STRIX FLAMMEA. 167 



" St Andrews town may look right gawsy, 

 Nae grass will grow upon her cawsey, 

 Nor wa'flowers of a yellow dye 

 Glour dowy o'er her ruins high, 

 Sin' Sammy's head, weel pang'd wi' lear, 

 Has seen the Alma mater there. 

 ^Regents, my winsome billy boys ! 

 'Bout him you've made an unco noise ; 

 But, hear me, lads ! gin I'd been there, 

 How I wad trimm'd his bill o' fare ! 

 For ne'er sic surly wight as he 

 Had met wi' sic respect frae me. 

 Mind ye, what Sam, the lying loun ! 

 Has in his dictionar laid doun ? 

 That aits in England are a feast 

 To cow an' horse, an' siccan beast. 

 While in Scots' ground this growth is common 

 To gust the gab o' man and woman. 

 Tak' tent, ye Regents ! then, an' hear 

 My list o' gudely hameil gear, 

 Sic as ha'e often rax'd the wyme 

 O' blyther fallows mony time ; 

 Mair hardy, souple, steive, an' swank, 

 Than ever stood on Sammy's shank." 



Then follows the list of oatmeal haggis, the sheep's head, &c. 

 (Boswell, in his " Tour to the Hebrides," records this " superb 

 feast " so genially " fly ted " about by Fergusson — " The Pro- 

 fessors entertained us with a very good dinner, present — 

 Murison, Shaw, Cook, Hill, Haddo, Watson, Flint, ancl Brown." 

 — Thursday, \Wi August 1773). 



In 1839, when a boy, I got two young barn owls from a nest 

 of four, taken out of a beam-hole in the south gable of the old 

 castle, close to the window where Cardinal Beaton's body was 

 slung over to please the populace who clamoured " to see my 

 Lord Cardinal" (who had just been murdered by Norman 

 Leslie's uncle and others). I kept them a long time. They 

 lived upon all sorts of flesh, and swallowed mice and small birds 

 entire. Since then I have seen both eggs and young taken by 

 long ladders from the cliffs at the " scaurs." I believe I saw 

 the last that frequented these cliffs and ruins ; it was shot about 

 1854. Two were shot the year before. In May 1863, when on 

 a bird-nesting expedition with two of my boys, we came upon an 

 old barn owl asleep on the margin of a little stream past the 

 " Rock and Spindle " at Kinkell. We stood within six feet of 

 it quite unconscious of our presence. I threw a stone, which 

 awoke it. It opened its large eyes and stared so oddly at us 

 that we could not help laughing at its grotesque look. At last 



* Professors were then called Regents. 



