With the coming of the grouse shooting season there is an outburst of rhymes about the North Country. e are a few lines from what is called a Highland Love Song'"—We wandered in the gloaming, Where soft the sporrans sang; We watched the haggis homing, And heard the saxpence bang; Wo heard the bittock booming His evening hymn of praise; We saw the bannocks blooming Upon their banks and braes, And much more to the same melodious effect. Another rhyme runs thus—
Now she's cast off her bonnie sheen Made o' gilded leather, And she's put on her Hieland brogues To skip among the heather, 'Ald she's cast off her bonnie goon Made o' the silk and satin, And she's put on a tartan plaid row among the bracken, is one strikes a fresh note— ko no pleasure in the heather, A coloured bell upon a stalk! I simply hate this sort of weather; V'm quite fed up with ghillies' talk, To shooting parties I've no leaning, They gather now at every house—For me they have a tragic meaning, Because T am a grousing Grouse!
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.