ever, by the winter hearth,
Old tales I heard of woe or mirth,
Of lovers' slights, of ladies' charms,
Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms--
Of patriot battles won of old
By Wallace Wight and Bruce the Bold--
Of {p.070} later fields of feud and fight,
When, pouring from their Highland height,
The Scottish clans, in headlong sway,
Had swept the scarlet ranks away.
While stretched at length upon the floor,
Again I fought each combat o'er,
Pebbles and shells, in order laid,
The mimic ranks of war displayed,
And onward still the Scottish Lion bore,
And still the scattered Southron fled before."[43]

[Footnote 43: [_Poetical Works_, Cambridge Edition, p. 108.]]

There are still living in that neighborhood two old women who were in
the domestic service of Sandy-Knowe when the lame child was brought
thither in the third year of his age. One of them, Tibby Hunter,
remembers his coming well; and that "he was a sweet-tempered bairn, a
darling with all about the house." The young ewe-milkers delighted,
she says, to carry him about on their backs among the crags; and he
was "very gleg (quick) at the uptake, and soon kenned every sheep and
lamb by headmark as well as any of them." His great pleasure, however,
was in the society of the "aged hind," recorded in the epistle to
Erskine. "Auld Sandy Ormistoun," called, from the most dignified part
of his function, "the Cow-bailie," had the chief superintendence of
the flocks that browsed upon "the velvet tufts of loveliest green." If
the child saw him in the morning, he could not be satisfied unless the
old man would set him astride on his shoulder, and take him to keep
him company as he lay watching his charge.

"Here was poetic impulse given
By the green hill and clear blue heaven."

The Cow-bailie blew a particular note on his whistle, which signified
to the maid-servants in the house below when the little boy wished to
be carried home again. He told his friend, Mr. Skene of Rubislaw, when
spending a summer day in his old age among these well-remembered
crags, that he delighted to roll about on the grass all day long in
the midst of the flock, and that "the sort of {p.071} fellowship he
thus formed with the sheep and lambs had impressed his mind with a
degree of affectionate feeling towards them which