er protection. It was necessary for his honour
that the Laird of Kerse should drive the animal and her attendants away,
and hence came a bloody battle about "the flitting of the sow." In the
contest, Kerse's eldest son and hope, Jock, is killed, and the point or
moral of the narrative is, the contempt with which the old laird looks
on that event, as compared with the grave affair of flitting the sow. A
retainer who comes to tell him the result of the battle stammers in his
narrative on account of his grief for Jock, and is thus pulled up by the
laird--

"'Is the sow flitted?' cries the carle;
'Gie me an answer, short and plain--
Is the sow flitted, yammerin' wean?'"

To which the answer is--

"'The sow, deil tak her, 's ower the water,
And at her back the Crawfords clatter;
The Carrick couts are cowed and bitted.'"

Hereupon the laird's exultation breaks forth,--

"'My thumb for Jock--the sow's flitted!'"

Another man of genius and learning, whose name is a household one among
the book clubs, is Robert Surtees, the historian of Durham. You may
hunt for it in vain among the biographical dictionaries. Let us hope
that this deficiency will be well supplied in the Biographia Britannica,
projected by Mr Murray. Surtees was not certainly among those who flare
their qualities before the world--he was to a peculiar degree addicted,
as we shall shortly see, to hiding his light under a bushel; and so any
little notice of him in actual flesh and blood, such as this left by his
friend, the Rev. James Tate, master of Richmond School, interests one:--

"One evening I was sitting alone--it was about nine o'clock in the
middle of summer--there came a gentle tap at the door. I opened the door
myself, and a gentleman said with great modesty, 'Mr Tate, I am Mr
Surtees of Mainsforth. James Raine begged I would call upon you.' 'The
master of Richmond School is delighted to see you,' said I; 'pray walk
in.' 'No, thank you, sir; I have ordered a bit of supper; perhaps you
will walk up with me?' 'To be sure I will;' and away we went. As we went
along, I quoted a line from the Odyssey. What was my astonishment to
hear from Mr Surtees, not the next only, but line after line of the
passage I had touched upon. Said I to myself, 'Good Master Tate, take
heed; it is not often you catch such a fellow as this at Richmond.' I
never spent such an evening in my life." What a pity, then, that he did
not give us more of