mountain hunt and scream together in the same field
by Fairmilehead. The winged, wild things intermix their wheelings, the
sea-birds skim the tree-tops and fish among the furrows of the plough.
These little craft of air are at home in all the world, so long as they
cruise in their own element; and like sailors, ask but food and water
from the shores they coast.
Below, over a stream, the road passes Bow Bridge, now a dairy-farm, but
once a distillery of whisky. It chanced, some time in the past century,
that the distiller was on terms of good-fellowship with the visiting
officer of excise. The latter was of an easy, friendly disposition, and
a master of convivial arts. Now and again, he had to walk out of
Edinburgh to measure the distiller's stock; and although it was
agreeable to find his business lead him in a friend's direction, it was
unfortunate that the friend should be a loser by his visits.
Accordingly, when he got about the level of Fairmilehead, the gauger
would take his flute, without which he never travelled, from his pocket,
fit it together, and set manfully to playing, as if for his own
delectation and inspired by the beauty of the scene. His favourite air,
it seems, was "Over the Hills and Far Away." At the first note, the
distiller pricked his ears. A flute at Fairmilehead? and playing, "Over
the Hills and Far Away"? This must be his friendly enemy, the gauger.
Instantly, horses were harnessed, and sundry barrels of whisky were got
upon a cart, driven at a gallop round Hill End, and buried in the mossy
glen behind Kirk Yetton. In the same breath, you may be sure, a fat fowl
was put to the fire, and the whitest napery prepared for the back
parlour. A little after, the gauger, having had his fill of music for
the moment, came strolling down with the most innocent air imaginable,
and found the good people at Bow Bridge taken entirely unawares by his
arrival, but none the less glad to see him. The distiller's liquor and
the gauger's flute would combine to speed the moments of digestion; and
when both were somewhat mellow, they would wind up the evening with
"Over the Hills and Far Away," to an accompaniment of knowing glances.
And at least there is a smuggling story, with original and half-idyllic
features.
A little farther, the road to the right passes an upright stone in a
field. The country people call it General Kay's monument. According to
them, an officer of that name had perished there in battle at
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