This eccentric peer, it is evident, cared but little about the fate of his descendants.  With his young heir in Scotland he held no communication whatever; and if at any time he happened to mention him, which but rarely occurred, it was never under any other designation than that of “the little boy who lives at Aberdeen.”

On the death of his grand-uncle, Lord Byron having become a ward of chancery, the Earl of Carlisle, who was in some degree connected with the family, being the son of the deceased lord’s sister, was appointed his guardian; and in the autumn of 1798, Mrs. Byron and her son, attended by their faithful Mary Gray, left Aberdeen for Newstead.  Previously to their departure, the furniture of the humble lodgings which they had occupied was, with the exception of the plate and linen, which Mrs. Byron took with her, sold, and the whole sum that the effects of the mother of the Lord of Newstead yielded was 74_l._ 17_s_. 7_d_.

From the early age at which Byron was taken to Scotland, as well as from the circumstance of his mother being a native of that country, he had every reason to consider himself—­as, indeed, he boasts in Don Juan—­“half a Scot by birth, and bred a whole one.”  We have already seen how warmly he preserved through life his recollection of the mountain scenery in which he was brought up; and in the passage of Don Juan, to which I have just referred, his allusion to the romantic bridge of Don, and to other localities of Aberdeen, shows an equal fidelity and fondness of retrospect:—­

    As Auld Lang Syne brings Scotland, one and all,
      Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills and clear streams,
    The Dee, the Don, Balgounie’s brig’s black wall,
      All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams
    Of what I then dreamt, clothed in their own pall,
      Like Banquo’s offspring;—­floating past me seems
    My childhood in this childishness of mine;
    I care not—­’tis a glimpse of “Auld Lang Syne.”

He adds in a note, “The Brig of Don, near the ‘auld town’ of Aberdeen, with its one arch and its black deep salmon stream, is in my memory as yesterday.  I still remember, though perhaps I may misquote the awful proverb which made me pause to cross it, and yet lean over it with a childish delight, being an only son, at least by the mother’s side.  The saying, as recollected by me, was this, but I have never heard or seen it since I was nine years of age:—­

    “‘Brig of Balgounie, black’s your wa’,
    Wi’ a wife’s ae son, and a mear’s ae foal,
    Down ye shall fa’.’"[21]