"[25]
To another friend Scott wrote that the neighbours had "been much
delighted with the procession of my furniture, in which old swords,
bows, targets, and lances, made a very conspicuous show. A family of
turkeys was accommodated within the helmet of some _preux chevalier_
of ancient border fame; and the very cows, for aught I know, were
bearing banners and muskets. I assure your ladyship that this caravan
attended by a dozen of ragged rosy peasant children, carrying
fishing-rods and spears, and leading ponies, greyhounds, and spaniels,
would, as it crossed the Tweed, have furnished no bad subject for the
pencil, and really reminded me of one of the gipsy groups of Callot
upon their march."[26]
The place thus bought for 4000_l._,--half of which, according to Scott's
bad and sanguine habit, was borrowed from his brother, and half raised on
the security of a poem at the moment of sale wholly unwritten, and not
completed even when he removed to Abbotsford--"Rokeby"--became only too
much of an idol for the rest of Scott's life.
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