370 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



hands. When he was twenty years old this memorable event would 

 have happened about 170 years, and he might easily have heard it 

 from those who had associated with men grown up when it occurred. 

 To give an instance : — Till the age of twenty -five I constantly asso- 

 ciated with my grandfather, who died then, at the age of ninety ; and 

 he was growing up into a man when his grandfather, born soon after 

 the restoration of Charles II., and a man in the reign of James II., 

 died, at the age of ninety-five. Thus circumstances which happened 

 in the reign of James II., one hundred and eighty years since, might 

 have been transmitted to me from the original actor or witness 

 through one intervening person only. Another almost similar 

 instance might be given in my own family. So long-lived as are 

 many of the Scots, the same thing may easily have happened to 

 Boethius, or to those with whom he associated. 



In addition, the truth of the story is amply confirmed by much 

 curious circumstantial evidence. The writer of the lines at the head 

 of this chapter was John Leyclen, the very learned and lamented 

 friend of Sir Walter Scott, who, in " The Lord of the Isles," thus 

 deplores his premature death in India : — 



" Scenes sung by him who sings no more ! 

 His bright and brief career is o'er, 

 And mute his tuneful strains ; 

 Quenched is his lamp of varied lore, 

 That loved the fight of song to pour; — 

 A distant and a deadly shore 



Has Leyden's cold remains ! " * 



He was a native of Denholm, in the County of Roxburgh, and in 

 the immediate vicinity of the country of the Turnbulls, and it is not 

 only the scenes, but the traditions also, of his infancy that he relates ; 

 and there the origin of the family of Turnbull, as described by 

 Boethius, was then — and is, I believe, still — universally believed. I 

 have met many Turnbulls, unconnected with and unknown to each 

 other, and they all believe in the truth of the story and in their 

 own descent from the man who saved the king's life ; so that this 

 universal family tradition deserves great consideration. It is con- 

 firmed still further by the crest and arms which they have borne for 

 generations. The following information has been kindly obtained 



* " Lord of the Isles," canto iv., stanza 11.] 



