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It is so easy, and apparently so natural, to deny what you cannot be easily convicted of, that a savage as well as a child lies to excuse himself almost as instinctively as he raises his hand to protect his head. The old saying, 'Confess and be hanged, carries much argument in it. I observed a remark the other day in old Birrel.
I hard my granfather often say that he was six feet four, and made in proportion a handsome, black-a-vis'd man, with great dark whiskers. Well! he spent money like sklates, and so he died miserable but had a merry birrel, as I said." "But," inquired Nancy, "did he ever appear to the rogue that chated him?"
Of the casualities that happened in this year, I should not forget to put down, as a thing for remembrance, that an aged woman, one Nanse Birrel, a distillator of herbs, and well skilled in the healing of sores, who had a great repute among the quarriers and colliers she having gone to the physic well in the sandy hills to draw water, was found, with her feet uppermost in the well, by some of the bairns of Mr Lorimore's school; and there was a great debate whether Nanse had fallen in by accident head foremost, or, in a temptation, thrown herself in that position, with her feet sticking up to the evil one; for Nanse was a curious discontented blear-eyed woman, and it was only with great ado that I could get the people keepit from calling her a witchwife.
The Diary of the honest citizen Birrel, repeatedly records such incidents as the following: "The 24 of November , at two afternoon, the Laird of Airth and the Laird of Weems met on the High Gate of Edinburgh, and they and their followers fought a very bloody skirmish, where there were many hurt on both sides with shot of pistol." These skirmishes also took place in London itself.
Hither came men-slayers, thieves, and rogues of every description, and if they reached this inn-door they were safe. There is a record of a horse-thief named Birrel in the days of Henry VIII seeking refuge here for a crime committed at Lydd, in Kent. It was intended originally as a house for the refreshment of mendicant friars.
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