276 Mr. Hardy on the Wolf in Scotland. 



1341 or 2, " when betwixt the desultory ravages of the 

 English and those exercised upon system by the Scottish 

 leaders, all the regular practice of agriculture was interrupted 

 year after year, and the produce in a gieat measure destroyed. 

 A great famine was the consequence ; the land that once 

 bore crops was left uncultivated, waste, and overgrown with 

 briers and thickets, while wolves and wild deer (^* ferae 

 et cervi de montanis descendentes, circa villam sajpius vena- 

 bantur," are the words of Fordun,) approached, contrary to 

 their nature, the dwellings of man."* Then it was "that 

 an uplandish fellow," named Christiecleik, with his mate, 

 " spared not to steale children, and to kil women, on whose 

 flesh he fed, as if he had bene a wolfe." f In a letter to Pope 

 Clement, Oct. 17, 1311, Edward II., compares the Scottish 

 invaders of Northumberland and Cumberland, in that year, 

 under Bruce, to a pack of wolves coming forth out of their 

 dens, not sparing innocence, sex, nor age.J As a Celtic 

 animal the wolf is mentioned by Dr. Smith in Dmi clainne 

 mhuirne.% Buchanan mentions two separate islands in the 

 Hebrides, called Luparia or the island of wolves ; but he 

 cites the authority of Donald Munro, for there being in his 

 time neither wolf, fox, nor serpent in the peninsula of Har- 

 ris. || The Scandinavians who made good their boast, that 



•' Outpoured we blood for grim wolves, 

 And golden-footed fray -birds," — 



had the satisfaction to shake hands with their grim allies on 

 the island of Ulva ; hence its name from the Norwegian 

 Ulifur, the isle of wolves.^ On the reverse of the ancient 

 seal of Stirling, a gothic castle, and two branches of a tree, 

 represent the castle and forest of Stirling, as appears from 

 the following line around it, Continet hoc nemus et castrum 

 Strivilense. The wolf makes a part of the arms, and is repre- 

 sented on a seal apart, standing on a rock with the motto, 

 Oppidum Sterlini* * " Of the Nemus Strivilense in the seal 

 of the borough it has, in the spirit of accurate criticism, been 

 remarked, that it probably means nothing more than the 

 grove on the rock. Here, it would seem, the wolf has been 



* Scott's Hist, of Scotland, i. p. 194, 



f Holinshed's Scotlande, p. 347- " Tanquam lupi eos strangulantes." 

 Fordun, 1. xiii c. 46. 



X Ridpath's Bord. Hist. p. 239. 



§ Scots Mag. 1802, p. 804. 



II Aikraan's Buchanan, i. pp. 44, 49, 53. 



H MacuUoch's Western Isles. ** Nimmo's Stirlingshire, p. 329. 



