10 BIRDS OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND. 



years since a person died, who, in his infancy, had been carried off 

 by an eagle, and recovered by his parents. By an ancient law in 

 the Orkneys any person destroying an eagle is entitled to a hen 

 from every farm in the parish in which it occurred." 



The following is one of the Acts of Bailiary for executing of 

 justice through the county of Orkney, and is apparently the law 

 spoken of by Mr Bullock : its insertion here may serve at least to 

 interest those who are curious about local enactments : 



"Act 31. Anent Slaying of the Earn. 



Apud Kirkwam, 8 die 9^ 1626. 



The which day it is statute and ordained by THOMAS BUCHANNAN, 

 Sherreif-deput of Orknay, with consent of the gentlemen and 

 suitors of Court present for the time. That whatever personc 

 shall slay the earn or eagle shall have of the Baillie of the 

 parochine where it shall happen him to slay the eagle, 8d. from 

 every reik within the parochine, except from cottars that have no 

 sheep, and 20 shill. from ilk persone for ilk earn's nest it shall 

 happen them to herrie; and they shall present them to the 

 Baillie, and the Baillie shall be holden to present the head of the 

 said Earn at ilk Head Court. 



Curia Capitalis vice comitatus de Orkney, tenta apud 

 Kirk warn in insula vocata de Wall house, in tern pi o 

 S t- Magni ibidem, per honorabiles viros Magistrum 

 Johannem Dick et Robertum Monteith de Eglishy 

 vice comites deputatos dicti vice comitatus, sexto die 

 mensis Februarii, Anno Domini 1628." 



About forty years after this law was passed the Earn would 

 seem to have acquired even a worse habit than that of sheep- 

 stealing, as has been narrated in a manuscript written in 1664 by 

 Mathew Mackaile, apothecary at Aberdeen, and preserved in the 

 Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. In making a short extract from 

 this curious account of Orkney, it is perhaps unnecessary to 

 congratulate ourselves that through the diligence of keepers and 

 collectors, we are spared the infliction of seeing a modern 

 perambulator relieved of its occupant. Here is the apothecary's 

 story: "I was very well informed that an eagle did take up a 

 swaddled child a month old, which the mother had laid down 

 until she went to the back of the peat stack at Honton Head, and 

 carried it to Choye, viz., four miles, which being discovered by a 



