But here come the graces of the forest, fifty at least in the herd—how beautifully light and airy; elegance and pride personified; onward they come in short, stately trot, and tossing and sawing the wind with their lofty antlers, like Sherwood oak taking a walk; heavens! it is a sight of sights. Now advance in play, a score of fawns and hinds in front of the herd, moving in their own light as it were, and skipping and leaping and scattering the dew from the green sward with their silvery feet, like fairies dancing on a moonbeam, and dashing its light drops on to the fairy ring with their feet of ether. O! it was a sight of living electricity; our very eyes seemed to shoot sparks from man to man, and even the monkey himself, as we gazed at each other in trembling suspense.

"Noo, here they coom wi' their een o' fire an' ears o' air," whispered the Ettric poet.

"Hush," quoth I, "or they'll be off like feathers in a whirlwind, or shadows of the lights and darks of nothingness lost in a poet's nightmare."

"A sumph ye mean," answered Jammie.

"Hush, there they are gazing in the water, and falling in love with their own reflected beauty."

"Mark the brindled tan buck," whispered one keeper to the other. They fired together, and both struck him plump in his eye of fire; mine seemed to drop sparks with sympathy: he bounded up ten feet high—he shrieked, and fell stone dead; Gods, what a shriek it was; I fancy even now I have that shriek and its hill-echo chained to the tympanum of my ear, like the shriek of the shipwrecked hanging over the sea—heavens! it was a pity to slay a king I thought, as I saw him fall in his pride and strength; but by some irresistible instinct, my own gun, pulled, I don't know how, and went off, and wounded another in the hip, and he plunged like mad into the river, to staunch his wounds and defend himself against the dogs. Ay, there he is keeping them at bay, and scorning to yield an inch backward; and now the keeper steals in behind him and lets him down by ham-stringing him: but when he found his favourite dog back-broken by the buck, why he cursed the deer, and begged our pardon for swearing; and now he cuts a slashing gash from shoulder to chop to let out the blood; and there lay they, dead, in silvan beauty, like two angels which might have been resting on the pole, and spirit-stricken into ice before they had power to flee away.

But we must away to Sir Reynard's hall, and unsough him; this we can do with less sorrowful feelings than killing a deer, which indeed, is like taking the life of a brother or a sister; but as to a fox, there is an old clow-jewdaism about him, that makes me feel like passing Petticoat-lane or Monmouth-street, or that sink of iniquity, Holy-well-street. O, the cunning, side-walking, side-long-glancing, corner-peeping, hang-dog-looking, stolen-goods-receiving knave; "Christian dog" can hold no sympathy with thee, so have at thee. Ah, here is his hold, a perfect Waterloo of bones.

"The banes o' my bonnie Toop, a prayer of vengeance for that; an' Sandy Scott's twa-yir-auld gimmer, marterdum for that." "An' my braxsied wether," quoth a forester; "the rack for that, and finally the auld spay-wife's bantam cock, eyes and tongue cut out and set adrift again, for that." Now we set to work to clear his hole for "rough Toby" (a long-backed, short-legged, wire-haired terrier of Dandy Dinmont's breed) to enter; in he went like red-hot fire, and "ready to nose the vary deevil himsel sud he meet him," as Jammie Hogg said; and to see the chattering anxiety of the red-coated monkey, as he sat at the mouth of the fox-hole, on his shaggy, grizzle-grey shadow of a horse, like a mounted guardsman in the hole yonder at St. James's; it truly would have made a "pudding creep" with laughter—"Reek, reek, reeking into th' hole after Toby, with his we we cunnin, pinkin, glimmerin een, an' catchin him 'bith stump o' th' tail as he were gooin in an' handing as long as he could," as James said. O, it was a very caricature of a caricature. But list, I hear them scuffle, they are coming out. Notice the monkey shaking his "bit staff;" here they come like a chimney swept in a hurry, they are out. "What a gernin, glowerin, sneerin, deevilitch leuk can a tod gie when hee's keepit at bay just afore he slinks off," exclaimed the poet, as Reynard was stealing away; but yonder they go before the wind, down the sweeping, outstretched glen, like smoke in a blast. Ay, there they go, two stag hounds, monkey, and grew, and Toby yelping behind; what a view we have of them—the grew is too fleet for him, he turns him and keeps him at bay till the hounds come up; now they are off again, and now we lose them, vanished like the shadow of a dream.

We followed, and on our way we met a herdsman, with his eyes staring like two bullets stuck in clay, or rather two currants stuck in a pudding: he said he had met "the deevil, a' dress'd like a heelanman o' tod huntin;" of course we laughed from the bottom end of our very bowels; but that was not the way to undemonize him, no, he pledged himself that he saw him "wi' his own twa een lowp off the shoather o' a thing lik a snagged foal, an' gie the tod such a dirl 'ith heed, that he kilt him deed's a herrin, an' we micht a' witness the same by gannin to the Shouther o' Birkin Brae." And truly it was as he said, for we found the mark of the little Highlandman's shillela on the fox's head, while he himself was sitting a straddle on him, like "the devil looking over Lincoln Minster," and the dogs lying panting round about.

On our road home to Hogg's we paid a visit to a wild-cat's lair in the Eagle's Cragg, and of all the incarnate devils, for fighting I ever saw, they "cow the cuddy," as the Scotch say; perfect fiends on earth. There was pa and ma, or rather dad and mam, (about the bigness of tiger-cats, one was four feet and a half from tip to tail) and seven kittens well grown; and O, the spit, snarl, tusshush and crissish, and mow-waaugh they did kick up in their den, whilst in its darkness we could see the electricity or phosphorescence of their eyes and hair sparkling like chemical fire-works. But I must tell you the rest hereafter, for my paper is out!

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The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 537, March 10, 1832

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