Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 002.djvu/650

short time; but he had more honour than I had, for he took him to his father, and desired him to foster Sirrah, and be kind to him as long as he lived, for the sake of what he had been; and this injunction the old man faithfully performed.

He came back to see me now and then for months after he went away, but afraid of the mortification of being driven from the farm-house, he never came there; but knowing well the road that I took to the hill in the morning, he lay down near to that. When he saw me coming, he did not venture to come to me, but walked round the hill, keeping always about 200 yards' distance, and then returned to his new master again, satisfied for the time that there was no more shelter with his beloved old one for him. When I thought how easily one kind word would have attached him to me for life, and how grateful it would have been to my faithful old servant and friend, I could not help regretting my fortune that obliged us to separate. That unfeeling tax on the shepherd's dog, his only breadwinner, has been the cause of much pain in this respect. The parting with old Sirrah, after all that he had done for me, had such an effect on my heart, that I have never been able to forget it to this day; the more I have considered his attachment and character, the more I have admired them; and the resolution that he took up, and persisted in, of never doing a good turn for any other of my race, after the ingratitude that he had experienced from me, appears to me to have a kind of heroism and sublimity in it. I am, however, writing nothing but the plain simple truth, to which there are plenty of living witnesses. I then made a vow to myself, which I have religiously kept, and ever shall, never to sell another dog; but that I may stand acquitted to you, sir, of all pecuniary motives, which indeed those who know me will scarcely suspect me of,—I must add, that when I saw how matters went, I never took a farthing of the stipulated price of old Sirrah.

I have Sirrah's race to this day; and though none of them have ever equalled him as a sheep dog, yet they have far excelled him in all the estimable qualities of sociality and humour. The history of his son, the renowned Hector, shall form the subject of another letter when I have leisure.

The following queries are addressed to the author of the account of the gypsies of Fife, being suggested by the research and industry which he has displayed in collecting memorials of that vagrant race. They relate to a class of persons, who, distinguished for honest industry in a laborious and dangerous calling, have only this in common with the Egyptian tribes, that they are not originally natives of the country which they inhabit, and are supposed still to exhibit traces of a foreign origin. I mean the colony of fishermen (Danish, as has been presumed) settled in the village of Buckhaven in Fife, unless my memory deceives me, (for I have not at present leisure to verify the fact) by King James V., among other honourable attempts to introduce arts and civilization into his kingdom.

There is a foolish little book, called the History of Buckhaven, still, I believe, hawked about by pedlars, and well known to the curious students in stall pamphlets and penny histories, amongst whom I respectfully ask leave to enroll myself. It contains a series of idle jests and stories, like those fathered on the Wise Men of Gotham, tending chiefly to ridicule the good people of Buckhaven, for their alleged ignorance of all that is unconnected with their own maritime employment; nor is it by any means devoid of a strain of low and coarse humour. Yet even this vituperative and injurious account of the honest fishers of Buckhaven and their wives, contains, or rather indicates, some peculiarities respecting them which irritate the curiosity of a local antiquary. In my copy of this respectable treatise, the title-page professes to give "the antiquities of their old dress, the bucky-boat with a flag of green-tree, with their dancing, Willie and his trusty rapier," &c. In this, however, as in too many cases of more importance, we may adopt the old caution, fronti nulla fides; for little or nothing is said in the treatise itself of the matters thus formally announced in the title. It is