THE BOATMAN'S TALE. 153 



his mind by the abject squad in which he had the 

 lamentable misfortune to work at Niddrie. 



Be this as it may, his nature, purified and elevated 

 by the influences of his training, remained uncontaminated 

 by the baseness of his companions. Retaining his erect 

 human attitude, he breathed freely and without hurt in 

 this Grotto of Dogs, while the canine creatures perished. 

 He had, besides, the society not only of William Ross, 

 whose friendship and converse were a perpetual solace to 

 him, but of a cousin and a few other rational persons. 

 And the trees were leafy, the skies were blue, the white 

 clouds over the Pentlands radiant in their stainlessness, 

 and, when the wind raged in the wood behind the cot- 

 tage at midnight, he could dream that it was the roll of 

 the surge among the crags beside his beloved Cromarty. 

 While his fellow-workmen in the shed indulged in clumsy 

 jest or obscene tattle, he could ' croon ' to himself the 

 Boatman s Tale, getting into shape during these weeks. 

 The poem will not rank high as a work of art, but there 

 were a few at that time in Edinburgh, Scott, Jeffrey, and 

 Wilson in the number, who would have heard with in- 

 terest that it had been composed by a mason lad of 

 twenty -one, who, in the very moments of composition, 

 held mallet and chisel in a shed at Niddrie. The first 

 two parts were written here, the remaining three at 

 Cromarty. We shall glance at the poem. 



The Boatman s Tale is varied in scene and incident, 

 but the gist of the story is that Walter Hogg, a sea-faring 

 man, beheld a vision of fiendish creatures who pre- 

 dicted his death, that this death took place as announced, 

 with appropriate circumstances of horror and terror, and 

 that the ghost of Walter appeared to his friend and in- 

 formed him that the demons, spite of their happy guess, 



