1 6 FAMOUS SCOTS 



moss dipped in tar and laid along the seams, the ropes 

 being made of filaments of moss-fir stripped with the 

 knife, while the sails were composed of a woollen 

 stuff whose hard thread had been spun on the distaff, 

 for hemp and flax were practically unknown. Such, in 

 1263, had at Largs been the equipment of the galleys 



of Haco, 



* When Norse and Danish galleys plied 

 Their oars within the Firth of Clyde, 

 And floated Haco's banner trim 

 Above Norweyan warriors grim.' 



Marmion, iii. xx. 



Such, too, had been the traditional custom for centuries 

 after of the boatbuilders in the Western Highlands. 



In Cromarty, then, on the loth of October 1802, 

 Hugh Miller was born in a long, low-built six-roomed 

 house of his great-grandfather, one of the last of the 

 old buccaneers of the Spanish Main, who had thriftily 

 invested his pieces of eight in house-property in his 

 native place. His mother was the great-granddaughter 

 of Donald Roy of Nigg, of whom, as a kind of Northern 

 Peden or Cargill, traditions long lingered. In his early 

 days, Donald had been a great club and football player 

 in the Sunday games that had been fostered in the 

 semi-Celtic parish by King James's Book of Sports^ and 

 which, it may be remembered, had been popular in the 

 days of Dugald Buchanan of Rannoch at a time when 

 the observance of the seventh day and of the King's 

 writ never ran beyond the Pass of Killiecrankie. At 

 the Revolution, however, Donald had become the sub- 



