ing his cattle under the
shadow of the old castle-wall. I began by asking him whose _apparition_
he thought it was that could continue to haunt a building, the very name
of whose last inhabitant had been long since forgotten. "_Oh, they're
saying_," was the reply, "it's the spirit of the man that was killed on
the foundation-stone, just after it was laid, and then built intil the
wa' by the masons, that he might _keep_ the castle by coming back again;
and _they're saying_ that a' the verra auld houses in the kintra had
murderit men builded intil them in that way, and that they have a' o'
them their bogle." I recognised in the boy's account of the matter an
old and widely-spread tradition, which, whatever may have been its
original basis of truth, seems to have so far influenced the buccaneers
of the 17th century, as to have become a reality in their hands. "If
time," says Sir Walter Scott, "did not permit the buccaneers to lavish
away their plunder in their usual debaucheries, they were wont to hide
it, with many superstitious solemnities, in the desert islands and
_keys_ which they frequented, and where much treasure, whose lawless
owners perished without reclaiming it, is still supposed to be
concealed. The most cruel of mankind are often the most superstitious;
and those pirates are said to have had recourse to a horrid ritual, in
order to secure an unearthly guardian to their treasures. They killed a
negro or Spaniard, and buried him with the treasure, believing that his
spirit would haunt the spot, and terrify away all intruders." There is a
figurative peculiarity in the language in which Joshua denounced the man
who should dare rebuild Jericho, that seems to point at some ancient
pagan rite of this kind. Nor does it seem improbable that a practice
which existed in times so little remote as those of the buccaneers, may
have first begun in the dark and cruel ages of human sacrifices. "Cursed
be the man before the Lord," said Joshua, "that riseth up and buildeth
this city of Jericho: _he shall lay the foundation thereof in his
firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it_."

The large-farm system had been already introduced into the part of the
country in which I at this time resided, on the richer and more level
lands; but many a Gaelic-speaking cottar and small tenant still lived on
the neighbouring moors and hill-sides. Though Highland in their surnames
and language, they bore a character cons