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"Papa's wit is running low," said Lady Mary: "the poor gentleman is repeating himself he sang that on the field of battle, when he was told the Highlanders had cut his left wing to pieces with their claymores." A pull by the hair was the repartee to this sally.
The Scotch clansmen used their claymores chiefly for striking; but under Rudolph's tuition the lad came to be as apt with the point as he had before been with the edge, and fully recognized the great advantages of the former.
Yet I will not go back to the days of clanship and claymores. Have at you, gentle reader, with a tale of Two Drovers. An oyster may be crossed in love, says the gentle Tilburina and a drover may be touched on a point of honour, says the Chronicler of the Canongate. It was the day after Doune Fair when my story commences. It had been a brisk market.
I like this society, and willingly give myself to be excited by the sight of handsome young men with plaids and claymores, and all the alertness and spirit of Highlanders in their native garb. There was the usual degree of excitation excellent dancing, capital songs, a general inclination to please and to be pleased.
'And what number of such gallant fellows have the happiness to call you leader? asked Waverley. 'In a good cause, and under a chieftain whom they loved, the race of Ivor have seldom taken the field under five hundred claymores.
Twenty or thirty targets, as many claymores, with dirks, and plaids, and guns, both match-lock and fire-lock, and long-bows, and cross-bows, and Lochaber axes, and coats of plate armour, and steel bonnets, and headpieces, and the more ancient haborgeons, or shirts of reticulated mail, with hood and sleeves corresponding to it, all hung in confusion about the walls, and would have formed a month's amusement to a member of a modern antiquarian society.
The ceiling is carved; and every inch of the walls is covered with claymores, targets, and other weapons and armor, or old-time curiosities, tastefully arranged, many of which, no doubt, have a history attached to them, or had, in Sir Walter's own mind.
Now do you two talk of bards and poetry, if not of purses and claymores, while I return to do the final honours to the senators of the tribe of Ivor. So saying, he left the room. The conversation continued between Flora, and Waverley; for two well-dressed young women, whose character seemed to hover between that of companions and dependants, took no share in it.
"Justice has a voice as weel as mercy. O waly, waly!" cried the wretched old man, going back to the pathetic Gælic of his childhood, "O waly, waly! to think o' the sin and the shame o' it. Plenty o' Callendars hae died before their time, but it has been wi' their faces to their foes and their claymores in their hands. O Davie, Davie! my lad, my lad! My Davie!"
In the soft and still balminess of the morning, it was a lovely picture. In the armory, I lifted the sword of Wallace, a two-handed weapon, five feet in length. We were also shown a Lochaber battle-axe, from Bannockburn, and several ancient claymores. We lingered long upon the summit before we forsook the stern fortress for the sweet vale spread out before us.
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