Talking of instruments hanging on walls---when Mary Queen of Scots set sail from Dundrenan to England and eventual execution she made a gift of her lute to Sir J. Gordon of Kenmure. This beautiful instrument hung on the wall at Kenmure Castle until the beginning of the 19th.C. at which time one of the young Gordons took it to the school with him one day and niffered {exchanged} it with one of his fellow pupils for an object he desired. The new owner of the lute bore his trophy home to the paternal farm where his father, with no eye to the beauty of the instrument, decided that if the top were removed it would make a grand ladle for scooping up the swill to feed the pigs with and for this purpose he mutilated the said instrument, which of course disintegrated after a short time into a bundle of staves.

Thus perished a thing of beauty, which would, no doubt, be of great historical and monetary value today.