachers the necessary deployment tools
• To enable students to become the creators of their learning tangibles, mixed reality
spaces e-textiles of their schools
• To motivate creativeness and handcraft mentality and to disseminate the maker
culture in schools
• To offer synergies between schools of different areas/countries
• To provide personalized embodied interactions by exploiting the wealth of data
collected from different schools
• Offer incentives to researchers, companies, learners and teachers for the continuous
design, development, application and research analysis of similar embodied learn-
ing environments beyond the projects’ lifespan.
In the following Fig. 1, the 3 phases of WeMake are presented.
In the following paragraphs, we will describe the three essential ingredients of
WeMake, the online makerplace, the participatory design methodology and the dis-
semination of the design proposals of the interdisciplinary team.

4.2 Online Makerspace for Fostering Maker Culture and Incorporating

Research in the Developing Cycle
The maker movement [20], an extension of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture, has largely
grown out of environments like Hackerspaces and Makerspaces where hobbyists can
create and share their designs. Makers usually are self-organized in communities of
practices and borrow and adapt (or remix) each others’ designs. Online communities,
 WeMake: A Framework for Letting Students Create Tangible 11

Fig. 1. WeMake phases

such as https://www.thingiverse.com/, https://www.youmagine.com/, http://www.

instructables.com/ and https://diy.org/ are an important piece of this ecosystem,
allowing geographically distributed makers to share designs with each other [39]. In
this new era of web 2.0 collaboration, makers collectively contribute to the develop-
ment of new designs by iteratively remixing and refining one another’s work. Makers’
main motivations for contributing to communities include finding inspiration for future
projects, learning new concepts, and receiving feedback on projects [28]. Cou-
pling STEAM learning with the makerspace model has the potential to re-center social
dimensions of learning to foster supportive collaborative learning communities. The
basic characteristics of online maker communities is that of social scaffolding. The
dimension of social scaffolding reflects the status in which learners help and inspire one
12 A. Karakostas et al.

another to persist and solve problems supports an individual’s learning [10]. Learners
establish social scaffolding by assisting one another while working on the same project
or across different projects (i.e. requesting or offering help, inspiring new ideas,
offering explanations for a strategy, tool or outcome, striving to understand etc.). Such
communities of practices should foster deep engagement of young people, provide
opportunities for developing and authoring ideas, and offer the potential for the
development of new dispositions, understandings, and directions [53]. Usually online
maker communities borrow a lot of elements from physical makerspaces. [42] proposes
that physical makerspaces should “provide opportunities to engage with the work and
ideas of others; to be supported with tools and assistance to develop and pursue one’s
own ideas; and to develop and evolve these ideas as direct engagement with materials
and phenomena provides feedback, creates constraints, and inspires new thinking and
solutions”. [10] identified seven central learning practices to collectively characterize
recognizable participation in the maker community for STEM-rich tinkering: explore &
question, tinker, test, and iterate, hack & repurpose, combine and complexify, cus-
tomize, seek out resources, and share. The process of externalizing ideas and building
on them creates two ideal conditions for learning [41]: (a) externalizing an idea, in
words or through an artifact, requires restructuring that idea into different formats
(b) creating a physical depiction of an idea and reflecting on that design creates an
opportunity for formative feedback.
Introduction of maker culture activities to for embodied STEM learning environ-
ments between students, teachers and research is totally new. In WeMake we propose
the exploration of the opportunities to create an online maker space where students with
an interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math (STEAM) can meet up,
work on projects, and learn through “Doing-it-Yourself” or “Doing-it-Together”. It
should also be a place where researchers, teachers and students of all ages can come
together and help and learn from one another. WeMake aim is to promote learners to
find and pursue a purpose, to exercise their creativity and imagination, and to confront
and solve conceptual challenges, within a STEM-rich tinkering context [42], teachers
can find valuable info about exploiting embodied STEAM learning environments in
and out of the classroom, researchers can propose their own embodied STEAM
learning environments together with instructional plans, videos etc. for their deploy-
ment and evaluation. WeMake intention is to create a shared repertoire, or a set of
shared resources used in the production of new meaning, which includes participatory
and reified aspects of practice.
More practically, the online makerplace should enable researchers, teachers and
students
– to share the new embodied interactive learning environments (how it works, how to
construct)
– to provide learning scenarios and instructional guides for the proposed learning
environments (how to deploy in school)
– to present personal variations and improvisations on the proposed learning envi-
ronments along with the production stages (how do I construct it)
 WeMake: A Framework for Letting Students Create Tangible 13

– to view anonymous learning usage data for each learning environment (how it was
used, the learning effects)
– to share personal info and discuss, question, comment, rate, favorite all proposed
resources
The makerplace should motivate support the user’s overall value creation. To
reward participants’ active involvement, the platform will provide its own badges
system and a gamification mechanism as an extrinsic motivational tool. Students,
teachers and researchers, by uploading their constructions and instructional proposals,
by answering questions, by providing comments and answers to questions, by “liking”
other participants’ work, will take part in a point accumulation game which will lead to
earning badges. The badges should be organized in different perspectives (motivation,
pedagogy, and credential) and follow an accreditation system with the use of educa-
tional milestones. Such social gamification framework should be tested in real class-
room scenarios to obtain empirical data on the actual effects of the gamified processes.

4.3 The Design Methodology

WeMake requires the development of a new participatory design methodology since
the interaction in such embodied learning environments is not the only the mean but
also the goal. The act of interacting should also be an embodied act for learning;
students are asked to act with their bodies, learn and interact with the environment.
While a wealth of participatory design methods has been proposed by researchers in the
field of Child Computer Interaction, they often are quite open with respect to the design
aims, they make excessive demands on the time children can invest, and leave ques-
tions regarding the equity of participation: researchers and developers clearly benefit by
children’s participation, who are asked to provide services on a voluntary basis. The
new participatory methodology should be sustainable in the sense that the design
activity must provide developmental, educational, self-actualisation, and fun benefits to
children in order to keep them engaged at an equitable basis. The new methodology
should emerge from tailoring and mixing existing participatory design methods (e.g.
cooperative inquiry, future workshop), techniques (e.g. play-back theater, bodys-
torming) and ideation tools (e.g. ideation decks, technological probes) after making
them suitable
(a) for the three types of embodied interaction: mixed reality spaces, tangibles and
wearables
(b) for facilitating multi-stakeholders preparation and collaboration (from students to
researchers),
(c) for sharing creative practices, purposes and reaching common understanding
when negotiating about embodied representations
(d) for the STEAM domains.
A plausible direction for the development of the participatory design methodologies
seams to be a research through design (RtD) approach, an approach also known as
design-based research [7] or action-based design [1]. Various researchers, e.g., [49],
argue that the main reason that interaction design research has not always been
14 A. Karakostas et al.

successful is that it has not been guided by a sufficient understanding of the nature of
design practice. Designers have to act on a complex design situation in all of its
richness and complexity, and in a way that is appropriate for the specifics of the
situation. This requires a designer to be fully immersed in the context of the case and to
make sense of that context based on an understanding of the particular situation, and
then to create an appropriate approach for the specific design task at hand ([49]: p. 61).
The RtD approach has been already used in the design of interactive embodied learning
systems (e.g. [2, 3]), involving both teachers and learners as co-designers and
evaluators.

4.4 The Connection Between the Designed Multimodal Artifacts

and the Online Makerspace
How will the products of the interdisciplinary design team will trigger the participation
of teachers and students in the online makerspace? This comes to the dissemination
preparation phase, where the domain experts together with learning psychologists,
prototyping experts and teachers will have to document the needed hardware kits, to
develop video instructions for the construction of the embodied learning environments
and to provide learning scenarios for exploring the new interface modalities by teachers
and students in and out of the classroom. The video instructions should be presented in
a self-paced learning platform, should follow principles of video-based learning and
should promote improvisation, adaptation and design freedom when the interfaces will
be recreated by the students. The learning scenarios should be able to address various
educational settings, from typical school-based learning to problem/scenario based
learning, scaffolding and flipped learning approaches. Additionally, the learning sce-
narios should cope with both collaborative and individual learning and also consider
gender issues with technology. These learning scenarios will serve as practical distilled
demonstrators of the efficacy and impact of the embodied learning environments and
also ensure the successful integration of the embodied learning environments in both
distance and blended learning approaches. All these supportive material is of para-
mount importance both for the successful deployment of the designed interfaces in the
teaching/learning practice and for their diffusion in schools all over the world.

5 Conclusions

The ultimate goal of learning and teaching is the acquisition of adaptive rather than
routine expertise or competence i.e. the ability to apply knowledge and skills flexibly
and creatively in a variety of contexts and situations (as opposed to simply completing
stereotype school tasks without understanding) [17]. STEAM learning has to be con-
ceived as an active, constructive and self-regulatory process of sense-making, under-
standing, and problem solving within a community of learners. There is ample
evidence that instruction that endorses such a view needs to promote, from the very
beginning, learner autonomy. This will create the necessary affective climate for the
development of intrinsic and autonomous incentives for and authentic interest in the
STEAM domains.
 WeMake: A Framework for Letting Students Create Tangible 15

WeMake is a framework that pays particular attention to (a) how learners can be
involved in and take the responsibility of the construction of their own learning
devices, rather than in the mere use of pre-given learning devices, and (b) how teachers
can be stimulated to enhance learners’ con-constructive activities (c) how effective
embodied learning environments can be disseminated in schools sooner than later
(d) how to create a community of sharing resources about embodied learning envi-
ronment with the participation of researchers, teachers and students. Essentially,
WeMake proposes a work process for enabling students and teachers to build, exploit,
share and assess their own embodied learning environments.

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Another random document with
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commonly called jockies, and present them to the state of Venice, ‘to
serve in the galleys against the common enemy of Christendom.’
Most of the patriot’s contemporaries probably acknowledged the
existence of the evil which he described—though he probably
exaggerated it to the extent of at least a third—but there is no
appearance of the slightest movement having ever been made
towards the adoption of his remedy. A modern man can only wonder
at such a scheme proceeding from one whose patriotism was in
general too fine for use, and who held such views of the late
tyrannical governments, that he was for punishing their surviving
instruments several years after the Revolution.[257]
At the date noted, the government was revolving more rational
plans for mitigating the evils of the wide-spread mendicancy. The
Privy Council issued a proclamation, 1699.
adverting to the non-execution of the laws
for the poor during the time of the scarcity, but intimating that better
arrangements were rendered possible by the plentiful harvest just
realised. The plan ordered to be adopted was to build correction-
houses at Edinburgh, Dumfries, Ayr, Glasgow, Stirling, Perth,
Dundee, Aberdeen, and Inverness, each for the county connected
with the burgh, into which the poor should be received: no allusion is
made to the other counties. The poor were to be confined to the
districts in which they had had residence for the last three years. It
was ordained of each correction-house, that it should have ‘a large
close sufficiently enclosed for keeping the said poor people, that they
be not necessitat to be always within doors to the hurt and hazard of
their health.’ And the magistrates of the burghs were commanded to
take the necessary steps for raising these pauper-receptacles under
heavy penalties.[258]

It was customary for the Lords of Privy Nov. 9.

Council to grant exclusive right to print and
vend books for certain terms—being all that then existed as
equivalent to our modern idea of copyright. Most generally, this right
was given to booksellers and printers, and bore reference rather to
the mercantile venture involved in the expense of producing the
book, than to any idea of a reward for authorcraft. Quite in
conformity with this old view of literary rights, the Council now
conferred on George Mossman, stationer in Edinburgh, ‘warrant to
print and sell the works of the learned Mr George Buchanan, in ane
volume in folio, or by parts in lesser volumes,’ and discharged ‘all
others to print, import, or sell, the whole or any part of the said Mr
George his works in any volume or character, for the space of
nineteen years.’
In conformity with the same view of copyright, another Edinburgh
stationer, who, in 1684, had obtained a nineteen years’ title to print
Sir George Mackenzie’s Institutes of the Law of Scotland, soon after
this day was favoured with a renewal of the privilege, on his
contemplating a second edition.
Robert Sanders, printer in Glasgow, had printed a large
impression of a small book, entitled Merchandising Spiritualised, or
the Christian Merchant Trading to Heaven, by Mr James Clark,
minister at Glasgow; which, in Sanders’s opinion, was calculated to
be ‘of excellent use to good people of all 1699.
ranks and degrees.’ For his encouragement
in the undertaking, he petitioned the Privy Council (July 13, 1703)
for an exclusive right of publishing the book; and he was fortified in
his claim by a letter from the author, as well as a ‘testificat from Mr
James Woodrow, professor of divinity at Glasgow, anent the
soundness of the said book.’ The Council, taking all these things into
account, gave Sanders a licence equivalent to copyright for nineteen
years.[259]

The abundant harvest of 1699 was Nov. 30.

acknowledged by a general thanksgiving.
But, that the people might not be too happy on the occasion, the
king, in the proclamation for this observance, was made to
acknowledge that the late famine and heavy mortality had been a just
retribution of the Almighty for the sins of the people; as likewise had
been ‘several other judgments, specially the frustrating the
endeavours that have been made for advancing the trade of this
nation.’ [The royal councillors were too good Christians, or too polite
towards their master, to insinuate as a secular cause the subserviency
of the king to English merchants jealous of Scottish rivalry.] For
these reasons, he said, it was proper, on the same day, that there be
solemn and fervent prayers to God, entreating him to look mercifully
on the sins of the people, and remove these, ‘the procuring causes of
all afflictions,’ and permit that ‘we may no more abuse his goodness
into wantonness and forgetfulness.’
The people of Scotland were poor, and lived in the most sparing
manner. When they made an honourable attempt to extend their
industry, that they might live a little better, their sovereign permitted
the English to ‘frustrate the endeavour.’ He then told them to humble
themselves for the sins which had procured their afflictions, and
reproached them with a luxury which they had never enjoyed. The
whole affair reminds one of the rebuke administered by Father Paul
to the starved porter in The Duenna: ‘Ye eat, and swill, and drink,
and gormandise,’ &c.

Notwithstanding the abundance of the Dec. 14.

harvest, universally acknowledged a
fortnight before by solemn religious rites, there was already some
alarm beginning to arise about the future, chiefly in consequence of
the very natural movements observed among possessors of and
dealers in grain, for reserving the stock against eventual demands.
There now, therefore, appeared a 1699.
proclamation forbidding export and
encouraging import, the latter step being ‘for the more effectual
disappointing of the ill practices of forestalled and regraters.’[260]

We have at this time a curious illustration Dec. 7.

of the slowness of all travelling in Scotland,
in a petition of Robert Irvine of Corinhaugh to the Privy Council. He
had been cited to appear as a witness by a particular day, in the case
of Dame Marjory Seton, relict of Lewis Viscount of Frendraught, but
he did not arrive till the day after, having been ‘fully eight days upon
the journey that he usually made in three,’ in consequence of the
unseasonableness of the weather, by which even the post had been
obstructed. The denunciation against him for nonappearance was
discharged.[261]

1700. Jan.
 A case of a singular character was brought before the Court of
Justiciary. In the preceding July, a boy named John Douglas, son of
Douglas of Dornock, attending the school of Moffat, was chastised by
his teacher, Mr Robert Carmichael, with such extreme severity that
he died on the spot. The master is described in the indictment as
beating and dragging the boy, and giving him three lashings without
intermission; so that when ‘let down’ for the third time, he ‘could
only weakly struggle along to his seat, and never spoke more, but
breathed out his last, and was carried dying, if not dead, out of the
school.’ Carmichael fled, and kept out of sight for some weeks, ‘but
by the providence of God was discovered and seized.’
‘The Lords decerned the said Mr Robert to be taken from the
Tolbooth of Edinburgh by the hangman under a sure guard to the
middle of the Landmarket, and there lashed by seven severe stripes;
then to be carried down to the Cross, and there severely lashed by six
sharp stripes; and then to be carried to the Fountain Well, to be
severely lashed by five stripes; and then to be carried back by the
hangman to the Tolbooth. Likeas, the Lords banish the said Mr
Robert furth of this kingdom, never to return thereto under all
highest pains.’[262]
Robert Carmichael was perhaps only unfortunate in some
constitutional weakness of his victim. An energetic use of the lash
was the rule, not the exception, in the old 1700.
school—nay, even down to times of which
many living persons may well say, ‘quæque miserrima vidi, et
quorum pars magna fui.’ In the High School of Edinburgh about
1790, one of the masters (Nicol) occasionally had twelve dunces to
whip at once, ranking them up in a row for the purpose. When all
was ready, he would send a polite message to his colleague, Mr
Cruikshank, ‘to come and hear his organ.’ Cruikshank having come,
Mr Nicol would proceed to administer a rapid cursory flagellation
along and up and down the row, producing a variety of notes from
the patients, which, if he had been more of a scientific musician, he
might have probably called a bravura. Mr Cruikshank was sure to
take an early opportunity of inviting Mr Nicol to a similar treat.

One of the most conspicuous persons at Jan.

this time in Scotland—one of the few,
moreover, known out of his own country, or destined to be
remembered in a future age—was Dr Archibald Pitcairn. He
practised as a physician in Edinburgh, without an equal in
reputation; but he was also noted as a man of bright general talents,
and of great wit and pleasantry. His habits were convivial, after the
manner of his time, or beyond it; and his professional Delphi was a
darkling tavern in the Parliament Close, which he called the Greping
Office (Latinè, ‘Greppa’), by reason of the necessity of groping in
order to get into it. Here, in addition to all difficulties of access, his
patients must have found it a somewhat critical matter to catch him
at a happy moment, if it was true, as alleged, that he would
sometimes be drunk twice a day. It is also told of him that, having
given an order at home, that when detained overnight at this same
Greping Office, he should have a clean shirt sent to him by a servant
next morning, the rule was on one occasion observed till the number
of clean shirts amounted to six, all of which he had duly put on; but,
behold, when he finally re-emerged and made his way home, the
whole were found upon him, one above the other! Perhaps these are
exaggerations, shewing no more than that the habits of the clever
doctor were such as to have excited the popular imagination. It was a
matter of more serious moment, that Pitcairn was insensible to the
beauties of the Presbyterian polity and the logic of the Calvinistic
faith—being for this reason popularly labelled as an atheist—and
that, in natural connection with this frame of opinion, he was no
admirer of the happy revolution government.
He had, about this time, written a letter to his friend, Dr Robert
Gray, in London; and Captain Bruce, a 1700.
person attached to the service of the Duke
of Hamilton, had sent it to its destination under a cover. It fell, in
London, into the hands of the Scottish Secretary, Seafield, who
immediately returned it to the Lord Chancellor in Edinburgh, as one
of a dangerous character towards the government. The Lord
Chancellor immediately caused Dr Pitcairn and Captain Bruce to be
apprehended and put into the Tolbooth, each in a room by himself.
On the letter being immediately after read to the Privy Council
(January 16), they entirely approved of what had been done, and
gave orders for a criminal process being instituted before them
against the two gentlemen.
 Dr Pitcairn.

On the 25th of January, Pitcairn was brought before the Council

on a charge of contravening various statutes against leasing-making
—that is, venting and circulating reproaches and false reports against
the government. He was accused of having, on a certain day in
December, written a letter to Dr Gray in reference to an address
which was in course of signature regarding 1700.
the meeting of parliament. This, he said,
was going on unanimously throughout the nation, only a few
courtiers and Presbyterian ministers opposing it, and that in vain;
‘twice so many have signed since the proclamation anent petitioning
as signed it before.’ ‘He bids him [Dr Gray] take notice that there is
one sent to court, with a title different, to beguile the elect of the
court, if it were possible.’ ‘And all the corporations and all the
gentlemen have signed the address, and himself among the rest; and
it is now a National Covenant, and, by Jove, it would produce a
national and universal ——; to which he adds that he is thinking after
a lazy way to reprint his papers, but hopes there shall be news ere
they are printed, and that he is calculating the force of the musculi
abdominis in digesting meat, and is sure they can do it, une belle
affaire.’
In the letters of charge brought forward by the Lord Advocate, it
was alleged that there were here as many falsehoods as statements,
and the object of the whole to throw discredit on the government was
manifest. One of his allegations was the more offensive as he had
sought to confirm it ‘by swearing profanely as a pagan, and not as a
Christian, “by Jove, it will produce a national and universal ——,”
which blank cannot be construed to have a less import than a
national and universal overturning.’ Seeing it clearly evidenced that
he had ‘foolishly and wickedly meddled in the affairs of his majesty
and his estate, he ought to be severely punished in his person and
goods, to the terror of others to do the like in time coming.’
Dr Pitcairn, knowing well the kind of men he had to deal with,
made no attempt at defence; neither did he utter any complaint as to
the violation of his private correspondence. He pleaded that he had
written in his cups with no evil design against the government, and
threw himself entirely on the mercy of the Council. His submission
was accepted, and he got off with a reprimand from the Lord
Chancellor, after giving bond with his friend Sir Archibald
Stevenson, under two hundred pounds sterling, to live peaceably
under the government, and consult and contrive nothing against it.
[263]

This is the date of a conflagration in Feb. 3.

Edinburgh, which made a great impression
at the time, and was long remembered. It 1700.
broke out in one of the densest parts of the
city, in a building between the Cowgate and Parliament Close, about
ten o’clock of a Saturday night. Here, in those days, lived men of no
small importance. We are told that the fire commenced in a closet of
the house of Mr John Buchan, being that below the residence of Lord
Crossrig, one of the judges. Part of his lordship’s family was in bed,
and he was himself retiring, when the alarm was given, and he and
his family were obliged to escape without their clothes. ‘Crossrig,
naked, with a child under his oxter [armpit], happing for his life,’ is
cited as one of the sad sights of the night. ‘When people were sent
into his closet to help out with his cabinet and papers, the smoke was
so thick that they only got out a small cabinet with great difficulty.
Albeit his papers were lying about the floor, or hung about the walls
of his closet in pocks, yet they durst not stay to gather them up or
take them ... so that that cabinet, and his servant [clerk]‘s lettron
[desk], which stood near the door of the lodging, with some few other
things, was all that was saved, and the rest, even to his lordship’s
wearing-clothes, were burnt.’[264] According to an eye-witness, the
fire continued to burn all night and till ten o’clock on Sunday
morning, ‘with the greatest frayor and vehemency that ever I saw a
fire do, notwithstanding that I saw London burn.’[265] ‘The flames
were so terrible, that none durst come near to quench it. It was a very
great wind, which blew to such a degree, that, with the sparks that
came from the fire, there was nothing to be seen through the whole
city, but as it had been showers of sparks, like showers of snow, they
were so thick.’[266]
‘There are burnt, by the easiest computation, between three and
four hundred families; the pride of Edinburgh is sunk; from the
Cowgate to the High Street, all is burnt, and hardly one stone left
upon another. The Commissioner, the President of Parliament, the
President of the Court of Session [Sir Hugh Dalrymple], the Bank [of
Scotland], most of the lords, lawyers, and clerks were burnt, besides
many poor families. The Parliament House very nearly [narrowly]
escaped; all registers confounded [the public registers being kept
there]; clerks’ chambers and processes in such a confusion, that the
lords and officers of state are just now met in Ross’s tavern, in order
to adjourn the session by reason of the 1700.
disorder. Few people are lost, if any at all;
but there was neither heart nor hand left among them for saving
from the fire, nor a drop of water in the cisterns. Twenty thousand
hands flitting [removing] their trash, they knew not where, and
hardly twenty at work. Many rueful spectacles, &c.’[267]
The Town Council recorded their sense of this calamity as a ‘fearful
rebuke of God,’ and the Rev. Mr Willison of Dundee did not omit to
improve the occasion. ‘In Edinburgh,’ says he, ‘where Sabbath-
breaking very much abounded, the fairest and stateliest of its
buildings, in the Parliament Close and about it (to which scarce any
in Britain were comparable), were on the fourth of February (being
the Lord’s Day), burnt down and laid in ashes and ruins in the space
of a few hours, to the astonishment and terror of the sorrowful
inhabitants, whereof I myself was an eye-witness. So great was the
terror and confusion of that Lord’s Day, that the people of the city
were in no case to attend any sermon or public worship upon it,
though there was a great number of worthy ministers convened in
the place (beside the reverend ministers of the city) ready to have
prayed with or preached to the people on that sad occasion, for the
General Assembly was sitting there at the time. However, the Lord
himself, by that silent Sabbath, did loudly preach to all the
inhabitants of the city,’ &c.[268]
Some of the houses burnt on this occasion, forming part of the
Parliament Square, were of the extraordinary altitude of fourteen
stories, six or seven of which, however, were below the level of the
ground on the north side. These had been built about twenty years
before by Thomas Robertson, brewer, a thriving citizen, who is
described in his epitaph in the Greyfriars’ churchyard as ‘remarkable
for piety towards God, loyalty towards his prince, love to his country,
and civility towards all persons;’ while he was also, by these
structures, ‘urbis exornator, si non conditor.’[269] But Robertson, as
youngest bailie, had given the Covenant out of his hand to be burnt
at the Cross in 1661; and ‘now God in his providence hath sent a
burning among his lands, so that that which was eleven years a-
building, was not six hours of burning. Notwithstanding this, he was
a good man, and lamented to his death the burning of the Covenant;
he was also very helpful to the Lord’s prisoners during the late
persecution.’[270]
There being no insurance against fire in 1700.
those days, the heirs of Robertson were
reduced from comparative affluence to poverty, and the head of the
family was glad to accept the situation of a captain in the city guard,
and at last was made a pensioner upon the city’s charge.[271]
Amongst the burnt out has been mentioned the Bank of Scotland.
‘The directors and others concerned did with great care and diligence
carry off all the cash, bank-notes, books, and papers in the office;
being assisted by a party of soldiers brought from the Castle by the
Earl of Leven, then governor thereof, and governor of the bank, who,
with the Lord Ruthven, then a director, stood all the night directing
and supporting the soldiers, in keeping the stair and passage from
being overcrowded. But the Company lost their lodging and whole
furniture in it.’[272]
Lord Crossrig, who suffered so much by this fire, tells us in his
Diary, that in the late evil times—that is, before the Revolution—he
had been a member of a society that met every Monday afternoon
‘for prayer and conference.’ Since their deliverance, such societies
had gone out of fashion, and profanity went on increasing till it came
to a great height. Hearing that there were societies setting up in
England ‘for reformation of manners,’ and falling in with a book that
gave an account of them, he bethought him how desirable it was that
something of the sort should be attempted in Edinburgh, and spoke
to several friends on the subject. There was, consequently, a meeting
at his house in November 1699, at which were present Mr Francis
Grant (subsequently Lord Cullen); Mr Matthew Sinclair; Mr William
Brodie, advocate; Mr Alexander Dundas, physician, and some other
persons, who then determined to form themselves into such a
society, under sanction of some of the clergy. The schedule of rules
for this fraternity was signed on the night when the fire happened.
‘This,’ says Crossrig, ‘is a thing I remark as notable, which
presently was a rebuke to some of us for some fault in our solemn
engagement there, and probably Satan blew that coal to witness his
indignation at a society designedly entered into in opposition to the
Kingdom of Darkness, and in hopes that such an occurrence should
dash our society in its infancy, and discourage us to proceed therein.
However, blessed be our God, all who then met have continued
steadfast ever since ... and we have had many meetings since that
time, even during the three months that I 1700.
lived at the Earl of Winton’s lodging in the
Canongate.... Likeas, there are several other societies of the same
nature set up in this city.’[273]

The burning out of the Bank of Scotland Feb.

was not more than twenty days past, when a
trouble of a different kind fell upon it. ‘One Thomas M‘Gie, who was
bred a scholar, but poor, of a good genius and ready wit, of an
aspiring temper, and desirous to make an appearance in the world,
but wanting a fund convenient for his purpose, was tempted to try
his hand upon bank-notes. At this time all the five kinds of notes—
namely, £100, £50, £20, £10, and £5—were engraven in one and the
same character. He, by artful razing, altered the word five in the five-
pound note, and made it fifty. But good providence discovered the
villainy before he had done any great damage, by means of the check-
book and a record kept in the office; and the rogue was forced to fly
abroad. The check-book and record are so excellently adapted to one
another, and well contrived; and the keeping them right, and
applying thereof, is so easy, that no forgery or falsehood of notes can
be imposed upon the bank for any sum of moment, before it is
discovered. After discovering this cheat of M‘Gie, the company
caused engrave new copper-plates for all their notes, each of a
different character, adding several other checks; so that it is not in
the power of man to renew M‘Gie’s villainy.’[274]

The glass-work at Leith made a great Feb.

complaint regarding the ruinous practice
pursued by the work at Newcastle, of sending great quantities of
their goods into Scotland. The English makers had lately landed at
Montrose no less than two thousand six hundred dozen of bottles,
‘which will overstock the whole country with the commodity.’ On
their petition, the Lords of the Privy Council empowered the Leith
Glass Company to send out officers to seize any such English bottles
and bring them in for his majesty’s use.[275]

The ill-reputed governments of the last Mar. 14.

two reigns put down unlicensed worship
among the Presbyterians, on the ground that the conventicles were
schools of disaffection. The present government acted upon precisely
the same principle, in crushing attempts at the establishment of
Episcopal meeting-houses. The commission 1700.
of the General Assembly at this time
represented to the Privy Council that the parishes of Eyemouth,
Ayton, and Coldingham[276] were ‘very much disturbed by the setting
up of Episcopal meeting-houses, whereby the people are withdrawn
from their duty to his majesty, and all good order of the church
violat.’ On the petition of the presbytery of Chirnside, backed by the
Assembly Commission, the Privy Council ordained that the sheriff
shut up all these meeting-houses, and recommended the Lord
Advocate to ‘prosecute the pretended ministers preaching at the said
meeting-houses, not qualified according to law, and thereby not
having the protection of the government.’[277]
This policy seems to have been effectual for its object, for in the
statistical account of Coldingham, drawn up near the close of the
eighteenth century, the minister reports that there were no
Episcopalians in his parish. It is but one of many facts which might
be adduced in opposition to the popular doctrine, that persecution is
powerless against religious conviction.

Notwithstanding the many serious and the many calamitous things

affecting Scotland, there was an under-current of pleasantries and
jocularities, of which we are here and there fortunate enough to get a
glimpse. For example—in Aberdeen, near the gate of the mansion of
the Earl of Errol, there looms out upon our view a little cozy tavern,
kept by one Peter Butter, much frequented of students in Marischal
College and the dependents of the magnate here named. The former
called it the Collegium Butterense, as affecting to consider it a sort of
university supplementary to, and necessary for the completion of, the
daylight one which their friends understood them to be attending.
Here drinking was study, and proficiency therein gave the title to
degrees. Even for admission, there was a theme required, which
consisted in drinking a particular glass to every friend and
acquaintance one had in the world, with one more. Without these
possibly thirty-nine or more articles being duly and unreservedly
swallowed, the candidate was relentlessly excluded. On being
accepted, a wreath was conferred, and Master James Hay, by virtue
of the authority resting in him under the 1700.
rules of the foundation, addressed the
neophyte:
Potestatem do tibique
Compotandi bibendique,
Ac summa pocula implendi,
Et haustus exhauriendi,
Cujusve sint capacitatis,
E rotundis aut quadratis.
In signum ut manumittaris,
 Adornet caput hic galerus,
Quod tibi felix sit faustumque,
Obnixe comprecor multumque.

There were theses, too, on suitably convivial ideas—as, for example:

’Gainst any man of sense,
Asserimus ex pacto,
Upon his own expense,
Quod vere datur ens
Potabile de facto....

If you expect degrees,

Drink off your cup and fill,
We’re not for what you please:
Our absolute decrees
Admit of no free-will....

The longer we do sit,

The more we hate all quarrels,
(Let none his quarters flit),
The more we do admit
Of vacuum in barrels. &c.

Or else:
For to find out a parallaxis
We’ll not our minds apply,
Save what a toast in Corbreed[278] makes us;
Whether the moon moves on her axis,
Ask Black and Gregory.[279]

That bodies are à parte rei,

To hold we think it meetest;
Some cold, some hot, some moist, some dry,
Though all of them ye taste and try,
The fluid is the sweetest.

Post sextam semi hora

At night, no friend refuses
To come lavare ora;
Est melior quam Aurorâ,
And fitter for the Muses, &c.

1700.
 A diploma conferred upon George Durward, doubtless not without
very grave consideration of his pretensions to the honour, is couched
in much the same strain as the theses:
To all and sundry who shall see this,
Whate’er his station or degree is,
We, Masters of the Buttery College,
Send greeting, and to give them knowledge,
That George Durward, præsentium lator,
Did study at our Alma Mater
Some years, and hated foolish projects,
But stiffly studied liquid logics;
And now he’s as well skilled in liquor
As any one that blaws a bicker;
For he can make our college theme
A syllogism or enthymeme....
Since now we have him manumitted,
In arts and sciences well fitted,
To recommend him we incline
To all besouth and north the line,
To black and white, though they live as far
As Cape Good-Hope and Madagascar,
Him to advance, because he is
Juvenis bonæ indolis, &c.

We have, however, no specimen of the wit of this fluid university

that strikes us as equal to a Catalogus Librorum in Bibliothecâ
Butterensi; to all external appearance, a dry list of learned books,
while in reality comprehending the whole paraphernalia of a tavern.
It is formally divided into ‘Books in large folio,’ ‘Books in lesser folio,’
‘Books in quarto,’ ‘Books in octavo,’ and ‘Lesser Volumes,’ just as we
might suppose the university catalogue to have been. Amongst the
works included are: ‘Maximilian Malt-kist de principiis liquidorum—
Kircherus Kettles de eodem themate—Bucket’s Hydrostaticks—
Opera Bibuli Barrelli, ubi de conservatione liquoris, et de vacuo,
problematice disputatur—Constantinus Chopinus de philosophicis
bibendi legibus, in usum Principalis, curâ Georgii Leith [described in
a note as a particularly assiduous pupil of the college] 12 tom.—
Compendium ejus, for weaker capacities—Barnabius Beer-glass, de
lavando gutture—Manuale Gideonis Gill, de Syllogismis
concludentibus—Findlay Fireside, de 1700.
circulari poculorum motu,’ &c. One may
faintly imagine how all this light-headed nonsense would please Dr
Pitcairn, as he sat regaling himself in the Greping Office, and how the
serious people would shake their heads at it when they perused it at
full length, a few years afterwards, in Watson’s Collection of Scots
Poems.

The commissioners of the General July 31.

Assembly, considering the impending
danger of a late harvest and consequent scarcity, and the other
distresses of the country, called for the 29th day of August being
solemnised by a fast. In the reasons for it, they mention the
unworthy repining at the late providences, and ‘that, under our great
penury and dearth, whilst some provoked God by their profuse
prodigality, the poorest of the people, who suffered most, and who
ought thereby to have been amended, have rather grown worse and
worse.’

Duncan Robertson, a younger son of the deceased Laird of Struan,

had fallen out of all good terms with his mother, apparently in
consequence of some disputes about their respective rights.
Gathering an armed band of idle ruffians, he went with them to his
mother’s jointure-lands, and laid them waste; he went to a ‘room’ or
piece of land occupied by his sister Margaret, and carried off all that
was upon it; he also ‘laid waste any possession his other sister Mrs
Janet had.’ When a military party, posted at Carie, came to protect
the ladies, he fired on it, and afterwards plainly avowed to the
commander that his object was to dispossess his mother and her
tenants. By this cruel act, Lady Struan and her other children had
been ‘reduced to these straits and difficulties, that they had not
whereupon to live.’
The Privy Council gave orders for the Aug. 2.
capture of Duncan Robertson, and his being
put in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and kept there till further orders.
[280]

Nov. 16.
 A band of persons, usually called Egyptians or gipsies, used to go
about the province of Moray in armed fashion, helping themselves
freely to the property of the settled population, and ordinarily
sleeping in kilns near the farmhouses. There seems to have been
thirty of them in all, men and women; but it was seldom that more
than eight or ten made their appearance in 1700.
any one place. It was quite a familiar sight,
at a fair or market in Banff, Elgin, Forres, or any other town of the
district, to see nearly a dozen sturdy Egyptians march in with a piper
playing at their head, their matchlocks slung behind them, and their
broadswords or dirks by their sides, to mingle in the crowd, inspect
the cattle shewn for sale, and watch for bargains passing among
individuals, in order to learn who was in the way of receiving money.
They would be viewed with no small suspicion and dislike by the
assembled rustics and farmers; but the law was unable to put them
entirely down.
James Macpherson, who was understood to be the natural son of a
gentleman of the district by a gipsy mother, was a conspicuous or
leading man in the band; he was a person of goodly figure and great
strength and daring, always carrying about with him—how acquired
we cannot tell—an example of the two-handed swords of a former
age, besides other weapons. He had a talent for music, and was a
good player on the violin. It has been stated that some traits of a
generous nature occasionally shone out in him; but, on the whole, he
was merely a Highland cateran, breaking houses and henroosts,
stealing horses and cattle, and living recklessly on the proceeds, like
the tribe with which he associated.
Duff, Laird of Braco, founder of the honours and wealth of the
Earls of Fife, took a lead at this time in the public affairs of his
district. He formed the resolution of trying to give a check to the
lawless proceedings of the Egyptians, by bringing their leaders to
justice. It required some courage to face such determined ruffians
with arms in their hands, and he had a further difficulty in the
territorial prejudices of the Laird of Grant, who regarded some of the
robbers as his tenants, and felt bound, accordingly, to protect them
from any jurisdiction besides his own.[281] This remark bears
particularly upon two named Peter and Donald Brown, who had
lived for half a year at a place closely adjacent to Castle-Grant, and
 the former of whom 1700.
was regarded as
captain of the band.
Finding Macpherson, the Browns, and
others at the ‘Summer’s Eve Fair in Keith, the
stout-hearted Braco made up his mind to
attack them. To pursue a narrative which
appears to be authentic: ‘As soon as he
observed them in the fair, he desired his
brother-in-law, Lesmurdie, to bring him a
dozen stout men, which he did. They attacked
the villains, who, as they had several of their
accomplices with them, made a desperate
resistance. One of them made a pass at Braco
with his hanger, intending to run him through
the heart; but it slanted along the outside of
the ribs, and one of his men immediately
stabbed the fellow dead. They then carried
Macpherson and [Peter] Brown to a house in
Keith, and set three or four stout men to
guard them, not expecting any more
opposition, as all the rest of the gang were
fled. Braco and Lesmurdie were sitting in an
upper room, concerting the commitment of
their prisoners, when the Laird of Grant and
thirty men came calling for them, swearing no
Duff in Scotland should keep them from him.
Braco, hearing the noise of the Grants, came
down stairs, and said, with seeming
unconcern and humour: “That he designed to
have sent them to prison; but he saw they
were too strong a party for him to contend
Macpherson’s with, and so he must leave them;” but,
Sword. without losing a moment, he took a turn
through the market, found other two justices
of peace, kept a court, and assembled sixty
stout fellows, with whom he retook the two criminals, and sent them
to prison.’[282]
 James Macpherson, the two Browns, and 1700.
James Gordon, were brought before the
sheriff of Banffshire at Banff, on the 7th of November 1700, charged
with ‘being habit and repute Egyptians and vagabonds, and keeping
the markets in their ordinary manner of thieving and purse-
cutting’ ... being guilty also of ‘masterful bangstrie and oppression.’ A
procurator appeared on the part of the young Laird of Grant,
demanding surrender of the two Browns, to be tried in the court of
his regality, within whose bounds they had lived, and offering a
culreach or pledge for them;[283] but the demand was overruled, on
the ground that the Browns had never been truly domiciliated there.
Witnesses were adduced, who detailed many felonies of the
prisoners. They had stolen sheep, oxen, and horses; they had broken
into houses, and taken away goods; they had robbed men of their
purses, and tyrannously oppressed many poor people. It was shewn
that the band was in the habit of speaking a peculiar language. They
often spent whole nights in dancing and debauchery, Peter Brown or
Macpherson giving animation to the scene by the strains of the
violin. An inhabitant of Keith related how Macpherson came to his
house one day, seeking for him, when, not finding him, he stabbed
the bed, to make sure he was not there, and, on going away, set the
ale-barrel aflowing. The jury gave a verdict against all the four
prisoners; but sentence was for the meantime passed upon only
Macpherson and Gordon, adjudging them to be hanged next market-
day.[284]
Macpherson spent the last hours of his life in composing a tune
expressive of the reckless courage with which he regarded his fate.
He marched to the place of execution, a mile from the town, playing
this air on his violin. He even danced to it under the fatal tree. Then
he asked if any one in the crowd would accept his fiddle, and keep it
as a memorial of Macpherson; and finding no one disposed to do so,
he broke the instrument over his knee, and threw himself
indignantly from the ladder. Such was the life and death of a man of
whom one is tempted to think that, with such qualities as he
possessed, he might, in a happier age, have 1700.
risen to some better distinction than that
which unfortunately he has attained.[285]
 At this date one of the most remarkable of 1701. Jan. 25.
the precursors of Watt in the construction
of the steam-engine, comes in an interesting manner into connection
with Scotland. Captain Thomas Savery, an Englishman, ‘treasurer to
the commissioners of sick and wounded,’ had, in 1696, described an
engine framed by himself, and which is believed to have been
original and unsuggested, ‘in which water is raised not only by the
expansive force of steam, but also by its condensation, the water
being raised by the pressure of the atmosphere into receivers, from
which it is forced to a greater height by the expansive force of the
steam.’[286] He had obtained a patent for this engine in 1698, to last
for thirty-five years.
We have seen that there were busy-brained men in Scotland,
constantly trying to devise new things; and even now, Mr James
Gregory, Professor of Mathematics in the Edinburgh University—a
member of a family in which talent has been inherent for two
centuries—was endeavouring to bring into use ‘a machine invented
by him for raising of water in a continued pipe merely by lifting,
without any suction or forcing, which are the only ways formerly
practised, and liable to a great many inconveniences.’ By this new
machine, according to the inventor, ‘water might be raised to any
height, in a greater quantity, and in less space of time,’ than by any
other means employing the same force. It was useful for ‘coal-pits or
mines under ground.’ On his petition, Mr 1701.
Gregory obtained an exclusive right to make
and use this machine for thirty-one years.
Another such inventive genius was Mr James Smith of Whitehill,
who for several years made himself notable by his plans for
introducing supplies of water into burghs. Smith had caught at
Savery’s idea, and made a paction with him for the use of his engine
in Scotland, and now he applied to the Estates for ‘encouragement.’
He says that, since his bargain with Captain Savery, he ‘has made
additions to the engine to considerable advantage, so that, in the
short space of an hour, there may be raised thereby no less than the
quantity of twenty tuns of water to the height of fourteen fathoms.’
Any member of the honourable house was welcome to see it at work,
and satisfy himself of its efficiency; whence we may infer that an
example of it had come down to Edinburgh. In compliance with his
petition, Smith was invested with the exclusive power of making the
engine and dealing with parties for its use during the remainder of
the English patent.[287]
Savery’s steam-engine, however, was a seed sown upon an infertile
soil, and after this date, we in Scotland at least hear of it no more.

It pleased the wisdom of the Scottish July 10.

legislature (as it did that of the English
parliament likewise) to forbid the export of wool and of woolly skins,
an encouragement to woollen manufacturers at home, at the
expense, as usual, of three or four times the amount in loss to the
rest of the community. At this date, Michael Allan, Dean of Guild in
Edinburgh, came before the Privy Council to shew that, in
consequence of the extreme coldness and backwardness of the late
spring, producing a mortality of lambs, there were many thousands
of lambs’ skins, or morts, which could not be manufactured in the
kingdom, and would consequently be lost, but which would be of
value at Dantzig and other eastern ports, where they could be
manufactured into clothing. He thought that property to the value of
about seven thousand pounds sterling might thus be utilised for
Scotland, which otherwise ‘must of a necessity perish at home, and
will be good for nothing;’ and the movement was the more desirable,
as the return for the goods would be in ‘lint, hemp, iron, steel, pot-
ashes, and knaple, very useful for our 1701.
manufactures, and without which the
nation cannot possibly be served.’
The Council called in skinners, furriers, and others to give them
the best advice, and the result was a refusal to allow the skins to be
exported.
Rather more than a twelvemonth before (June 4, 1700), it was
intimated to the Privy Council by ‘the manufactory of Glasgow,’ that
one Fitzgerard, an Irish papist, ‘has had a constant trade these three
years past of exporting wool and woollen yarn to France, and that he
has at this present time combed wool and woollen yarn to the value
of three thousand pounds sterling ready to be exported, to the great
ruin of the nation, and of manufactories of that kind.’ The Council
immediately sent orders to the magistrates of Glasgow to take all