THE BLACK DWARF
by Sir Walter Scott
CONTENTS.
I. Tales of my Landlord
Introduction by “Jedediah Cleishbotham”
II. Introduction to THE BLACK DWARF
III. Main text of THE BLACK DWARF
Note: Footnotes in the printed book have been inserted in the
etext in square brackets (“[]”) close to the place where
they were referenced by a suffix in the original text.
Text in italics has been written in capital letters.
I. TALES OF MY LANDLORD
COLLECTED AND REPORTED BY JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM, SCHOOLMASTER AND
PARISH-CLERK OF GANDERCLEUGH.
INTRODUCTION.
As I may, without vanity, presume that the name and official description
prefixed to this Proem will secure it, from the sedate and reflecting
part of mankind, to whom only I would be understood to address myself,
such attention as is due to the sedulous instructor of youth, and the
careful performer of my Sabbath duties, I will forbear to hold up
a candle to the daylight, or to point out to the judicious those
recommendations of my labours which they must necessarily anticipate
from the perusal of the title-page. Nevertheless, I am not unaware,
that, as Envy always dogs Merit at the heels, there may be those who
will whisper, that albeit my learning and good principles cannot
(lauded be the heavens) be denied by any one, yet that my situation at
Gandercleugh hath been more favourable to my acquisitions in learning
than to the enlargement of my views of the ways and works of the present
generation. To the which objection, if, peradventure, any such shall be
started, my answer shall be threefold:
First, Gandercleugh is, as it were, the central part--the navel (SI
FAS SIT DICERE) of this our native realm of Scotland; so that men, from
every corner thereof, when travelling on their concernments of business,
either towards our metropolis of law, by which I mean Edinburgh, or
towards our metropolis and mart of gain, whereby I insinuate Glasgow,
are frequently led to make Gandercleugh their abiding stage and place of
rest for the night. And it must be acknowledged by the most sceptical,
that I, who have sat in the leathern armchair, on the left-hand side of
the fire, in the common room of the Wallace Inn, winter and summer,
for every evening in my life, during forty years bypast (the Christian
Sabbaths only excepted), must have seen more of the manners and customs
of various tribes and people, than if I had sought them out by my
own painful travel and bodily labour. Even so doth the tollman at the
well-frequented turn-pike on the Wellbraehead, sitting at his ease in
his own dwelling, gather more receipt of custom, than if, moving forth
upon the road, he were to require a contribution from each person whom
he chanced to meet in his journey, when, according to the vulgar adage,
he might possibly be greeted with more kicks than halfpence.
But, secondly, supposing it again urged, that Ithacus, the most wise of
the Greeks, acquired his renown, as the Roman poet hath assured us, by
visiting states and men, I reply to the Zoilus who shall adhere to this
objection, that, DE FACTO, I have seen states and men also; for I have
visited the famous cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, the former twice,
and the latter three times, in the course of my earthly pilgrimage. And,
moreover, I had the honour to sit in the General Assembly (meaning, as
an auditor, in the galleries thereof), and have heard as much goodly
speaking on the law of patronage, as, with the fructification thereof
in mine own understanding, hath made me be considered as an oracle upon
that doctrine ever since my safe and happy return to Gandercleugh.
Again--and thirdly, If it be nevertheless pretended that my information
and knowledge of mankind, however extensive, and however painfully
acquired, by constant domestic enquiry, and by foreign travel, is,
natheless, incompetent to the task of recording the pleasant narratives
of my Landlord, I will let these critics know, to their own eternal
shame and confusion as well as to the abashment and discomfiture of all
who shall rashly take up a song against me, that I am NOT the writer,
redacter, or compiler, of the Tales of my Landlord; nor am I, in one
single iota, answerable for their contents, more or less. And now, ye
generation of critics, who raise yourselves up as if it were brazen
serpents, to hiss with your tongues, and to smite with your stings, bow
yourselves down to your native dust, and acknowledge that yours have
been the thoughts of ignorance, and the words of vain foolishness. Lo!
ye are caught in your own snare, and your own pit hath yawned for you.
Turn, then, aside from the task that is too heavy for you; destroy
not your teeth by gnawing a file; waste not your strength by spurning
against a castle wall; nor spend your breath in contending in swiftness
with a fleet steed; and let those weigh the Tales of my Landlord, who
shall bring with them the scales of candour cleansed from the rust of
prejudice by the hands of intelligent modesty. For these alone they were
compiled, as will appear from a brief narrative which my zeal for truth
compelled me to make supplementary to the present Proem.
It is well known that my Landlord was a pleasing and a facetious man,
acceptable unto all the parish of Gandercleugh, excepting only the
Laird, the Exciseman, and those for whom he refused to draw liquor upon
trust. Their causes of dislike I will touch separately, adding my own
refutation thereof.
His honour, the Laird, accused our Landlord, deceased, of having
encouraged, in various times and places, the destruction of hares,
rabbits, fowls black and grey, partridges, moor-pouts, roe-deer, and
other birds and quadrupeds, at unlawful seasons, and contrary to the
laws of this realm, which have secured, in their wisdom, the slaughter
of such animals for the great of the earth, whom I have remarked to take
an uncommon (though to me, an unintelligible) pleasure therein. Now, in
humble deference to his honour, and in justifiable defence of my friend
deceased, I reply to this charge, that howsoever the form of such
animals might appear to be similar to those so protected by the law, yet
it was a mere DECEPTIO VISUS; for what resembled hares were, in fact,
HILL-KIDS, and those partaking of the appearance of moor-fowl, were
truly WOOD PIGEONS and consumed and eaten EO NOMINE, and not otherwise.
Again, the Exciseman pretended, that my deceased Landlord did encourage
that species of manufacture called distillation, without having an
especial permission from the Great, technically called a license, for
doing so. Now, I stand up to confront this falsehood; and in defiance
of him, his gauging-stick, and pen and inkhorn, I tell him, that I
never saw, or tasted, a glass of unlawful aqua vitae in the house of
my Landlord; nay, that, on the contrary, we needed not such devices, in
respect of a pleasing and somewhat seductive liquor, which was vended
and consumed at the Wallace Inn, under the name of MOUNTAIN DEW. If
there is a penalty against manufacturing such a liquor, let him show me
the statute; and when he does, I’ll tell him if I will obey it or no.
Concerning those who came to my Landlord for liquor, and went thirsty
away, for lack of present coin, or future credit, I cannot but say it
has grieved my bowels as if the case had been mine own. Nevertheless, my
Landlord considered the necessities of a thirsty soul, and would permit
them, in extreme need, and when their soul was impoverished for lack
of moisture, to drink to the full value of their watches and wearing
apparel, exclusively of their inferior habiliments, which he was
uniformly inexorable in obliging them to retain, for the credit of the
house. As to mine own part, I may well say, that he never refused me
that modicum of refreshment with which I am wont to recruit nature after
the fatigues of my school. It is true, I taught his five sons English
and Latin, writing, book-keeping, with a tincture of mathematics, and
that I instructed his daughter in psalmody. Nor do I remember me of
any fee or HONORARIUM received from him on account of these my labours,
except the compotations aforesaid. Nevertheless this compensation suited
my humour well, since it is a hard sentence to bid a dry throat wait
till quarter-day.
But, truly, were I to speak my simple conceit and belief, I think my
Landlord was chiefly moved to waive in my behalf the usual requisition
of a symbol, or reckoning, from the pleasure he was wont to take in my
conversation, which, though solid and edifying in the main, was, like
a well-built palace, decorated with facetious narratives and devices,
tending much to the enhancement and ornament thereof. And so pleased was
my Landlord of the Wallace in his replies during such colloquies, that
there was no district in Scotland, yea, and no peculiar, and, as it
were, distinctive custom therein practised, but was discussed betwixt
us; insomuch, that those who stood by were wont to say, it was worth
a bottle of ale to hear us communicate with each other. And not a few
travellers, from distant parts, as well as from the remote districts of
our kingdom, were wont to mingle in the conversation, and to tell news
that had been gathered in foreign lands, or preserved from oblivion in
this our own.
Now I chanced to have contracted for teaching the lower classes with a
young person called Peter, or Patrick, Pattieson, who had been educated
for our Holy Kirk, yea, had, by the license of presbytery, his voice
opened therein as a preacher, who delighted in the collection of olden
tales and legends, and in garnishing them with the flowers of poesy,
whereof he was a vain and frivolous professor. For he followed not the
example of those strong poets whom I proposed to him as a pattern, but
formed versification of a flimsy and modern texture, to the compounding
whereof was necessary small pains and less thought. And hence I have
chid him as being one of those who bring forward the fatal revolution
prophesied by Mr. Robert Carey, in his Vaticination on the Death of the
celebrated Dr. John Donne:
Now thou art gone, and thy strict laws will be
Too hard for libertines in poetry;
Till verse (by thee refined) in this last age
Turn ballad rhyme.
I had also disputations with him touching his indulging rather a
flowing and redundant than a concise and stately diction in his prose
exercitations. But notwithstanding these symptoms of inferior taste,
and a humour of contradicting his betters upon passages of dubious
construction in Latin authors, I did grievously lament when Peter
Pattieson was removed from me by death, even as if he had been the
offspring of my own loins. And in respect his papers had been left in
my care (to answer funeral and death-bed expenses), I conceived myself
entitled to dispose of one parcel thereof, entitled, “Tales of my
Landlord,” to one cunning in the trade (as it is called) of bookselling.
He was a mirthful man, of small stature, cunning in counterfeiting of
voices, and in making facetious tales and responses, and whom I have to
laud for the truth of his dealings towards me.
Now, therefore, the world may see the injustice that charges me with
incapacity to write these narratives, seeing, that though I have proved
that I could have written them if I would, yet, not having done so,
the censure will deservedly fall, if at all due, upon the memory of Mr.
Peter Pattieson; whereas I must be justly entitled to the praise,
when any is due, seeing that, as the Dean of St. Patrick’s wittily and
logically expresseth it,
That without which a thing is not,
Is CAUSA SINE QUA NON.
The work, therefore, is unto me as a child is to a parent; in the which
child, if it proveth worthy, the parent hath honour and praise; but, if
otherwise, the disgrace will deservedly attach to itself alone.
I have only further to intimate, that Mr. Peter Pattieson, in arranging
these Tales for the press, hath more consulted his own fancy than the
accuracy of the narrative; nay, that he hath sometimes blended two
or three stories together for the mere grace of his plots. Of which
infidelity, although I disapprove and enter my testimony against it, yet
I have not taken upon me to correct the same, in respect it was the will
of the deceased, that his manuscript should be submitted to the press
without diminution or alteration. A fanciful nicety it was on the part
of my deceased friend, who, if thinking wisely, ought rather to have
conjured me, by all the tender ties of our friendship and common
pursuits, to have carefully revised, altered, and augmented, at my
judgment and discretion. But the will of the dead must be scrupulously
obeyed, even when we weep over their pertinacity and self-delusion. So,
gentle reader, I bid you farewell, recommending you to such fare as the
mountains of your own country produce; and I will only farther premise,
that each Tale is preceded by a short introduction, mentioning the
persons by whom, and the circumstances under which, the materials
thereof were collected.
JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM.
II. INTRODUCTION to THE BLACK DWARF.
The ideal being who is here presented as residing in solitude, and
haunted by a consciousness of his own deformity, and a suspicion of
his being generally subjected to the scorn of his fellow-men, is not
altogether imaginary. An individual existed many years since, under
the author’s observation, which suggested such a character. This poor
unfortunate man’s name was David Ritchie, a native of Tweeddale. He was
the son of a labourer in the slate-quarries of Stobo, and must have
been born in the misshapen form which he exhibited, though he sometimes
imputed it to ill-usage when in infancy. He was bred a brush-maker at
Edinburgh, and had wandered to several places, working at his trade,
from all which he was chased by the disagreeable attention which his
hideous singularity of form and face attracted wherever he came. The
author understood him to say he had even been in Dublin.
Tired at length of being the object of shouts, laughter, and derision,
David Ritchie resolved, like a deer hunted from the herd, to retreat to
some wilderness, where he might have the least possible communication
with the world which scoffed at him. He settled himself, with this view,
upon a patch of wild moorland at the bottom of a bank on the farm
of Woodhouse, in the sequestered vale of the small river Manor, in
Peeblesshire. The few people who had occasion to pass that way were much
surprised, and some superstitious persons a little alarmed, to see so
strange a figure as Bow’d Davie (i.e. Crooked David) employed in a task,
for which he seemed so totally unfit, as that of erecting a house. The
cottage which he built was extremely small, but the walls, as well as
those of a little garden that surrounded it, were constructed with an
ambitious degree of solidity, being composed of layers of large stones
and turf; and some of the corner stones were so weighty, as to puzzle
the spectators how such a person as the architect could possibly have
raised them. In fact, David received from passengers, or those who came
attracted by curiosity, a good deal of assistance; and as no one knew
how much aid had been given by others, the wonder of each individual
remained undiminished.
The proprietor of the ground, the late Sir James Naesmith, baronet,
chanced to pass this singular dwelling, which, having been placed there
without right or leave asked or given, formed an exact parallel with
Falstaff’s simile of a “fair house built on another’s ground;” so that
poor David might have lost his edifice by mistaking the property where
he had erected it. Of course, the proprietor entertained no idea
of exacting such a forfeiture, but readily sanctioned the harmless
encroachment.
The personal description of Elshender of Mucklestane-Moor has been
generally allowed to be a tolerably exact and unexaggerated portrait of
David of Manor Water. He was not quite three feet and a half high, since
he could stand upright in the door of his mansion, which was just that
height. The following particulars concerning his figure and temper occur
in the SCOTS MAGAZINE for 1817, and are now understood to have been
communicated by the ingenious Mr. Robert Chambers of Edinburgh, who has
recorded with much spirit the traditions of the Good Town, and, in other
publications, largely and agreeably added to the stock of our popular
antiquities. He is the countryman of David Ritchie, and had the best
access to collect anecdotes of him.
“His skull,” says this authority, “which was of an oblong and rather
unusual shape, was said to be of such strength, that he could strike it
with ease through the panel of a door, or the end of a barrel. His laugh
is said to have been quite horrible; and his screech-owl voice, shrill,
uncouth, and dissonant, corresponded well with his other peculiarities.
“There was nothing very uncommon about his dress. He usually wore an old
slouched hat when he went abroad; and when at home, a sort of cowl
or night-cap. He never wore shoes, being unable to adapt them to
his mis-shapen finlike feet, but always had both feet and legs quite
concealed, and wrapt up with pieces of cloth. He always walked with a
sort of pole or pike-staff, considerably taller than himself. His habits
were, in many respects, singular, and indicated a mind congenial to its
uncouth tabernacle. A jealous, misanthropical, and irritable temper,
was his prominent characteristic. The sense of his deformity haunted him
like a phantom. And the insults and scorn to which this exposed him, had
poisoned his heart with fierce and bitter feelings, which, from other
points in his character, do not appear to have been more largely infused
into his original temperament than that of his fellow-men.
“He detested children, on account of their propensity to insult and
persecute him. To strangers he was generally reserved, crabbed, and
surly; and though he by no means refused assistance or charity, he
seldom either expressed or exhibited much gratitude. Even towards
persons who had been his greatest benefactors, and who possessed the
greatest share of his good-will, he frequently displayed much caprice
and jealousy. A lady who had known him from his infancy, and who
has furnished us in the most obliging manner with some particulars
respecting him, says, that although Davie showed as much respect and
attachment to her father’s family, as it was in his nature to show
to any, yet they were always obliged to be very cautious in their
deportment towards him. One day, having gone to visit him with another
lady, he took them through his garden, and was showing them, with much
pride and good-humour, all his rich and tastefully assorted borders,
when they happened to stop near a plot of cabbages which had been
somewhat injured by the caterpillars. Davie, observing one of the ladies
smile, instantly assumed his savage, scowling aspect, rushed among the
cabbages, and dashed them to pieces with his KENT, exclaiming, ‘I hate
the worms, for they mock me!’
“Another lady, likewise a friend and old acquaintance of his, very
unintentionally gave David mortal offence on a similar occasion.
Throwing back his jealous glance as he was ushering her into his garden,
he fancied he observed her spit, and exclaimed, with great ferocity, ‘Am
I a toad, woman! that ye spit at me--that ye spit at me?’ and without
listening to any answer or excuse, drove her out of his garden
with imprecations and insult. When irritated by persons for whom he
entertained little respect, his misanthropy displayed itself in words,
and sometimes in actions, of still greater rudeness; and he used on
such occasions the most unusual and singularly savage imprecations and
threats.” [SCOTS MAGAZINE, vol. lxxx. p.207.]
Nature maintains a certain balance of good and evil in all her works;
and there is no state perhaps so utterly desolate, which does not
possess some source of gratification peculiar to itself, This poor
man, whose misanthropy was founded in a sense on his own preternatural
deformity, had yet his own particular enjoyments. Driven into solitude,
he became an admirer of the beauties of nature. His garden, which he
sedulously cultivated, and from a piece of wild moorland made a very
productive spot, was his pride and his delight; but he was also an
admirer of more natural beauty: the soft sweep of the green hill, the
bubbling of a clear fountain, or the complexities of a wild thicket,
were scenes on which he often gazed for hours, and, as he said, with
inexpressible delight. It was perhaps for this reason that he was fond
of Shenstone’s pastorals, and some parts of PARADISE LOST. The author
has heard his most unmusical voice repeat the celebrated description of
Paradise, which he seemed fully to appreciate. His other studies were of
a different cast, chiefly polemical. He never went to the parish church,
and was therefore suspected of entertaining heterodox opinions, though
his objection was probably to the concourse of spectators, to whom he
must have exposed his unseemly deformity. He spoke of a future state
with intense feeling, and even with tears. He expressed disgust at the
idea, of his remains being mixed with the common rubbish, as he called
it, of the churchyard, and selected with his usual taste a beautiful and
wild spot in the glen where he had his hermitage, in which to take his
last repose. He changed his mind, however, and was finally interred in
the common burial-ground of Manor parish.
The author has invested Wise Elshie with some qualities which made
him appear, in the eyes of the vulgar, a man possessed of supernatural
power. Common fame paid David Ritchie a similar compliment, for some
of the poor and ignorant, as well as all the children, in the
neighbourhood, held him to be what is called uncanny. He himself did not
altogether discourage the idea; it enlarged his very limited circle
of power, and in so far gratified his conceit; and it soothed his
misanthropy, by increasing his means of giving terror or pain. But even
in a rude Scottish glen thirty years back, the fear of sorcery was very
much out of date.
David Ritchie affected to frequent solitary scenes, especially such
as were supposed to be haunted, and valued himself upon his courage in
doing so. To be sure he had little chance of meeting anything more ugly
than himself. At heart, he was superstitious, and planted many
rowans (mountain ashes) around his hut, as a certain defence against
necromancy. For the same reason, doubtless, he desired to have
rowan-trees set above his grave.
We have stated that David Ritchie loved objects of natural beauty.
His only living favourites were a dog and a cat, to which he was
particularly attached, and his bees, which he treated with great care.
He took a sister, latterly, to live in a hut adjacent to his own, but
he did not permit her to enter it. She was weak in intellect, but not
deformed in person; simple, or rather silly, but not, like her brother,
sullen or bizarre. David was never affectionate to her; it was not in
his nature; but he endured her. He maintained himself and her by the
sale of the product of their garden and bee-hives; and, latterly,
they had a small allowance from the parish. Indeed, in the simple
and patriarchal state in which the country then was, persons in the
situation of David and his sister were sure to be supported. They had
only to apply to the next gentleman or respectable farmer, and were sure
to find them equally ready and willing to supply their very moderate
wants. David often received gratuities from strangers, which he never
asked, never refused, and never seemed to consider as an obligation. He
had a right, indeed, to regard himself as one of Nature’s paupers,
to whom she gave a title to be maintained by his kind, even by that
deformity which closed against him all ordinary ways of supporting
himself by his own labour. Besides, a bag was suspended in the mill for
David Ritchie’s benefit; and those who were carrying home a melder of
meal, seldom failed to add a GOWPEN [Handful] to the alms-bag of the
deformed cripple. In short, David had no occasion for money, save to
purchase snuff, his only luxury, in which he indulged himself liberally.
When he died, in the beginning of the present century, he was found
to have hoarded about twenty pounds, a habit very consistent with his
disposition; for wealth is power, and power was what David Ritchie
desired to possess, as a compensation for his exclusion from human
society.
His sister survived till the publication of the tale to which this brief
notice forms the introduction; and the author is sorry to learn that a
sort of “local sympathy,” and the curiosity then expressed concerning
the Author of WAVERLEY and the subjects of his Novels, exposed the poor
woman to enquiries which gave her pain. When pressed about her brother’s
peculiarities, she asked, in her turn, why they would not permit the
dead to rest? To others, who pressed for some account of her parents,
she answered in the same tone of feeling.
The author saw this poor, and, it may be said, unhappy man, in autumn
1797 being then, as he has the happiness still to remain, connected by
ties of intimate friendship with the family of the venerable Dr. Adam
Fergusson, the philosopher and historian, who then resided at the
mansion-house of Halyards, in the vale of Manor, about a mile from
Ritchie’s hermitage, the author was upon a visit at Halyards, which
lasted for several days, and was made acquainted with this singular
anchorite, whom Dr. Fergusson considered as an extraordinary character,
and whom he assisted in various ways, particularly by the occasional
loan of books. Though the taste of the philosopher and the poor peasant
did not, it may be supposed, always correspond, [I remember David was
particularly anxious to see a book, which he called, I think, LETTERS TO
ELECT LADIES, and which, he said, was the best composition he had
ever read; but Dr. Fergusson’s library did not supply the volume.] Dr.
Fergusson considered him as a man of a powerful capacity and original
ideas, but whose mind was thrown off its just bias by a predominant
degree of self-love and self-opinion, galled by the sense of ridicule
and contempt, and avenging itself upon society, in idea at least, by a
gloomy misanthropy.
David Ritchie, besides the utter obscurity of his life while in
existence, had been dead for many years, when it occurred to the author
that such a character might be made a powerful agent in fictitious
narrative. He, accordingly, sketched that of Elshie of the
Mucklestane-Moor. The story was intended to be longer, and the
catastrophe more artificially brought out; but a friendly critic, to
whose opinion I subjected the work in its progress, was of opinion, that
the idea of the Solitary was of a kind too revolting, and more likely to
disgust than to interest the reader. As I had good right to consider my
adviser as an excellent judge of public opinion, I got off my subject
by hastening the story to an end, as fast as it was possible; and, by
huddling into one volume, a tale which was designed to occupy two, have
perhaps produced a narrative as much disproportioned and distorted, as
the Black Dwarf who is its subject.
III. THE BLACK DWARF.
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY.
Hast any philosophy in thee, Shepherd?--AS YOU LIKE IT.
It was a fine April morning (excepting that it had snowed hard the night
before, and the ground remained covered with a dazzling mantle of six
inches in depth) when two horsemen rode up to the Wallace Inn. The first
was a strong, tall, powerful man, in a grey riding-coat, having a hat
covered with waxcloth, a huge silver-mounted horsewhip, boots, and
dreadnought overalls. He was mounted on a large strong brown mare, rough
in coat, but well in condition, with a saddle of the yeomanry cut, and
a double-bitted military bridle. The man who accompanied him was
apparently his servant; he rode a shaggy little grey pony, had a blue
bonnet on his head, and a large check napkin folded about his neck, wore
a pair of long blue worsted hose instead of boots, had his gloveless
hands much stained with tar, and observed an air of deference and
respect towards his companion, but without any of those indications
of precedence and punctilio which are preserved between the gentry
and their domestics. On the contrary, the two travellers entered the
court-yard abreast, and the concluding sentence of the conversation
which had been carrying on betwixt them was a joint ejaculation, “Lord
guide us, an this weather last, what will come o’ the lambs!” The hint
was sufficient for my Landlord, who, advancing to take the horse of the
principal person, and holding him by the reins as he dismounted, while
his ostler rendered the same service to the attendant, welcomed the
stranger to Gandercleugh, and, in the same breath, enquired, “What news
from the south hielands?”
“News?” said the farmer, “bad eneugh news, I think;--an we can carry
through the yowes, it will be a’ we can do; we maun e’en leave the lambs
to the Black Dwarfs care.”
“Ay, ay,” subjoined the old shepherd (for such he was), shaking his
head, “he’ll be unco busy amang the morts this season.”
“The Black Dwarf!” said MY LEARNED FRIEND AND PATRON, Mr. Jedediah
Cleishbotham, “and what sort of a personage may he be?”
[We have, in this and other instances, printed in italics (CAPITALS
in this etext) some few words which the worthy editor, Mr. Jedediah
Cleishbotham, seems to have interpolated upon the text of his deceased
friend, Mr. Pattieson. We must observe, once for all, that such
liberties seem only to have been taken by the learned gentleman where
his own character and conduct are concerned; and surely he must be the
best judge of the style in which his own character and conduct should be
treated of.]
“Hout awa, man,” answered the farmer, “ye’ll hae heard o’ Canny Elshie
the Black Dwarf, or I am muckle mistaen--A’ the warld tells tales about
him, but it’s but daft nonsense after a’--I dinna believe a word o’t
frae beginning to end.”
“Your father believed it unco stievely, though,” said the old man, to
whom the scepticism of his master gave obvious displeasure.
“Ay, very true, Bauldie, but that was in the time o’ the
blackfaces--they believed a hantle queer things in thae days, that
naebody heeds since the lang sheep cam in.”
“The mair’s the pity, the mair’s the pity,” said the old man. “Your
father, and sae I have aften tell’d ye, maister, wad hae been sair vexed
to hae seen the auld peel-house wa’s pu’d down to make park dykes; and
the bonny broomy knowe, where he liked sae weel to sit at e’en, wi’ his
plaid about him, and look at the kye as they cam down the loaning, ill
wad he hae liked to hae seen that braw sunny knowe a’ riven out wi’ the
pleugh in the fashion it is at this day.”
“Hout, Bauldie,” replied the principal, “tak ye that dram the landlord’s
offering ye, and never fash your head about the changes o’ the warld,
sae lang as ye’re blithe and bien yoursell.”
“Wussing your health, sirs,” said the shepherd; and having taken off his
glass, and observed the whisky was the right thing, he continued, “It’s
no for the like o’ us to be judging, to be sure; but it was a bonny
knowe that broomy knowe, and an unco braw shelter for the lambs in a
severe morning like this.”
“Ay,” said his patron, “but ye ken we maun hae turnips for the lang
sheep, billie, and muckle hard wark to get them, baith wi’ the pleugh
and the howe; and that wad sort ill wi’ sitting on the broomy knowe, and
cracking about Black Dwarfs, and siccan clavers, as was the gate lang
syne, when the short sheep were in the fashion.”
“Aweel, aweel, maister,” said the attendant, “short sheep had short
rents, I’m thinking.”
Here my WORTHY AND LEARNED patron again interposed, and observed, “that
he could never perceive any material difference, in point of longitude,
between one sheep and another.”
This occasioned a loud hoarse laugh on the part of the farmer, and an
astonished stare on the part of the shepherd.
“It’s the woo’, man,--it’s the woo’, and no the beasts themsells, that
makes them be ca’d lang or short. I believe if ye were to measure their
backs, the short sheep wad be rather the langer-bodied o’ the twa; but
it’s the woo’ that pays the rent in thae days, and it had muckle need.”
“Odd, Bauldie says very true,--short sheep did make short rents--my
father paid for our steading just threescore punds, and it stands me in
three hundred, plack and bawbee.--And that’s very true--I hae nae time
to be standing here clavering--Landlord, get us our breakfast, and see
an’ get the yauds fed--I am for doun to Christy Wilson’s, to see if him
and me can gree about the luckpenny I am to gie him for his year-aulds.
We had drank sax mutchkins to the making the bargain at St. Boswell’s
fair, and some gate we canna gree upon the particulars preceesely, for
as muckle time as we took about it--I doubt we draw to a plea--But hear
ye, neighbour,” addressing my WORTHY AND LEARNED patron, “if ye want to
hear onything about lang or short sheep, I will be back here to my kail
against ane o’clock; or, if ye want ony auld-warld stories about the
Black Dwarf, and sic-like, if ye’ll ware a half mutchkin upon Bauldie
there, he’ll crack t’ye like a pen-gun. And I’se gie ye a mutchkin
mysell, man, if I can settle weel wi’ Christy Wilson.”
The farmer returned at the hour appointed, and with him came Christy
Wilson, their difference having been fortunately settled without an
appeal to the gentlemen of the long robe. My LEARNED AND WORTHY patron
failed not to attend, both on account of the refreshment promised to the
mind and to the body, ALTHOUGH HE IS KNOWN TO PARTAKE OF THE LATTER IN
A VERY MODERATE DEGREE; and the party, with which my Landlord was
associated, continued to sit late in the evening, seasoning their liquor
with many choice tales and songs. The last incident which I recollect,
was my LEARNED AND WORTHY patron falling from his chair, just as he
concluded a long lecture upon temperance, by reciting, from the “Gentle
Shepherd,” a couplet, which he RIGHT HAPPILY transferred from the vice
of avarice to that of ebriety:
He that has just eneugh may soundly sleep,
The owercome only fashes folk to keep.
In the course of the evening the Black Dwarf had not been forgotten,
and the old shepherd, Bauldie, told so many stories of him, that they
excited a good deal of interest. It also appeared, though not till the
third punch-bowl was emptied, that much of the farmer’s scepticism on
the subject was affected, as evincing a liberality of thinking, and a
freedom from ancient prejudices, becoming a man who paid three hundred
pounds a-year of rent, while, in fact, he had a lurking belief in the
traditions of his forefathers. After my usual manner, I made farther
enquiries of other persons connected with the wild and pastoral district
in which the scene of the following narrative is placed, and I was
fortunate enough to recover many links of the story, not generally
known, and which account, at least in some degree, for the circumstances
of exaggerated marvel with which superstition has attired it in the more
vulgar traditions.
[The Black Dwarf, now almost forgotten, was once held a formidable
personage by the dalesmen of the Border, where he got the blame of
whatever mischief befell the sheep or cattle. “He was,” says Dr. Leyden,
who makes considerable use of him in the ballad called the Cowt of
Keeldar, “a fairy of the most malignant order--the genuine Northern
Duergar.” The best and most authentic account of this dangerous and
mysterious being occurs in a tale communicated to the author by that
eminent antiquary, Richard Surtees, Esq. of Mainsforth, author of the
HISTORY OF THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM.
According to this well-attested legend, two young Northumbrians were
out on a shooting party, and had plunged deep among the mountainous
moorlands which border on Cumberland. They stopped for refreshment in
a little secluded dell by the side of a rivulet. There, after they had
partaken of such food as they brought with them, one of the party fell
asleep; the other, unwilling to disturb his friend’s repose, stole
silently out of the dell with the purpose of looking around him, when he
was astonished to find himself close to a being who seemed not to belong
to this world, as he was the most hideous dwarf that the sun had ever
shone on. His head was of full human size, forming a frightful contrast
with his height, which was considerably under four feet. It was thatched
with no other covering than long matted red hair, like that of the felt
of a badger in consistence, and in colour a reddish brown, like the hue
of the heather-blossom. His limbs seemed of great strength; nor was he
otherwise deformed than from their undue proportion in thickness to his
diminutive height. The terrified sportsman stood gazing on this horrible
apparition, until, with an angry countenance, the being demanded by what
right he intruded himself on those hills, and destroyed their harmless
inhabitants. The perplexed stranger endeavoured to propitiate the
incensed dwarf, by offering to surrender his game, as he would to an
earthly Lord of the Manor. The proposal only redoubled the offence
already taken by the dwarf, who alleged that he was the lord of those
mountains, and the protector of the wild creatures who found a retreat
in their solitary recesses; and that all spoils derived from their
death, or misery, were abhorrent to him. The hunter humbled himself
before the angry goblin, and by protestations of his ignorance, and
of his resolution to abstain from such intrusion in future, at last
succeeded in pacifying him. The gnome now became more communicative, and
spoke of himself as belonging to a species of beings something between
the angelic race and humanity. He added, moreover, which could hardly
have been anticipated, that he had hopes of sharing in the redemption of
the race of Adam. He pressed the sportsman to visit his dwelling, which
he said was hard by, and plighted his faith for his safe return. But at
this moment, the shout of the sportsman’s companion was heard calling
for his friend, and the dwarf, as if unwilling that more than one
person should be cognisant of his presence, disappeared as the young man
emerged from the dell to join his comrade.
It was the universal opinion of those most experienced in such
matters, that if the shooter had accompanied the spirit, he would,
notwithstanding the dwarf’s fair pretences, have been either torn to
pieces, or immured for years in the recesses of some fairy hill.
Such is the last and most authentic account of the apparition of the
Black Dwarf.]