Hello again, just been lucky enough to purchase a ticket to your Flying visit at the Scottish Borders Book Festival! And After your last reply which horrified me at your lack of golfing ability(I’m Scottish after all & only 29!!). You may be interested in this chap!– THE LEGEND OF LORD SOULIS (Early owner of Hermitage) This baron is supposed to have had dealings with a familiar spirit. His story was made into a ballad by Dr John Leyden ‘Lord Soulis he sat in Hermitage Castle, And beside him Old Redcap sly – Now, tell me, thou sprite who art miekle of might, The death that I must die?’ Naught that enemies can attempt, replies the spirit, will avail against him until ‘Til threefold ropes of sifted sand Around thy body twine. In the end, this is what happens, when Thomas of Ercidoune, a wizard, binds up Lord Soulis as described, then wraps him in lead and boils him to death in a cauldron http://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/spiritualism/hermitage.php. And he wasn’t even a foxhunter.

Craig Macdougall