FALKIRK TO EDINBURGH. 53 



year, as five to six shillings for a fleece on a liili farm 

 will not pay the year's rent and risk. Very few 

 hunters are kept, and hardly any farmer has bred 

 more than a couple of foals a-year since the horse 

 prices became low. 



Tom Rintoul bade us welcome when we reached 

 the hostel at Linlithgow. His career began in the 

 racing stable along with Tom Dawson, under Daw- 

 son, senior, about the time when John Osborne was 

 hunting groom to Mr. Taylor of Kirton. Tom was 

 never " put up,^' and therefore his life was not like 

 that of the well-known Scottish rider about that 

 time, whose difficulties in wasting were so great that 

 he travelled from Ayr to Carlisle, leading a mare, on 

 four half-penny biscuits and two-pennyworth of 

 Epsom salts. His career with hounds began in 

 1817, and he came to Linlithgow in 1826 as first 

 whip to Kit Scott. Mr. Ramsay was true to his 

 family tastes, and kept stag-hounds at nineteen, a? 

 his father had done at Golf Hall. The latter had 

 also hunted the Linlithgowshire and Stirlingshire 

 country along with Lord Elphinstone and Colonel 

 Murray of Polmaise ; and he was wont to ride from. 

 Barnton to Hamilton, hunt all day, and back again 

 at night, by changing hacks at Cumbernaud. His 

 son^s country extended at one time pver Lanarkshire, 

 Carnwath, Linlithgowshire, Stirlingshire, and the 

 West of Fife and Forfarshire as well. Once they 

 had eleven Aveeks in Forfarshire, and killed twenty- 

 one brace, hunting four days a week, and accounted 



