Dinner at Abbotsford

'At Abbotsford, Sir Walter Scott always entertained his dinner guests with piping. The windows were open, and on the lawn before the house, a tall and stalwart piper in full Highland dress paced up and down. This was John of Skye, who, incidentally, was a capital hedger.

When the cloth was drawn, and the never-failing salver of quaichs introduced, John of Skye, upon some well-known signal, entered the room, but en militaire, without removing his bonnet, and taking his station behind the landlord, received from his hand the largest of the Celtic bickers brimful of Glenlivet. The man saluted the company in his own dialect, tipped off the contents (probably a quarter of an English pint of raw aquavitae) at a gulp, wheeled about as if the whole ceremony had been a movement on parade, and forthwith recommenced his pilbrochs and gatherings.'

John Gibson Lockhart: Life of Scott