of 1806. I was on my way to join a family in Galloway, where I long
acted in the capacity of tutor. I had then attained my twenty-first
year; and I chanced to be calculating--as I expected seeing Alice
Lorimer on the following day--what her age must be. Let me see, said I,
so audibly that I started at my own utterance, as did a little pony I
rode; and what followed was the sum of my reflections. I calculated, by
the common rule of proportion, that if Alice was twelve when I was
sixteen, she would be seventeen now that I was twenty-one. Seventeen! I
repeated, just seventeen!--and I urged on the pony instinctively, as if
hastening towards Croalchapel. But I had been five years at Edinburgh at
College. What a change had come over the spirit of my dreams during that
period! I had had to contend with fortune in many ways; had been often
disappointed, and sometimes driven almost to despair; again I had
prospered, got into lucrative employment, become a member of speaking
societies, distinguished myself by talking sense and nonsense right and
left. I had spent many merry evenings in Johnie Dowie's; and had seen
Lady Charlotte Campbell and Tom Sheridan in a box at the theatre. In
fact, I was not now the same being I was when I left for College; and I
felt that, however fair and faultless Alice Lorimer might be, she could
never be mine--I could never be hers; our fortunes were separated by a
barrier which, when I went to College, I did not clearly perceive. In
fact, my ambition now taught me to aim at the bar or the church; and I
knew that, for years to come, I must be contented with a single life,
which, in Edinburgh in particular, I had learned to endure without
murmuring. Yet I thought of poor Alice with most kindly feelings, and
had some secret doubts upon the propriety of exposing myself in her
presence to a revival of old times and former feelings. In this tone of
mind I was jogging on, with half a bottle of Mrs. Otto's (of Lead-hills)
best port wine under my belt, and endeavouring to collect some rhymes to
the word Lorimer; but either the muse was unpropitious, or the word,
like that mentioned in Horace, refused to stand in verse; it so happened
that I had given up the effort, and was about to dismiss the subject
altogether, when I discovered, near the bottom of the pass, a number of
figures advancing upon me in an opposite direction. As they came up the
pass, under a meridian moon, I could discover that they carried
something on a barrow, which, on nearer inspection, I found to be a
coffin. I drew my pony to the side of the road, lifted my hat
reverentially, and the party, consisting of upwards of twenty, passed in
solemn silence. The incident was a little startling, and somewhat
unnatural, not to say superhuman; for, why were these people carrying a
coffin up the long and narrow pass which separates Lanark from
Dumfriesshire, so late at night, and in such mysterious silence? A
thought struck me, which contributed not a little to ease my mind in
regard to supernaturals; were they a company of smugglers from Bowness,
taking this method of carrying forward their untaxed goods to Lanark and
Glasgow? Ruminating on this subject, and laughing inwardly at my own
ingenuity and discernment, I arrived at last at Thornhill, where I
remained for the night. Next morning I reached Croalchapel, on my way to
my birthplace. I went up to that very door at which I had parted with
Alice, some five years before, and endeavoured to open it; but it was
shut and locked. I looked in at the end-window, above the fire-place;
but there was neither fire nor inhabitant--all was silence. My heart
sank within me; and a neighbour, who saw my ignorance and mistake,
advertised me that both parent and child were no more; and that Alice
Lorimer was _buried_!--here he hesitated, and seemed to retract the
expression--"at least," said he, "committed to the earth last night!"
"Was she not buried by her father in the burial-ground of the Lorimers
of Closeburn?" said I, hastily, and in an agitated tone. The man looked
me in the face attentively, and, probably then for the first time
recognising me, waved his hand, burst into tears, and left me. I
hastened to the home of my fathers, half distracted. My mother still
lived and enjoyed good health--from her I learned the following
particulars.
John Lorimer's sight, she said, served him for a time, during which he
wrought as usual, and his daughter grew to be a tall and handsome woman;
but at last it began to fail, and he would put the elshun into a wrong
place, or thrust it into his hand. Alice perceived this, and was most
anxious to provide for her father under this irremediable calamity. She
took in linen and bleached it on the bonny knowe among the gowans; she
span yarn, and sold it at Thornhill fairs; in short, she did all she
could to support herself and her father in an honest and honourable way.
But it was a severe struggle to make ends meet. In the meantime she had
several offers of marriage; but refused them all, as she could not think
of leaving her poor blind parent alone and helpless, and none of her
lovers were rich enough to present a home to a supernumerary inmate. One
evening, whilst, after a severe day's labour, she was sitting with old
Poodle (her constant companion, but now likewise blind) by the fire, Mr.
John Murdoch made his appearance. Her father had gone early to bed in
the shop end of the house, and did not know of the man's visit. He came,
he said, as a repentant sinner to relieve her necessities. He had
occasioned her father's blindness, and he was glad to be made the
instrument of bringing some pecuniary relief. Thus saying, he put into
her hands a five-pound note, and, without waiting for a reply, took his
departure. This startled poor Alice not a little; she looked at the
money, then thought of the man, and again listened to see if her father
was sleeping--at last, she put it into her chest, determined not to make
use of it unless in case of necessity. The factor, who had hitherto been
lenient, became urgent for the rent. There were two years due, and the
five-pound note exactly covered the debt; away therefore it went into
the factor's hands, and poor Alice returned thanks on her knees to
Heaven, that had sent her the means of keeping from her father the
knowledge of their situation.
In a few days Murdoch found her at the washing-green, and entered more
particularly into the history of the money. He said it had been sent by
one who had seen and admired her. He was on a visit at Barjarg, the
proprietor being his uncle. He was the son and heir of a very rich man,
not expected to live many months. He was determined to please himself in
marrying, having observed great misery arise from adopting a contrary
plan and he wished, in fine, to cultivate a further acquaintance with
Alice, to whom he had sent another five-pound note in the meantime. In
short, after exhibiting great reluctance to agree to a secret interview,
and after having again and again tried to get words to communicate the
whole matter to her father, a young gentleman of gaudy and genteel
appearance made his way out of the adjoining wood, and was introduced
by Murdoch as young Johnstone of Westerhall. Few words passed--poor
Alice was quite nonplussed--she felt that she was not equal to this
awful trial, and yet there was something fearfully pleasant in it. A
young man, handsome and rich--her father blind and helpless--her hand
quite at her own disposal--and independence and comfort brought to the
good man's house for life. Her lover, however, did not press the thing
further that time; he took his departure along with Murdoch, and
Alice was a second time left to her own reflections. These, however,
soon informed her that she was on the brink of perdition. She ran at
once to her father, and, in a paroxysm of feeling, informed him of all
that had passed. He reproved her, but gently, for her having devoted the
money to the purpose which she mentioned; informed her that he was
richer than she supposed, for he had just five pounds which her sainted
mother had put into his hand on the marriage day; and that he was
keeping, and had kept it sacred against the expenses of his funeral. He
would now willingly give it to recover their house, and to free her from
all temptation to sin. Alice wept; but she felt comforted in the
assurance that, by repaying the money, and breaking off all connection
with Murdoch and Johnstone, she was doing the right and the safe thing.
Accordingly, she went to bed with a satisfied mind, determined next day
to find out Murdoch's dwelling, and have everything settled to her
father's advice and her own wish. She dressed herself in her best; and
set out, soon after breakfast, for Barjarg Castle, never to see her
father again. She was betrayed by the revengeful Murdoch to a
dissipated, a heartless debauchee; was carried by force betwixt Murdoch
and him in a chaise to Dumfries; was lodged by Johnstone in convenient
quarters. Every art was used to reconcile her to her situation: but all
in vain; she stood her trials nobly; detected the old game of a private
marriage; and afterwards refused to be united to Johnstone on any terms
whatever. But in the meantime, poor John Lorimer missed his daughter,
and immediately guessed the cause of it. Tibby Murdoch took care to
inform him, for his comfort, that Alice had run away with the young
Laird of Westerha', and, giggling and laughing all the while, that they
were living very comfortably and lovingly in Dumfries. The blind man
knew this to be all a lie, but he knew enough to kill him; he knew that
his daughter was young and beautiful--that a villain had been
endeavouring to inveigle her--that a still greater villain, Murdoch, had
betrayed her--and that, in a word, she was now a poor dishonoured woman.
He knew, or thought he knew, all this, and was found dead next morning
in his bed. The doctors said he died of apoplexy! If it was, it was a
mental apoplexy. Tired with fruitless efforts to gain his purpose,
Johnstone at last permitted Alice to depart. In a few hours she was at
her father's house; but it was desolate and silent. A paper, which was
put into my hands, was evidently written by Alice. She expressed her
determination to follow her dear father into another and a better world,
and hoped Heaven would forgive her. It was her funeral I met at
Enterkin. Hers was
"The poor suicide's grave."
THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL.
In the autumn of 1759, the Bay of Udoll, an arm of the sea which
intersects the southern shore of the Frith of Cromarty, was occupied by
two large salmon wears, the property of one Allan Thomson, a native of
the province of Moray, who had settled in this part of the country a few
months before. He was a thin, athletic, raw-boned man, of about five
feet ten, well nigh in his thirtieth year, but apparently younger; erect
and clean-limbed, with a set of handsome features, bright intelligent
eyes, and a profusion of dark-brown hair, curling round an ample expanse
of forehead. For the first twenty years of his life, he had lived about
a farm-house, tending cattle when a boy, and guiding the plough when he
had grown up; he then travelled into England, where he wrought about
seven years as a common labourer. A novelist would scarcely make choice
of such a person for the hero of a tale; but men are to be estimated
rather by the size and colour of their minds, than the complexion of
their circumstances; and this ploughman and labourer of the north was by
no means a very common man. For the latter half of his life, he had
pursued, in all his undertakings, one main design. He saw his brother
rustics tied down by circumstance--that destiny of vulgar minds--to a
youth of toil and dependence, and an old age of destitution and
wretchedness; and, with a force of character which, had he been placed
at his outset on what may be termed the table-land of fortune, would
have raised him to her higher pinnacles, he persisted in adding shilling
to shilling and pound to pound, not in the sordid spirit of the miser,
but in the hope that his little hoard might yet serve him as a kind of
stepping-stone in rising to a more comfortable place in society. Nor
were his desires fixed very high; for, convinced that independence and
the happiness which springs from situation in life lie within the reach
of the frugal farmer of sixty or eighty acres, he moulded his ambition
on the conviction; and scarcely looked beyond the period at which he
anticipated his savings would enable him to take his place among the
humbler tenantry of the country.
Our firths and estuaries at this period abounded with salmon--one of the
earliest exports of the kingdom; but from the low state into which
commerce had sunk in the northern districts, and the irregularity of the
communication kept up between them and the sister kingdom, by far the
greater part caught on our shores were consumed by the inhabitants. And
so little were they deemed a luxury, that it was by no means uncommon,
it is said, for servants to stipulate with their masters that they
should not have to diet on salmon oftener than thrice a-week. Thomson,
however, had seen quite enough, when in England, to convince him, that,
meanly as they were esteemed by his countryfolks, they might be rendered
the staple of a profitable trade; and, removing to the vicinity of
Cromarty, for the facilities it afforded in trading to the capital, he
launched boldly into the speculation. He erected his two wears with his
own hands; built himself a cottage of sods on the gorge of a little
ravine, sprinkled over with bushes of alder and hazel; entered into
correspondence with a London merchant, whom he engaged as his agent; and
began to export his fish by two large sloops, which plied, at this
period, between the neighbouring port and the capital. His fishings were
abundant, and his agent an honest one; and he soon began to realize the
sums he had expended in establishing himself in the trade.
Could any one anticipate that a story of fondly-cherished, but hapless
attachment--of one heart blighted for ever, and another fatally
broken--was to follow such an introduction?
The first season of Thomson's speculation had come to a close; winter
set in; and, with scarcely a single acquaintance among the people in the
neighbourhood, and little to employ him, he had to draw for amusement on
his own resources alone. He had formed, when a boy, a taste for reading;
and might now be found in the long evenings, hanging over a book, beside
the fire; by day, he went sauntering among the fields, calculating on
the advantages of every agricultural improvement; or attended the fairs
and trysts of the country, to speculate on the profits of the drover and
cattle-feeder, and make himself acquainted with all the little mysteries
of bargain-making.
There holds, early in November, a famous cattle market in the ancient
barony of Ferntosh; and Thomson had set out to attend it. The morning
was clear and frosty, and he felt buoyant of heart and limb, as passing
westwards along the shore, he saw the huge Ben-Nevis towering darker and
more loftily over the Frith as he advanced; or turned aside, from time
to time, to explore some ancient burying-ground or Danish encampment.
There is not a tract of country of equal extent in the three kingdoms,
where antiquities of this class lie thicker than in that northern strip
of the parish of Resolis which bounds on the Cromarty Frith. The old
castle of Craig House, a venerable, time-shattered building, detained
him, amid its broken arches, for hours; and he was only reminded of the
ultimate object of his journey, when, on surveying the moor from the
upper bartizan, he saw that the groups of men and cattle which, since
morning, had been mottling in succession the track leading to the fair,
were all gone out of sight; and that, far as the eye could reach not a
human figure was to be seen. The whole population of the country seemed
to have gone to the fair. He quitted the ruins, and, after walking
smartly over the heathy ridge to the west, and through the long
birch-wood of Kinbeakie, he reached about mid-day the little straggling
village at which the market holds.
Thomson had never before attended a thoroughly Highland market; and the
scene now presented was wholly new to him. The area it occupied was an
irregular opening in the middle of the village, broken by ruts, and
dung-hills, and heaps of stone. In front of the little turf-houses on
either side, there was a row of booths, constructed mostly of poles and
blankets, in which much whisky, and a few of the simpler articles of
foreign merchandise, were sold. In the middle of the open space, there
were carts and benches, laden with the rude manufactures of the
country--Highland brogues and blankets; bowls and platters of beech; a
species of horse and cattle harness, formed of the twisted twigs of
birch; bundles of split fir, for lath and torches; and hair tackle and
nets, for fishermen. Nearly seven thousand persons, male and female,
thronged the area bustling and busy, and in continual motion, like the
tides and eddies of two rivers at their confluence. There were
countrywomen, with their shaggy little horses, laden with cheese and
butter; Highlanders from the far hills, with droves of sheep and cattle;
shoemakers and weavers, from the neighbouring villages, with bales of
webs and wallets of shoes; farmers and fishermen, engaged as it chanced
in buying or selling; bevies of bonny lasses, attired in their gayest;
ploughmen and mechanics; drovers, butchers, and herd-boys. Whisky flowed
abundantly, whether bargain-makers bought or sold, or friends met or
parted; and, as the day wore later, the confusion and bustle of the
crowd increased. A Highland tryst, even in the present age, rarely
passes without witnessing a fray; and the Highlanders, seventy years
ago, were of more combative dispositions than they are now; but Thomson,
who had neither friend nor enemy among the thousands around him, neither
quarreled himself, nor interfered in the quarrels of others. He merely
stood and looked on, as a European would among the frays of one of the
great fairs of Bagdad or Astracan.
He was passing through the crowd, towards evening, in front of one of
the dingier cottages, when a sudden burst of oaths and exclamations rose
from within, and the inmates came pouring out pell-mell at the door, to
throttle and pummel one another, in inextricable confusion. A grey
headed old man, of great apparent strength, who seemed by far the most
formidable of the combatants, was engaged in desperate battle with two
young fellows from the remote Highlands, while all the others were
matched man to man. Thomson, whose residence in England had taught him
very different notions of fair play and the ring, was on the eve of
forgetting his caution and interfering; but the interference proved
unnecessary. Ere he had stepped up to the combatants, the old man, with
a vigour little lessened by age, had shaken off both his opponents; and,
though they stood glaring at him like tiger cats, neither of them seemed
in the least inclined to renew the attack.
"Twa mean pitiful kerns," exclaimed the old man, "to tak odds against
ane auld enough to be their faither! an that, too, after burning my loof
wi' the het airn! But I hae noited their twa heads thegither! Sic a
trick!--to bid me stir up the fire, after they had heated the wrang end
o' the poker! Deil but I hae a guid mind to gie them baith mair o't
yet!"
Ere he could make good his threat, however, his daughter, a
delicate-looking girl of nineteen, came rushing up to him through the
crowd. "Father!" she exclaimed, "dearest father! let us away. For my
sake, if not your own, let these wild men alone; they always carry
knives; and, besides, you will bring all of their clan upon you that are
at the tryst, and you will be murdered."
"No muckle danger frae that, Lillias," said the old man. "I hae little
fear frae ony ane o' them; an' if they come by twasome, I hae my friends
here to. The ill-deedy wratches, to blister a' my loof wi' the poker!
But come awa, lassie; your advice is, I daresay, best after a'."
The old man quitted the place with his daughter; and, for the time,
Thomson saw no more of him. As the night approached, the Highlanders
became more noisy and turbulent; they drank, and disputed, and drove
their very bargains at the dirk's point; and, as the salmon-fisher
passed through the village for the last time, he could see the waving of
bludgeons, and hear the formidable war-cry of one of the clans, with the
equally formidable, "Hilloa! help for Cromarty!" echoing on every side
of him. He kept coolly on his way, however, without waiting the result;
and while yet several miles from the shores of Udoll, daylight had
departed, and the moon at full had risen, red and huge in the frosty
atmosphere, over the bleak hill of Nigg.
He had reached the burn of Newhall--a small stream, which, after winding
for several miles between its double row of alders, and its thickets of
gorse and hazel, falls into the upper part of the bay--and was
cautiously picking his way, by the light of the moon, along a narrow
pathway which winds among the bushes. There are few places in the
country of worse repute among believers in the supernatural than the
burn of Newhall; and its character seventy years ago was even worse than
it is at present. Witch meetings without number have been held on its
banks, and dead lights have been seen hovering over its deeper pools.
Sportsmen have charged their fowling-pieces with silver when crossing it
in the night-time; and I remember an old man who never approached it
after dark without fixing a bayonet on the head of his staff. Thomson,
however, was but little influenced by the beliefs of the period; and he
was passing under the shadow of the alders, with more of this world than
of the other in his thoughts, when the silence was suddenly broken by a
burst of threats and exclamations, as if several men had fallen
a-fighting, scarcely fifty yards away, without any preliminary quarrel;
and, with the gruffer noises, there mingled the shrieks and entreaties
of a female. Thomson grasped his stick and sprang forward. He reached an
opening among the bushes, and saw in the imperfect light the old robust
Lowlander of the previous fray attacked by two men armed with bludgeons,
and defending himself manfully with his staff. The old man's daughter,
who had clung round the knees of one of the ruffians, was already thrown
to the ground and trampled under foot. An exclamation of wrath and
horror burst from the high-spirited fisherman, as, rushing upon the
fellow like a tiger from its jungle, he caught the stroke aimed at him
on his stick, and with a sidelong blow on the temple, felled him to the
ground. At the instant he fell, a gigantic Highlander leaped from among
the bushes, and raising his huge arm, discharged a tremendous blow at
the head of the fisherman, who, though taken unawares and at a
disadvantage, succeeded, notwithstanding, in transferring it to his left
shoulder, where it fell broken and weak. A desperate but brief combat
ensued. The ferocity and ponderous strength of the Celt, found their
more than match in the cool, vigilant skill, and leopard-like agility of
the Lowland Scot; for the latter, after discharging a storm of blows on
the head, face, and shoulders of the giant, until he staggered, at
length struck his bludgeon out of his hand, and prostrated his whole
huge length by dashing his stick end-long against his breast. At nearly
the same moment the burly old farmer, who had grappled with his
antagonist, had succeeded in flinging him, stunned and senseless,
against the gnarled root of an alder; and the three ruffians--for the
first had not yet recovered--lay stretched on the grass. Ere they could
secure them, however, a shrill whistle was heard echoing from among the
alders, scarcely a hundred yards away. "We had better get home," said
Thomson to the old man, "ere these fellows are reinforced by their
brother ruffians in the wood." And, supporting the maiden with his one
hand, and grasping his stick with the other, he plunged among the bushes
in the direction of the path, and, gaining it, passed onward, lightly
and hurriedly, with his charge; the old man followed more heavily
behind; and, in somewhat less than an hour after, they were all seated
beside the hearth of the latter, in the farm-house of Meikle Farness.