An old Fingalian Hero--His keenness of Sight and sharpness of Ear-- Foresters and Keepers--Foxhunters--Donald MacDonald--His Dogs--Sandy MacArthur the Mole-catcher.
The hero of one of our most popular old Fingalian tales is described as very marvellously gifted. In order to secure the hand of a beautiful Scandinavian princess, whose locks are as the beams of the setting sun, about the time the summer sea is flecked and barred with gold, and with whom he has long been in love, he has to undertake the most strange and startling adventures; and not the least important of his qualifications for combating the frequent difficulties of his position is a preternatural acuteness of eye and ear, of sight and hearing. His keenness of sight, for instance, is indicated by his being able to count the beats of the swallow's wings in all the gyrations of its flight over the summer grove; and as for his acuteness of ear, enough is said when the veracious chronicler does not hesitate to assert that his hero could hear the grass grow? We, in our unheroic and degenerate day, cannot boast of anything like this. We are content to know that the swallow skims the pool with a swiftness due to a motion of wing too rapid to be detected in its separate beats by the acutest eye, and that the grass does grow, and at times with marvellous rapidity, albeit the stir and tumult of its upward rush is inaudible to human ears. But if we cannot hear the grass grow, we can safely aver that in such exceptionally splendid seasons as this [July 1875], and without fear of being charged with any very culpable exaggeration, we can see it grow, not only from day to day, but almost literally from hour to hour--so rapid, so marked, and visibly perceptible is the progress towards a large and lusty maturity of grass and grain and every green herb of the field. Anything, indeed, to equal the sturdy vigour and upward rush of vegetation during the month of June last past we never did see before, and had it not come immediately under our own observation, we could hardly have believed it possible anywhere outside the tropics. The harvest must necessarily be a late one, though not quite so late as it was at one time feared must be the case. If we say that the season of ingathering will be later than usual by ten days, or a fortnight at the most, we are probably not far from the mark. But, late or early, it is sure to be an exceedingly abundant harvest, there being at present all over the West Highlands every promise of very heavy returns, the heaviest, perhaps, that, under any circumstances whatever, the land could safely bear, with the hope of an eventually fully ripe and lusty maturity.