Mr. Hscvdy o?i the Wolf t?i Scotland. 289 



This, he remarks, is the same as the Norse story, " Why the 

 bear is stumpy tailed," (Dasent's Tales from the Norse, p. 177, 

 and Thorpe's Yule-tide Stories, p. 278). But an equally 

 good parallel occurs in Petrus Alphonsus, where the wolf is 

 left in a well, looking after a supposed cheese made by the 

 moon's image in the water. This is imitated by La Fontaine. 

 (Ellis's Early English Romances, p. 42). In Pilpay's Fables, 

 p. 123, a drake mistakes the moonshine for a fish. Thus far 

 for the wolf as a myth. 



Of the wolves that once tenanted the Border forests, time 

 has left few traces. They did not, however, perish unremem- 

 bered. " Some blue stream winds to their fame." Chalmers 

 cites, in Roxburghshire, Wolf-cleugh, in Roberton parish, on 

 Bortlnvick-water ; Wolf-cleugh, on Rule-water, and Wolf- 

 hope, on Catlee-burn, in Southdean parish; to which may be 

 added Wolflee or" Woole, on Wauchope-burn ; and Wolf 

 Keilder, on the Northumbrian border, a branch of the Keilder, 

 as bearing testimony to their ancient haunts. There are also 

 Wolf-gill land, in the parish and shire of Dumfries, and Wolf- 

 star, in the parish of Pencaitland, East Lothian. It is thus 

 that the minstrel, when he peoples the scenes, 



" Desert now and bare, 

 Where flourished once a forest fair," 



assigns a place, after the pursuit of the stag, to the wolf, " a 

 fiercer game." 



" Of such proud huntings many tales 

 Yet linger in our lonely dales, 

 Up pathless Ettrick and on Yarrow." 



Sir Walter Scott was of opinion that " the worm," which the 

 " wode Laird of Lariestoun" is represented as slaying, on an 

 old sculptured stone placed above the south entrance of Linton 

 Church, Roxburghshire, resembles " rather a wolf or boar, 

 with which the neighbouring Cheviot mountains must, in 

 early times, have abounded."* Berwickshire possesses few 

 such storied spots.f There was, in 1769, a farm called Burn- 



* Minst. Scot. Bord. iii. p. 237. 



t There is no good authority for the name of the parish of Westruther, as 

 has been stated in the new Statistical Account, having once been Wolfstruther. 

 This statement appears to have originated from an observation made by Mr. 

 John Veitch, minister of the parish above 54 years, (died 1703,) in his descrip- 

 tion of Berwickshire written for Sir Kobert Sibbald. " That parish (says he) 

 of old had great woods with wild beasts, fra quhilk the dwellings and hills were 

 designed ; as Woolstruther, Roecleugh, Hindside, Hartlaw, and Harelaw." 

 (Sibbald's MS. collections, 208. Adv. Library.) In itself the conjecture is too 

 wide. Some of them are probable ; but Harelaw comes from her, hoar, har, har, 

 •war, a boundary, the fertile source of names of places throughout the island. 



