And spared the symbol dear:
No nation, no station,
My envy e’er could raise;
A Scot still, but blot still,
I knew nae higher praise.”
—(Epistle to the Guidwife of Wauchope House.)
The true Carduus Scotticus is not fond of cultivated land, but is a tremendous fellow when he gets hold of a waste outlying corner to himself, sometimes attaining a height of four or five, or even six feet, with a stem as thick as your wrist, and prickles—no, spikes is the word—with spikes, then, as formidable as the bayonets of a kilted regiment going into action.
An anonymous lady correspondent in London sent us a manuscript sheet of paper of the last century, containing a very old dog-rhyme. “The paper has been in our family as long as I can remember, and I have heard my grandfather repeat the lines often before we left the Highlands fifty years ago. The Ronald Mac Ronald Vic John mentioned in the rhyme was, I believe, one of the Glencoe family, a celebrated hunter of deer in his day. He was killed, as I have heard my grandfather relate, at the battle of Philiphaugh. It was the fairy dog-rhyme in one of your recent letters that brought to my mind that such a thing was in my possession.” Owing to the faded state of the writing, and a very peculiar orthography, we had some difficulty in deciphering the lines; but, modernising the spelling a little, the following we believe to be an accurate transcript:—
An cù ’bh’aig Raonull-mac-Raonuil-’ic-Iain,
Bheiradh e sithionn a beinn: