That face alas no more is fair, These lips no longer red; Dark are my eyes, now closed in death, And every charm is fled.
The hungry worm my sister is; This winding sheet I wear; And cold and weary lasts our night Till that last morn appear.
But hark the cock has warned me hence, A long and last adieu! Come see, false man, how low she lies Who dy’d for love of you.
The lark sung loud, the morning smiled With beams of rosy red: Pale William shook in every limb And raving left his bed.
He hyed him to the fatal place, Where Margaret’s body lay; And stretched him on the grass green turf That wrapt her breathless clay.
And thrice he called on Margaret’s name And thrice he wept full sore, Then laid his cheek to her cold grave And word spake never more.’
The author of this poem was not only a M’Gregor, but like the Gregories, a M’Gregor of Roro, and though he had changed his name, as did so many members of that unfortunate clan, the tradition was always kept up in his family.
Charles Gregorie, a half brother of Professor James, who was for a time Snell Exhibitioner at Balliol, was created by Queen Anne in 1707 Professor of Mathematics at St Andrews, which chair he held for thirty-two years until such time as his son could be appointed in his stead. He was quiet, studious, and able, but little is known of him.
David Gregorie, who succeeded him, does not bear quite so gentle a character, but he was a much abler man and one who could make his personality felt wherever he went.
After his own schooldays were over, he became tutor to the sons of the Duke of Gordon with whom he was connected through his grandmother. In this way he passed several years of his life before he was appointed to the Mathematical Chair. As a professor he was very popular, and if he tried to extend his influence beyond his class-room, he meant nothing but kindness. This was not always understood. One of his students wrote an autobiography, in which he described the ardour with which Mr Gregorie insisted that he should attend the services at the church—ardour for which Mr. Stockdale was not grateful and to requite which he put the professor’s name into his ‘immortal’ autobiography as that of a bigot, who had compelled him to attend the kirk. Thomas Reid, when studying his cousin’s character and especially his whiggery and Presbyterianism, so curiously unlike the rest of his family, remembered that he, like himself, was descended from the second wife of David Gregorie of Kinairdy, and had inherited her principles both in religion and politics.