SCOTCH SPORTS AND A GREAT SCOTCH SPORTSMAN.* ONE cannot help
wondering, after digesting the curious hotch- potch of facts, anecdotes, and rhapsodies in prose and verse • (L) Out-of-Door Sports in Scotlonsir their Economy and Surroundings. By Ellangowan." London : W. H. Allen and Co. 1889.—.(2) Angling Songs. By Thomas Tod Stoddart. With a Memoir by Anna H. Stoddart. Edixtbargh and London : William Blackwood and Sons. 1889. which has been published by the authority on sports who writes under the nom de plume of " Ellangowan," if there is a man in Scotland who does not devote a third of his waking existence to outdoor recreation in one form or other. "In Scotland to-day," we are told, "there is sport of a kind for all degrees of people,—for the masses there is football in particular; for the classes there are deer-stalking and salmon-fishing as well as grouse-shooting, and with the intermediate bodies of people, curling and greyhound-coursing never go out of favour: golfing may be called a middle-class game, although largely shared in by many of the professional aristocracy of the day." Scotchwomen no longer allow themselves to be confined to indoor work and pleasure. At one time they were liable to be hissed at if they appeared on the ice to skate, and even if they gave themselves up to hunting, they were shunned by mothers desirous of making good matches for their sons. Now, it seems, "ladies not only go a-hunting, but they go a-fishing as well— indeed, it is difficult to tell where they will stop ; some of them even go grouse-shooting andileer-stalking, and there are many ladies who can handle their golf-clubs and their bows and arrows with skill and dexterity." Those who remember the strong hold that Calvinism once had over the people of Scotland as a scheme not only of religion, but of conduct, when applied to the ethical problems of every-day life—mean- ing that, as a relief from the sorrows and crosses of that life, man should turn to subjective consolations only—will find a sinister significance in such statements as these : "The evening papers—those published in Edinburgh and Glasgow especially—are disposed of every night in tens of thousands, more particularly in the height of the football and cricket seasons, when results of the day's doings are anxiously looked for and perused. Who, half-a-century ago, would have ventured to predict that in the course of one Saturday after- noon and evening of the present year, nearly a quarter of a million evening newspapers would be sold in Godly Glasgow' because of a football-match ? Every night the results of the day's horse-racing are also eagerly sought after; large numbers of persons impatiently await the news relating to starting-prices and the names of the running steeds." One can hardly help pausing and wondering whether all these facts taken together constitute a really good sign of Scotland. They indicate animal energy, and such energy is in itself, of course, not only a good thing, but the basis of better things. But everything depends upon the channel which it finds for itself, and it may be doubted whether, in particular, the passion for football which has of late years gained such a hold upon Scotland, has not had a coarsening—even a brutalising—effect upon the classes (or rather, the masses) who have been seized by it. Such, at all events, seems to be the fear of thoughtful people in Scotland itself.
As a matter of fact, however, the heart of the author of- this volume is not in " sport " in the sense of outdoor games, although he is evidently fond of a good story or stanza about the too literally roaring game of curling. When the fact is noted that of his twenty-four chapters he devotes only two to such subjects as golf and curling, and twenty- one to deer, grouse, bares, rabbits, pheasants, partridges, salmon, trout, foxes, fox-hunters, gamekeepers, poachers, "the vermin of the moor and manor," "the political economy of sport," "the game-supply," "the natural economy of a grouse- moor," and kindred subjects, it is not difficult to tell what it is that he would really dignify by the name of "Sports." As an authority on his subject in this limited but yet important sense, " Ellangowan " is as little notable for originality of view as he is for piquancy of style. His book is a collection of the theories held and the facts gathered by others, touched with his own quite genuine enthusiasm. He is not very suc- cessful, indeed, when he tries to realise Scotch life on the moors, with the help of his own imagination, as in his account of the arrival of the Lancashiree at "Glen Hoolichan Castle by Killin, Perthshire." Is there not, too, a suspicion of advertisement in such a statement as : "A night at Grieve's comfortable Waterloo Hotel affords refreshing rest"? " Ellangowan " has evidently, however, taken great pains to arrange and verify his facts. From these the magnitude of Scotch "sport," in his sense, may be estimated. As regards grouse-shooting in particular, he would seem disposed to place five hundred thousand brace of grouse, or one million birds, as the annual yield of the Scotch moors. Certain agitators, who desire the total extermination of the bigger Scotch game, but who are not themselves Scotch, should care- fully consider such a statement as this, which is, indeed, borne out by a deliverance of the Napier Commission :— " Were the red deer of Scotland to be totally exterminated, or to become greatly reduced in numbers, and sheep to be put on the land at the rate of one to every five acres so gained, that would only mean the addition of 400,000 more sheep than there are at the present time, or a total for the four Highland counties of Argyll, Inverness, Ross, and Sutherland of, say, two and a half millions." The annual slaughter of stags in Scotland is placed at 4,500, 3,000 of these being killed in the counties of Ross and Inverness, in which there are no fewer than seventy-eight deer-forests. It is calculated that for every stag that is killed, twenty deer of all ages will be left in the forests. In years when 4,500 is the number killed, there will thus be a total reserve stock of 90,000. According to another calculation, every 50,000 acres yield 5,000 deer. As the one hundred deer-forests of Scotland occupy an area of 1,975,209 acres, the stock on them ought to be 200,000 deer of all ages. "For such a number," says the author of this book, "there is really not food."
One cannot pass from this book without wondering if this Scotch "sport" need be quite such a hungry and thirsty thing as it seems to be. Here is the beginning of a deer-stalking ex- pedition :—" I started on that best of all foundations, a capital breakfast. Attend and envy me ; item first, a steak of broiled salmon ; item second, a helping from a pie composed of jellied sheep's head, nicely seasoned and palatable; item third, a savoury omelet piping hot ; item fourth, half of a rizzard had- dock ; add to these home-baked bread in the form of scones and oatcakes, as well as honey, marmalade at discretion, plenty of cream and real good coffee, and you will give me credit for having breakfasted. There was a dram after, but that is never counted, although the whisky is well disguised in several table-spoonfuls of heather-honey. We started for the seat of war about 7 o'clock, mounted on hardy ponies, and in about an hour we had arrived at the beginning of our stalk, which we inaugurated by tossing off 'nips' of whisky all round." The idea of "a good dinner "—one, however, which "may lack variety, and want that light-and-shade so dear to the educated gourmet"—is: "First of all have salmon— in two ways if the party is large—boiled with parsley- sauce, and in cutlets. For entries you can have curried oysters, a salmi of snipe, stewed partridges, and plover /a Bonaparte. Follow these with pheasants and a haunch of roebuck, let grouse and capercailzie then appear; in addition to which, if you want it, have a black-game pie ; apple-pudding, pancakes, and other sweets succeed; then a dish full of 'melted' cheese, with a supply of oatcakes. Have plenty of sound wine; Amontillado, Liebfraumilch, Roederer's champagne, and claret." Scotch appetites must surely be as robust as they were a hundred years ago.
Justice has incidentally been done in the Spectator to the literary side of the second of the two volumes which have been here bracketed together : the Angling Songs of the late Thomas Tod Stoddart have an interest apart from his personality. But that personality is itself eminently worth making the acquaint- ance of. This one may do through the memoir which Mr. Stoddart's daughter has prefixed to the Angling Songs, and which we have no hesitation in saying is perfect in its way,— perfect above all things in its simplicity. Thomas Tod Stoddart, the greatest of Scotch anglers, and not the least of Scotch poets, was born in Edinburgh in 1810. He was trained for the law, but from an early period he gave himself up to angling, and haunted the Tweed and Teviot till his death in 1880.. He was happily married, was simply sociable, knew most of the people worth knowing in his time, such as Professor Wilson, Glassford Bell, and Alexander Russel; and although at a public dinner he once in jest proposed "The Clergy, of all Abominations," hated nobody except men who des- troyed or damaged the homes of the trout and the salmon. He found time to read, reflect, and write sincere verses. Probably he was the happiest Scotchman of his generation. Even since his death, he has been exceptionally happy in his
biographer.
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