_From the letters of two sportsmen; with recollections of the Ettrick
Shepherd._
(_For the Mirror_.)
After visiting Thoms, the sculptor, "Burns's cottage," "Halloway
Kirk," Monument, &c., in Ayrshire, we toddled on over to Dumfries,
and had a _crack_ with poor "Rabbie Burns's" widow, not forgetting
McDiarmid the author; thence to Moffat, and up that dismal glen, the
pass of Moffat, to the grey mare's tail, a waterfall, so called from
its resembling the silvery tail of a grey mare; and truly, if the
simile were extended into infinitude, which from its sublimity it
would admit of, we might compare its waving, silky stream swinging
over the broad face of its lofty grey rock, to the tail of the pale
horse of Revelation, over the chaos of time. It was a sombre, solemn
sort of a day, and the dense clouds hung curtaining down the mountain
sides, like our living pall as it were--I scarcely know how--but we
felt dismally until we took a dram and got into a perspiration, with
tugging up the sinuosities of the cliff's, to the summit of the
waterfall. Loch Skein, where we were galvanized, electrified,
magnetized, and petrified, all at once, by the quackery, clackery,
flappery, quatter, splatter, clatter, scatter, and dash-de-blash, and
squash, of a flock of wild ducks, on its reedy, flaggy surface; O,
what a _scutter_ was there! Our hearts, too full, leapt into our
mouths, but our guns were turned into tons of lead, and ere we could
heave them up to our shoulders of clay, the thousand had fled into the
eternal grey mist of the mountain, like the dispersion of a confused
dream. There we stood like two sumphs, (as Hogg calls those who are
ganging a bit aglee in their wits) gaping and staring at each other
with a look which said, why did not _you_ shoot? Our dogs too stood
as stiff as two pumps, with tails standing out like the handles!
_Apropos_--talking of Hogg, the poet, we called to see him in his
half-acre island in Eltrive Lake, and truly we met with that burning
hot reception which we had anticipated from _Blackwood's Magazine_
description of him. We had no _notes of introduction_ except the notes
which our guns pricked upon the echoes of Ettric Forest, and which
James Hogg heard and answered with a view-hallo, for us to "come awa
doon the brae an' tak' a dram o'speerits," and so we did, and in true
Highland style; he met us at the door and gave us a drain from the
bottle, first gulping a glass himself of that double-strong like &
fire-eater, without a twink of the eye or a wince of the mouth; and
then with a grip o' the daddle, which made the fingers crack, he
pulled us into his bonnie wee bit shooting box of a house, with a
"Come awa ben ye'll be the better o' a bite o' venison pasty;" so in
we went, and were introduced to his bonnie wife and sousy barnes,
which latter, Jammie Hogg nursed as though he lov'd 'em frae the
uttermost ends o' his sowl.
Campbell has it against Byron, that "the poetic temperament is
incompatible with matrimonial felicity." Fudge, fudge, Mr. Campbell,
did you ever visit James Hogg?
Well, we sat down to take a snack with James and an extraordinary
monkey of his, which he has dressed in the garb of a Highland soldier,
and which too, sat down at table, and played his knife and fork like
a true epicure. "An extrornry crater is that wee Heelan-man o' mine,
gentlemen, he can conduc himsel' as weel's ony Christan man at table,
and aft when I'm pennin' a bit rhyme 'thegither, the crater'll lowp up
'ith chair anent me and tak' up a pen, in exac emeetation o' me, and
keck into my 'een in his cunnin way, as if he was speering me what to
write aboot; he surely maun ha' a feck o' thocht in his heed if are
could gar him spak it; but ye ken his horsemanship beats a'. I had a
spire-haired collie, a breed atween a Heelan lurcher, a grew, and a
wolf, dog, a meety, muckle collie he is for sure--weel, gentlemen, do
ye ken, he a' rides on him when we hoont the tod (fox), an' to see him
girt a screep o' red flannin on for a saddle, that the neer-do-weel
toor fra a beggar-wife's tattered duds ane day; an' then to see him
lowp on like a mountebank, and sit skreighin an' chatrin, an' cronkin
like a paddock on a clud o'yearth. O, its a lachin teeklesome sicht
for sure--an' then hee'l thud, thud, thud his wee bit neive 'ith
shouther 'oth collie, an' steek his toes in his side, just for a'
the world like a Newmarket jockey, an' then hee'l turn him roon
behint-afore an' play treeks, till collie gerns at him; an' then beway
o' makin friens again, hee'l streek an' pat him, an' peek the ferlie
oot o' his hurdles; an' then when we're a' ready for gannin awa, to be
sure what a dirdum an' stramash do they twa keek up; an' then aff they
flee like the deevil in a gale o' wind, an' are oot o' sicht before ye
can say owr the border an' far awa. But I ha' just been speerin the
forester aboot the tod (fox), an' he gars me gang owr the muir to
Ettric Forest, an' leuk in a cleuch in a rock there is there, an'
I shall find the half-peckit banes o' a joop o' mine that stray'd
yestreen. So, gentlemen, if yer fond o' oor kin o' sportin, ye shall
hae such a sicht o' rinnin an' ridin as ye ne'er saw heretofore we
your twa een."
We readily accepted the invite, and off we set in company with the
"Ettric Shepherd" and his monkey, and certainly it was a "_teeklesome
sicht_" to see him mounted on the long, lank, wire-haired, shaggy
wolf-dog-grew-lurcher, while he in play was scouring round and round
the wild and barren moor; away and away as swift as the wind, over
brae and bourn and bog they went, like a red petticoated witch on a
besom, flying in the storm.
On our way we fell in with the foresters, who were going a
deer-stalking; they had a buck to kill for the duke, so we joined
company, and gave that satisfactory shrug of the shoulders, with the
expectation of sport, that a spider would feel while sitting in the
corner of a hollow nut-shell, and seeing his victim already entangled
in his web, while he was whetting his appetite with suspended hope, in
dream of anticipated fattenings.
We made the best of our way to the watering-place haunt of the deer.
Silence was the word, and we crept on tip-toe and tip-toe, scarce
breathing, keeping ever out of the wind's course; for they have an
ear of silk, and an eye of light, and a scent so exquisite that they
could, if it were possible, hear the tread, see the essence, and scent
the breath, of a spirit. This watering haunt was in a lonely glen,
which was commanded, within pistol-shot, by a small clump of trees,
which were under-grown by brushwood and brambles, and wherein we
ambushed ourselves. Ay, there it was, the "gory bed," where "this day
a stag must die," just one hundred yards from that said clump. Hush,
hush, silence, silence, "Swallow your brith," says Jammie Hogg, hush,
"Heck, cack, a," says the monkey, "the deevil tak' the monkey," says
Jammie, "whist, whist, hush!"
(_To be concluded in our next_.)
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