England and Scotland in the words of Wat Tinlinn—
"They cross'd the Liddel at curfew hour,
And burnt my little lonely tower;
The fiend receive their souls therefor!
It had not been burnt this year and more.
Barn-yard and dwelling, blazing bright.
Served to guide me on my flight;
But I was chased the live-long night.
Black John of Akeshaw, and Fergus Grasme,
Full fast upon my traces came,
Until I turn'd at Priesthaugh Scrogg,
And shot their horses in the bog.
Slew Fergus with my lance outright—
I had him long at high despite,
He drove my cows last Fastern's night."
Scott himself, in his History of Scotland, has given a good explanation of the effect of his own genius in describing that of the genius of Shakspeare upon the Scottish tale of Macbeth.
"The genius of Shakspeare," says Scott,[1] "having found the tale of Macbeth in the Scottish chronicles of Holingshed, adorned it with a lustre similar to that with which a level beam of the sun often invests some fragment of glass, which, though shining at a distance with the lustre of a diamond, is, by a near investigation, discovered to be of no worth or
- ↑ History of Scotland contained in "Tales of a Grandfather," vol. i., p. 16, note (Robert Cadell, Edinburgh, 1846).
