dy in the end; and found her, according to the tradition which the
poet, her descendant, has transmitted, an excellent wife, with a fine
talent for pickling the beef which her husband stole from the herds of
his foes. Meikle-mouthed Meg transmitted a distinct trace of her large
mouth to all her descendants, and not least to him who was to use his
"meikle" mouth to best advantage as the spokesman of his race. Rather
more than half-way between Auld Wat of Harden's times--i. e., the
middle of the sixteenth century--and those of Sir Walter Scott, poet
and novelist, lived Sir Walter's great-grandfather, Walter Scott
generally known in Teviotdale by the surname of Beardie, because he
would never cut his beard after the banishment of the Stuarts, and who
took arms in their cause and lost by his intrigues on their behalf
almost all that he had, besides running the greatest risk of being
hanged as a traitor. This was the ancestor of whom Sir Walter speaks
in the introduction to the last canto of _Marmion_:--

"And thus my Christmas still I hold,
Where my great grandsire came of old,
With amber beard and flaxen hair,
And reverend apostolic air,--
The feast and holy tide to share,
And mix sobriety with wine,
And honest mirth with thoughts divine;
Small thought was his in after time
E'er to be hitch'd into a rhyme,
The simple sire could only boast
That he was loyal to his cost;
The banish'd race of kings revered,
And lost his land--but kept his beard."

Sir Walter inherited from Beardie that sentimental Stuart bias which
his better judgment condemned, but which seemed to be rather part of
his blood than of his mind. And most useful to him this sentiment
undoubtedly was in helping him to restore the mould and fashion of
the past. Beardie's second son was Sir Walter's grandfather, and to
him he owed not only his first childish experience of the delights of
country life, but also,--in his own estimation at least,--that risky,
speculative, and sanguine spirit which had so much influence over his
fortunes. The good man of Sandy-Knowe, wishing to breed sheep, and
being destitute of capital, borrowed 30_l._ from a shepherd who was
willing to invest that sum for him in sheep; and the two set off to
purchase a flock near Wooler, in Northumberland; but when the shepherd
had found what he thought would suit their purpose, he returned to
find his master galloping about a fine hunter, on