ror.

noted was the Taghairm, mentioned in the text. A person was wrapped up in the skin of a newly-slain bullock, and deposited beside a waterfall, or at the bottom of a precipice, or in some other strange, wild, and unusual situation, where the scenery around him suggested nothing but objects of horIn this situation, he revolved in his mind the question proposed; and whatever was impressed upon him by his exalted imagination, passed for the inspiration of the disembodied spirits, who haunt the desolate recesses. In some of these Hebrides, they attributed the same oracular power to a large black stone by the sea-shore, which they approached with certain solemnities, and considered the first fancy which came into their own minds, after they did so, to be the undoubted dictate of the tutelar deity of the stone, and, as such, to be, if possible, punctually complied with. Martin has recorded the following curious modes of Highland augury, in which the Taghairm, and its effects upon the person who was subjected to it, may serve to illustrate the text.

"It was an ordinary thing among the over-curious to consult an invisible oracle, concerning the fate of families and battles, &c. This was performed three different ways: the first was by a company of men, one of whom, being detached by lot, was afterwards carried to a river, which was the boundary between two villages; four of the company laid hold on him, and, having shut his eyes, they took him by the legs and arms, and then, tossing him to and again, struck his hips with force against the bank. One of them cried out, What is it you have got here? another answers, A log of birch-wood. The other cries again, Let his invisible friends appear from all quarters, and let them relieve him by giving an answer to our present demands: and in a few minutes after, a number of little creatures came from the sea, who answered the question, and disappeared suddenly. The man was then set at iberty, and they all returned home, to take their measures according to the prediction of their false prophets; but the poor deluded fools were abused, for their answer was still ambiguous. This was always practised in the night, and may literally be called the works of darkness.

“I had an account from the most intelligent and judicious men in the Isle of Skie, that about sixty-two years ago, the oracle was thus consulted only once, and that was in the parish of Kilmartin, on the east side, by a wicked and mischievous race of people, who are now extinguished, both root and branch.

"The second way of consulting the oracle was by a party of men, who first retired to solitary places, remote from any house, and there they singled out one of their number, and wrapt him in a big cow's hide, which they folded about him; his whole body was covered with it, except his head, and so left in this posture all night, until his invisible friends relieved him, by giving a proper answer to the question in hand; which he received, as he fancied, from several persons that he found about him all that time. His consorts returned to him at the break of day, and then he communicated his news to them; which often proved fatal to those concerned in such unwarrantable enquiries.

"There was a third way of consulting, which was a confirmation of the second above mentioned. The same company who put the man into the hide, took a live cat, and put him on a spit; one of the number was employed to turn the spit, and one of his consorts enquired of him, What are you doing? he answered, I roast this cat, until his friends answer the question; which must be the same that was proposed by the man shut up in the hide. And afterwards, a very big cat1 comes, attended by a number of lesser cats, desiring to rehieve the cat turned upon the spit, and then answers the

1 The reader may have met with the story of the "King of the Cats," in Lord Littleton's Letters. It is well known in the Highlands as a nursery tale.

2 This anecdote was, in former editions, inaccurately as

question. If this answer proved the same that was given to the man in the hide, then it was taken as a confirmation of the other, which, in this case, was believed infallible. "Mr. Alexander Cooper, present minister of North-Vist. told me, that one John Erach, in the Isle of Lewis, assured him, it was his fate to have been led by his curiosity with some who consulted this oracle, and that he was a night within the hide, as above mentioned; during which time he felt and heard such terrible things, that he could not express them; the impression it made on him was such as could never go off, and he said, for a thousand worlds he would never again be concerned in the like performance, for this had disordered him to a high degree. He confessed it ingenuously, and with an air of great remorse, and seemed to be very penitent under a just sense of so great a crime: he declared this about five years since, and is still living in the Lewis for any thing I know."-Description of the Western Isles, p. 110. See also PENNANT'S Scottish Tour, vol. ii. p. 361.

NOTE 2 U.

The choicest of the prey we had,

When swept our merry-men Gallangad.-P. 203.

I know not if it be worth observing, that this passage is taken almost literally from the mouth of an old Highland Kern or Ketteran, as they were called. He used to narrate the merry doings of the good old time when he was follower of Rob Roy MacGregor. This leader, on one occasion, thought proper to make a descent upon the lower part of the Loch Lomond district, and summoned all the heritors and farmers to meet at the Kirk of Drymen, to pay him black-mail, i. e. tribute for forbearance and protection. As this invitation was supported by a band of thirty or forty stout fellows, only one gentleman, an ancestor, if I mistake not, of the present Mr. Grahame of Gartmore, ventured to decline compliance. Rob Roy instantly swept his land of all he could drive away, and among the spoil was a bull of the old Scottish wild breed, whose ferocity occasioned great plague to the Ketterans. "But ere we had reached the Row of Dennan," said the old man, “a child might have scratched his ears." The circumstance is a minute one, but it paints the times when the poor beeve was compelled

Raven

NOTE 2 W.

That, watching while the deer is broke,

His morsel claims with sullen croak 7—P. 203.

Broke-Quartered.-Every thing belonging to the chase was matter of solemnity among our ancestors; but nothing was more so than the mode of cutting up, or, as it was technically called, breaking, the slaughtered stag. The forester had his allotted portion; the hounds had a certain allowance; and, to make the division as general as possible, the very birds had their share also. "There is a little gristle," says Turberville, "which is upon the spoone of the brisket, which we call the raven's bone; and I have seen in some places a raven so wont and accustomed to it, that she would never fail to croak and cry for it all the time you were in breaking up of the deer, and would not depart till she had it." In the very ancient metrical romance of Sir Tristrem, that peerless knight, who is said to have been the very deviser of all rules of chase, did not omit the ceremony :

"The rauen he yaue his yiftes

Sat on the fourched tre."

Sir Tristrem.

The raven might also challenge his rights by the Book of St. Albans; for thus says Dame Juliana Berners :

"Slitteth anon

The bely to the side, from the corbyn bone; That is corbyn's fee, at the death he will be."

Jonson, in "The Sad Shepherd," gives a more poetical account of the same ceremony:

"Marian.-He that undoes him,

Doth cleave the brisket bone, upon the spoon
Of which a little gristle grows-you call it -
Robin Hood.-The raven's bone.
Marian.-Now o'er head sat a raven

On a sere bough, a grown, great bird, and hoarse,
Who, all the while the deer was breaking up,
So croak'd and cried for't, as all the huntsmen,
Especially old Scathlock, thought it ominous."

heroic songs, first published in 1591, and reprinted in 165, inscribed by Anders Sofrensen, the collector and editor, to Sophia Queen of Denmark. I have been favoured with a literal translation of the original, by my learned friend Mr. Robert Jamieson, whose deep knowledge of Scandinavian antiquities will, I hope, one day be displayed in illustration of the history of Scottish Ballad and Song, for which no man possesses more ample materials. The story will remind the readers of the Border Minstrelsy of the tale of Young Tamlane. But this is only a solitary and not very marked instance of coincidence, whereas several of the other ballads in the same collection find exact counterparts in the Kampe Viser. Which may have been the originals, will be a question for future antiquaries. Mr. Jamieson, to secure the power of literal translation, has adopted the old Scottish idiom, which approaches so near to that of the Danish, as almost to give word for word, as well as line for line, and indeed in many verses the orthography alone is altered. As Wester Haf, mentioned in the first stanzas of the ballad, means the West Sea, in opposition to the Baltic, or East Sea, Mr. Jamieson inclines to be of opinion, that the scene of the disenchantment is laid in one of the Orkney, or Hebride Islands. To each verse in the original is added a burden, having a kind of meaning of its own, but not applicable, at least not uniformly applicable, to the sense of the stanza to which it is subjoined: this is very common both in Danish and Scottish song.

THE ELFIN GRAY.

TRANSLATED FROM THE DANISH KÆMPE VISER, p. 143. AND FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1591.

Der ligger en vold i Vester Haf, Der agter en bundè at byggè: Hand förer did baade hög og hund, Og agter der om vinteren at ligge. (DE VILDE DIUR OG DIURENE UDI SKOFVEN.)

NOTE 2 X.

Which spills the foremost foeman's life, That party conquers in the strife.”—P. 204.

Though this be in the text described as a response of the Taghairm, or Oracle of the Hide, it was of itself an augury frequently attended to. The fate of the battle was often anticipated in the imagination of the combatants, by observing which party first shed blood. It is said that the Highlanders under Montrose were so deeply imbued with this notion, that, on the morning of the battle of Tippermoor, they murdered a defenceless herdsman, whom they found in the fields, merely to secure an advantage of so much consequence to their party.

NOTE 2 Y.

Alice Brand.--P. 205.

This little fairy tale is founded upon a very curious Danish bailad, which occurs in the Kempe Viser, a collection of

5.

Syne up and spak the weiest Elf,
Creau'd as an immert sma:
"It's here is come a Christian man;--
I'll fley him or he ga."

28.

This fell under a linden green,

That again his shape he found;

O' wae and care was the word nae mair,

A' were sae glad that stound.

20.

"O dearest Eline, hear thou this,
And thou my wife sall be,
And a' the goud in merry England
Sae freely I'll gi'e thee!

30.

"Whan I was but a little wee bairn,

My mither died me fra;

My stepmither sent me awa' fra her; I turn'd till an Elfin Gray.

31.

"To thy husbande I a gift will gie,
Wi' mickle state and gear,
As mends for Eline his huswife;-
Thou's be my heartis dear."-

32.

"Thou nobil knyght, we thank now God
That has freed us frae skaith;
Sac wed thou thee a maiden free,
And joy attend ye baith!

33.

"Sin' I to thee nae maik can be

My dochter may be thine;

And thy gud will right to fulfill, Lat this be our propine."

34.

"I thank thee, Eline, thou wise woman;

My praise thy worth sall ha'e;

And thy love gin I fail to win,
Thou here at hame sall stay."

35.

The husbande biggit now on his oe, And nae ane wrought him wrang; His dochter wore crown in Engeland, And happy lived and lang.

36.

Now Eline, the husbande's huswife, has

Cour'd a' her grief and harms;

She's mither to a noble queen
That sleeps in a kingis arms.

GLOSSARY.

ST. 1. Wold, a wood; woody fastness. Husbande, from the Dan. hos, with, and bonde, a villain, or bondsman, who was a cultivator of the ground, and could not quit the estate to which he was attached, without the permission of his lord. This is the sense of the word, in the old Scottish records. In the Scottish "Burghe Laws," translated from the Reg. Majest. (Auchinleck MS. in the Adv. Lib.) it is used indiscriminately with the Dan. and Swed. bonde.

Bigg, build.

Ligg, lie.

Daes, does.

2. Shaw, wood.

Sairly, sorely.

3. Aik, oak.

Grewsome, terrible.

Bald, bold.

17. An, if.

Bide, abide.

Lemman, mistress.

18. Nae-gate, nowise.

19. Couth, could, knew how to

Lat be, let alone.

Gude, goods; property 20. Aneath, beneath.

Dwalling-stead, dwelling-place.

21. Sary, sorrowful.

Rede, counsel; consultation.
Forfairn, forlorn; lost; gone.

Tyne, (verb neut.) be lost; perish.

22. Will of rede, bewildered in thought; in the Danish original" vildraadage," Lat. " inops consilii;" Gr. Togwy. This expression is left among the desiderata in the Glossary to Ritson's Romances, and has never been explained. It is obsolete in the Danish as well as in English.