Clephane, Elizabeth

Author

[given in error as ‘Edith’ in the Praise! index only] Cecilia Douglas, b Edinburgh 1830, d Bridgend House nr Melrose, Roxburgh 1869. Nicknamed ‘Sunbeam’ from her early years and later generosity, and in spite of generally poor health, she spent most of her life in Melrose where she belonged to the Free Ch of Scotland. She was quiet by disposition, a lover of books who especially delighted in poetry. Like her sisters she gave all her spare income away; on one occasion they sold their horse and carriage to support some neighbours in distress. Their home was close to Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Abbotsford’ property. She was the author of ‘The ninety and nine’ (There were ninety and nine that safely lay), published in 1868, which D L Moody saw in The Christian Age newspaper in 1874 and Ira Sankey set to music spontaneously at an evangelistic rally in Edinburgh that year. 8 hymns, including that and the choice included in Praise!, were published anonymously, belatedly and even posthumously in the Free Ch periodical The Family Treasury between 1872 and 1874, under the doubleedged title ‘Breathings on the Border’. She died at home in her 39th year. No.699.