Читать книгу Our Western Hills: How to reach them; And the Views from their Summits. By a Glasgow Pedestrian онлайн

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But tho’ a lassie were e’er sae black,

Let her ha’e the penny siller,

Set her up on Tinto tap,

The wind wad blaw a man till her.

On the “tap,” too, there is a “kist,” or large block of granite, with a hole in one side, said to have been caused by the grasp of Wallace’s thumb on the evening before his victory at Boghall, Biggar; just as Quothquand, a hill a little to the north-east, is crowned with a large stone known as Wallace’s chair, and popularly believed to have been his seat at a council held the same evening. The “kist” on the top of Tinto is the subject of another curious rhyme, which Mr. Robert Chambers thinks is intended as a mockery of human strength, for it is certainly impossible to lift the lid and drink off the contents of the hollow—

On Tintock tap there is a mist,

And in that mist there is a kist,

And in the kist there is a caup,

And in the caup there is a drap;

Tak’ up the caup, drink off the drap,

And set the caup on Tintock tap.

This old world rhyme is finely moralised by Dr. John Brown in his “Jeems the Door-keeper.” We have been here when the sunset has died away upon the hill, like the “watch fires of departing angels,” and from the undergrowth about the neighbouring river blackbird and ousel sent forth their liquid pipings. The cuckoos that all day long had been calling to each other across the fields, were now with a more restful “chuck! chuck! chu, chu-chu,” flitting, like gray flakes, from coppice to coppice, preparatory to settling for the night. The blackcock’s challenge could still be heard from the lower ground, and from the hillside came the silvery “whorl-whorl-whorl” of the grouse. Such sounds can be heard far off in the stillness of the dusk.