2IO The Poets Beasts. 



" As also how hee slue 

 That cruell boare, whose tusks turned up whole fields of giaine 

 (And wrooting, raised hills upon the levell plaine, 

 Dig'd caverns in the earth, so darke and wondrous deepe 

 As that into whose mouth the desperate Roman leepe) ; 

 And, cutting off his head, a trophy thence to beare." — Drayton. 



Are the Gordons ever likely to forget their illustrious clans- 

 man who slew " the boar of Huntley ? " or the Boswells 

 how their ancestor avenged the death of Farquhar II., King 

 o' Scots? — 



" When beyond he lyeth languishing, 

 Deadly engored of a great wild bore." 



In Chetwode once abode a boar, and the terror of it was 

 so great that the country people could not pass that way to 

 Rookwood ; and even travellers of quality "passed by on 

 the other side." Then Sir Ryalas, Lord of Chetwode, 

 thinking it great shame that he should be thus isolated 

 ■from society by an " urchin -snouted boar," goes forth to 

 slay it, as if the beast were a Guillaume le Sanglier with a 

 mighty fanfaronade of castle trumpets. 



" Then the wild boar, being so stout and so strong — 

 Wind well thy horn, good hunter ; 

 Tlirashed down the trees as he ramped him along, 

 To Sir Ryalas, the jovial hunter. 



Then they fought four hours in a long summer day — 



Wind well thy horn, good hunter ; 

 Till the wild b lar fain would have got him away 



From Sir Ryalas, the jovial hunter. 



Then Sir Ryalas he drew his broadsword with miglil — 



Wind well thy horn, good hunter ; 

 And he fairly cut the boar's head olT quite, 



For he was a jovial liunter." ^ 



1 " Within a mile of Chetwode Manor-House there existed a large 

 mound, surrounded by a ditch, and bearing the name of 'the Buai's 

 Pond.' It had long been overgrown with gorsc and brushwood, when, 

 about the year iSlo, the tenant to whose farm it belonged, wishing to 



