[534] {405}["I don't like to bore you about the Scotch novels (as they call them, though two of them are English, and the rest half so); but nothing can or could ever persuade me, since I was the first ten minutes in your company, that you are not the man. To me these novels have so much of 'Auld Lang Syne' (I was bred a canny Scot till ten years old), that I never move without them."—Letter to Sir W. Scott, January 12, 1822, Letters, 1901, vi. 4, 5.]
[535] [Compare The Island, Canto II. lines 280-297.]
[536] The brig of Don, near the "auld toun" of Aberdeen, with its one arch, and its black deep salmon stream below, is in my memory as yesterday. I still remember, though perhaps I may misquote, the awful proverb which made me pause to cross it, and yet lean over it with a childish delight, being an only son, at least by the mother's side. The saying as recollected by me was this, but I have never heard or seen it since I was nine years of age:—
"Brig of Balgounie, black's your wa',
Wi' a wife's ae son, and a mear's ae foal,
Doun ye shall fa'!"
[See for illustration of the Brig o' Balgownie, with its single Gothic arch, Letters, 1901 [L.P.], v. 406. ]
[537] {406}
["Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood," etc.