Page:The Lady of the Lake - Scott (1810).djvu/314

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298
NOTES TO CANTO FIRST.

"'Tis well known, that in the highlands, it was, in former times, accounted not only lawful, but honourable, among hostile tribes, to commit depredations on one another; and these habits of the age were perhaps strengthened in this district, by the circumstances which have been mentioned. It bordered on a country, the inhabitants of which, while they were richer, were less warlike than they, and widely differenced by language and manners."—Graham's Sketches of Scenery in Perthshire. Edin. 1806, p. 97.

The reader will therefore be pleased to remember, that the the scene of this poem is laid in a time

When tooming faulds, or sweeping of a glen,
Had still been held the deed of gallant men.

Note VI.

A grey-haired sire, whose eye, intent,
Was on the visioned future bent.—St. XXIII. P. 28.

If force of evidence could authorise us to believe facts inconistent with the general laws of nature, enough might be produced in favour of the existence of the Second-Sight. It is called in Gaelic Taishitaraugh, from Taish, an unreal or shadowy appearance; and those possessed of the faculty are called Taishatrin, which may be aptly translated visionaries. Martin, a steady believer in the second-sight, gives the following account of it:

"The second-sight is a singular faculty of seeing an otherwise