By JAMES HOGG,
AUTHOR OF "WINTER-EVENING TALES," "BROWNIE OF
BODSBECK," "QUEEN'S WAKE," &c. &c.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
Beshrew me if I dare open it.
Fletcher.
LONDON:
LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN,
PATERNOSTER-ROW.
1822.
John Moir, Printer, Edinburgh, 1822.
TO
WILLIAM STEWART ROSE, ESQ.
AS A SMALL MEMORIAL
OF
YARROW,
AND
THE SHEPHERD'S HUMBLE SHEIL,
THIS WORK
IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED
BY
THE AUTHOR.
THE
THREE PERILS OF MAN.
* * * * * *
The days of the Stuarts, kings of Scotland,were the days of chivalry and romance.The long and bloody contest thatthe nation maintained against the wholepower of England, for the recovery of itsindependence,—of those rights which hadbeen most unwarrantably wrested from ourfathers by the greatest and most treacheroussovereign of that age, with the successful[2]and glorious issue of the war, laidthe foundation for this spirit of heroism,which appears to have been at its zenithabout the time that the Stuarts first acquiredthe sovereignty of the realm. Thedeeds of the Douglasses, the Randolphs,and other border barons of that day, arenot to be equalled by any recorded in ourannals; while the reprisals that they madeupon the English, in retaliation for formerinjuries, enriched both them and their followers,and rendered their appearancesplendid and imposing to a degree thatwould scarcely now gain credit. It wasno uncommon thing for a Scottish earl thento visit the Court at the head of a thousandhorsemen, all splendidly mounted intheir military accoutrements; and manyof these gentlemen of rank and family. Incourt and camp, feats of arms were thetopic of conversation, and the only die thatstamped the character of a man of renown,either with the fair, the monarch, or thechiefs of the land. No gentleman of nobleblood would pay his addresses to hismistress, until he had broken a spear with[3]the knights of the rival nation, surprised astrong-hold, or driven a prey from thekinsmen of the Piercies, the Musgraves, orthe Howards. As in all other things thatrun to a fashionable extremity, the fair sexto