He tried to
look stern, and cracked his whip at the creature, but was in
a moment obliged to join in the general cheers. Poor piggy
soon found a strap round his neck, and was dragged into the
background. Scott, watching the retreat, repeated with mock
pathos the first verse of an old pastoral song:--
"What will I do gin my hoggie die?
My joy, my pride, my hoggie!
My only beast, I had nae mae,
And wow! but I was vogie!"
The cheers were redoubled, and the squadron moved on. This
pig had taken, nobody could tell how, a most sentimental
attachment to Scott, and was constantly urging its
pretension to be admitted a regular member of his _tail_,
along with the greyhounds and terriers; but indeed I
remember him suffering another summer under the same sort of
pertinacity on the part of an affectionate hen. I leave the
explanation for philosophers; but such were the facts. I
have too much respect for the vulgarly calumniated donkey to
name him in the same category of pets with the pig and the
hen; but a year or two after this time, my wife used to
drive a couple of these animals in a little garden chair,
and whenever her father appeared at the door of our cottage,
we were sure to see Hannah More and Lady Morgan (as Anne
Scott had wickedly christened them) trotting from their
pasture to lay their noses over the paling, and, as
Washington Irving says of the old white-haired hedger with
the Parisian snuff-box, 'to have a pleasant crack wi' the
laird.
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