The Life of Mansie Wauch
by D. M. Moir · English · Gutenberg #23739 · 522,096 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Life of Mansie Wauch
Author: D. M. Moir
Illustrator: Charles Martin Hardie
Release date: December 5, 2007 [eBook #23739]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23739
Credits: Transcribed from the 1911 T. N. Foulis edition by David Price
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF MANSIE WAUCH ***
Transcribed from the 1911 T. N. Foulis edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: One of the Duke's huntsmen]
THE LIFE OF
MANSIE WAUCH
TAILOR IN DALKEITH WRITTEN
BY HIMSELF AND EDITED BY
D. M. MOIR
ILLUSTRATED IN COLOUR BY
CHARLES MARTIN HARDIE, R.S.A.
T.N.FOULIS
London & Edinburgh
1 9 1 1
_October_ 1911
_Turnbull & Spears_, _Printers_, _Edinburgh_
TO
JOHN GALT, ESQ.,
AUTHOR OF "ANNALS OF THE PARISH," "THE PROVOST,"
"AYRSHIRE LEGATEES," ETC.
THE FOLLOWING SKETCHES,
PRINCIPALLY OF HUMBLE SCOTTISH CHARACTER,
ARE DEDICATED,
BY HIS SINCERE FRIEND AND ADMIRER,
THE EDITOR.
[Picture: Mansie's shop door]
PRELIMINARIES TO THIS VOLUME
Having, within myself, made observation of late years, that all notable
characters, whatsoever line of life they may have pursued, and to
whatever business they might belong, have made a trade of committing to
paper all the surprising occurrences and remarkable events that chanced
to happen to them in the course of Providence, during their journey
through life--that such as come after them might take warning and be
benefited--I have found it incumbent on me, following a right example, to
do the same thing; and have set down, in black and white, a good few
uncos, that I should reckon will not soon be forgotten, provided they
make as deep an impression on the world as they have done on me. To this
decision I have been urged by the elbowing on of not a few judicious
friends, among whom I would particularly remark James Batter, who has
been most earnest in his request, and than whom a truer judge on anything
connected with book-lear, or a better neighbour, does not breathe the
breath of life: both of which positions will, I doubt not, appear as
clear as daylight to the reader, in the course of the work: to say
nothing of the approval the scheme met with from the pious Maister
Wiggie, who has now gone to his account, and divers other advisers, that
wished either the general good of the world, or studied their own
particular profit.
Had the course of my pilgrimage lain just on the beaten track, I would
not--at least I think so--have been o'ercome by ony perswasions to do
what I have done; but as will be seen, in the twinkling of half-an-eye,
by the judicious reader, I am a man that has witnessed much, and come
through a great deal, both in regard to the times wherein I have lived,
and the out-o'-the-way adventures in which it has been my fortune to be
engaged. Indeed, though I say it myself, who might as well be silent, I
that have never stirred, in a manner so to speak, from home, have
witnessed more of the world we live in, and the doings of men, than many
who have sailed the salt seas from the East Indies to the West; or, in
the course of nature, visited Greenland, Jamaica, or Van Diemen's Land.
The cream of the matter, and to which we would solicit the attention of
old and young, rich and poor, is just this, that, unless unco doure
indeed to learn, the inexperienced may gleam from my pages sundry grand
lessons, concerning what they have a chance to expect in the course of an
active life; and the unsteady may take a hint concerning what it is
possible for one of a clear head and a stout heart to go through with.
Notwithstanding, however, these plain and evident conclusions, even after
writing the whole out, I thought I felt a kind of a qualm of conscience
about submitting an account of my actions and transactions to the world
during my lifetime; and I had almost determined, for decency's sake, not
to let the papers be printed till after I had been gathered to my
fathers; but I took into consideration the duty that one man owes to
another; and that my keeping back, and withholding these curious
documents, would be in a great measure hindering the improvement of
society, so far as I was myself personally concerned. Now this is a
business, which James Batter agrees with me in thinking is carried on,
furthered, and brought about, by every one furnishing his share of
experience to the general stock. Let-a-be this plain truth, another
point of argument for my bringing out my bit book at the present time is,
that I am here to the fore bodily, with the use of my seven senses, to
give day and date to all such as venture to put on the misbelieving front
of Sadducees, with regard to any of the accidents, mischances, marvellous
escapes, and extraordinary businesses therein related; and to show them,
as plain as the bool of a pint stoup, that each and everything set down
by me within its boards is just as true, as that a blind man needs not
spectacles, or that my name is Mansie Wauch.
Perhaps as a person willing and anxious to give every man his due, it is
necessary for me explicitly to mention, that, in the course of this book,
I am indebted to my friend James Batter, for his able help in assisting
me to spell the kittle words, and in rummaging out scraps of poem-books
for headpieces to my different chapters which appear in the table of
contents.
LIST OF CONTENTS
PRELIMINARIES
I. OUR OLD GRANDFATHER,
II. MY OWN FATHER,
The weaver he gied up the stair,
Dancing and singing;
A bunch o' bobbins at his back,
Rattling and ringing.
_Old Song_.
III. COMING INTO THE WORLD,
--At first the babe
Was sickly; and a smile was seen to pass
Across the midwife's cheek, when, holding up
The feeble wretch, she to the father said,
"A fine man-child!" What else could they expect?
The father being, as I said before,
A weaver.
HOGG'S _Poetic Mirror_.
IV. CALF-LOVE,
Bonny lassie, will ye go, will ye go, will ye go,
Bonny lassie, will ye go to the Birks of Aberfeldy?
BURNS.
For a tailor is a man, a man, a man,
And a tailor is a man.
_Popular Heroic Song_.
V. CURSECOWL,
From his red poll a redder cowl hung down;
His jacket, if through grease we guess, was brown;
A vigorous scamp, some forty summers old;
Rough Shetland stockings up his thighs were roll'd;
While at his side horn-handled steels and knives
Gleam'd from his pouch, and thirsted for sheep's lives.
ODOHERTY'S _Miscellanea Classica_.
VI. PUSHING MY FORTUNE,
Oh, love, love, lassie,
Love is like a dizziness,
It winna let a puir bodie
Gang about their business.
JAMES HOGG.
VII. THE FOREWARNING,
I had a dream which was not all a dream.
BYRON.
Coming events cast their shadows before.
CAMPBELL.
VIII. LETTING LODGINGS,
Then first he ate the white puddings,
And syne he ate the black, O;
Though muckle thought the Gudewife to hersell,
Yet ne'er a word she spak, O.
But up then started our Gudeman,
And an angry man was he, O.
_Old Song_.
IX. BENJIE'S CHRISTENING,
We'll hap and row, hap and row,
We'll hap and row the feetie o't.
It is a wee bit weary thing,
I dinnie bide the greetie o't.
PROVOST CREECH.
An honest man, close button'd to the chin,
Broad-cloth without, and a warm heart within.
COWPER.
This great globe and all that it inherits shall dissolve,
And, like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Leave not a rack behind.
SHAKESPEARE.
X. THE RESURRECTION MEN,
How then was the Devil drest!
He was in his Sunday's best;
His coat was red, and his breeches were blue,
With a hole behind where his tail came thro'.
Over the hill, and over the dale,
And he went over the plain:
And backward and forward he switch'd his tail,
As a gentleman switches his cane.
COLERIDGE.
XI. TAFFY WITH THE PIGTAIL,
Song,
Song of the South,
School Recollections,
Elegiac Stanzas,
Dirge,
In the sweet shire of Cardigan,
Not far from pleasant Ivor-hall,
An old man dwells, a little man;
I've heard he once was tall.
A long blue livery-coat has he,
That's fair behind and fair before;
Yet, meet him where you will, you see
At once that he is poor.
WORDSWORTH.
XII. VOLUNTEERING,
Come from the hills where your hirsels are grazing,
Come from the glen of the buck and the roe;
Come to the crag where the beacon is blazing,
Come with the buckler, the lance, and the bow:
Many a banner spread
Flutters above your head,
Many a crest that is famous in story;
Mount and make ready then,
Sons of the mountain glen,
Fight for the _King_, and our old Scottish glory.
SIR WALTER SCOTT'S _Monastery_.
XIII. THE CHINCOUGH PILGRIMAGE,
Man hath a weary pilgrimage
As through the world he wends:
On every stage from youth to age
Still discontent attends.
With heaviness he casts his eye
Upon the road before,
And still remembers with a sigh
The days that are no more.
SOUTHEY.
XIV. MY LORD'S RACES,
Aff they a' went galloping, galloping;
Legs and arms a' walloping, walloping;
De'il take the hindmost, quo' Duncan M'Calapin,
The Laird of Tillyben, Joe.
_Old Song_.
He went a little further,
And turn'd his head aside,
And just by Goodman Whitfield's gate,
Oh there the mare he spied.
He ask'd her how she did,
She stared him in the face,
Then down she laid her head again--
She was in wretched case.
_Old Poulter's Mo_.
XV. THE RETURN,
That sweet home is there delight,
And thither they repair
Communion with their own to hold!
Peaceful as, at the fall of night,
Two little lambkins gliding white
Return unto the gentle air,
That sleeps within the fold.
Or like two birds to their lonely nest,
Or wearied waves to their bay of rest,
Or fleecy clouds when their race is run,
That hang in their own beauty blest,
'Mid the calm that sanctifies the west
Around the setting sun.
WILSON.
XVI. THE BLOODY CARTRIDGE,
So stands the Thracian herdsman with his spear
Full in the gap, and hopes the hunted bear;
And hears him in the rustling wood, and sees
His course at distance by the bending trees;
And thinks--Here comes my mortal enemy,
And either he must fall in fight or I.
DRYDEN'S _Palamon and Arcite_.
Nay, never shake thy gory looks at me;
Thou canst not say I did it!
_Macbeth_.
XVII. MY FIRST AND LAST PLAY,
_Pla._ I' faith
I like the audience that frequenteth there
With much applause: a man shall not be chokt
With the stench of garlick, nor be pasted firm
With the barmy jacket of a beer-brewer.
_Bra._ 'Tis a good gentle audience, and I hope
The boys will come one day in great request.
_Jack Drum's Entertainment_, 1601.
Out cam the gudeman, and laigh he louted;
Out cam the gudewife, and heigh she shouted;
And a the toun-neibours gather'd about it;
And there he lay, I trow.
_The Cauldrife Wooer_.
XVIII. THE BARLEY FEVER: AND REBUKE,
Sages their solemn een may steek,
And raise a philosophic reek,
And, physically, causes seek,
In clime and season:
But tell me _Whisky's_ name in Greek,
I'll tell the reason.
BURNS.
XIX. THE AWFUL NIGHT,
Ha!--'twas but a dream;
But then so terrible, it shakes my soul!
Cold drops of sweat hang on my trembling flesh;
My blood grows chilly, and I freeze with horror,
_Richard the Third_.
The Fire-king one day rather amorous felt;
He mounted his hot copper filly;
His breeches and boots were of tin, and the belt
Was made of cast-iron, for fear it should melt
With the heat of the copper colt's belly.
Oh! then there was glitter and fire in each eye,
For two living coals were the symbols;
His teeth were calcined, and his tongue was so dry,
It rattled against them as though you should try
To play the piano on thimbles.
_Rejected Addresses_.
XX. ADVENTURES IN THE SPORTING LINE,
A fig for them by law protected,
Liberty's glorious feast;
Courts for cowards were erected,
Churches built to please the priest.
_Jolly Beggars_.
Wi' cauk and keel I'll win your bread,
And spindles and whorles for them wha need,
Whilk is a gentle trade indeed,
To carry the Gaberlunzie on.
I'll bow my leg and crook my knee,
And draw a black clout owre my ee,
A cripple or blind they will ca' me,
While we shall be merry and sing.
KING JAMES V.
XXI. ANENT MUNGO GLEN,
"Earth to earth," and "dust to dust,"
The solemn priest hath said,
So we lay the turf above thee now,
And we seal thy narrow bed;
But thy spirit, brother, soars away
Among the faithful blest,
Where the wicked cease from troubling,
And the weary are at rest.
MILMAN.
XXII. THE JUNE JAUNT,
The lapwing lilteth o'er the lea,
With nimble wing she sporteth;
By vows she'll flee from tree to tree
Where Philomel resorteth:
By break of day, the lark can say,
I'll bid you a good-morrow,
I'll streik my wing, and mounting sing,
O'er Leader hauchs and Yarrow.
NICOL BURN, _the Minstrel_.
XXIII. CATCHING A TARTAR,
_Fr. Sol._ O, prennez misericorde! ayez pitie de moy!
_Pist._ Moy shall not serve, I will have forty moys!
For I will fetch my rim out at thy throat,
In drops of crimson blood.
_Henry V._
XXIV. JAMES BATTER AND THE MAID OF DAMASCUS,
He chose a mournful muse
Soft pity to infuse;
He sung the Weaver wise and good,
By too severe a fate,
Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate,
And weltering in his blood.
DRYDEN _Revised_.
All close they met, all eves, before the dusk
Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil,
Close in a bower of hyacinth and musk,
Unknown of any, free from whispering tale.
KEATS.
XXV. A PHILISTINE IN THE COAL-HOLE,
They steeked doors, they steeked yetts,
Close to the cheek and chin;
They steeked them a' but a wee wicket,
And Lammikin crapt in.
_Ballad of the Lammikin_.
Hame cam our gudeman at een,
And hame cam he;
And there he spied a man
Where a man shouldna be.
Hoo cam this man kimmer,
And who can it be;
Hoo cam this carle here,
Without the leave o' me?
_Old Song_.
XXVI. BENJIE ON THE CARPET,
It's no in titles, nor in rank--
It's no in wealth, like Lon'on bank,
To purchase peace and rest;
It's no in making muckle _mair_--
It's no in books--it's no in lear,
To make us truly blest.
BURNS.
XXVII. "PUGGIE, PUGGIE,"
Saw ye Johnie coming? quo' she,
Saw ye Johnie coming?
Wi' his blue bonnet on his head,
And his doggie running?
_Old Ballad_.
XXVIII. SERIOUS MUSINGS,
My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirr'd,
For the same sound is in mine ears,
Which in those days I heard.
Thus fares it still in our decay;
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away,
Than what it leaves behind.
WORDSWORTH.
XXIX. CONCLUSION,
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man, and bird, and beast--
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
COLERIDGE.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_FROM OIL PAINTINGS BY_
_CHARLES MARTIN HARDIE_, _R.S.A._
ONE OF THE DUKE'S HUNTSMEN _Frontispiece_
MANSIE'S SHOP DOOR _Title-page_
MANSIE'S WEDDING: THE DANCE GAED _Page_ 8
THROUGH THE LIGHTED HALL
MANSIE AND NANCY 24
THE MINISTER'S LASSIE JESS: A 40
BLUE-EYED LASSIE OF A SERVING
MAID
MANSIE'S FATHER 56
REV. MR WIGGIE 72
THE FIRST DAY I GOT MY 104
REGIMENTALS ON
THOMAS BURLINGS: ELDER 136
MUNGO GLEN 184
JAMES BATTER, MOSTLY BLINDED IN 216
BOTH HIS EYES, LOOKING FOR OUR
NAME IN THE BOOK OF MARTYRS
COUNTRY LASSIES BLEACHING THEIR 248
SNOW-WHITE LINEN
THE WAITING GIRL, JEANIE AMOS 264
PETER FARREL 280
AN OLD DALKEITH BODY 312
THE LAZY CORNER, DALKEITH 344
* * * * *
The sun rises bright in France,
And fair sets he;
But he has tint the blithe blink he had
In my ain countree.
ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.
CHAPTER ONE--IN THE TIME OF MY GRANDFATHER
Some of the rich houses and great folk pretend to have histories of the
auncientness of their families, which they can count back on their
fingers almost to the days of Noah's ark, and King Fergus the First; but
whatever may spunk out after on this point, I am free to confess, with a
safe conscience, in the meantime, that it is not in my power to come up
within sight of them; having never seen or heard tell of anybody in our
connexion, further back than auld granfaither, that I mind of when a
laddie; and who it behoves to have belonged by birthright to some parish
or other; but where-away, gude kens. James Batter mostly blinded both
his eyes, looking all last winter for one of our name in the Book of
Martyrs, to make us proud of; but his search, I am free to confess, worse
than failed--as the only man of the name he could find out was a Sergeant
Jacob Wauch, that lost his lug and his left arm, fighting like a Russian
Turk against the godly, at the bloody battle of the Pentland Hills.
Auld granfaither died when I was a growing callant, some seven or eight
years old; yet I mind him full well; it being a curious thing how early
such matters take hold of one's memory. He was a straught, tall, old
man, with a shining bell-pow, and reverend white locks hanging down about
his haffets; a Roman nose, and two cheeks blooming through the winter of
his long age like roses, when, poor body, he was sand-blind with
infirmity. In his latter days he was hardly able to crawl about alone;
but used to sit resting himself on the truff seat before our door,
leaning forward his head on his staff, and finding a kind of pleasure in
feeling the beams of God's own sun beaking on him. A blackbird, that he
had tamed, hung above his head in a whand-cage of my father's making; and
he had taken a pride in learning it to whistle two three turns of his own
favourite sang, "Oure the water to Charlie."
I recollect, as well as yesterday, that, on the Sundays, he wore a braid
bannet with a red worsted cherry on the top of it; and had a
single-breasted coat, square in the tails, of light Gilmerton blue, with
plaited white buttons, bigger than crown pieces. His waistcoat was low
in the neck, and had flap pouches, wherein he kept his mull for rappee,
and his tobacco-box. To look at him, with his rig-and-fur Shetland hose
pulled up over his knees, and his big glancing buckles in his shoon,
sitting at our door-cheek, clean and tidy as he was kept, was just as if
one of the ancient patriarchs had been left on earth, to let succeeding
survivors witness a picture of hoary and venerable eld. Poor body, many
a bit Gibraltar-rock and gingerbread did he give to me, as he would pat
me on the head, and prophesy I would be a great man yet; and sing me bits
of old songs about the bloody times of the Rebellion, and Prince Charlie.
There was nothing that I liked so well as to hear him set a-going with
his auld-warld stories and lilts; though my mother used sometimes to say,
"Wheest, granfaither, ye ken it's no canny to let out a word of thae
things; let byganes be byganes, and forgotten." He never liked to give
trouble, so a rebuke of this kind would put a tether to his tongue for a
wee; but, when we were left by ourselves, I used aye to egg him on to
tell me what he had come through in his far-away travels beyond the broad
seas; and of the famous battles he had seen and shed his precious blood
in; for his pinkie was hacked off by a dragoon of Cornel Gardener's, down
by at Prestonpans, and he had catched a bullet with his ankle over in the
north at Culloden. So it was no wonder that he liked to crack about
these times, though they had brought him muckle and no little mischief,
having obliged him to skulk like another Cain among the Highland hills
and heather, for many a long month and day, homeless and hungry. Not
dauring to be seen in his own country, where his head would have been
chacked off like a sybo, he took leg-bail in a ship over the sea, among
the Dutch folk; where he followed out his lawful trade of a cooper,
making girrs for the herring barrels and so on; and sending, when he
could find time and opportunity, such savings from his wages as he could
afford, for the maintenance of his wife and small family of three
helpless weans, that he had been obligated to leave, dowie and destitute,
at their native home of pleasant Dalkeith.
At long and last, when the breeze had blown over, and the feverish pulse
of the country began to grow calm and cool, auld granfaither took a
longing to see his native land; and though not free of jeopardy from
king's cutters on the sea, and from spies on shore, he risked his neck
over in a sloop from Rotterdam to Aberlady, that came across with a
valuable cargo of smuggled gin. When granfaither had been obliged to
take the wings of flight for the preservation of his life and liberty, my
father was a wean at grannie's breast: so, by her fending--for she was a
canny industrious body, and kept a bit shop, in the which she sold
oatmeal and red herrings, needles and prins, potatoes and tape, and
cabbage, and what not--he had grown a strapping laddie of eleven or
twelve, helping his two sisters, one of whom perished of the measles in
the dear year, to go errands, chap sand, carry water, and keep the housie
clean. I have heard him say, when auld granfaither came to their door at
the dead of night, tirling, like a thief of darkness, at the window-brod
to get in, that he was so altered in his voice and lingo that no living
soul kenned him, not even the wife of his bosom; so he had to put grannie
in mind of things that had happened between them, before she would allow
my father to lift the sneck, or draw the bar. Many and many a year, for
gude kens how long after, I have heard tell, that his speech was so
Dutchified as to be scarcely kenspeckle to a Scotch European; but Nature
is powerful, and, in the course of time, he came in the upshot to gather
his words together like a Christian.
Of my auntie Bell, that, as I have just said, died of the measles in the
dear year, at the age of fourteen, I have no story to tell but one, and
that a short one, though not without a sprinkling of interest.
Among her other ways of doing, grannie kept a cow, and sold the milk
round about to the neighbours in a pitcher, whiles carried by my father,
and whiles by my aunties, at the ransom of a halfpenny the mutchkin.
Well, ye observe, that the cow ran yeild, and it was as plain as pease
that she was with calf:--Geordie Drouth, the horse-doctor, could have
made solemn affidavy on that head. So they waited on, and better waited
on for the prowie's calfing, keeping it upon draff and oat-strae in the
byre; till one morning every thing seemed in a fair way, and my auntie
Bell was set out to keep watch and ward.
Some of her companions, however, chancing to come by, took her out to the
back of the house to have a game at the pallall; and, in the interim,
Donald Bogie, the tinkler from Yetholm, came and left his little jackass
in the byre, while he was selling about his crockery of cups and saucers,
and brown plates, on the old one, through the town, in two creels.
In the middle of auntie Bell's game, she heard an unco noise in the byre;
and, knowing that she had neglected her charge, she ran round the gable,
and opened the door in a great hurry; when, seeing the beastie, she
pulled it to again, and fleeing, half out of breath, into the kitchen
cried,--"Come away, come away, mother, as fast as ye can. Eh, lyst, the
cow's cauffed,--and it's a cuddie!"
CHAPTER TWO--MY OWN FATHER
My own father, that is to say, auld Mansie Wauch with regard to myself,
but young Mansie with reference to my granfather after having run the
errands, and done his best to grannie during his early years, was, at the
age of thirteen, as I have heard him tell, bound a prentice to the weaver
trade which from that day and date, for better for worse, he, prosecuted
to the hour of his death:--I should rather have said to within a
fortnight of it, for he lay for that time in the mortal fever, that cut
through the thread of his existence. Alas! as Job says, "How time flies
like a weaver's shuttle!"
He was a tall, thin, lowering man, blackaviced, and something in the
physog like myself, though scarcely so weel-faured; with a kind of
blueness about his chin, as if his beard grew of that colour--which I
scarcely think it would do--but might arise either from the dust of the
blue cloth, constantly flying about the shop, taking a rest there, or
from his having a custom of giving it a rub now and then with his finger
and thumb, both of which were dyed of that colour, as well as his apron,
from rubbing against, and handling the webs of checkit claith in the
loom.
Ill would it become me, I trust a dutiful son, to say that my father was
any thing but a decent, industrious, hard-working man, doing everything
for the good of his family, and winning the respect of all that knew the
value of his worth. As to his decency, few--very few indeed--laid
beneath the mools of Dalkeith kirkyard, made their beds there, leaving a
better name behind them; and as to industry, it is but little to say that
he toiled the very flesh off his bones, driving the shuttle from Monday
morning till Saturday night, from the rising up of the sun, even to the
going down thereof; and whiles, when opportunity led him, or occasion
required, digging and delving away at the bit kail-yard, till moon and
stars were in the lift, and the dews of heaven that fell on his head,
were like the oil that flowed from Aaron's beard, even to the skirts of
his garment. But what will ye say there? Some are born with a silver
spoon in their mouths, and others with a parritch-stick. Of the latter
was my father; for, with all his fechting, he never was able much more
than to keep our heads above the ocean of debt. Whatever was denied him,
a kind Providence, howsoever, enabled him to do that; and so he departed
this life contented, leaving to my mother and me, the two survivors, the
prideful remembrance of being, respectively, she the widow, and me the
son, of an honest man. Some left with twenty thousand cannot boast as
much; so every one has their comforts.
[Picture: Mansie's wedding]
Having never entered much into public life, further than attending the
kirk twice every Sabbath--and thrice when there was evening service--the
days of my father glided over like the waters of a deep river that make
little noise in their course; so I do not know whether to lament or to
rejoice at having almost nothing to record of him. Had Buonaparte as
little ill to account for, it would be well this day for him:--but, losh
me! I had almost skipped over his wedding.
In the five-and-twentieth year of his age, he had fallen in love with my
mother, Marion Laverock, at the christening of a neighbour's bairn, where
they both happened to forgather; little, I daresay, jealousing, at the
time their eyes first met, that fate had destined them for a pair, and to
be the honoured parents of me, their only bairn. Seeing my father's
heart was catched as in the net of the fowler, she took every lawful
means, such as adding another knot to her cockernony, putting up her hair
in screw curls, and so on, to follow up her advantage; the result of all
which was, that, after three months' courtship, she wrote a letter out to
her friends at Loanhead, telling them of what was more than likely to
happen, and giving a kind invitation to such of them as might think it
worth their whiles to come in and be spectators of the ceremony.--And a
prime day I am told they had of it, having, by advice of more than one,
consented to make it a penny wedding; and hiring Deacon Laurie's
malt-barn at five shillings, for the express purpose.
Many yet living, among whom James Batter, who was the best-man, and
Duncan Imrie, the heelcutter in the Flesh-Market Close, are still above
board to bear solemn testimony to the grandness of the occasion, and the
uncountable numerousness of the company, with such a display of
mutton-broth, swimming thick with raisins,--and roasted jiggets of
lamb,--to say nothing of mashed turnips and champed potatoes,--as had not
been seen in the wide parish of Dalkeith in the memory of man. It was
not only my father's bridal day, but it brought many a lad and lass
together by way of partners at foursome reels and Hieland jigs, whose
courtship did not end in smoke, couple above couple dating the day of
their happiness from that famous forgathering. There were no less than
three fiddlers, two of them blind with the small-pox, and one naturally;
and a piper with his drone and chanter, playing as many pibrochs as would
have deaved a mill-happer,--all skirling, scraping, and bumming away
throughither, the whole afternoon and night, and keeping half the
countryside dancing, capering, and cutting, in strathspey step and quick
time, as if they were without a weary, or had not a bone in their bodies.
In the days of darkness, the whole concern would have been imputed to
magic and glamour; and douce folk, finding how they were transgressing
over their usual bounds, would have looked about them for the wooden pin
that auld Michael Scott the warlock drave in behind the door, leaving the
family to dance themselves to death at their leisure.
Had the business ended in dancing, so far well, for a sound sleep would
have brought a blithe wakening, and all be tight and right again; but,
alas and alackaday! the violent heat and fume of foment they were all
thrown into, caused the emptying of so many ale-tankers, and the
swallowing of so muckle toddy, by way of cooling and refreshing the
company, that they all got as fou as the Baltic; and many ploys, that
shall be nameless, were the result of a sober ceremony, whereby two douce
and decent people, Mansie Wauch, my honoured father, and Marion Laverock,
my respected mother, were linked thegither, for better for worse, in the
lawful bonds of honest wedlock.
It seems as if Providence, reserving every thing famous and remarkable
for me, allowed little or nothing of consequence to happen to my father,
who had few cruiks in his lot; at least I never learned, either from him
or any other body, of any adventures likely seriously to interest the
world at large. I have heard tell, indeed, that he once got a terrible
fright by taking the bounty, during the American war, from an Eirish
corporal, of the name of Dochart O'Flaucherty, at Dalkeith Fair, when he
was at his prenticeship; he, not being accustomed to malt-liquor, having
got fouish and frisky--which was not his natural disposition--over a half
a bottle of porter. From this it will easily be seen, in the first
place, that it would be with a fight that his master would get him off,
by obliging the corporal to take back the trepan money; in the second
place, how long a date back it is since the Eirish began to be the death
of us; and, in conclusion, that my honoured faither got such a fleg, as
to spain him effectually, for the space of ten years, from every
drinkable stronger than good spring-well water. Let the unwary take
caution; and may this be a wholesome lesson to all whom it may concern.
In this family history it becomes me, as an honest man, to make passing
mention of my father's sister, auntie Mysie, that married a carpenter and
undertaker in the town of Jedburgh; and who, in the course of nature and
industry, came to be in a prosperous and thriving way; indeed, so much
so, as to be raised from the rank of a private head of a family; and at
last elected, by a majority of two votes over a famous cow-doctor, a
member of the town-council itself.
There is a good story, howsoever, connected with this business, with
which I shall make myself free to wind up this somewhat fusty and
fushionless chapter.
Well, ye see, some great lord,--I forget his name, but no matter,--that
had made a most tremendous sum of money, either by foul or fair means,
among the blacks in the East Indies, had returned, before he died, to lay
his bones at home, as yellow as a Limerick glove, and as rich as Dives in
the New Testament. He kept flunkies with plush small-clothes and
sky-blue coats with scarlet-velvet cuffs and collars,--lived like a
princie, and settled, as I said before, in the neighbourhood of Jedburgh.
The body, though as brown as a toad's back, was as prideful and full of
power as old King Nebuchadneisher; and how to exhibit all his purple and
fine linen, he aye thought and better thought, till at last the happy
determination came over his mind like a flash of lightning, to invite the
bailies, deacons, and town-council, all in a body, to come and dine with
him.
Save us! what a brushing of coats, such a switching of stoury trowsers,
and bleaching of white cotton stockings, as took place before the
catastrophe of the feast, never before happened since Jeddert was a
burgh. Some of them that were forward and geyan bold in the spirit,
crowed aloud for joy, at being able to boast that they had received an
invitation letter to dine with a great lord; while others as proud as
peacocks of the honour, yet not very sure as to their being up to the
trade of behaving themselves at the tables of the great, were mostly dung
stupid with not knowing what to think. A council meeting or two was held
in the gloamings, to take such a serious business into consideration;
some expressing their fears and inward down-sinking, while others cheered
them up with a fillip of pleasant consolation. Scarcely a word of the
matter, for which they were summoned together by the town-officer--and
which was about the mending of the old bell-rope--was discussed by any of
them. So after a sowd of toddy was swallowed, with the hopes of making
them brave men, and good soldiers of the magistracy, they all plucked up
a proud spirit, and do or die, determined to march in a body up to the
gate, and forward to the table of his lordship.
My uncle, who had been one of the ringleaders of the chicken-hearted,
crap away up among the rest, with his new blue coat on, shining fresh
from the ironing of the goose, but keeping well among the thick, to be as
little kenspeckle as possible; for all the folk of the town were at their
doors and windows to witness the great occasion of the town-council going
a way up like gentlemen of rank to take their dinner with his lordship.
That it was a terrible trial to all cannot be for a moment denied; yet
some of them behaved themselves decently; and, if we confess that others
trembled in the knees, as if they were marching to a field of battle, it
was all in the course of human nature.
Yet ye would wonder how they came on by degrees; and, to cut a long tale
short, at length found themselves in a great big room, like a palace in a
fairy tale, full of grand pictures with gold frames, and looking-glasses
like the side of a house, where they could see down to their very shoes.
For a while they were like men in a dream, perfectly dazzled and
dumfoundered; and it was five minutes before they could either see a
seat, or think of sitting down. With the reflection of the
looking-glasses, one of the bailies was so possessed within himself, that
he tried to chair himself where chair was none, and landed, not very
softly, on the carpet; while another of the deacons, a fat and dumpy man,
as he was trying to make a bow, and throw out his leg behind him,
stramped on a favourite Newfoundland dog's tail, that, wakening out of
its slumbers with a yell that made the roof ring, played drive against my
uncle, who was standing abaft, and wheeled him like a butterfly, side
foremost, against a table with a heap of flowers on it, where, in trying
to kep himself, he drove his head, like a battering-ram, through a
looking-glass, and bleached back on his hands and feet on the carpet.
Seeing what had happened, they were all frightened; but his lordship,
after laughing heartily, was politer, and knew better about manners than
all that; so, bidding the flunkies hurry away with the fragments of the
china jugs and jars, they found themselves, sweating with terror and
vexation, ranged along silk settees, cracking about the weather and other
wonderfuls.
Such a dinner! the fume of it went round about their hearts like myrrh
and frankincense. The landlord took the head of the table, the bailies
the right and left of him; the deacons and councillors were ranged along
the sides, like files of soldiers; and the chaplain at the foot said
grace. It is entirely out of the power of man to set down on paper all
that they got to eat and drink; and such was the effect of French
cookery, that they did not know fish from flesh. Howsoever, for all
that, they laid their lugs in every thing that lay before them, and what
they could not eat with forks they supped with spoons; so it was all to
one purpose.
When the dishes were removing, each had a large blue glass bowl full of
water, and a clean calendered red damask towel, put down by a smart
flunkie before him; and many of them that had not helped themselves well
to the wine, while they were eating their steaks and French frigassees,
were now vexed to death on that score, imagining that nothing remained
for them, but to dight their nebs and flee up.
Ignorant folk should not judge rashly, and the worthy town-council were
here in error; for their surmises, however feasible, did the landlord
wrong. In a minute they had fresh wine decanters ranged down before
them, filled with liquors of all variety of colours, red, green, and
blue; and the table was covered with dishes full of jargonelles and
pippins, raisins and almonds, shell-walnuts and plumdamases, with
nut-crackers, and everything else they could think of eating; so that,
after drinking "The King, and long life to him," and "The constitution of
the country at home and abroad," and "Success to trade," and "A good
harvest," and "May ne'er waur be among us," and "Botheration to the
French," and "Corny toes and short shoes to the foes of old Scotland,"
and so on, their tongues began at length not to be so tacked; and the
weight of their own dignity, that had taken flight before his lordship,
came back and rested on their shoulders.
In the course of the evening, his lordship whispered to one of the
flunkies to bring in some things--they could not hear what--as the
company might like them. The wise ones thought within themselves that
the best aye comes hindmost; so in brushed a powdered valet, with three
dishes on his arm of twisted black things, just like sticks of
Gibraltar-rock, but different in the colour.
Bailie Bowie helped himself to a jargonelle, and Deacon Purves to a wheen
raisins; and my uncle, to show that he was not frighted, and knew what he
was about, helped himself to one of the long black things, which, without
much ceremony, he shoved into his mouth and began to. Two or three more,
seeing that my uncle was up to trap, followed his example, and chewed
away like nine-year-olds.
Instead of the curious-looking black thing being sweet as honey--for so
they expected--they soon found they had catched a Tartar; for it had a
confounded bitter tobacco-taste. Manners, however, forbade them laying
it down again, more especially as his lordship, like a man dumfoundered,
was aye keeping his eye on them. So away they chewed, and better chewed,
and whammelled them round in their mouths, first in one cheek, and then
in the other, taking now and then a mouthful of drink to wash the trash
down, then chewing away again, and syne another whammel from one cheek to
the other, and syne another mouthful, while the whole time their eyes
were staring in their heads like mad, and the faces they made may be
imagined, but cannot be described. His lordship gave his eyes a rub, and
thought he was dreaming; but no--there they were bodily, chewing, and
whammelling, and making faces; so no wonder that, in keeping in his
laugh, he sprung a button from his waistcoat, and was like to drop down
from his chair, through the floor, in an ecstacy of astonishment, seeing
they were all growing sea-sick, and pale as stucco images.
Frightened out of his wits at last that he would be the death of the
whole council, and that more of them would poison themselves, he took up
one of the segars--every one knows segars now, for they are fashionable
among the very sweeps--which he lighted at the candle, and commenced
puffing like a tobacco-pipe.
My uncle and the rest, if they were ill before, were worse now; so when
they got to the open air, instead of growing better, they grew sicker and
sicker, till they were waggling from side to side like ships in a storm;
and, not knowing whether their heels or heads were uppermost, went
spinning round about like pieries.
"A little spark may make muckle wark." It is perfectly wonderful what
great events spring out of trifles, or what seem to common eyes but
trifles. I do not allude to the nine days' deadly sickness, that was the
legacy of every one that ate his segar, but to the awful truth, that, at
the next election of councillors, my poor uncle Jamie was completely
blackballed--a general spite having been taken to him in the town-hall,
on account of having led the magistracy wrong, by doing what he ought to
have let alone, thereby making himself and the rest a topic of amusement
to the world at large, for many and many a month.
Others, to be sure, it becomes me to make mention, have another version
of the story, and impute the cause of his having been turned out to the
implacable wrath of old Bailie Bogie, whose best black coat, square in
the tails, that he had worn only on the Sundays for nine years, was
totally spoiled, on their way home in the dark from his lordship's, by a
tremendous blash, that my unfortunate uncle happened, in the course of
nature, to let flee in the frenzy of a deadly upthrowing.
CHAPTER THREE--THE COMING INTO THE WORLD OF MANSIE WAUCH
I have no distinct recollection of the thing myself, yet there is every
reason to believe that I was born on the 15th of October 1765, in that
little house standing by itself, not many yards from the eastmost side of
the Flesh-market Gate, Dalkeith. My eyes opened on the light about two
o'clock in a dark and rainy morning. Long was it spoken about that
something great and mysterious would happen on that dreary night; as the
cat, after washing her face, went mewing about, with her tail sweeing
behind her like a ramrod; and a corbie, from the Duke's woods, tumbled
down Jamie Elder's lum, when he had set the little still-a-going--giving
them a terrible fright, as they all took it first for the devil, and then
for an exciseman--and fell with a great cloud of soot, and a loud
skraigh, into the empty kail-pot.
The first thing that I have any clear memory of, was my being carried out
on my auntie's shoulder, with a leather cap tied under my chin, to see
the Fair Race. Oh! but it was a grand sight! I have read since then the
story of Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp, but this beat it all to sticks. There
was a long row of tables covered with carpets of bonny patterns, heaped
from one end to the other with shoes of every kind and size, some with
polished soles, and some glittering with sparribles and cuddy-heels; and
little red worsted boots for bairns, with blue and white edgings, hanging
like strings of flowers up the posts at each end;--and then what a
collection of luggies! the whole meal in the market-sacks on a Thursday
did not seem able to fill them;--and horn-spoons, green and black
freckled, with shanks clear as amber,--and timber caups,--and ivory
egg-cups of every pattern. Have a care of us! all the eggs in Smeaton
dairy might have found resting places for their doups in a row. As for
the gingerbread, I shall not attempt a description. Sixpenny and
shilling cakes, in paper, tied with skinie; and roundabouts, and snaps,
brown and white quality, and parliaments, on stands covered with
calendered linen, clean from the fold. To pass it was just impossible;
it set my teeth a-watering, and I skirled like mad, until I had a gilded
lady thrust into my little nieve; the which, after admiring for a minute,
I applied my teeth to, and of the head I made no bones; so that in less
than no time she had vanished, petticoats and all, no trace of her being
to the fore, save and except long treacly daubs, extending east and west
from ear to ear, and north and south from cape neb of the nose to the
extremity of beardy-land.
But what, of all things, attracted my attention on that memorable day,
was the show of cows, sheep, and horses, mooing, baaing and neighering;
and the race--that was best! Od, what a sight!--we were jammed in the
crowd of old wives, with their toys and shining ribands; and carter lads,
with their blue bonnets; and young wenches, carrying home their fairings
in napkins, as muckle as would hold their teeth going for a month;--there
scarcely could be much for love, when there was so much for the
stomach;--and men, with wooden legs, and brass virls at the end of them,
playing on the fiddle,--and a bear that roared, and danced on its hind
feet, with a muzzled mouth,--and Punch and Polly,--and puppie-shows, and
more than I can tell,--when up came the horses to the starting-post. I
shall never forget the bonny dresses of the riders. One had a napkin
tied round his head, with the flaps fleeing at his neck; and his
coat-tails were curled up into a big hump behind; it was so tight
buttoned ye would not think he could have breathed. His corduroy
trowsers (such like as I have often since made to growing callants) were
tied round his ankles with a string; and he had a rusty spur on one shoe,
which I saw a man take off to lend him. Save us! how he pulled the
beast's head by the bridle, and flapped up and down on the saddle when he
tried a canter! The second one had on a black velvet hunting-cap, and
his coat stripped. I wonder he was not feared of cold, his shirt being
like a riddle, and his nether nankeens but thin for such weather; but he
was a brave lad; and sorry were the folks for him, when he fell off in
taking over sharp a turn, by which old Pullen, the bell-ringer, who was
holding the post, was made to coup the creels, and got a bloody
nose.--And but the last was a wearyful one! He was all life, and as gleg
as an eel. Up and down he went; and up and down philandered the beast on
its hind-legs and its fore-legs, funking like mad; yet though he was not
above thirteen, or fourteen at most, he did not cry out for help more
than five or six times, but grippit at the mane with one hand, and at the
back of the saddle with the other, till daft Robie, the hostler at the
stables, claught hold of the beast by the head, and off they set. The
young birkie had neither hat nor shoon, but he did not spare the stick;
round and round they flew like mad. Ye would have thought their eyes
would have loupen out; and loudly all the crowds were hurraing, when
young hatless came up foremost, standing in the stirrups, the long stick
between his teeth, and his white hair fleeing behind him in the wind like
streamers on a frosty night.
CHAPTER FOUR--CALF-LOVE
The long and the short is, that I was sent to school, where I learned to
read and spell, making great progress in the Single and Mother's
Carritch. No, what is more, few could fickle me in the Bible, being
mostly able to spell it all over, save the second of Ezra and the seventh
of Nehemiah, which the Dominie himself could never read through twice in
the same way, or without variations.
My father, to whom I was born, like Isaac to Abraham, in his old age, was
an elder in the Relief Kirk, respected by all for his canny and douce
behaviour, and, as I have observed before, a weaver to his trade. The
cot and the kail-yard were his own, and had been auld granfaither's; but
still he had to ply the shuttle from Monday to Saturday, to keep all
right and tight. The thrums were a perquisite of my own, which I
niffered with the gundy-wife for Gibraltar-rock, cut-throat, gib, or
bull's-eyes.
[Picture: Mansie and Nancy]
Having come into the world before my time, and being of a pale face and
delicate make, Nature never could have intended me for the naval or
military line, or for any robustious trade or profession whatsoever. No,
no, I never liked fighting in my life; peace was aye in my thoughts.
When there was any riot in the streets, I fled, and scougged myself at
the chimney-lug as quickly as I dowed; and, rather than double a nieve to
a school-fellow, I pocketed many shabby epithets, got my paiks, and took
the coucher's blow from laddies that could hardly reach up to my
waistband.
Just after I was put to my prenticeship, having made free choice of the
tailoring trade, I had a terrible stound of calf-love. Never shall I
forget it. I was growing up, long and lank as a willow-wand. Brawns to
my legs there were none, as my trowsers of other years too visibly
effected to show. The long yellow hair hung down like a flax-wig, the
length of my lantern jaws, which looked, notwithstanding my yapness and
stiff appetite, as if eating and they had broken up acquaintanceship. My
blue jacket seemed in the sleeves to have picked a quarrel with the
wrists, and had retreated to a tait below the elbows. The
haunch-buttons, on the contrary, appeared to have taken a strong liking
to the shoulders, a little below which they showed their tarnished
brightness. At the middle of the back the tails terminated, leaving the
well-worn rear of my corduroys, like a full moon seen through a dark
haze. Oh! but I must have been a bonny lad.
My first flame was the minister's lassie, Jess, a buxom and forward
quean, two or three years older than myself. I used to sit looking at
her in the kirk, and felt a droll confusion when our eyes met. It dirled
through my heart like a dart, and I looked down at my psalm-book sheepish
and blushing. Fain would I have spoken to her, but it would not do; my
courage aye failed me at the pinch, though she whiles gave me a smile
when she passed me. She used to go to the well every night with her two
stoups, to draw water after the manner of the Israelites at gloaming; so
I thought of watching to give her the two apples which I had carried in
my pocket for more than a week for that purpose. How she started when I
stappit them into her hand, and brushed by without speaking! I stood at
the bottom of the close listening, and heard her laughing till she was
like to split. My heart flap-flappit in my breast like a pair of
fanners. It was a moment of heavenly hope; but I saw Jamie Coom, the
blacksmith, who I aye jealoused was my rival, coming down to the well. I
saw her give him one of the apples; and, hearing him say, with a loud
gaffaw, "Where is the tailor?" I took to my heels, and never stopped
till I found myself on the little stool by the fireside, and the hamely
sound of my mother's wheel bum-bumming in my lug, like a gentle lullaby.
Every noise I heard flustered me, but I calmed in time, though I went to
my bed without my supper. When I was driving out the gaislings to the
grass on the next morn, who was it my ill fate to meet but the
blacksmith. "Ou, Mansie," said Jamie Coom, "are ye gaun to take me for
your best man? I hear you are to be cried in the kirk on Sunday?"
"Me!" answered I, shaking and staring.
"Yes!" said he; "Jess the minister's maid told me last night, that you
had been giving up your name at the manse. Ay, it's ower true--for she
showed me the apples ye gied her in a present. This is a bonny story,
Mansie, my man, and you only at your prenticeship yet."
Terror and despair had struck me dumb. I stood as still and as stiff as
a web of buckram. My tongue was tied, and I could not contradict him.
Jamie folded his arms, and went away whistling, turning every now and
then his sooty face over his shoulder, and mostly sticking his tune, as
he could not keep his mouth screwed for laughing. What would I not have
given to have laughed too!
There was no time to be lost; this was the Saturday. The next rising sun
would shine on the Sabbath. Ah, what a case I was in! I could mostly
have drowned myself, had I not been frighted. What could I do? My love
had vanished like lightning; but oh, I was in a terrible gliff! Instead
of gundy, I sold my thrums to Mrs Walnut for a penny, with which I bought
at the counter a sheet of paper and a pen; so that in the afternoon I
wrote out a letter to the minister, telling him what I had been given to
hear, and begging him, for the sake of mercy, not to believe Jess's word,
as I was not able to keep a wife, and as she was a leeing gipsy.
CHAPTER FIVE--CURSECOWL
But, losh me! I have come on too far already, before mentioning a
wonderful thing that happened to me when I was only seven years old. Few
things in my eventful life have made a deeper impression on me than what
I am going to relate.
It was the custom, in those times, for the different schools to have
cock-fighting on Fastern's E'en: and the victor, as he was called,
treated the other scholars to a football. Many a dust have I seen rise
out of that business--broken shins and broken heads, sore bones and sound
duckings--but this was none of these.
Our next neighbour was a flesher; and right before the window was a large
stone, on which old wives with their weans would sometimes take a rest;
so what does I, when I saw the whole hobble-shaw coming fleeing down the
street, with the kick-ba' at their noses, but up I speels upon the stone
(I was a wee chap with a daidley, a ruffled shirt, and leather cap edged
with rabbit fur) that I might see all the fun. This one fell, and that
one fell, and a third was knocked over and a fourth got a bloody nose:
and so on; and there was such a noise and din, as would have deaved the
workmen of Babel--when, lo! and behold! the ball played bounce mostly at
my feet, and the whole mob after it. I thought I should have been dung
to pieces; so I pressed myself back with all my might, and through went
my elbow into Cursecowl's kitchen. It did not stick long there. Before
you could say Jack Robinson, out flew the flesher in his killing-clothes;
his face was as red as fire, and he had his pouch full of bloody knives
buckled to his side. I skreighed out in his face when I looked at him,
but he did not stop a moment for that. With a girn that was like to rive
his mouth, he twisted his nieve in the back of my hair, and off with me
hanging by the cuff of the neck, like a kittling. My eyes were like to
loup out of my head, but I had no breath to cry. I heard him thraw the
key, for I could not look down, the skin of my face was pulled so tight;
and in he flang me like a pair of old boots into his booth, where I
landed on my knees upon a raw bloody calf's skin. I thought I would have
gone out of my wits, when I heard the door locked upon me, and looked
round me in such an unearthly place. It had only one sparred window, and
there was a garden behind; but how was I to get out? I danced round and
round about, stamping my heels on the floor, and rubbing my begritten
face with my coat sleeve. To make matters worse, it was wearing to the
darkening. The floor was all covered with lappered blood, and sheep and
calf skins. The calves and the sheep themselves, with their cuttit
throats, and glazed een, and ghastly girning faces, were hanging about on
pins, heels uppermost. Losh me! I thought on Bluebeard and his wives in
the bloody chamber!
And all the time it was growing darker and darker, and more dreary; and
all was as quiet as death itself. It looked, by all the world, like a
grave, and me buried alive within it; till the rottens came out of their
holes to lick the blood, and whisked about like wee evil spirits. I
thought on my father and my mother, and how I should never see them more;
for I was sure that Cursecowl would come in the dark, tie my hands and
feet thegither, and lay me across the killing-stool. I grew more and
more frightened; and it grew more and more dark. I thought all the
sheep-heads were looking at one another, and then girn-girning at me. At
last I grew desperate; and my hair was as stiff as wire, though it was as
wet as if I had been douking in the Esk. I began to bite through the
wooden spars with my teeth, and rugged at them with my nails, till they
were like to come off--but no, it would not do. At length, when I had
greeted myself mostly blind, and cried till I was as hoarse as a corbie,
I saw auld Janet Hogg taking in her bit washing from the bushes, and I
reeled and screamed till she heard me.--It was like being transported
into heaven; for, in less than no time, my mother, with her apron at her
eyes, was at the door; and Cursecowl, with a candle in the front of his
hat, had scarcely thrawn the key, when out I flew; and she lifted up her
foot (I dare say it was the first and last time in her life, for she was
a douce woman) and gave him such a kick and a push that he played bleach
over, head foremost, without being able to recover himself; and, as we
ran down the close, we heard him cursing and swearing in the dark, like a
devil incarnate.
CHAPTER SIX--MANSIE WAUCH ON THE PUSHING OF HIS FORTUNE
The days of the years of my prenticeship having glided cannily over on
the working-board of my respected maister, James Hosey, where I sat
sewing cross-legged like a busy bee, in the true spirit of industrious
contentment, I found myself, at the end of the seven year, so well
instructed in the tailoring trade, to which I had paid a near-sighted
attention, that, without more ado, I girt myself round about with a proud
determination of at once cutting my mother's apron string, and venturing
to go without a hold. Thinks I to myself, "faint heart never won fair
lady"; so, taking my stick in my hand, I set out towards Edinburgh, as
brave as a Highlander, in search of a journeyman's place. When I think
how many have been out of bread, month after month, making vain
application at the house of call, I may set it down to an especial
Providence, that I found a place, on the very first day, to my heart's
content, in by at the Grassmarket, where I stayed for the space of six
calendar months.
Had it not been from a real sense of the duty I owed to my future
employers, whomsoever they might be, in making myself a first-rate hand
in the cutting, shaping, and sewing line, I would not have found courage
in my breast to have helped me out through such a long and dreary time.
The change from our own town, where every face was friendly, and where I
could ken every man I saw, by the cut of his coat, at half a mile's
distance, to the bum and bustle of the High Street, the tremendous
cannons of the Castle, packed full of soldiers ready for war, and the
filthy, ill-smelling abominations of the Cowgate, where I put up, was
almost more than could be tholed by man of woman born. My lodging was up
six pair of stairs, in a room of Widow Randie's, which I rented for
half-a-crown a week, coals included; and many a time, after putting out
my candle, before stepping into my bed, I used to look out at the window,
where I could see thousands and thousands of lamps, spreading for miles
adown streets and through squares, where I did not know a living soul;
and dreeing the awful and insignificant sense of being a lonely stranger
in a foreign land. Then would the memory of past days return to me; yet
I had the same trust in Heaven as I had before, seeing that they were the
dividual stars above my head which I used to glour up at in wonder at
Dalkeith--pleasant Dalkeith! ay, how different, with its bonny river Esk,
its gardens full of gooseberry bushes and pear-trees, its grass parks
spotted with sheep, and its grand green woods, from the bullying
blackguards, the comfortless reek, and the nasty gutters of the
Netherbow.
To those, nevertheless, that take the world as they find it, there are
pleasures in all situations; nor was mine, bad though I allow it to be,
entirely destitute of them; for our work-room being at the top of the
stairs, and the light of heaven coming down through skylights, three in
number, we could, by putting out our heads, have a vizzy of the grand
ancient building of George Heriot's Hospital, with the crowds of young
laddies playing through the grass parks, with their bit brown coaties,
and shining leather caps, like a wheen puddocks; and all the sweet
country out by Barrowmuirhead, and thereaway; together with the
Corstorphine Hills--and the Braid Hills--and the Pentland Hills--and all
the rest of the hills, covered here and there with tufts of blooming
whins, as yellow as the beaten gold--spotted round about their bottoms
with green trees, and growing corn, but with tops as bare as a
gaberlunzie's coat--kepping the rowling clouds on their awful shoulders
on cold and misty days; and freckled over with the flowers of the purple
heather, on which the shy moorfowl take a delight to fatten and fill
their craps, through the cosy months of the blythe summer time.
Let nobody take it amiss, yet I must bear witness to the truth, though
the devil should have me. My heart was sea-sick of Edinburgh folk and
town manners, for the which I had no stomach. I could form no friendly
acquaintanceship with a living soul; so I abode by myself, like St John
in the Isle of Patmos, on spare allowance, making a sheep-head serve me
for three day's kitchen. I longed like a sailor that has been far at
sea, and wasted and weatherbeaten, to see once more my native home; and,
bundling up, flee from the noisy stramash to the loun dykeside of
domestic privacy. Everything around me seemed to smell of sin and
pollution, like the garments of the Egyptians with the ten plagues; and
often, after I took off my clothes to lie down in my bed, when the
watchmen that guarded us through the night in blue dreadnoughts with red
necks, and battons, and horn-bouets, from thieves, murderers, and
pickpockets, were bawling, "Half-past ten o'clock," did I commune with my
own heart, and think within myself, that I would rather be a sober, poor,
honest man in the country, able to clear my day and way by the help of
Providence, than the Provost himself, my lord though he be, or even the
Mayor of London, with his velvet gown trailing for yards in the glaur
behind him--do what he likes to keep it up; or riding about the
streets--as Joey Smith the Yorkshire Jockey, to whom I made a hunting
cap, told me--in a coach made of clear crystal, and wheels of the beaten
gold.
It was an awful business; dog on it, I ay wonder yet how I got through
with it. There was no rest for soul or body, by night or day, with
police-officers crying, "One o'clock, an' a frosty morning," knocking
Eirishmen's teeth down their throats with their battons, hauling limmers
by the lug and horn into the lock-up house, or over by to Bridewell,
where they were set to beat hemp for a small wage, and got their heads
shaved; with carters bawling, "Ye yo, yellow sand, yellow sand," with
mouths as wide as a barn-door, and voices that made the drums of your
ears dirl, and ring again like mad; with fishwives from Newhaven,
Cockenzie, and Fisherrow, skirling, "Roug-a-rug, warstling herring," as
if every one was trying to drown out her neighbour, till the very
landladies, at the top of the seventeen story houses, could hear, if they
liked to be fashed, and might come down at their leisure to buy them at
three for a penny; men from Barnton, and thereaway on the Queensferry
Road, halloing "Sour douk, sour douk"; tinklers skirmishing the edges of
brown plates they were trying to make the old wives buy--and what not.
To me it was a real hell upon earth.
Never let us repine, howsomever, but consider that all is ordered for the
best. The sons of the patriarch Jacob found out their brother Joseph in
a foreign land, and where they least expected it; so it was here--even
here, where my heart was sickening unto death, from my daily and nightly
thoughts being as bitter as gall--that I fell in with the greatest
blessing of my life, Nanse Cromie!
In the flat below our workshop lived Mrs Whitteraick, the wife of Mr
Whitteraick, a dealer in hens and hams in the poultry market, that had
been fallen in with, when her gudeman was riding out on his bit sheltie
in the Lauder direction, bargaining with the farmers for their ducks,
chickens, gaislings, geese, turkey-pouts, howtowdies, guinea-hens, and
other barn-door fowls; and, among his other calls, having happened to
make a transaction with her father, anent some Anchovy-ducks, he, by a
warm invitation, was kindly pressed to remain for the night.
The upshot of the business was, that, on mounting his pony to make the
best of his way home, next morning after breakfast, Maister Whitteraick
found he was shot through the heart with a stound of love; and that,
unless a suitable remedy could be got, there was no hope for him on this
side of time, let alone blowing out his brains, or standing before the
minister. Right it was in him to run the risk of deciding on the last;
and so well did he play his game, that, in two months from that date,
after sending sundry presents on his part to the family, of smeaked hams
and salt tongues--acknowledged on theirs, by return of carrier, in the
shape of sucking pigs, jargonelle pears, skim-milk cheeses, and such
like--matters were soldered; and Miss Jeanie Learig, made into Mrs
Whitteraick by the blessing of Dr Blether, rode away into Edinburgh in a
post-chaise, with a brown and a black horse, one blind and the other
lame, seated cheek-by-jowl with her loving spouse, who, doubtless was
busked out in his best, with a Manchester superfine blue coat, and double
gilt buttons, a waterproof hat, silk stockings, with open-steek gushats,
and bright yellow shamoy gloves.
A stranger among strangers, and not knowing how she might thole the
company and conversation of town-life, Mrs Whitteraick, that was to be,
hired a bit wench of a lassie from the neighbourhood, that was to follow
her, come the term. And who think ye should this lassie be, but Nanse
Cromie--afterwards, in the course of a kind Providence, the honoured wife
of my bosom, and the mother of bonny Benjie.
In going up and down the stairs--it being a common entry, ye observe--me
maybe going down with my everyday hat on to my dinner, and she coming up,
carrying a stoup of water, or half-a-pound of pouthered butter on a
plate, with a piece paper thrown over it--we frequently met half-way, and
had to stand still to let one another pass. Nothing came out of these
foregatherings, howsomever, for a month or two, she being as shy and
modest as she was bonny, with her clean demity short-gown, and snow-white
morning mutch, to say nothing of her cheery mouth, and her glancing eyes;
and me unco douffie, in making up to strangers. We could not help,
nevertheless, to take aye a stolen look of each other in passing; and I
was a gone man, bewitched out of my seven senses, falling from my
clothes, losing my stomach, and over the lugs in love, three weeks and
some odd days before ever a single syllable passed between us.
Gude kens how long this Quaker-meeting-like silence would have continued,
had we not chanced to foregather one gloaming; and I, having gotten a
dram from one of our customers with a hump-back, at the Crosscausey,
whose fashionable new coat I had been out fitting on, found myself as
brave as a Bengal tiger, and said to her, "This is a fine day, I say, my
dear Nancy."
The ice being once broken, every thing went on as smoothly as ye like;
so, in the long run, we went like lightning from twohanded cracks on the
stair-head, to stown walks, after work-hours, out by the West Port, and
thereaway.
If ever a man loved, and loved like mad, it was me, Mansie Wauch--and I
take no shame in the confession; but, knowing it all in the course of
nature, declare it openly and courageously in the face of the wide world.
Let them laugh who like; honest folk, I pity them; such know not the
pleasures of virtuous affection. It is not in corrupted, sinful hearts
that the fire of true love can ever burn clear. Alas, and ohon orie!
they lose the sweetest, completest, dearest, truest pleasure that this
world has in store for its children. They know not the bliss to meet,
that makes the embrace of separation bitter. They never dreamed the
dreams that make wakening to the morning light unpleasant. They never
felt the raptures that can dirl like darts through a man's soul from a
woman's eye. They never tasted the honey that dwells on a woman's lip,
sweeter than yellow marygolds to the bee; or fretted under the fever of
bliss that glows through the frame in pressing the hand of a suddenly
met, and fluttering sweetheart. But tuts-tuts--hech-how! my day has long
since passed: and this is stuff to drop from the lips of an auld fool.
Nevertheless, forgive me, friends: I cannot help all-powerful nature.
[Picture: The minister's lassie Jess]
Nanse's taste being like my own, we amused one another in abusing great
cities, which are all chokeful of the abominations of the Scarlet Woman;
and it is curious how soon I learned to be up to trap--I mean in an
honest way; for, when she said she was wearying the very heart out of her
to be home again to Lauder, which she said was her native, and the true
land of Goshen, I spoke back to her by way of answer--"Nancy, my dear,
believe me that the real land of Goshen is out at Dalkeith; and if ye'll
take up house with me, and enter into a way of doing, I daursay in a
while, ye'll come to think so too."
What will ye say there? Matters were by-and-by settled full tosh between
us; and, though the means of both parties were small, we were young, and
able and willing to help one another. Nanse, out of her wages, had
hained a trifle; and I had, safe lodged under lock-and-key in the Bank of
Scotland, against the time of my setting up, the siller which was got by
selling the bit house of granfaither's, on the death of my
ever-to-be-lamented mother, who survived her helpmate only six months,
leaving me an orphan lad in a wicked world, obliged to fend, forage and
look out for myself.
Taking matters into account, therefore, and considering that it is not
good for man to be alone, Nanse and me laid our heads together towards
the taking a bit house in the fore-street of Dalkeith; and at our leisure
kept a look-out about buying the plenishing--the expense of which, for
different littles and littles, amounted to more than we expected; yet, to
our hearts' content, we made some most famous second-hand bargains of
sprechery, amongst the old-furniture warehousemen of the Cowgate. I
might put down here the prices of the room-grate, the bachelor's oven,
the cheese-toaster, and the warming-pan, especially, which, though it had
a wheen holes in it, kept a fine polish; but, somehow or other, have lost
the receipt and cannot make true affidavy.
Certain it is, whatever cadgers may say to the contrary, that the back is
aye made for the burden; and, were all to use the means, and be
industrious, many, that wyte bad harvests, and worse times, would have,
like the miller in the auld sang, "A penny in the purse for dinner and
for supper," or better to finish the verse, "Gin ye please a guid fat
cheese, and lumps of yellow butter."
For two three days, I must confess, after Maister Wiggie had gone through
the ceremony of tying us together, and Nanse and me found ourselves in
the comfortable situation of man and wife, I was a wee dowie and
desponding, thinking that we were to have a numerous small family, and
where trade was to come from; but no sooner was my sign nailed up, with
four iron hold-fasts, by Johnny Hammer, painted in black letters on a
blue ground, with a picture of a jacket on one side and a pair of shears
on the other,--and my shop-door opened to the public, with a wheen
ready-made waistcoats, gallowses, leather-caps, and Kilmarnock cowls,
hung up at the window, than business flowed in upon us in a perfect
torrent. First one came in for his measure, and then another. A wife
came in for a pair of red worsted boots for her bairn, but would not take
them for they had not blue fringes. A bareheaded lassie, hoping to be
handsel, threw down twopence, and asked tape at three yards for a
halfpenny. The minister sent an old black coat beneath his maid's arm,
pinned up in a towel, to get docked in the tails down into a jacket;
which I trust I did to his entire satisfaction, making it fit to a hair.
The Duke's butler himself patronized me, by sending me a coat which was
all hair-powder and pomate, to get a new neck put to it. And James
Batter, aye a staunch friend of the family, dispatched a barefoot cripple
lassie down the close to me, with a brown paper parcel, tied with skinie,
and having a memorandum letter sewed on the top of it, and wafered with a
wafer. It ran as follows; "Maister Batter has sent down, per the bearer,
with his compliments to Mr Wauch, a cuttikin of corduroy, deficient in
the instep, which please let out, as required. Maister Wauch will also
please be so good as observe that three of the buttons have sprung the
thorls, which he will be obliged to him to replace, at his earliest
convenience. Please send me a message what they may be; and have the
account made out, article for article, and duly discharged, that I may
send down the bearer with the change; and to bring me back the cuttikin
and the account, to save time and trouble. I am, dear sir, your most
obedient friend, and ever most sincerely,
"JAMES BATTER."
No wonder than we attracted customers, for our sign was the prettiest ye
ever saw, though the jacket was not just so neatly painted, as for some
sand-blind creatures not to take it for a goose. I daresay there were
fifty half-naked bairns glowring their eyes out of their heads at it,
from morning till night; and, after they all were gone to their beds,
both Nanse and me found ourselves so proud of our new situation in life,
that we slipped out in the dark by ourselves, and had a prime look at it
with a lantern.
CHAPTER SEVEN--MANSIE WAUCH AND HIS FOREWARNING
On first commencing business, I have freely confessed, I believe, that I
was unco solicitous of custom, though less from sinful, selfish motives,
than from the, I trust, laudable fear I had about becoming in a jiffy the
father of a small family, every one with a mouth to fill and a back to
cleid--helpless bairns, with nothing to look to or lean on, save and
except the proceeds of my daily handiwork. Nothing, however, is sure in
this world, as Maister Wiggie more than once took occasion to observe,
when lecturing on the house built by the foolish man on the sea-sands;
for months passed on, and better passed on; and these, added together by
simple addition, amounted to three years; and still neither word nor
wittens of a family, to perpetuate our name to future generations,
appeared to be forthcoming.
Between friends, I make no secret of the matter, that this was a
catastrophe which vexed me not a little, for more reasons than one. In
the first place, youngsters being a bond of mutual affection between man
and wife, sweeter than honey from the comb, and stronger than the Roman
cement with which the old Picts built their bridges, that will last till
the day of doom. In the second place, bairns toddling round a bit ingle
make a house look like itself, especially in the winter time, when
hailstanes rattle on the window, and winds roar like the voices of mighty
giants at the lum-head; for then the maister of the dwelling finds
himself like an ancient patriarch, and the shepherd of a flock, tender as
young lambs, yet pleasant to his eye, and dear to his heart. And, in the
third place (for I'll speak the truth and shame the deil) as I could not
thole the gibes and idle tongues of a wheen fools that, for their
diversion, would be asking me, "How the wife and bairns were; and if I
had sent my auldest laddie to the school yet?"
I have swithered within myself for more than half-an-hour, whether I
should relate a circumstance bordering a little on the supernatural line,
that happened to me, as connected with the business of the bairns of
which I have just been speaking; and, were it for no other reason, but
just to plague the scoffer that sits in his elbow-chair, I have
determined to jot down the whole miraculous paraphernally in black and
white. With folk that will not listen to the voice of reason, it is
needless to be wasterful of words; so them that like, may either prin
their faith to my coat-sleeve, about what I am going to relate, or
not--just as they choose. All that I can say in my defence, and as an
affidavy to my veracity, is that I have been thirty year an elder of
Maister Wiggie's kirk--and that is no joke. The matter I make free to
consider is not a laughing concern, nor anything belonging to the
Merry-Andrew line; and, if folk were but strong in the faith, there is no
saying what may come to pass for their good. One might as well hold up
their brazen face, and pretend not to believe any thing--neither the
Witch of Endor raising up Samuel; nor Cornel Gardener's vision; nor
Johnny Wilkes and the De'il; nor Peden's prophecies.
Nanse and me aye made what they call an anniversary of our wedding-day,
which happened to be the fifth of November, the very same as that on
which the Gunpowder Plot chances to be occasionally held--Sundays
excepted. According to custom, this being the fourth year, we collected
a good few friends to a tea-drinking; and had our cracks and a glass or
two of toddy. Thomas Burlings, if I mind, was there, and his wife; and
Deacon Paunch, he was a bachelor; and likewise James Batter; and David
Sawdust and his wife, and their four bairns, good customers; and a wheen
more, that, without telling a lie, I could not venture to particularize
at this moment, though maybe I may mind them when I am not wanting--but
no matter. Well, as I was saying, after they all went away, and Nanse
and me, after locking the door, slipped to our bed, I had one of the most
miraculous dreams recorded in the history of man; more especially if we
take into consideration where, when, and to whom it happened.
At first I thought I was sitting by the fireside, where the cat and the
kittling were playing with a mouse they had catched in the meal-kit,
cracking with James Batter on check-reels for yarn, and the cleverest way
of winding pirns, when, all at once, I thought myself transplanted back
to the auld world--forgetting the tailoring-trade; broad and narrow
cloth; worsted boots and Kilmarnock cowls; pleasant Dalkeith; our late
yearly ploy; my kith and kindred; the friends of the people; the Duke's
parks; and so on--and found myself walking beneath beautiful trees, from
the branches of which hung apples, and oranges, and cocky-nuts, and figs,
and raisins, and plumdamases, and corry-danders, and more than the tongue
of man can tell, while all the birds and beasts seemed as tame as our
bantings; in fact, just as they were in the days of Adam and Eve--Bengal
tigers passing by on this hand, and Russian bears on that, rowing
themselves on the grass, out of fun; while peacocks, and magpies, and
parrots, and cockytoos, and yorlins, and grey-linties, and all birds of
sweet voice and fair feather, sported among the woods, as if they had
nothing to do but sit and sing in the sweet sunshine, having dread
neither of the net of the fowler, the double-barrelled gun of the
gamekeeper, nor the laddies' girn set with moorlings of bread. It was
real paradise; and I found myself fairly lifted off my feet and
transported out of my seven senses.
While sauntering about at my leisure, with my Sunday hat on, and a pair
of clean white cotton stockings, in this heavenly mood, under the green
trees, and beside the still waters, out of which beautiful salmon trouts
were sporting and leaping, methought in a moment I fell down in a trance,
as flat as a flounder, and I heard a voice visibly saying to me, "Thou
shalt have a son; let him be christened Benjamin!" The joy that this
vision brought my spirit thrilled through my bones, like the sounds of a
blind man grinding "Rule Britannia" out of an organ, and my senses
vanished from me into a kind of slumber, on rousing from which I thought
I found myself walking, all dressed, with powdered hair, and a long tye
behind, just like a grand gentleman, with a valuable bamboo walking-stick
in my hand, among green yerbs and flowers, like an auncient hermit far
away among the hills, at the back of beyont; as if broad cloth and
buckram had never been heard tell of, and serge, twist, pocket-linings,
and shamoy leather, were matters with which mortal man had no concern.
Speak of auld-light or new-light as ye like, for my own part I am not
much taken up with any of your warlock and wizard tribe; I have no brew
of your auld Major Weir, or Tam o' Shanter, or Michael Scott, or Thomas
the Rhymer's kind, knocking in pins behind doors to make decent folk
dance, jig, cut, and shuffle themselves to death--splitting the hills as
ye would spelder a haddy, and playing all manner of evil pranks, and
sinful abominations, till their crafty maister, Auld Nick, puts them to
their mettle, by setting them to twine ropes out of sea-sand, and such
like. I like none of your paternosters, and saying of prayers backwards,
or drawing lines with chalk round ye, before crying,
"Redcowl, redcowl, come if ye daur;
Lift the sneck, and draw the bar."
I never, in the whole course of my life, was fond of lending the sanction
of my countenance to any thing that was not canny; and, even when I was a
wee smout of a callant, with my jacket and trowsers buttoned all in one,
I never would play, on Hallo'-'een night, at anything else but douking
for apples, burning nuts, pulling kail-runts, foul water and clean,
drapping the egg, or trying who was to be your sweetheart out of the
lucky-bag.
As I have often thought, and sometimes taken occasion to observe, it
would be well for us all to profit by experience--"burned bairns should
dread the fire," as the proverb goes. After the miserable catastrophe of
the playhouse, for instance--which I shall afterwards have occasion to
commemorate in due time, and in a subsequent chapter of my eventful
life--I would have been worse than mad, had I persisted, night after
night, to pay my shilling for a veesy of vagrants in buckram, and limmers
in silk, parading away at no allowance--as kings and queens, with their
tale--speaking havers that only fools have throats wide enough to
swallow, and giving themselves airs to which they have no more earthly
title than the man in the moon. I say nothing, besides, of their
throwing glamour in honest folks een; but I'll not deny that I have been
told by them who would not lie, and were living witnesses of the
transaction, that, as true as death, they had seen the tane of these
ne'er-do-weels spit the other, through and through, with a
weel-sharpened, old, Highland, forty-second Andrew Ferrary, in single
combat; whereupon, as might reasonably be expected, he would, in the
twinkling of a farthing rushlight, fall down as dead as a bag of sand;
yet, by their rictum-ticktum, rise-up-Jack, slight-of-hand, hocus-pocus
way, would be on his legs, brushing the stour from his breeches knees,
before the green curtain was half-way down. James Batter himself once
told me, that, when he was a laddie, he saw one of these clanjamphrey go
in behind the scenes with nankeen trowsers, a blue coat out at the
elbows, and fair hair hanging over his ears, and in less than no time,
come out a real negro, as black as Robinson Crusoe's man Friday, with a
jacket on his back of Macgregor tartan, and as good a pair of buckskin
breeches as jockey ever mounted horse in at a Newmarket race. Where the
silk stockings were wrought, and the Jerusalem sandals made, that he had
on his feet, James Batter used doucely to observe he would leave every
reasonable man to guess at a venture.
A good story not being the worse of being twice told, I repeat it over
again, that I would have been worse than daft, after the precious warning
it was my fortune to get, to have sanctioned such places with my
presence, in spite of the remonstrances of my conscience--and of Maister
Wiggie--and of the kirk-session. Whenever any thing is carried on out of
the course of nature, especially when accompanied with dancing and
singing, toot-tooing of clarionets, and bumming of bass-fiddles, ye may
be as sure as you are born, that ye run a chance of being deluded out of
your right senses--that the sounds are by way of lulling the soul
asleep--and that, to the certainty of a without-a-doubt, you are in the
heat and heart of one of the devil's rendevooses.
To say no more, I was once myself, for example, at one of our Dalkeith
fairs, present in a hay-loft--I think they charged threepence at the
door, but let me in with a grudge for twopence, but no matter--to see a
punch and puppie-show business, and other slight-of-hand work. Well, the
very moment I put my neb within the door, I was visibly convinced of the
smell of burnt roset, with, which I understand they make lightning, and
knew, as well as maybe, what they had been trafficking about with their
black art; but, nevertheless, having a stout heart, I determined to sit
still, and see what they would make of it, knowing well enough, that, as
long as I had the Psalm-book in my pocket, they would be gay and clever
to throw any of their blasted cantrips over me.
What do ye think they did? One of them, a wauf, drucken-looking
scoundrel, fired a gold ring over the window, and mostly set fire to the
thatch house opposite--which was not insured. Yet where think ye did the
ring go to? With my living een I saw it taken out of auld Willie
Turneep's waistcoat pouch, who was sitting blind fou, with his mouth
open, on one of the back seats; so, by no earthly possibility could it
have got there, except by whizzing round the gable, and in through the
steeked door by the key-hole.
Folk may say what they chuse by way of apology, but I neither like nor
understand such on-going as changing sterling silver half-crowns into
copper penny-pieces, or mending a man's coat--as they did mine, after
cutting a blad out of one of the tails--by the black-art.
But, hout-tout, one thing and another coming across me, had almost clean
made me forget explaining to the world, the upshot of my extraordinary
vision; but better late than never--and now for it.
Nanse, on finding herself in a certain way, was a thought dumfoundered;
and instead of laughing, as she did at first, when I told her my dream,
she soon came to regard the matter as one of sober earnest. The very
prospect of what was to happen threw a gleam of comfort round our bit
fireside; and, long ere the day had come about which was to crown our
expectations, Nanse was prepared with her bit stock of baby's wearing
apparel, and all necessaries appertaining thereto--wee little mutches
with lace borders, and side-knots of blue three-ha'penny ribbon--long
muslin frockies, vandyked across the breast, drawn round the waist with
narrow nittings and tucked five rows about the tail--Welsh-flannel
petticoaties--demity wrappers--a coral gumstick, and other uncos, which
it does not befit the like of me to particularize. I trust, on my part,
as far as in me lay, I was not found wanting; having taken care to
provide a famous Dunlop cheese, at fivepence-halfpenny the pound--I
believe I paled fifteen, in Joseph Gowdy's shop, before I fixed on
it;--to say nothing of a bottle, or maybe two, of real peat-reek,
Farintosh, small-still Hieland whisky--Glenlivat, I think, is the name
o't--half a peck of shortbread, baken by Thomas Burlings, with three
pounds of butter, and two ounces of carvie-seeds in it, let alone
orange-peel, and a pennyworth of ground cinnamon--half a mutchkin of best
cony brandy, by way of change--and a Musselburgh ankerstoke, to slice
down for tea-drinkings and posset cups.
Everyone has reason to be thankful, and me among the rest; for many a
worse provided for, and less welcome down-lying has taken place, time out
of mind, throughout broad Scotland. I say this with a warm heart, as I
am grateful for my all mercies. To hundreds above hundreds such a
catastrophe brings scarcely any joy at all; but it was far different with
me, who had a Benjamin to look for.
If the reader will be so kind as to look over the next chapter, he will
find whether or not I was disappointed in my expectations.
CHAPTER EIGHT--LETTING LODGINGS
It would be curious if I passed over a remarkable incident, which at this
time fell out. Being but new beginners in the world, the wife and I put
our heads constantly together to contrive for our forward advancement, as
it is the bounden duty of all to do. So our housie being rather large
(two rooms and a kitchen, not speaking of the coal-cellar and a
hen-house,) and having as yet only the expectation of a family, we
thought we could not do better than get John Varnish the painter, to do
off a small ticket, with "A Furnished Room to Let" on it, which we nailed
out at the window; having collected into it the choicest of our
furniture, that it might fit a genteeler lodger and produce a better
rent--And a lodger soon we got.
Dog on it! I think I see him yet. He was a blackaviced Englishman, with
curled whiskers and a powdered pow, stout round the waistband, and fond
of good eating, let alone drinking, as we found to our cost. Well, he
was our first lodger. We sought a good price, that we might, on
bargaining, have the merit of coming down a tait; but no, no--go away wi'
ye; it was dog-cheap to him. The half-guinea a-week was judged perfectly
moderate; but if all his debts were--yet I must not cut before the cloth.
Hang expenses! was the order of the day. Ham and eggs for breakfast, let
alone our currant jelly. Roast-mutton cold, and strong ale at twelve, by
way of check, to keep away wind from the stomach. Smoking roast-beef,
with scraped horse raddish, at four precisely; and toasted cheese, punch,
and porter, for supper. It would have been less, had all the things been
within ourselves. Nothing had we but the cauler new-laid eggs; then
there was Deacon Heukbane's butcher's account; and John Cony's spirit
account; and Thomas Burlings' bap account; and deevil kens how many more
accounts, that came all in upon us afterwards. But the crowning of all
was reserved for the end. It was no farce at the time, and kept our
heads down at the water edge for many a day. I was just driving the hot
goose along the seams of a Sunday jacket I was finishing for Thomas Clod
the ploughman, when the Englisher came in at the shop door, whistling
"Robert Adair," and "Scots wha ha'e wi' Wallace bled," and whiles, maybe,
churming to himself like a young blackbird;--but I have not patience to
go through with it. The long and the short of the matter, however, was,
that, after rummaging among my two or three webs of broadcloth on the
shelf, he pitched on a Manchester blue, five quarters wide, marked
CXD.XF, which is to say, three-and-twenty shillings the yard. I told him
it was impossible to make a pair of pantaloons to him in two hours; but
he insisted upon having them, alive or dead, as he had to go down the
same afternoon to dine with my Lord Duke, no less. I convinced him, that
if I was to sit up all night, he could get them by five next morning, if
that would do, as I would keep my laddie, Tammy Bodkin, out of his bed;
but no--I thought he would have jumped out of his seven senses. "Just
look," he said, turning up the inside seam of the leg--"just see--can any
gentleman make a visit in such things as these? they are as full of holes
as a coal-sieve. I wonder the devil why my baggage has not come forward.
Can I get a horse and boy to ride express to Edinburgh for a ready-made
article?"
[Picture: Mansie's father]
A thought struck me; for I had heard of wonderful advancement in the
world, for those who had been so lucky as help the great at a pinch. "If
ye'll no take it amiss, sir," said I, making my obedience, "a notion has
just struck me."
"Well, what is it?" said he briskly.
"Well, sir, I have a pair of knee-breeches, of most famous velveteen,
double tweel, which have been only once on my legs, and that no farther
gone than last Sabbath. I'm pretty sure they would fit ye in the
meantime; and I would just take a pleasure in driving the needle all
night, to get your own ready."
"A clever thought," said the Englisher. "Do you think they would fit
me?--Devilish clever thought, indeed."
"To a hair," I answered; and cried to Nanse to bring the velveteens.
I do not think he was ten minutes, when lo, and behold! out at the door
he went, and away past the shop-window like a lamplighter. The buttons
on the velveteens were glittering like gold at the knees. Alas! it was
like the flash of the setting sun; I never beheld them more. He was to
have been back in two or three hours, but the laddie, with the box on his
shoulder, was going through the street crying "Hot penny-pies" for
supper, and neither word nor wittens of him. I began to be a thought
uneasy, and fidgeted on the board like a hen on a hot girdle. No man
should do anything when he is vexed, but I could not help giving Tammy
Bodkin, who was sewing away at the lining of the new pantaloons, a
terrible whisk in the lug for singing to himself. I say I was vexed for
it afterwards; especially as the laddie did not mean to give offence; and
as I saw the blae marks of my four fingers along his chaft-blade.
The wife had been bothering me for a new gown, on strength of the payment
of our grand bill; and in came she, at this blessed moment of time, with
about twenty swatches from Simeon Calicoe's pinned on a screed of paper.
"Which of these do you think bonniest?" said Nanse, in a flattering way;
"I ken, Mansie, you have a good taste."
"Cut not before the cloth," answered I, "gudewife," with a wise shake of
my head. "It'll be time enough, I daresay, to make your choice
to-morrow."
Nanse went out as if her nose had been blooding. I could thole it no
longer; so, buttoning my breeches-knees, I threw my cowl into a corner,
clapped my hat on my head, and away down in full birr to the Duke's gate.
I speired at the porter, if the gentleman with the velveteen breeches and
powdered hair, that was dining with the Duke, had come up the avenue yet?
"Velveteen breeches and powdered hair!" said auld Paul laughing, and
taking the pipe out of his cheek, "whose butler is't that ye're after?"
"Well," said I to him, "I see it all as plain as a pikestaff. He is off
bodily; but may the meat and the drink he has taken off us be like drogs
to his inside; and may the velveteens play crack, and cast the steeks at
every step he takes!" It was no Christian wish; and Paul laughed till he
was like to burst, at my expense. "Gang your ways hame, Mansie," said he
to me, clapping me on the shoulder as if I had been a wean, "and give
over setting traps, for ye see you have catched a Tartar."
This was too much; first to be cheated by a swindling loon, and then made
game of by a flunkie; and, in my desperation, I determined to do some
awful thing.
Nanse followed me in from the door, and asked what news?--I was ower big,
and ower vexed to hear her; so, never letting on, I went to the little
looking-glass on the drawers' head, and set it down on the table. Then I
looked myself in it for a moment, and made a gruesome face. Syne I
pulled out the little drawer, and got the sharping strap, the which I
fastened to my button. Syne I took my razor from the box, and gave it
five or six turns along first one side and then the other, with great
precision. Syne I tried the edge of it along the flat of my hand. Syne
I loosed my neckcloth, and laid it over the back of the chair; and syne I
took out the button of my shirt neck, and folded it back. Nanse, who
was, all time, standing behind, looking what I was after, asked me, "if I
was going to shave without hot water?" when I said to her in a fierce and
brave manner, (which was very cruel, considering the way she was in,)
"I'll let you see that presently." The razor looked desperate sharp; and
I never liked the sight of blood; but oh, I was in a terrible flurry and
fermentation. A kind of cold trembling went through me; and I thought it
best to tell Nanse what I was going to do, that she might be something
prepared for it. "Fare ye well, my dear!" said I to her, "you will be a
widow in five minutes--for here goes!" I did not think she could have
mustered so much courage, but she sprang at me like a tiger; and,
throwing the razor into the ass-hole, took me round the neck, and cried
like a bairn. First she was seized with a fit of the hystericks, and
then with her pains. It was a serious time for us both, and no joke; for
my heart smote me for my sin and cruelty. But I did my best to make up
for it. I ran up and down like mad for the Howdie, and at last brought
her trotting along with me by the lug. I could not stand it. I shut
myself up in the shop with Tammy Bodkin, like Daniel in the lions' den;
and every now and then opened the door to spier what news. Oh, but my
heart was like to break with anxiety! I paced up and down, and to and
fro, with my Kilmarnock on my head, and my hands in my breeches pockets,
like a man out of Bedlam. I thought it would never be over; but, at the
second hour of the morning, I heard a wee squeel, and knew that I was a
father; and so proud was I, that notwithstanding our loss, Lucky
Bringthereout and me whanged away at the cheese and bread, and drank so
briskly at the whisky and foot-yill, that, when she tried to rise and go
away, she could not stir a foot. So Tammy and I had to oxter her out
between us, and deliver the howdie herself--safe in at her own door.
CHAPTER NINE--BENJIE'S CHRISTENING
At the christening of our only bairn, Benjie, two or three remarkable
circumstances occurred, which it behoves me to relate.
It was on a cold November afternoon; and really when the bit room was all
redd up, the fire bleezing away, and the candles lighted, every thing
looked full tosh and comfortable. It was a real pleasure, after looking
out into the drift that was fleeing like mad from the east, to turn one's
neb inwards, and think that we had a civilized home to comfort us in the
dreary season. So, one after another, the bit party we had invited to
the ceremony came papping in; and the crack began to get loud and hearty;
for, to speak the truth, we were blessed with canny friends, and a good
neighbourhood. Notwithstanding, it was very curious, that I had no mind
of asking down James Batter, the weaver, honest man, though he was one of
our own elders; and in papped James, just when the company had haffins
met, with his stocking-sleeves on his arms, his nightcap on his head, and
his blue-stained apron hanging down before him, to light his pipe at our
fire.
James, when he saw his mistake, was fain to make his retreat; but we
would not hear tell of it, till he came in, and took a dram out of the
bottle, as we told him the not doing so would spoil the wean's beauty,
which is an old freak, (the small-pox, however, afterwards did that;) so,
with much persuasion, he took a chair for a gliff, and began with some of
his drolls--for he is a clever, humoursome man, as ye ever met with. But
he had now got far on with his jests, when lo! a rap came to the door,
and Mysie whipped away the bottle under her apron, saying, "Wheesht,
wheesht, for the sake of gudeness, there's the minister!"
The room had only one door, and James mistook it, running his head, for
lack of knowledge, into the open closet, just as the minister lifted the
outer-door sneck. We were all now sitting on nettles, for we were
frighted that James would be seized with a cough, for he was a wee
asthmatic; or that some, knowing there was a thief in the pantry, might
hurt good manners by breaking out into a giggle. However, all for a
considerable time was quiet, and the ceremony was performed; little
Nancy, our niece, handing the bairn upon my arm to receive its name. So,
we thought, as the minister seldom made a long stay on similar occasions,
that all would pass off well enough--But wait a wee.
There was but one of our company that had not cast up, to wit, Deacon
Paunch, the flesher, a most worthy man, but tremendously big, and grown
to the very heels; as was once seen on a wager, that his ankle was
greater than my brans. It was really a pain to all feeling Christians,
to see the worthy man waigling about, being, when weighed in his own
scales, two-and-twenty stone ten ounces, Dutch weight. Honest man, he
had had a sore fecht with the wind and the sleet, and he came in with a
shawl roppined round his neck, peching like a broken-winded horse; so
fain was he to find a rest for his weary carcass in our stuffed chintz
pattern elbow-chair by the fire cheek.
From the soughing of wind at the window, and the rattling in the lum, it
was clear to all manner of comprehension, that the night was a dismal
one; so the minister, seeing so many of his own douce folk about him,
thought he might do worse than volunteer to sit still, and try our toddy:
indeed, we would have pressed him before this to do so; but what was to
come of James Batter, who was shut up in the closet, like the spies in
the house of Rahab, the harlot, in the city of Jericho?
James began to find it was a bad business; and having been driving the
shuttle about from before daylight, he was fain to cruik his hough, and
felt round about him quietly in the dark for a chair to sit down upon,
since better might not be. But, wae's me! the cat was soon out of the
pock.
Me and the minister were just argle-bargling some few words on the
doctrine of the camel and the eye of the needle, when, in the midst of
our discourse, as all was wheesht and attentive, an awful thud was heard
in the closet, which gave the minister, who thought the house had fallen
down, such a start, that his very wig louped for a full three-eighths off
his crown. I say we were needcessitated to let the cat out of the pock
for two reasons; firstly, because we did not know what had happened; and,
secondly, to quiet the minister's fears, decent man, for he was a wee
nervous. So we made a hearty laugh of it, as well as we could, and
opened the door to bid James Batter come out, as we confessed all.
Easier said than done, howsoever. When we pulled open the door, and took
forward one of the candles, there was James doubled up, sticking twofold
like a rotten in a sneck-trap, in an old chair, the bottom of which had
gone down before him, and which, for some craize about it, had been put
out of the way by Nanse, that no accident might happen. Save us! if the
deacon had sate down upon it, pity on our brick-floor.
Well, after some ado, we got James, who was more frighted than hurt,
hauled out of his hidy-hole; and after lifting off his cowl, and sleeking
down his front hair, he took a seat beside us, apologeezing for not being
in his Sunday's garb, the which the minister, who was a free and easy
man, declared there was no occasion for, and begged him to make himself
comfortable.
Well, passing over that business, Mr Wiggie and me entered into our
humours, for the drappikie was beginning to tell on my noddle, and make
me somewhat venturesome--not to say that I was not a little proud to have
the minister in my bit housie; so, says I to him in a cosh way, "Ye may
believe me or no, Mr Wiggie, but mair than me think ye out of sight the
best preacher in the parish--nane of them, Mr Wiggie; can hold the candle
to ye, man."
"Weesht, weesht," said the body, in rather a cold way that I did not
expect, knowing him to be as proud as a peacock--"I daresay I am just
like my neighbours."
This was not quite so kind--so says I to him, "Maybe, sae, for many a one
thinks ye could not hold a candle to Mr Blowster the Cameronian, that
whiles preaches at Lugton."
This was a stramp on his corny toe. "Na, na," answered Mr Wiggie, rather
nettled; "let us drop that subject. I preach like my neighbours. Some
of them may be worse, and others better; just as some of your own trade
may make clothes worse, and some better, than yourself."
My corruption was raised. "I deny that," said I, in a brisk manner,
which I was sorry for after--"I deny that, Mr Wiggie," says I to him;
"I'll make a pair of breeches with the face of clay."
But this was only a passing breeze, during the which, howsoever, I
happened to swallow my thimble, which accidentally slipped off my middle
finger, causing both me and the company general alarm, as there were
great fears that it might mortify in the stomach; but it did not; and
neither word nor wittens of it have been seen or heard tell of from that
to this day. So, in two or three minutes, we had some few good songs,
and a round of Scotch proverbs, when the clock chapped eleven. We were
all getting, I must confess, a thought noisy; Johnny Soutter having
broken a dram-glass, and Willie Fegs couped a bottle on the bit
table-cloth; all noisy, I say, except Deacon Paunch, douce man, who had
fallen into a pleasant slumber; so, when the minister rose to take his
hat, they all rose except the Deacon, whom we shook by the arms for some
time, but in vain, to waken him. His round, oily face, good creature,
was just as if it had been cut out of a big turnip, it was so fat, fozy,
and soft; but at last, after some ado, we succeeded, and he looked about
him with a wild stare, opening his two red eyes, like Pandore oysters,
asking what had happened; and we got him hoized up on his legs, tying the
blue shawl round his bull-neck again.
Our company had not got well out of the door, and I was priding myself in
my heart, about being landlord to such a goodly turn out, when Nanse took
me by the arm, and said, "Come, and see such an unearthly sight." This
startled me, and I hesitated; but, at long and last, I went in with her,
a thought alarmed at what had happened, and--my gracious!! there on the
easy-chair, was our bonny tortoise-shell cat; Tommy, with the red morocco
collar about its neck, bruised as flat as a flounder, and as dead as a
mawk!!!
The Deacon had sat down upon it without thinking; and the poor animal,
that our neighbours' bairns used to play with, and be so fond of, was
crushed out of life without a cheep. The thing, doubtless, was not
intended, but it gave Nanse and me a very sore heart.
CHAPTER TEN--RESURRECTION MEN
About this time there arose a great sough and surmise, that some loons
were playing false with the kirkyard, howking up the bodies from their
damp graves, and harling them away to the College. Words cannot describe
the fear, and the dool, and the misery it caused. All flocked to the
kirk-yett; and the friends of the newly buried stood by the mools, which
were yet dark, and the brown newly cast divots, that had not yet taken
root, looking, with mournful faces, to descry any tokens of sinking in.
I'll never forget it. I was standing by when three young lads took
shools, and, lifting up the truff, proceeded to houk down to the coffin,
wherein they had laid the grey hairs of their mother. They looked wild
and bewildered like, and the glance of their een was like that of folk
out of a mad-house; and none dared in the world to have spoken to them.
They did not even speak to one another; but wrought on with a great
hurry, till the spades struck on the coffin lid--which was broken. The
dead-clothes were there huddled together in a nook, but the dead was
gone. I took hold of Willie Walker's arm, and looked down. There was a
cold sweat all over me;--losh me! but I was terribly frighted and eerie.
Three more graves were opened, and all just alike; save and except that
of a wee unchristened wean, which was off bodily, coffin and all.
There was a burst of righteous indignation throughout the parish; nor
without reason. Tell me that doctors and graduates must have the dead;
but tell it not to Mansie Wauch, that our hearts must be trampled in the
mire of scorn, and our best feelings laughed at, in order that a bruise
may be properly plastered up, or a sore head cured. Verily, the remedy
is worse than the disease.
But what remead? It was to watch in the session-house, with loaded guns,
night about, three at a time. I never liked to go into the kirkyard
after darkening, let-a-be to sit there through a long winter night, windy
and rainy it may be, with none but the dead around us. Save us! it was
an unco thought, and garred all my flesh creep; but the cause was
good--my corruption was raised--and I was determined not to be dauntened.
I counted and counted, but the dread day at length came and I was
summoned. All the live-long afternoon, when ca'ing the needle upon the
board, I tried to whistle Jenny Nettles, Neil Gow, and other funny tunes,
and whiles crooned to myself between hands; but my consternation was
visible, and all would not do.
It was in November; and the cold glimmering sun sank behind the
Pentlands. The trees had been shorn of their frail leaves, and the misty
night was closing fast in upon the dull and short day; but the candles
glittered at the shop windows, and leery-light-the-lamps was brushing
about with his ladder in his oxter, and bleezing flamboy sparking out
behind him. I felt a kind of qualm of faintness and down-sinking about
my heart and stomach, to the dispelling of which I took a thimbleful of
spirits, and, tying my red comforter about my neck, I marched briskly to
the session-house. A neighbour (Andrew Goldie, the pensioner) lent me
his piece, and loaded it to me. He took tent that it was only half-cock,
and I wrapped a napkin round the dog-head, for it was raining. Not being
well acquaint with guns, I kept the muzzle aye away from me; as it is
every man's duty not to throw his precious life into jeopardy.
A furm was set before the session-house fire, which bleezed brightly, nor
had I any thought that such an unearthly place could have been made to
look half so comfortable either by coal or candle; so my spirits rose up
as if a weight had been taken off them, and I wondered, in my bravery,
that a man like me could be afraid of anything. Nobody was there but a
touzy, ragged, halflins callant of thirteen, (for I speired his age,)
with a desperate dirty face, and long carroty hair, tearing a speldrin
with his teeth, which looked long and sharp enough, and throwing the skin
and lugs into the fire.
We sat for mostly an hour together, cracking the best way we could in
such a place; nor was anybody more likely to cast up. The night was now
pitmirk; the wind soughed amid the head-stones and railings of the
gentry, (for we must all die,) and the black corbies in the steeple-holes
cackled and crawed in a fearsome manner. All at once we heard a lonesome
sound; and my heart began to play pit-pat--my skin grew all rough, like a
pouked chicken--and I felt as if I did not know what was the matter with
me. It was only a false alarm, however, being the warning of the clock;
and, in a minute or two thereafter, the bell struck ten. Oh, but it was
a lonesome and dreary sound! Every chap went through my breast like the
dunt of a fore-hammer.
Then up and spak the red-headed laddie:--"It's no fair; anither should
hae come by this time. I wad rin awa hame, only I am frighted to gang
out my lane.--Do ye think the doup of that candle wad carry i' my cap?"
"Na, na, lad; we maun bide here, as we are here now.--Leave me alane?
Lord save us! and the yett lockit, and the bethrel sleeping with the key
in his breek pouches!--We canna win out now though we would," answered I,
trying to look brave, though half frightened out of my seven
senses:--"Sit down, sit down; I've baith whisky and porter wi' me. Hae,
man, there's a cawker to keep your heart warm; and set down that bottle,"
quoth I, wiping the saw-dust affn't with my hand, "to get a toast; I'se
warrant it for Deacon Jaffrey's best brown stout."
[Picture: Rev. Mr Wiggie]
The wind blew higher, and like a hurricane; the rain began to fall in
perfect spouts; the auld kirk rumbled and rowed, and made a sad soughing;
and the branches of the bourtree behind the house, where auld Cockburn
that cut his throat was burned, creaked and crazed in a frightful manner;
but as to the roaring of the troubled waters, and the bumming in the
lum-head, they were past all power of description. To make bad worse,
just in the heart of the brattle, the grating sound of the yett turning
on its rusty hinges was but too plainly heard. What was to be done? I
thought of our both running away; and then of our locking ourselves in,
and firing through the door; but who was to pull the trigger?
Gudeness watch over us! I tremble yet when I think on it. We were
perfectly between the de'il and the deep sea--either to stand still and
fire our gun, or run and be shot at. It was really a hang choice. As I
stood swithering and shaking, the laddie flew to the door, and, thrawing
round the key, clapped his back to it. Oh! how I looked at him, as he
stood for a gliff, like a magpie hearkening with his lug cocked up, or
rather like a terrier watching a rotten. "They're coming! they're
coming!" he cried out; "cock the piece, ye sumph;" while the red hair
rose up from his pow like feathers; "they're coming, I hear them tramping
on the gravel." Out he stretched his arms against the wall, and brizzed
his back against the door like mad; as if he had been Samson pushing over
the pillars in the house of Dagon. "For the Lord's sake, prime the gun,"
he cried out, "or our throats will be cut frae lug to lug before we can
cry Jack Robison! See that there's priming in the pan."
I did the best I could; but my whole strength could hardly lift up the
piece, which waggled to and fro like a cock's tail on a rainy day; my
knees knocked against one another, and though I was resigned to die--I
trust I was resigned to die--'od, but it was a frightful thing to be out
of one's bed, and to be murdered in an old session-house, at the dead
hour of night, by unearthly resurrection men, or rather let me call them
deevils incarnate, wrapt up in dreadnoughts, with blacked faces, pistols,
big sticks, and other deadly weapons.
A snuff-snuffing was heard; and, through below the door, I saw a pair of
glancing black een. 'Od, but my heart nearly louped off the bit--a
snouff, and a gur-gurring, and over all the plain tramp of a man's heavy
tackets and cuddy-heels among the gravel. Then came a great slap like
thunder on the wall; and the laddie, quitting his grip, fell down,
crying, "Fire, fire!--murder! holy murder!"
"Wha's there?" growled a deep rough voice; "open, I'm a freend."
I tried to speak, but could not; something like a halfpenny roll was
sticking in my throat, so I tried to cough it up, but it would not come.
"Gie the pass-word then," said the laddie, staring as if his eyes would
loup out; "gie the pass-word!"
First came a loud whistle, and then "Copmahagen," answered the voice.
Oh! what a relief! The laddie started up, like one crazy with joy. "Ou!
ou!" cried he, thrawing round the key, and rubbing his hands; "by jingo,
it's the bethrel--it's the bethrel--it's auld Isaac himsell."
First rushed in the dog, and then Isaac, with his glazed hat, slouched
over his brow, and his horn bowet glimmering by his knee. "Has the
French landed, do ye think? Losh keep us a'," said he, with a smile on
his half-idiot face (for he was a kind of a sort of a natural, with an
infirmity in his leg), '"od sauf us, man, put by your gun. Ye dinna mean
to shoot me, do ye? What are ye about here with the door lockit? I just
keepit four resurrectioners louping ower the wall."
"Gude guide us!" I said, taking a long breath to drive the blood from my
heart, and something relieved by Isaac's company--"Come now, Isaac, ye're
just gieing us a fright. Isn't that true, Isaac?"
"Yes, I'm joking--and what for no?--but they might have been, for
onything ye wad hae hindered them to the contrair, I'm thinking. Na, na,
ye maunna lock the door; that's no fair play."
When the door was put ajee, and the furm set fornent the fire, I gave
Isaac a dram to keep his heart up on such a cold stormy night. 'Od, but
he was a droll fellow, Isaac. He sung and leuch as if he had been
boozing in Luckie Thamson's, with some of his drucken cronies. Feint a
hair cared he about auld kirks, or kirkyards, or vouts, or
through-stanes, or dead folk in their winding-sheets, with the wet grass
growing over them, and at last I began to brighten up a wee myself; so
when he had gone over a good few funny stories, I said to him, quoth I,
"Mony folk, I daresay, mak mair noise about their sitting up in a
kirkyard than it's a' worth. There's naething here to harm us?"
"I beg to differ wi' ye there," answered Isaac, taking out his horn mull
from his coat pouch, and tapping on the lid in a queer style--"I could
gie anither version of that story. Did ye no ken of three young
doctors--Eirish students--alang with some resurrectioners, as waff and
wile as themsells, firing shottie for shottie with the guard at
Kirkmabreck, and lodging three slugs in ane of their backs, forbye firing
a ramrod through anither ane's hat?"
This was a wee alarming--"No," quoth I; "no, Isaac, man; I never heard of
it."
"But, let alane resurrectioners, do you no think there is sic a thing as
ghaists? Guide ye, man, my grannie could hae telled as muckle about them
as would have filled a minister's sermons from June to January."
"Kay--kay--that's all buff," I said. "Are there nae cutty-stool
businesses--are there nae marriages going on just now, Isaac?" for I was
keen to change the subject.
"Ye may kay--kay, as ye like, though; I can just tell ye this:--Ye'll
mind auld Armstrong with the leather breeks, and the brown three-story
wig--him that was the grave-digger? Weel, he saw a ghaist, wi' his
leeving een--aye, and what's better, in this very kirkyard too. It was a
cauld spring morning, and daylight just coming in when he came to the
yett yonder, thinking to meet his man, paidling Jock--but Jock had
sleepit in, and wasna there. Weel, to the wast corner ower yonder he
gaed, and throwing his coat ower a headstane, and his hat on the tap o't,
he dug away with his spade, casting out the mools, and the coffin
handles, and the green banes and sic like, till he stoppit a wee to take
breath.--What! are ye whistling to yoursell?" quoth Isaac to me, "and no
hearing what's God's truth?"
"Ou, ay," said I; "but ye didna tell me if onybody was cried last
Sunday?"--I would have given every farthing I had made by the needle, to
have been at that blessed time in my bed with my wife and wean. Ay, how
I was gruing! I mostly chacked off my tongue in chittering.--But all
would not do.
"Weel, speaking of ghaists--when he was resting on his spade he looked up
to the steeple, to see what o'clock it was, wondering what way Jock hadna
come, when lo! and behold, in the lang diced window of the kirk yonder,
he saw a lady a' in white, with her hands clasped thegither, looking out
to the kirkyard at him.
"He couldna believe his een, so he rubbit them with his sark sleeve, but
she was still there bodily; and, keeping ae ee on her, and anither on his
road to the yett, he drew his coat and hat to him below his arm, and aff
like mad, throwing the shool half a mile ahint him. Jock fand that; for
he was coming singing in at the yett, when his maister ran clean ower the
tap o' him, and capsized him like a toom barrel; never stopping till he
was in at his ain house, and the door baith bolted and barred at his
tail.
"Did ye ever hear the like of that, Mansie? Weel, man, I'll explain the
hail history of it to ye. Ye see--'Od! how sound that callant's
sleeping," continued Isaac; "he's snoring like a nine-year-auld!"
I was glad he had stopped, for I was like to sink through the ground with
fear; but no, it would not do.
"Dinna ye ken--sauf us! what a fearsome night this is! The trees will be
all broken. What a noise in the lum! I daresay there's some auld hag of
a witch-wife gaun to come rumble doun't. It's no the first time, I'll
swear. Hae ye a silver sixpence? Wad ye like that?" he bawled up the
chimney. "Ye'll hae heard," said he, "lang ago, that a wee murdered wean
was buried--didna ye hear a voice?--was buried below that corner--the
hearth-stane there, where the laddie's lying on?"
I had now lost my breath, so that I could not stop him.
"Ye never heard tell o't, didna ye? Weel, I'se tell't ye--Sauf us, what
swurls of smoke coming doun the chimley--I could swear something no
canny's stopping up the lum head--Gang out, and see!"
At that moment a clap like thunder was heard--the candle was driven
over--the sleeping laddie roared "Help!" and "Murder!" and "Thieves!"
and, as the furm on which we were sitting played flee backwards, cripple
Isaac bellowed out, "I'm dead!--I'm killed--shot through the head!--Oh!
oh! oh!"
Surely I had fainted away; for, when I came to myself, I found my red
comforter loosed; my face all wet--Isaac rubbing down his waistcoat with
his sleeve--the laddie swigging ale out of a bicker--and the brisk brown
stout, which, by casting its cork, had caused all the alarm,
whizz--whizz--whizzing in the chimley lug.
CHAPTER ELEVEN--TAFFY WITH THE PIGTAIL: SCHOOL RECOLLECTIONS
It was a clear starry night, in the blasty month of January, I mind it
well. The snow had fallen during the afternoon; or, as Benjie came in
crying, that "the auld wives o' the norlan sky were plucking their
geese"; and it continued dim and dowie till towards the gloaming, when,
as the road-side labourers were dandering home from their work, some with
pickaxes and others with shools, and just as our cocks and hens were
going into their beds, poor things, the lift cleared up to a sharp
freeze, and the well-ordered stars came forth glowing over the blue sky.
Between six and seven the moon rose; and I could not get my two prentices
in from the door, where they were bickering one another with snow-balls,
or maybe carhailling the folk on the street in their idle wantonness; so
I was obliged for that night to disappoint Edie Macfarlane of the pair of
black spatterdashes he was so anxious to get finished, for dancing in
next day, at Souple Jack the carpenter's grand penny-wedding.
Seeing that little more good was to be expected till morning, I came to
the resolution of shutting-in half-an-hour earlier than usual; so, as I
was carrying out the shop-shutters, with my hat over my cowl, for it was
desperately sharp, I mostly in my hurry knocked down an old man, that was
coming up to ask me, "if I was Maister Wauch the tailor and furnisher."
Having told him that I was myself, instead of a better; and having asked
him to step in, that I might have a glimpse of his face at the candle, I
saw that he was a stranger, dressed in a droll auld-farrant green
livery-coat, faced with white. His waistcoat was cut in the Parly-voo
fashion, with long lappels, and a double row of buttons down the breast;
and round his neck he had a black corded stock, such like, but not so
broad, as I afterwards wore in the volunteers, when drilling under Big
Sam. He had a well-worn scraper on his head, peaked before and behind,
with a bit crape knotted round it, which he politely took off, making a
low bow; and requesting me to bargain with him for a few articles of
grand second-hand apparel, which once belonged to his master that was
deceased, and which was now carried by himself, in a bundle under his
left oxter.
Happening never to make a trade of dealing in this line, and not very
sure like as to how the old man might have come by the bundle in these
riotous and knock-him-down times, I swithered a moment, giving my chin a
rub, before answering; and then advised him to take a step in at his
leisure to St Mary's Wynd, where he would meet in with merchants in
scores. But no; he seemed determined to strike a bargain with me; and I
heard from the man's sponsible and feasible manner of speech--for he was
an old weatherbeaten-looking body of a creature, with gleg een, a cock
nose, white locks, and a tye behind--that the clothes must have been left
him, as a kind of friendly keepsake, by his master, now beneath the
mools. Thinking by this, that if I got them at a wanworth, I might
boldly venture, I condescended to his loosing down the bundle, which was
in a blue silk napkin with yellow flowers. As he was doing this, he told
me that he was on his way home from the north to his own country, which
lay among the green Welsh hills, far away; and that he could not carry
much luggage with him, as he was obliged to travel with his baggage tied
up in a bundle, on the end of his walking-staff, over his right shoulder.
Pity me! what a grand coat it was! I thought at first it must have been
worn on the King's own back, honest man; for it was made of green velvet,
and embroidered all round about--back seams, side seams, flaps, lappels,
button-holes, nape and cuffs, with gold lace and spangles, in a manner to
have dazzled the understanding of any Jew with a beard shorter than his
arm. So, no wonder that it imposed on the like of me; and I was mostly
ashamed to make him an offer for it of a crown-piece and a dram. The
waistcoat, which was of white satin, single-breasted, and done up with
silver tinsel in a most beautiful manner, I also bought from him for a
couple of shillings, and four hanks of black thread. Though I would on
no account or consideration give him a bode for the Hessian boots, which
having cuddy-heels and long silk tossels, were by far and away over grand
for the like of a tailor, such as me, and fit for the Sunday's wear of
some fashionable Don of the first water. However, not to part uncivilly,
and be as good as my word, I brought ben Nanse's bottle, and gave him a
cawker at the shop counter; and, after taking a thimbleful to myself, to
drink a good journey to him, I bade him take care of his feet, as the
causeway was frozen, and saw the auld flunkie safely over the strand with
a candle.
Ye may easily conceive that Nanse got a surprise, when I paraded ben to
the room with the grand coat and waistcoat on, cocking up my head,
putting my hands into the haunch pockets, and strutting about more like a
peacock than a douce elder of Maister Wiggie's kirk; so just as, thinking
shame of myself, I was about to throw it off, I found something bulky at
the bottom of the side pocket, which I discovered to be a wheen papers
fastened together with green tape. Finding they were written in a real
neat hand, I put on my spectacles, and sending up the close for James
Batter, we sat round the fireside, and read away like nine-year-aulds.
The next matter of consideration was, whether, in buying the coat as it
stood, the paper belonged to me, or the old flunkie waiting-servant with
the peaked hat. James and me, after an hour and a half's argle-bargleing
pro and con, in the way of Parliament-house lawyers, came at last to be
unanimously of opinion, that according to the auld Scotch proverb of
"He that finds keeps,
And he that loses seeks,"
whatever was part or pendicle of the coat at the time of purchase, when
it hung exposed for sale over the white-headed Welshman's little finger,
became according to the law of nature and nations, as James Batter wisely
observed, part and pendicle of the property of me, Mansie Wauch, the
legal purchaser.
Notwithstanding all this, however, I was not sincerely convinced in my
own conscience; and I daresay if the creature had cast up, and come
seeking them back, I would have found myself bound to make restitution.
This is not now likely to happen; for twenty long years have come and
passed away, like the sunshine of yesterday, and neither word nor wittens
of the body have been seen or heard tell of; so, according to the course
of nature, being a white-headed old man, with a pigtail, when the bargain
was made, his dust and bones have, in all likelihood, long ago mouldered
down beneath the green turf of his own mountains, like his granfather's
before him. This being the case, I daresay it is the reader's opinion as
well as my own, that I am quite at liberty to make what use of them I
like. Concerning the poem things that came first in hand, I do not
pretend to be any judge; but James thinks he could scarcely write any
muckle better himself: so here goes; but I cannot tell you to what tune:
SONG
I
They say that other eyes are bright,
I see no eyes like thine;
So full of Heaven's serenest light,
Like midnight stars they shine.
II
They say that other cheeks are fair--
But fairer cannot glow
The rosebud in the morning air,
Or blood on mountain snow.
III
Thy voice--Oh sweet it streams to me,
And charms my raptured breast;
Like music on the moonlight sea,
When waves are lull'd to rest.
IV
The wealth of worlds were vain to give
Thy sinless heart to buy;
Oh I will bless thee while I live,
And love thee till I die!
From this song it appears a matter beyond doubt--for I know human
nature--that the flunkie's master had, in his earlier years, been deeply
in love with some beautiful young lady, that loved him again, and that
maybe, with a bounding and bursting heart, durst not let her affection be
shown, from dread of her cruel relations, who insisted on her marrying
some lord or baronet that she did not care one button about. If so,
unhappy pair, I pity them! Were we to guess our way in the dark a wee
farther, I think it not altogether unlikely, that he must have fallen in
with his sweetheart abroad, when wandering about on his travels; for what
follows seems to come as it were from her, lamenting his being called to
leave her forlorn and return home. This is all merely supposition on my
part, and in the antiquarian style, whereby much is made out of little;
but both me and James Batter are determined to be unanimously of this
opinion, until otherwise convinced to the contrary. Love is a fiery and
fierce passion every where; but I am told that we, who live in a more
favoured land, know very little of the terrible effects it sometimes
causes, and the bloody tragedies, which it has a thousand times produced,
where the heart of man is uncontrolled by reason or religion, and his
blood heated into a raging fever, by the burning sun that glows in the
heaven above his head.
Here follows the poem of Taffy's master's foreign sweetheart; which,
considering it to be a woman's handiwork, is, I daresay, not that far
amiss.
SONG OF THE SOUTH
I
Of all the garden flowers
The fairest is the rose;
Of winds that stir the bowers,
Oh! there is none that blows
Like the south--the gentle south--
For that balmy breeze is ours.
II
Cold is the frozen north;
In its stern and savage mood,
'Mid gales, come drifting forth
Bleak snows and drenching flood;
But the south--the gentle south--
Thaws to love the unwilling blood.
III
Bethink thee of the vales,
With their birds and blossoms fair--
Of the darkling nightingales,
That charm the starry air
In the south--the gentle south--
Ah! our own dear home is there.
IV
Where doth Beauty brightest glow,
With each rich and radiant charm,
Eye of light, and brow of snow,
Cherry lip, and bosom warm;
In the south--the gentle south--
There she waits, and works her harm.
V
Say, shines the Star of Love,
From the clear and cloudless sky,
The shadowy groves above,
Where the nestling ringdoves lie;
From the south--the gentle south--
Gleams its lone and lucid eye.
VI
Then turn ye to the home
Of your brethren and your bride;
Far astray your steps may roam,
But more joys for thee abide,
In the south--our gentle south--
Than in all the world beside.
After reading a lot of the unknown gentleman's compositions in prose and
verse, something like his private history, James Batter informs me, can
be made out, provided we are allowed to eke a little here and there.
That he was an Englisher we both think amounts to a probability; and,
from having an old "Taffy was a Welshman" for a flunkie, it would not be
out of the order of nature to jealouse, that he may have resided
somewhere among the hills, where he had picked him up and taken him into
his kitchen, promoting him thereafter, for sobriety and good conduct, to
be his body servant, and gentleman's gentleman. Where he was born,
however, is a matter of doubt, and also who were his folks; but of a
surety, he was either born with a silver spoon in his mouth, or rose from
the ranks like many another great man. That, however, is a matter of
moonshine; we are all descended in a direct line from Adam. Where he was
educated does not appear; but there can scarcely be a shadow of doubt,
that he was for a considerable while at some school or other, where he
had a number of cronies. In proof of this, and to show that we have good
reasons for our suppositions, James recommends me to print the following
rigmarole meditations, on the top of which is written in half-text,
SCHOOL RECOLLECTIONS.
"--They who in the vale of years advance,
And the dark eve is closing on their way,
When on the mind the recollections glance
Of early joy, and Hope's delightful day,
Behold, in brighter hues than those of truth,
The light of morning on the fields of youth."
SOUTHEY.
The morning being clear and fine, full of Milton's "vernal delight and
joy," I determined on a saunter; the inclemency of the weather having,
for more than a week, kept me a prisoner at home. Although now advanced
into the heart of February, a great fall of snow had taken place; the
roads were blocked up; the mails obstructed; and, while the merchant
grumbled audibly for his letters, the politician, no less chagrined,
conned over and over again his dingy rumpled old newspaper, compelled "to
eat the leek of his disappointment." The wind, which had blown
inveterately steady from the surly north-east, had veered, however,
during the preceding night, to the west; and, as it were by the spell of
an enchanter, an instant thaw commenced. In the low grounds the snow
gleamed forth in patches of a pearly whiteness; but, on the banks of
southern exposure, the green grass and the black trodden pathway again
showed themselves. The vicissitudes of twenty-four hours were indeed
wonderful. Instead of the sharp frost, the pattering hail, and the
congealed streams, we had the blue sky, the vernal zephyr, and the genial
sunshine; the stream murmuring with a broader wave, as if making up for
the season spent in the fetters of congelation; and that luxurious flow
of the spirits, which irresistibly comes over the heart, at the
re-assertion of Nature's suspended vigour.
As I passed on under the budding trees, how delightful it was to hear the
lark and the linnet again at their cheerful songs, to be aware that now
"the winter was over and gone;" and to feel that the prospect of summer,
with its lengthening days, and its rich variety of fruits and flowers,
lay fully before us. There is something within us that connects the
spring of the year with the childhood of our existence, and it is more
especially at that season, that the thrilling remembrances of long
departed pleasures are apt to steal into the thoughts; the re-awakening
of nature calling us, by a fearful contrast, to the contemplation of joys
that never can return, while all the time the heart is rendered more
susceptible by the beauteous renovation in the aspect of the external
world.
This sensation pressed strongly on my mind, as I chanced to be passing
the door of the village school, momentarily opened for the admission of
one, creeping along somewhat tardily with satchel on back, and "shining
morning face." What a sudden burst of sound was emitted--what harmonious
discord--what a commixture of all the tones in the vocal gamut, from the
shrill treble to the deep underhum! A chord was touched which vibrated
in unison; boyish days and school recollections crowded upon me;
pleasures long vanished; feelings long stifled; and friendships--aye,
everlasting friendships--cut asunder by the sharp stroke of death!
A public school is a petty world within itself--a wheel within a
wheel--in so far as it is entirely occupied with its own concerns,
affords its peculiar catalogue of virtues and vices, its own cares,
pleasures, regrets, anticipations, and disappointments--in fact, a
Lilliputian facsimile of the great one. By grown men, nothing is more
common than the assertion that childhood is a perfect Elysium; but it is
a false supposition that school-days are those of unalloyed carelessness
and enjoyment. It seems to be a great deal too much overlooked, that
"little things are great to little men;" and perhaps the mind of boyhood
is more active in its conceptions--more alive to the impulses of pleasure
and pain--in other words, has a more extended scope of sensations, than
during any other portion of our existence. Its days are not those of
lack-occupation; they are full of stir, animation, and activity, for it
is then we are in training for after life; and, when the hours of school
restraint glide slowly over, "like wounded snakes," the clock, that
chimes to liberty, sends forth the blood with a livelier flow; and
pleasure thus derives a double zest from the bridle that duty has
imposed, joy being generally measured according to the difficulty of its
attainment. What delight in life have we ever experienced more exquisite
than that, which flowed at once in upon us from the teacher's "_bene_,
_bene_," our own self-approbation, and release from the tasks of the
day?--the green fields around us wherein to ramble, the stream beside us
wherein to angle, the world of games and pastimes, "before us where to
choose." Words are inadequate to express the thrill of transport, with
which, on the rush from the school-house door, the hat is waved in air,
and the shout sent forth!
Then what a variety of amusements succeed each other. Every month has
its favourite ones. The sports-man does not more keenly scrutinize his
kalendar for the commencement of the trouting, grouse shooting, or
hare-hunting season, than the younker for the time of flying kites,
bowling at cricket, football, spinning peg-tops, and playing at marbles.
Pleasure is the focus, which it is the common aim to approximate; and the
mass is guided by a sort of unpremeditated social compact, which draws
them out of doors as soon as meals are discussed, with a sincere thirst
of amusement, as certainly as rooks congregate in spring to discuss the
propriety of building nests, or swallows in autumn to deliberate in
conclave on the expediency of emigration.
Then how perfectly glorious was the anticipation of a holiday--a long
summer day of liberty and ease! In anticipation it was a thing boundless
and endless, a foretaste of Elysium. It extended from the _prima luce_,
from the earliest dawn of radiance that streaked the "severing clouds in
yonder east," through the sun's matin, meridian, postmeridian, and vesper
circuit; from the disappearance of Lucifer in the re-illumined skies, to
his evening entree in the character of Hesperus. Complain not of the
brevity of life; 'tis _men_ that are idle; a thousand things could be
contrived and accomplished in that space, and a thousand schemes were
devised by us, when _boys_, to prevent any portion of it passing over
without improvement. We pursued the fleet angel of time through all his
movements till he blessed us.
With these and similar thoughts in my mind, I strayed down to the banks
of the river, and came upon the very spot, which, in those long-vanished
years, had been a favourite scene of our boyish sports. The impression
was overpowering; and as I gazed silently around me, my mind was subdued
to that tone of feeling which Ossian so finely designates "the joy of
grief." The trees were the same, but older, like myself; seemingly
unscathed by the strife of years--and herein was a difference. Some of
the very bushes I recognized as our old lurking-places at "hunt the
hare"; and, on the old fantastic beech-tree, I discovered the very bough
from which we were accustomed to suspend our swings. What
alterations--what sad havoc had time, circumstances, the hand of fortune,
and the stroke of death, made among us since then! How were the thoughts
of the heart, the hopes, the pursuits, the feelings changed; and, in
almost every instance, it is to be feared, for the worse! As I gazed
around me, and paused, I could not help reciting aloud to myself the
lines of Charles Lamb, so touching in their simple beauty.
"I have had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
Some they have died, and some they have left me,
And some are taken from me, all are departed;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces."
The fresh green plat, by the brink of the stream, lay before me. It was
there that we played at leap-frog, or gathered dandelions for our tame
rabbits; and, at its western extremity, were still extant the reliques of
the deal-seat, at which we used to assemble on autumn evenings to have
our round of stories. Many a witching tale and wondrous tradition hath
there been told; many a marvel of "figures that visited the glimpses of
the moon"; many a recital of heroic and chivalrous enterprise,
accomplished ere warriors dwindled away to the mere puny strength of
mortals. Sapped by the wind and rain, the planks lay in a sorely decayed
and rotten state, looking in their mossiness like a sign-post of
desolation, a memento of terrestrial instability. Traces of the knife
were still here and there visible upon the trunks of the supporting
trees; and with little difficulty I could decipher some well-remembered
initials.
"Cold were the hands that carved them there."
It is, no doubt, wonderful that the human mind can retain such a mass of
recollections; yet we seem to be, in general, little aware that for one
solitary incident in our lives, preserved by memory, hundreds have been
buried in the silent charnel-house of oblivion. We peruse the past, like
a map of pleasing or melancholy recollections, and observe lines crossing
and re-crossing each other in a thousand directions; some spots are
almost blank; others faintly traced; and the rest a confused and
perplexed labyrinth. A thousand feelings that, in their day and hour,
agitated our bosoms, are now forgotten; a thousand hopes, and joys, and
apprehensions, and fears, are vanished without a trace. Schemes, which
cost us much care in their formation, and much anxiety in their
fulfilment, have glided, like the clouds of yesterday, from our
remembrance. Many a sharer of our early friendships, and of our boyish
sports, we think of no more; they are as if they had never been, till
perhaps some accidental occurrence, some words in conversation, some
object by the wayside, or some passenger in the street, attract our
notice--and then, as if awaking from a perplexing trance, a light darts
in upon our darkness; and we discover that thus some one long ago spoke;
that there something long ago happened; or that the person, who just
passed us like a vision, shared smiles with us long, long years ago, and
added a double zest to the enjoyments of our childhood.
Of our old class-fellows, of those whose days were of "a mingled yarn"
with ours, whose hearts blended in the warmest reciprocities of
friendship, whose joys, whose cares, almost whose wishes were in common,
how little do we know? how little will even the severest scrutiny enable
us to discover? Yet, at one time, we were inseparable "like Juno's
swans"; we were as brothers, nor dreamt we of ought else, in the
susceptibility of our youthful imagination, than that we were to pass
through all the future scenes of life, side by side; and, mutually
supporting and supported, lengthen out the endearments, the ties, and the
feelings of boyhood unto the extremities of existence. What a fine but a
fond dream--alas, how wide of the cruel reality! The casual relation of
a traveller may discover to us where one of them resided or resides. The
page of an obituary may accidentally inform us how long one of them
lingered on the bed of sickness, and by what death he died. Some we may
perhaps discover in elevated situations, from which worldly pride might
probably prevent their stooping down to recognize us. Others, immersed
in the labyrinths of business, have forgot all, in the selfish pursuits
of earthly accumulation. While the rest, the children of misfortune and
disappointment, we may occasionally find out amid the great multitude of
the streets, to whom life is but a desert of sorrow, and against whom
prosperity seems to have shut for ever her golden gates.
Such are the diversities of condition, the varieties of fortune to which
man is exposed, while climbing the hill of probationary difficulty. And
how sublimely applicable are the words of Job, expatiating on the
uncertainty of human existence: "Man dieth and wasteth away; yea, man
giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea,
and the flood decayeth and drieth up; so man lieth down and riseth not
till the heavens be no more."
While standing on the same spot, where of yore the boyish multitude
congregated in pursuit of their eager sports, a silent awe steals over
the bosom, and the heart desponds at the thought, that all these once
smiling faces are scattered now! Some, mayhap, tossing on the waste and
perilous seas; some the merchants of distant lands; some fighting the
battles of their country; others dead--inhabitants of the dark and narrow
house, and hearing no more the billows of life, that thunder and break
above their low and lonely dwelling-place!
* * * * *
Nanse, who was sitting by the table, knitting a pair of light-blue
worsted stockings for Benjie, and myself, who was sewing on the buttons
of a velveteen jacket for a country lad, were, I must say, not a little
delighted, not only with the way in which the Welshman's late master had
spoken of his school-fellows, but with the manner in which James Batter,
with his specs on, had read it over to us. Upon my word--and that of an
elder--I do not believe that even Mr Wiggie himself could have done the
thing greater justice. It was just as if he had been a play-actor man,
spouting Douglas's tragedy.
Having folded up that paper, and turned over not a few others, the
docketings of which he read out to us, James at last says, "Ou ay, here
it is. I think I can now prove to ye, that the gentlemen's sweetheart
died abroad; and that, likely from her name--for it is here
mentioned--she must have been a Portugee or Spaniard."
"Ay, let us hear it," cried Nanse. "Do, like a man, let us hear it,
James; for I delight above a' things to hear about love-stories. Do ye
mind, Maister," she said, "when ye was so deep in love aince yoursell?"
"Foolish woman," I said, giving her a kind of severe look; "is that all
your manners to interrupt Mr Batter? If ye'll just keep a calm sough,
ye'll hear the long and the short o't, in good time."
By this, James, who did not relish interruption, and was a thought
fidgety in his natural temper, had laid down the paper on the table,
snuffed the candle, and raised his spectacles on his brow. But I said to
him, "Excuse freedoms, James, and be so good as resume your discourse."
Then wishing to smooth him down, I added, by way of compliment--"Do go
on; for you really are a prime reader. Nature surely intended ye for a
minister."
"Dinna flatter me," said James; looking, however, rather proudishly at
what I had said, and replacing his glasses on the brig of his nose, he
then read us a screed of metre to the following effect; part of which, I
am free to confess, is rather above my comprehension. But, never mind.
ELEGIAC STANZAS
I
'Tis midnight deep; the full round moon,
As 'twere a spectre, walks the sky;
The balmy breath of gentlest June
Just stirs the stream that murmurs by;
Above me frowns the solemn wood;
Nature, methinks, seems Solitude
Embodied to the eye.
II
Yes, 'tis a season and a scene,
Inez, to think on thee; the day,
With stir and strife, may come between
Affection and thy beauty's ray,
But feeling here assumes control,
And mourns my desolated soul
That thou are rapt away!
III
Thou wert a rainbow to my sight,
The storms of life before thee fled;
The glory and the guiding light,
That onward cheer'd and upward led;
From boyhood to this very hour,
For me, and only me, thy flower
Its fragrance seem'd to shed.
IV
Dark though the world for me might show
Its sordid faith and selfish gloom,
Yet 'mid life's wilderness to know
For me that sweet flower shed its bloom,
Was joy, was solace:--thou art gone--
And hope forsook me, when the stone
Sank darkly o'er thy tomb.
V
And art thou dead? I dare not think
That thus the solemn truth can be;
And broken is the only link
That chain'd youth's pleasant thoughts to me!
Alas! that thou couldst know decay,
That, sighing, I should live to say
"The cold grave holdeth thee!"
VI
For me thou shon'st, as shines a star,
Lonely, in clouds when Heaven is lost;
Thou wert my guiding light afar,
When on misfortune's billows tost:
Now darkness hath obscured that light,
And I am left in rayless night,
On Sorrow's lowering coast.
VII
And art thou gone? I deem'd thee some
Immortal essence--art thou gone?--
I saw thee laid within the tomb,
And turn'd away to mourn alone:
Once to have loved, is to have loved
Enough; and, what with thee I proved,
Again I'll seek in none.
VIII
Earth in thy sight grew faery land;--
Life was Elysium--thought was love,--
When, long ago, hand clasp'd in hand,
We roam'd through Autumn's twilight grove;
Or watch'd the broad uprising moon
Shed, as it were, a wizard noon,
The blasted heath above.
IX
Farewell!--and must I say farewell?--
No--thou wilt ever be to me
A present thought; thy form shall dwell
In love's most holy sanctuary;
Thy voice shall mingle with my dreams,
And haunt me, when the shot-star gleams
Above the rippling sea.
X
Never revives the past again;
But still thou art, in lonely hours,
To me earth's heaven,--the azure main,--
Soft music,--and the breath of flowers;
My heart shall gain from thee its hues;
And Memory give, though Truth refuse,
The bliss that once was ours!
After this, Mr Batter read over to us a great many other curiosities,
about foreign things wonderful to hear, and foreign places wonderful to
behold. Moreover, also, of divers adventures by sea and land. But the
time wearing late, and Tammie Bodkin having brought ben the shop-key,
after putting on the window-shutters, Nanse and I, out of
good-fellowship, thought we could not do less than ask the honest man,
whose cleverality had diverted us so much, to sit still and take a chack
of supper;--James being up in the air, from having been allowed to ride
on his hobby so briskly, made only a show of objection; so, after a
rizzard haddo, we had a jug of toddy, and sat round the fire with our
feet on the fender--Benjie having fallen asleep with his clothes on, and
been carried away to his bed. Poor bit mannikin!
I never remember to have heard James so prime either on Boston or
Josephus; but as his heart warmed with the liquor and the good fire, for
it was a cold rawish night,--he returned to Taffy with the pigtail's
master; and insisted, that as we had heard about his foreign sweetheart's
death, which he appeared to have taken so much to heart, we should just
bear with him once more, as he read over what he called her dirgie, which
was written on a half-sheet of grey mouldy paper--as if handed down from
the days of the Covenanters. It jingles well; and both Nanse and me
thought it gey and pretty; but eh! if ye only had heard how James Batter
read it. It beat cock-fighting.
DIRGE
I
Weep not for her!--Oh she was far too fair,
Too pure to dwell on this guilt-tainted earth!
The sinless glory, and the golden air
Of Zion, seem'd to claim her from her birth;
A Spirit wander'd from its native Zone,
Which, soon discovering, took her for its own:
Weep not for Her!
II
Weep not for her!--Her span was like the sky,
Whose thousand stars shine beautiful and bright;
Like flowers that know not what it is to die;
Like long-linked, shadeless months of Polar light;
Like music floating o'er a waveless lake,
While Echo answers from the flowery brake:
Weep not for Her!
III
Weep not for her!--She died in early youth,
Ere hope had lost its rich romantic hues;
When human bosoms seem'd the homes of truth,
And earth still gleam'd with beauty's radiant dews.
Her summer prime waned not to days that freeze;
Her wine of life was run not to the lees:
Weep not for Her!
IV
Weep not for her!--By fleet or slow decay,
It never grieved her bosom's core to mark
The playmates of her childhood wane away,
Her prospects wither, or her hopes grow dark;
Translated by her God with spirit shriven,
She pass'd as 'twere in smiles from earth to heaven.
Weep not for Her!
V
Weep not for her!--It was not hers to feel
The miseries that corrode amassing years,
'Gainst dreams of baffled bliss the heart to steel,
To wander sad down age's vale of tears,
As whirl the withered leaves from friendship's tree,
And on earth's wintry wold alone to be:
Weep not for Her!
VI
Weep not for her!--She is an angel now,
And treads the sapphire floors of paradise:
All darkness wiped from her refulgent brow,
Sin, sorrow, suffering, banish'd from her eyes;
Victorious over death, to her appear
The vista'd joys of heaven's eternal year;
Weep not for Her!
VII
Weep not for her!--Her memory is the shrine
Of pleasant thoughts, soft as the scent of flowers,
Calm as on windless eve the sun's decline,
Sweet as the song of birds among the bowers,
Rich as a rainbow with its hues of light,
Pure as the moonshine of an autumn night:
Weep not for Her!
VIII
Weep not for her!--There is no cause for woe;
But rather nerve the spirit that it walk
Unshrinking o'er the thorny paths below,
And from earth's low defilements keep thee back:
So, when a few, fleet, severing years have flown,
She'll meet thee at heaven's gate--and lead thee on!
Weep not for Her.
[Picture: The first day I got my regimentals on]
Having right and law on my side, as any man of judgment may perceive with
half an eye, nothing could hinder me, if I so liked, to print the whole
bundle; but, in the meantime, we must just be satisfied with the
foregoing curiosities, which we have picked out. All that I have set
down concerning myself, the reader may take on credit as open and
even-down truth; but as to whether Taffy's master's nick-nackets be true
or false, every one is at liberty, in this free country, to think for
himself. Old sparrows are not easily caught with chaff; and unless I saw
a proper affidavit, I would not, for my own part, pin my faith to a
single word of them. But every man his own opinion,--that's my motto.
In the Yankee Almanack of Poor Richard, which, besides the Pilgrim's
Progress and the Book of Martyrs, I whiles read on the week-days for a
little diversion, I see it is set down with great rationality, that "we
should never buy for the bargain sake." Experience teaches all men, and
I found that to my cost in this matter; for, cheap as the coat and
waistcoat seemed which I had bought from the auld-farrant Welsh flunkie
with the peaked hat and the pigtail, I made no great shakes of them after
all. Neither the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, nor any other of the grand
public characters, ever made me an offer for them, as some had led me to
expect; and the play house people lay all as quiet as ducks in a storm.
After hanging at my window for two or three months, collecting all the
idle wives and weans of the parish to glour and gaze at them from morn
till night, during which time I got half of my lozens broken, by their
knocking one another's heads through, I was obliged to get quit of them
at last, by selling them to a man and his son, that kept dancing dogs,
Pan's pipes, and a tambourine; and that made a livelihood by tumbling on
a carpet in the middle of the street, the one playing "Carle now the
King's come," as the other whummled head over heels, and then jumped up
into the air, cutting capers, to show that not a bone of his body had
been broken.
Knowing that the raiment was not for everybody's wear, and that the like
of it was not to be found in a country side, I put a decent price on it,
"foreign birds with fair feathers" aye taking the top place of the
market. When I mentioned forty shillings to the dancing-dog man and his
son, they said nothing, but, putting their tongues in their cheeks, took
up their hats, wishing me a good day. Next forenoon, however, a
sleight-of-hand character having arrived, together with a bass drum and a
bugle horn, that was likely to take the shine out of them, and maybe also
purchase my article--which was capital for his purpose, having famous
wide sleeves--they came back in less than no time, asking the liberty,
before finally concluding with me, of carrying them home to their
lodgings for ten minutes to see how they would fit; and, in that case,
offering me thirty-five shillings and an old flute. The old flute was
for next to no use at all, except for wee Benjie, poor thing, too-tooing
on, to keep him good, and I told them so, myself being no musicianer; but
would take their offer not to quarrel. It would not do unless some of us
were timber-tuned; men not being meant for blackbirds.
Home went the man, and home went the son, and home went my grand coat and
waistcoat over his arm; and putting my hands into my breeches pockets, as
if I had satisfactorily concluded a great transaction, I marched ben to
the back shop, and took my needle into play, as if nothing in the world
had happened; but where their home lay, or whether the raiment fitted or
not, goodness knows, having never to this blessed hour heard word or
wittens of either of them. Such a pair of blacks! It just shows us how
simple we Scotch folk are. The London man swindled me out of my lawful
room-rent and my Sunday velveteens; the Eirishers, as will be but too
soon seen, made free with my hen-house, committing felonious robbery at
the dead hour of night; and here a decent-looking old Welshman, with a
pigtail tied with black tape, palmed a grand coat and waistcoat upon me,
that were made away with by a man and his son, a devilish deal too long
out of Botany Bay.
Benjie, poor doggie, was vastly proud of the flute, which he fifed away
on morning, noon, and night; and, for more than a fortnight, would not go
to his bed unless it was laid under his pillow. But for me I could not
bide the sight of it, knowing whose hands it had been in, and reminding
me as it did of the depravity of human nature.
Verily, verily, this is a wonderfully wicked world. To find out the two
vagabonds would have been hopeless; unless I could have followed them to
the Back of Beyond, where the mare foaled the fiddler.
CHAPTER TWELVE--MANSIE ON THE OLD VOLUNTEERING DAYS
The sough of war and invasion flew over the face of the land, at this
time, like a great whirlwind; and the hearts of men died within their
persons with fear and trembling. The accounts that came from abroad were
just dreadful beyond all power of description. Death stalked about from
place to place, like a lawless tyrant, and human blood was spilt like
water; while the heads of crowned kings were cut off; and great dukes and
lords were thrown into dark dungeons, or obligated to flee for their
lives into foreign lands, and to seek out hiding-places of safety beyond
the waves of the sea. What was worst of all, our trouble seemed a
smittal one; the infection spread around; and even our own land, which
all thought hale and healthy, began to show symptoms of the plague-spot.
Losh me! that men, in their seven senses, could have ever shown
themselves so infatuated. Johnny Wilkes and liberty was but a joke to
what was hanging over the head of the nation, brewing like a dark tempest
which was to swallow it up. Bills were posted up through night, by hands
that durst not have been seen at the work through day; and the agents of
the Spirit of Darkness, calling themselves the Friends of the People,
held secret meetings, and hatched plots to blow up our blessed King and
Constitution.
Yet the business, though fearsome in the main, was in some parts almost
laughable. Everything was to be divided, and every one made alike:
houses and lands were to be distributed by lot; and the mighty man and
the beggar--the auld man and the hobble-de-hoy--the industrious man and
the spendthrift--the maimed, the cripple, and the blind, the clever man
of business and the haveril simpleton, made all just brethren, and alike.
Save us! but to think of such nonsense!!--At one of their meetings, held
at the sign of the Tappet Hen and the Tankard, there was a prime fight of
five rounds between Tammy Bowsie the snab, and auld Thrashem the dominie
with the boulie-back about their drawing cuts which was to get Dalkeith
Palace, and which Newbottle Abbey. Oh, sic riff-raff!!!
What was worst of all, it was an agreed and determined on thing among
them, these wise men of Gotham, to abolish all kings, clergy, and
religion, as havers. No, no--what need had such wise pows as theirs of
being taught or lectured to? What need had such feelosophers of having a
king to rule over, or a Parliament to direct them? There was not a
single one among their number, that did not think himself, in his own
conceit, as wise as Solomon or William Pitt, and as mighty as King
Nebuchadnezzar.
It was full time to put a stop to all such nonsense. The newspapers told
us what it had done abroad; and what better could we expect from it at
home? Weeds will not grow into flowers anywhere, and no man can handle
tar without being defiled; the first of which comparisons is I daresay
true, and the latter must be--for we read of it in Scripture. Well, as I
was saying, it was a brave notion of the king to put the loyalty of his
land to the test, that the daft folk might be dismayed, and that the
clanjamphrey might be tumbled down before their betters, like
windle-straes in a hurricane:--and so they were.
Such a crowd that day, when the names of the volunteers came to be taken
down! No house could have held them, even though many had not stepped
forward who thought to have got themselves enrolled. Losh me! did they
think the government was so far gone, as to take characters with deformed
legs, and thrawn necks, and blind eyes, and hashie lips, and grey hairs
on their pows? No, no, they were not put to such straits; though it
showed that the right spirit was in the creatures, and that, though their
bodies might be deformed, they had consciences to direct them, and souls
to be saved like their neighbours.
I will never forget the first day that I got my regimentals on; and when
I looked myself in the bit glass, just to think I was a sodger, who never
in my life could thole the smell of powder, and had not fired anything
but a penny cannon on a Fourth of June, when I was a haflins callant. I
thought my throat would have been cut with the black corded stock; for,
whenever I looked down, without thinking like, my chaff-blade played
clank against it, with such a dunt that I mostly chacked my tongue off.
And, as to the soaping of the hair, that beat cock-fighting. It was
really fearsome; but I could scarcely keep from laughing when I glee'd
round over my shoulder, and saw a glazed leather queue hanging for half
an ell down the braid of my back, and a pickle horse-hair curling out
like a rotten's tail at the far end of it. And then the worsted taissels
on the shoulders--and the lead buttons--and the yellow facings,--oh, but
it was grand! I sometimes fancied myself a general, and giving the word
of command. Then the pipeclayed breeches--but that was a sore job; many
a weary arm did they give me--beat-beating camstane into them.
The pipeclaying of the breeches, I was saying, was the most fashious job,
let alone courtship, that ever mortal man put his hand to. Indeed, there
was no end to the rubbing, and scrubbing, and brushing, and fyling, and
cleaning; for to the like of me, who was not well accustomed to the
thing, the whitening was continually coming off and destroying my red
coat or my black leggings. I had mostly forgot to speak of the birse for
cleaning out the pan, and the piker for clearing the motion-hole. But
time enough till we come to firing.
Big Sam, who was a sergeant of the Fencibles, and enough to have put five
Frenchmen to flight any day of the year, whiles came to train us; and a
hard battle he had with more than me. I have already said, that nature
never intended me for the soldiering trade; and why should I hesitate
about confessing, that Sam never got me out of the awkward squad? But I
had two or three neighbours to keep me in countenance. A weary work we
made with the right, left--left, right,--right-wheel, left-wheel--to the
right about,--at ease,--attention,--by sections,--and all the rest of it.
But then there is nothing in the course of nature that is useless; and
what was to hinder me from acting as orderly, or being one of the
camp-colour-men on head days?
We all cracked very crouse about fighting, when we heard of garments
rolled in blood only from abroad; but one dark night we got a fleg in
sober earnest.
There were signal-posts on the hills, up and down all the country, to
make alarms in case of necessity; and I never went to my bed without
giving first a glee eastward to Falside-brae, and then another westward
to the Calton-hill, to see that all the country was quiet. I had just
papped in--it might be about nine o'clock--after being gey hard drilled,
and sore between the shoulders, with keeping my head back and playing the
dumb-bells; when, lo and behold! instead of getting my needful rest in my
own bed, with my wife and wean, jow went the bell, and row-de-dow gaed
the drums, and all in a minute was confusion and uproar. I was seized
with a severe shaking of the knees, and a flang at the heart; but I
hurried, with my nightcap on, up to the garret window, and there I too
plainly saw that the French had landed--for all the signal posts were in
a bleeze. This was in reality to be a soldier! I never got such a
fright since the day I was cleckit. Then such a noise and hullabaloo in
the streets--men, women, and weans, all hurrying through ither, and
crying with loud voices, amid the dark, as if the day of judgment had
come, to find us all unprepared; and still the bells ringing, and the
drums beating to arms. Poor Nanse was in a bad condition, and I was well
worse; she, at the fears of losing me, their bread-winner; and I, with
the grief of parting from her, the wife of my bosom, and going out to
scenes of blood, bayonets, and gunpowder, none of which I had the least
stomach for. Our little son, Benjie, mostly grat himself blind, pulling
me back by the cartridge-box; but there was no contending with fate, so
he was obliged at last to let go.
Notwithstanding all that, we behaved ourselves like true-blue Scotsmen
called forth to fight the battles of our country; and if the French had
come, as they did not come, they would have found that to their cost, as
sure as my name is Mansie. However, it turned out as well, in the
meantime, that it was a false alarm, and that the thief Buonaparte had
not landed at Dunbar, as it was jealoused: so, after standing under arms
for half the night, with nineteen rounds of ball-cartridge in our boxes,
and the baggage carts all loaden, and ready to follow us to the field of
battle, we were sent home to our beds; and, notwithstanding the awful
state of alarm to which I had been put, never in the course of my life
did I enjoy six hours sounder sleep; for we were hippet the morning
parade, on account of our gallant men being kept so long without natural
rest. It is wise to pick a lesson even out of our adversities; and, at
all events, it was at this time fully shown to us the necessity of our
regiment being taught the art of firing--a tactic to the length of which
it had never yet come.
Next day, out we were taken for the whilk purpose; and we went through
our motions bravely. Prime--load--handle cartridge--ram down
cartridge--return bayonets--and shoulder hoop--make ready--present--fire.
Such was the confusion, and the flurry, and the din of the report, that I
was so flustered and confused, thinking that half of us would have been
shot dead, that--will ye believe it?--I never yet had mind to pull the
tricker. Howsomever, I minded aye with the rest to ram down a fresh
cartridge at the word of command; and something told me I would repent
not doing like the rest (for I had half a kind of notion that my piece
never went off); so, when the firing was over, the sergeant of the
company ordered all that had loaded pieces to come to the front. I
swithered a little, not being very sure like what to do; but some five or
six stept out; and our corporal, on looking at my piece, ordered me with
the rest to the front. It was just by all the world like an execution;
we six, in the face of the regiment, in a little line, going through our
manoeuvres at the word of command; and I could hardly stand upon my feet,
with a queer feeling of fear and trembling, till at length the terrible
moment came. I looked straight forward--for I durst not jee my head
about, and turned to the hills and green trees, as if I was never to see
nature more.
Our pieces were cocked; and at the word--Fire!--off they went. It was an
act of desperation to draw the tricker, and I had hardly well shut my
blinkers, when I got such a thump in the shoulder, as knocked me
backwards head-over-heels on the grass. Before I came to my senses, I
could have sworn I was in another world; but, when I opened my eyes,
there were the men at ease, holding their sides, laughing like to spleet
them; and my gun lying on the ground two or three ell before me.
When I found myself not killed outright, I began to rise up. As I was
rubbing my breek-knees, I saw one of the men going forward to lift up the
fatal piece; and my care for the safety of others overcame the sense of
my own peril,--"Let alane--let alane!" cried I to him, "and take care of
yoursell, for it has to gang off five times yet."
The laughing was now terrible; but being little of a soldier, I thought,
in my innocence, that we should hear as many reports as I had crammed
cartridges down her muzzle. This was a sore joke against me for a length
of time; but I tholed it patiently, considering cannily within myself,
that knowledge is only to be bought by experience, and that, if we can
credit the old song, even Johnny Cope himself did not learn the art of
war in a single morning.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN--MANSIE IN SEARCH OF A CURE FOR CHINCOUGH
Some folks having been bred up from their cradle to the writing of books,
of course naturally do the thing regularly and scientifically; but that's
not to be expected from the like of me, that have followed no other way
of life than the shaping and sewing line. It behoves me, therefore, to
beg pardon for not being able to carry my history aye regularly straight
forward, and for being forced whiles to zig-zag and vandyke. For
instance, I clean forgot to give, in its proper place, a history of one
of my travels, with Benjie in my bosom, in search of a cure for the
chincough.
My son Benjie was, at this dividual time, between four and five years
old, when--poor wee chieldie!--he took the chincough, and in more
respects than one was not in a good way; so the doctor recommended his
mother and me, for the change of air, first to carry him down a coal-pit,
and syne to the limekilns at Cousland.
The coal-pit I could not think of at all; to say nothing of the danger of
swinging down into the bowels of the earth in a creel, the thing aye put
me in mind of the awful place, where the wicked, after death and
judgment, howl, and hiss, and gnash their teeth; and where, unless Heaven
be more merciful than we are just--we may all be soon enough. So I could
not think of that, till other human means failed; and I determined, in
the first place, to hire Tammie Dobbie's cart, and try a smell of the
fresh air about the limekilns.
It was a fine July forenoon, and the cart, filled with clean straw, was
at the door by eleven o'clock; so our wife handed us out a pair of
blankets to hap round me, and syne little Benjie into my arms, with his
big-coatie on, and his leather cappie tied below his chin, and a bit red
worsted comforterie round his neck; for, though the sun was warm and
pleasant withal, we dreaded cold, as the doctor bade us. Oh, he was a
fine old man, Doctor Hartshorn!
We had not well got out of the town, when Tammie Dobbie louped up on the
fore-tram. He was a crouse, cantie auld cock, having seen much and not
little in his day; so he began a pleasant confab, pointing out all the
gentlemen's houses round the country, and the names of the farms on the
hill sides. To one like me, whose occupations tie him to the town-foot,
it really is a sweet and grateful thing to be let loose, as it were, for
a wee among the scenes of peace and quietness, where nature is in a way
wild and wanton--where the clouds above our heads seem to sail along more
grandly over the bosom of the sky, and the wee birds to cheep and churm,
from the hedges among the fields, with greater pleasure, feeling that
they are God's free creatures.
I cannot tell how many thoughts came over my mind, one after another,
like the waves of the sea down on Musselburgh beach; but especially the
days when I was a wee callant with a daidly at Dominie Duncan's school,
were fresh in my mind as if the time had been but yesterday; though much,
much was I changed since then, being at that time a little, careless,
ragged laddie, and now the head of a family, earning bread to my wife and
wean by the sweat of my brow. I thought on the blythe summer days when I
dandered about the braes and bushes seeking birds'-nests with Alick
Bowsie and Samuel Search; and of the time when we stood upon one
another's backs to speil up to the ripe cherries that hung over the
garden walls of Woodburn. Awful changes had taken place since then. I
had seen Sammy die of the black jaundice--an awful spectacle! and poor
Alick Bowsie married to a drucken randie, that wore the breeks, and did
not allow the misfortunate creature the life of a dog.
When I was meditating thus, after the manner of the patriarch Isaac,
there was a pleasant sadness at my heart, though it was like to loup to
my mouth; but I could not get leave to enjoy it long for the tongue of
Tammie Dobbie. He bade me look over into a field, about the middle of
which were some wooden railings round the black gaping mouth of a
coal-pit. "Div ye see that dark bit owre yonder amang the green clover,
wi' the sticks about it?" asked Tammie.
"Yes," said I; "and what for?"
"Weel, do you ken," quo' Tammie, "that has been a weary place to mair
than ane. Twa-three year ago, some o' the collyer bodies were choked to
death down below wi' a blast of foul air; and a pour o' orphan weans they
left behint them on the cauldrife parish. But ye'll mind Hornem, the
sherry-officer wi' the thrawn shouther?"
"Ou, bravely; I believe he came to some untimeous end hereaway about?"
"Just in that spat," answered Tammie. "He was a drucken, blustering
chield, as ye mind; fearing neither man nor de'il, and living a wild,
wicked, regardless life; but, puir man, that couldna aye last. He had
been bousing about the countryside somehow--maybe harrying out of house
and hald some puir bodies that hadna the wherewith to pay their rents;
so, in riding hame fou--it was pitmirk, and the rain pouring down in
bucketfu's--he became dumfoundered wi' the darkness and the dramming
thegither; and, losing his way, wandered about the fields, hauling his
mare after him by the bridle. In the morning the beast was found
nibbling away at the grass owre by yonder, wi' the saddle upon its back,
and a broken bridle hinging down about its fore-legs, by the which the
folks round were putten upon the scent; for, on making search down yon
pit, he was fund at the bottom, wi' his brains smashed about him, and his
legs and arms broken to chitters!"
"Save us!" said I, "it makes a' my flesh grue."
"Weel it may," answered Tammie, "or the story's lost in the telling; for
the collyers that fand him shook as if they had been seized wi' the ague.
The dumb animal, ye observe, had far mair sense than him; for, when his
fitting gaed way, instead of following it had plunged back; and the bit
o' the bridle, that had broken, was still in his grup, when they spied
him wi' their lanterns."
"It was an awful like way to leave the world," said I.
"'Deed it was, and nae less," answered Tammie, "to gang to his lang
account in the middle of his mad thochtlessness, without a moment's
warning. But see, yonder's Cousland lying right forrit to the east
hand."
At this very nick of time Benjie was seized with a severe kink; so Tammie
stopped his cart, and I held his head over the side of it till the cough
went by. I thought his inside would have jumped out; but he fell sound
asleep in two or three minutes; and we jogged on till we came to the
yill-house door, where, after louping out, we got a pickle pease-strae to
Tammie's horse.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN--MANSIE AND TAMMIE AT MY LORD'S RACES
It happened curiously that, of all the days of the year, this should have
been the one on which the Carters'-play was held; and, by good luck, we
were just in time to see that grand sight. The whole regiment of carters
were paraded up at my Lord's door, for so they call their box-master; and
a beautiful thing it was, I can assure ye. What a sight of ribands was
on the horses! Many a crame must have been emptied ere such a number of
manes and long tails could have been busked out. The beasts themselves,
poor things, I dare say, wondered much at their bravery, and no less I am
sure did the riders. They looked for all the world like living
haberdashery shops. Great bunches of wallflower, thyme, spearmint,
batchelor buttons, gardeners' gartens, peony roses, gillyflower, and
southernwood, were stuck in their button holes; and broad belts of
stripped silk, of every colour in the rainbow, were flung across their
shoulders. As to their hats, the man would have had a clear e'e that
could have kent what was their shape or colour. They were all rowed
round with ribands, and puffed about the rim with long green or white
feathers; and cockades were stuck on the off side, to say nothing of long
strips fleeing behind them in the wind like streamers. Save us! to see
men so proud of finery; if they had been peacocks one would have thought
less; but in decent sober men, the heads of small families, and with no
great wages, the thing was crazy-like. Was it not?
At long and last we saw them all set in motion, like a regiment of
dragoons, two and two, with a drum and fife at their head, as if they had
been marching to the field of battle. By-the-bye, it was two of our own
volunteer lads that were playing that day before them, Rory Skirl the
snab, and Geordie Thump the dyer; so this, ye see, verified the old
proverb, that travel where ye like, to the world's end, ye'll aye meet
with kent faces; Tammie and me coming out to the yill-house door to see
them pass by.
Behind the drum and fife came a big, half-crazy looking chield, with a
broad blue bonnet on his head, and a red worsted cherry sticking in the
crown of it. He was carrying a new car-saddle over his shoulder on a
well-cleaned pitchfork. Syne came three abreast, one on each side of my
lord, being the key-keepers; he keeping the box, and they keeping the
keys, in case like he should take any thing out. And syne came the auld
my lord--him that was my lord last year, ye observe; and syne came the
colours, as bright and bonny as mostly any thing ye ever saw. On one of
them was painted a plough and harrows, and a man sowing wheat; over the
top of which were gilded letters, the which I was able to read when I put
on my specs, being, if I mind well, "Speed the Plough." On the other
one, which was a mazarine blue with yellow fringes, was the picture of
two carters, with flat bonnets on their heads, the tane with a whip in
his hand, and the tither a rake, making hay like. Then came they all
passing by two and two, looking as if each one of them had been the Duke
of Buccleuch himself, every one rigged out in his best; the young
callants, such like as had just entered the box, coming hindmost, and
thinking themselves, I daresay, no small drink, and the day a great one
when they were first allowed to be art and part in such a grand
procession.
But losh me! I had mostly forgot the piper, that played in the middle,
as proud as Hezekiah, that we read of in Second Kings, strutting about
from side to side with his bare legs and big buckles, and bit Macgregor
tartan jacket--his cheeks blown up with wind like a smith's bellows--the
feathers dirling with conceit in his bonnet--and the drone, below his
oxter, squeeling and skirling like an evil spirit tied up in a green bag.
Keep us all! what gleys he gied about him to observe that the folk were
looking at him! He put me in mind of the song that old Barny used to
sing about the streets--
Ilka ane his sword and dirk has,
Ilka ane as proud's a Turk is;
There's the Grants o' Tullochgorum,
Wi' their pipers gaun before 'em;
Proud the mithers are that bore 'em.
Feedle, faddle, fa, fum.
But who do ye think should come up to us at this blessed moment, with a
staff in his hand, being old now, and not able to ride in the procession,
as he had many a time and often done before, but honest Saunders Tram,
that had been a staunch customer of mine since the day on which I opened
shop, and to whom I had made countless pairs of corduroy spatterdashes;
so we shook hands jocosely together, like old acquaintances, and the body
hodged and leuch as if he had found a fiddle, he was so glad to see me.
Benjie having fallen asleep, Luckie Barm of the Change, a douce woman,
put him to his bed, and promised to take care of him till we came back;
Saunders Tram insisting on us to go forward along with him to see the
race. I had no great scruple to do this, as I thought Benjie would
likely sleep for an hour, being wearied with the joggling of the cart,
and having supped a mutchkin bowlful of Luckie Barm's broo and bread.
By the time we had tramped on to the braehead, two or three had booked
for the race, and were busy pulling away the flowers that hung over about
their horses' lugs, to say little of the tapes and twine; and which made
them look, poor brutes, as if they were not very sure what was the matter
with them. Meanwhile, there was a terrible uproar between my lord and a
man from Edinburgh Grassmarket, leading a limping horse, covered with a
dirty sheet, with two holes for the beast's een looking out at.
But, for all this outward care, the poor thing seemed very like as if
wind was more plenty in the land than corn, being thin and
starved-looking, and as lame as Vulcan in the off hind-leg. So ye see
the managers of the box insisted on its not running; and the man said "it
had a right to run as well as any other horse"; and my lord said "it had
no such thing, as it was not in the box"; and the man said "he would take
out a protest"; and my lord said "he didna gie a bawbee for a protest;
and that he would not allow him to run on any account whatsoever"; but
the man was throng all the time they were argle-bargling taking the cover
off the beast's back, that was ready saddled, and as accoutred for
running as our regiment of volunteers was for fighting on field-days. So
he swore like a trooper, that, notwithstanding all their debarring, he
would run in spite of their teeth--both my lord's teeth, ye observe, and
that of the two key-keepers;--maybe, too, of the man that carried the
saddle, for he aye lent in a word at my lord's back, egging him on to
stand out for the laws to the last drop of his blood.
To cut a long tale short, the drum ruffed, and off set four of them, a
black one, and a white one, and a brown one, and the man's one, neck and
neck, as neat as you like. The race course was along the high road; and,
dog on it, they made a noise like thunder, throwing out their big heavy
feet behind them, and whisking their tails from side to side as if they
would have dung out one another's een; till, not being used to gallop,
they at last began to funk and fling; syne first one stopping, and then
another, wheeling round and round about like peiries, in spite of the
riders whipping them, and pulling them by the heads. The man's mare,
however, from the Grassmarket, with the limping leg, carried on, followed
by the white one, an old tough brute, that had belonged in its youth to a
trumpeter of the Scots Greys; and, to tell the truth, it showed mettle
still, though far past its best; so back they came, neck and neck, all
the folk crying, and holloing, and clapping their hands--some "Weel dune
the lame ane--five shillings on the lame ane";--and others, "Weel run
Bonaparte--at him, auld Bonaparte--two to one that Whitey beats him all
to sticks,"--when, dismal to relate, the limping-legged ane couped the
creels, and old white Bonaparte came in with his tail cocked amid loud
cheering, and no small clapping of hands.
We all ran down the road to the place where the limping horse was lying,
for it was never like to rise up again any more than the bit rider, that
was thrown over its head like an arrow out of a bow; but on helping him
to his feet, save and except the fright, two wide screeds across his
trowser-knees, and a scratch along the brig of his nose, nothing visible
was to be perceived. It was different, however, with the limping horse.
Misfortunate brute! one of its fore-legs had folded below it, and snapped
through at the fetlock joint. There was it lying with a sad sorrowful
look, as if it longed for death to come quick and end its miseries; the
blood, all the while, gush-gushing out at the gaping wound. To all it
was as plain as the A, B, C, that the bones would never knit; and that,
considering the case it was in, it would be an act of Christian charity
to put the beast out of pain. The maister gloomed, stroked his chin, and
looked down, knowing, weel-a-wat, that he had lost his bread-winner, then
gave his head a nod, nod--thrusting both his hands down to the bottom
lining of the pockets of his long square-tailed jockey coat. He was a
wauf, hallanshaker-looking chield, with an old broad-snouted japanned
beaver hat pulled over his brow--one that seemed by his phisog to hold
the good word of the world as nothing--and that had, in the course of
circumstances, been reduced to a kind of wild desperation, either by
chance-misfortunes, cares and trials, or, what is more likely, by his own
sinful, regardless way of life.
"It canna be helpit," he said, giving his head a bit shake; "it canna be
helpit, friends. Ay, Jess, ye were a gude ane in yere day, lass,--mony a
penny and pound have I made out of ye. Which o' ye can lend me a hand,
lads? Rin away for a gun some o' ye."
Here Thomas Clod interfered with a small bit of advice--a thing that
Thomas was good at, being a Cameronian elder, and accustomed to giving a
word. "Wad ye no think it better," said Thomas, "to stick her with a
long gully-knife, or a sharp shoemaker's parer? It wad be an easier way,
I'm thinking."
Dog on it! I could scarcely keep from shuddering when I heard them
speaking in this wild, heathenish, bloody sort of a manner.
'"Deed no," quo' Saunders Tram, at whose side I was standing, "far better
send away for the smith's forehammer, and hit her a smack or twa betwixt
the een; so ye wad settle her in half a second."
"No, no," cried Tammie Dobbie, lending in his word; "a better plan than
a' that, wad be to make a strong kinch of ropes, and hang her."
Loveyding! such ways of showing how to be merciful!! But the old Jockey
himself interfered. "Haud yere tongues, fules," was his speech;
"yonder's the man coming wi' a gun. We'll shune put an end to her. She
would have won for a hundred pounds, if she hadna broken her leg. Wha'll
wager me that she wadna hae won? But she's the last of my stable, puir
beast; and I havena ae plack to rub against anither, now that I have lost
her. Gi'e me the gun and the penny candle. Is she loaded?" speired he
at the man that carried the piece.
"Troth is she," was the answer, "double charged."
"Then stand back, lads," quoth the old round-shouthered horse-couper, and
ramming down the candle he lifted up the piece, cocking it as he went
four or five yards in front of the poor bleeding brute, that seemed,
though she could not rise, to know what he was about with the weapon of
destruction; casting her black eye up at him, and looking pitifully in
his face.
When I saw him taking his aim, and preparing to draw the trigger, I
turned round my back, not being able to stand it, and brizzed the flats
of my hands with all my pith against the opening of my ears;
nevertheless, I heard a faint boom; so, heeling round, I observed the
miserable bleeding creature lift her head, and pulling up her legs, give
them a plunge down again on the divots: after which she lay still, and we
all saw, to our satisfaction, that death had come to her relief.
We are not commanded to be the judges of our fellow-creatures, but to
think charitably of all men, hoping every thing for the best; and, though
the horse-couper was a thought suspicious, both in look, speech, dress,
and outward behaviour, still, ever and anon, we were bound by the ten
commandments to consider him only in the light of a fellow-mortal in
distress of mind and poverty of pocket; so we made a superscription for
the poor man; and, though he did not look much like one that deserved our
charity, nevertheless and howsoever, maybe he was a bad halfpenny, and
maybe not; yet one thing was visibly certain, that he was as poor as
Job--misery being written in big-hand letters on his brow. So it behoved
each one to open his purse as he could afford it; and, though I say not
what I put into the hat, proud am I to tell that he collected two or
three shillings to help him home.
This job being over to his mind as well as mine, and the money safely
stowed into his big hinder coat-pocket--would ye believe it? ere yet the
beast was scarcely cold, just as we were decamping from the place, and
buttoning up our breeches-pockets, we saw him casting his coat, and had
the curiosity to stand still for a jiffy, to observe what he was after,
in case, in the middle of his misfortunes, he was bent on some act of
desperation; when, lo and behold! he out with a gully knife, and began
skinning his old servant, as if he had been only peeling the bark off a
fallen tree!
One cannot sit at their ingle-cheek and expect, without casting their
eyes about them, to grow experienced in the ways of men, or the on-goings
of the world. This spectacle gave me, I can assure you, much and no
little insight; and so dowie was I with the thoughts of what I had
witnessed of the selfishness, the sinfulness, and perversity of man, that
I grew more and more home-sick, thinking never so much in my life before
of my quiet hearthstone and cheerful ingle; and though Thomas Clod
insisted greatly on my staying to their head-meeting dinner, and taking a
reel with the lassies in the barn; and Tammie Dobbie, the bit body, had
got so much into the spirit of the thing, that little persuasion would
have made him stay all night and reel till the dawing--yet I was
determined to make the best of my way home; more-be-token, as Benjie
might take skaith from the night air, and our jaunt therefrom might,
instead of contributing to his welfare, do him more harm than good. So,
after getting some cheese and bread, to say nothing of a glass or two of
strong beer and a dram at Luckie Barm's, we waited in her parlour, which
was hung round with most beautiful pictures of Joseph and his Brethren,
besides two stucco parrots on the chimney-piece, amusing ourselves with
looking at them, as a pastime like, till Benjie wakened; on the which I
made Tammie yoke his beast, and rowing the bit callant in his mother's
shawl, took him into my arms in the cart, and after shaking hands with
all and sundry twice or thrice over, we bade them a "good-night," and
drove away.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN--MANSIE ON THE RETURN FROM MY LORD'S RACES
I may confess, without thinking shame, that I was glad when I found our
nebs turned homeward; and, when we got over the turn of the brae at the
old quarry-holes, to see the blue smoke of our own Dalkeith, hanging like
a thin cloud over the tops of the green trees, through which I perceived
the glittering weathercock on the old kirk steeple. Tammie, poor
creature, I observed, was a whit ree with the good cheer; and, as he sat
on the fore-tram, with his whip-hand thrown over the beast's haunches, he
sang, half to himself and half-aloud, a great many old Scotch songs, such
as "the Gaberlunzie," "Aiken Drum," "Tak' yere Auld Cloak about ye," and
"the Deuks dang ower my Daddie"; besides "The Mucking o' Geordie's Byre,"
and "Ca' the Ewes to the Knowes," and so on; but, do what I liked, I
could not keep my spirits up, thinking of the woful end of the poor old
horse, and of the ne'er-do-weel loon its master. Many an excellent
instruction of Mr Wiggie's came to my mind, of how we misguided the good
things that were lent us for our use here, by a gracious Provider, who
would, however, bid us render a final account to him of our conduct and
conversation. I thought of how many were aye complaining and
complaining, myself whiles among the rest, of the hardships, the
miseries, and the misfortunes of their lot; putting all down to the
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