Page:Scott - Tales of my Landlord - 3rd series - 1819.djvu/150

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140
TALES OF MY LANDLORD.

usually bid farewell to their native shores. The uncouth cries of the foreign shepherds, and the barking of their dogs, were often heard in the mist of the hills long before their real arrival. A bard, the last of his race, had commemorated the expulsion of the natives of the glen in a tune, which brought tears into the aged eyes of the veteran, and of which the first stanza may be thus rendered—


Woe, woe, son of the Lowlander,
Why wilt thou leave thy bonny Border?
Why comest thou hither, disturbing the Highlander,
Wasting the glen that was once in fair order?


What added to Serjeant More M'Alpin's distress upon the occasion was, that the Chief by whom this change had been effected, was by tradition and common opinion, held to represent the ancient leaders and fathers of the expelled fugitives, and it had hitherto been one of Serjeant More's principal subjects of pride to prove, by genealogical deduction, in what de-