After spending some days in this manner in the Brae of Mar, the party, attended by Taylor, went into Badenoch, and renewed the sport there for three or four days, concluding with a brief visit to Ruthven Castle. This grand old fortress—anciently the stronghold of the Cumins, lords of Badenoch—seated on an alluvial promontory jutting into the haugh beside the Spey, occupying an area of a hundred and twenty yards long, and consisting of two great towers surrounded by a fortified wall with an iron gate and portcullis,[383] was now the property of the Gordon family. Here, says Taylor, ‘my Lord of Enzie and his noble countess (being daughter to the Earl of Argyle) did give us most noble welcome for three days.’ ‘From thence we went to a place called Ballo[ch] Castle, a fair and stately house, a worthy gentleman being the owner of it, called the Laird of Grant.[384]... Our cheer was more than sufficient, and yet much less than they could afford us. There stayed there four days four earls, one lord, divers knights and gentlemen, and their servants, footmen, and horses; and every meal four long tables furnished with all varieties; our first and second course being threescore dishes at one board; and after that always a banquet; and there, if I had not forsworn wine till I came to Edinburgh, I think I had there drank my last.’

The Water-poet was afterwards four days at Tarnaway, entertained in the same hospitable manner by the Earl and Countess of Moray. He speaks of Morayland as the pleasantest and most plentiful country in Scotland, ‘being plain land, that a coach may be driven more than four-and-thirty miles one way in it, alongst the sea-coast,’ He spent a few days with the Marquis of Huntly at the Bog, ‘where our entertainment was, like himself, free, bountiful, and honourable,’ and then returned by the Cairn-a-mount to Edinburgh.

Here he was again in the midst of plentiful good cheer and good company for eight days, while recovering from certain bruises he had got at the Highland hunting. In Leith, at the house of Mr John Stuart, he found his ‘long approved and assured good friend, Mr Benjamin Jonson,’ who gave him a piece of gold of the value of twenty-two shillings, to drink his health in England. ‘So with a friendly farewell, I left him as well as I hope never to see him in a worse estate; for he is among noblemen and gentlemen that know his true worth and their own honours, where with much respective love he is worthily entertained.’

In short, Taylor, in his progress through Scotland, seems to have been everywhere feasted sumptuously, and supplied liberally with money. So much of a virtue comparatively rare in England, and so much plenty in a country which his own people were accustomed to think of as the birthplace of famine, seems to have greatly astonished him. The wonder comes to a climax at Cockburnspath, near his exit from Scotland, where he was handsomely entertained at an inn by Master William Arnot and his wife, the owners thereof. ‘I must explain,’ he says, ‘their bountiful entertainment of guests, which is this:

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‘Suppose ten, fifteen, or twenty men and horses come to lodge at their house. The men shall have flesh, tame and wild fowl, fish, with all variety of good cheer, good lodging, and welcome, and the horses shall want neither hay nor provender; and at the morning at their departure the reckoning is just nothing. This is this worthy gentleman’s use, his chief delight being to give strangers entertainment gratis! And I am sure that in Scotland, beyond Edinburgh, I have been at houses like castles for building; the master of the house’s beaver being his blue bonnet, one that will wear no other shirts but of the flax that grows on his own ground, and of his wife’s, daughters’, or servants’ spinning; that hath his stockings, hose, and jerkin of the wool of his own sheep’s backs; that never by his pride of apparel caused mercer, draper, silk-man, embroiderer, or haberdasher, to break and turn bankrupt; and yet this plain home-spun fellow keeps and maintains thirty, forty, fifty servants, or perhaps more, every day relieving three or four score poor people at his gate; and besides all this, can give noble entertainment for four days together to five or six earls and lords, besides knights, gentlemen, and their followers, if they be three or four hundred men and horse of them, where they shall not only feed but feast, and not feast but banquet; this is a man that desires to know nothing so much as his duty to God and his king, whose greatest cares are to practise the works of piety, charity, and hospitality. He never studies the consuming art of fashionless fashions; he never tries his strength to bear four or five hundred acres on his back at once; his legs are always at liberty, not being fettered with golden garters and manacled with artificial roses.... Many of these worthy housekeepers there are in Scotland....

‘There th’ Almighty doth his blessings heap,

In such abundant food for beasts and men,

That I ne’er saw more plenty or more cheap.’[385]

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