NOVEMBER 255 



his peace. There is not a shred of documentary or 

 other evidence in support of this, which is just the sort 

 of story that would gain currency and credence in a 

 district where half the inhabitants were moss troopers 

 and half of the rest were in league with them ; but, be 

 it true or not, it furnishes the darkest shade in the 

 ballad of Johnnie Armstrong, whom, with some forty 

 of his men, King James caused to be hanged on the 

 trees round Carlenrig Chapel, after they had ridden 

 in on the faith of the proclamation to receive the royal 

 pardon. 



But I have been tempted into an unpardonable 

 digression. Let us get back to my text. 



Even if the prejudice against venison as food were 

 overcome, it would still be reckoned an offence against 

 the community that deer have to be fed in the forest 

 in hard weather. So, for that matter, must sheep and 

 cattle be supplied with fodder if they are to survive 

 the winter on the kind of ground now given up to 

 deer ; but sheep and cattle are free from the taint of 

 being kept for the sport of rich men. 



Considerations of a different kind affect the keeping 

 of deer in parks. I have in mind a lovely dale in 

 Westmorland, part of which was fenced as a chace 

 under licence from Edward iii. in the fourteenth 

 century. For six hundred years, therefore, it has 

 been a deer park, traversed by a salmon river, by 

 the side of which runs a right-of-way, greatly appre- 

 ciated by lovers of fair landscape. The strict political 

 economist may denounce such a scene as an eyesore — 

 the wasteful appanage of a manor-house — the lounging 



