Waverley by Walter Scott — Read

Shall this be a long or a short chapter? This is a question in which you, gentle reader, have no vote, however much you may be interested in the consequences; just as you may (like myself) probably have nothing to do with the imposing a new tax, excepting the trifling circumstance of being obliged to pay it. More happy surely in the present case, since, though it lies within my arbitrary power to extend my materials as I think proper, I cannot call you into Exchequer if you do not think proper to read my narrative. Let me therefore consider. It is true that the annals and documents in my hands say but little of this Highland chase; but then I can find copious materials for description elsewhere. There is old Lindsay of Pitscottie ready at my elbow, with his Athole hunting, and his "lofted and joisted palace of green timber; with all kind of drink to be had in burgh and land, as ale, beer, wine, muscadel, malvaise, hippocras, and aqua-vitae; with wheat-bread, main-bread, ginge-bread, beef, mutton, lamb, veal, venison, goose, grice, capon, coney, crane, swan, partridge, plover, duck, drake, brissel-cock, pawnies, blackcock, muir-fowl, and capercailzies"; not forgetting the "costly bedding, vaiselle, and napry," and least of all the "excelling stewards, cunning baxters, excellent cooks, and pottingars, with confections and drugs for the desserts. " Besides the particulars which may be thence gleaned for this Highland feast (the splendour of which induced the Pope's legate71 to dissent from an opinion which he had hitherto held, that Scotland, namely, was the -- the -- the latter end of the world) -- besides these, might I not illuminate my pages with Taylor the Water Poet's hunting in the braes of Mar, where --

Through heather, mosse, 'mong frogs, and bogs, and fogs, 'Mongst craggy cliffs and thunder-batter'd hills, Hares, hinds, bucks, roes, are chased by men and dogs, Where two hours' hunting fourscore fat deer kills.