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 aquavitae; with wheat-bread, main-bread, ginge-bread, beef, mutton,
lamb, veal, venison, goose, grice, capon, coney, crane, swan, partridge,
plover, duck, drake, brisselcock, 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-batter'd hills,
Hares, hinds, bucks, roes, are chased by men and dogs,
Where two hours' hunting fourscore fat deer kills.
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