Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

368
PORTREK.
is it for such as you and me to crook our lip at a chief-
tain of five thousand a year, because he drives his own
stirks to market, and can trace the points and consan-
guinity of every bull at the fair. Did not the Vituli and
Porcii and Vitellii and Tauri and Caprse of ancient Rome,
families high as even Clan Alpin or Clan Colla, spring
fro mbullsand calves and hogs and goats ;
as the Pisones,
Lentuli, Fabii, and Cicerones, derived their origin from
pease and beans. And was not Romulus a shepherd, and
David, and Diocletian ; to say nothing of Eudymion and
Paris and Argus and Polyphemus and Apollo. And there-
fore I took refuge from the Lairds and Chiefs in the
opener element of the fair itself. And then the cows and
the queys and the stots and the stirks began to bellow
and roar and whisk their tails, and the sellers of cows
and the buyers of cows began to compete for the mas-
tery, and all the town began to look like a stable, and
I had nothing to do but to leave them to poke about their
horns, and bellow down the Highland drovers, if they
could, or remain to be daubed by the whisking of cows'
tails in Portree myself.
It is hard to escape thus free from the perils of the
waters, only to fall into perils by land. And therefore 1
took refuge among the tenants of the church-yard, trusting
that the spirit of pugnacity had, there at least, yielded at
last to the great King of peace. But if the dead were as
them that sleep, assuredly the pugnacious spirit of the
living Highlander was not yet extinct in Portree church-
yard. Noris it sleepingamong thisrace, Theyseem quite
as " fA.a.xty-01^ as in the days recorded by Herodian, In the
good old times, no meeting of these idle worthies ever
took place without terminating in a battle ; no matter
whether it was a wedding, a funeral, or a merry-making.
I say wrong : in the latter case, a special provision against
war, wassometimes made by each man's sticking his naked