AND ANGLING SONGS. 2OQ 



such creel-loads of trout, the renderings not of St. Mary's and 

 its sister lake alone, but of Loch Skene to boot ; the Yarrow, 

 Ettrick, and Meggat ; Winterhope, Chapelhope, and Corsecleugh 

 burns (none of which is so far out of reach but that an hour-and-a 

 half's walk may command access to it), as would astonish some 

 of my friends in the South, who, in regard to this species of the 

 Salmonidce, place the captured individuals on a rank with game, 

 and talk of them, not as we do by the dozen, but by the brace. 



As a frequent guest under Tibby's roof, and entitled, more- 

 over, as a Forest chield and a zealous angler, to special notice, I 

 must not omit to mention James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. 

 With his recognised status among our poets I do not pretend to 

 deal. The opinions of critics on poetry have only the age in 

 which they are sported to back them. They are not, as we 

 Scotchmen would say, greatly ' to be lippened to.' History has 

 proved, and will continue to do so, that contemporary criticism 

 is seldom guided by the ken which secures its judgment against 

 reversal. Hogg's poetry, it appears to me, has had but bare 

 justice done to it through this medium ; but sinewed as it is with 

 nationality, and teeming with rich fancies, it cannot fail to gain 

 in position, if it does not eventually take its stand, side by side, 

 with the productions of Robert Burns. 



In his capacity as an angler the Ettrick Shepherd was de- 

 cidedly hill-bred. The niceties of the art he neither studied nor 

 cared to study. He was not at all fastidious as to rod or tackle, 

 but usually gave the preference, in the case of the former, to 

 length and strength as desired qualities. A stiff sixteen-foot 

 wand, and salmon- gut to correspond, carried the day over any 

 Phin or Mackenzie at that time the crack rod-makers in Edin- 

 burgh which was ever fitted up. The rise of the Yarrow, 

 consequent on a high westerly wind blowing down St. Mary's, 

 was usually held by him as a sort of invitation to the Loch ; and 

 on its occurrence, when apprised of the presence of kindred 



o 



