212 AN ANGLER'S RAMBLES 



journal, 4th May 1832. Professor Aytoun and I, then quar- 

 tered at the cottage, were invited as guests. The Shepherd was 

 to be there ; so were half the inhabitants of the district. Close 

 upon the hour appointed, Mr. Hogg accordingly made his appear- 

 ance, rod in hand, and in the folds of his inseparable plaid a 

 fiddle. This instrument, a Cremona and Straduarius for aught 

 I know, although not the only contribution of its kind to the 

 mirth of the evening, enacted, in the hands of the bard, a leading 

 part. It was the promoter of as much fun and frolic as ever 

 sprung from the contact of horse-hair and catgut. The dance 

 started out of it in all the shapes and varieties which the reel- 

 tunes o' auld Scotland, played with spirit and a supple wrist, 

 could educe. To old as well as young, to grey-haired carles and 

 wrinkled crones, as well as to the blooming and weel-faured 

 the braw lads and winsome lasses of the Forest, it gave limbs of 

 speed and faces of joy. The Shepherd was in his glory: he had 

 struck the proper key, and out leaped those strains of inspiriting 

 harmony which impart a common impulse those sounds hilari- 

 ous which provoke to life and saltatory action. As fast and 

 furious waxed the fun of that night as it ever did, to Kobert 

 Burns's fancy, within the haunted walls of Kirk Alloway, and 

 as fair were the witches there assembled as any that ever gave 

 chase to glorious Taqj and his mare Meg. I shall not easily 

 forget the readiness with which my friend Aytoun and myself 

 entered into the spirit of the scene ; or how, clad in sporting 

 costume, we kept time, as well as we could, to the hurrying pace 

 of the Shepherd's fiddle-stick, bargaining for a parley, now and 

 then, with our comely partners, who seemed as if they could 

 have shaken the leg, twirled on the fantastic toe, and beaten 

 time with the playful heel for a century to come, provided the 

 music of the bard kept them in countenance. As the upshot of 

 the ploy, Mr. Hogg was persuaded to take up his night, or rather 

 morning, quarters with us at Tibby's. The unusual excitement 



