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I came here to enjoy natures delightful breath it is sweeter than a fial of rose oil." Braehead is the farm the historical Jock Howison asked and got from our gay James the Fifth, "the gudeman o' Ballengiech," as a reward for the services of his flail when the King had the worst of it at Cramond Brig with the gipsies.
MY early days were all spent in the beautiful county of Dumfries, which Scotch folks call the Queen of the South. There, in a small cottage, on the farm of Braehead, in the parish of Kirkmahoe, I was born on the 24th May, 1824.
By some cause that I do not recollect, if I ever had it properly told, the regiment wherein the captain had bought his commission was not sent to the plantations, but only over to Ireland, by which the captain and his lady were allowed to prolong their stay in the parish with his mother; and he, coming of age while he was among us, in making a settlement on his wife, bought the house at the Braehead, which was then just built by Thomas Shivers the mason, and he gave that house, with a judicious income, to Mrs Malcolm, telling her that it was not becoming, he having it in his power to do the contrary, that she should any longer be dependent on her own industry.
The army was therefore drawn up, with its left resting on the sharp angle of the burn above the Park Mill, and extended where the villages of Easterton, Borestine, and Braehead now stand to the spot where the road crosses the river at the village of Bannockburn.
It is a lovely neuk, this Braehead, preserved almost as it was two hundred years ago. "Lot and his wife," mentioned by Maidie, two quaintly cropped yew-trees, still thrive; the burn runs as it did in her time, and sings the same quiet tune, as much the same and as different as Now and Then.
On my visit to Scotland in 1884 I drove out to Braehead; but we found no cottage, nor trace of a cottage, and amused ourselves by supposing that we could discover by the rising of the grassy mound, the outline where the foundations once had been!
This amount of meditation and thankfulness seems to have been all she was able for. "I am going to-morrow to a delightfull place, Braehead by name, belonging to Mrs. Crraford, where there is ducks cocks hens bubblyjocks 2 dogs 2 cats and swine which is delightful. I would rather have a man-dog than a woman-dog, because they do not bear like woman-dogs; it is a hard case it is shocking.
She sent her coachman on horseback to overtake them, which he did at Kilmarnock, and they returned in the morning, when her ladyship was as cagey and meikle taken up with them as if they had gotten her full consent and privilege from the first. Captain Macadam afterwards bought a house at the Braehead, and gave it, with a judicious income, to Mrs.
The farm is unchanged in size from that time, and still in the unbroken line of the ready and victorious thrasher. Braehead is held on the condition of the possessor being ready to present the King with a ewer and basin to wash his hands, Jock having done this for his unknown king after the splore; and when George the Fourth came to Edinburgh, this ceremony was performed in silver at Holyrood.
Here are bits from her Diary at Braehead: "The day of my existence here has been delightful and enchanting. On Saturday I expected no less than three well-made Bucks the names of whom is here advertised. Mr. Geo. Keith and Jn. Keith the first is the funniest of every one of them. Mr. Mr. Craky you must-know is a great Buck and pretty good-looking." "I am at Ravelston enjoying nature's fresh air.
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