11 Certain Delusions of the North Britons 3 15 



with the secret might be slain too, and so the mystery 

 lost for ever ; but I do not think the Scot was ever 

 the man to lose the receipt for good liquor, and, 

 indeed, what I have written above shows that he 

 did not, though but known to {&\\. 



Still whisky was known a long time ago, and 

 had got into Aberdeenshire in 1 6 1 6, where it pro- 

 duced its usual symptoms, now better known. A 

 magistrate of that day tells us that he had two men 

 brought before him for abusing themselves by an 

 extraordinary drinking of aqua vitcs ; and some- 

 where about the same time the Earl of Sutherland 

 and his menie were surprised in Glen Loth by a 

 storm, which imperilled many, but lost none save 

 the harper, who, having store of usquebaugh, did 

 perish in the snow.^ 



Sir Robert Gordon putteth a side-note to this 

 which shows how little the peculiar properties of 

 distilled waters were known in his time : ' Usquebaugh 

 is a fainting liquor in travel.' Strange that the first 

 recorded victim to whisky should have been a 

 harper ! But as the old Scotch song says— 



'Just as the piper drinks 

 So drank the harper ; 

 Drank wi' nods, an' winks, an' bhnks. 

 Spite of saint or carper.' 



In the matter of the delusion that the Bagpipes 



1 General Wade, when he was making those roads which would 

 have so astonished us had we seen them before they existed, treated 

 his men after extra work with husque. — ^n. 



