PREFACE. xxi 



this sport brings him into daily contact, and I can 

 hardly recall to mind any of my friends who have 

 been much on the hill, who have not confessed 

 to having had their feelings, chivalrous, poetic, and 

 romantic, quickened and enhanced as "they sat 

 by the mossy fountain on the top of the hill of the 

 winds," while searching with their glasses the depths 

 below for those whose " skins gleam red in the 

 sunshine." Granted that the presence of a good 

 stag in front of one does away with every feeling of 

 romance or enjoyment of beautiful scenery, yet it 

 often so happens that stags are not visible for many 

 an hour — or the stalker may be called on, as is so 

 often the case, to " play patience " and endure the 

 tedious monotony of a long wait on a lying deer, let 

 us say on the banks of the Sword Loch of Corrour ; 

 surely then it will help him to pass such time 

 more quickly and pleasantly if he be acquainted with 

 the story of how the loch won its name, and so enabled 

 to recall to life and picture to himself the curious 

 scene, such a mixture of treachery with chivalrous 



