A NUT TO CRACK. 207 



inquirer, to entering upon the subject at all. How these practices 

 root themselves among a people, defying eradication, is very extra- 

 ordinary. 



Did you ever, reader, crack a nut 1 Not the aristocratic walnut 

 or filbert over your wine, but the far superior, rich, ripe hazel nut 

 in its season from off the hazel bough, when the bright autumnal 

 sun was overhead, and the autumnal breeze stirred the leaves 

 around you, their multitudinous murmur resembling the far-heard 

 music of the restless sea. A ripe hazel nut is good anywhere, but 

 best of all when gathered by your own hand in its native wild wood 

 from the overhanging branch, whence the beautiful cluster nods at 

 you as if soliciting your attention, now and again, as you approach 

 to pull it, seeming to delight in playing a game of bo-peep with 

 you among the leaves, like as you have seen the Pleiades at times 

 when, though the night be clear, many blanket-like clouds are 

 chasing each other in wild career athwart the starry blue. Through- 

 out the whole range of poetry, the hazel nut, though often men- 

 tioned, has never perhaps had so much justice done to it as by the 

 Gaelic bard Duncan Ban Macintyre. In his Coire-Cheathaich, one 

 of his finest poems, he says : 



Bha cus ra' fhaotainn de chnothan caoine, 

 'S cha b' iad na cacohagan aotrom gann, 

 Ach bagailt mhaola, bu taine plaoisge, 

 'Toirt brigh ;i laoghan na' maoth-shlat fann : 

 S rath nan caochan 'na dhosaibh caorainn, 

 'S na phreasaibh caola, Ian chraobh a's mhearg ; 

 Na gallain ura, 's na faillein dhlutha, 

 'S am barrach dhinte inu chul nan crann. 



Ewen Maclachlan, commonly styled " of Aberdeen," because he 

 taught the Grammar School there, and there died, but who was, 

 in ti^uth, a Lochaber man nay, a Nether Lochaber man, born and 

 bred, and whose ashes rest in Killevaodain of Ardgour, without, 

 we are ashamed to confess it, " One gray stone to mark his grave ;" 



