AND AMERICAN RURAL SPORTS. 



201 



wina: will strike a man dead to the ground. Even when 

 they are absent, an attack on their brood is far from safe, 

 as they see so far, and can come so rapidly. An Irish 

 peasant had discovered the eyrie of a pair of Eagles on one 

 of the islands in the Lake of Killarney; and watching the 

 absence of the parents, he swam to the island, climbed the 

 rocks, made prize of the Eaglets, and dashing into the lake, 

 made for the shore; but before he had reached it, and while 

 only his head was above water, the Eagles came, killed him 

 on the spot, and bore off their rescued brood in triumph. 

 In the northern islands, where cormorants, gulls, and other 

 aquatic birds breed in immense numbers, the Eagles com- 

 mit terrible devastation among the young; though in these 

 places the Sea Eagle is often mistaken for the Golden 

 Eagle. They also attack full-grown deer, and even foxes, 

 wolves, and bears; they generally fasten on the heads of 

 the larger quadrupeds, tear out their eyes, and then beat 

 them to death with their wings. 



There are accounts of their carrying off infants in Britain; 

 and in places farther to the north, they have carried off 

 children a little more advanced. Instances of this are 

 mentioned in Iceland, in the Faroe islands, and in Nor- 

 way. In the parish of Nooder-hangs in the last country, 

 a boy two years of age was carried off in 1737, though his 

 parents were close at hand, and made all the exertions in 

 their power to scare the spoiler; nor were they able to 

 follow her to the place of her retreat. In Tinkalen (Faroe 

 islands) a child was carried off, and the mother climbed the 

 hitherto unascended precipice, but the child was dead. 

 Ray mentions a case in the Orkneys, where the mother 

 was more fortunate; and it probably is the foundation of 

 the following tale, which appeared in Blackwood's Maga- 

 zine for November, 1826, and which bears the exquisitely 

 graphic stamp of Professor Wilson. 



The Story of Hannah Lamond. — "Almost all the peo- 

 ple in the parish were leading in their meadow-hay on the 

 same day of Midsummer, so drying was the sunshine and 

 the wind, — and huge heaped-up wains, that almost hid from 

 view the horses that drew them along the sward, beginning 

 to get green with second growth, were moving in all di- 

 rections towards the snug farm-yards. Never had the 

 parish seemed before so populous. Jocund was the balmy 

 air with laughter, whistle, and song. But the treegnomens 

 threw the shadow of ' one o'clock' on the green dial-face 

 of the earth — the horses were unyoked, and took instantly 

 to grazing — groups of men, women, lads, lasses, and chil- 

 dren, collected under grove and bush, and hedge-row, — 

 graces were pronounced, and the great Being who gave 

 them that day their daily bread, looked down from his 

 eternal throne, well-pleased with the piety of his thankful 

 creatures. The great Golden Eagle, the pride and the pest 

 3E 



of the parish, stooped down, and away with something in 

 his talons. One single, sudden female shriek — and then 

 shouts and outcries as if a church-spire had tumbled down 

 on a congregation at a sacrament! ' Hannah Lamond's 

 bairn! Hannah Lamond's bairn!' was the loud, fast spread- 

 ing cry. 'The Eagles ta'en aff Hannah Lamond's bairn!' 

 and many hundred feet were in another instant hurrying 

 towards the mountain. Two miles of hill, and dale, and 

 copse, and shingle, and many intersecting brooks lay be- 

 tween; but in an incredibly short time, the foot of the 

 mountain was alive with people. The eyrie was well- 

 known, and both old birds were visible on the rock-ledge. 

 But who shall scale that dizzy cliff, which Mark Steuart the 

 sailor, who had been at the storming of many a fort, at- 

 tempted in vain? All kept gazing, weeping, wringing of 

 hands in vain, rooted to the ground, or running back and 

 forwards, like so many ants essaying their new wings in 

 discomfiture. 'What's the use — what's the use o' ony puir 

 human means? We have no power but in prayer!' and 

 many knelt down — fathers and mothers, thinking of their 

 own babies, as if they would force the deaf heavens to hear! 



"Hannah Lamond had all this while been sitting on a 

 rock, with a face perfectly white, and eyes like those of a 

 mad person, fixed on the eyrie. Nobody had noticed her; 

 for strong as all sympathies with her had been at the swoop 

 of the Eagle, they were now swallowed up in the agony of 

 eyesight. 'Only last Sabbath was my sweet wee wean 

 baptized:' and on uttering these words, she flew off through 

 the brakes and over the huge stones, up — up — up — faster 

 than ever huntsman ran in to the death, — fearless as a goat 

 playing among precipices. No one doubted, no one could 

 doubt, that she would soon be dashed to pieces. But have 

 not people who walk in their sleep, obedient to the myste- 

 rious guidance of dreams, clomb the walls of old ruins, and 

 found footing, even in decrepitude, along the edge of un- 

 guarded battlements and down dilapidated staircases, deep 

 as draw-wells or coal-pits, and returned with open, fixed, 

 and unseeing eyes, unharmed to their beds, at midnight? 

 It is all the work of the soul, to whom the body is a slave; 

 and shall not the agony of a mother's passion — who sees her 

 baby, whose warm mouth has just left her breast, hurried 

 off by a demon to a hideous death — bear her limbs aloft 

 wherever there is dust to dust, till she reach that devour- 

 ing den, and fiercer and more furious far, in the passion of 

 love, than any bird of prey that ever bathed its beak in 

 blood, throttle the fiends, that with their heavy wings, 

 would fain flap her down the cliffs, and hold up her child 

 in deliverance before the eye of the all-seeing God? 



"No stop — no stay — she knew not that she drew her 

 breath. Beneath her feet Providence fastened every loose 

 stone, and to her hands strengthened every root. How 



