It would be needless in me to waste precious time in relating how I returned to my own country, especially as I may be thankful that nothing particular happened, excepting the coach-wheels riding over an old dog that was lying sleeping on the middle of the road, and, poor brute, nearly got one of his fore-paws chacked off. The day was sharp and frosty and all the passengers took a loup off at a yill-house, with a Highlandman on the sign of it, to get a dram, to gar them bear up against the cold; yet knowing what had but so lately happened, and having the fears of Maister Wiggie before my eyes, I had made a solemn vow within myself, not to taste liquor for six months at least; nor would I here break my word, tho’ much made a fool of by an Englisher, and a fou Eirisher, who sang all the road; contenting myself, in the best way I could, with a tumbler of strong beer and two butter-bakes.
It is an old proverb, and a true one, that there is no rest to the wicked; so when I got home, I found business crying out for me loudly, having been twice wanted to take the measure for suits of clothes. Of course, knowing that my two customers would be wearying, I immediately cut my stick to their houses, and promised without fail to have my work done against the next Sabbath. Whether from my hurry, or my grief for poor Mungo, or maybe from both, I found on the Saturday night, when the clothes were sent home on the arm of Tammie Bodkin, whom I was obliged to hire by way of foresman, that some awful mistake had occurred—the dress of the one having been made for the back of the other, the one being long and tall, the other thick and short; so that Maister Peter Pole’s cuffs did not reach above half-way down his arms, and the tails ended at the small of his back, rendering him a perfect fright; while Maister Watty Firkin’s new coat hung on him like a dreadnought, the sleeves coming over the nebs of his fingers, and the hainch buttons hanging down between his heels, making him resemble a mouse below a firlot. With some persuasion, however, there being but small difference in the value of the cloths, the one being a west of England bottle-green, and the other a Manchester blue, I caused them to niffer, and hushed up the business, which, had they been obstreperous, would have made half the parish of Dalkeith stand on end.
After poor Mungo had been beneath the mools, I daresay a good month, Benjie, as he was one forenoon diverting himself dozing his top in the room where they sleeped, happened to drive it in below the bed, where, scrambling in on his hands and feet, he found a half sheet of paper written over in Mungo’s hand-writing, the which he brought to me; and, on looking over it, I found it jingled in metre like the Psalms of David.
Having no skeel in these matters, I sent up the close for James Batter, who, being a member of the fifteenpence a-quarter subscription book-club, had read a power of all sorts of things, sacred and profane. James, as he was humming it over with his specs on his beak, gave now and then a thump on his thigh, “Prime, prime, man; fine, prime, good, capital!” and so on, which astonished me much, kenning who had written it—a callant that had sleeped with our Benjie, and could not have shaped a pair of leggins though we had offered him the crown of the three kingdoms.
Seeing what it was thought of by one who knew what was what, and could distinguish the difference between a B and a bull’s foot, I judged it necessary for me to take a copy of it; which, for the benefit of them that like poems, I do not scruple to tag to the tail of this chapter.
Oh, wad that my time were ower but,
Wi’ this wintry sleet and snaw,
That I might see our house again
I’ the bonny birken shaw!—
For this is no my ain life,
And I peak and pine away
Wi’ the thochts o’ hame, and the young flow’rs
I’ the glad green month o’ May.I used to wauk in the morning
Wi’ the loud sang o’ the lark,
And the whistling o’ the ploughmen lads
As they gaed to their wark;
I used to weir in the young lambs
Frae the tod and the roaring stream;
But the warld is changed, and a’ thing now
To me seems like a dream.There are busy crowds around me
On ilka lang dull street;
Yet, though sae mony surround me
I kenna ane I meet.
And I think on kind, kent faces,
And o’ blythe and cheery days,
When I wander’d out, wi’ our ain folk,
Out-owre the simmer braes.Wae’s me, for my heart is breaking!
I think on my brithers sma’,
And on my sister greeting,
When I came fra hame awa
And oh! how my mither sobbi,
As she shook me by the hand;
When I left the door o’ our auld house,
To come to this stranger land;There’s nae place like our ain hame;
Oh, I wish that I was there!—
There’s nae hame like our ain hame
To be met wi’ ony where!—
And oh! that I were back again
To our farm and fields so green;
And heard the tongues o’ my ain folk,
And was what I hae been!
That’s poor Mungo’s poem; which I and James Batter, and the rest, think excellent, and not far short of Robert Burns himself, had he been spared. Some may judge otherwise, out of bad taste or ill nature; but I would just thank them to write a better at their leisure.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO—THE JUNE JAUNT WITH PETER FARREL
After Tammie Bodkin had been working with me on the board for more than four years in the capacity of foresman, superintending the workshop department, together with the conduct and conversation of Joe Breeky, Walter Cuff, and Jack Thorl, my three bounden apprentices, I thought I might lippen him awee to try his hand in the shaping line, especially with the clothes of such of our customers as I knew were not very nice, provided they got enough of cutting from the Manchester manufacture, and room to shake themselves in. The upshot, however, proved to a moral certainty, that such a length of tether is not chancey for youth, and that a master cannot be too much on the head of his own business.
It was in the pleasant month of June, sometime, maybe six or eight days, after the birth-day of our good old King George the Third—for I recollect the withering branches of lily-oak and flowers still sticking up behind the signs, and over the lamp-posts,—that my respected acquaintance and customer, Peter Farrel the baker, to whom I have made many a good suit of pepper-and-salt clothes—which he preferred from their not dirtying so easily with the bakehouse—called in upon me, requesting me, in a very pressing manner, to take a pleasure ride up with him the length of Roslin, in his good-brother’s bit phieton, to eat a wheen strawberries, and see how the forthcoming harvest was getting on.
That the offer was friendly admitted not of doubt, but I did not like to accept for two-three reasons; among which were, in the first place, my awareness of the danger of riding in such vehicles—having read sundry times in the newspapers of folk having been tumbled out of them, drunk or sober, head-foremost, and having got eyes knocked ben, skulls cloured, and collar-bones broken; and, in the second place, the expense of feeding the horse, together with our feeding ourselves in meat and drink during the journey—let alone tolls, strawberries and cream, bawbees to the waiter, the hostler, and what not. But let me speak the knock-him-down truth, and shame the de’il,—above all, I was afraid of being seen by my employers wheeling about, on a work-day, like a gentleman, dressed out in my best, and leaving my business to mind itself as it best could.
Peter Farrel, however, being a man of determination, stuck to his text like a horse-leech; so, after a great to-do, and considerable argle-bargling, he got me, by dint of powerful persuasion, to give him my hand on the subject. Accordingly, at the hour appointed, I popped up the back loan with my stick in my hand—Peter having agreed to be waiting for me on the roadside, a bit beyond the head of the town, near Gallows-hall toll. The cat should be let out of the pock by my declaring, that Nanse, the goodwife, had also a finger in the pie—as, do what ye like, women will make their points good—she having overcome me in her wheedling way, by telling me, that it was curious I had no ambition to speel the ladder of gentility, and hold up my chin in imitation of my betters.
That we had a most beautiful drive I cannot deny; for though I would not allow Peter to touch the horse with the whip, in case it might run away, fling, or trot ower fast—and so we made but slow progress—little more even than walking; yet, as I told him, it gave a man leisure to use his eyes, and make observation to the right and the left; and so we had a prime look of Eskbank, and Newbottle Abbey, and Melville Castle, and Dalhousie, and Polton, and Hawthornden, and Dryden woods—and the powder mills, the paper mills, the bleachfield—and so on. The day was bright and beautiful, and the feeling of summer came over our bosoms: the flowers blossomed and the birds sang; and, as the sun looked from the blue sky, the quiet of nature banished from our thoughts all the poor and paltry cares that embitter life, and all the pitiful considerations which are but too apt to be the only concerns of the busy and bustling, from their awaking in the morning to their lying down on the pillow of evening rest. Peter and myself felt this forcibly; he, as he confessed to me, having entirely forgot the four pan-soled loaves that were, that morning, left by his laddie, Peter Crust, in the oven, and burned to sticks; and for my own part, do what I liked, I could not bring myself to mind what piece of work I was employed on the evening before, till, far on the road, I recollected that it was a pair of mouse-brown spatterdashes for worthy old Mr Mooleypouch the mealmonger.
Oh, it is a pleasant thing, now and then, to get a peep of the country! To them who live among shops and markets, and stone-walls, and butcher-stalls, and fishwives—and the smell of ready-made tripe, red herring, and Cheshire cheeses—the sights, and sounds, and smells of the country, bring to mind the sinless days of the world before the fall of man, when all was love, peace, and happiness. Peter Farrel and I were transported out of our seven senses, as we feasted our eyes on the beauty of the green fields. The bumbees were bizzing among the gowans and blue-bells; and a thousand wee birds among the green trees were churm-churming away, filling earth and air with music, as it were a universal hymn of gratitude to the Creator for his unbounded goodness to all his creatures. We saw the trig country lasses bleaching their snow-white linen on the grass by the waterside, and they too were lilting their favourite songs, Logan Water, the Flowers of the Forest, and the Broom of the Cowdenknowes. All the world seemed happy, and I could scarcely believe—what I kent to be true for all that—that we were still walking in the realms of sin and misery. The milk-cows were nipping the clovery parks, and chewing their cuds at their leisure;—the wild partridges whidding about in pairs, or birring their wings with fright over the hedges;—and the blue-bonneted ploughmen on the road cracking their whips in wantonness, and whistling along amid the clean straw in their carts. And then the rows of snug cottages, with their kailyards and their goose-berry bushes, with the fruit hanging from the branches like ear-rings on the neck of a lady of fashion. How happy, thought we both—both Peter Farrel and me—how happy might they be, who, without worldly pride or ambition, passed their days in such situations, in the society of their wives and children. Ah! such were a blissful lot!
During our ride, Peter Farrel and I had an immense deal of rational conversation on a variety of matters, Peter having seen great part of the world in his youth, from having made two voyages to Greenland, during one of which he was very nearly frozen up—with his uncle, who was the mate of a whale-vessel. To relate all that Peter told me he had seen and witnessed in his far-away travels, among the white bears, and the frozen seas, would take up a great deal of the reader’s time, and of my paper; but as to its being very diverting, there is no doubt of that. However, when Peter came to the years of discretion, Peter had sense enough in his noddle to discover, that “a rowing stane gathers no fog”; and, having got an inkling of the penny-pie manufacture when he was a wee smout, he yoked to the baking trade tooth and nail; and, in the course of years, thumped butter-bakes with his elbows to some purpose; so that, at the time of our colleaguing together, Peter was well to do in the world—had bought his own bounds, and built new ones—could lay down the blunt for his article, and take the measure of the markets, by laying up wheat in his granaries against the day of trouble—to wit—rise of prices.
“Well, Peter,” said I to him, “seeing that ye read the newspapers, and have a notion of things, what think ye, just at the present moment, of affairs in general?”
Peter cocked up his lugs at this appeal, and, looking as wise as if he had been Solomon’s nephew, gave a knowing smirk, and said—
“Is it foreign or domestic affairs that you are after, Maister Wauch? for the question is a six-quarters wide one.”
I was determined not to be beat by man of woman born; so I answered with almost as much cleverality as himself, “Oh, Mr Farrel, as to our foreign concerns, I trust I am ower loyal a subject of George the Third to have any doubt at all about them, as the Buonaparte is yet to be born that will ever beat our regulars abroad—to say nothing of our volunteers at home; but what think you of the paper specie—the national debt—borough reform—the poor-rates—and the Catholic question?”
I do not think Peter jealoused I ever had so much in my noddle; but when he saw I had put him to his mettle, he did his best to give me satisfactory answers to my queries, saying, that till gold came in fashion, it would not be for my own interest, or that of my family, to refuse bank-notes, for which he would, any day of the year, give me as many quarter loaves as I could carry, to say nothing of coarse flour for the prentices’ scones, and bran for the pigs—that the national debt would take care of itself long after both him and I were gathered to our fathers: and that individual debt was a much more hazardous, pressing, and personal concern, far more likely to come home to our more immediate bosoms and businesses—that the best species of reform was every one’s commencing to make amendment in their own lives and conversations—that poor-rates were likely to be worse before they were better; and that, as to the Catholic question,—“But, Mansie,” said he, “it would give me great pleasure to hear your candid and judicious opinion of Popery and the Papists.”
I saw, with half an e’e, that Peter was trying to put me to my mettle, and I devoutly wished that I had had James Batter at my elbow to have given him play for his money—James being the longest-headed man that ever drove a shuttle between warp and woof; but most fortunately, just as I was going to say, that “every honest man, who wished well to the good of his country, could only have one opinion on that subject,”—we came to the by-road, that leads away off on the right-hand side down to Hawthornden, and we observed, from the curious ringle, that one of the naig’s fore-shoon was loose; which consequently put an end to the discussion of this important question, before Peter and I had time to get it comfortably settled to the world’s satisfaction.
The upshot was, that we were needcessitated to dismount, and lead the animal by the head forward to Kittlerig, where Macturk Sparrible keeps his smith’s shop; in order that, with his hammer, he might make fast the loose nails: and that him and his foresman did in a couple of hurries; me and Peter looking over them with our hands in our big-coat pockets, while they pelt-pelted away with the beast’s foot between their knees, as if we had been a couple of grand gentlemen incog.; and so we were to him.
After getting ourselves again decently mounted, and giving Sparrible a consideration for his trouble, Peter took occasion, from the horse casting its shoe, to make a few apropos moral observations, in the manner of the Rev. Mr Wiggie, on the uncertainties which it is every man’s lot to encounter in the weariful pilgrimage of human life. “There is many a slip ’tween the cup and the lip,” said Peter.
“And, indeed, Mr Farrel, ye never spoke a truer word,” said I. “We are here to-day—yonder to-morrow; this moment we are shining like the mid-day sun, and on the next, pugh! we go out like the snuff of a candle. ‘Man’s life,’ as Job observes, ‘is like a weaver’s shuttle.’”
“But, Maister Waugh,” quo’ Peter, who was a hearer of the Parish Church, “you dissenting bodies aye take the black side of things; never considering that the doubtful shadows of affairs sometimes brighten up into the cloudless daylight. For instance, now, there was an old fellow-apprentice of my father’s, who, like myself, was a baker, his name was Charlie Cheeper; and, both his father and mother dying when he was yet hardly in trowsers, he would have been left without a hame in the world, had not an old widow woman, who had long lived next door to them, and whose only breadwinner was her spinning-wheel, taken the wee wretchie in to share her morsel. For several years, as might naturally have been expected, the callant was a perfect dead-weight on the concern, and perhaps, in her hours of greater distress, the widow regretted the heedlessness of her Christian charity; but Charlie had a winning way with him, and she could not find it in her heart to turn him to the door. By the time he was seven—and a ragged coute he was as ever stepped without shoes—he could fend for himself, by running messages—holding horses at shop doors—winning bools and selling them—and so on; so that when he had collected half-a-crown in a penny pig, the widow sent him to the school, where he got on like a hatter, and in a little while, could both read and write. When he was ten, he was bound apprentice to Saunders Snaps in the Back-row, whose grandson has yet, as you know, the sign of the Wheat Sheaf; and for five years he behaved himself like his betters.
“Well, sir, when his time was out, Charlie had an ambition to see the world; and, by working for a month or two as journeyman in the Candlemaker-row at Edinburgh, he raked as much together as took him up to London in the steerage of a Leith smack. For several years nothing was heard of him, except an occasional present of a shawl, or so on, to the widow, who had been so kind to him in his helpless years; and at length a farewell present of some little money came to her, with his blessing for past favours, saying that he was off for good and all to America.
“In the course of time, Widow Amos became frail and sand-blind. She was unable to work for herself, and the charity she had shown to others no one seemed disposed to extend to her. Her only child, Jeanie Amos, was obliged to leave her service, and come home to the house of poverty, to guard her mother’s grey hairs from accident, and to divide with her the little she could make at the trade of mangling; for, with the money that Charlie Cheeper had sent, before leaving the country, the old woman had bought a calender, and let it out to the neighbours at so much an hour; honest poverty having many shifts.
“Matters had gone on in this way for two or three fitful years; and Jeanie, who, when she had come home from service, was a buxom and blooming lass, although yet but a wee advanced in her thirties, began to show, like all earthly things, that she was wearing past her best. Some said that she had lost hopes of Charlie’s return; and others, that, come hame when he liked, he would never look over his left shoulder after her.
“Well, sir, as fact as death, I mind mysell, when a laddie, of the rumpus the thing made in the town. One Saturday night, a whole washing of old Mrs Pernickity’s that had been sent to be calendered, vanished like lightning, no one knew where: the old lady was neither to hold nor bind: and nothing would serve her, but having both the old woman and her daughter committed to the Tolbooth. So to the Tolbooth they went, weeping and wailing; followed by a crowd, who cried loudly out at the sin and iniquity of the proceeding; because the honesty of the prisoners, although impeached, was unimpeachable; the mob were furious; and before the Sunday sun arose old Mrs Pernickity awakened with a sore throat, every pane of her windows having been miraculously broken during the dead hours.
“The mother and the daughter were kept in custody until the Monday; when, as they were standing making a declaration of their innocence before the justices, who should come in but Francie Deep, the Sheriff-officer, with an Irish vagrant and his wife—two tinklers who were lodging in the Back-row, and in whose possession the bundle was found bodily, basket and all. Such a cheering as the folk set up! it did all honest folk’s hearts good to hear it. Mrs Pernickity and her lass, to save their bacon, were obliged to be let out by a back door; and, as the justices were about to discharge the two prisoners, who had been so unjustly and injuriously suspected, a stranger forced his way to the middle of the floor, and took the old woman in his arms!”
“Charlie Cheeper returned, for a gold guinea,” said I.
“And no other it was,” said Peter, resuming his comical story. “The world had flowed upon him to his heart’s desire. Over in Virginia he had given up the baking business, and commenced planter; and, after years of industrious exertion, having made enough and to spare, he had returned to spend the rest of his days in peace and plenty, in his native town.”
“Not to interrupt you,” added I, “Mr Farrel, I think I could wager something mair.”
“You are a witch of a guesser I know, Mansie,” said Peter; “and I see what you are at. Well, sir, you are right again. For, on the very day week that Patrick Makillaguddy and his spouce got their heads shaved, and were sent to beat hemp in the New Bridgewell on the Caltonhill, Jeanie Amos became Mrs Cheeper; the calender and the spinning-wheel were both burned by a crowd of wicked weans before old Mrs Pernickity’s door, raising such a smoke as almost smeaked her to a rizzar’d haddock; and the old widow under the snug roof of her ever grateful son-in-law, spent the remainder of her Christian life in peace and prosperity.”
“That story ends as it ought,” said I, “Mr Farrel; neither Jew nor Gentle dare dispute that; and as to the telling of it, I do not think man of woman born, except maybe James Batter, who is a nonsuch, could have handled it more prettily. I like to hear virtue aye getting its ain reward.”
As these dividual words were falling from my lips, we approached the end of our journey, the Roslin Inn house heaving in sight, at the door of which me and Peter louped out, an hostler with a yellow striped waistcoat, and white calico sleeves, I meantime holding the naig’s head, in case it should spend off, and capsize the concern. After seeing the horse and gig put into the stable, Peter and I pulled up our shirt necks, and after looking at our watches, as if time was precious, oxtered away, arm-in-arm, to see the Chapel, which surpasses all, and beats cock-fighting.
It is an unaccountable thing to me, how the auld folk could afford to build such grand kirks and castles. If once gold was like slate stones, there is a wearyful change now-a-days, I must confess; for, so to speak, gold guineas seem to have taken flight from the land along with the witches and warlocks, and posterity are left as toom in the pockets as rookit gamblers.
But if the mammon of precious metals be now totally altogether out of the world, weel-a-wat we had a curiosity still, and that was a clepy woman with a long stick, and rhaemed away, and better rhaemed away, about the Prentice’s Pillar, who got a knock on the pow from his jealous blackguard of a master—and about the dogs and the deer—and Sir Thomas this-thing and my Lord tother-thing, who lay buried beneath the broad flag stones in their rusty coats of armour—and such a heap of havers, that no throat was wide enough to swallow them for gospel, although gey an’ entertaining I allow. However, it was a real farce; that is certain.
Oh, but the building was a grand and overpowering sight, making man to dree the sense of his own insignificance, even in the midst of his own handiwork! First, we looked over our shoulders to the grand carved roofs, where the swallows swee-swee’d, as they darted through the open windows, and the yattering sparrows fed their gorbals in the far boles; and syne we looked shuddering down into the dark vaults, where nobody in their senses could have ventured, though Peter Farrel, being a rash courageous body, was keen on it, having heard less than I could tell him of such places being haunted by the spirits of those who have died or been murdered within them in the bloody days of the old times; or of their being so full of foul air, as to extinguish man’s breath in his nostrils like the snuff of a candle. Though no man should throw his life into jeopardy, yet I commend all for taking timeous recreation—the King himself on the throne not being able to live without the comforts of life; and even the fifteen Lords of Session, with as much powder on their wigs as would keep a small family in loaves for a week, requiring air and exercise, after sentencing vagabonds to be first hanged, and then their clothes given to Jock Heich, and their bodies to Doctor Monro.
Before going out to inspect the wonderfuls, we had taken the natural precaution to tell the goodman of the inn, that we would be back to take a smack of something from him, at such and such an hour; and, having had our bellyful of the Chapel,—and the Prentice’s Pillar,—and the vaults,—and the cleipy auld wife with the lang stick,—we found that we had still half an hour to spare; so took a stroll into the Kirkyard, to see if we could find out any of the martyrs had been buried there-away-abouts.
We saw a good few head-stones, you may make no doubt, both ancient and modern; but nothing out of the course of nature; so, the day being pleasant, Mr Farrell and me sat down on a throughstane, below an old hawthorn, and commenced chatting on the Pentland Hills—the river Esk—Penicuik—Glencorse—and all the rest of the beautiful country within sight. A mooly auld skull was lying among the grass, and Peter, as he spoke, was aye stirring it about with his stick.
“I never touched a dead man’s bones in my life,” said I to Peter, “nor would I for a sixpence. Who might that have belonged to, now, I wonder? Maybe to a baker or a tailor, in his day and generation, like you and I, Peter; or maybe to ane of the great Sinclairs with their coats-of-mail, that the auld wife was cracking so crousely about?”
“Deil may care,” said Peter; “but are you really frighted to touch a skull, Mansie? You would make a bad doctor, I’m doubting, then; to say nothing of a resurrection man.”
“Doctor! I would not be a doctor for all the gold and silver on the walls of Solomon’s Temple—”
“Yet you would think the young doctors suck in their trade with their mother’s milk, and could cut off one another’s heads as fast as look at you.—Speaking of skulls,” added Peter, “I mind when my father lived in the under-flat of the three-storey house at the top of Dalkeith Street, that the Misses Skinflints occupied the middle story, and Doctor Chickenweed had the one above, with the garrets, in which was the laboratory.
“Weel, ye observe, in getting to the shop, it was not necessary to knock at the Doctor’s door, but just proceed up the narrow wooden stairs, facing the top of which was the shop-door, which, for light to the customer’s feet, was generally allowed to stand open.
“For a long time, the Doctor had heard the most unearthly noises in the house—as if a thunderbolt was in the habit of coming in at one of the sky-lights, and walking down stairs; and the Misses Skinflints had more than once nearly got their door carried off the hinges; so they had not the life of dogs, for constant startings and surprises. At first they had no faith in ghosts; but, in the course of time, they came to be alike doubtful on that point; but you shall hear.
“The foundation of the mystery was this. The three mischievous laddies—the apprentices—after getting their daily work over, of making pills and potions for his Majesty’s unfortunate subjects, took to the trick of mounting a human skull, like that, upon springs, so that it could open its mouth, and setting it on a stand at the end of the counter, could make it gape, and turn from side to side, by pulling a string.
“The door being left purposely ajee—whenever the rascals saw a fit subject, they set the skull a-moving and a-gaping; the consequence of which was, that many a poor customer descended without counting the number of steps, and after bouncing against Dr Chickenweed’s panels, played flee down to try the strength of Misses Skinflints’. One of the three instantly darted down, behind the evanished patient; and, after assisting her or him—whichever it might chance to be—to gain their feet, begged of them not to mention what they had seen, as the house was haunted by the ghost of an old maiden aunt of their master’s who had died abroad; and that the thing would hurt his feelings if ever it came to his ears.”
“Dog on me,” said I, “if ever I heard of such a trick since ever I was born! What was the upshot?”
“The upshot was, that the thing might have continued long enough, and the laboratory been left as deserted as Tadmor in the Wilderness, had not a fat old woman fallen one day perfectly through the doctor’s door, and dislocated her ankle—which unfortunately incapacitated her from making a similar attack on that of the Misses Skinflints. The consequence was, that the conspiracy was detected—the Doctor’s aunt’s ghost laid, and the fat old woman carried down on a shutter to her bed, where she lay till her ankle grew better in the course of nature.”
It being near the hour at which we had ordered our dinner to be ready, we rose up from the tombstone; and, after taking a snuff out of Peter’s box, we returned arm-in-arm to the tavern, to lay in a stock of provisions.
Peter Farrel was a warm-hearted, thorough-going fellow, and did not like half-measures, such as swollowing the sheep and worrying on the tail; so, after having ate as many strawberries as we could well stow away, he began trying to fright me with stories of folk taking the elic passion—the colic—the mulligrubs—and other deadly maladies, on account of neglecting to swallow a drop of something warm to qualify the coldness of the fruit; so, after we had discussed good part of a fore-quarter of lamb and chopped cabbage—the latter a prime dish—we took first one jug, and syne another, till Peter was growing tongue-tied, and as red in the face as a bubbly-jock; and, to speak the truth, my own een began to reel like merligoes. In a jiffy, both of us found our hearts waxing so brave as to kick and spur at all niggardly hesitation; and we leuch and thumped on the good-man of the inn-house’s mahogany table, as if it had been warranted never to break. In fact, we were as furious and obstrapulous as two unchristened Turks; and it was a mercy that we ever thought of rising to come away at all. At the long and the last, however, we found ourselves mounted and trotting home at no allowance, me telling Peter, as far as I mind, to give the beast a good creish, and not to be frighted.
The evening was fine and warmer than we could have wished, our cheeks glowing like dragons’ jackets; and as we passed like lightning through among the trees, the sun was setting with a golden glory in the west, between the Pentland and the Corstorphine Hills, and flashing in upon us through the branches at every opening. About half-way on our road back, we foregathered with Robbie Maut, drucken body, with his Shetland rig-and-fur hose on, and his green umbrella in his hand, shug-shugging away home, keeping the trot, with his tale, and his bit arm shak-shaking at his tae side, on his grey sheltie; so, after carhailing him, we bragged him to a race full gallop for better than a mile to the toll. The damage we did I dare not pretend to recollect. First, we knocked over two drunk Irishmen, that were singing “Erin-go-Bragh,” arm-in-arm—syne we rode over the top of an old woman with a wheelbarrow of cabbages—and when we came to the toll, which was kept by a fat man with a red waistcoat, Robbie’s pony, being, like all Highlanders, a wilful creature, stopped all at once; and though he won the half mutchkin by getting through first, after driving over the tollman, it was at the expense of poor Robbie’s being ejected from his stirrups like a battering-ram, and disappearing head-foremost through the toll-house window, which was open, hat, wig, green umbrella, and all—the tollman’s wife’s bairn making a providential escape from Robbie’s landing on all-fours, more than two yards on the far-side of the cradle in which it was lying asleep, with its little flannel nightgown on.
At the time, all was war and rebellion with the tollman, assault and battery, damages, broken panes, and what not; but with skilful management, and a few words in the private ear of Mr Rory Sneckdrawer, the penny-writer, we got matters southered up when we were in our sober senses; though I shall not say how much it cost us both in preaching and pocket, to make the man keep a calm sough as to bringing us in for the penalty, which would have been deadly. I think black-burning shame of myself to make mention of such ploys and pliskies; but, after all, it is better to make a clean breast.
Hame at last we got, making fire flee out of the Dalkeith causey stones like mad: and we arrived at our own door between nine and ten at night, still in a half-seas-overish state. I had, nevertheless, sense enough about me remaining, to make me aware that the best place for me would be my bed; so, after making Nanse bring the bottle and glass to the door on a server, to give Peter Farrel a dram by way of “doch-an-dorris,” as the Gaelic folk say, we wished him a good-night, and left him to drive home the bit gig, with the broken shaft spliced with ropes, to his own bounds; little jealousing, as we heard next morning, that he would be thrown over the back of it, without being hurt, by taking too sharp a turn at the corner.
After a tremendous sound sleep, I was up betimes in the morning, though a wee drumly about the head, anxious to enquire at Tammie Bodkin, the head of the business department, me being absent, if any extraordinars had occurred on the yesterday; and found that the only particular customer making enquiries anent me was our old friend Cursecowl, savage for the measure of a killing-coat, which he wanted made as fast as directly. Though dreadfully angry at finding me from home, and unco swithering at first, he at length, after a volley of oaths enough to have opened a stone wall, allowed Tammie Bodkin to take his inches; but, as he swore and went on havering and speaking nonsense all the time, Tammie’s hand shook, partly through fear, and partly through anxiety; and if he went wrong in making a nick in the paper here and there in a wrong place, it was no more than might have been looked for, from his fright and inexperience.
In the twinkle of an eyelid, I saw that there was some mortal mistake in the measurement; as, unless Cursecowl had lost beef at no allowance, I knew, judging from the past, that it would not peep on his corpus by four inches. The matter was, however, now past all earthly remede, and there was nothing to be done but trusting to good fortune, and allowing the killing-coat to take its chance in the world. How the thing happened, I have bothered and beat my brains to no purpose to make out, and it remains a wonderful mystery to me to this blessed day; but, by long thought on the subject, both when awake and in my bed, and by multifarious cross-questionings at Tammie’s self concerning the paper measurings, I am devoutly inclined to think, that he mistook the nicking of the side-seams and the shoulder-strap for the girth of the belly-band.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE—ON CATCHING A TARTAR—CURSECOWL
From the first moment I clapped eye on the caricature thing of a coat, that Tammie Bodkin had, in my absence, shaped out for Cursecowl the butcher, I foresaw, in my own mind, that a catastrophe was brewing for us; and never did soldier gird himself to fight the French, or sailor prepare for a sea-storm, with greater alacrity, than I did to cope with the bull-dog anger, and buffet back the uproarious vengeance of our heathenish customer.
At first I thought of letting the thing take its natural course, and of threaping down Cursecowl’s throat that he must have been feloniously keeping in his breath when Tammie took his measure; and, moreover, that as it was the fashion to be straight-laced, Tammie had done his utmost trying to make him look like his betters; till, my conscience checking me for such a nefarious intention, I endeavoured, as became me in the relations of man, merchant, and Christian, to solder the matter peaceably, and show him, if there was a fault committed, that there was no evil intention on my side of the house. To this end I dispatched the bit servant wench, on the Friday afternoon, to deliver the coat, which was neatly tied up in a brown paper, and directed—“Mr Cursecowl, with care,” and to buy a sheep’s head; bidding her, by the way of being civil, give my kind compliments, and enquire how Mr and Mrs Cursecowl, and the five little Miss Cursecowl’s, were keeping their healths, and trusting to his honour in sending me a good article. But have a moment’s patience.
Being busy at the time, turning a pair of kuttikins for old Mr Molleypouch the mealmonger, when the lassie came back, I had no mind of asking a sight of the sheep’s head, as I aye like the little blackfaced, in preference to the white, fat, fozy Cheviot breed: but, most providentially, I catched a gliskie of the wench passing the shop window, on the road over to Jamie Coom the smith’s, to get it singed, having been dispatched there by her mistress. Running round the counter like lightning, I opened the sneck, and halooed to her to wheel to the right about, having, somehow or other, a superstitious longing to look at the article. As I was saying, there was a Providence in this, which, at the time, mortal man could never have thought of.
James Batter had popped in with a newspaper in his hand, to read me a curious account of a mermaid, that was seen singing a Gaelic song, and combing its hair with a tortoise-shell comb, someway terrible far north about Shetland, by a respectable minister of the district, riding home in the gloaming after a presbytery dinner. So, as he was just taking off his spectacles cannily, and saying to me—“And was not that droll?”—the lassie spread down her towel on the counter, when, lo and behold! such an abominable spectacle, James Batter observing me run back, and turn white! put on his glasses again, cannily taking them out of his well-worn shagreen case, and, giving a stare down at the towel, almost touched the beast’s nose with his own.
“And what, in the name of goodness, is the matter?” quo’ James Batter; “ye seem in a wonderful quandary.”
“The matter!” answered I, in astonishment; looking to see if the man had lost his sight or his senses—“the matter! who ever saw a sheep’s head with straight horns, and a visnomy all colours of the rainbow—red, blue, orange, green, yellow, white, and black?”
‘“Deed it is,” said James, after a nearer inspection; “it must be a lowsy-naturay. I’m sure I have read most of Buffon’s books, and I have never heard tell of like. It’s gey an’ queerish.”
‘“Od, James,” answered I, “ye take every thing very canny; you’re a philosopher, to be sure; but, I daresay, if the moon was to fall from the lift, and knock down the old kirk, ye would say no more than it’s gey an’ queerish!”
“Queerish, man! do ye not see that?” added I, shoving down his head mostly on the top of it. “Do ye not see that? awful, most awful! extonishing!! Do ye not see that long beard? Who, in the name of goodness, ever was an eyewitness to a sheep’s head, in a Christian land, with a beard like an unshaven Jew crying ‘owl clowes,’ with a green bag over his left shoulder!”
“Dog on it,” said James, giving a fidge with his hainches; “Dog on it, as I am a living sinner, that is the head of a Willie-goat.”
“Willie or Nannie,” answered I, “it’s not meat for me; and never shall an ounce of it cross the craig of my family:—that is as sure as ever James Batter drave a shuttle. Give counsel in need, James: what is to be done?”
“That needs consideration,” quo’ James, giving a bit hoast. “Unless he makes ample apology, and explains the mistake in a feasible way, it is my humble opinion that he ought to be summoned before his betters. That is the legal way to make him smart for his sins.”
At last a thought struck me, and I saw farther through my difficulties than ever mortal man did through a millstone; but, like a politician, I minted not the matter to James. Keeping my tongue cannily within my teeth, I then laid the head, wrapped up in the bit towel, in a corner behind the counter; and turning my face round again to James, I put my hands into my breeches-pockets, as if nothing in the world had happened, and ventured back to the story of the mermaid. I asked him how she looked—what kind of dress she wore—if she swam with her corsets—what was the colour of her hair—where she would buy the tortoise-shell comb—and so on; when, just as he was clearing his pipe to reply, who should burst open the shop-door like a clap of thunder, with burning cat’s een, and a face as red as a soldier’s jacket, but Cursecowl himself, with the new killing-coat in his hand,—which, giving a tremendous curse, the words of which are not essentially necessary for me to repeat, being an elder of our kirk, he made play flee at me with such a birr, that it twisted round my neck, and, mostly blinding me, made me doze like a tottum. At the same time, to clear his way, and the better to enable him to take a good mark, he gave James Batter a shove, that made him stotter against the wall, and snacked the good new farthing tobacco-pipe, that James was taking his first whiff out of; crying, at the same blessed moment—“Hold out o’ my road, ye long withered wabster. Ye’er a pair of havering idiots; but I’ll have pennyworths out of both your skins, as I’m a sinner!”
What was to be done? There was no time for speaking, for Cursccowl, foaming like a mad dog with passion, seized hold of the ell-wand, which he flourished round his head like a Highlander’s broadsword, and stamping about, with his stockings drawn up his thighs, threatened every moment to commit bloody murder.
If James Batter never saw service before, he learned a little of it that day, being in a pickle of bodily terror not to be imagined by living man; but his presence of mind did not forsake him, and he cowered for safety and succour into a far corner, holding out a web of buckram before him—me crying all the time, “Send for the town officer! will ye not send for the town-officer?”
You may talk of your general Moores, and your Lord Wellingtons, as ye like; but never, since I was born, did I ever see or hear tell of anything braver than the way Tammie Bodkin behaved, in saving both our precious lives, at that blessed nick of time, from touch-and-go jeopardy: for, when Cursecowl was rampauging about, cursing and swearing like a Russian bear, hurling out volleys of oaths that would have frighted John Knox, forbye the like of us, Tammie stole in behind him like a wild-cat, followed by Joseph Breekey, Walter Cuff, and Jack Thorl, the three apprentices on their stocking soles; and, having strong and dumpy arms, pinned back his elbows like a flash of lightning, giving the other callants time to jump on his back, and hold him like a vice; while, having got time to draw my breath, and screw up my pluck, I ran forward like a lion, and houghed the whole concern—Tammie Bodkin, the three faithful apprentices, Cursecowl and all, coming to the ground like a battered castle.
It was now James Batter’s time to come up in line, and, though a douce man (being savage for the insulting way that Cursecowl had dared to use him), he dropped down like mad, with his knees on Cursecowl’s breast, who was yelling, roaring, and grinding his buck-teeth like a mad bull, kicking right and spurring left with fire and fury; and, taking his Kilmarnock off his head, thrust it, like a battering-ram, into Cursecowl’s mouth, to hinder him from alarming the neighbourhood, and bringing the whole world about our ears. Such a stramash of tumbling, roaring, tearing, swearing, kicking, pushing, cuffing, rugging and riving about the floor!! I thought they would not have left one another with a shirt on: it seemed a combat even to the death. Cursecowl’s breath was choked up within him like wind in an empty bladder, and when I got a gliskie of his face, from beneath James’s cowl, it was growing as black as the crown of my hat. It feared me much that murder would be the upshot, the webs being all heeled over, both of broad cloth, buckram, cassimir, and Welsh flannel; and the paper shapings and worsted runds coiled about their throats and bodies like fiery serpents. At long and last, I thought it became me, being the head of the house, to sound a parley, and bid them give the savage a mouthful of fresh air, to see if he had anything to say in his defence.
Cursecowl, by this time, had forcible assurance of our ability to overpower him, and finding he had by far the worst of it, was obliged to grow tamer, using the first breath he got to cry out, “A barley, ye thieves! a barley! I tell ye, give me wind. There’s not a man in nine of ye.”
Finding our own strength, we saw, by this time, that we were masters of the field; nevertheless, we took care to make good terms when they were in our power; nor would we allow Cursecowl to sit upright, till after he had said, three times over, on his honour as a gentleman, that he would behave as became one. After giving his breeches-knees a skuff with his loof, to dad off the stoure, he came, right foot foremost, to the counter side, while the laddies were dighting their brows, and stowing away the webs upon their ends round about, saying, “Maister Wauch, how have ye the conscience to send hame such a piece o’ wark as that coat to ony decent man? Do ye dare to imagine that I am a Jerusalem spider, that I could be crammed, neck and heels, into such a thing as that? Fye, shame—it would not button on yourself, man, scarecrow-looking mortal though ye be!”
James Batter’s blood was now up, and boiling like an old Roman’s; so he was determined to show Cursecowl that I had a friend in court, able and willing to keep him at stave’s-end. “Keep a calm sough,” said James Batter, interfering, “and not miscall the head of the house in his own shop; or, to say nothing of present consequences, byway of showing ye the road to the door, perhaps Maister Sneckdrawer, the penny-writer, ’ll give ye a caption-paper with a broad margin, to claw your elbow with at your leisure, my good fellow.”
“Pugh, pugh,” cried Cursecowl, snapping his finger and thumb at James’s beak, “I do not value your threatening an ill halfpenny. Come away out your ways to the crown of the causey, and I’ll box any three of ye, over the bannys, for half-a-mutchkin. But ’od-sake, Batter, my man, nobody’s speaking to you,” added Cursecowl, giving a hack now and then, and a bit spit down on the floor; “go hame, man, and get your cowl washed; I dare say you have pushioned me, so I have no more to say to the like of you. But now, Maister Wauch, just speaking holy and fairly, do you not think black burning shame of yourself, for putting such an article into any decent Christian man’s hand, like mine?”
“Wait a wee—wait a wee, friend, and I’ll give ye a lock salt to your broth,” answered I, in a calm and cool way; for, being a confidential elder of Maister Wiggie’s, I kept myself free from the sin of getting into a passion, or fighting, except in self-defence, which is forbidden neither by law nor gospel; and, stooping down, I took up the towel from the corner, and, spreading it upon the counter, bade him look, and see if he knew an auld acquaintance!
Cursecowl, to be such a dragoon, had some rational points in his character; so, seeing that he lent ear to me with a smirk on his rough red face, I went on: “Take my advice as a friend, and make the best of your way home, killing-coat and all; for the most perfect will sometimes fall into an innocent mistake, and, at any rate, it cannot be helped now. But if ye show any symptom of obstrapulosity, I’ll find myself under the necessity of publishing you abroad to the world for what you are, and show about that head in the towel for a wonder to broad Scotland, in a manner that will make customers flee from your booth, as if it was infected with the seven plagues of Egypt.”
At sight of the goat’s-head, Cursecowl clapped his hand on his thigh two or three times, and could scarcely muster good manners enough to keep himself from bursting out a-laughing.
“Ye seem to have found a fiddle, friend,” said I; “but give me leave to tell you, that ye’ll may be find it liker a hanging-match than a musical matter. Are you not aware that I could hand you over to the sheriff, on two special indictments? In the first place, for an action of assault and batterification, in cuffing me, an elder of our kirk, with a sticked killing-coat, in my own shop; and, in the second place, as a swindler, imposing on his Majesty’s loyal subjects, taking the coin of the realm on false pretences, and palming off goat’s flesh upon Christians, as if they were perfect Pagans.”
Heathen though Cursecowl was, this oration alarmed him in a jiffie, soon showing him, in a couple of hurries, that it was necessary for him to be our humble servant: so he said, still keeping the smirk on his face, “Keh, keh, it’s not worth making a noise about after all. Gie me the jacket, Mansie, my man, and it’ll maybe serve my nephew, young Killim, who is as lingit in the waist as a wasp. Let us take a shake of your paw over the counter, and be friends. Bye-ganes should be bye-ganes.”
Never let it be said that Mansie Wauch, though one of the king’s volunteers, ever thrust aside the olive branch of peace; so, ill-used though I had been, to say nothing of James Batter, who had got his pipe smashed to crunches, and one of the eyes of his spectacles knocked out, I gave him my fist frankly.
James Batter’s birse had been so fiercely put up, and no wonder, that it was not so easily sleeked down; so, for a while he looked unco glum, till Cursecowl insisted that our meeting should not be a dry one; nor would he hear a single word on me and James Batter not accepting his treat of a mutchkin of Kilbagie.
I did not think James would have been so doure and refractory—funking and flinging like old Jeroboam; but at last, with the persuasion of the treat, he came to, and, sleeking down his front hair, we all three took a step down to the far end of the close, at the back street, where Widow Thamson kept the sign of “The Tankard and the Tappit Hen”; Cursecowl, when we got ourselves seated, ordering in the spirits with a loud rap on the table with his knuckles, and a whistle on the landlady through his fore-teeth, that made the roof ring. A bottle of beer was also brought; so, after drinking one another’s healths round, with a tasting out of the dram glass, Cursecowl swashed the rest of the raw creature into the tankard, saying—“Now take your will o’t; there’s drink fit for a king; that’s real ‘Pap-in.’”
He was an awful body, Cursecowl, and had a power of queer stories, which, weel-a-wat, did no lose in the telling. James Batter beginning to brighten up, hodged and leuch like a nine-year-old; and I freely confess, for another, that I was so diverted, that, I dare say, had it not been for his fearsome oaths, which made our very hair stand on end, and were enough to open the stone-wall, we would have both sate from that time to this.
We got the whole story of the Willie-goat, out and out; it seeming to be, with Cursecowl, a prime matter of diversion, especially that part of it relating to the head, by which he had won a crown from Deacon Paunch, who wagered that the wife and me would eat it, without ever finding out our mistake. But, aha, lad!
The long and the short of the matter was this. The Willie-goat, had, for eighteen year, belonged to a dragoon marching regiment, and, in its better days, had seen a power of service abroad; till, being now old and infirm, it had fallen off one of the baggage-carts, and got its leg broken on the road to Piershill, where it was sold to Cursecowl, by a corporal, for half-a-crown and a dram. The four quarters he had managed to sell for mutton, like lightning—this one buying a jigget, that one a back-ribs, and so on. However, he had to weather a gey brisk gale in making his point good. One woman remarked, that it had an unearthly, rank smell; to which he said, “No, no—ye do not ken your blessings, friend,—that’s the smell of venison, for the beast was brought up along with the deers in the Duke’s parks.” And to another wife, that, after smell-smelling at it, thought it was a wee humphed, he replied, “Faith that’s all the thanks folk gets for letting their sheep crop heather among Cheviot Hills”; and such like lies. But as for the head, that had been the doure business. Six times had it been sold and away, and six times had it been brought back again. One bairn said, that her “mother didna like a sheep’s head with horns like these, and wanted it changed for another one.” A second one said, that, “it had tup’s een, and her father liked wether mutton.” A third customer found mortal fault with the colours, which, she said, “were not canny, or in the course of nature.” What the fourth one said, and the fifth one took leave to observe, I have stupidly forgotten, though, I am sure, I heard both; but I mind one remarked, quite off-hand, as she sought back her money, that “unless sheep could do without beards, like their neighbours, she would keep the pot boiling with a piece beef, in the meantime.” After all this, would any mortal man believe it, Deacon Paunch, the greasy Daniel Lambert that he is, had taken the wager, as I before took opportunity to remark, that our family would swallow the bait? But, aha, he was off his eggs there!
James and me were so tickled with Cursecowl’s wild, outrageous, off-hand, humoursome way of telling his crack, that, though sore with neighering, none of the two of us ever thought of rising; Cursecowl chapping in first one stoup, and then another, and birling the tankard round the table, as if we had been drinking dub-water. I dare say I would never have got away, had I not slipped out behind Lucky Thamson’s back—for she was a broad fat body, with a round-eared mutch, and a full-plaited check apron—when she was drawing the sixth bottle of small beer, with her corkscrew between her knees; Cursecowl lecturing away, at the dividual moment, like a Glasgow professor, to James Batter, whose een were gathering straws, on a pliskie he had once, in the course of trade, played on a conceited body of a French sicknurse, by selling her a lump of fat pork to make beef-tea of to her mistress, who was dwining in the blue Beelzebubs.
Ohone, and woes me, for old Father Adam and the fall of man! Poor, sober, good, honest James Batter was not, by a thousand miles, a match for such company. Everything, however, has its moral, and the truth will out. When Nanse and me were sitting at our breakfast next morning, we heard from Benjie, who had been early up fishing for eels at the water-side, that the whole town-talk was concerning the misfortunate James Batter, who had been carried home, totally incapable, far in the night, by Cursecowl and an Irish labourer—that sleeped in Widow Thamson’s garret—on a hand-barrow, borrowed from Maister Wiggie’s servant-lass, Jenny Jessamine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR—JAMES BATTER & THE MAID OF DAMASCUS
On the morning after the debosh with Mr Cursecowl, my respected friend, James Batter, the pattern of steadiness and sobriety, awoke in a terrible pliskie. The decent man came to the use of his senses as from a trance, and scarcely knew either where he was, or whether his head or heels were uppermost. He found himself lying without his Kilmarnock, from which he might have received deadly damage, being subject to the rheumatics in the cuff of the neck; and everything about him was in a most fearful and disjaskit state. It was a long time before he could, for the life of him, bring his mind or memory to a sense of his condition, having still on his corduroy trowsers, and his upper and under vest, besides one of his stockings:—his hat, his wig, his neckcloth, his shoes, his coat, his snuff-box, his spectacles, and the other stocking, all lying on the floor, together with a table, a chair, a candlestick, with a broken candle, which had been knocked over;—the snuffers standing upright, being sharp in the point, and having stuck in the deal floor.
It was a terrible business! and might have been a life-long lesson to every one, of the truth of St Paul’s maxim, that “evil communication corrupts good manners”;—Cursecowl being the most incomprehensible fellow that ever breathed the breath of life. To add to his calamities, James found, on attempting to rise, that he had, in some way or other, of which he had not a shadow of recollection, dismally sprained his left ankle, which, to his consternation, was swelled like a door-post, and as blue as his apron. There was also a black ugly lump on his brow, as big as a pigeon’s egg, which was horrible to look at in the bit glass. Many a gallant soldier escaped from Waterloo with less scaith—and that they did. Poor innocent sowl! I pitied him from the very bottom of my heart—as who would not?
Having got an inkling of the town-talk by breakfast time, and knowing also that many a one—such is the corruption of human nature—would like to have a hair in the neck of James, by taking up an evil report, I remembered within myself that a friend in need is a friend indeed, and cannily papped up the close, after I had got myself shaved, to see how the land lay. And a humbling spectacle it was! James could scarcely yet be said to be himself, for his eyes were like scored collops, and his stomach was so sick that his face was like ill-bleached linen—pale as a dishclout. When he tried to speak, it was between a bock and a hiccup with him, and my feeling for his situation was such—knowing, as I did, all the ins and outs of the business—that I could not help being very wae for him. It therefore behoved me to make Nanse send him a cup of well-made tea, to see if it would act as a settler, but his heart stood at it, as if it had been ’cacuana, and do as he liked, he could not let a drop of it down his craig. When the wife informed me of this, I at last luckily remembered the old saying about giving one a hair of the dog that bit him; and I made poor James swallow a thimbleful of malt spirits—the real unadulterated creatur, with wonderfully good effects. Though then in his sixty-first year, James declares on his honour as a gentleman, that this was the first time he ever had fallen a victim to the barley-fever!
How could we do otherwise! it afforded Nanse and I great pleasure—and no mistake—in acting the part of good Samaritans, by pouring oil and wine into his wounds; I having bound up his brow with a Sunday silk-napkin, and she having fomented his unfortunate ankle with warm water and hog’s lard. The truth is, that I found myself in conscience bound and obligated to take a deep interest in the decent man’s distresses, he having come to his catastrophe in a cause of mine, and having fallen a victim to the snares and devices of Cursecowl, instead of myself, for whom the vagabond’s girn was set. Providence decided that, in this particular case, I should escape; but a better man, James Batter, was caught in it by the left ankle. What will a body say there?
The web of Lucky Caird, which James had promised to carry home to her on the Saturday night, was still in the loom, and had I been up to the craft, I would not have hesitated to have driven the shuttle myself till I had got it off hand for him; but every man to his trade; so afraid of consequences, I let the batter and the bobbin-box lie still, trusting to Lucky Caird’s discretion, and my friend’s speedy recovery. But the distress of James Batter was not the business of a day. In the course of the next night, to be sure, he had some natural sleep, which cleared his brain from the effects of that dangerous and deluding drink, the “Pap-in”; but his ankle left him a grievous lameter, hirpling on a staff; and, although his brown scratch and his Kilmarnock helped to hide the bump upon his temple, the dregs of it fell down upon his e’e-bree, which, to the consternation of everybody, became as green as a docken leaf.
My friend, however, be it added to this, was not more a sufferer in body than in estate; for the illness, being of his own bringing on, he could not make application to the Weavers’ Society—of which he had been a regular member for forty odd years—for his lawful sick-money. But, being a philosopher, James submitted to his bed of thorns without a murmur; Nanse and I soothing his calamities, as we best could, by a bowl of sheep-head broth; a rizzar’d haddock; a tankard of broo-and-bread; a caller egg; a swine’s trotter; and other circumstantialities needless to repeat—as occasion required.
As for Cursecowl, the invincible reprobate, so ashamed was he of his infamous conduct, that he did not dare, for the life in his body, to show himself before my shop-window—far less in my presence—for more than a week; yet, would ye believe it! he made a perfect farce of the whole business among his own wauf cronies; and, instead of repentance, I verily believe, would not have cared twopence to have played me the same pliskie that he did my douce and worthy friend. But away with him! he is not worth speaking about; and ye’ll get nothing from a sow but—grumph!
Being betimes on mending order, James sent down, one forenoon, to request, with his compliments, that I would hand him up by the bearer old Taffy with the Pigtail’s bundle of old papers,—as having more leisure in his hands than either he liked, or well knew how to dispose of, it might afford him some diversion to take a reading of them, for the purpose of enquiring farther into the particulars of the Welsh gentleman’s history—which undoubtedly was a wee mysterious; consisting of matters lying heads and thraws; and of odds and ends, that no human skill could dovetail into a Christian consistency.
On the night of the next day—I mind it weel, for it was on that dividual evening that Willie, the minister’s man, married Mysie Clouts, the keeper of the lodging-house called the Beggars’ Opera—it struck me, seeing the general joy of the weans on the street, and the laughing, daffing, and hallabuloo that they were making, that poor James must be lonely at his ingle side, and that a drink of porter and a crack would do his old heart good. Accordingly, I made Nanse send the bit lassie, our servant, Jenny Heggins, for a couple of bottles of Deacon Jaffrey’s best brown stout, asking if he could pawn his word anent its being genuine, as it was for a gentleman in delicate health. So, brushing the saw-dust off the doup of one of them, and slipping it into my coat pocket, which was gey an’ large, I popped at leisure up the close to pay my neighbour a friendly visit.
’Od, but comfort is a grand thing. If ever ye saw an ancient patriarch, there was one. James was seated in his snug old easychair by the fireside, as if he had been an Edinburgh Parliament House lawyer, studying his hornings, duplies, and fugie warrants, with his left leg paraded out on a stool, with a pillow smoothed down over it, and all the Welshman’s papers docketed on the bit table before him. The cat was lying streaked out on the hearth, pur-purring away to herself, and the kettle by the fire cheek was singing along with her, as if to cheer the heart of their mutual master. As for Mr Batter, he looked as prejinct as a pikestaff, and so taken up was he with his papers, that, when I asked him how he felt, his answer, to my wonderment, was, that “in the Song of Songs Solomon had likened the nose of his beloved to the tower of Lebanon, which looketh towards Damascus.” So brown was he in his studies, that, for a while, I feared the fall had produced some crack in his pan, and that his seven senses had gone a wool-gathering; but the story will out, as ye will hear, and being naturally a wee-camstairie, I gave him time to gather the feet of his faculties before pressing him too hard; but even the sight of the bottle of porter toasting by the cheek of the fire, hardly brought him at once to his right mind.
Mr Batter’s noddle, however, after a little patience, clearing up, we leisurely discussed between us the porter, which was in prime condition, with a ream as yellow as a marigold; together with half-a-dozen of butter-bakes, crimp and new-baked, it being batch-day with Thomas Burlings, who, like his father and grandfather before him, have been notorious in the biscuit department. It soon became clear to me, that the dialogue about Lebanon and Damascus, which was followed up with a clishmaclaver anent dirks, daggers, red cloaks, and other bloody weapons which made all my flesh grue, had some connexion with Taffy’s papers on the table—out of which James had been diverting himself by reading bits here and there, at random like.
In the course of our confab, he told me a monstrous heap about them; but, in general, the things were so out of the course of Providence, and so queer and leeing-like, that I, for one, would not believe them without solemn affidavy. Indeed, I began at length to question within myself—for the subject naturally resolved itself into two heads; firstly, whether Taffy’s master might not have had a bee in his bonnet; or, secondly, whether he was a person not over-scrupulous regarding the matter of truth. As for James, he declared him a nonsuch, and said, that although poor, he would not have hesitated to have given him sixpence for a lock of his hair, just to keep beside him for a keepsake; (did anybody ever hear such nonsense?) Before parting, he insisted that I should bear with him, till he read me over the story he had just finished as I came in, and which had been running in his noddle. At such a late hour, for it was now wearing on to wellnigh ten o’clock, I was not just clear about listening to anything bloody; but not to vex the old boy, who, I am sure, would not have sleeped a wink through the night for disappointment, had he not got a free breast made of it, I at long and last consented—provided his story was not too long. My chief particularity on this point, as I should mention, was, that it was past Benjie’s bedtime, and the callant had a hoast, which required all his mother’s as well as my own good doctoring—having cost us two bottles of Dantzic black beer, with little effect; besides not a few other recommendations of friends and skielly acquaintances.
It was best, therefore, to consent with a good grace; so, after clearing his windpipes, James wiped the eyes of his spectacles with the corner of his red-check pocket-napkin; and thereafter fixing them on his beak, he commenced preaching away in grand style at some queer outlandish stuff, which fairly baffled my gumption. I must confess, however, both in fairness to Taffy and to James, that, as I had been up since five in the morning (having pawned my word to send home Duncan Imrie, the heel-cutter’s new duffle great-coat by breakfast time, as he had to go into the Edinburgh leather-market by eleven), my een were gathering straws; and it was only at the fearsome parts that I could for half a moment keep them sundry. “Many men,” however, “many minds,” as the copy-line book says; and as every one has a right to judge for himself, I requested James to copy the concern out for me; and ye here have it, word for word, without substraction, multiplication, or addition.