THE OADZOW HERD OF WHITE CATTLE. 231 



several years. He refers to the cattle, so I think we 



may safely assume that about 1760 they occupied 



the same pastures as now. He says : 



"Where these high walls round wide enclosures run, 

 Forbid the winter and invite the sun, 

 Wild strays the race of bisons, white as snow. 

 Hills, dales, and woods re-echo when they low. 

 No houses lodge them, and no milk they yield, 



Save to their calves : nor turn the furrowed field : 



***** 



But, mightiest of his race, the bull is bred ; 



High o'er the rest he rears his armed head, 



The monarch of the drove, his sullen roar 



Shakes Clyde with all his rocks from shore to shore." 



Wilson's description of these white cattle appears 



to have influenced Sir Walter Scott. In his ballad 



of Cadzow Castle the pithy and powerful description 



of the cattle seems to arise naturally in finer poetic 



form from the germ of Wilson's verse : 



"Through the huge oaks of Evandale, 



Whose limbs a thousand years have worn, 

 What sullen roar comes down the gale, 

 And drowns the hunter s pealing horn ? 



Mightiest of all the beasts of chase, 



That roam in "woody Caledon, 

 Crashing the forest in his race, 



The Mountain Bull comes thundering on. 



Fierce, on the hunter's quiver'd band, 



He rolls his eyes of swarthy glow, 

 Spurns, with black hoof and horn, the sand, 



And tosses high his niane of snow." 



Scott spent the Christmas of 1801 at Hamilton 

 Palace. A morning ramble to the ruins of Cadzow 

 Castle, and amid the remains of the forest, suggested 

 the ballad, which is addressed to Lady Anne Hamilton, 

 eldest daughter of Archibald, ninth Duke. Recollect 

 how enthusiastic Scott was over all things ancient, 

 and how keen was his antiquarian sense, and hear 

 what he says of the cattle in his introduction : 

 *' There was long preserved in this forest the breed 

 of the Scottish wild cattle, until their ferocity oc- 

 casioned their being extirpated about forty years 



