Wattie Dalgleish had a collie which, like himself, was getting somewhat aged, and no longer fit for the severer work of the hill. The dog would accompany him in his short rounds and return early in the afternoon to the cottage. Some hours later I would come back from my rambles, and as I descended the steep slope opposite, and came within old ‘Tweed’s’ sight and hearing, he would signify his recognition of me by a loud barking, which I could always distinguish from other canine performances, for it showed neither surprise nor anger, but had an element of kindly welcome in it. As I drew nearer, the barking underwent a curious change into a sort of short intermittent howl of delight, and as I came up to the enclosure, the dear old creature would burst into a loud guffaw. He was the only dog I ever knew that had what one might fairly call a true honest laugh. And how his tail would wag, as if it would surely be twisted off, while he marched in front of me to announce in his own way that the guest of the family had come back.
SHEPHERDS’ DOGS
There were so many dogs in the household that one could study the idiosyncrasies of canine nature on a basis of some breadth. It struck me then that perhaps there might be more truth than one had been inclined to suppose in Butler’s facetious remark:
As some philosophers
Have well observ’d, beasts that converse
With man, take after him.
Certainly there did appear to be in that shepherd’s shieling a curious similarity of disposition between the dogs and their respective masters. My old friend ‘Tweed’ was a kind of four-footed duplicate of the honest Wattie, down even to the hearty laugh. On the other hand, the stranger shepherd had a collie that closely reproduced his own characteristics. The man was sullen and taciturn, did not mingle with the family, but sat apart, and retired soon to his own quarters. The dog usually lay below his master’s chair, refused to fraternise with the other dogs, receiving them with a snarl or growl when they came too near, and marching off with the shepherd when he retired for the night. I tried hard to be on cordial terms with the man, and still harder to ingratiate myself with the dog, but was equally unsuccessful in both directions.
The Talla valley is narrow and deep, the hills rising steeply from 1000 to 1400 feet above the flat alluvial haugh at the bottom, which is about 900 feet above the sea. It must be sadly changed now, when it has become the site of one of the great Edinburgh water-reservoirs. But in the days of which I am speaking it was a lonely sequestered glen, silent save for the bleat of the sheep or the bark of the dogs. In wet weather the wind drove up or down the defile, separating the rain into long vertical shafts, which chased each other like pale spectres. In the narrower tributary gorge of the Gameshope, these ghost-like forms are even more marked, hence they are known in the district as the ‘White Men of Gameshope.’ Above Talla Linnfoot, the ground rises steeply up into the heights around Loch Skene and the weird hollows of the White Coomb. With my early school-fellow and colleague in the Geological Survey, the late Professor John Young, of Glasgow University, I have wandered into every recess and over every summit of that fascinating ground. On one occasion we extended our ramble to the Yarrow valley, with the intention of spending the night under the hospitable roof of Tibbie Shiels, who was then in still vigorous old age. Next morning we found the ground buried under some six inches of snow, which still continued to fall. As a return over the trackless hills was then impossible, we were shut up for several days, during which we shared in various domestic employments, among the rest in learning to churn butter. Tibbie encouraged us in our labours by various recollections of Wilson, Hogg, and other personages of the Noctes Ambrosianae.
TIBBIE SHIELS
When the storm ceased and the sun shone out again, the whole landscape was white up to the crests of the hills, save St. Mary’s Loch and the Loch of the Lowes, between which the little hostelry stands. These waters were still unfrozen, and wore a look of inky blackness by contrast with the surrounding ground. One unlooked-for effect of the wintry covering was to reveal the surface features of the hills with a clearness never before realised. These uplands in their ordinary guise are so rich in colour, and the distribution of the varying tints has so little relation to the forms of the ground, that most of the minor details of the topography are lost to the eye. But now that colour was wholly eliminated, every little dimple and ridge stood out marked by its delicate violet shadows in the pure white snow.