The Laird of Balnamoon and the Brock.
The laird, so Dean Ramsay had the story sent him, once riding past a high steep bank, stopped opposite a hole in it, and said, "John, I saw a brock gang in there."—"Did ye?" said John; "wull ye haud my horse, sir?"—"Certainly," said the laird, and away rushed John for a spade. After digging for half an hour, he came back, nigh speechless to the laird, who had regarded him musingly. "I canna find him, sir," said John.—"'Deed," said the laird, very coolly, "I wad ha' wondered if ye had, for it's ten years sin' I saw him gang in there."[44]
FERRET.
A truly blood-thirsty member of that slim-bodied but active race, the weasel tribe. He is certainly an inhabitant of a warmer climate than this, being very sensitive to cold. He is used in killing rats and ferreting out rabbits, a verb indeed derived from his name. He has been known to attack sleeping infants.
Collins and the Rat-catchers grip of his Ferrets.
That delightful painter of cottage life, says his son,[45] often found cottagers who gloried in being painted, and who sat like professional models, under an erroneous impression that it was for their personal beauties and perfections that their likenesses were portrayed. The remarks of these and other good people, who sat to the painter in perfect ignorance of the use or object of his labours, were often exquisitely original. He used to quote the criticism of a celebrated country rat-catcher, on the study he had made from him, with hearty triumph and delight. When asked whether he thought his portrait like, the rat-catcher, who—perhaps in virtue of his calling—was a gruff and unhesitating man, immediately declared that the face was "not a morsel like," but vowed with a great oath, that nothing could ever be equal to the correctness of the dirt shine on his old leather breeches, and the grip that he had of the necks of his ferrets!
POLE-CAT.
An equally blood-thirsty member of the weasel family, with the subject of the preceding paragraph.