The reader may be amused with the following whimsical details of this
incident, which took place in the castle of Borthwick, in the year
1517. It appears, that in consequence of a process betwixt Master
George Hay de Minzeane and the Lord Borthwick, letters of
excommunication had passed against the latter, on account of the
contumacy of certain witnesses. William Langlands, an apparitor or
macer (_bacularius_) of the See of St Andrews, presented these
letters to the curate of the church of Borthwick, requiring him to
publish the same at the service of high mass. It seems that the
inhabitants of the castle were at this time engaged in the favourite
sport of enacting the Abbot of Unreason, a species of high jinks, in
which a mimic prelate was elected, who, like the Lord of Misrule in
England, turned all sort of lawful authority, and particularly the
church ritual, into ridicule. This frolicsome person with his retinue,
notwithstanding of the apparitor's character, entered the church,
seized upon the primate's officer without hesitation, and, dragging
him to the mill-dam on the south side of the castle, compelled him to
leap into the water. Not contented with this partial immersion, the
Abbot of Unreason pronounced, that Mr. William Langlands was not yet
sufficiently bathed, and therefore caused his assistants to lay him on
his back in the stream, and duck him in the most satisfactory and
perfect manner. The unfortunate apparitor was then conducted back to
the church, where, for his refreshment after his bath, the letters of
excommunication were torn to pieces, and steeped in a bowl of wine;
the mock abbot being probably of opinion that a tough parchment was
but dry eating, Langlands was compelled to eat the letters, and
swallow the wine, and dismissed by the Abbot of Unreason, with the
comfortable assurance, that if any more such letters should arrive
during the continuance of his office, "they should a' gang the same
gate," _i.
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