The poetical works of Sir Walter Scott ... Notes & life of the author.

NOTES TO CANTO SECOrID
NOTE XVII.
Thence to St. Fillan's blessed well,
Whose springs can frenzied dreams dispel,
And the crazed brain restore.
St Fillan was a Scottish saint of some reputation. There are, In Perth.
ohis, several wells and springs dedicated to St. Fillan, which are still
places of pilgrimage and offerings, even among the Protestants. They
are held powerful in cases of madness; and in cases of very late occur.
rence, lunatics have been left all night bound to the holy stone, in conf.
dence that the saint would cure and release them before the mojiing,
gf ote; to fiarmrmtfll
CANTO SECOND.
NOTE I.
The scenes are desert now, and bare
Where flourished once a forest fair.
Ettrieke Forest, now a range of mountainous sheep walks, was as
eiently reserved for the pleasure of the royal chase. Since it was dis.
parked, the wood has been, by degrees, almost totally destroyed, although,
wherever protected from the sheep, copses soon arise without any planting.
When-the king hunted there, he often summoned the array of the count
try to meet and assist his sport. Thus, in 1528, James V. " made procla.
mation to all lords, barons, gentlemen, landward-men, and freeholders,
that they should compear at Edinburgh, with a month's victuals, to pass
with the king where he pleased, to danton the thieves of reviotdale, Annan.
dale, Liddisdale, and other parts of that country; and also warned all
gentlemen that had good dogs, to bring them, that he might hunt in the
said country, as he pleased; the whilk the Earl of Argyle, the Earl of
Huntley, the Earl of Athol, and so all the rest of the gentlemen of the
Highland, did, and brought their hounds with them in like manner, to
hunt with the king as he pleased.
" The second day of June, the king past out of Edinburgh to the hunt.
ing, with many of the nobles and gentlemen of Scotland with him, to
the number of twelve thousand men; and then passed to Meggitland,
and hounded and hawked all the country and hounds: that is to say,
Crammat, Papertlaw, St. Marylaws, Carlavirick, Chapel, Ewindoores,
and Longhope. I heard say, he slew, in those bounds, eighteen score of
harts."*
Taylor, the water-poet, has given an account of the mode in which these
buntings were conducted in the Highlands of Scotland, in the seventeenth
century, having been present at JBraemar upon such an occasion:
" For once in the year, which is the whole month of August, and some.
times part of September, many of the nobility and gentry of the kingdom (for their pleasure) do come into these Highland countries to hunt;
where they do conform themselves to the habit of the highland-men, who,
for the most part, speak nothing but Irish; and, in former time, were
those people which were called the Red shanks. Their habit is —eh)es,
with but one sole a-piece; stockings (which they call short hose) made of
a warm stuff of divers colours, which they call tartan; as for breeches,
many of them, nor their forefathers, never wore any, but a j.rkin of the
same stuff that their hose is made of; their garters being bands os'ittlcottie's H.i tory of S&ecolt