This is merely a local legend, such as boatmen are expected to know.  As the green trout utterly declined to rise, I tried the boatman with the Irish story of why the Gruagach Gaire left off laughing, and all about the hare that came and defiled his table, as recited by Mr. Curtin in his “Irish Legends” (Sampson, Low, & Co.).  The boatman did not know this fable, but he did know of a red deer that came and spoke to a gentleman.  This was a story from the Macpherson country.  I give it first in the boatman’s words, and then we shall discuss the history of the legend as known to Sir Walter Scott and James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd.

THE YARN OF THE BLACK OFFICER

“It was about ’the last Christmas of the hundred’—­the end of last century.  They wanted men for the Black Watch (42nd Highlanders), and the Black Officer, as they called him, was sent to his own country to enlist them.  Some he got willingly, and others by force.  He promised he would only take them to London, where the King wanted to review them, and then let them go home.  So they came, though they little liked it, and he was marching them south.  Now at night they reached a place where nobody would have halted them except the Black Officer, for it was a great place for ghosts.  And they would have run away if they had dared, but they were afraid of him.  So some tried to sleep in threes and fours, and some were afraid to sleep, and they sat up round the fire.  But the Black Officer, he went some way from the rest, and lay down beneath a tree.

“Now as the night wore on, and whiles it would be dark and whiles the moon shone, a man came—­they did not know from where—­a big red man, and drew up to the fire, and was talking with them.  And he asked where the Black Officer was, and they showed him.  Now there was one man, Shamus Mackenzie they called him, and he was very curious, and he must be seeing what they did.  So he followed the man, and saw him stoop and speak to the officer, but he did not waken; then this individual took the Black Officer by the breast and shook him violently.  Then Shamus knew who the stranger was, for no man alive durst have done as much to the Black Officer.  And there was the Black Officer kneeling to him!

“Well, what they said, Shamus could not hear, and presently they walked away, and the Black Officer came back alone.

“He took them to England, but never to London, and they never saw the King.  He took them to Portsmouth, and they were embarked for India, where we were fighting the French.  There was a town we couldn’t get into” (Seringapatam?), “and the Black Officer volunteered to make a tunnel under the walls.  Now they worked three days, and whether it was the French heard them and let them dig on, or not, any way, on the third day the French broke in on them.  They kept sending men into the tunnel, and more men, and still they wondered who was fighting within, and how we could