Page:The Lady of the Lake - Scott (1810).djvu/381

 The raven might also challenge his rights by the Book of Saint Albans; for thus says Dame Juliana Berners:—

Jonson, in "The Sad Shepherd," gives a more poetical account of the same ceremony.

Though this be in the text described as the response of the Taghairm, or Oracle of the Hide, it was of itself an augury frequently attended to. The fate of the battle was often anticipated in the imagination of the combatants, by observing which party first shed blood. It is said that the Highlanders under Montrose, were so deeply embued with this notion, that on the morning of the battle of Tippermoor, they murdered a defenceless herdsman, whom they found in the fields, merely to secure an advantage of so much consequence to their party.