The Pirate

Boor– so spelt, to accord with the vulgar pronunciation of the word bower.

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Porte– so spelt in the original. The word is known as indicating a piece of music on the bagpipe, to which ancient instrument, which is of Scandinavian origin, the sword-dance may have been originally composed.

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Stour, great.

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Muckle tinte, much loss or harm; so in MS.

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Something is evidently amiss or omitted here. David probably exhibited some feat of archery.

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Lout– to bend or bow down, pronounced loot, as doubt is doot in Scotland.

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Figuir– so spelt in MS.

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Agast– so spelt in MS.

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The garland is an artificial coronet, composed of ribbons by those young women who take an interest in a whaling vessel or her crew: it is always displayed from the rigging, and preserved with great care during the voyage.

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The best oil exudes from the jaw-bones of the whale, which, for the purpose of collecting it, are suspended to the masts of the vessel.

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There is established among whalers a sort of telegraphic signal, in which a certain number of motions, made with a broom, express to any other vessel the number of fish which they have caught.

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The Admiral of the Spanish Armada was wrecked on the Fair Isle, half-way betwixt the Orkney and Zetland Archipelago. The Duke of Medina Sidonia landed, with some of his people, and pillaged the islanders of their winter stores. These strangers are remembered as having remained on the island by force, and on bad terms with the inhabitants, till spring returned, when they effected their escape.

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Galdra-Kinna– the Norse for a sorceress.

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Note I. (#n_Note2_1_15_24)– Fortune-telling Rhymes.

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See Editor’s Notes at the end of the Volume. Wherever a similar reference occurs, the reader will understand that the same direction applies.

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Dr. Edmonston, the ingenious author of a View of the Ancient and Present State of the Zetland Islands, has placed this part of the subject in an interesting light. “It is truly painful to witness the anxiety and distress which the wives of these poor men suffer on the approach of a storm. Regardless of fatigue, they leave their homes, and fly to the spot where they expect their husbands to land, or ascend the summit of a rock, to look out for them on the bosom of the deep. Should they get the glimpse of a sail, they watch, with trembling solicitude, its alternate rise and disappearance on the waves; and though often tranquillized by the safe arrival of the objects of their search, yet it sometimes is their lot ‘to hail the bark that never can return.’ Subject to the influence of a variable climate, and engaged on a sea naturally tempestuous, with rapid currents, scarcely a season passes over without the occurrence of some fatal accident or hairbreadth escape.” —View, &c. of the Zetland Islands, vol. i. p. 238. Many interesting particulars respecting the fisheries and agriculture of Zetland, as well as its antiquities, may be found in the work we have quoted.

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Note II. (#n_Note2_2_16_24)– Promise of Odin.

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To maroon a seaman, signified to abandon him on a desolate coast or island – a piece of cruelty often practised by Pirates and Buccaniers.

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An elder brother, now no more, who was educated in the navy, and had been a midshipman in Rodney’s squadron in the West Indies, used to astonish the author’s boyhood with tales of those haunted islets. On one of them, called, I believe, Coffin-key, the seamen positively refused to pass the night, and came off every evening while they were engaged in completing the watering of the vessel, returning the following sunrise.

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I cannot suppress the pride of saying, that these lines have been beautifully set to original music, by Mrs. Arkwright, of Derbyshire.

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The celebrated Sortes Virgilianæ were resorted to by Charles I. and his courtiers, as a mode of prying into futurity.

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It is worth while saying, that this motto, and the ascription of the beautiful ballad from which it is taken to the Right Honourable Lady Ann Lindsay, occasioned the ingenious authoress’s acknowledgment of the ballad, of which the Editor, by her permission, published a small impression, inscribed to the Bannatyne Club.

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A light-armed vessel of the seventeenth century, adapted for privateering, and much used by the Dutch.

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The Frawa-Stack or Maiden-Rock, an inaccessible cliff, divided by a narrow gulf from the Island of Papa, has on the summit some ruins, concerning which there is a legend similar to that of Danaë.

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Lowe, flame.

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