RIDDELLS OF GLEN-RIDDELL, SCOTLAND.
81
before being followed by his son. By this marriage there were several
children, of whom hereafter.
Elizabeth Riddell (1), second daughter of Robert² (1), of Glen-Rid-
dell, was married to Mr. John Wood (Esq.), of Largo, governor of the Isle
of Man from 1761 to 1775 A. D.
Catherine Riddell (1), third daughter of Robert² (1), of Glen-Rid-
dell, was the wife of Maule, Esq.
FOURTH GENERATION.
Robert Riddell (2), eldest son of Walters (3), and his wife, An-
nie Riddell, of Glen-Riddell and Newhouse, succeeded to his mother's
property; married a Miss Kennedy, but had no issue. Mr. Riddell dis-
tinguished himself as an antiquary and author. He published several
small works; among them, "A Desertation on Ancient Modes of Fortify-
cations in Scotland"; another on "The Petrified Fortifications of Scot-
land." He was a member of the Philosophical Society of Manchester,
and Fellow of the Antiquarian Societies of Edinburgh and London.
He was a patron of Robert Burns, the poet, and is frequently mentioned
by him in his poems; he was present at the celebrated convivial celebra-
tion connected with the conquest of the "Whistle," as the following lines
by the great bard imply:-
"Three joyous good fellows, with hearts clear of flaw,
Craigdorroch, so famous for wit, worth, and law,
And trusty Glen-Riddell, so skilled in old coins,
And gallant Sir Robert, deep read in old wines." *
There are several other poems in which Mr. Riddell is alluded to during
his lifetime, one of which was evidently sent to him with a returned news-
paper, and is addressed to "Captain Riddell, of Glen-Riddell." It reads
as follows:
:-
"My goosequill too rude is to tell all your goodness,
Bestowed on your servant, the poet.
Would to God I had one like the beam of the sun,
And then all the world, sir, should know it."
Mr. Riddell was in sympathy with those in the more lowly walks of
life, and employed means to inform them by establishing a circulating
library, which was owned by a society formed by his own tenants and
farming neighbors. "Burns was treasurer, librarian, and censor." Mr.
Riddell died April 21, 1794, and the representation of this family devolved
upon the descendants of John, the second son of Walter, the first of Glen-
-
The parties mentioned in the poem entitled "The Whistle," were Robert Rid-
dell, the antiquary; Furguson, of Craigdorroch, -"a line that struggled for free-
dom under Bruce," - and Sir Robert Laurie, an admiral of the Royal Navy, all three
gentlemen being connected in the ties of kinship. The lines of the poem were
founded upon the challenge of a Dane, who brought the "whistle" to Scotland.
The Scandinavian challenged various parties in his wine orgies, promising the whis-
tle to the one who could outdrink him, and Sir Walter Laurie, the ancestor of the
admiral, met and saw the Dane under the table, "blowing upon the whistle his
requiem still." Having thus secured the trophy, Laurie and his brother-in-law,
Walter Riddell, of Glen-Riddell, encountered one another in a bacchanalian contest,
when the latter was victor, but his son-in-law, Robert Riddell, the "trusty Glen-
Riddell" of the song, lost it to his friend Furguson, whose libations on the occa-
sion were very wonderful, and whose representative now possesses the little ebony
whistle which Walter Riddell-Carre, Esq., late of Cavers, had seen and blown upon,
but not in a bacchanalian encounter.
6
