Epigraph
“Hast thou not noted on the bye way-side,
Where aged saughs lean o’er the lazy tide,
A vagrant crew, far straggled through the glade,
With trifles busied, or in slumber laid;
Their children lolling round them on the grass,
Or pestering with their sports the patient ass!
The wrinkled beldame there you may espy,
And ripe young maiden with the glossy eye;
Men in their prime, and striplings dark and dun,
Scathed by the storm and freckled with the sun;
Their swarthy hue and mantle’s flowing fold,
Bespeak the remnant of a race of old.
Strange are their annals—list! and mark them well—
For thou hast much to hear and I to tell.”
—Hogg.