CHAPTER VII.—THE FOREWARNING.
I had a dream which was not all a dream.
Byron.
Coming events cast their shadows before.
Campbell.
On first commencing business, I have freely confessed, I believe, that I was unco solicitous of custom, though less from sinful, selfish motives, than from the, I trust, laudable fear I had about becoming in a jiffy the father of a small family, every one with a mouth to fill and a back to cleid—helpless bairns, with nothing to look to or lean on, save and except the proceeds of my daily handiwork. Nothing, however, is sure in this world, as Maister Wiggie more than once took occasion to observe, when lecturing on the house built by the foolish man on the sea-sands; for months passed on, and better passed on; and these, added together by simple addition, amounted to three years; and still neither word nor wittens of a family, to perpetuate our name to future generations, appeared to be forthcoming.
Between friends, I make no secret of the matter, that this was a catastrophe which vexed me not a little, for more reasons than one. In the first place, youngsters being a bond of mutual affection between man and wife, sweeter than honey from the comb, and stronger than the Roman cement with which the old Picts built their bridges, that will last till the day of doom. In the second place, bairns toddling round a bit ingle make a house look like itself, especially in the winter time, when hailstanes rattle on the window, and winds roar like the voices of mighty giants at the lum-head; for then the maister of the dwelling finds himself like an ancient patriarch, and the shepherd of a flock, tender as young lambs, yet pleasant to his eye, and dear to his heart. And, in the third place, (for I’ll speak the truth and shame the deil,) as I could not thole the gibes and idle tongues of a wheen fools, that, for their diversion, would be asking me, “How the wife and bairns were; and if I had sent my auldest laddie to the school yet?”
I have swithered within myself for more than half-an-hour whether I should relate a circumstance bordering a little on the supernatural line, that happened to me, as connected with the business of the bairns of which I have just been speaking; and, were it for no other reason, but just to plague the scoffer that sits in his elbow-chair, I have determined to jot down the whole miraculous paraphernally in black and white. With folk that will not listen to the voice of reason, it is needless to be wasterful of words; so them that like, may either prin their faith to my coat-sleeve, about what I am going to relate, or not—just as they choose. All that I can say in my defence, and as an affidavy to my veracity, is, that I have been thirty year an elder of Maister Wiggie’s kirk—and that is no joke. The matter I make free to consider is not a laughing concern, nor any thing belonging to the Merry-Andrew line; and, if folk were but strong in the faith, there is no saying what may come to pass for their good. One might as well hold up their brazen face, and pretend not to believe any thing—neither the Witch of Endor raising up Samuel; nor Cornel Gardener’s vision; nor Johnny Wilkes and the De’il; nor Peden’s prophecies.
Nanse and me aye made what they call an anniversary of our wedding-day, which happened to be the fifth of November, the very same as that on which the Gunpowder Plot chances to be occasionally held—Sundays excepted. According to custom, this being the fourth year, we collected a good few friends to a tea-drinking; and had our cracks and a glass or two of toddy. Thomas Burlings, if I mind, was there, and his wife; and Deacon Paunch, he was a bachelor; and likewise James Batter; and David Sawdust and his wife, and their four bairns, good customers; and a wheen more, that, without telling a lie, I could not venture to particularize at this moment, though maybe I may mind them when I am not wanting—but no matter.—Well, as I was saying, after they all went away, and Nanse and me, after locking the door, slipped to our bed, I had one of the most miraculous dreams recorded in the history of man; more especially if we take into consideration where, when, and to whom it happened.
At first I thought I was sitting by the fireside, where the cat and the kittling were playing with a mouse they had catched in the meal-kit, cracking with James Batter on check-reels for yarn, and the cleverest way of winding pirns, when, all at once, I thought myself transplanted back to the auld world—forgetting the tailoring trade; broad and narrow cloth; worsted boots and Kilmarnock cowls; pleasant Dalkeith; our late yearly ploy; my kith and kindred; the friends of the people; the Duke’s parks; and so on—and found myself walking beneath beautiful trees, from the branches of which hung apples, and oranges, and cocky-nuts, and figs, and raisins, and plumdamases, and corry-danders, and more than the tongue of man can tell, while all the birds and beasts seemed as tame as our bantings; in fact, just as they were in the days of Adam and Eve—Bengal tigers passing by on this hand, and Russian bears on that, rowing themselves on the grass, out of fun; while peacocks, and magpies, and parrots, and cockytoos, and yorlins, and grey-linties, and all birds of sweet voice and fair feather, sported among the woods, as if they had nothing to do but sit and sing in the sweet sunshine, having dread neither of the net of the fowler, the double-barrelled gun of the gamekeeper, nor the laddies’ girn set with moolings of bread. It was real paradise; and I found myself fairly lifted off my feet and transported out of my seven senses.
While sauntering about at my leisure, with my Sunday hat on, and a pair of clean white cotton stockings, in this heavenly mood, under the green trees, and beside the still waters, out of which beautiful salmon trouts were sporting and leaping, methought in a moment I fell down in a trance, as flat as a flounder, and I heard a voice visibly saying to me, “Thou shalt have a son; let him be christened Benjamin!” The joy that this vision brought my spirit thrilled through my bones, like the sounds of a blind man grinding “Rule Britannia” out of an organ, and my senses vanished from me into a kind of slumber on rousing from which I thought I found myself walking, all dressed, with powdered hair, and a long tye behind, just like a grand gentleman, with a valuable bamboo walking-stick in my hand, among green yerbs and flowers, like an auncient hermit far away among the hills, at the back of beyont; as if broad cloth and buckram had never been heard tell of, and serge, twist, pocket-linings, and shamoy leather, were matters with which mortal man had no concern.
Speak of auld-light or new-light as ye like, for my own part I am not much taken up with any of your warlock and wizard tribe; I have no brew of your auld Major Weir, or Tam o’ Shanter, or Michael Scott, or Thomas the Rhymer’s kind, knocking in pins behind doors to make decent folk dance, jig, cut, and shuffle themselves to death—splitting the hills as ye would spelder a haddy, and playing all manner of evil pranks, and sinful abominations, till their crafty maister, Auld Nick, puts them to their mettle, by setting them to twine ropes out of sea-sand, and such like. I like none of your paternosters, and saying of prayers backwards, or drawing lines with chalk round ye, before crying,
“Redcowl, redcowl, come if ye daur;
Lift the sneck, and draw the bar.
I never, in the whole course of my life, was fond of lending the sanction of my countenance to any thing that was not canny; and, even when I was a wee smout of a callant, with my jacket and trowsers buttoned all in one, I never would play, on Hallo’-e’en night, at any thing else but douking for apples, burning nuts, pulling kail-runts, foul water and clean, drapping the egg, or trying who was to be your sweetheart out of the lucky-bag.
As I have often thought, and sometimes taken occasion to observe, it would be well for us all to profit by experience—“burned bairns should dread the fire,” as the proverb goes. After the miserable catastrophe of the playhouse, for instance—which I shall afterwards have occasion to commemorate in due time, and in a subsequent chapter of my eventful life—I would have been worse than mad, had I persisted, night after night, to pay my shilling for a veesy of vagrants in buckram, and limmers in silk, parading away at no allowance—as kings and queens, with their tale—speaking havers that only fools have throats wide enough to swallow, and giving themselves airs to which they have no more earthly title than the man in the moon. I say nothing, besides, of their throwing glamour in honest folks een; but I’ll not deny that I have been told by them who would not lie, and were living witnesses of the transaction, that, as true as death, they had seen the tane of these ne’er-do-weels spit the other, through and through, with a weel-sharpened, old, Highland, forty-second Andrew Ferrary, in single combat; whereupon, as might reasonably be expected, he would, in the twinkling of a farthing rushlight, fall down as dead as a bag of sand; yet, by their rictum-ticktum, rise-up-Jack, slight-of-hand, hocus-pocus way, would be on his legs, brushing the stour from his breeches knees, before the green curtain was half-way down. James Batter himself once told me, that, when he was a laddie, he saw one of these clanjamphrey go in behind the scenes with nankeen trowsers, a blue coat out at the elbows, and fair hair hanging over his ears, and in less than no time come out a real negro, as black as Robinson Crusoe’s man Friday, with a jacket on his back of Macgregor tartan, and as good a pair of buckskin breeches as jockey ever mounted horse in at a Newmarket race. Where the silk stockings were wrought, and the Jerusalem sandals made, that he had on his feet, James Batter used doucely to observe he would leave every reasonable man to guess at a venture.
A good story not being the worse of being twice told, I repeat it over again, that I would have been worse than daft, after the precious warning it was my fortune to get, to have sanctioned such places with my presence, in spite of the remonstrances of my conscience—and of Maister Wiggie—and of the kirk-session. Whenever any thing is carried on out of the course of nature, especially when accompanied with dancing and singing, toot-tooing of clarionets, and bumming of bass-fiddles, ye may be as sure as you are born, that ye run a chance of being deluded out of your right senses—that the sounds are by way of lulling the soul asleep—and that, to the certainty of a without-a-doubt, you are in the heat and heart of one of the devil’s rendevooses.
To say no more, I was once myself, for example, at one of our Dalkeith fairs, present in a hay-loft—I think they charged threepence at the door, but let me in with a grudge for twopence, but no matter—to see a punch and puppie-show business, and other slight-of-hand work. Well, the very moment I put my neb within the door, I was visibly convinced of the smell of burnt roset, with which I understand they make lightning, and knew, as well as maybe, what they had been trafficking about with their black art; but, nevertheless, having a stout heart, I determined to sit still, and see what they would make of it, knowing well enough, that, as long as I had the Psalm-book in my pocket, they would be gay and clever to throw any of their blasted cantrips over me.
What do ye think they did? One of them, a wauf, drucken-looking scoundrel, fired a gold ring over the window, and mostly set fire to the thatch house opposite—which was not insured. Yet where think ye did the ring go to? With my living een I saw it taken out of auld Willie Turneep’s waistcoat pouch, who was sitting blind fou, with his mouth open, on one of the back seats; so, by no earthly possibility could it have got there, except by whizzing round the gable, and in through the steeked door by the key-hole.
Folk may say what they chuse by way of apology, but I neither like nor understand such on-going as changing sterling silver half-crowns into copper penny-pieces, or mending a man’s coat—as they did mine, after cutting a blad out of one of the tails—by the black-art.
But, hout-tout, one thing and another coming across me, had almost clean made me forget explaining to the world, the upshot of my extraordinary vision; but better late than never—and now for it.
Nanse, on finding herself in a certain way, was a thought dumfoundered; and instead of laughing, as she did at first, when I told her my dream, she soon came to regard the matter as one of sober earnest. The very prospect of what was to happen threw a gleam of comfort round our bit fireside: and, long ere the day had come about which was to crown our expectations, Nanse was prepared with her bit stock of baby’s wearing apparel, and all necessaries appertaining thereto—wee little mutches with lace borders, and side-knots of blue three-ha’penny ribbon—long muslin frockies, vandyked across the breast, drawn round the waist with narrow nittings, and tucked five rows about the tail—Welsh-flannel petticoaties—demity wrappers—a coral gum-stick, and other uncos, which it does not befit the like of me to particularize. I trust, on my part, as far as in me lay, I was not found wanting; having taken care to provide a famous Dunlop cheese, at fivepence-halfpenny the pound—I believe I paled fifteen, in Joseph Gowdy’s shop, before I fixed on it;—to say nothing of a bottle, or maybe two, of real peat-reek, Farintosh, small-still Hieland whisky—Glenlivat, I think, is the name o’t—half a peck of shortbread, baken by Thomas Burlings, with three pounds of butter, and two ounces of carvie-seeds in it, let alone orange-peel, and a pennyworth of ground cinnamon—half a mutchkin of best cony brandy, by way of change—and a Musselburgh ankerstoke, to slice down for tea-drinkings and posset cups.
Every one has reason to be thankful, and me among the rest; for many a worse provided for, and less welcome down-lying has taken place, time out of mind, throughout broad Scotland. I say this with a warm heart, as I am grateful for all my mercies. To hundreds above hundreds such a catastrophe brings scarcely any joy at all; but it was far different with me, who had a Benjamin to look for.
If the reader will be so kind as to look over the next chapter, he will find whether or not I was disappointed in my expectations.
CHAPTER VIII.—LETTING LODGINGS.
Then first he ate the white puddings,
And syne he ate the black, O;
Though muckle thought the Gudewife to hersell,
Yet ne’er a word she spak, O.
But up then started our Gudeman,
And an angry man was he, O.Old Song.
It would be curious if I passed over a remarkable incident, which at this time fell out. Being but new beginners in the world, the wife and I put our heads constantly together to contrive for our forward advancement, as it is the bounden duty of all to do. So our housie being rather large, (two rooms and a kitchen, not speaking of a coal-cellar and a hen-house,) and having as yet only the expectation of a family, we thought we could not do better than get John Varnish the painter, to do off a small ticket, with “A Furnished Room to Let” on it, which we nailed out at the window; having collected into it the choicest of our furniture, that it might fit a genteeler lodger and produce a better rent—And a lodger soon we got.
Dog on it! I think I see him yet. He was a blackaviced Englishman, with curled whiskers and a powdered pow, stout round the waistband, and fond of good eating, let alone drinking, as we found to our cost. Well, he was our first lodger. We sought a good price, that we might, on bargaining, have the merit of coming down a tait; but no, no—go away wi’ ye; it was dog-cheap to him. The half-guinea a-week was judged perfectly moderate; but if all his debts were—yet I must not cut before the cloth.
Hang expenses! was the order of the day. Ham and eggs for breakfast, let alone our currant jelly. Roast-mutton cold, and strong ale at twelve, by way of check, to keep away wind from the stomach. Smoking roast-beef, with scraped horse raddish, at four precisely; and toasted cheese, punch, and porter, for supper. It would have been less, had all the things been within ourselves. Nothing had we but the cauler new-laid eggs; then there was Deacon Heukbane’s butcher’s account; and John Cony’s spirit account; and Thomas Burlings’ bap account; and deevil kens how many more accounts, that came all in upon us afterwards. But the crowning of all was reserved for the end. It was no farce at the time, and kept our heads down at the water edge for many a day. I was just driving the hot goose along the seams of a Sunday jacket I was finishing for Thomas Clod the ploughman, when the Englisher came in at the shop door, whistling “Robert Adair,” and “Scots wha ha’e wi’ Wallace bled,” and whiles, maybe, churming to himself like a young blackbird;—but I have not patience to go through with it. The long and the short of the matter, however, was, that, after rummaging among my two or three webs of broadcloth on the shelf, he pitched on a Manchester blue, five quarters wide, marked CXD.XF, which is to say, three-and-twenty shillings the yard. I told him it was impossible to make a pair of pantaloons to him in two hours; but he insisted upon having them, alive or dead, as he had to go down the same afternoon to dine with my Lord Duke, no less. I convinced him, that if I was to sit up all night, he could get them by five next morning, if that would do, as I would also keep my laddie, Tammy Bodkin, out of his bed; but no—I thought he would have jumped out of his seven senses. “Just look,” he said, turning up the inside seam of the leg—“just see—can any gentleman make a visit in such things as these? they are as full of holes as a coal-sieve. I wonder the devil why my baggage has not come forward. Can I get a horse and boy to ride express to Edinburgh for a ready-made article?”
A thought struck me; for I had heard of wonderful advancement in the world, for those who had been so lucky as help the great at a pinch. “If ye’ll no take it amiss, sir,” said I, making my obedience, “a notion has just struck me.”
“Well, what is it?” said he briskly.
“Well, sir, I have a pair of knee-breeches, of most famous velveteen, double tweel, which have been only once on my legs, and that no farther gone than last Sabbath. I’m pretty sure they would fit ye in the meantime; and I would just take a pleasure in driving the needle all night, to get your own ready.”
“A clever thought,” said the Englisher. “Do you think they would fit me?—Devilish clever thought, indeed.”
“To a hair,” I answered; and cried to Nanse to bring the velveteens.
I do not think he was ten minutes, when lo, and behold! out at the door he went, and away past the shop-window like a lamplighter. The buttons on the velveteens were glittering like gold at the knees. Alas! it was like the flash of the setting sun; I never beheld them more. He was to have been back in two or three hours, but the laddie, with the box on his shoulder, was going through the street crying “Hot penny-pies” for supper, and neither word nor wittens of him. I began to be a thought uneasy, and fidgeted on the board like a hen on a hot girdle. No man should do any thing when he is vexed, but I could not help giving Tammy Bodkin, who was sewing away at the lining of the new pantaloons, a terrible whisk in the lug for singing to himself. I say I was vexed for it afterwards; especially as the laddie did not mean to give offence; and as I saw the blae marks of my four fingers along his chaft-blade.
The wife had been bothering me for a new gown, on strength of the payment of our grand bill; and in came she, at this blessed moment of time, with about twenty swatches from Simeon Calicoe’s prinned on a screed of paper.
“Which of these do you think bonniest?” said Nanse, in a flattering way; “I ken, Mansie, you have a good taste.”
“Cut not before the cloth,” answered I, “gudewife,” with a wise shake of my head. “It’ll be time enough, I daresay, to make your choice to-morrow.”
Nanse went out as if her nose had been blooding. I could thole it no longer; so, buttoning my breeches-knees, I threw my cowl into a corner, clapped my hat on my head, and away down in full birr to the Duke’s gate.
I speired at the porter, if the gentleman with the velveteen breeches and powdered hair, that was dining with the Duke, had come up the avenue yet?
“Velveteen breeches and powdered hair!” said auld Paul laughing, and taking the pipe out of his cheek, “whose butler is’t that ye’re after?”
“Well,” said I to him, “I see it all as plain as a pikestaff. He is off bodily; but may the meat and the drink he has taken off us be like drogs to his inside; and may the velveteens play crack, and cast the steeks at every step he takes!” It was no Christian wish; and Paul laughed till he was like to burst, at my expense. “Gang your ways hame, Mansie,” said he to me, clapping me on the shoulder as if I had been a wean, “and give over setting traps, for ye see you have catched a Tartar.”
This was too much; first to be cheated by a swindling loon, and then made game of by a flunkie; and, in my desperation, I determined to do some awful thing.
Nanse followed me in from the door, and asked what news?—I was ower big, and ower vexed to hear her; so, never letting on, I went to the little looking-glass on the drawers’ head, and set it down on the table. Then I looked myself in it for a moment, and made a gruesome face. Syne I pulled out the little drawer, and got the sharping strap, the which I fastened to my button. Syne I took my razor from the box, and gave it five or six turns along first one side and then the other, with great precision. Syne I tried the edge of it along the flat of my hand. Syne I loosed my neckcloth, and laid it over the back of the chair; and syne I took out the button of my shirt-neck, and folded it back. Nanse, who was, all the time, standing behind, looking what I was after, asked me, “if I was going to shave without hot water?” when I said to her in a fierce and brave manner, (which was very cruel, considering the way she was in,) “I’ll let you see that presently.” The razor looked desperate sharp; and I never liked the sight of blood; but oh, I was in a terrible flurry and fermentation. A kind of cold trembling went through me; and I thought it best to tell Nanse what I was going to do, that she might be something prepared for it. “Fare ye well, my dear!” said I to her, “you will be a widow in five minutes—for here goes!” I did not think she could have mustered so much courage, but she sprang at me like a tiger; and, throwing the razor into the ass-hole, took me round the neck, and cried like a bairn. First she was seized with a fit of the hystericks, and then with her pains. It was a serious time for us both, and no joke; for my heart smote me for my sin and cruelty. But I did my best to make up for it. I ran up and down like mad for the Howdie, and at last brought her trotting along with me by the lug. I could not stand it. I shut myself up in the shop with Tammy Bodkin, like Daniel in the lions’ den; and every now and then opened the door to speir what news. Oh, but my heart was like to break with anxiety! I paced up and down, and to and fro, with my Kilmarnock on my head and my hands in my breeches pockets, like a man out of Bedlam. I thought it would never be over; but, at the second hour of the morning, I heard a wee squeel, and knew that I was a father; and so proud was I, that notwithstanding our loss, Lucky Bringthereout and me whanged away at the cheese and bread, and drank so briskly at the whisky and foot-yill, that, when she tried to rise and go away, she could not stir a foot. So Tammy and I had to oxter her out between us, and deliver the howdie herself—safe in at her own door.
CHAPTER IX.—BENJIE’S CHRISTENING.
We’ll hap and row, hap and row,
We’ll hap and row the feetie o’t.
It is a wee bit weary thing,
I dinnie bide the greetie o’t.Provost Creech.
An honest man, close button’d to the chin,
Broad-cloth without, and a warm heart within.Cowper.
This great globe and all that it inherits shall dissolve,
And, like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Leave not a rack behind.Shakspeare.
At the christening of our only bairn, Benjie, two or three remarkable circumstances occurred, which it behoves me to relate.
It was on a cold November afternoon; and really when the bit room was all redd up, the fire bleezing away, and the candles lighted, every thing looked full tosh and comfortable. It was a real pleasure, after looking out into the drift that was fleeing like mad from the east, to turn one’s neb inwards, and think that we had a civilized home to comfort us in the dreary season. So, one after another, the bit party we had invited to the ceremony came papping in; and the crack began to get loud and hearty; for, to speak the truth, we were blessed with canny friends, and a good neighbourhood. Notwithstanding, it was very curious, that I had no mind of asking down James Batter, the weaver, honest man, though he was one of our own elders; and in papped James, just when the company had haffins met, with his stocking-sleeves on his arms, his nightcap on his head, and his blue-stained apron hanging down before him, to light his pipe at our fire.
James, when he saw his mistake, was fain to make his retreat; but we would not hear tell of it, till he came in, and took a dram out of the bottle, as we told him the not doing so would spoil the wean’s beauty, which is an old freak, (the smallpox, however, afterwards did that;) so, with much persuasion, he took a chair for a gliff, and began with some of his drolls—for he is a clever, humoursome man, as ye ever met with. But he had now got far on with his jests, when lo! a rap came to the door, and Mysie whipped away the bottle under her apron, saying “Wheesht, wheesht, for the sake of gudeness, there’s the minister!”
The room had only one door, and James mistook it, running his head, for lack of knowledge, into the open closet, just as the minister lifted the outer-door sneck. We were all now sitting on nettles, for we were frighted that James would be seized with a cough, for he was a wee asthmatic; or that some, knowing there was a thief in the pantry, might hurt good manners by breaking out into a giggle. However, all for a considerable time was quiet, and the ceremony was performed; little Nancy, our niece, handing the bairn upon my arm to receive its name. So, we thought, as the minister seldom made a long stay on similar occasions, that all would pass off well enough—But wait a wee.
There was but one of our company that had not cast up, to wit, Deacon Paunch, the flesher, a most worthy man, but tremendously big, and grown to the very heels; as was once seen on a wager, that his ankle was greater than my brans. It was really a pain to all feeling Christians, to see the worthy man waigling about, being, when weighed in his own scales, two-and-twenty stone ten ounces, Dutch weight. Honest man, he had had a sore fecht with the wind and the sleet, and he came in with a shawl roppined round his neck, peching like a broken-winded horse; so fain was he to find a rest for his weary carcass in our stuffed chintz pattern elbow-chair by the fire cheek.
From the soughing of wind at the window, and the rattling in the lum, it was clear to all manner of comprehension, that the night was a dismal one; so the minister, seeing so many of his own douce folk about him, thought he might do worse than volunteer to sit still, and try our toddy: indeed, we would have pressed him before this to do so; but what was to come of James Batter, who was shut up in the closet, like the spies in the house of Rahab the harlot, in the city of Jericho?
James began to find it was a bad business; and having been driving the shuttle about from before daylight, he was fain to cruik his hough, and felt round about him quietly in the dark for a chair to sit down upon, since better might not be. But, wae’s me! the cat was soon out of the pock.
Me and the minister were just argle-bargling some few words on the doctrine of the camel and the eye of the needle, when, in the midst of our discourse, as all was wheesht and attentive, an awful thud was heard in the closet, which gave the minister, who thought the house had fallen down, such a start, that his very wig louped for a full three-eighths off his crown. I say we were needcessitated to let the cat out of the pock for two reasons; firstly, because we did not know what had happened; and, secondly, to quiet the minister’s fears, decent man, for he was a wee nervous. So we made a hearty laugh of it, as well as we could, and opened the door to bid James Batter come out, as we confessed all. Easier said than done, howsoever. When we pulled open the door, and took forward one of the candles, there was James doubled up, sticking twofold like a rotten in a sneak-trap, in an old chair, the bottom of which had gone down before him, and which, for some craize about it, had been put out of the way by Nanse, that no accident might happen. Save us! if the deacon had sate down upon it, pity on our brick-floor.
Well, after some ado, we got James, who was more frighted than hurt, hauled out of his hidy-hole; and after lifting off his cowl, and sleeking down his front hair, he took a seat beside us, apologeezing for not being in his Sunday’s garb, the which the minister, who was a free and easy man, declared there was no occasion for, and begged him to make himself comfortable.
Well, passing over that business, Mr Wiggie and me entered into our humours, for the drappikie was beginning to tell on my noddle, and made me somewhat venturesome—not to say that I was not a little proud to have the minister in my bit housie; so, says I to him in a cosh way, “Ye may believe me or no, Mr Wiggie, but mair than me think ye out of sight the best preacher in the parish—nane of them, Mr Wiggie, can hold the candle to ye, man.”
“Weesht, weesht,” said the body, in rather a cold way that I did not expect, knowing him to be as proud as a peacock—“I daresay I am just like my neighbours.”
This was not quite so kind—so says I to him, “Maybe sae, for many a one thinks ye could not hold a candle to Mr Blowster the Cameronian, that whiles preaches at Lugton.”
This was a stramp on his corny toe. “Na, na,” answered Mr Wiggie, rather nettled; “let us drop that subject. I preach like my neighbours. Some of them may be worse, and others better; just as some of your own trade may make clothes worse, and some better, than yourself.”
My corruption was raised. “I deny that,” said I, in a brisk manner, which I was sorry for after—“I deny that, Mr Wiggie,” says I to him; “I’ll make a pair of breeches with the face of clay.”
But this was only a passing breeze, during the which, howsoever, I happened to swallow my thimble, which accidentally slipped off my middle finger, causing both me and the company general alarm, as there were great fears that it might mortify in the stomach; but it did not; and neither word nor wittens of it have been seen or heard tell of from that to this day. So, in two or three minutes, we had some few good songs, and a round of Scotch proverbs, when the clock chapped eleven. We were all getting, I must confess, a thought noisy; Johnny Soutter having broken a dram-glass, and Willie Fegs couped a bottle on the bit table-cloth; all noisy, I say, except Deacon Paunch, douce man, who had fallen into a pleasant slumber; so, when the minister rose to take his hat, they all rose except the Deacon, whom we shook by the arms for some time, but in vain, to waken him. His round, oily face, good creature, was just as if it had been cut out of a big turnip, it was so fat, fozy, and soft; but at last, after some ado, we succeeded, and he looked about him with a wild stare, opening his two red eyes, like Pandore oysters, asking what had happened; and we got him hoized up on his legs, tying the blue shawl round his bull-neck again.
Our company had not got well out of the door, and I was priding myself in my heart, about being landlord to such a goodly turn out, when Nanse took me by the arm, and said, “Come, and see such an unearthly sight.” This startled me, and I hesitated; but, at long and last, I went in with her, a thought alarmed at what had happened, and—my gracious!! there, on the easy-chair, was our bonny tortoise-shell cat, Tommy, with the red morocco collar about its neck, bruised as flat as a flounder, and as dead as a mawk!!!
The Deacon had sat down upon it without thinking; and the poor animal, that our neighbours’ bairns used to play with, and be so fond of, was crushed out of life without a cheep. The thing, doubtless, was not intended, but it gave Nanse and me a very sore heart.
CHAPTER X.—THE RESURRECTION MEN.
How then was the Devil drest!
He was in his Sunday’s best;
His coat was red, and his breeches were blue,
With a hole behind where his tail came thro’.
Over the hill, and over the dale,
And he went over the plain:
And backward and forward he switch’d his tail,
As a gentleman switches his cane.Coleridge.
About this time there arose a great sough and surmise, that some loons were playing false with the kirkyard, howking up the bodies from their damp graves, and harling them away to the College. Words cannot describe the fear, and the dool, and the misery it caused. All flocked to the kirk-yett; and the friends of the newly buried stood by the mools, which were yet dark, and the brown newly cast divots, that had not yet taken root, looking, with mournful faces, to descry any tokens of sinking in.
I’ll never forget it. I was standing by when three young lads took shools, and, lifting up the truff, proceeded to houk down to the coffin, wherein they had laid the grey hairs of their mother. They looked wild and bewildered like, and the glance of their een was like that of folk out of a mad-house; and none dared in the world to have spoken to them. They did not even speak to one another; but wrought on with a great hurry, till the spades struck on the coffin lid—which was broken. The dead-clothes were there huddled together in a nook, but the dead was gone. I took hold of Willie Walker’s arm, and looked down. There was a cold sweat all over me;—losh me! but I was terribly frighted and eerie. Three more graves were opened, and all just alike; save and except that of a wee unchristened wean, which was off bodily, coffin and all.
There was a burst of righteous indignation throughout the parish; nor without reason. Tell me that doctors and graduates must have the dead; but tell it not to Mansie Wauch, that our hearts must be trampled in the mire of scorn, and our best feelings laughed at, in order that a bruise may be properly plaistered up, or a sore head cured. Verily, the remedy is worse than the disease.
But what remead? It was to watch in the session-house, with loaded guns, night about, three at a time. I never liked to go into the kirkyard after darkening, let-a-be to sit there through a long winter night, windy and rainy it may be, with none but the dead around us. Save us! it was an unco thought, and garred all my flesh creep; but the cause was good—my corruption was raised—and I was determined not to be dauntened.
I counted and counted, but the dread day at length came and I was summoned. All the live-long afternoon, when ca’ing the needle upon the board, I tried to whistle Jenny Nettles, Neil Gow, and other funny tunes, and whiles crooned to myself between hands; but my consternation was visible, and all would not do.
It was in November; and the cold glimmering sun sank behind the Pentlands. The trees had been shorn of their frail leaves, and the misty night was closing fast in upon the dull and short day; but the candles glittered at the shop windows, and leery-light-the-lamps was brushing about with his ladder in his oxter, and bleezing flamboy sparking out behind him. I felt a kind of qualm of faintness and down-sinking about my heart and stomach, to the dispelling of which I took a thimbleful of spirits, and, tying my red comforter about my neck, I marched briskly to the session-house. A neighbour (Andrew Goldie, the pensioner) lent me his piece, and loaded it to me. He took tent that it was only half-cock, and I wrapped a napkin round the dog-head, for it was raining. Not being well acquaint with guns, I kept the muzzle aye away from me; as it is every man’s duty not to throw his precious life into jeopardy.
A furm was set before the session-house fire, which bleezed brightly, nor had I any thought that such an unearthly place could have been made to look half so comfortable either by coal or candle; so my spirits rose up as if a weight had been taken off them, and I wondered, in my bravery, that a man like me could be afraid of anything. Nobody was there but a touzy, ragged, halflins callant of thirteen, (for I speired his age,) with a desperate dirty face, and long carroty hair, tearing a speldrin with his teeth, which looked long and sharp enough, and throwing the skin and lugs into the fire.
We sat for mostly an hour together, cracking the best way we could in such a place; nor was anybody more likely to cast up. The night was now pitmirk; the wind soughed amid the head-stones and railings of the gentry, (for we must all die,) and the black corbies in the steeple-holes cackled and crawed in a fearsome manner. All at once we heard a lonesome sound; and my heart began to play pit-pat—my skin grew all rough, like a pouked chicken—and I felt as if I did not know what was the matter with me. It was only a false alarm, however, being the warning of the clock; and, in a minute or two thereafter, the bell struck ten. Oh, but it was a lonesome and dreary sound! Every chap went through my breast like the dunt of a fore-hammer.
Then up and spak the red-headed laddie:—“It’s no fair; anither should hae come by this time. I wad rin awa hame, only I am frighted to gang out my lane.—Do ye think the doup of that candle wad carry i’ my cap?”
“Na, na, lad; we maun bide here, as we are here now.—Leave me alane? Lord safe us! and the yett lockit, and the bethrel sleeping with the key in his breek pouches!—We canna win out now though we would,” answered I, trying to look brave, though half frightened out of my seven senses:—“Sit down, sit down; I’ve baith whisky and porter wi’ me. Hae, man, there’s a cawker to keep your heart warm; and set down that bottle,” quoth I, wiping the saw-dust affn’t with my hand, “to get a toast; I’se warrant it for Deacon Jaffrey’s best brown stout.”
The wind blew higher, and like a hurricane; the rain began to fall in perfect spouts; the auld kirk rumbled and rowed, and made a sad soughing; and the branches of the bourtree behind the house, where auld Cockburn that cut his throat was buried creaked and crazed in a frightful manner; but as to the roaring of the troubled waters, and the bumming in the lum-head, they were past all power of description. To make bad worse, just in the heart of the brattle, the grating sound of the yett turning on its rusty hinges was but too plainly heard. What was to be done? I thought of our both running away; and then of our locking ourselves in, and firing through the door; but who was to pull the trigger?
Gudeness watch over us! I tremble yet when I think on it. We were perfectly between the de’il and the deep sea—either to stand still and fire our gun, or run and be shot at. It was really a hang choice. As I stood swithering and shaking, the laddie flew to the door, and, thrawing round the key, clapped his back to it. Oh! how I looked at him, as he stood for a gliff, like a magpie hearkening with his lug cocked up, or rather like a terrier watching a rotten. “They’re coming! they’re coming!” he cried out; “cock the piece, ye sumph;” while the red hair rose up from his pow like feathers; “they’re coming, I hear them tramping on the gravel!” Out he stretched his arms against the wall, and brizzed his back against the door like mad; as if he had been Samson pushing over the pillars in the house of Dagon. “For the Lord’s sake, prime the gun,” he cried out, “or our throats will be cut frae lug to lug before we can cry Jack Robison! See that there’s priming in the pan.”
I did the best I could; but my whole strength could hardly lift up the piece, which waggled to and fro like a cock’s tail on a rainy day; my knees knocked against one another, and though I was resigned to die—I trust I was resigned to die—’od, but it was a frightful thing to be out of one’s bed, and to be murdered in an old session-house, at the dead hour of night, by unearthly resurrection men, or rather let me call them deevils incarnate, wrapt up in dreadnoughts, with blacked faces, pistols, big sticks, and other deadly weapons.
A snuff-snuffing was heard; and, through below the door, I saw a pair of glancing black een. ’Od, but my heart nearly louped off the bit—a snouff, and a gur-gurring, and over all the plain tramp of a man’s heavy tackets and cuddy-heels among the gravel. Then came a great slap like thunder on the wall; and the laddie, quitting his grip, fell down, crying, “Fire, fire!—murder! holy murder!”
“Wha’s there?” growled a deep rough voice; “open, I’m a freend.”
I tried to speak, but could not; something like a halfpenny roll was sticking in my throat, so I tried to cough it up, but it would not come. “Gie the pass-word then,” said the laddie, staring as if his eyes would loup out; “gie the pass-word!”
First came a loud whistle, and then “Copmahagen,” answered the voice. Oh! what a relief! The laddie started up, like one crazy with joy. “Ou! ou!” cried he, thrawing round the key, and rubbing his hands; “by jingo, it’s the bethrel—it’s the bethrel—it’s auld Isaac himsell.”
First rushed in the dog, and then Isaac, with his glazed hat, slouched over his brow, and his horn bowet glimmering by his knee. “Has the French landed, do ye think? Losh keep us a’,” said he, with a smile on his half-idiot face, (for he was a kind of a sort of a natural, with an infirmity in his leg,) “’od sauf us, man, put by your gun. Ye dinna mean to shoot me, do ye? What are ye about here with the door lockit? I just keppit four resurrectioners louping ower the wall.”
“Gude guide us!” I said, taking a long breath to drive the blood from my heart, and something relieved by Isaac’s company—“Come now, Isaac, ye’re just gieing us a fright. Isn’t that true, Isaac?”
“Yes, I’m joking—and what for no?—but they might have been, for onything ye wad hae hindered them to the contrair, I’m thinking. Na, na, ye maunna lock the door; that’s no fair play.”
When the door was put ajee, and the furm set fornent the fire, I gave Isaac a dram to keep his heart up on such a cold stormy night. ’Od, but he was a droll fellow, Isaac. He sung and leuch as if he had been boozing in Luckie Thamson’s, with some of his drucken cronies. Feint a hair cared he about auld kirks, or kirkyards, or vouts, or through-stanes, or dead folk in their winding-sheets, with the wet grass growing over them; and at last I began to brighten up a wee myself; so when he had gone over a good few funny stories, I said to him, quoth I, “Mony folk, I daresay, mak mair noise about their sitting up in a kirkyard than it’s a’ worth. There’s naething here to harm us?”
“I beg to differ wi’ ye there,” answered Isaac, taking out his horn mull from his coat pouch, and tapping on the lid in a queer style—“I could gie anither version of that story. Did ye no ken of three young doctors—Eirish students—alang with some resurrectioners, as waff and wild as themsells, firing shottie for shottie with the guard at Kirkmabreck, and lodging three slugs in ane of their backs, forbye firing a ramrod through anither ane’s hat?”
This was a wee alarming—“No,” quoth I; “no, Isaac, man; I never heard of it.”
“But, let alane resurrectioners, do ye no think there is sic a thing as ghaists? Guide ye, man, my grannie could hae telled as muckle about them as would have filled a minister’s sermons from June to January.”
“Kay—kay—that’s all buff,” I said. “Are there nae cutty-stool businesses—are there nae marriages going on just now, Isaac?” for I was keen to change the subject.
“Ye may kay—kay, as ye like, though; I can just tell ye this:—Ye’ll mind auld Armstrong with the leather breeks, and the brown three-story wig—him that was the grave-digger? Weel, he saw a ghaist wi’ his leeving een—aye, and what’s better, in this very kirkyard too. It was a cauld spring morning, and daylight just coming in, whan he cam to the yett yonder, thinking to meet his man, paidling Jock—but Jock had sleepit in, and wasna there. Weel, to the wast corner ower yonder he gaed, and throwing his coat ower a headstane, and his hat on the tap o’t, he dug away with his spade, casting out the mools, and the coffin handles, and the green banes and sic like, till he stoppit a wee to take breath.—What! are ye whistling to yoursell?” quoth Isaac to me, “and no hearing what’s God’s truth?”
“Ou, ay,” said I; “but ye didna tell me if onybody was cried last Sunday?”—I would have given every farthing I had made by the needle, to have been at that blessed time in my bed with my wife and wean. Ay, how I was gruing! I mostly chacked off my tongue in chittering.—But all would not do.
“Weel, speaking of ghaists—when he was resting on his spade he looked up to the steeple, to see what o’clock it was, wondering what way Jock hadna come, when lo! and behold, in the lang diced window of the kirk yonder, he saw a lady a’ in white, with her hands clasped thegither, looking out to the kirkyard at him.
“He couldna believe his een, so he rubbit them with his sark sleeve, but she was still there bodily; and, keeping ae ee on her, and anither on his road to the yett, he drew his coat and hat to him below his arm, and aff like mad, throwing the shool half a mile ahint him. Jock fand that; for he was coming singing in at the yett, when his maister ran clean ower the tap o’ him, and capsized him like a toom barrel; never stopping till he was in at his ain house, and the door baith bolted and barred at his tail.
“Did ye ever hear the like of that, Mansie? Weel, man, I’ll explain the hail history of it to ye. Ye see—’Od! how sound that callant’s sleeping,” continued Isaac; “he’s snoring like a nine-year-auld!”
I was glad he had stopped, for I was like to sink through the ground with fear; but no, it would not do.
“Dinna ye ken—sauf us! what a fearsome night this is! The trees will be all broken. What a noise in the lum! I daresay there’s some auld hag of a witch-wife gaun to come rumble doun’t. It’s no the first time, I’ll swear. Hae ye a silver sixpence? Wad ye like that?” he bawled up the chimney. “Ye’ll hae heard,” said he, “lang ago, that a wee murdered wean was buried—didna ye hear a voice?—was buried below that corner—the hearth-stane there, where the laddie’s lying on?”
I had now lost my breath, so that I could not stop him.
“Ye never heard tell o’t, didna ye? Weel, I’se tell’t ye—Sauf us, what swurls of smoke coming doun the chimley—I could swear something no canny’s stopping up the lum head—Gang out, and see!”
At that moment a clap like thunder was heard—the candle was driven over—the sleeping laddie roared “Help!” and “Murder!” and “Thieves!” and, as the furm on which we were sitting played flee backwards, cripple Isaac bellowed out, “I’m dead!—I’m killed—shot through the head!—Oh! oh! oh!”
Surely I had fainted away; for, when I came to myself, I found my red comforter loosed; my face all wet—Isaac rubbing down his waistcoat with his sleeve—the laddie swigging ale out of a bicker—and the brisk brown stout, which, by casting its cork, had caused all the alarm, whizz—whizz—whizzing in the chimley lug.
CHAPTER XI.—TAFFY WITH THE PIGTAIL.
In the sweet shire of Cardigan,
Not far from pleasant Ivor-hall,
An old man dwells, a little man;
I’ve heard he once was tall.
A long blue livery coat has he,
That’s fair behind and fair before;
Yet, meet him where you will, you see
At once that he is poor.Wordsworth.
It was a clear starry night, in the blasty month of January, I mind it well. The snow had fallen during the afternoon; or, as Benjie came in crying, that “the auld wives o’ the norlan sky were plucking their geese;” and it continued dim and dowie till towards the gloaming, when, as the road-side labourers were dandering home from their work, some with pickaxes and others with shools, and just as our cocks and hens were going into their beds, poor things, the lift cleared up to a sharp freeze, and the well-ordered stars came forth glowing over the blue sky. Between six and seven the moon rose; and I could not get my two prentices in from the door, where they were bickering one another with snow-balls, or maybe carhailling the folk on the street in their idle wantonness; so I was obliged for that night to disappoint Edie Macfarlane of the pair of black spatterdashes he was so anxious to get finished, for dancing in next day, at Souple Jack the carpenter’s grand penny-wedding.
Seeing that little more good was to be expected till morning, I came to the resolution of shutting-in half-an-hour earlier than usual; so, as I was carrying out the shop-shutters, with my hat over my cowl, for it was desperately sharp, I mostly in my hurry knocked down an old man, that was coming up to ask me, “if I was Maister Wauch the tailor and furnisher.”
Having told him that I was myself, instead of a better; and having asked him to step in, that I might have a glimpse of his face at the candle, I saw that he was a stranger, dressed in a droll auld-farrant green livery-coat, faced with white. His waistcoat was cut in the Parly-voo fashion, with long lappels, and a double row of buttons down the breast; and round his neck he had a black corded stock, such like, but not so broad, as I afterwards wore in the volunteers, when drilling under Big Sam. He had a well-worn scraper on his head, peaked before and behind, with a bit crape knotted round it, which he politely took off, making a low bow; and requesting me to bargain with him for a few articles of grand second-hand apparel, which once belonged to his master that was deceased, and which was now carried by himself, in a bundle under his left oxter.
Happening never to make a trade of dealing in this line, and not very sure like as to how the old man might have come by the bundle in these riotous and knock-him-down times, I swithered a moment, giving my chin a rub, before answering; and then advised him to take a step in at his leisure to St Mary’s Wynd, where he would meet in with merchants in scores. But no; he seemed determined to strike a bargain with me; and I heard from the man’s sponsible and feasible manner of speech—for he was an old weatherbeaten-looking body of a creature, with gleg een, a cock nose, white locks, and a tye behind—that the clothes must have been left him, as a kind of friendly keepsake, by his master, now beneath the mools. Thinking by this, that if I got them at a wanworth, I might boldly venture, I condescended to his loosing down the bundle, which was in a blue silk napkin with yellow flowers. As he was doing this, he told me that he was on his way home from the north to his own country, which lay among the green Welsh hills, far away; and that he could not carry much luggage with him, as he was obliged to travel with his baggage tied up in a bundle, on the end of his walking-staff, over his right shoulder.
Pity me! what a grand coat it was! I thought at first it must have been worn on the King’s own back, honest man; for it was made of green velvet, and embroidered all round about—back seams, side seams, flaps, lappels, button-holes, nape and cuffs, with gold lace and spangles, in a manner to have dazzled the understanding of any Jew with a beard shorter than his arm. So, no wonder that it imposed on the like of me; and I was mostly ashamed to make him an offer for it of a crown-piece and a dram. The waistcoat, which was of white satin, single-breasted, and done up with silver tinsel in a most beautiful manner, I also bought from him for a couple of shillings, and four hanks of black thread. Though I would on no account or consideration give him a bode for the Hessian boots, which having cuddy-heels and long silk tossels, were by far and away over grand for the like of a tailor, such as me, and fit for the Sunday’s wear of some fashionable Don of the first water. However, not to part uncivilly, and be as good as my word, I brought ben Nanse’s bottle, and gave him a cawker at the shop counter; and, after taking a thimbleful to myself, to drink a good journey to him, I bade him take care of his feet, as the causeway was frozen, and saw the auld flunkie safely over the strand with a candle.
Ye may easily conceive that Nanse got a surprise, when I paraded ben to the room with the grand coat and waistcoat on, cocking up my head, putting my hands into the haunch pockets, and strutting about more like a peacock than a douce elder of Maister Wiggie’s kirk; so just as, thinking shame of myself, I was about to throw it off, I found something bulky at the bottom of the side pocket, which I discovered to be a wheen papers fastened together with green tape. Finding they were written in a real neat hand, I put on my spectacles, and sending up the close for James Batter, we sat round the fireside, and read away like nine-year-aulds.
The next matter of consideration was, whether, in buying the coat as it stood, the paper belonged to me, or the old flunkie waiting-servant with the peaked hat. James and me, after an hour and a half’s argle-bargleing pro and con, in the way of Parliament-house lawyers, came at last to be unanimously of opinion, that according to the auld Scotch proverb of
“He that finds keeps,
And he that loses seeks,”
whatever was part or pendicle of the coat at the time of purchase, when it hung exposed for sale over the white-headed Welshman’s little finger, became, according to the law of nature and nations, as James Batter wisely observed, part and pendicle of the property of me, Mansie Wauch, the legal purchaser.
Notwithstanding all this, however, I was not sincerely convinced in my own conscience; and I daresay if the creature had cast up, and come seeking them back, I would have found myself bound to make restitution. This is not now likely to happen; for twenty long years have come and passed away, like the sunshine of yesterday, and neither word nor wittens of the body have been seen or heard tell of; so, according to the course of nature, being a white-headed old man, with a pigtail, when the bargain was made, his dust and bones have, in all likelihood, long ago mouldered down beneath the green turf of his own mountains, like his granfather’s before him. This being the case, I daresay it is the reader’s opinion as well as my own, that I am quite at liberty to make what use of them I like. Concerning the poem things that came first in hand, I do not pretend to be any judge; but James thinks he could scarcely write any muckle better himself: so here goes; but I cannot tell you to what tune:
SONG.
I.
They say that other eyes are bright,
I see no eyes like thine;
So full of Heaven’s serenest light,
Like midnight stars they shine.
They say that other cheeks are fair—
But fairer cannot glow
The rosebud in the morning air,
Or blood on mountain snow.
III.
Thy voice—Oh sweet it streams to me,
And charms my raptured breast;
Like music on the moonlight sea,
When waves are lull’d to rest.
IV.
The wealth of worlds were vain to give
Thy sinless heart to buy;
Oh I will bless thee while I live,
And love thee till I die!
From this song it appears a matter beyond doubt—for I know human nature—that the flunkie’s master had, in his earlier years, been deeply in love with some beautiful young lady, that loved him again, and that maybe, with a bounding and bursting heart, durst not let her affection be shown, from dread of her cruel relations, who insisted on her marrying some lord or baronet that she did not care one button about. If so, unhappy pair, I pity them! Were we to guess our way in the dark a wee farther, I think it not altogether unlikely, that he must have fallen in with his sweetheart abroad, when wandering about on his travels; for what follows seems to come as it were from her, lamenting his being called to leave her forlorn, and return home. This is all merely supposition on my part, and in the antiquarian style, whereby much is made out of little; but both me and James Batter are determined to be unanimously of this opinion, until otherwise convinced to the contrary. Love is a fiery and fierce passion everywhere; but I am told that we, who live in a more favoured land, know very little of the terrible effects it sometimes causes, and the bloody tragedies, which it has a thousand times produced, where the heart of man is uncontrolled by reason or religion, and his blood heated into a raging fever, by the burning sun that glows in the heaven above his head.
Here follows the poem of Taffy’s master’s foreign sweetheart; which, considering it to be a woman’s handiwork, is, I daresay, not that far amiss.
SONG OF THE SOUTH.
I.
Of all the garden flowers
The fairest is the rose;
Of winds that stir the bowers,
Oh! there is none that blows
Like the south—the gentle south—
For that balmy breeze is ours.
II.
Cold is the frozen north;
In its stern and savage mood,
’Mid gales, come drifting forth
Bleak snows and drenching flood:
But the south—the gentle south—
Thaws to love the willing blood.
III.
Bethink thee of the vales,
With their birds and blossoms fair—
Of the darkling nightingales,
That charm the starry air
In the south—the gentle south,—
Ah! our own dear home is there.
IV.
Where doth Beauty brightest glow,
With each rich and radiant charm,
Eye of light, and brow of snow,
Cherry lip, and bosom warm;
In the south—the gentle south—
There she waits, and works her harm
V.
Say, shines the Star of Love,
From the clear and cloudless sky,
The shadowy groves above,
Where the nestling ringdoves lie?
From the south—the gentle south—
Gleams its lone and lucid eye.
Then turn ye to the home
Of your brethren and your bride;
Far astray your steps may roam,
But more joys for thee abide,
In the south—our gentle south—
Than in all the world beside.
After reading a lot of the unknown gentleman’s compositions in prose and verse, something like his private history, James Batter informs me, can be made out, provided we are allowed to eke a little here and there. That he was an Englisher we both think amounts to a probability; and, from having an old “Taffy was a Welshman” for a flunkie, it would not be out of the order of nature to jealouse, that he may have resided somewhere among the hills, where he had picked him up and taken him into his kitchen, promoting him thereafter, for sobriety and good conduct, to be his body servant, and gentleman’s gentleman. Where he was born, however, is a matter of doubt, and also who were his folks; but of a surety, he was either born with a silver spoon in his mouth, or rose from the ranks like many another great man. That, however, is a matter of moonshine; we are all descended in a direct line from Adam. Where he was educated does not appear; but there can scarcely be a shadow of doubt, that he was for a considerable while at some school or other, where he had a number of cronies. In proof of this, and to show that we have good reasons for our suppositions, James recommends me to print the following rigmarole meditations, on the top of which is written in half-text,
SCHOOL RECOLLECTIONS.
“—They who in the vale of years advance,
And the dark eve is closing on their way,
When on the mind the recollections glance
Of early joy, and Hope’s delightful day,
Behold, in brighter hues than those of truth,
The light of morning on the fields of youth.”Southey.
The morning being clear and fine, full of Milton’s “vernal delight and joy,” I determined on a saunter; the inclemency of the weather having, for more than a week, kept me a prisoner at home. Although now advanced into the heart of February, a great fall of snow had taken place; the roads were blocked up; the mails obstructed; and, while the merchant grumbled audibly for his letters, the politician, no less chagrined, conned over and over again his dingy rumpled old newspaper, compelled “to eat the leek of his disappointment.” The wind, which had blown inveterately steady from the surly north-east, had veered, however, during the preceding night, to the west; and, as it were by the spell of an enchanter, an instant thaw commenced. In the low grounds the snow gleamed forth in patches of a pearly whiteness; but, on the banks of southern exposure, the green grass and the black trodden pathway again showed themselves. The vicissitudes of twenty-four hours were indeed wonderful. Instead of the sharp frost, the pattering hail, and the congealed streams, we had the blue sky, the vernal zephyr, and the genial sunshine; the stream murmuring with a broader wave, as if making up for the season spent in the fetters of congelation; and that luxurious flow of the spirits, which irresistibly comes over the heart, at the re-assertion of Nature’s suspended vigour.
As I passed on under the budding trees, how delightful it was to hear the lark and the linnet again at their cheerful songs, to be aware that now “the winter was over and gone;” and to feel that the prospect of summer, with its lengthening days, and its rich variety of fruits and flowers, lay fully before us. There is something within us that connects the spring of the year with the childhood of our existence, and it is more especially at that season, that the thrilling remembrances of long departed pleasures are apt to steal into the thoughts; the re-awakening of nature calling us, by a fearful contrast, to the contemplation of joys that never can return, while all the time the heart is rendered more susceptible by the beauteous renovation in the aspect of the external world.
This sensation pressed strongly on my mind, as I chanced to be passing the door of the village school, momentarily opened for the admission of one, creeping along somewhat tardily with satchel on back, and “shining morning face.” What a sudden burst of sound was emitted—what harmonious discord—what a commixture of all the tones in the vocal gamut, from the shrill treble to the deep under-hum! A chord was touched which vibrated in unison; boyish days and school recollections crowded upon me; pleasures long vanished; feelings long stifled; and friendships—aye, everlasting friendships—cut asunder by the sharp stroke of death!
A public school is a petty world within itself—a wheel within a wheel—in so far as it is entirely occupied with its own concerns, affords its peculiar catalogue of virtues and vices, its own cares, pleasures, regrets, anticipations, and disappointments—in fact, a Lilliputian fac-simile of the great one. By grown men, nothing is more common than the assertion that childhood is a perfect Elysium; but it is a false supposition that school-days are those of unalloyed carelessness and enjoyment. It seems to be a great deal too much overlooked, that “little things are great to little men;” and perhaps the mind of boyhood is more active in its conceptions—more alive to the impulses of pleasure and pain—in other words, has a more extended scope of sensations, than during any other portion of our existence. Its days are not those of lack-occupation; they are full of stir, animation, and activity, for it is then we are in training for after life; and, when the hours of school restraint glide slowly over, “like wounded snakes,” the clock, that chimes to liberty, sends forth the blood with a livelier flow; and pleasure thus derives a double zest from the bridle that duty has imposed, joy being generally measured according to the difficulty of its attainment. What delight in life have we ever experienced more exquisite than that, which flowed at once in upon us from the teacher’s “bene, bene,” our own self-approbation, and release from the tasks of the day?—the green fields around us wherein to ramble, the stream beside us wherein to angle, the world of games and pastimes “before us where to choose.” Words are inadequate to express the thrill of transport, with which, on the rush from the school-house door, the hat is waved in air, and the shout sent forth!
Then what a variety of amusements succeed each other. Every mouth has its favourite ones. The sportsman does not more keenly scrutinize his kalendar for the commencement of the trouting, grouse-shooting, or hare-hunting season, than the younker for the time of flying kites, bowling at cricket, football, spinning peg-tops, and playing at marbles. Pleasure is the focus, which it is the common aim to approximate; and the mass is guided by a sort of unpremeditated social compact, which draws them out of doors as soon as meals are discussed, with a sincere thirst of amusement, as certainly as rooks congregate in spring to discuss the propriety of building nests, or swallows in autumn to deliberate in conclave on the expediency of emigration.
Then how perfectly glorious was the anticipation of a holiday—a long summer day of liberty and ease! In anticipation it was a thing boundless and endless, a foretaste of Elysium. It extended from the prima luce, from the earliest dawn of radiance that streaked the “severing clouds in yonder east,” through the sun’s matin, meridian, postmeridian, and vesper circuit; from the disappearance of Lucifer in the re-illumined skies, to his evening entrée in the character of Hesperus. Complain not of the brevity of life; ’tis men that are idle; a thousand things could be contrived and accomplished in that space, and a thousand schemes were devised by us, when boys, to prevent any portion of it passing over without improvement. We pursued the fleet angel of time through all his movements till he blessed us.
With these and similar thoughts in my mind, I strayed down to the banks of the river, and came upon the very spot, which, in those long-vanished years, had been a favourite scene of our boyish sports. The impression was overpowering; and as I gazed silently around me, my mind was subdued to that tone of feeling which Ossian so finely designates “the joy of grief.” The trees were the same, but older, like myself; seemingly unscathed by the strife of years—and herein was a difference. Some of the very bushes I recognised as our old lurking-places at “hunt the hare;” and, on the old fantastic beech-tree, I discovered the very bough from which we were accustomed to suspend our swings. What alterations—what sad havoc had time, circumstances, the hand of fortune, and the stroke of death, made among us since then! How were the thoughts of the heart, the hopes, the pursuits, the feelings changed; and, in almost every instance, it is to be feared, for the worse! As I gazed around me, and paused, I could not help reciting aloud to myself the lines of Charles Lamb, so touching in their simple beauty.
“I have had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
Some they have died, and some they have left me,
And some are taken from me, all are departed;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.”
The fresh green plat, by the brink of the stream, lay before me. It was there that we played at leap-frog, or gathered dandelions for our tame rabbits; and, at its western extremity, were still extant the reliques of the deal-seat, at which we used to assemble on autumn evenings to have our round of stories. Many a witching tale and wondrous tradition hath there been told; many a marvel of “figures that visited the glimpses of the moon;” many a recital of heroic and chivalrous enterprise, accomplished ere warriors dwindled away to the mere puny-strength of mortals. Sapped by the wind and rain, the planks lay in a sorely decayed and rotten state, looking in their mossiness like a sign-post of desolation, a memento of terrestrial instability. Traces of the knife were still here and there visible upon the trunks of the supporting trees; and with little difficulty I could decipher some well-remembered initials.
“Cold were the hands that carved them there.”
It is, no doubt, wonderful that the human mind can retain such a mass of recollections; yet we seem to be, in general, little aware that for one solitary incident in our lives, preserved by memory, hundreds have been buried in the silent charnel-house of oblivion. We peruse the past, like a map of pleasing or melancholy recollections, and observe lines crossing and re-crossing each other in a thousand directions; some spots are almost blank; others faintly traced; and the rest a confused and perplexed labyrinth. A thousand feelings that, in their day and hour, agitated our bosoms, are now forgotten; a thousand hopes, and joys, and apprehensions, and fears, are vanished without a trace. Schemes, which cost us much care in their formation, and much anxiety in their fulfilment, have glided, like the clouds of yesterday, from our remembrance. Many a sharer of our early friendships, and of our boyish sports, we think of no more; they are as if they had never been, till perhaps some accidental occurrence, some words in conversation, some object by the wayside, or some passenger in the street, attract our notice—and then, as if awaking from a perplexing trance, a light darts in upon our darkness; and we discover that thus some one long ago spoke; that there something long ago happened; or that the person, who just passed us like a vision, shared smiles with us long, long years ago, and added a double zest to the enjoyments of our childhood.