'These huntings had, of course, a military character, and attendance upon them was part of the duty of a vassal. The act for abolishing ward or military tenures in Scotland, enumerates the services of hunting, hosting, watching and warding, as those which were in future to be illegal.'--SCOTT. lines 5-11. Cp. Wordsworth's 'Thorn':-- 'There is a Thorn--it looks so old, In truth, you'd find it hard to say How it could ever have been young, It looks so old and grey.' There is a special suggestion of antiquity in the wrinkled, lichen- covered thorn of a wintry landscape, and thus it is a fitting object to stir and sustain the poet's tendency to note 'chance and change' and to lament the loss of the days that are no more. The exceeding appropriateness of this in a narrative poem dealing with departed habits and customs must be quite apparent. The thorn grows to a very great age, and many an unpretentious Scottish homestead receives a pathetic grace and dignity from the presence of its ancestral thorn- tree. line 15. The rowan is the mountain ash. One of the most tender and haunting of Scottish songs is Lady Nairne's 'Oh, Rowan tree!'-- 'How fair wert thou in summer time, wi' a' thy clusters white, How rich and gay thy autumn dress, wi' berries red and bright.' line 27. There are some notable allusions in the poets to the moonlight baying of dogs and wolves. Cp. Julius Caesar, iv. 3. 27:-- 'I had rather be a dog and bay the moon.' See also Shield's great English song, 'The Wolf':-- 'While the wolf, in nightly prowl, Bays the moon with hideous howl!' One of the best lines in English verse on the wolf--both skilfully onomatopoeic and suggestively picturesque--is Campbell's, line 66 of 'Pleasures of Hope':-- 'The wolf's long howl from Oonalaska's shore.' line 30. Cp. the movement of this line with line 3 in 'Sang of the Outlaw Murray':-- 'There's hart and hynd, and dae and rae.' line 31. 'Grene wode' is a phrase of the 'Robyn Hode Ballads.' Cp.:- - 'She set her on a gode palfray, To GRENE WODE anon rode she.' line 32. The ruins of Newark Castle are above the confluence of the Ettrick and the Yarrow, on the latter river, and a few miles from Selkirk. Close by is Bowhill, mentioned below, 73. See Prof. Minto's 'Lay of the Last Minstrel' (Clarendon Press), pp. 122-3. In the days of the 'last minstrel' it was appropriate to describe this 'riven' relic as 'Newark's stately tower.' line 33. James II built Newark as a fortress. line 41. The gazehound or greyhound hunts by sight, not scent. The Encyclopedic Dictionary quotes Tickell 'On Hunting':-- 'See'st thou the GAZEHOUND! how with glance severe From the close herd he marks the destined deer.' line 42. 'Bratchet, slowhound.'--SCOTT. The older spelling is brachet (from BRACH or BRACHE), as:--