74 Notes and Sketches. 



The writer goes on to say that he had often from a 

 distance seen great numbers of cattle driven along the 

 sides of the mountains, but only once had been near at 

 hand, when in a time of rain a drove of cattle were 

 being taken over a wide river across which the drovers 

 were ferried by a boat. " The cows were about fifty 

 in number and took the water like spaniels ; and when 

 they were in their drivers made a hideous cry to urge 

 them forwards ; this they told me they did to keep the 

 foremost of them from turning about, for in that case 

 the rest would do the like, and then they would be in 

 danger, especially the weakest of them, to be driven 

 away and drowned by the torrent. I thought it a very 

 odd sight to see so many noses and eyes just above 

 water, and nothing of them more to be seen, for they 

 had no horns, and upon the land they appeared like so 

 many large Lincolnshire calves." 



In the Lowlands the local business in cattle in each 

 district was transacted at a few annual fairs Lawrence 

 Fair in the Garioch and Aikey Fair in Buchan were 

 early established " trysts" in Aberdeenshire, And as 

 the fairs were wide apart, in point of locality, and came 

 but once in the season, the gathering of cattle at them 

 was always large. If less wild and romantic than the 

 cattle traffic in the Highlands, it was still a picturesque 

 style of things as they gathered out here and there from 

 upland glens ; the master, plaided and bonneted, riding 

 his hairy pony, and one or two assistants equally 

 hairy and hardy, tramping on afoot for many miles, and 

 keeping the small drove of shaggy Highlanders jogging 

 leisurely along, and picking up a livelihood by the 

 way ; while the dwellers in the Lowlands came " their 

 gate," from the haughs and braesides, with groups of 

 black "hummlies," diversified by an occasional 

 41 bran'it" or " rigget" stirk ; or it might be a few horned 

 beasts not indisposed to butt, and be otherwise 

 domineering amongst their fellows. The roads were 

 not very exactly defined, and fences were little known ; 



