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Walter Scott owed to Dandie the text of the "Raid of Wearie" in the MINSTRELSY; and made him welcome at his house, and appreciated his talents, such as they were, with all his usual generosity. The Ettrick Shepherd was his sworn crony; they would meet, drink to excess, roar out their lyrics in each other's faces, and quarrel and make it up again till bedtime.

Something we know concerning their great deeds, their great power, and, alas! their great crimes. Something we also know of a Lord of Douglas who sat in a parliament at Forfar, held by King Malcolm the First, and we are aware that from his attachment to hunting the wild hart, he built himself a tower called Blackhouse, in the forest of Ettrick, which perhaps still exists."

As he read it, he wished that he could have brought her there; in the morning-room he had wished no, he had thought how proud he would have been to tell Lord Ettrick that the story was true. If he could see her now in the empty chair, a rose behind one ear, a silk shawl broidered with grey birds in flight, as on the evening when they first met. . . . But she would hardly come dressed as Carmen.

To be sure, this is done by the aid of a little "diablerie," but then it is done very neatly, much more so than in some of the clumsy fictions of the late Ettrick Shepherd, to say nothing of the edifying legends about the Romish saints which the good people of southern Europe are taught to swallow as gospel.

All this, and much more he related in a way hovering between jest and earnest, and in a strong Ettrick tone, to the consternation of the English part of the meeting, for whom it was rather peculiar and learned. The audience evidently, one and all, regarded the Shepherd with wonder, and hundreds were on tiptoe to have a look at him as he stood on a table to relate his own varied fortunes.

Like most Americans interested in birds and books, I know a good deal about English birds as they appear in books. I know the lark of Shakespeare and Shelley and the Ettrick Shepherd; I know the nightingale of Milton and Keats; I know Wordsworth's cuckoo; I know mavis and merle singing in the merry green wood of the old ballads; I know Jenny Wren and Cock Robin of the nursery books.

Yonder is Lammermuir, and Smalholme; and there you have Gallashiels, and Torwoodlie, and Gallawater; and in that direction you see Teviotdale, and the Braes of Yarrow; and Ettrick stream, winding along, like a silver thread, to throw itself into the Tweed." He went on thus to call over names celebrated in Scottish song, and most of which had recently received a romantic interest from his own pen.

The boatman did not know this fable, but he did know of a red deer that came and spoke to a gentleman. This was a story from the Macpherson country. I give it first in the boatman's words, and then we shall discuss the history of the legend as known to Sir Walter Scott and James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. "It was about 'the last Christmas of the hundred' the end of last century.

Uncle Thomas introduces to the Notice of the Young Folks the Ettrick Shepherd's Stories about Sheep; and tells them some Interesting Stories about the Goat, and its Peculiarities. "I dare say, Boys, you have not forgotten the Ettrick Shepherd's wonderful stories about his dogs.

In this respect, certainly, the Ettrick Shepherd has a place in Burns's school, and, in our own opinion, one which has been very much overrated. But the deeper elements of Burns's mind, those which have especially endeared him to the working man, reappear very little, or not at all, in Hogg.