FALDONSIDE TO DALGIG. 241 



The Duke secured royal rights over the Forest,, and 

 stocked it with 20,000 blackfaces, which some will 

 have it came from Fife. It was not until 1785 that 

 Cheviots crept in. The old shepherds raved against 

 them in their death-throes, and called them ^^white- 

 faced shilpit things,^' which had been attended to like 

 "fine leddies,-'-' and, as the Shepherd adds, "the 

 blackfaces sought the heights in disdain.''^ They 

 had to stay there like moody Jupiters till ^60 ; but 

 that fearful time, added to the barren spring of ^64, 

 produced a reaction in the higher sheep-walks, and 

 Lead Hills, the birth-place of Allan Ramsay and the 

 highest inhabited village in Scotland, had "its ain 

 again." 



In Lanark market, blackfaced ewe hoggs, which 

 could be had once at from £1 to 25s., have lately 

 ranged from 28s. to 35s. ; and in the upper parts of 

 Peebleshire and Lanarkshire the Cheviots have had 

 to retire. Still, with the exception of Mr. Aitchison^s, 

 there are hardly any Cheviot wedders in these two 

 counties. Mr. Denholm, who has a large flock, both 

 of blackfaces and Cheviots, in the upper ward of 

 Lanarkshire, has quite given up the idea which many 



Ills vigorous faculties of mind to the last g-asp of life. For the last twenty 

 years he had been a pensioner of Mr, Gordon of Nethermuir, to whom he 

 bequeathed his album, composed of two large, thick volumes of extracts of 

 newspapers, containing accounts of the Aberdeen races, murders, executions, 

 TurriO" coursing meetings, comings of age, aud other remarkable events in 

 the northern counties since the commencement of this century. It is a most 

 unique, instructive, and amusing album, though not weU adapted for the 

 drawing-room table, as its leather covers and soiled pages are nearly black 

 from tobacco-smoke and peat reek, the combined odour of which not all the 

 perfumes of Arabia could overwhelm." 



2 R 



