stir and sustain the poet's tendency to note 'chance and change' and to lament the loss of the days that are no more. The exceeding appropriateness of this in a narrative poem dealing with departed habits and customs must be quite apparent. The thorn grows to a very great age, and many an unpretentious Scottish homestead receives a pathetic grace and dignity from the presence of its ancestral thorn-tree.
l. 15. The rowan is the mountain ash. One of the most tender and haunting of Scottish songs is Lady Nairne's 'Oh, Rowan tree!'—
How rich and gay thy autumn dress, wi' berries red and bright.'
l. 27. There are some notable allusions in the poets to the moonlight baying of dogs and wolves. Cp. Julius Caesar, iv. 3. 27:—
'I had rather be a dog and bay the moon.'
See also Shield's great English song, 'The Wolf':—
Bays the moon with hideous howl!'
One of the best lines in English verse on the wolf—both skilfully onomatopoeic and suggestively picturesque—is Campbell's, line 66 of 'Pleasures of Hope':—
'The wolf's long howl from Oonalaska's shore.'
l. 30. Cp. the movement of this line with line 3 in 'Sang of the Outlaw Murray':—
'There's hart and hynd, and dae and rae.'
l. 31. 'Grene wode' is a phrase of the 'Robyn Hode Ballads.' Cp.:—
To grene wode anon rode she.'
l. 32. The ruins of Newark Castle are above the confluence of the Ettrick and the Yarrow, on the latter river, and a few miles from Selkirk. Close by is Bowhill, mentioned below, 73. See Prof. Minto's 'Lay of the Last Minstrel' (Clarendon Press), pp. 122-3. In the days of the 'last minstrel' it was appropriate to describe this 'riven' relic as 'Newark's stately tower.'
l. 33. James II built Newark as a fortress.
l. 41. The gazehound or greyhound hunts by sight, not scent. The Encyclopedic Dictionary quotes Tickell 'On Hunting':—
From the close herd he marks the destined deer.'
