The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 19
Page 16
WEIR OF HERMISTON
INTRODUCTORY
In the wild end of a moorland parish, far out of the sight of any house,there stands a cairn among the heather, and a little by east of it, inthe going down of the braeside, a monument with some verses halfdefaced. It was here that Claverhouse shot with his own hand the PrayingWeaver of Balweary, and the chisel of Old Mortality has clinked on thatlonely gravestone. Public and domestic history have thus marked with abloody finger this hollow among the hills; and since the Cameronian gavehis life there, two hundred years ago, in a glorious folly, and withoutcomprehension or regret, the silence of the moss has been broken onceagain by the report of firearms and the cry of the dying.
The Deil's Hags was the old name. But the place is now called Francie'sCairn. For a while it was told that Francie walked. Aggie Hogg met himin the gloaming by the cairnside, and he spoke to her, with chatteringteeth, so that his words were lost. He pursued Rob Todd (if any onecould have believed Robbie) for the space of half a mile with pitifulentreaties. But the age is one of incredulity; these superstitiousdecorations speedily fell off; and the facts of the story itself, likethe bones of a giant buried there and half dug up, survived, naked andimperfect, in the memory of the scattered neighbours. To this day, ofwinter nights, when the sleet is on the window and the cattle are quietin the byre, there will be told again, amid the silence of the young andthe additions and corrections of the old, the tale of the Justice-Clerkand of his son, young Hermiston, that vanished from men's knowledge; ofthe two Kirsties and the four Black Brothers of the Cauldstaneslap; andof Frank Innes, "the young fool advocate," that came into these moorlandparts to find his destiny.