Scotland/Scots > Black's picturesque tourist of Scotland

PERTHSHIRE—CALLANDER TO TROSACHS.
220
“ Instant, through copse and heath, arose
Bonnets and spears and bended bows;
On right, on left, above, below.
Sprung up at once the lurking foe;
From shingles grey their lances start,
The bracken bush sends forth the dart.”
Towards the western extremity of the lake, on the left hand,
lies Lanrick Mead, a flat meadow at the head of the loch, which
was the gathering ground of the Clan Alpine, and well suited
for the purpose.
Half a mile further, we reach the first stage of the exhausted
bearer of the fiery cross,—*
* The fiery cross was no mere creation of the poet’s fancy. Though there are
many attributes fictitiously applied to the Highlanders, this was a real one, and the
adaptation of it shows the great novelist’s marvellous capacity for seizing whatever
was true, and, at the same time, striking and picturesque. The symbol was sometimes
called the fiery cross—sometimes the crossterie or crossteric. It was made, as Scott
has described, by tying two pieces of wood into a cross, burning the ends, and extin¬
guishing them in the blood of an animal. This is said to be symbolic of the fire and
sword with which those who failed to obey the summons were to be visited; but it is
not unlikely that the ceremony was a remnant of some ancient heathen sacrificial
superstition. It was considered the strongest form of invocation, and when other