122
NOTES.
angry than witty; and, like the other poems of that author, published in 1697, it is equally defective in versification and poetical imagery. He thus describes the Highlanders:
Some might have judged they were the creatures
Called Selfies, whose customs and features,
Paracelsus doth descry
In his occult philosophy,
Or Faunes, or Brownies, if ye will,
Or Satyrs come from Atlas' hill[1].———
But those who were their chief commanders,
As such who bore the pirnie standards,
Who led the van, and drove the rear,
Were right well mounted in their gear,
With brogues, trues, and pirnie plaids,
With good blue bonnets on their heads,
Which on the one side had a flipe,
Adorned with a tobacco-pipe;
With durk and snap-work and snuff-mill,
A bag which they with onions fill;
And, as their strick observers say,
A tupe-horn filled with usquebay;
A slasht-out coat beneath her plaids;
A targe of timber nails and hides,
With a long two-handed sword[2].———
In nothing they're accounted sharp,
Except in bag-pipe, and in harp[3].———
Called Selfies, whose customs and features,
Paracelsus doth descry
In his occult philosophy,
Or Faunes, or Brownies, if ye will,
Or Satyrs come from Atlas' hill[1].———
But those who were their chief commanders,
As such who bore the pirnie standards,
Who led the van, and drove the rear,
Were right well mounted in their gear,
With brogues, trues, and pirnie plaids,
With good blue bonnets on their heads,
Which on the one side had a flipe,
Adorned with a tobacco-pipe;
With durk and snap-work and snuff-mill,
A bag which they with onions fill;
And, as their strick observers say,
A tupe-horn filled with usquebay;
A slasht-out coat beneath her plaids;
A targe of timber nails and hides,
With a long two-handed sword[2].———
In nothing they're accounted sharp,
Except in bag-pipe, and in harp[3].———
Cleland represents the Highlanders as exhibiting
———more different postures
Than's sewed on hangings, beds or bolstures;
Than's sewed on hangings, beds or bolstures;
