286 The Dog Book 



that is hazy, but we recall the delight we took in some of the Jacobite songs 

 which our mother and aunts had learned from nurses and their parents' 

 folks, who were Haddingtonshire residents when Bonnie Prince Charlie 

 and his Highland followers were there. We liked nothing better than to 

 hear our oldest aunt, born 1801, sing "Hie Johnnie Cowp, are ye waukin' 

 yet?" — the song that was written after the Battle of Prestonpans, which 

 was won by an early morning attack of the Highlanders upon the sleeping 

 English troops under Sir John Cope. That goes back to 1745. Had 

 we been at all curious, there is no doubt we could have been told about 

 incidents of that campaign which had come at first hand to those who sang 

 to us the Jacobite songs. The great interest now being taken in the dis- 

 covery of the body of Paul Jones and the bringing it to this country for 

 interment in American soil recalls the fact that he was the "bogey man" 

 of our very youthful days. The direct punishment for misbehaviour was 

 the threat to have "Paul Jones, the Pirate," attend to our case. On the 

 southeast coast of Scotland there was undoubtedly the greatest fear of a visit 

 from "the Pirate," and some of those who used the threat to us must have 

 been living at the time of his exploits, while others used the threat as it 

 had been used to them. We therefore hold that Major Topham could 

 write with authority of incidents participated in by his informants as far 

 back as 1700, and those informants could with like knowledge by informa- 

 tion take him back nearly another fifty years, and this without any extraor- 

 dinary stretch of longevity. Men he knew in his youth could tell him 

 of the introduction of the flintlock, which, as we hold, covers the life of 

 the pointer, and what more natural for some of these old fellows to say that 

 they remembered when the pointer was just a dog for finding hares for 

 coursing. There is a good deal more than mere theory in this. 



The following anecdote from the "Sportsman's Repository" is not 

 advanced as evidence of the claim set forth being absolutely correct, but 

 it certainly is not in any way a contradiction. "A gentleman in the County 

 of Stirling lately kept a greyhound and pointer, and being fond of coursing, 

 the pointer was accustomed to find the hares and the greyhound to catch 

 them. When the season was over it was found that the dogs were in the 

 habit of going out by themselves and killing hares for their own amuse- 

 ment." The rest of the story is that a collar and large ring were so arranged 

 as to prevent the pointer jumping walls or fences, but the greyhound learned 

 to take the ring in his mouth and carry it till the pointer pointed the hare. 



