Page:Scott - Tales of my Landlord - 3rd series - 1819.djvu/156

146 third of those very trees, counting from the stile at the west corner of the churchyard.

The delight which I had in Serjeant M'Alpin's conversation, related not only to his own adventures, of which he had encountered many in the course of a wandering life, but also to his recollection of numerous Highland traditions, in which his youth had been instructed by his parents, and of which he would in after life have deemed it a kind of heresy to question the authenticity. Many of these related to the wars of Montrose, in which some of the serjeant's ancestry had, it seems, taken a distinguished part. It has happened, that, although these civil commotions reflect the highest honour upon the Highlanders, being indeed the first occasion upon which they shewed themselves superior, or even equal, to their Lowcountry neighbours in military encounters, they have been less commemorated among them than one would have expected, judging from the abundance of traditions which they have preserved upon less