AND ANGLING SONGS. 75 



the longevity of its inhabitants. The characteristic in question, 

 I presume, still belongs to it. In my own recollection, in 1833, 

 there were, out of a population of about 4000 individuals, at least 

 five centenarians, three of whom, lusty in limb and sound in 

 wind, formed the vanguard to a corps of indigence which paraded 

 the streets and suburbs in quest of the weekly largess, in shape of 

 broken food and bawbees, which it was customary at that period 

 for the better class of inhabitants to dole out on Saturday after- 

 noons. 



The scenery round about Crieff has never, in proportion to its 

 merits, been done justice to. It is chiefly of that mixed class 

 which finds favour with poets and artists the sublime subdued 

 by the beautiful. In the upper part of the valley of the Earn, 

 from Lochearnhead in fact, passing the villages of St. Fillans 

 and Comrie, all the way down to Crieff, nothing can exceed the 

 loveliness, blended with grandeur, which characterizes the land- 

 scape. Every deflection in the lake, every elbow of the river, 

 presents to the eye a fresh feast, and exercises its own witching 

 power over the fancy. A hundred traditions are mixed up with 

 the scenic attractions of old Strathearn, in which the Druids and 

 the Culdees, and the Caledonian King Galgacus, and the Romans, 

 and the Clan Grrigor, and the Grhouls subterranean of wooded 

 Lednock, and the little green manikins that play at bo-peep by 

 moonlight on the birken knolls of Dunira, flourish indiscriminately. 

 To me these things the landscape, the lore, and the legend 

 make angling all the pleasanter, and so they do with every one 

 I would care to meet, rod in hand, by the river-side. There are 

 some touching lyrics also that owe. their life to this, the fairest of 

 Highland straths. 'Glen Turrit Grlen,' beginning 'Blythe 

 was she,' by Burns, was one of them ; but what stream in 

 Scotland has not invited to some well-known effusion of bard or 

 ballad- maker ? 



As a trouting river the Earn has perhaps been rated beyond 



