294 FIELD AND FERN. 



animated. Nine or ten men were hanging over 

 some little blackfaces, but, with the exception of a 

 remark that one was " no a despicable beast" and that 

 the whole were " six quarters old' 3 there was nothing 

 to break the flood of Gaelic disputation. 



Blair Athole is truly the land of the kilt and the 

 claymore, and no one in the late Duke's employ dared 

 to shirk his nationality. Everything is in keeping 

 with an old Highland home that Blair Castle to 

 which " Castle Rushen sendeth greeting" in rude 

 letters on a horn. Its Long Passage is decked on 

 each side with the skeletons of antlered heads ; and 

 among the pictures are Neil Gow with his violin, and 

 the muster in '42 of the loyal clan Athole behind 

 the Duke (then Lord Glenlyon) on the green, ere 

 they marched to receive the Queen at Dunkeld. 

 The gallows is still there, a stern relic of the days 

 when a chieftain held the power of life and death. 

 The long ivy tendrils were working through the 

 ruined windows of the old church, where Claver- 

 house sleeps ; and there, too, among those bound- 

 less forests which he loved so well and the hills 

 which stand fast for ever, the Athole Guard laid the 

 man of their heart. 



The West Highland herd are all kept here; but it 

 was only within a year of his death that the late Duke 

 began to care for it. The remnants of the original 

 herd were sold to Mr. Hend rie of Ayr in the autumn 

 of '63, a few months after th c Breadalbane sale. It was 

 there that his Grace bid * o determinedly against the 



