A STAG-HUNT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
Shall this be a long or a short chapter?---This is a question in which you, gentle reader, have no vote, however much you may be interested in the consequences; just as you may (like myself) probably have nothing to do with the imposing a new tax, excepting the trifling circumstance of being obliged to pay it.More happy surely in the present case, since, though it lies within my arbitrary power to extend my materials as Ithink proper, I cannot call you into Exchequer if you do not think proper to read my narrative.Let me therefore consider.
It is true that the annals and documents in my hands say but little of this Highland chase; but then I can find copious materials for description elsewhere.There is old Lindsay of Pitscottie ready at my elbow, with his Athole hunting, and his ``lofted and joisted palace of green timber; with all kind of drink to be had in burgh and land, as ale, beer, wine, muscadel, malvaise, hippocras, and aquavit<ae>; with wheat-bread, main-bread, gingerbread, beef, mutton, lamb, veal, venison, goose, grice, capon, coney, crane, swan, partridge, plover, duck, drake, brissel-cock, pawnies, black-cock, muir-fowl, and capercailzies;''
not forgetting the ``costly bedding, vaiselle, and napry,'' and least of all, the ``excelling stewards, cunning baxters, excellent cooks and pottingars, with confections and drugs for the desserts.''
Besides the particulars which may be thence gleaned for this Highland feast (the splendour of which induced the Pope's legate to dissent from an opinion which he had hitherto held, that Scotland, namely, was the---the---the latter end of the world)---besides these, might I not illuminate my pages with Taylor the Water Poet's hunting in the braes of Mar, where, Through heather, mosse, 'mong frogs, and bogs, and fogs, 'Mongst craggy cliffs and thunder-battered hills, Hares, hinds, bucks, roes, are chased by men and dogs, Where two hours' hunting fourscore fat deer kills.
Lowland, your sports are low as is your seat;The Highland games and minds are high and great.
But without farther tyranny over my readers, or display of the extent of my own reading, I shall content myself with borrowing a single incident from the memorable hunting at Lude, commemorated in the ingenious Mr.Gunn's Essay on the Caledonian Harp, and so proceed in my story with all the brevity that my natural style of composition, partaking of what scholars call the periphrastic and ambagitory, and the vulgar the circumbendibus, will permit me.
The solemn hunting was delayed, from various causes, for about three weeks.The interval was spent by Waverley with great satisfaction at Glennaquoich; for the impression which Flora had made on his mind at their first meeting grew daily stronger.She was precisely the character to fascinate a youth of romantic imagination.Her manners, her language, her talents for poetry and music, gave additional and varied influence to her eminent personal charms.Even in her hours of gaiety she was in his fancy exalted above the ordinary daughters of Eve, and seemed only to stoop for an instant to those topics of amusement and gallantry which others appear to live for.
In the neighbourhood of this enchantress, while sport consumed the morning, and music and the dance led on the hours of evening, Waverley became daily more delighted with his hospitable landlord, and more enamoured of his bewitching sister.
At length the period fixed for the grand hunting arrived, and Waverley and the Chieftain departed for the place of rendezvous, which was a day's journey to the northward of Glennaquoich.
Fergus was attended on this occasion by about three hundred of his clan, well armed, and accoutred in their best fashion.
Waverley complied so far with the custom of the country as to adopt the trews (he could not be reconciled to the kilt), brogues, and bonnet, as the fittest dress for the exercise in which he was to be engaged, and which least exposed him to be stared at as a stranger when they should reach the place of rendezvous.
They found on the spot appointed several powerful Chiefs, to all of whom Waverley was formally presented, and by all cordially received.Their vassals and clansmen, a part of whose feudal duty it was to attend on these parties, appeared in such numbers as amounted to a small army.These active assistants spread through the country far and near, forming a circle, technically called the _tinchel,_ which, gradually closing, drove the deer in herds together towards the glen where the Chiefs and principal sportsmen lay in wait for them.In the meanwhile, these distinguished personages bivouacked among the flowery heath, wrapped up in their plaids; a mode of passing a summer's night which Waverley found by no means unpleasant.
For many hours after sunrise, the mountain ridges and passes retained their ordinary appearance of silence and solitude;and the Chiefs, with their followers, amused themselves with various pastimes, in which the joys of the shell, as Ossian has it, were not forgotten.``Others apart sate on a hill retired;'' probably as deeply engaged in the discussion of politics and news, as Milton's spirits in metaphysical disquisition.
At length signals of the approach of the game were descried and heard.Distant shouts resounded from valley to valley, as the various parties of Highlanders, climbing rocks, struggling through copses, wading brooks, and traversing thickets, approached more and more near to each other, and compelled the astonished deer, with the other wild animals that fled before them, into a narrower circuit.Every now and then the report of muskets was heard, repeated by a thousand echoes.