_Bothy_ (Vol. ix., p. 305.).--For a familiar mention of this word (commonly
spelt _Bothie_), your correspondent may be referred to the poem of _The
Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich_, a Long-Vacation Pastoral, by Arthur Hugh
Clough, Oxford: Macpherson, 1848. The action of the poem is chiefly carried
on at the Bothie, the situation of which is thus described (in hexameter
verse):
"There on the blank hill side, looking down through the loch to the
ocean,
There with a runnel beside, and pine trees twain before it,
There with the road underneath, and in sight of coaches and steamers,
Dwelling of David Mackaye, and his daughters Elspie and Bella,
Sends up a volume of smoke the Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich."
This sort of verse, by the way, is thus humorously spoken of by Professor
Wilson in his dedication, "to the King," of the twelfth volume of Blackwood
(1822):
"What dost thou think, my liege, of the metre in which I address thee?
Doth it not sound very big, verse bouncing, bubble-and-squeaky,
Rattling, and loud, and high, resembling a drum or a bugle--
Rub-a-dub-dub like the one, like t'other tantaratara?
(It into use was brought of late by thy Laureate Doctor--
But, in my humble opinion, I write it better than he does)
It was chosen by me as the longest measure I knew of,
And, in praising one's King, it is right full measure to give him."