The Story of Mary Mochrie and the
Miracle of the Cod.
IT was said that David Hume’s barber, who had the honour of shaving the philosopher every morning, was so scandalised by David’s Essay on Miracles, that he told him to his face—which he was smoothing at the time—that Mary Mochrie’s miracle shut his mouth. And no doubt this was so far true, for the shaver took care while he was telling the story to hold David’s lips close with his left hand, while he was plying his razor with the other. David, we are informed, used to tell this anecdote himself along with the story of the modern miracle appended to it; and as the latter is a good example of the easy way by which the blind sentiment of wonder groping for light comes to refer strange things to Divine interposition, and consequently the facility of belief in those darker times, we may include among our stories for the amusement of our readers that of the miracle, which, goes in this wise:—
On a fine day in the month of June a certain Miss Isabella Warrender, the daughter of a respectable burgess, bethought herself of the luxury of a plunge in the Forth, on the sands to the west of Newhaven, and with a view to safety, as well as companionship, she behoved to take with her her father’s trusty servant, Mary Mochrie. The blue bathing-gowns were accordingly put into the basket, and away they went on their journey of two miles with heads “as light as lavrocks,” and thinking of no other miracle in the world than that of enjoyment—a veritable miracle to many, insomuch as it is to them in this world of doubtful happiness and real misery miraculously scarce. Nor was it long, with their light feet, ere they reached their destination; all things, too, being otherwise propitious, for the sun was shining in a clear sky, the surface of the sea was as smooth as glass, and like a mirror reflected the rays of the sun; so that, to speak figuratively, Apollo and Neptune were on the best of terms, as if they had resolved to favour specially on that day so fair a specimen of an earthly maid, who, for a time, was to become a water nymph. So, after looking out from beneath her curls for Peeping Toms,—of whom, by the way, to the honour of Scotland, our Godivas in these parts have little to complain,—Isabella got herself made as like Musidora as possible, in which condition she remained only for that single moment occupied by Mary in investing her with the said blue gown. Whereupon, Mary having also divested herself of her clothes, was as quickly reclaimed from the searching eyes of the upper of the two propitious gods by her young mistress helping her on with her sea dress.
All which sacrifices to Bona Dea are pretty uniform, if we may not say that, although young women have as good a right to outrage modesty by splashing about perfectly nude in the sea as the men have, they know better than do any such naughty thing. Nor, perhaps, was it any exception, that as they went into the sea they took each other by the hand, just as Adam and Eve did when they walked hand in hand into a flood of sin, as enticing to them, too, as the shining water was to our virgins—a comparison more true than you may be at present thinking. Then having got up to the middle—that is, in a sense, half seas over, they got into that sportive mood which belongs to bathers, as if an infection from the playful element; and, of course, they could not avoid the usual ducking, which is performed by the two taking hold of both hands, and alternately or simultaneously dipping themselves over head, and as they emerge shaking their locks as the ducks do their wings when they come out of the water. All which was very pleasant, as might have been apparent from the laughing and screighing which terrified the Tom Norries there and then flying over their heads; but it so happened that in one of these see-saws Isabella’s foot slipped, and the consequence was that her hands slipped also out of those of Mary, so that she fell back into the water, more afraid, of course, than hurt; nor was this all, for no sooner had Isabella got on her feet again than holding out her left hand she cried in rather a wild way that she had lost her ruby ring—nay, that very ring which a certain George Ballennie had given her as a pledge of his love, and the loss of which was so like an augury of evil. And then as it was Mary’s hand which pulled it off, or rather Isabella’s that left it in Mary’s, it was natural she should ask at the same time whether Mary had it or had felt it, but Mary asserted that she had it not, neither had she felt it when coming off. So if Mary was honest it behoved to be in the sea, and in all likelihood would never be found again.
And thus the pleasant act of bathing was interrupted in the very middle, for how could there be any more splashing and tumbling and mermaiding with this terrible loss weighing upon Isabella’s heart? She would not know how to face her mother; and as for Ballennie, might he not think that she who would not take better care of a love-token had no great love on her part to be betokened by a ring or anything else. The very sea which a moment before was as beautiful as a blushing bride holding out her arms for the embrace of the bridegroom, became as hateful to her as a Fury, and, hastening to the bank with tears in her eyes, which, of course, could not be seen, she began to dress. Mary, who seemed to participate in her young mistress’s sorrow, commenced the same operation; but when the clothes were on what was to be done? The tide was ebbing, and an hour, or at most two, would discover the channel at the spot where the unlucky slip was made, but to remain all that time would produce uneasiness at home, and there appeared to be nothing for it but for the young lady to go to Edinburgh, and leave Mary to wait for the ebbing of the tide, and make a search among the shingle for the valuable article.
A plan accordingly carried out. Mary certainly awaited the ebb, and did make a search among the gravel, but whether that search was conducted in that assiduous way followed by those who are lighted in their travel by the Lamp of Hope, it is not for us at present to say. Certain at least it is that Mary did not seem very greatly disappointed at her failure in not finding Isabella’s precious love-token, for which want of feeling we do not require to go very deep into Mary’s breast, or any other body’s breast, seeing she was a woman, and had a lover of her own, even George Gallie, as good as Ballennie any day. True, he had never given her a ruby ring; though, as for that, he would if he could, and if he couldn’t how could he? So Mary was on a par with Isabella in that matter; still, we confess, she might have searched more carefully, unless, indeed, we are to be so ungallant as to believe that she had in her mind some foregone secret conclusion that the ring was not there to be found.
Nor, what is almost as strange, did Mary take up her basket and commence her journey homeward in that saddened way which belongs to deep disappointment. Nay, we are not sure but that the words of the old song of her whose ring had been stolen by a mermaid, were conned by Mary to herself as she trudged homewards,—
But there was something else in her head when she reached the house, where she met some very suspicious looks not only from Isabella, but also from Mrs Warrender, for we may as well confess that the daughter had told her mother that when the slip of the hand took place she felt as if the ring had been taken off by the hand of Mary. And then when Mary appeared with a lugubrious face, and reported that she had not found the ring in the shingle, the foresaid suspicion was so much confirmed, that very little more would be required to induce Mr Warrender to make some judicial investigation into the strange circumstance. An inauspicious afternoon and night for Mary, and not less the next day, when she was called into the dining-room, and so sharply interrogated by Mr Warrender, that she cried very bitterly, all the time asserting that she never felt her hand touch the ring, and that it had most certainly fallen into the water and been lost. But Mr Warrender was not a man who believed in tears, at least women’s; for he was ungallant enough to think, that as we cannot distinguish ex parte rei between those of anger and those of sorrow, and as there is a kind called crocodile, as limpid as the others, and just as like a pretty dewdrop, so they never can or ought to be received as evidence either of guilt or innocence. And so it came about, that as the hours passed the conviction grew stronger and stronger in the minds of the family that the meek, and church-going, and psalm-singing Mary Mochrie was a thief.
Of this latter fact, in the peculiar circumstances of the case, there could be no evidence beyond the finding of the missing article, either on Mary’s person or in some place under her power, for Isabella’s word could not go for much; and so it was resolved that Mary’s person and trunk should be searched. A very strong step in the case of a girl who had hitherto held a very good character, and probably altogether unjustifiable, where so powerful an abstractor of earthly things as Neptune was apparently as much in the scrape as Mary. Yet this strong thing was done illotis manibus, and, as might have been expected, with no effect beyond scandalising Mary, who went so far as to say that Heaven took care of its own, and that God would in His own time and way show her persecutors that she was as innocent as that babe unborn, who takes away and places, nobody knows where, so many of the wickednesses of the world. But then an assertion of innocence in the grand style of an appeal to the Deity sometimes piques a prosecutor, because it conveys an imputation that the accused one is better taken care of by Heaven than he is; and so it turned out here, for Mr Warrender felt as if he had been challenged to the ultimate trial by ordeal, and he straightway proceeded to take measures for having Mary apprehended upon the charge of having robbed his daughter of the much-prized ring.
These measures were taken as they had been resolved upon, and here it behoves us, for a reason which may appear by and by, to be so particular as to say, that the officer was to come in the morning after breakfast to convey the alleged culprit to the office of the public prosecutor, for the purpose, in the first place, of examination. Nor was Mary unprepared, nay, she was not even to all appearance very much put about, for she had gone about her work as usual, and having finished what she had to do as maid-of-all-work—cook, scullery-maid, and scrub—she began to make preparations for cutting-up and gutting, and scraping, and washing the large cod, which lay upon the dresser ready for these operations, and which, by the way, Mrs Warrender had that morning, an hour before, bought for the sum of one and sixpence, from a Jenny Mucklebacket, of the village of Newhaven—another particular fact which we are bound to apologise for on the foresaid plea of necessity, lest we might incur the charge of wishing to produce an effect by Dutch painting. But Mary’s services as to the cod were dispensed with by Mrs Warrender, if they were not actually resented as either a bribe to forego the prosecution, or a cold-blooded indifference assumed for the purpose of showing her innocence. And so when the officer came Mary was hurried away to undergo this terrible ordeal, which, whatever other effect it might have, could not fail to leave her marked with the very burning irons that might not inflict the punishment due to robbery.
Leaving Mrs Warrender with the cod, which is as indispensable to our legend as a frying-pan to a Dutch interior, or the bone of a pig to a saint’s legend, we follow the prisoner to the office of the man who is a terror to evil-doers. Mr Warrender was there as the private prosecutor, and Isabella as a witness, or rather the witness. On being seated, the fiscal asked Mary, whether, on the day of the bathing, she had not seen the said ring on the finger of her young mistress; whereto Mary answered in the affirmative. Then came the application of the Lydian stone, in the form of the question, whether she did not, at the foresaid time and place, abstract the said ring from the finger of Isabella when she held her hand in the process of dipping; but Mary was here negative and firm, asserting that she did not, and giving emphasis to her denial by adding, that God knew she was as innocent as the foresaid babe. In spite of all which, Isabella insisted that she had been robbed in the manner set forth. The fiscal saw at once that the whole case lay between the two young women, and recommended Mr Warrender to let go the prosecution as one which must fail for defect of evidence; but that gentleman, for the reason that he had so far committed himself, and also for that he was annoyed at what he called the impudence of a servant disputing the word of his daughter, and calling her, in effect, a liar, insisted upon his right, as the protector and curator of his daughter, of having the culprit committed to jail, in the expectation that, through some medium of the three magic balls, or otherwise, he would get more evidence of the crime. The fiscal had no alternative; and so Mary Mochrie was taken to the Tolbooth, with the ordinary result, in the first place, of the news going up and down the long street which then formed the city, that Mrs Warrender’s servant was imprisoned for the strange crime of abstracting from Miss Warrender’s finger, while bathing, the love-token given to her by her intended. There was, doubtless, about the tale just so much of romance that would serve it as wings to carry it wherever gossip was acceptable—and we would like to know where in that city it was not acceptable then, and where it is not acceptable now.
Meanwhile Mrs Warrender had been very busy with the mute person of our drama—the cod—in which, like the devil in the story who had bargained for a sinner and having got a saint instead, had half resolved to follow the advice of Burns and “take a thought and mend,” she had got so much more than she bargained for with the fishwife that she was, when Mr Warrender and Isabella entered, ready to faint. They found her sitting in a chair scarcely able to move, under no less an agency than the fear of God. Her breath came and went with difficulty through lips with that degree of paleness which lips have a special tendency to take on, an expression of awe was over her face, and in her hand she held that identical ruby ring for the supposed theft of which the unfortunate Mary had been hurried to jail, and as for being able to speak she was as mute as the flounder in the proverb that never spoke but once; all she could do was to hold up the ring and point to the cod upon the dresser. But all in vain, for Mr Warrender could not see through the terrible mystery, nay, surely the most wonderful thing that had ever happened in this lower world since the time when the whale cast up Jonah just where and when he was wanted, till at length Mrs Warrender was enabled to utter a few broken words to the effect that the ring had been found in the stomach of the fish. Then, to be sure, all was plain enough—the cod was a chosen instrument in the hands of the great Author of Justice sent by a special message to save Mary Mochrie from the ruin which awaited her under a false charge. The conviction was easy in proportion to the charm which supernaturalism always holds over man—
and we are to remember that the last witch had not been burnt at the time of our story. But what made this Divine interposition the more serious to the house of the Warrenders, the message from above was sent as direct as a letter by post, only not prepaid, for Mrs Warrender had paid for the fish; and so it was equally plain that a duty was thus put upon Mr Warrender of no ordinary kind.
Nor was he long in obeying the command. Taking the wonderful ring along with him he hurried away to the office he had so lately left, and told the miraculous tale to the man of prosecutions. And what although that astute personage smiled at the story, just as if he would have said, if he had thought it worth his while, “Was there any opportunity for Mary Mochrie handling the cod?”—it was only the small whipcord of scepticism applied to the posteriors of the rhinoceros of superstition, even that instinct in poor man to be eternally looking up into the blank sky for special providences. So Mr Warrender, now himself a holy instrument, got what he wanted—an order to the jailer for Mary’s liberation. So away he went; and as he went to the Tolbooth he told every acquaintance he met the exciting story—among others his own clergyman of the Greyfriars, who held up his hands and said, “Wonderful are the ways of God! Yea, this very thing hath a purpose in it, even that of utterly demolishing that arch sceptic David Hume’s soul-destroying Essay on Miracles. I will verily take up the subject the next Sabbath.” And thus, dropping the germs as he went, which formed a revolving radius line from the centre of the mystery—his own house—the consequence was that the miracle of the cod went like wildfire wherever there was the fuel of a predisposing superstition; and where, we repeat, was that not then? where is not now, despite of David with all his genius—the first and best of the anti-Positivists, because he was a true Pyrrhonean. Having got to the jail, Mr Warrender informed Mary of this wonderful turn of providence in her favour, whereat Mary, as a matter of course, held up her hands in great wonder and admiration.
But Mr Warrender was not, by this act of justice, yet done with Mary. It behoved him to take her home and restore her to her place, with a character not only cleared of all imputation, but illustrated by the shining light of the favour of Heaven; and so he accompanied her down the thronged High Street,—an act which partook somewhat of the procession of a saint, whereat people stared; nay, many who had heard of the miracle went up and shook hands with one who was the favourite of the Great Disposer of events. Nor did her honours end with this display; for when they reached the house they found it filled with acquaintances, and even strangers, all anxious to see the wonderful fish, and the ring, and the maid. In the midst of all which honours Mary looked as simple as a Madonna; and if she winked it was only with one eye, and the winking was to herself. Even here her honours that day did not terminate, for she behoved for once to dine with the family—not on the cod, which was reserved as something sacred, like the small fishes offered by the Phaselites to their gods—but on a jolly leg of lamb, as a recompense for the breakfast of which she had that morning been deprived. Nay, as for the cod, in place of being eaten, it stood a risk of being pickled, and carried off to help the exchequer of some poor Catholic community in the land of miracles.
But probably the most wonderful part of our history consists in this fact, that no one ever hinted at the propriety of having recourse to the easiest and most natural way of solving a knot so easily tied; but we have only to remember another mystery—that of the gullibility of man when under the hunger of superstition. Nor need we say that the maw of a cod, big and omnivorous as it is, never equalled that of the miracle-devourer’s, possessing, as it does, too, the peculiarity of keeping so long that which is accepted. Wherein it resembles the purse of the miser, the click of the spring of which is the sign of perpetual imprisonment. We only hear the subsequent jingle of the coin, and the jingle in our present instance might have lasted for twenty years, during all which time Mary Mochrie’s miracle might have served as the best answer to the Essay of the renowned sceptic.
And thus we are brought back to the anecdote with which we set out. The story we have told is, in all its essentials, that which Donald Gorm, David Hume’s barber, treated him to on that morning when he wanted to close up for ever the mouth of the arch sceptic. It is not easy to smile while under the hands of a story-telling barber, for the reason that the contracted muscle runs a risk of being still more contracted by a slice being taken off it by a resolute razor moving in straight lines, so that probably it was not till Donald had finished both the story and the shaving, that David dared to indulge in that good-natured smile with which he used to meet his opponents, even in the teeth of the Gael’s oath, “’Tis a miracle, py Cot,”—a word this latter which, in Donald’s humour, might stand for the word cod, as well as for another too sacred to be here mentioned.
Yet the philosopher had further occasion for his good-humoured reticence, with which, as is well known, he declared he would alone meet the censors of his Essay, for it was really on the occasion of this great religious sensation in the city that the washer-women at the “Nor’ Loch” threatened to “dook him,” for the reason that, as they had heard, he had not only written that detestable Essay to prove that no miracles (for they were ungenerous enough to pay no attention to his very grave exception of the real Bible ones) could ever be, but he had actually gone the extreme length of disbelieving the intervention of God to save the innocent Mary Mochrie from the Moloch of the criminal law. We need not be unassured that this additional bit of gossip, as it spread though the city, would only tend to the inflammation that already prevailed. Nor need we wonder at all this, when we remember the play of metaphysical wit, which was received as very serious by the vulgar,—that David believed in nothing, except that there was no God.
But the mind of the Edinburgh public was not destined to cool down before it underwent further combustion. It happened that a certain person of the name of Gallie, a common working jeweller in World’s End Close, was possessed of knowledge which he had picked up on the road to Newhaven, whither he had been going to bathe, on that very morning when the miraculous ring was lost, and which knowledge, he thought, being a knowing fellow, he could turn to account in the midst of the heat of collision between the miracle-mongers and the sceptics, even as he might have transmuted by the fire of the furnace a piece of base metal into gold; and he took a strange way to effect his purpose. Having first called on Mr Warrender and got a sight of the magic ring, he next wrote an advertisement, which he got printed in the form of the small posters of that day of Lilliputian bills. It ran in these terms:—“Mary Mochrie’s Miracle.—If any one is anxious to learne the trew secret of this reputyd miracle, let him or her, mann or woman, hye to the closs of ye Warld’s End, where Michael Gallie resideth, and on ye payement of one shilling they will hear somethyng that will astonie them; but not one to tell ye other upon his aith.”
Copies of this bill Gallie posted on several walls in the most crowded parts of the city, and the consequence was such a crowd at World’s End Close as might have been looked for if the close had really been the last refuge from a conflagration of another kind. The applicants got their turn of entry; every one came out with a face expressive of wonder, yet so true were they to their oath, that no one would tell a word he had heard behind the veil of Gallie’s mystery, so that the curiosity of the outsiders, who wanted to save their shillings, became inflamed by pique in addition to curiosity. The secret took on the sacred and cabalistic character of a mystery, and the mystery feeding, as it always does, upon whispers and ominous looks, increased as the hours passed. Nor can we wonder at an excitement which had religion at the bottom of it, and the vanquishment of the soul-destroying David for the fruitful and ultimate issue. It was only the high price of admission which limited the number of Gallie’s shillings, for during the entire day the stern obligation of an oath proved the stern honesty of a religious people. It was said—and I see no reason to doubt the truth of the report—that Dr Robertson and many others of the educated classes caught the infection and paid their shilling; but we may doubt if the imperturbable David would risk his body or trouble his spirit by looking into the mysterious close of the World’s End.
As to what took place within Gallie’s room, it would seem that the ingenious fellow, when he saw the heather on fire, set his gins for the hares and conies in such a way as to catch them by dozens. He allowed the room to fill, and having administered the oath to two or three dozen at a time, he contrived during the course of the day to bag more shillings than there might have been supposed to be fools or religious enthusiasts even in superstitious Edinburgh. Afterwards, when rumour became busy with his gains, it was said that he was thereby enabled to set up the famous silversmith’s shop that so long, under the name of “Gallie and Son,” occupied a prominent front in the High Street, between Halkerston’s Wynd and Milne’s Entry.
But as all things that depend upon mere human testimony must ultimately be left insoluble, except as belief makes an election and decision, so even the revelation of the prophet Gallie did not settle the great question of Mochrie versus Hume, for Gallie could offer no corroboration of the testimony of which he contrived to make a little fortune. That revelation came to be known very well the next day, probably from the softening and tongue-loosening influence of Edinburgh ale exercised upon even gnarled and cross-grained Presbyterians; and we need be under no doubt that Donald Gorm, when he shaved the philosopher next morning, was in full possession of the secret, though we might be entitled to hold pretty fast by the suspicion that he would not court another smile from David by recounting to him the destruction of his, Donald’s, theory of the miracle.
With an apology for having kept the reader too long from a knowledge of Gallie’s revelation, we now proceed to give it as it was currently reported. It seemed that on that morning when the two girls went to bathe, Gallie had left Edinburgh for the same purpose about an hour later—a statement probable enough, although not attempted to be supported by any evidence. When about halfway on his journey, he met Mary Mochrie, who, strangely enough, though perfectly true, was his sweetheart. After some talk about the kind of bathe she had had, Mary showed him a ring, which she said she had bought from an old Jew broker on the previous day, and which she regretted was too wide for her finger. She then asked him to take it home with him and reduce it. Gallie having taken the ring into his hand started the moment he fixed his eye upon it.
“That ring,” said he, for, notwithstanding his scheme to make capital out of superstition, of which he was an enemy, he was an honest fellow,—“that ring belongs to your young mistress; and the reason I know this is that I fixed the ruby in it for her not yet a fortnight since.”
Taken thus aback, Mary began to prevaricate, saying that Miss Isabella Warrender had given it to her.
“That cannot be,” said Gallie, “because she told me it was a present from her lover, George Ballennie, to whom she is to be married.”
Words which Gallie uttered in a solemn if not sorrowful tone, and a look indicating displeasure and disappointment at thus detecting in the woman whom he had intended to marry, both theft and falsehood. Nor were these words left unrequited, for the fiery girl, snatching the ring out of his hand, called him a liar, besides taunting him with a certain pendulous attitude which his father, old Gallie, had assumed somewhere about the precincts of the Tolbooth immediately before dying. The cruel remark was one of those combinations of sharp words which have a tendency to stick, especially where the brain to which they adhere has been previously occupied by love, and so Gallie, muttering to himself a determination to be revenged, parted from her for ever, and proceeded on his way to Newhaven.
Things in this world being so arranged that one person’s misfortune or wretchedness becomes another person’s opportunity, we may see how Gallie came to his purpose. Perhaps he might not have thought it worth his pains to expose his own sweetheart from a mere feeling of revenge, but when he came to find that the woman who had cast up to him his father’s misfortune, had taken or been put into the position of an instrument of God’s grace, that the public had been by her precipitated into a superstitious enthusiasm—a species of feeling which he hated, (for who knows but that he might have been descended from that older Gallio who deserved to have been hanged?) and that he saw by the clear vision of ingenuity that he could revenge himself as to Mary, and make himself rich at the expense of the fools whom he despised, he fell upon the adroit scheme which we have so faithfully recorded.
We have already also said that the oath of secrecy which Gallie had imposed on his dupes was dispensed with by some of the “loose-fish” who could not be so easily caught as the devout cod. But this did not end the controversy, for it immediately took the form of a contest between the Gallieites and the Mochrieites, and the fury of the contest having drawn the attention of the officials of the law, Mary was again apprehended, with the view to be indicted for the theft of the ring, provided any corroborative testimony could be got in support of the statement of Gallie, who was forced to make his revelation to the fiscal, this one time without a shilling. The Scotch people are blessed or cursed with a metaphysical tendency, and this may be the reason of their peculiar faith, as well as of their old suspicion of human testimony in the courts of law. One witness has never been received in Scotland as good for anything, if standing alone; and when we look to the samples of humanity that meet us every day, so nicely poised between truth and falsehood, that the weight of a Queen Anne’s farthing would decide the inclination to the one side or the other, we are apt to think our judges rather sagacious. Perhaps they thought of themselves in these palmy days when they took bribes, and considered them very good and gracious things, too, in their own way. But be all that as it may, the evidence of Gallie was not corroborated in any way; the ring might have been put into the cod’s mouth by Isabella Warrender herself to ruin Mary. Woman can do such things; and Gallie’s accusation might have been the consequence of Mary’s allusion to the fate of his father. The result, accordingly, was, that Mary Mochrie was dismissed. Yet even here the affair did not end, for some people received her with open arms, as being a vessel of mercy.