A very interesting account is given by one Taylor, a poet, of the mode in which these huntings were conducted in the Highlands. This, however, is a sketch of a later day than that in which the moss-troopers were at their best, but many of the characteristics of the scene suggest the earlier and hardly yet forgotten time of the true Borderers. He begins by enumerating the many “truly noble and right honorable lords” who were present, and gives a detailed description of the dress which they wore in common with the peasantry, “as if Lycurgus had been there and made laws of equality.” The dress is the Highland costume of to-day—a dress that has never changed since at least the beginning of this century. The English poet evidently finds it very primitive, and takes no notice of the difference of color or of mixing of color that distinguishes the various tartans. He says: “As for their attire, any man of what degree so-ever who comes amongst them must not disdain to wear it; for if they do, then they will disdain to hunt or willingly to bring in their dogs; but if men be kind to them and be in their habit, then they are conquered with kindness, and the sport will be plentiful.” The gathering is of some fourteen or fifteen hundred or more men—a little city or camp. Small cottages built on purpose to lodge in, and called lonquhards, are here for the chiefs, the kitchens whereof are always on the side of a bank. A formidable list of provisions follows; there are “many kettles and pots boiling, and many spits turning and winding, with great variety of cheer, as venison baked, sodden, rost, and stewed beef, mutton, goats, kids, hares, fresh salmon, pigeons, hens, capons, chickens, partridges, muir-coots (water-fowl), heath-cocks, capercailzies and ptarmigans, good ale, sacke, white and claret (red) tent, or allegant, with the most potent aqua-vitæ. All these, and more than these, we had continually in superfluous abundance, caught by falconers, fowlers, fishers, and brought by my lord's tenants and purveyors to victual our camp, which consisteth of fourteen or fifteen hundred men and horses. The manner of the hunting is this: Five or six hundred men do rise early in the morning, [pg 232] and they do disperse themselves divers ways, and seven, eight, or ten miles compass; they do bring or chase in the deer, in many herds (two, three, or four hundred in a herd), to such or such a place as the noblemen shall appoint them; then, when day is come, the lords and gentlemen of their companies do ride or go to the said places, sometimes wading up to the middles through burns (streams) and rivers, and then they, being come to the place, do lie down upon the ground till those foresaid scouts, which are called the tinkhell, do bring down the deer. But as the proverb says of a bad cook, so these tinkhell men do lick their own fingers; for, besides their bows and arrows, which they carry with them, we can hear now and then a harquebuss or a musket go off, which they do seldom discharge in vain. Then after we had stayed there three hours or thereabouts, we might perceive the deer appear on the hills round about us (their heads making a show like a wood), which, being followed close by the tinkhell, are chased down into the valley where we lay; then all the valley, on each side, being waylaid with a hundred couple of strong Irish greyhounds, they are all let loose, as occasion serves, upon the herd of deer, that with dogs, guns, arrows, durks, and daggers, in the space of two hours, fourscore fat deer were slain, which after are disposed of, some one way and some another, twenty and thirty miles, and more than enough left for us, to make merry withal at our rendezvous.”
Doubtless the scene must have been very picturesque before the battue began; but as sport what could be more unsatisfactory? For once modern customs seem to excel ancient ones, and the Scotch deer-stalker of to-day, in his arduous, solitary walk over the moors and through the forests, is a much more enviable personage than the high and mighty huntsman of King James' train. The best sport recorded in this curious narrative was the result of the unauthorized shots heard in the distance, when the tinkhell men could not resist the temptation of “licking their own fingers.”
It was the result of all these centuries of wild life and romantic lawlessness that made Scotland so safe a retreat for the unfortunate Prince Charlie after the last stand had been so loyally and unsuccessfully made at Culloden in 1745. Personal fidelity to a beloved chieftain, and an habitual disregard of all laws of the “Southron” that clashed with their own immemorial customs, made of the Scottish people the most perfect partisans in the world. Even at this day, when they are famed for their thriftiness, their amenableness to law, their eminently peaceful qualities, a strong undercurrent of romance lies at the bottom of their surface tranquillity. The organization of clanship has disappeared, but the feeling that put life into that system is itself living yet. The humblest Scotsman is a born genealogist, and privately considers the blood of the laird under whose protection or in whose service he lives as immeasurably bluer than that of the German royal family that sits in the high places of England; and a characteristic instance of the clinging affection with which the national nomenclature of rank is still looked upon by the Scottish peasantry was afforded not many years ago, when the tenants of Lord Breadalbane were required to conform to modern usage, and address [pg 233] their master as “my lord.” “What!” they exclaimed, “call the Breadalbane my lord, like any paltry Southron chiel (fellow)?” They thought—and rightly, as it seems to us—that the old appellation, “the Breadalbane,” as if he were sovereign on his own lands, and the only one of the name who needed no title to distinguish him from others of his kin, was the only fitting one for their chief. The English title of marquis was nothing to that.
The superstitions of the Border, those of early times and those whose traces remain even to this day, are another interesting phase in the annals of the moss-troopers, but they would occupy more space than we have now at command. We will close this sketch by quoting an old saying that shows that some at least of the Border chieftains, doubtless through the influence of their wives, had not relinquished all reverent belief in the things of the world to come. They may not always have acted up to what they believed; and indeed so wise a maxim as the following, if carried out in practice to its furthest limit, would have caused the pious Borderer to retire altogether from his adventurous “profession,” unless, indeed, the obscure sentence in the second line of the couplet, “Keep well the rod,” could have been twisted into an injunction to him to become an embodiment of poetical justice in the eyes of less discriminating moss-troopers. The inscription is found over an arched door at Branxholm or Branksome Castle, and is in old black-letter type:
In varld. is. nocht. nature. hes. vrought. yat. sal. lest. ay.
Tharefore. serve. God. keip. veil. ye. rod. thy. fame. sal. nocht. dekay. [62]
Assunta Howard. IV. Convalescence.
“I have almost made up my mind to go back to bed again, and play possum. Truly, I find but little encouragement in my tremendous efforts to get well, in the marked neglect which I am suffering from the feminine portion of my family. Clara is making herself ridiculous by returning to the days of her first folly, against which I protest to unheeding ears, and of which I wash my hands. Come here, Assunta; leave that everlasting writing of yours, and enliven the ‘winter of my discontent’ by the ‘glorious summer’ of your presence, of mind as well as of body.”
Mr. Carlisle certainly looked very unlike the neglected personage he described himself to be. He was sitting in a luxurious chair near the open window; and he had but to raise his eyes to feast them upon the ever-changing, never-tiring beauties of the Alban hills, while the soft spring air was laden with the fragrance of many gardens. Beside him were books, flowers, and cigars—everything, in short, which could charm away the tediousness of a prolonged convalescence. And it must be said, to his credit, that he bore the monotony very well for a man—which, it is to be feared, is after all damning his patience with very faint praise.