58 THE GOLDEN EAGLE. 



So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain, 

 No more through rolling clouds to soar again, 

 View'd his own feather on the fatal dart, 

 And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart. 

 Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel 

 He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel ; 

 While the same plumage that had warmed his nest 

 Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast." 



There is a tradition in the north of Scotland of an eagle 

 having taken up a child from behind some reapers, in the parish 

 of Ophir, and carried it to her nest in Hoy ; but by the assiduity 

 of the people who saw it and immediately followed her, the 

 child was rescued — only partially injured, and recovered. And in 

 the island of Harris a similar tradition is told of a golden eagle 

 having carried a child across the Minch to the island of Skye — 

 a distance of over sixteen miles. 



Some time ago when a clergyman was walking, with his gun, 

 in the Highlands, he saw an eagle making off with a pretty 

 large pig in her talons, which she dropped when fired at. 

 Sometimes the eagle catches a Tartar, and the biter gets bit, as 

 the following authentic account of an encounter between one 

 and a polecat, in the forest of Glenavon, Banffshire, proves : — 



" One of the keepers of the forest, being one day reclining on the side of 

 a hill, saw an eagle hovering about, and darting suddenly down clutched a 

 polecat, with which it rose up and flew away in the direction of a high cliff 

 on the opposite hill. It had not gone far when he observed it descending 

 in a spiral direction until it reached the ground. Led by curiosity he went 

 to the spot — about a mile distant — and found the eagle quite dead, with its 

 talons transfixed in the polecat. The polecat was also dead, with its teeth 

 firmly fixed in the eagle's gullet." 



I can corroborate this by the death of kestrel falcons and a 

 heron by weasels, in a similar manner. In 1879 I got the 

 following interesting and authentic account of a young man 

 meeting his death by a wounded eagle pulling the trigger of his 

 gun : — In April 1852 the young fawns were being killed by a pair 

 of golden eagles, at Rhendorraeh, near Ullapool, Ross-shire. The 

 son of the forester, Mr M'Lean, a lad about eighteen years old, 

 who knew where their eyrie was — high up in an inaccessible 

 cliff — was determined to put a stop to the systematic thinning of 

 the fawns. He got up very early one morning and went to the 

 place with his double-barrelled gun. After waiting under cover 

 he shot at one of the eagles and broke its wing — it fell, then 

 immediately lay on its back, raised its claws, and, like a 

 feathered Fitz James (who planted his back against a rock when 

 opposed to Rhoderick Dim and all his clan), was determined to 

 sell its life dearly. No doubt if it could have spoken it would 



