As it chanced later, a French trader—these tribes were the allies of the French—arrived in camp, and remained there some time. Moved to pity by the boy's unhappy condition, this man, with some difficulty, persuaded Peewash to sell the lad to him for goods to the value of £40. Great was Kerr's exultation; once more he was free, free too without having had to face the terrible ordeal of attempting to escape from these murderous Indian devils. All would now be well, for assuredly he, or his friends, would repay to the Frenchman the ransom money. The boy felt as if his troubles were already over; in a day or two at longest he would sleep again under the flag of his own land; perhaps even, at no distant date, he might once more gaze on scenes for which throughout his captivity his soul had hungered, see, once more, Cheviot lying blue in the distance, the Eildons with their triple crown, hear the ripple of the Border streams. What tales of adventure he would have to tell.
Alas! he counted without his hosts. The Chippeways when they heard of the transaction would have none of it. The captive boy had been the property of the tribe, they said, and they refused to part with him; he must be given up by the Frenchman. And the latter had no choice but to comply.
Black now were the nights, gloomy the days, for Andrew Kerr, the blacker and the more gloomy for the false dawn that for brief space had cheered him; unbearable was his burden, more hopeless and wretched than ever before, a thousandfold, his captivity. It was as it might be with a man dying of thirst if a cup of cold water were dashed from his lips and spilt on the sandy desert at his feet. Who can blame the boy if only the knowledge of what treatment he would avowedly receive from the young Indians if he should play the squaw and weep, kept him from shedding tears of misery and vexation.
A new master was now his, a chief of the Chippeways; a new squaw set him hateful, degrading tasks, and ordered him about; the young men and the squaws laughed him to scorn; life became more bitter than ever before.
Gradually, however, Kerr's new owners relaxed their severity of treatment, and his lines grew less unpleasant. Time, indeed, made him almost popular—embarrassingly popular—for there came a day when the tribe more than hinted its desire that the Pale-face should wed one of its most beauteous daughters. Happily, the question of who should be bride was left in abeyance. He became, too, almost reconciled to his dress, or want of dress—though, to be sure, a coat of paint and a blanket cannot, at the best, be regarded as more than a passably efficient hot-weather costume. With the easy adaptability of boyhood, Andrew Kerr had become almost a veritable Indian.
Now, Peewash all this time had looked with covetous eye on his former slave, and desired to repossess him. A big price would have to be paid, no doubt; but Peewash was prepared to bid high, and the owner could not withstand a temptation, backed, as it was, by that bait irresistible to a Red Indian, "firewater." The boy again changed hands, and now for some time served his original captor.
About this period the Tribes again "dug up the hatchet," and set out on a big war-trail. Cruel and bloody was the fighting, many the prisoners taken and brought into camp from time to time. On one occasion young Kerr was compelled to stand, a horrified spectator, among the exulting Redskins as with yells of gratified triumph, warriors and squaws, young men and children, gloated fiercely over the brutal torture and lingering death of eight English prisoners. It was a grim and grisly spectacle, for no form of torment—from the nerve-wracking test of knife and tomahawk, arrow or bullet, aimed with intent to graze the flesh and not immediately to kill, to the ghastly ordeal of red-hot ramrods and blazing pine-root splinters thrust into the flesh or under the nails —was omitted by those bloodthirsty red devils. Many a sleepless hour, many a night broken by awful dreams, must the sight have cost the boy. But it determined him to attempt escape at all hazards whenever kind fortune should put the chance in his way.
And fortune did help him ere long. There was a French trader named Boileau who came much about the camp. To him Andrew very cautiously made advances, and succeeded at last in enlisting the man's sympathies. Kerr confided to the trader his desire to attempt escape, and, none too willingly at the beginning, Boileau agreed to take the risk of helping. It was no easy task to lull the suspicions and to evade the watchful eye of the crafty Indians; but the boy had never, so far, shown any desire to escape, and he was not now so everlastingly under supervision. In very bad English on Boileau's part, and in worse French on that of Kerr, a plan of escape was devised. Early in the day, Boileau, after his usual habit, was to leave camp in his canoe, ostensibly setting out on an ordinary trapping expedition. After nightfall, he would return to a certain rock on the lake shore, and then Kerr was to steal out and attempt to join him; thereafter, a night's paddling ought to take the fugitive out of the immediate danger-zone.
The night was cloudy and black, and not too still; everything, in fact, was in the boy's favour as, with beating heart, he wormed his way out of the wigwam and crawled stealthily on his belly from the camp towards the dense gloom of the forest. Then, almost as he had succeeded in gaining the comparative safety of the trees, beneath his moccasined foot a stick snapped, and a cursed Indian dog gave tongue, rousing the entire pack, and the sleeping camp, like an angry swarm of bees, woke at once to venomous life.
But Kerr by this time was at least clear of the wigwams; if he could but reach that rock by the lake-side, and if the Frenchman had kept faith, he might get safely away. Boileau would surely never fail him. Hampered and constantly tripped up by roots and tangled undergrowth, confused by the blackness of the night, the boy toiled on with thumping heart and shortening breath; and at last, looming above him, was the welcome outlines of the great rock. But on neither side of it could he find sign of the trader or of his canoe. And already by the rustlings in the woods and the occasional snapping of dry sticks, he could tell that the pursuing Indians were drawing perilously near him.
"Boileau!" he whispered. "Boileau!" And then, in an agony of mind he risked all, and shouted:
"Boileau, Boileau! A moi!"
An angry whisper from almost at his side replied viciously:
"Pas de chahut, malheureux! A bord vite, mille dieux!"
And as the canoe silently glided from the shore with the boy safely on board, the form of an Indian could be dimly seen where Kerr had stood the previous moment, and a bullet sang past his ear.
There for the time his more acute troubles ended. A few days later, at Detroit, a throng of persons, half helpless with laughter, noisily escorted to the Fort a forlorn, bald-headed, painted scare-crow, clad in a tattered Indian blanket, which scare-crow presently introduced itself to the commandant as Andrew Kerr, lately a prisoner of the Indians.
Once recovered from his fatigues and hardships, Andrew, as one of a small force, was sent to Niagara to obtain supplies for the Detroit garrison. The outward voyage down Lake Erie was safely and pleasantly accomplished. But these vast American lakes are subject to sudden and violent storms, and on the return trip, during an exceptionally fierce squall, the little 40-ton sloop, heavily laden as she was with military stores, sprang a leak, and to save themselves the crew were forced to run her aground on a gravelly beach under the lee of a projecting headland. The situation at best was most critical, for if the wind should shift but a few points the sloop must inevitably break up; and not only was the one boat available a mere skiff incapable of living in a heavy sea, but even should they all succeed in safely getting ashore with muskets intact and ammunition dry, their position would still be in the last degree precarious. For well they knew in what manner of country they were about to set unwilling foot—forest land occupied by the fiercest and most treacherous of the hostile Indian tribes. Capture meant death, probably with torture to precede it.
With great difficulty and some danger the ship-wrecked crew did at length succeed in getting ashore, with their rifles and a fair supply of powder and lead, and without an instant's delay they set about building a rude breastwork for protection if matters should come to a fight. The stranded vessel must certainly have been already seen by the Indians; at any moment they might appear. But the breastwork was completed without interruption, and still no sign of the Redskins had been seen. It was at least breathing space, though all knew what must assuredly follow, and to some the actual immediate combat would have been less unwelcome than was now the suspense.
After consultation, a few of the party, including Kerr, whose knowledge of Indian ways it was thought might be useful, left the breastwork to spy on the enemy—or at least to try to pick up some knowledge of their whereabouts. Had it been into that enchanted land that they now entered, where lay the Sleeping Beauty, the forest shades could not have been more still, more apparently devoid of life. No breath of wind stirred leaf or bough, all nature breathed peace, and, lulled to a sense of security, the little party ventured farther among the trees than was prudent. In Indian warfare, appearances were ever deceitful; the greater the apparent security, the greater the need for caution. So it was now here.
"I guess it ain't all right," one man was saying; "I don't like it. Get back, boys."
And even as he spoke, "crack" went a rifle on their left—"crack," "crack," "crack," came the sound of fire-arms on three sides; and as they turned and ran for the breastwork, a man hiccoughed and fell on his face, clutching at the grass, coughing up his life-blood. No time to turn and help; the yelling Redskins were at their heels, tomahawk and scalping knife in hand; delay meant certain death for all, and the fugitives tumbled into the breastwork just in time. Then, save for one awful scream of agony, again for a time all was quiet; for any sign that might be seen of them by the white men, the forest might have swallowed up the enemy. But let one of these white men for but an instant show his head over the breastwork, or in any way expose an arm or even a hand, then from the concealed foe came at once a hail of bullets, and the forest rang with the crack of rifles. Several of the little garrison, careless, or too impatient to fire only through the roughly made loopholes, lost their lives in this way; and some others were picked off by Indians who had managed to get into the high branches of neighbouring trees, and thence, concealed behind thick foliage, fired on the garrison, for a time with impunity, till by chance it was discovered from where the fatal shots were coming.
Meantime, for the white men it was almost like letting off their rifles into the night; seldom could a Redskin be seen, and men fired only at the spots where the smoke of Indian muskets hung about the undergrowth, or where they saw a spirt of flame.
And so the fight went on, hour after hour, till many of the defenders had fallen, and the necessity of husbanding ammunition slackened the fire of Kerr and his comrades. Then the Indians, knowing that the white men were few, abandoning caution tried to rush the breastwork. But now necessarily they exposed themselves, and as the white men had reloaded the empty rifles of their dead and wounded comrades, and thus had at least two apiece ready, heavy toll was taken of the stormers, and the Redskins were beaten back. Time and again was this repeated, once even during the night—just before dawn. But each attempt failed, and the baffled Indians finally drew off.
With thankful hearts, if with sore labour, the surviving white men, by lightening their vessel, got her off the ground, and succeeded in finding and stopping the leak. A few days saw them again safely at Detroit.
No more, as a civilian, did Andrew Kerr face the Indians. On getting back to New York in 1764 he was given a commission as ensign in the 1st battalion of the 42nd Regiment, and in various parts of the world he saw much service, finally retiring about 1780 with the rank of captain. He did not wholly, however, sever his connection with the service, for later, after he had purchased an estate in the Border, and had married, he became a major in the Dumfries Militia.
It is given to few to pass a youth so stormy as Kerr's, and to end, as he did, by becoming a peaceful, prosperous Border laird.
BORDER SNOWSTORMS
"St. Agnes' Eve—ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold."
The great round-backed, solemn Border hills, in summer time kindly sleeping giants, smiling in their sleep, take on another guise when winter smites with pitiless blast, when
"The sounds that drive wild deer and fox
To shelter in the brake and rocks,"
bellow fearsomely among the crags, and down glen and burn rushes the White Death, bewildering, blinding, choking, and at the last, perhaps, with Judas kiss folding in its icy arms some luckless shepherd whom duty has sent from his warm fireside to the rescue of his master's sheep. You would not know for the same those hills that so little time gone past nursed you in their soft embrace. Then, in the warm, sunny days, shadows of great fleecy clouds chased each other leisurely up the braes through the bracken and the purpling heather; the burn sang to itself a merry tune as it tumbled from boulder to boulder, rippling through pools where the yellow trout lay basking; on the clear air came the call of grouse, and afar off a solitary raven croaked in the stillness of a sun-steeped glen. Now the bracken is dead, the bent sodden and chill with November's sleet; against a background of heavy, leaden-grey sky the heather lies black as if washed in ink. Across from the wild North Sea comes a wind thin and nipping, waxing in strength, and with the gathering storm piping ever more shrilly down the glen, driving before it now a fine, powdery white dust that chokes nostril and mouth, and blinds the eyes of those whom necessity compels to be out-doors. It is "an oncome," a "feeding storm." Thus have begun many of the great snowstorms that from time to time have devastated the Border and taken heavy toll of man and beast.
In March 1615 snow fell to such a depth, and drifted so terribly, that not only did many men perish, but likewise "most part of all the horse, nolt, and sheep of the kingdom." In the years 1633 and 1665 there were great storms, when vast numbers of sheep perished, and "the frost was severe enough to kill broom and whins." But greater than these, both in devastating effect and in duration, was the memorable storm of 1674. The early part of that year was marked by extraordinarily tempestuous weather. In January came a violent gale from east and by north that strewed the coasts with wreckage. Down by Berwick and Eyemouth, by St. Abb's, and along all that rugged shore, the cruel sea sported daily with bodies of drowned sailors, flinging them from wave to wave, tossing them headlong on to a stony beach, only with greedy far-stretched grasp to snatch them back again to its hungry maw. In every rocky fissure, where angry waves spout cliff-high and burst in clouds of spray; in every rugged inlet, where the far-flung roaring seas boil furiously, timbers and deck-hamper of vessels driven on a lee-shore churned ceaselessly, pounding themselves to matchwood.
Throughout January, and till February was far advanced, this bitter easterly gale blew fiercely. In mid-February the wind died down, leaving a sky black with piled-up cloud gravid with coming evil. Inland, hill and river lay frost-bound, white with snow, and already the pinch of winter had begun to make itself seriously felt amongst the sheep. In those days, beyond driving the flocks, when necessary, from the hill to more sheltered, low-lying country, but little provision was ever made for severe weather, and even the precaution of shifting the sheep to lower ground was frequently too long delayed. Turnips, of course, had not yet come into cultivation in Scotland, and feed-stuffs were generally unknown.
This time farmers were caught napping. On 20th February a rising wind drove before it snow, fine powdered and dry as March dust, and with the waxing gale, and cold "intense to a degree never before remembered," the drift quickly became a swirling blizzard which no living thing could face. Day and night for thirteen days this maelstrom of snow continued, and till the 29th of March no decided improvement took place in the weather; the snow lay deep, and the frost held, so that there was "much loss of sheep by the snow, and of whole families in the moor and high lands; much loss of cows everywhere, also of wild beasts, as of doe and roe."
"The Thirteen Drifty Days," folk called this storm, and by that name it has gone down to history. "About the fifth and sixth days of the storm," says the Ettrick Shepherd, writing in Blackwood's Magazine of July 1819, "the young sheep began to fall into a sleepy and torpid state, and all that were affected in the evening died over-night. The intensity of the frost wind often cut them off when in that state quite instantaneously. About the ninth and tenth days, the shepherds began to build up huge semicircular walls of their dead, in order to afford some shelter for the remainder of the living; but they availed but little, for about the same time they were frequently seen tearing at one another's wool with their teeth. When the storm abated on the fourteenth day from its commencement, there was, on many a high-lying farm, not a living sheep to be seen. Large misshapen walls of dead, surrounding a small prostrate flock, likewise all dead, and frozen stiff in their lairs, was all that remained to cheer the forlorn shepherd and his master."
As a matter of fact, something like nine-tenths of all the sheep in the south of Scotland perished in this one storm, or if they did not then actually perish, their vitality was so lowered, their constitutions so wrecked, by the intense cold and the long deprivation of food, that they never again picked up condition, but died like flies when the spring was further advanced. Hogg says that in Eskdalemuir, out of 20,000 sheep "none were left alive but forty young wedders on one farm, and five old ewes on another. The farm of Phaup remained without a stock and without a tenant for twenty years subsequent to the storm." On another farm all the sheep perished save one black-faced ewe; and she was not long left to perpetuate her breed, for dogs hunted her into a loch, and she too went the way of her fellows.
Amongst other great storms, Hogg also mentions one in this same century, long remembered as the "Blast o' March." It occurred on a Monday, the twenty-fourth day of March, and was of singularly short duration, considering the havoc it wrought. The previous Sunday was so warm that lassies returning from Yarrow Kirk in the evening took off shoes and stockings and walked barefoot; the young men cast plaids and coats. To their unconcealed astonishment, as they sauntered homeward these young people found that an old shepherd, named Walter Blake, had driven his entire flock of sheep into a sheltered position by the side of a wood, near the road. Now, Blake was a deeply religious man, one to whom the Sabbath was in the strictest sense a holy day, a day too sacred to be broken in any fashion whatever, except for some extraordinarily powerful reason. On being asked how it came to pass that he was found thus following his worldly vocation, to the neglect of church-going, he said that in the morning he had seen to the northward so ill-looking a "weather-gaw" that he was convinced a heavy storm was coming, and that probably before morning there would be a dangerous drift. The young men laughed the old one to scorn. A snowstorm! The auld man was daft! Why, the air was like June; no sensible body would even so much as dream of snow.
"Belike we'll be up to oor oxters in snaw, the morn, Wattie," chirrupped one damsel, in the bicker of rustic wit and empty laughter that flew around.
"Weel, weel, lads! Time will show. Let them laugh that win," said old
Wattie.
That night there came a sudden shift of wind, and ere morning the country-side was smothered in snow. Twenty thousand sheep perished, and none but old Walter Blake came out of that storm free from loss.
The years 1709, 1740, and 1772 were all notable for unusually heavy falls of snow. In the latter year the country was snow-clad from mid-December till well on in April, and the loss of sheep was very great, chiefly because partial thaws, occurring at intervals, encouraged hill farmers to believe each time that the back of the winter was broken. Hence, they delayed too long in shifting their sheep to lower lands, and when the imperative necessity of removal at length became obvious, if life were to be saved, it was too late; from sheer weakness the poor animals were unable to travel.
Then came that terrible storm of 1794, a calamity that old men of our own day may yet remember to have heard talked about by eye-witnesses of the scenes they described. Nothing in nature ever wrought such havoc in the Border. Seventeen shepherds perished in the endeavour to rescue their flocks; no less than thirty others, overwhelmed by the intense cold, the fury of the gale, and the blinding, choking whirlwind of snow, dropped and lay unconscious, to all intents dead, sleeping the dreamless sleep of those whom King Frost slays with his icy darts. And dead would those thirty assuredly have been, but for the timely aid of brave men, themselves toil-worn to the verge of collapse, who, through the deep drifts and the swirling snow, bore home the heavy, unconscious bodies, to revive them with difficulty.
The storm began on the 24th of January, and though the snow lay but a week, whole flocks were overwhelmed, in some instances buried fifty feet deep. Countless numbers of sheep, driven into burns and lochs by the pitiless strength of the wind, were never again seen, swept away into the sea by the tremendous floods that followed the melting of the snow. There is on Solway Sands a place called the Beds of Esk, where with terrible persistency the tides cast up whatever may have been carried to sea by the rivers which in this neighbourhood empty themselves into the Firth. Ghastly was the burden here strewn when the floods now went down. In those Beds lay the lifeless bodies of two men and of one woman; the swollen carcasses of five-and-forty dogs, eighteen hundred and forty sheep, nine black cattle, three horses, one hundred and eighty hares; and of rabbits and small animals a multitude innumerable. Death held high carnival in Eskdalemuir that January of 1794.
Hogg gives a vivid picture of his own adventures in this storm. He had gone from home the previous day, tramping over the Ettrick hills many a long mile to attend some friendly meeting of fellow-shepherds, leaving his sheep in charge of his master. Arrived at his destination, and rendered uneasy by the unwonted appearance of the sky, without waiting for rest or for anything but a little food and drink, he turned and set out straightway on his homeward journey. A tramp of thirty or forty miles over the hills is ordinarily no great matter for a young and active shepherd. But now snow was falling; already it lay to some depth, making the footing toilsome and insecure. Moreover, a curious yellow mist had spread over the hills, shrouding the hollows from sight; darkness must be on him hours before he could hope to reach home, and the night promised to be wild. But what would daunt an ordinary pedestrian has no terrors for the Border shepherd, and Hogg safely reached his home before bedtime, to learn, greatly to his dismay, that his master, good easy man, had left the sheep that evening on an exposed part of the hill. Not even the master's "Never mind them the nicht, Jamie; they're safe eneuch, and I'll gie ye a hand in the morning," could calm his anxiety. However, on looking out before going to bed, he was comforted to find the wind coming from the south, and apparently a thaw beginning. He might sleep in peace after all; things were going to turn out less bad than he had feared.
Tired as he was, however, try as he might, sleep would not come that night; an unaccountable feeling of restlessness and of vague apprehension had him in its grip. Hour after hour he lay, listening irritably to the snoring of his fellow-shepherd, Borthwick, starting nervously at every scraping of rat or creak of timber. At last, long after midnight, he rose and looked out. The wind had fallen, but snow still fell; there was nothing abnormal in the night, and the weather might have been described as merely "seasonable." But away in the northern sky, low down, appeared a strange break in the mist, such as in all his experience he had never before seen. And it came to his mind that the previous day, when on his homeward way he had "looked in" at his uncle's house, the old man had predicted the coming of a violent storm, which would surely spring from that quarter in which should first be seen a phenomenon such as that on which Hogg was now looking. The shepherd returned to bed, and had almost succeeded in falling into a doze, when again some impulse caused him to sit up and listen. From far in the distant hills came quivering a strange low moaning that brought with it something of awe and suspense. Nearer it drove, and nearer, rising at length to a fierce bellow; and then, with appalling roar, as of thunder, the gale hurled itself on to the building, shaking it to the foundations. In the pitch blackness of the night Hogg groped his way to an opening in the byre over which he and Borthwick slept, and thrust out a hand and arm. "So completely was the air overloaded with falling and driving snow that, but for the force of the wind, I felt as if I had thrust my arm into a wreath of snow," he writes.
Presently he roused Borthwick, who had slept soundly through the hubbub, and at once his fellow-shepherd dressed and tried to make his way from the byre to the kitchen, a distance of no more than fourteen yards. But even in the little time which had elapsed since the breaking of the storm the space between kitchen and byre had drifted up with snow as high as the house walls, and Borthwick straightway lost himself; neither could he find his way to the house, nor succeed in regaining the byre. Eventually both men with no small toil made their way to the kitchen, where they found master and maids already assembled, and in a state of no little alarm.
Their first concern was manifestly the safety of the sheep. But at such an hour, in such a night, what could be done? Nevertheless, two hours before daylight shepherds and master started for the hill, taking first the precaution to sew their plaids round them, and to tie on their bonnets. For the thrilling details of the dangerous undertaking one must refer to Hogg's own account, but it may here be noted that no sooner was the kitchen door closed on the men than they lost each other, and lost also all sense of direction; it was only by the sound of their voices that the little party succeeded in keeping in each other's neighbourhood. And such was the fury of the wind and the confusion of the drift that frequently, in order to draw breath, they were compelled to bend till their faces were between their knees. The farmhouse stood within what in Scotland is called a "park," in this instance a small enclosure, the wall of which might be at most three hundred yards distant from the house door. It was two hours before daylight when they entered this park; when morning broke, they had not yet succeeded in making their way out of it.
Hogg's own story must be read, to learn how, and at what dire peril to the searchers, Borthwick's flock was at length found. They were huddled together, and buried deep in a snow wreath so compact that when the outside sheep had been extricated, most of the remainder were able of themselves to walk out, leaving where they had stood a sort of vast cave. Hogg himself, when the bulk of Borthwick's sheep had been at length saved, started alone to rescue his own flock. With comparatively little trouble he found them, got them by slow degrees to a place of safety, and then turned to make his way home. Of the course to steer, it never occurred to him to doubt; he had known the hills from infancy, and could have walked blindfold across them. His instinct for locality was as the instinct of some wild animal, or of an Australian black-fellow. But what put some dread in his mind was the knowledge that between him and home lay the Douglas Burn, possibly by now in spate, and dangerous to cross. The noise of the wind would prevent him from hearing the roar of the swollen torrent, the driving snow prevent him from seeing the danger, and a false step on the bank might deposit him where he would never come out alive. To a man alone on the hill in such weather, the task was arduous, the danger great; moreover, in the last thirty-six hours he had walked far, had undergone great toil, and he had been without sleep all night. The prospect was no pleasing one. But he struggled on through the blinding, wind-driven snow, heading, as he confidently believed, straight for home. Yet doubt presently began to fill his mind. He should long ago have reached the Douglas Burn, but not a sign even suggestive of such a thing as a watercourse had he yet seen. Presently he roused with a start, for now he stood amongst trees, stretching apparently in endless succession to an infinite distance. After all, it seemed that he had missed his way. Where he was he could not tell; and it needed some minutes of anxious groping ere he could clear his mind and make certain of his position. He stood not much more than fifty yards from the farm-house door, by the side of a little clump of trees, which in that blurred light and in the confusion of the drifting snow took on the semblance of some vast forest. Without being aware of it, Hogg had crossed the gully of the Douglas Burn on a bridge formed by the deep snow, and crossed over the park wall in similar fashion.
Many have been the terrible winters since those of which Hogg wrote, many the lives lost, and more, perhaps, the narrow escapes from what seemed certain death. In 1803 the frozen, deep-buried body of a man was found near Ashestiel, within what—but for the raging storm the previous night—must have been easy hail of his own cottage, where, sick with anxiety, his wife and little ones sat waiting his return from the hill. In that same storm a young shepherd, within sight of his own father, fell over a precipice near Birkhill, and, with spine hopelessly injured, lay helpless amongst the snow-covered boulders in a place inaccessible to the distracted father. A party succeeded in rescuing him, but rescue availed him little; he lay afterwards at home for several weeks unable to stir hand or foot, and in great pain, till death mercifully released him.
In 1825 came an on-fall so sudden and violent that scores of people who happened to be on journeys were compelled to remain for weeks wherever they had chanced to be when the storm broke. There was no possibility of getting away; except those in the immediate vicinity of large towns, all roads were completely blocked, and communication was absolutely cut off. The mails had ceased to run, and of course in those days the electric telegraph was unknown. Thus, many a man, the father of a family, was parted indefinitely from wife and children without possibility of allaying their anxiety for his welfare; many a commercial traveller passed week after week in some roadside inn, waiting vainly for the long-delayed thaw to enable him to communicate with his employer. And had country people in those days depended for their supplies on tradesmen's carts, as is the custom now, many a family must have found itself in the direst straits ere the storm was half over.
Then a few years later came that memorable storm of 1831, of which men in Tweedsmuir still speak almost as if it were an event of yesterday. It was in the days of the old mail coaches, and the event which served to fix this storm indelibly in the public mind occurred on or near the old coach road from Dumfries to Edinburgh. The road runs past Moffat and up something like five miles of very heavy gradient to the Devil's Beef Tub, ascending in that distance nearly nine hundred feet; from the Tub it crosses the lonely, desolate watershed which divides Tweed from Annan, then by easy slope drops past Tweedshaws and Badlieu, and so by Tweedsmuir and the old Crook Inn—with Broad Law upheaving his massive shoulder on the right—slips gradually into country less unkind in days of storm than are those bleak upper regions.
Snow had been falling all day on the 1st of February 1831, and the morning mail from Dumfries to Edinburgh was already late in reaching Moffat. Would "she" go on, would "she" risk the terrible drifts that even now must have formed nearer the bleak moorland summit? And the little knot of faithful admirers who, according to custom, daily assembled by one's and two's about the inn door at Moffat to wait the coming of the coach—their one excitement—agreed that "MacGeorge would gang on if the de'il himsel' stude across the road." MacGeorge was guard of the mail-coach, a fine, determined man, an old soldier, one imbued with abnormally strong sense of duty. Once before, for some quite unavoidable delay, the Post-Office authorities had "quarrelled" him (as he expressed it), and this undeserved blame rankled in the old soldier's heart. It should not be said of him a second time that he had failed to get his mails through on time. So it came to pass that, in spite of rising gale and fiercer driving snow, in spite of earnest remonstrance from innkeepers and spectators, with "toot-toot" of horn away into the white smother, spectral-like, glided the silent coach. A mile from the inn she was blocked by a huge drift. That safely won through, a couple of miles farther she plodded on, slowly and ever more slow; and finally, in a mighty wreath, stuck fast; "all the King's horses" might not have brought her through that. MacGeorge was urged to turn now, to make the best of a bad business and to go back to Moffat. The delay was unavoidable; no one could cast blame on him, for the worst part of the road was yet to come, and no power on earth could get the mails through that. But no! It was his duty to go on, and go he would.
The horses were taken out of the coach. Some were sent back to Moffat in charge of the lads who rode the extra tracers used in snowy weather for the few miles of heavy collar-work out of Moffat; of the rest, loaded with the mail-bags, MacGeorge led one, Goodfellow, the coachman, another; and the two set off for Tweedshaws, accompanied by a man named Marchbanks, the Moffat roadman, who had been a passenger on the coach. It was but four miles to Tweedshaws, yet before they had struggled through half the distance the horses had come to a standstill, utterly blown and exhausted; nothing could get them to stir forward, or longer to face the drift. Marchbanks suggested that now at length they might reasonably turn and fight their way back. Goodfellow hesitated.
"What say ye, Jamie?" he asked of MacGeorge.
"Come ye or bide ye, I go on," answered the stern old soldier. "I can carry the bags mysel'."
"Then that settles the maitter. If ye gang, I gang."
So the horses were turned adrift to find their own way home, and the two men went off into the mirk, carrying the bags; whilst Marchbanks, on their urgent advice, turned to force his arduous way back to Moffat.
Snow still fell in the morning, but the worst of the storm seemed over when Marchbanks again started to try for Tweedshaws to ascertain if MacGeorge and Goodfellow had won their way through. The country was one vast drift; the snow-posts by the roadside, where not altogether buried or so plastered with the driving snow on their weather side as to be invisible, pushed their black heads through the universal ghostly shroud; where the road had been, the abandoned coach itself loomed, a shapeless white mound. On and on Marchbanks toiled, and, far past the spot where last night he had parted from his comrades, something unusual hanging to a snow post caught his eye. It was the mail-bags, securely tied there by hands which too evidently had been bleeding from the cold; but of guard or coachman there was never a sign. The meagre winter day was already drawing to a close; with the gathering darkness a rising wind drove the snow once more before it, and the clouds to windward piled black and ominous. By himself Marchbanks was powerless to help, if help were indeed yet possible; he could but return to Moffat and give the alarm.
That night men with lanterns and snow-poles fought their way to Tweedshaws, only to learn there what all had feared—neither guard nor coachman had come through. Therefore, if by remote chance they still lived, the men must lie buried in the snow, perhaps within very few yards of the high-road. For two days scores of men searched every likely spot, but never a clue they found, except Goodfellow's hat, which lay in a peat-hag at no great distance from the post where the mail-bags had been hung.
Then—some said it was a dream that guided them—some one thought of an old, disused road along which there was possibility the lost men might have made their way. There, from a drift protruded something black—a boot; and on his back, deep buried, lay Goodfellow. Near at hand they found MacGeorge, in an easy attitude, as if quietly sleeping, on his face a smile—"a kind o' a pleasure," the finders called it—such a smile, perhaps, as the face of the "good and faithful servant" may wear when he entereth into the joy of his Lord.
Many have been the snowy years since that in which MacGeorge threw away life for duty's sake. Besides winters, such as that hard "Crimean" one of 1854-5, there have been, for example, the terrible season of 1860-1, the bitter winter of 1878-9, when snow lay, practically unbroken, from November till March, and the frost was unrelenting in severity; and there have been others, too numerous to specify. Many a man has perished on the hill, before and since, but no tragedy ever seized the popular imagination so firmly as did that on the Moffat road in 1831. It is a district lonely enough even in summer time, that joint watershed of Tweed, Annan, and Clyde, but when winter gales sweep over those lofty moorlands, and snow drives down before the bitter blast, let no man unused to the hill attempt that road. It was but the other year that a lonely shepherd's wife near Tweedshaws, one stormy evening when snow drove wildly across the moor, thought that she heard the cry of a human voice come down the gale. Again and again, as she sat by her cosy fire of glowing peat she imagined that some one called for help. Again and again she rose, and opening the door, listened, but never, when she stood by the open door waiting for the call to come again, was anything to be heard but the noise of the storm and the rush of the wind, anything to be seen but the driving snow. Long she listened, but the cry came no more, and naturally she concluded that imagination had fooled her. In the morning, not very many yards away from the door, half-covered by its snowy winding-sheet, lay the stiff-frozen body of a young man. There had been the breakdown of some vehicle down the road the previous evening, and he had thought to make his way to Moffat on foot. Of what do men think when they are lost in the snow? Of nothing, probably, one may conclude; very likely, before it has dawned upon them that there is danger, the mind, like the body, has become numbed with the cold, and they probably only think of rest and sleep. To some spot sheltered from the blast they may perhaps have stumbled, and they pause to take breath. After the turmoil through which they have been struggling, this sheltered spot seems a quiet little back-water, out of the raging torrent, peaceful, even warm, by comparison. A little rest—even, it may be, a few minutes' sleep—will revive them, and afterwards they will push on, refreshed. All will be well; it is not far to safety. And the snow falls quietly, ceaselessly, softly lapping them in its gentle folds, and the roar of the wind comes now from very far away—their last lullaby, heard vaguely through "death's twilight dim." The desire to sleep, men say, is irresistible, and once yielded to, sleep's twin brother, death, is very near at hand. There was found many years ago in the Border hills the body of a man, who had taken off his plaid, folded it carefully to make a pillow, on it had rested his head, and so had passed to his long rest, contented enough, if one might judge from the smile on his face.
But men do not always thus loose consciousness when buried in the snow. There was the case of Mr. Alexander Laidlaw of Bowerhope, on St. Mary's Loch, in the year 1842. One wild day of storm and deep-lying snow he started out to see after the safety of his sheep. Hours had passed, darkness had fallen, and he did not come home. Then a shepherd remembered having seen him crossing a certain hill where snow lay extra deep. To this hill in the morning the searchers betook themselves, to find that a great avalanche had taken place, leaving the hill bare but for the night's coating of snow. At the hill-foot the old snow was piled in giant masses. Here a dog sniffed, and whimpered, and began to scrape. They found Laidlaw buried there in tons of snow, uninjured save in one arm, and after fourteen hours burial in his snowy sepulchre he was still partly conscious. When the tumbling snow mass overwhelmed him he had had presence of mind and strength to clear from before his face breathing space sufficient to preserve life. Laidlaw lived for many years after, in no permanent respect a sufferer from his burial and resurrection.
His was an experience of no common order, yet it was a case less strange than that of a sportsman, many years ago, who, unused to the hills, was lost amongst the snow one evening of sudden storm. Far and long he wandered, till, utterly exhausted, dropping from fatigue and cold, he chanced on a roof-less cottage, the crumbling walls of which promised some shelter from the wind and the terrible drifting snow. By the empty chimney-place he sat down, thankful that at least the bitter gale no longer buffeted him. But the snow fell thick and fast, eddying into every corner, gently covering his feet and stealing up over his body. A drowsy languor crept over his senses, an irresistible feeling of warmth and comfort came to him; his head fell forward. Again and again, knowing the deadly peril, he roused himself with ever-increasing effort; again and again his head sank. Then suddenly it seemed that all was well. How could he have fancied that he was out amongst the snow? The sound of the gale still thundered in his ears, but dully, muffled by thick walls, and he stood in a bedroom wherein burned a cheerful fire. On the bed lay a man, who presently, with a start, sat up, looked at him, and lay down again. Three times this happened, but the fourth time the man in bed got up and hurriedly began to dress. He was a man unknown to the dreamer—if dreaming he was—but his features were strongly marked, and bore a scar on the cheek, unmistakable to anyone who had once seen it. Then, suddenly, except for himself, the room was empty, and, as the dreamer in his dream strove to reach the fire, to thrust cold hands close to the pleasant glow, room and fire faded, and he knew no more till a bright light shone in his dazed eyes, and by his side, a hand on his shoulder, vigorously shaking him, knelt the man whom he had seen in his dreams. "I knew you were coming," drowsily murmured the awakened sleeper, glancing feebly at his rescuer, and immediately dropping off to sleep again.
When next he came to full consciousness, it was in a warm bed in a comfortable room, where every evidence of luxury met his eyes. In an armchair by the fire, with outstretched feet, sat his rescuer, his face turned towards the bed. And presently:
"Why did you say last night that you knew I was coming?" he asked.
And when the dreamer had told his dream:
"It is strange," said the other, "that last night I should have been forced, as it were, to get up and go to the old cottage by the wood. Over and over again I woke, plagued by an unaccountable impulse to visit those ruined walls. Struggle as I might against it, argue with myself as I would on its folly, it always returned; and at last, about midnight, it conquered me, and I arose and went."
THE MURDER OF COLONEL STEWART OF HARTRIGGE
Since a time long prior to the Raid of the Redeswire—when on Caterfell the rallying cry, "Jethart's here," fell like sweetest music on the ears of a sore-pressed little band of armed Scots, fighting for their lives, and giving back sullenly before superior English strength—the worst enemies of Jedburgh have never been able to taunt her with apathy, or with want of strenuousness. In the fighting of days long gone by, in questions social or political of more modern times, lack of zeal has not been one of her characteristics; nor, perhaps, in past times have her inhabitants, or those resident in the district, been conspicuous for tolerance of the religious or political convictions of neighbours who might chance not to see eye to eye with them in such matters.
The first half of the eighteenth century was a time more fully charged than most with questions which, on the Border as elsewhere, goaded men to fury. There was, for example, the Union; there had been, prior to that, the unhappy Darien Scheme, which ruined half Scotland and raised hatred of England to white heat; there was, later, the advent of George the First and his "Hanoverian Rats," to the final ousting of the rightful King over the water; there was the Rising of 1715, and, finally, there was the gallant attempt by Bonnie Prince Charlie to regain his father's crown in 1745. Thus they had, indeed, a superfluity of subjects over which men might legitimately quarrel. And when it is remembered that gentlemen in those days universally carried swords, and as a rule possessed some knowledge of how to use them, and that the man who did not habitually drink too much at dinner was a veritable rara avis—a poor creature, unworthy to be deemed wholly a man—the wonder will be, not that so many, but rather that so few, fatal quarrels took place.
Whatever in other respects might be their failings—and these were, indeed, many and grave—Scottish inns in those days were noted for the goodness of their claret. As a consequence of our ancient alliance and direct trade with France, that wine was not only good, but was plentiful and cheap—cheap enough, indeed, to become almost the national drink—and vast quantities were daily consumed; though there were not wanting those who, protesting that claret was "shilpit" and "cauld on the stomach," called loudly for brandy, and with copious draughts of that spirit corrected the acidity of the less potent wine.
Possibly the very depth of the drinking in those days guarded many a life from sacrifice; the hand is not steady, nor the foot sure, when the brain is muddled by fumes of wine, and it was perhaps more often chance than design that guided the sword's point in some of these combats. Still, even so, Death too often claimed his toll from such chance strokes.
A duel between opponents equally armed was fair enough, provided that the skill and sobriety were not unequally divided, and that one of the fighters did not chance to be unduly handicapped by age. If a man wore a sword, he knew that he might be called upon to use it—even the most peace-loving of men might not then, without loss of honour, always succeed in avoiding a brawl; the blame was his own if he had neglected to make himself proficient in the use of his weapon. At that period the tongue of the libeller was not tied by fear of the law; for the man insulted or libelled there existed no means of redress other than that of shedding, or trying to shed, his insulter's blood. It was a rough and ready mode of obtaining justice; and if it had its manifest disadvantages, it was at least not wholly unsuited to the rough and ready times.
But cases, unhappily, were not unknown in which one or other of the tipsy combatants—in his sober moments possibly an honourable and kindly-natured man—thrust suddenly and without warning, giving his opponent small time to draw, or even, perhaps, to rise from his chair, a course of action which, even under the easy moral code of those days, was accounted as murder.
Such a case occurred at Jedburgh in the year 1726. Sir Gilbert Eliott of Stobs and Colonel Stewart of Stewartfield (now called Hartrigge) were the principals in the affair.
Sir Gilbert (father of the General Eliott afterwards so famed for his defence of Gibraltar in the great siege of 1779-83) was a man who had spent some part of his youth in London, a place then, as ever, little calculated to repress leanings towards conviviality in young men possessing the command of money. Probably the habits there contracted were emphasized later, when ebbing fortune consigned him for good to what no doubt then seemed to him the deadly dull life of a dull country-side. More than likely, too, he was a little scornful of his neighbours who knew not the delights of London, a trifle contemptuous of their country manners, and possibly he may have been of quarrelsome disposition, when in his cups quick to take offence and to see slights where none existed. In any event, if one may judge from the evidence given later at an inquiry held in Jedburgh, throughout the affair with Colonel Stewart, Sir Gilbert Eliott was the aggressor. Possibly, after the fashion of the day, both were more or less tipsy; certainly, without any doubt, Sir Gilbert was greatly the worse of liquor, and did not carry that liquor as a gentleman was expected to carry it. He persistently forced a quarrel on the Colonel.
It was in the old Black Bull Inn at Jedburgh that the meeting took place. There had been a Head Court that forenoon to determine the list of voters for the year, and a large and already somewhat convivial company assembled afterwards in the dining-room of the Black Bull. Wine flowed, and as the evening waned, guest after guest prudently took himself off, till of the original party there were left but five—Sir Gilbert, Colonel Stewart, two officers of the Royal Regiment of North British Dragoons (the Scots Greys), and the proprietor of Timpendean—the latter described in the evidence as being "very noysie."
It is easy to imagine the scene. The long, low-ceilinged room, lit by candles, reeking of dinner and of wine. Eliott, still brooding over his defeat in the recent parliamentary election, bent on picking a quarrel; Stewart, amiable and for a time conciliatory, till goaded beyond endurance; the two officers, very red in the face, laughing and treating the whole affair as a huge joke; and Timpendean, the while, in a monotonous loud bawl, chanting, very much out of tune, a song, most of the verses of which he forgot before he had sung two lines, ever starting afresh ad nauseam, after the manner of drunken men. It was not a seemly spectacle, but it was the fashion of the day, and but for Eliott all might have ended with no worse effect than a bad headache next morning. But for Eliott—unfortunately. Nothing, apparently, would satisfy that gentleman. Colonel Stewart had let fall words which were twisted into an affront. The Colonel assured him that no such words had passed his lips; but that if he had by chance uttered anything which could be construed as an insult, or if anything said by him had hurt Sir Gilbert's feelings, he was sorry for it, and he willingly apologised.
Then Sir Gilbert must needs drag in politics. There was the burning question of the late election. Why had Colonel Stewart voted against him? He would have expected the Colonel's vote sooner than anybody's, and he took it ill that it had not been given to him. Colonel Stewart explained that as he lay under very great obligations to Sir Patrick Scott and his family, he considered that he had no choice but to vote as he had done; but this did not satisfy Sir Gilbert; the vote should have been his by rights, and all the efforts of Captain Ross as peacemaker could not keep him from harping on this one string—the supposed slight put upon him in the matter of the vote. Colonel Stewart was more than willing to drop the subject, and at last Captain Ross, thinking the matter settled, momentarily turned away, in an endeavour to stop the monotony of Timpendean's tuneless, dreary song.
And then the mischief began. Sir Gilbert used words which, owing to Timpendean's noise, Ross did not catch, but he heard Colonel Stewart's reply: "Pray, Sir Gilbert, you have said a great deal already to provoke me; don't provoke me further." Then more hot words from Eliott, and Colonel Stewart threw a glass of wine in the baronet's face. With that, Eliott started to his feet, drew his sword, and plunged it into Stewart's stomach before the latter could rise from his chair or defend himself in any way.
Thereupon arose a babel of sound—a shout, the scuffle and tramp of unsteady feet, noise of chairs pushed aside and overturned on the bare boards, servants running to and fro. And Colonel Stewart, with clammy brow and failing limbs, sat silent in his chair, a dying man.
Captain Ross and his brother officer secured the swords of both men—shutting the stable door, indeed, after the steed was stolen; in hot haste doctors were sent for; and 'mid the bustle and "strow" Eliott stumbled from the room and down the stair, "wanting his wig," as the landlady, whom he passed on the way, deponed. Sir Gilbert's old and faithful servant hurried his master out of the inn, and behind a great tombstone in the Abbey churchyard hid him till the cool night air gave him sense to attempt escape.
In a thick wood near the head of Rulewater Sir Gilbert Eliott lay concealed, till his friends succeeded in smuggling him aboard a small craft off the coast of Berwickshire, and an outlaw, with a warrant out against him, he lived an uneasy life in Holland for some years, until influential friends with difficulty got him pardon, and enabled him again to return to the Border.
That is the story as it is usually known. But it is fair to add that the tale is differently told in Chambers' Domestic Annals of Scotland, where it is stated that Colonel Stewart was "a huffing, hectoring person," and that he had given "great provocation, and gentlemen afterwards admitted that Stobbs was called upon by the laws of honour to take notice of the offence." Evidence given at the inquiry, however, hardly seems to favour this view. Possibly neither side was quite free from blame; wine has other effects than to make glad the heart of man.
AULD RINGAN OLIVER
Amongst the flying, broken rabble that represented all that was left of the Covenanting army after the disastrous business of Bothwell Bridge, a dismounted Borderer, with one or two other stout hearts by no means disposed even now to give up the day, continued still to strike fiercely at Claverhouse's pursuing troopers. But their efforts to stem the tide of disaster were utterly without avail, and the Borderer, zealously protesting and struggling, was at length swept off the field by a wild panic rush of the fugitives. Missing his footing on the broken ground as the flying mob pressed on to him, the Borderer fell, and, hampered by the bodies of a couple of wounded and exhausted countrymen, ere he could again struggle to his feet, the horse of more than one spurring rider had trampled over him, and he lay disabled and helpless, at the mercy of any dragoon who might chance to ride that way.
"'The Lord hath afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger,'" groaned the Covenanter. "'He hath made my strength to fall; the Lord hath delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up.'"
"Aye!" whimpered a wounded man who lay partly across the Borderer's legs. "'The Lord was as an enemy; He hath swallowed up Israel.' And I'm thinkin', 'gin He send nae help, and that sune, we're no muckle better than deid men. Eh! weary fa' the day I left my ain pleugh stilts, an' my ain fireside."
"Na, na, freend. He that setteth his hand to the plough, let him not look back," answered the Borderer. "'Gin I win oot o' this, I trow I'll 'hew Agag in pieces before the Lord,' or a's dune. We will yet smite the Philistines, destroy utterly the Amalakites! Aye! smite them hip and thigh, even from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof!"
This fiery Borderer, Ringan Oliver by name, a man of gigantic strength and great courage, a strong pillar of the Covenant, was a native of Jedwater, where he and his fathers before him had for generations occupied the small holding of Smailcleuchfoot. From the turmoil of the disastrous flight after the battle of Bothwell Bridge, and from the close search of the pursuing soldiers, Ringan Oliver did eventually escape, sore battered, and not without much difficulty and danger, and for many a month thereafter he lay in hiding; caves, holes in the moors, and dripping peat hags, were his shelter, heather and ferns his bed, many a time when the hunt waxed hot. And in 1680, hearing of the return from Holland of the outlawed Hall of Haughhead, he speedily joined that noted Covenanter, hiding with him, "lurking as privily as they could about Borrowstounness and other places on both sides of the Firth of Forth"; and he was with Hall and "worthy Mr. Cargill" when "these two bloody hounds, the curates of Borrowstounness and Carriden, smelled out Mr. Cargill and his companion," and sent to the Governor of Borrowstounness that information which led to the death of one of the three Covenanters. Mr. Cargill and Ringan Oliver got clear away from the house at Queensferry where Colonel Middleton, single-handed, tried to arrest them, but Hall, severely wounded in the head, was taken, and died before he could be carried even so far as Edinburgh.
For some years after this we have no record of Ringan's doings; possibly part of the time he spent on his farm at Smailcleuchfoot. In 1689, however, he was with General Mackay at Killiecrankie. And again, as at Bothwell Bridge, sorely against his inclination he experienced the horrors of headlong flight in company of a broken rabble. Reaching Dunkeld in an exhausted condition early in the following morning, he and a few comrades found shelter in the house of a friend. But as they sat, about to fall to on a much needed meal, down the little street came the "rat-tat-tat" of a drum, and past the window swaggered an unkempt Highland drummer, halting at intervals to hurl defiance at all Whigs, and a challenge to them to fight the famous Highland champion, Rory Dhu Mhor. And this is something after the fashion of what Ringan and his weary comrades heard drawled out with fine nasal whine:
"This will pe to pe kiving notice to aal it may pe concerning, tat Rory Dhu Mhor of ta Clan Donachy will pe keeping ta crown of ta causeway in ta toun of Tunkel for wan hour and mhore. And he iss civilly tesiring it to pe known tat if there will pe any canting, poo-hooing, psalm-singing whig repellioner in ta toun, and he will pe so pould as to pe coming forth his hiding holes, and looking ta said Rory Dhu Mhor in ta face, ta said Rory Dhu Mhor herepy kifs promise to pe so ferry condescending as to pe cutting ta same filthy Whig loon shorter by ta legs, for ta honour of King Tchames. Ochilow! Cot save King Tchames!"
A few paces behind this tattered herald strutted the champion, Rory Dhu Mhor, swinging his kilt, and like the wild stag of his native mountains, haughtily sniffing the breeze.
At this sight, all the fierce old Border blood began to surge through Ringan Oliver's veins. The contemptuous challenge goaded him to fury; for the Christianity of our Covenanting ancestors was seldom of that cast which prompts the turning of the other cheek to the smiter, and Ringan was one of the most militant of a militant sect.
"God do so to me, and more also," shouted he, springing to his feet, "'gin I humble not this blethering boaster, and stop his craw, or he maun stop mine."
"Na, na, Ringan," cried his friends, "haud sae, man, haud sae. Ye'll be clean dung-ower; ye're ower sair spent to fecht thenow."
But this only goaded Ringan the more.
"As the Lord liveth, he shall lick the dust. Hinder me not, friends, withstand me not; I maun do battle with this Philistine."
And with that, he rushed into the street, broadsword in hand.
"Diaoul! Fwhat will this creatur pe tat will pe approaching in such ways and manners pefore a Hieland shentleman?" cried the Highlander with a snort, giving an extra cock to his bonnet.
"I am an unworthy follower of Christ, our spiritual Redeemer, and a soldier of King William, our temporal deliverer; and I stand here to bid you make good your profane boasting."
"Fhery goot inteet! Fhery goot inteet! you haf peen suppering at
Killiecrankie, and now you would pe after breakfasting at Tunkeld? By
Cot, you shall haf it!"
And Rory drew his claymore. They were not ill-matched. Both were big men, both of gigantic strength, both skilled swordsmen. But the Highlander had by far the greater experience of duelling; it was, in fact, the pride of his life to pick a quarrel and to slay his antagonist. Moreover, he had his target, which was of immense assistance in warding off blows; and Ringan had no guard other than his sword, which fact, in itself, made the combat unequal. And, to crown all, the Highlander was infinitely the fresher. But the dour, fiery, old Border blood had brought Ringan to this pass, when he was in no way fit to fight, and, whatever the cost, he must now go through with it.
So to it they fell. Long they fought, and fiercely, till the breath came hard-drawn and short, and the red blood ran fast from both combatants. Only, the Highlander was less distressed than Ringan, his wounds fewer and less serious. Still, they kept on without pause, till to the fierce joy of the Highland onlookers, and the dull misery of others, it became quite plain that Ringan's time had come. Human nature could do no more; he was beaten, and was being driven slowly back and back, his defence each minute getting less vigorous and confident, his attack less to be dreaded. Loud rang the exulting Gaelic yells to Rory to finish him, to "give his flesh to the eagles."
And now Ringan, blood flowing from a dozen gashes, was down on one knee, but still almost mechanically guarding head and body from the whirlwind final attack of the Highlander. Sick at heart, the Lowland onlookers turned their looks aside; they hated to see such an end of a brave comrade, and they were too few to avenge him. Suddenly, and with bent heads, they turned away from looking at the figure of the wearied Borderer, beaten down on to his knee, away from sight of the flashing claymore that was now so near to tasting their friend's life-blood. And then to their ears came a roar, as of the routing of some mighty bull of Bashan. Glancing back quickly, their astonished eyes saw Rory Dhu Mhor standing rigidly erect and stiff, an expression of blank wonder on his hairy face, and the point of Ringan's broadsword appearing out between the Highlander's shoulders. Then, with another mighty roar, as the sword was withdrawn, he sprang convulsively off the ground, and with a clatter fell heavily on his target, dead. It was a spent man that he was dealing with, he had rashly thought. Too well he knew the game; he had played it successfully so often before. It needed but to go in now and slay. In his over confidence the Highlander neglected for one moment to be cunning of fence, and during that moment he exposed his body. It was enough for a swordsman so skilled as Ringan Oliver. Exhausted as he was, like a flash his weapon leapt forward, and the great Highland champion had fought his last fight.
It was near to being a dearly bought victory. Murder was in the hearts of the Highlanders, as for the moment they stood in savage silence, hungering for the life of their champion's overthrower. And Ringan was fainting from loss of blood, unable to raise himself from the trampled, muddy ground on which he had fallen. Things indeed looked ill for him and for his friends. And ill, no doubt, it would have fared with them, if just then it had not chanced that the certain news reached the Highlanders in Dunkeld of the death of him they called "Ian Dhu nan Cath" (Black John of the Battles), John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, slain the previous day in Killiecrankie fight. Thus it happened that, instead of falling sword in hand on the little party of Lowlanders, the dismayed clansmen began to slip away, and Ringan's friends succeeded in getting their sorely wounded comrade into safety.
It was some time after this, when life had become less stormy, that Ringan again took up his residence at Smailcleuchfoot. Here he continued to live till he was quite an old man. It was here, too, that the incident befell which gave rise to the ballad written by Mr. James Telfer early in last century.
Ringan had ever been known as well for his rigid ideas of faith and honour as for his great strength and undaunted courage, and these qualities had brought him greatly into the esteem and friendship of his landlord, one of the earliest of the Marquesses of Lothian. It is said that when the Marquess, towards the end of his life, found it necessary to take what was then the tedious and toilsome journey to London, he sent for Ringan, and giving him the key of a room in Ferniehurst in which were kept important and valuable deeds and family papers, charged him on no account to allow anyone to enter the room or to interfere with the papers until he (the Marquess) should return. It happened, however, shortly after Lord Lothian's departure that his heir had occasion to wish to enter this locked room, and he sent to demand the key from Ringan. The old man, naturally and rightly, refused to depart from the instructions he had received when the key was delivered to him, and the reply he sent to the young lord may probably have been somewhat blunt and uncompromising. In any case, hot words passed between him and the indignant heir, who considered, perhaps not unnaturally, that prohibition to enter the locked room, to whomsoever else it might apply, certainly could not under any circumstances apply to him. Perhaps had he gone in the first instance himself to Ringan and explained matters the affair might without much difficulty have been arranged. But he had taken the other course, and had demanded the key as a matter of right. Hence came hot words between the two, and the upshot was that the younger man left boiling with resentment at the "old Cameronian devil, Ringan Oliver," and threatening to pay him out.
No very long time after this the old Marquess died, and Ringan's enemy reigned in his stead. Nor was it long ere he began to show that no portion of the wrath conceived by him against the old man had been allowed to die for want of nursing. One September day, when Ringan's crop was all but ready to cut, there came across the water from Ferniehurst the new Marquess accompanied by several mounted men, servants, and others, with dogs. Soon the party began riding over the farm, ostensibly looking for hares; finally, they all went into the standing crop, trampling it down wantonly, hallooing their dogs here, there, and everywhere, and galloping furiously about wherever the corn stood thickest. Ringan had been rapidly becoming more and more angry as he found that the damage done was so manifestly wilful damage; and at last, finding remonstrance to be so much waste of breath, he snatched up an old musket, which possibly had not seen the light since Killiecrankie, and shot one of the dogs.
That was enough for the Marquess; he had got the old man in the wrong now. Off he went at once and lodged with the Sheriff of Roxburghshire a complaint against Ringan, and a summons was issued. Ringan refused to appear in court.
"Na!" he said. "I've done nae wrong. I daur them to lay a hand on me."
But the Law was not to be thus flouted. If he wouldn't come freely, then he must be made to come, said the sheriff. Here a difficulty arose. Ringan's reputation for gigantic strength and utter fearlessness still survived, and no one dared even attempt to apprehend the old man. In such circumstances the sheriff pressed into his service the Marquess and his men, and this party set off for Smailcleuchfoot. Friends warned Ringan of their coming and counselled him to fly. But the dour old Cameronian's spirit refused to let him do aught that might even remotely suggest a doubt as to his being absolutely in the right. He only retired into his house, and resolutely set about barring doors and windows; and when that was done—
"Let them touch me that daur," he cried, taking up and carefully loading the same old musket with which he had shot the dog.
Soon came the sheriff's summons, to which Ringan paid no heed, beyond letting the party know that he was at home, and had no intention of surrendering. There was in the house with him at this time a young girl (whether an adopted daughter or merely a maid who cooked and looked after the old man's house, one does not know), but she had refused to leave when he began to barricade the place, and Ringan's sole anxiety was now apparently for her. Of his own safety or that of his house, he seemed to think not at all; the grim old dourness and determination that had distinguished him at Bothwell Bridge and elsewhere were again smouldering, ready to burst into flame.
"Keep oot o' the licht, lass, and rin nae risk; gang in ahint yon press door," he said to the girl, when the men outside began firing at the windows.
Then he, too, began to fire back at his enemies, and for a time he was too much absorbed in his practice to pay attention to what the girl might be doing. Thus, he had just fired a shot which clipped away one of the curls from the Sheriff's wig, when a gasp, and the sound of a heavy fall on the floor behind him, caused the old man hastily to look round. Curiosity had overcome her caution; the girl had ventured from her shelter, and, standing behind Ringan, had been trying to see, past the edge of the window, how things were going outside. Perhaps she had a lover in the attacking party, and feared for his safety. Anyhow, as she lent forward, forgetting her own danger, a bullet meant for the old man found its billet in her throat. For a moment Ringan stood aghast, then knelt by the dying girl, striving in vain to staunch the blood that gushed from her wound. And as he realised that such a hurt was far beyond his simple skill, the lust to kill was born again in the old man's breast. He forgot that he was old, forgot how the treacherous years had stolen from him the vigour and spring that had been his, forgot everything but the half-crazy desire for vengeance.
With the roar of a wounded tiger he tore down the barricades fixed by himself not an hour before, snatched from its place over the fire the trusty old broad-sword that had served him so well in former days, flung wide the door, and charged blindly out on his enemies. Alas for Ringan Oliver! Even as he crossed the threshold, a rope, or some part of his discarded barricade, caught his foot, and like the Philistines' mighty god Dagon lang syne before the Ark of the Lord, he fell prone on his face, and the enemy was on him in an instant.
Even then, disarmed and smothered by numbers as he was, the struggle for a time was by no means unequal, and more than once, with gigantic effort, he had all but flung off his captors. Perhaps, in the end, the task might even have been too much for the sheriff's party had it not been that a treacherous tinker, named Allan, with a hammer struck the old man a heavy blow on the face, fracturing the jaw and partially stunning him. Then, bound hand and foot, Auld Ringan was carried to Edinburgh. There, in the Tolbooth, he lay for eight long years, suffering tortures, first from his broken jaw, and later from old wounds that now broke out afresh. He that had lived so long a life in the pure fresh air of the Border, who had loved more to hear the lark sing than the mouse cheep, now languished in a foul, insanitary prison, and it was but the ghost of his former self that at the end of his long confinement crept away to pass the brief remainder of his days in a house in the Crosscauseway, Edinburgh.
Auld Ringan Oliver died in 1736. He sleeps among the martyrs in
Greyfriars Churchyard.