Page:Scotish Descriptive Poems - Leyden (1803).djvu/130

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118
NOTES.

here, and they are equally fringed with wood; the trees however are by no means so tall and stately, being composed of coppice wood[1]."

P. 57. v. 489. Fordun, Lesley, Buchanan, and Wyntown, have mentioned the regulations established by King Kenneth at Lanark. But D. M'Pherson, the learned editor of Wyntown, has ingeniously conjectured, that the superior reputation of the warlike Kenneth has in this instance appropriated what is more justly due to the peaceful genius of his brother Dovenald, who revived the institutions of that ancient legislator, Hed-Fyn[2].

P. 61. v. 587. The following description of wild and garden fruits, present a favourable specimen of the "The Don," a loco-descriptive poem, and may be compared by the curious reader with Wilson's delineation of the appearances of forest and fruit trees:

What though no olive-trees adorn the plain,
Nor juicy grapes intoxicate the brain;
Nor citron groves, delightful to the eye,
Whose juice completes Italian luxury;
Yet still you find our mountain-trees produce
Fruits full as good, and fit for human use[3] ———.
The soil, though thin, due nourishment supplies,
And, without art, the beauteous berries rise;
Some black, some blue, and some whose red can vie
With brightest scarlet of rich Tyrian dye:


  1. Statistical Account of Scotland, Vol. XV. p. 23.
  2. Chron. Pict. ap. Innes, p. 783.
  3. The Don; a Poem, p.17.