3 1 8 Notes on Sport and Travel w 



though too subtle an instrument, methinketh, for 

 their invention. 



The earliest notice of the bagpipes in the far 

 North ^ I have yet met with is on an ancient 

 chimney-piece at Cawdor Castle (O sweet haven 

 of refuge for the weary !), dated i 5 1 o, where is 

 depicted a cat in one corner playing on them ; but 

 as there is another cat in the other corner playing 

 on the violin, and two mermaids below playing on 

 harps, to say nothing of two apes performing on 

 clarinets, we can hardly claim this as a proof of 

 their exceptional nationality. Moreover, as on the 

 same stone are depicted two foxes smoking tobacco- 

 pipes, and two gentlemen, in the garb of Charles the 

 Second, his time, coursing the hare, I doubt me the 

 sculpture is newer than the date. In 1590 I find 

 recorded the existence in the north country of ' organs 

 and regals, hautboy and harp, lutes, viols, and 

 virginals, with " gitterns maist jucunduous," trumpets 

 and timbrels, leisters and sumphions, with clarche, 

 pipe and clarion,' a most delectable noise of music — 

 but never a bagpipe ! 



The last modern Scottish delusion — at least the 

 last we intend to handle at the present — is that the 

 Andrea Ferrara broadsword is the ancient clay- 

 mohr, or big two-handed sword,^ and that it was in 



1 They were in the North in 1627 ; and in 1640 Lord Ancram 

 writes to Lord Lothian, ' that eveiy company of Covenanters had a 

 piper,' and that he ' thought they were as good as drummers.' — Ed. 



- Macpherson's (he of the ' Rant ') sword was, and probably may still 

 be, at Lord Fife's, at Duff House. It was a double-handed one. — Ed. 



