Part 41

47. Repair. That is, to repair.

55. 'T is well advised. Well thought of, well planned. Cf. advised careful, well considered; as in M. of V. i. 1. 142: "with more advised watch," etc.

The MS. reads:

"'Tis well advised--a prudent plan, Worthy the father of his clan."

59. Evening-tide. See on iii. 478 above.

63. The Taghairm. Scott says here: "The Highlanders, like all rude people, had various superstitious modes of inquiring into futurity. One of the most noted was the Taghairm, mentioned in the text. A person was wrapped up in the skin of a newly-slain bullock, and deposited beside a waterfall, or at the bottom of a precipice, or in some other strange, wild, and unusual situation, where the scenery around him suggested nothing but objects of horror. In this situation, he revolved in his mind the question proposed; and whatever was impressed upon him by his exalted imagination, passed for the inspiration of the disembodied spirits, who haunt these desolate recesses. In some of the Hebrides they attributed the same oracular power to a large black stone by the sea-shore, which they approached with certain solemnities, and considered the first fancy which came into their own minds, after they did so, to be the undoubted dictate of the tutelar deity of the stone, and, as such, to be, if possible, punctually complied with."

68. Gallangad. We do not find this name elsewhere, but it probably belongs to some part of the district referred to in Scott's note inserted here: "I know not if it be worth observing that this passage is taken almost literally from the mouth of an old Highland kern, or Ketteran, as they were called. He used to narrate the merry doings of the good old time when he was follower of Rob Roy MacGregor. This leader, on one occasion, thought proper to make a descent upon the lower part of the Loch Lomond district, and summoned all the heritors and farmers to meet at the Kirk of Drymen, to pay him black-mail; i.e., tribute for forbearance and protection. As this invitation was supported by a band of thirty or forty stout fellows, only one gentleman, an ancestor, if I mistake not, of the present Mr. Grahame of Gartmore, ventured to decline compliance. Rob Roy instantly swept his land of all he could drive away, and among the spoil was a bull of the old Scottish wild breed, whose ferocity occasioned great plague to the Ketterans. 'But ere we had reached the Row of Dennan,' said the old man, 'a child might have scratched his ears.' The circumstance is a minute one, but it paints the time when the poor beeve was compelled

'To hoof it o'er as many weary miles, With goading pikemen hollowing at his heels, As e'er the bravest antler of the woods' (Ethwald)."

73. Kerns. The Gaelic and Irish light-armed soldiers, the heavy-armed being known as gallowglasses. The names are often associated; as in Macbeth, i. 2. 13: "kerns and gallowglasses;" 2 Hen. VI. iv. 9. 26: "gallowglasses and stout kerns;" Drayton, Heroical Epist.: "the Kerne and Irish Galliglasse," etc.

74. Beal'maha. "The pass of the plain," on the east of Loch Lomond, opposite Inch-Cailliach. In the olden time it was one of the established roads for making raids into the Lowlands.

77. Dennan's Row. The modern Rowardennan, on Loch Lomond at the foot of Ben Lomond, and a favorite starting=point for the ascent of that mountain.

82. Boss. Knob; in keeping with Targe.

83. Verge. Pronounced varge, as the rhyme shows. In v. 219 below it has its ordinary sound; but cf. v. 812.

84. The Hero's Targe. "There is a rock so named in the Forest of Glenfinlas, by which a tumultuary cataract takes its course. This wild place is said in former times to have afforded refuge to an outlaw, who was supplied with provisions by a woman, who lowered them down from the brink of the precipice above. His water he procured for himself, by letting down a flagon tied to a string into the black pool beneath the fall" (Scott).

98. Broke. Quartered. Cf. the quotation from Jonson below. Scott says here: "Everything belonging to the chase was matter of solemnity among our ancestors; but nothing was more so than the mode of cutting up, or, as it was technically called, breaking, the slaughtered stag. The forester had his allotted portion; the hounds had a certain allowance; and, to make the division as general as possible, the very birds had their share also. 'There is a little gristle,' says Tubervile, 'which is upon the spoone of the brisket, which we call the raven's bone; and I have seen in some places a raven so wont and accustomed to it, that she would never fail to croak and cry for it all the time you were in breaking up of the deer, and would not depart till she had it.' In the very ancient metrical romance of Sir Tristrem, that peerless knight, who is said to have been the very deviser of all rules of chase, did not omit the ceremony:

'The rauen he yaue his yiftes Sat on the fourched tre.'

"The raven might also challenge his rights by the Book of St. Albans; for thus says Dame Juliana Berners:

'slitteth anon The bely to the side, from the corbyn bone; That is corbyns fee, at the death he will be.'

Jonson, in The Sad Shepherd, gives a more poetical account of the same ceremony:

'Marian. He that undoes him, Doth cleave the brisket bone, upon the spoon Of which a little gristle grows--you call it Robin Hood. The raven's bone. Marian. Now o'er head sat a raven On a sere bough, a grown, great bird, and hoarse, Who, all the while the deer was breaking up, So croaked and cried for 't, as all the huntsmen, Especially old Scathlock, thought it ominous.'"

115. Rouse. Rise, stand erect. Cf. Macbeth, v. 5. 12:

"The time has been, my senses would have cool'd To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir As life were in 't."

119. Mine. Many eds. have "my."

128. Fateful. The reading of the 1st ed. and that of 1821; "fatal" in some recent eds.

132. Which spills, etc. The MS. has "Which foremost spills a foeman's life."

"Though this be in the text described as a response of the Taghairm, or Oracle of the Hide, it was of itself an augury frequently attended to. The fate of the battle was often anticipated, in the imagination of the combatants, by observing which party first shed blood. It is said that the Highlanders under Montrose were so deeply imbued with this notion, that on the morning of the battle of Tippermoor, they murdered a defenceless herdsman, whom they found in the fields, merely to secure an advantage of so much consequence to their party" (Scott).

140. A spy. That is, Fitz-James. For has sought, the 1st ed. has "hath sought."

144. Red Murdoch, etc. The MS. has "The clansman vainly deemed his guide," etc.