3i8 The European Sky -God.
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as a hawk let off at Kinnoull should fly over before it settled. The hawk alighted at the Hawk's Stane in St. Madoes' Parish, all the intervening land becoming the property of the Hays. John Hay Allan, a member of the family, in his ' Lines Written upon coming in sight of the Coast of Scotland ' ^ exclaims :
' And sooth there was a time, howe'er 'tis now, O'er thy wide realm they held the regal sway. The blood which yet beneath this breast doth flow, Was from thy Stuarts drawn in olden day:- But with their race all ! all ! is fallen away — Yet mourn I how my name withstood their foes? Cursed had it been to fail them in the fray, Aye in their weal it shared as in their woes, And aye the misle spray shall blend it with the rose.'^
Commenting on the last line, the poet himself writes as follows : * ' Among the Low Country families the badges are now almost generally forgotten ; but it appears by an ancient MS. and the tradition of a few old people in Perthshire, that the badge of the Hays was the mistletoe. There was formerly in the neighbourhood of Errol, and not far from the Falcon stone, a vast oak of an unknown age, and upon which grew a profusion of the plant: many charms and legends were considered to be connected with the tree, and the duration of the family of Hay was said to be united with its existence. It was believed that a sprig of the mistletoe cut by a Hay
^J. H. Allan The Bridal of Cadkhairn ; and other Poems London 1822 p. 97-
2 This refers to the supposed connexion between J. H. Allan and Prince Charlie, on which see the Rev. A. Philip op. cit. p. 142 ff. and Mr. F. Hindes Groome's article on 'John Sobieski Stolberg Stuart' in the National Dictionary of Biography.
^J. H. Allan Bridal of Cabkhairn p. 232 in 'The Gathering of the Hays ' writes :
' Dark as the mountain's heather wave, The rose and the misle are coming brave.'
- Id. ib. p. 337 f.
