The Leafing of the Oak and Ash--Splendid Stags' Heads--Edmund
Waller--Old Silver-Plate buried for preservation in the
'45--Mimicry in Birds--An accomplished Goldfinch.
While mild and May-like enough in the valleys and along the coast line,
the weather [May 1872] is reported as having more of March than May
about it on the uplands, owing to the prevalence of north-easterly
winds, that are at once exceedingly piercing and unseasonably snell. It
is pleasant at the same time to have to report that, so far, crops of
all kinds look extremely well, and have seldom been seen so forward
in mid-May. Potatoes have been distinguishable from field's end to
field's end in regular drills for ten days past, and in some instances
are already undergoing their first weeding and hoeing. Oats show a
strong, healthy braird, and nothing but a deficiency of moisture in
its present stage can prevent ryegrass from being the best crop that
has been known in the West Highlands for many years. Much, however,
will depend on the nature of the weather for the next fortnight: those
who should know best say that the country would be all the better
of more or less rain on every day for the remainder of the month,
and we daresay they are right. The lambing season has hitherto been a
highly favourable one, though the drought and the keen-edged easterly
winds are beginning to be complained of by shepherds in charge of
upland hirsels. As we write, however, there is appearance of rain,
which cannot fail to be attended by a change of wind to a more genial
airt, and it is hoped it may fall abundantly. The summer, by the way,
is likely to be a hot and dry one, if there be any truth in the popular
belief that when the oak takes precedence of the ash in presenting its
rich green foliage to the light, a cloudless, rainless summer is sure
to follow. We observe that everywhere the oak is now in leaf, while
the ash is yet budless and bare to its topmost bough, manifesting
an unwonted dulness and drowsiness for mid-May, as if it was loth,
even at the call of summer, to be roused from its hybernal repose.
We are indebted to the monks of the middle ages for the introduction
into our country, and successful cultivation, of some of our choicest
fruits and most beautiful flowers; nor is it any wonder that in
times when herbalism and the culling of simples was universally
practised and believed in, numberless shrubs and plants of real or
supposed efficacy in the cure of particular ailments should also be
imported and assiduously cultivated by the same benefactors. In some
cases, however, the supposed plants of virtue then introduced have
in our day turned out to be no better than noisome weeds, extremely
difficult of eradication, and one of these--how it found its way into
this district it would be difficulty to say--is becoming a perfect
pest in some parts of Lochaber. We refer to the plant commonly known
as Bishopweed, Goatweed, or Herb Gerard, which the botanists have
honoured by the high-sounding name Ægropodium podagraria. Gout, as
its botanical name implies, was the disease in which this rank and
foul-smelling weed was supposed to be of extraordinary virtue, and
for anything we know to the contrary, it may still possess all the
virtues at one time so confidently ascribed to it; but then you see
gout is altogether unknown in Lochaber--we are too poor, and perforce
live too soberly, to be visited by such aristocratic ailments--and
what business therefore this weed has to grow and spread amongst us,
and become unto us a nuisance and a plague, we cannot imagine: not
knowing the disease, we could get on very well without the unsavoury
antidote. Bishopweed, if allowed free growth in suitable soil, will
quickly cover the ground, to the destruction of everything else,
its innumerable stalks, crowned with pinnated ash-like leaves,
attaining to the height of a foot or more. When a single plant once
gets root-hold in pasture land, it spreads with amazing rapidity,
damaging and crowding out the grass in all directions, so that whenever
and wherever it appears its utter and thorough extirpation, whatever
the labour and cost, should be insisted upon with the least possible
delay. When plucked by the hand the plant emits a foetid, sickening
smell, all trace of which is only effaced from the fingers by a very
thorough washing indeed. We have observed that neither horse, nor ox,
nor sheep will of choice touch it, though its being in many places
called goatweed would seem to indicate that it is no more rejected
by that animal than many other acrid and poisonous plants and herbs
which our other ruminants will not touch even if starving. Of all the
ground pests with which we are acquainted, bishopweed is the worst,
and we warn our readers, if ever they meet with it in any neglected
corner of garden or field, to show it no mercy at all, for it is of
an unmerciful nature itself, killing every blade of grass it comes
in contact with, and choking unto the death every other vegetable
that it can surmount and master.
The finest stag's head and antlers that we have ever seen form a
trophy in the possession of our neighbour, Mr. Bill, Kilmalieu, the
magnificent "monarch of the waste" that bore them having fallen to
that gentleman's own rifle in Glengour two or three years ago. The
other day, however, we were shown a set of larger horns, though not
quite so handsome perhaps, or so faultless in spread and curve,
and unfortunately imperfect from the loss of one of the tines,
which was picked up by a shepherd in the Black Mount Forest many
years ago. The size of beam throughout was something extraordinary,
and one could not help regretting that it had not the head and neck
attached, that it might be set up in the style for which the good city
of Inverness has of recent years become so famous. Such a trophy of
the chase, complete in all its parts, would have deserved the place
of honour amid a thousand such trophies in the noblest hall in the
kingdom. As we handled these antlers, and poised them at arm's length
with admiration, the thought suddenly struck us that Edmund Waller,
the poet, must have had some such magnificent trophy before him when
he burst into the following apostrophe, in which a well-known fact
in the natural history of the animal is so happily interwoven with
the old mythological legend:--
"O fertile head! which every year
Could such a crop of wonder bear!
The teeming earth did never bring
So soon so hard, so huge a thing:
Which, might it never have been cast,
Each year's growth added to the last,
These lofty branches had supplied,
The earth's bold sons' prodigious pride;
Heaven with these engines had been scal'd
When mountains heaped on mountains failed."
Lines, by the way, that would form a most happy and appropriate
inscription for any really fine trophy of this kind.
Calling upon the Misses Macdonald of Achtriachtan the other day at
Fort-William, we were shown some very fine old silver-plate, having
a history of its own, to the recital of which we listened with no
small interest. After the battle of Culloden, a party of "red-coat"
soldiers entered Lochaber, and employed themselves in pillaging and
plundering in all directions. Hearing that visitors so unwelcome
were in the neighbourhood, Mrs. Cameron of Glenevis, a lady of great
spirit and decision of character, had all her silver-plate, china,
and other valuables buried deep in the ground outside the garden wall,
after which she removed, with her children and personal attendants,
to a spacious cave called Uaimh Shomhairle (Samuel's Cave), far up
the glen, in the south-western shoulder of Ben Nevis. Meanwhile the
soldiers visited Glenevis House, but, disappointed at not finding
the valuables they looked for in such a residence, they burned and
plundered the glen without mercy, the terrified inhabitants taking
to the mountains, only too glad to escape with their lives, while
their homesteads were in flames, and their cattle either driven away
or slaughtered on the spot. Lady Glenevis was at last discovered in
her cave by a party of soldiers, who had somehow heard of her place
of retreat, and had to undergo much rude treatment at their hands,
because, in defiance of all their threats, she refused to tell where
the valuables of which they were in search had been hidden away. As
they were about to leave the cave, one of the soldiers, observing
that she had something bulky in her breast, of which she seemed very
careful, and over which her plaid, fastened with a silver brooch,
was carefully drawn, made a snatch at the trinket, and, when the
lady resisted, drew his sword and made a thrust, which cut open the
plaid at its point of fastening, wounding her infant son at the same
moment in the neck; for the hidden treasure in her bosom, though the
soldier doubtless thought it might turn out to be something of more
marketable value, was a child only a few months old. The soldiers at
last departed, carrying with them the brooch and plaid as the only
trophies of their victory over the defenceless lady of the cave. The
wounded child recovered, though he bore the mark of the sword-thrust
to his dying day. He lived to be laird of Glenevis, was father of the
late much-respected Mrs. Macdonald of Achtriachtan, and grandfather of
the ladies above mentioned. We remember hearing our friend, the late
Dr. Macintyre of Kilmonivaig, repeating some very fine Gaelic lines to
a waterfall, something in the style of Southey's address to Lodore,
which he said was by the Mrs. Cameron of Glenevis above mentioned,
and composed by her while in hiding in the cave. When quieter times
came round, the buried valuables were of course exhumed, and were
found to be none the worse of their temporary interment.
Most birds are endowed with considerable powers of mimicry, the
exercise of which, under favourable circumstances, seems, we have
observed, to afford them great delight. The bird most celebrated in
this respect is, perhaps, the mocking-thrush of America, the singularly
expressive and appropriate name of which, among the Mexican aborigines,
is Cencontlatlolli, which means four hundred tongues or languages,
conferred upon it in honour and acknowledgment of the fact that,
with a rich and varied song of its own, it correctly imitates all
other songs and sounds as well. Though we have nothing equal to the
four-hundred-tongued wonder of America, many of our native British
birds are in truth excellent mimics, particularly after they have
been some time in confinement, the tedium and irksomeness of their
imprisonment being probably alleviated by a constant exercise of their
gifts in this way, until individuals sometimes attain to a mastery in
the art that is perfectly astonishing. Amongst our pets at present is a
goldfinch cock, a very fine bird, still perfect at all points, though
he must be at least a dozen years old, during ten of which he has
been in our possession as a favourite cage-bird. He is a magnificent
singer, and the wisest little fellow in the world; you only wonder,
indeed, how such a rich flood of song, clear and long sustained, can
issue from such a tiny throat, and how such a little scarlet-capped
head can contain so much intelligence and sagacity. "Cowie"--for so
he is called, after the bird-catcher from whom we purchased him--is
above all things an extraordinary mimic. We have never, indeed,
known any bird to equal him in this respect. The chirping of the
sparrow in the hedge opposite the window at which usually hangs his
cage; the twittering of swallows, as they flit past on their zigzag
insect cruise; the fink, fink of the lively chaffinch; the chirr
of the ox-eye tit; the bell-like jingle of the blackbird scolding
a prowling cat; the lugubrious notes of the corn bunting's evening
plaint; the love-cheep of the lesser white-throat; and the quick
rasping utterances of the excited wren, into whose proper territories
a rival has dared to intrude;--these are each and all imitated by our
little pet with marvellous exactness of note, emphasis, and tone. The
querulous cheeping of a chicken that has met with some little accident,
or for the moment lost sight of its mother, he mimics to the life;
and he will on such occasions stand on tip-toe, stretch his neck to
the utmost, or cling parrot-like to the topmost wire of his cage, in
order to catch a glimpse of the victim of his ridicule. When tired
of this, the commoner and coarser part of his art, he will burst
suddenly into song, which he will continue sometimes for an hour on
end, introducing voluntaries and variations without number, in which
you can readily distinguish longer or shorter strophes from the songs
of almost all the birds he has ever had a chance of hearing. Any one,
indeed, thoroughly familiar with bird-music could easily name the
principal songsters in the district immediately around us solely
from the singing of our talented little polyglot, so faultless is
his imitation of the songs as well as "conversational utterances,"
so to speak, of all such birds as he is in the habit of hearing and
seeing from his cage at the frequently open window. You may be sure
that "Cowie" is an immense favourite with us all, and that his weight
in diamonds would hardly induce us to part with him.