Annandale's Beef-Stand, Marquis of, or Devil's Beef Tub, a strange conchoidal hollow in Moffat parish, Dumfriesshire, 5 miles NNW of Moffat town. It lies near the source of Annan Water, just off the pass of Erickstane Brae from Annandale into Tweeddale, and to the N is overhung by Great Hill, 1527 feet high. ` It received its name, ' says the Laird of Summertrees in Scott's Redgauntlet, ` because the Annandale loons used to put their stolen cattle in there; and it looks as if four hills were laying their heads together to shut out daylight from the dark, hollow space between them. A deep, black, blackguard-looking abyss of a hole it is, and goes straight down from the roadside, as perpendicular as it can do, to be a heathery brae. At the bottom there is a small bit of a brook, that yon would think could hardly find its way out from the hills that are so closely jammed around it. ' At the bottom also is a martyred Covenanter's grave; and its second alias, ` MacCleran's Loup, ' records the escape of a Highland rebel in the '45, who, wrapped in his plaid, rolled like a hedgehog down the steep declivity amid a shower of musketballs-an incident Scott used in his romance (Lander's Scottish Rivers, ed. 1874, p. 37).

(F.H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4); © 2004 Gazetteer for Scotland)