The poetical works of Sir Walter Scott, with memoir of the author.

CANTO IV.] ROKEBY. 173
Who, in his charge, from Ulster bore
Letters, and gifts a goodly store;
But ruffians met them in the wood,
Ferraught in battle boldly stood,
Till wounded and o'erpower'd at length,
And stripp'd of all, his failing strength
Just bore him here-and then the child
Renew'd again his moaning wild.'
which connected the foster-father, as well as the nurse herself, with the child they brought up.
" Foster-fathers spend much more time, money, and affection on their foster-children than their own; and in return
take from them clothes, money for their several professions,
and arms, and, even for any vicious purposes, fortunes and
cattle, not so much by a claim of right as by extortion; and
they will even carry those things off as plunder. All who
have been nursed by the same person preserve a greater mutual affection and confidence in each other than if they were
natural brothers, whom they will even hate for the sake of
these. When chid by their parents, they fly to their fosterfathers, who frequently encourage them to make open war
on their parents, train them up to every excess of wickedness,
and make them most abandoned miscreants; as, on the other
hand, the nurses make the young women, whom they bring
up for every excess. If a foster-child is sick, it is incredible
how soon the nurses hear of it, however distant, and with
what solicitude they attend it by day and night."-Giraldus
Cambrensis, quoted by Cambden, iv. 368.
This custom, like many other Irish usages, prevailed till
of late in the Scottish Highlands, and was cherished by the
chiefs as an easy mode of extending their influence and connection; and even in the Lowlands, during the last century,
the connection between the nurse and foster-child was seldom
dissolved but by the death of one party.
1 [Here follows in the MS. a stanza of sixteen lines, which
the author subsequently dispersed through stanzas xv. and
xvi., post.]