A Scots Wanderjahre Author:David Lowe Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: FROM NEW CATHCART TO EAGLESHAM " O, we aft hae met at e'en, bonnie Peggie, O ! On the banks of Cart sae green, bonnie Peggie, O ! Where the waters smooth... more »ly rin, Far aneath the roarin" linn, Far frae busy strife and din, bonnie Peggie, O ! " —JOHN SlM. Haymaking and berry-picking were in progress when my second excursion southward took place, and on this occasion I passed through the village of New Cathcart, where, in 1820, " nearly a dozen Radicals armed with spikes and pistols visited two public-houses at midnight on a search for arms." The publicans do not make their houses into armouries now. Radicals also prefer spoon to spike. It took the walking of several miles to get in full sympathy with the country, and Clarkston and Busby were left behindere city associations dropped entirely away. On an otherwise steep road there is a delightful hollow in which rests Water- foot, a little hamlet on the Cart. I would not have been surprised to see the author of " The Lost Pibroch" casting a line up stream, but the only tangible proof of his residence in the neighbourhood was his young, yellow-haired, kilted son ranging a field near for marguerites. Immediately beyond Waterfoot flaunts the warning that the Walton Fishing Club will prosecute trespassers, and I wondered how Christopher North, who beguiled trout from this stream, would have relished the notice-board. In the heyday of physical vigour he was the friend and companion of strolling players and gipsies; yet, to be just, we must remember that afterwards he filled a Chair of Moral Philosophy for thirty years. I would accept North's earlier opinion; though, as the Laird of Gartmore, in one of his characteristic "Letters to the Editor," remarks, "When a man is a moralist, you can believe muchof him." I do not for...« less