A CREAGH, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
When Edward had been a guest at Tully-Veolan nearly six weeks, he
descried, one morning, as he took his usual walk before the
breakfast hour, signs of uncommon perturbation in the family. Four
bare-legged dairy-maids, with each an empty milk-pail in her hand,
ran about with frantic gestures, and uttering loud exclamations of
surprise, grief, and resentment. From their appearance, a pagan
might have conceived them a detachment of the celebrated Belides,
just come from their baling penance. As nothing was to be got from
this distracted chorus, excepting 'Lord guide us!' and 'Eh sirs!'
ejaculations which threw no light upon the cause of their dismay,
Waverley repaired to the fore-court, as it was called, where he
beheld Bailie Macwheeble cantering his white pony down the avenue
with all the speed it could muster. He had arrived, it would seem,
upon a hasty summons, and was followed by half a score of peasants
from the village who had no great difficulty in keeping pace with
him.
The Bailie, greatly too busy and too important to enter into
explanations with Edward, summoned forth Mr. Saunderson, who
appeared with a countenance in which dismay was mingled with
solemnity, and they immediately entered into close conference.
Davie Gellatley was also seen in the group, idle as Diogenes at
Sinope while his countrymen were preparing for a siege. His
spirits always rose with anything, good or bad, which occasioned
tumult, and he continued frisking, hopping, dancing, and singing
the burden of an old ballad--
'Our gear's a' gane,'
until, happening to pass too near the Bailie, he received an
admonitory hint from his horse-whip, which converted his songs
into lamentation.
Passing from thence towards the garden, Waverley beheld the Baron
in person, measuring and re-measuring, with swift and tremendous
strides, the length of the terrace; his countenance clouded with
offended pride and indignation, and the whole of his demeanour
such as seemed to indicate, that any inquiry concerning the cause
of his discomposure would give pain at least, if not offence.
Waverley therefore glided into the house, without addressing him,
and took his way to the breakfast-parlour, where he found his
young friend Rose, who, though she neither exhibited the
resentment of her father, the turbid importance of Bailie
Macwheeble, nor the despair of the handmaidens, seemed vexed and
thoughtful. A single word explained the mystery. 'Your breakfast
will be a disturbed one, Captain Waverley. A party of Caterans
have come down upon us last night, and have driven off all our
milch cows.'
'A party of Caterans?'
'Yes; robbers from the neighbouring Highlands. We used to be quite
free from them while we paid blackmail to Fergus Mac-Ivor Vich Ian
Vohr; but my father thought it unworthy of his rank and birth to
pay it any longer, and so this disaster has happened. It is not
the value of the cattle, Captain Waverley, that vexes me; but my
father is so much hurt at the affront, and is so bold and hot,
that I fear he will try to recover them by the strong hand; and if
he is not hurt himself, he will hurt some of these wild people,
and then there will be no peace between them and us perhaps for
our life-time; and we cannot defend ourselves as in old times, for
the government have taken all our arms; and my dear father is so
rash--O what will become of us!'--Here poor Rose lost heart
altogether, and burst into a flood of tears.
The Baron entered at this moment, and rebuked her with more
asperity than Waverley had ever heard him use to any one. 'Was it
not a shame,' he said, 'that she should exhibit herself before any
gentleman in such a light, as if she shed tears for a drove of
horned nolt and milch kine, like the daughter of a Cheshire
yeoman!--Captain Waverley, I must request your favourable
construction of her grief, which may, or ought to proceed, solely
from seeing her father's estate exposed to spulzie and depredation
from common thieves and sorners, while we are not allowed to keep
half a score of muskets, whether for defence or rescue.'
Bailie Macwheeble entered immediately afterwards, and by his
report of arms and ammunition confirmed this statement, informing
the Baron, in a melancholy voice, that though the people would
certainly obey his honour's orders, yet there was no chance of
their following the gear to ony guid purpose, in respect there
were only his honour's body servants who had swords and pistols,
and the depredators were twelve Highlanders, completely armed
after the manner of their country. Having delivered this doleful
annunciation, he assumed a posture of silent dejection, shaking
his head slowly with the motion of a pendulum when it is ceasing
to vibrate, and then remained stationary, his body stooping at a
more acute angle than usual, and the latter part of his person
projecting in proportion.
The Baron, meanwhile, paced the room in silent indignation, and at
length fixing his eye upon an old portrait, whose person was clad
in armour, and whose features glared grimly out of a huge bush of
hair, part of which descended from his head to his shoulders, and
part from his chin and upper-lip to his breast-plate,--'That
gentleman, Captain Waverley, my grandsire,' he said, 'with two
hundred horse,--whom he levied within his own bounds, discomfited
and put to the rout more than five hundred of these Highland
reivers, who have been ever lapis offensionis et petra scandali, a
stumbling-block and a rock of offence, to the Lowland vicinage--he
discomfited them, I say, when they had the temerity to descend to
harry this country, in the time of the civil dissensions, in the
year of grace sixteen hundred forty and two. And now, sir, I, his
grandson, am thus used at such unworthy hands.'
Here there was an awful pause; after which all the company, as is
usual in cases of difficulty, began to give separate and
inconsistent counsel. Alexander ab Alexandro proposed they should
send some one to compound with the Caterans, who would readily, he
said, give up their prey for a dollar a head. The Bailie opined
that this transaction would amount to theft-boot, or composition
of felony; and he recommended that some canny hand should be sent
up to the glens to make the best bargain he could, as it were for
himself, so that the Laird might not be seen in such a
transaction. Edward proposed to send off to the nearest garrison
for a party of soldiers and a magistrate's warrant; and Rose, as
far as she dared, endeavoured to insinuate the course of paying
the arrears of tribute money to Fergus Mac-Ivor Vich Ian Vohr,
who, they all knew, could easily procure restoration of the
cattle, if he were properly propitiated.
None of these proposals met the Baron's approbation. The idea of
composition, direct or implied, was absolutely ignominious; that
of Waverley only showed that he did not understand the state of
the country, and of the political parties which divided it; and,
standing matters as they did with Fergus Mac-Ivor Vich Ian Vohr,
the Baron would make no concession to him, were it, he said, 'to
procure restitution in integrum of every stirk and stot that the
chief, his forefathers, and his clan, had stolen since the days of
Malcolm Canmore.'
In fact his voice was still for war, and he proposed to send
expresses to Balmawhapple, Killancureit, Tulliellum, and other
lairds, who were exposed to similar depredations, inviting them to
join in the pursuit; 'and then, sir, shall these nebulones
nequissimi, as Leslaeus calls them, be brought to the fate of
their predecessor Cacus,
"Elisos oculos, et siccum sanguine guttur."'
The Bailie, who by no means relished these warlike counsels, here
pulled forth an immense watch, of the colour, and nearly of the
size, of a pewter warming-pan, and observed it was now past noon,
and that the Caterans had been seen in the pass of Ballybrough
soon after sunrise; so that, before the allied forces could
assemble, they and their prey would be far beyond the reach of the
most active pursuit, and sheltered in those pathless deserts,
where it was neither advisable to follow, nor indeed possible to
trace them.
This proposition was undeniable. The council therefore broke up
without coming to any conclusion, as has occurred to councils of
more importance; only it was determined that the Bailie should
send his own three milkcows down to the mains for the use of the
Baron's family, and brew small ale, as a substitute for milk, in
his own. To this arrangement, which was suggested by Saunderson,
the Bailie readily assented, both from habitual deference to the
family, and an internal consciousness that his courtesy would, in
some mode or other, be repaid tenfold.
The Baron having also retired to give some necessary directions,
Waverley seized the opportunity to ask, whether this Fergus, with
the unpronounceable name, was the chief thief-taker of the
district?
'Thief-taker!' answered Rose, laughing; 'he is a gentleman of
great honour and consequence, the chieftain of an independent
branch of a powerful Highland clan, and is much respected, both
for his own power and that of his kith, kin, and allies.'
'And what has he to do with the thieves, then? Is he a magistrate,
or in the commission of the peace?' asked Waverley.
'The commission of war rather, if there be such a thing,' said
Rose; 'for he is a very unquiet neighbour to his unfriends, and
keeps a greater following on foot than many that have thrice his
estate. As to his connection with the thieves, that I cannot well
explain; but the boldest of them will never steal a hoof from any
one that pays black-mail to Vich lan Vohr.'
'And what is black-mail?'
'A sort of protection-money that Low-Country gentlemen and
heritors, lying near the Highlands, pay to some Highland chief,
that he may neither do them harm himself, nor suffer it to be done
to them by others; and then if your cattle are stolen, you have
only to send him word, and he will recover them; or it may be, he
will drive away cows from some distant place, where he has a
quarrel, and give them to you to make up your loss.' [Footnote:
See note 13.]
'And is this sort of Highland Jonathan Wild admitted into society,
and called a gentleman?'
'So much so,' said Rose, 'that the quarrel between my father and
Fergus Mac-Ivor began at a county meeting, where he wanted to take
precedence of all the Lowland gentlemen then present, only my
father would not suffer it. And then he upbraided my father that
he was under his banner, and paid him tribute; and my father was
in a towering passion, for Bailie Macwheeble, who manages such
things his own way, had contrived to keep this black-mail a secret
from him, and passed it in his account for cess-money. And they
would have fought; but Fergus Mac-Ivor said, very gallantly, he
would never raise his hand against a grey head that was so much
respected as my father's.--O I wish, I wish they had continued
friends!'
'And did you ever see this Mr. Mac-Ivor, if that be his name, Miss
Bradwardine?'
'No, that is not his name; and he would consider MASTER as a sort
of affront, only that you are an Englishman, and know no better.
But the Lowlanders call him, like other gentlemen, by the name of
his estate, Glennaquoich; and the Highlanders call him Vich Ian
Vohr, that is, the son of John the Great; and we upon the braes
here call him by both names indifferently.'
'I am afraid I shall never bring my English tongue to call him by
either one or other.'
'But he is a very polite, handsome man,' continued Rose; 'and his
sister Flora is one of the most beautiful and accomplished young
ladies in this country; she was bred in a convent in France, and
was a great friend of mine before this unhappy dispute. Dear
Captain Waverley, try your influence with my father to make
matters up. I am sure this is but the beginning of our troubles;
for Tully-Veolan has never been a safe or quiet residence when we
have been at feud with the Highlanders. When I was a girl about
ten, there was a skirmish fought between a party of twenty of them
and my father and his servants behind the mains; and the bullets
broke several panes in the north windows, they were so near. Three
of the Highlanders were killed, and they brought them in wrapped
in their plaids, and laid them on the stone floor of the hall; and
next morning, their wives and daughters came, clapping their
hands, and crying the coronach, and shrieking, and carried away
the dead bodies, with the pipes playing before them. I could not
sleep for six weeks without starting and thinking I heard these
terrible cries, and saw the bodies lying on the steps, all stiff
and swathed up in their bloody tartans. But since that time there
came a party from the garrison at Stirling, with a warrant from
the Lord Justice Clerk, or some such great man, and took away all
our arms; and now, how are we to protect ourselves if they come
down in any strength?'
Waverley could not help starting at a story which bore so much
resemblance to one of his own day-dreams. Here was a girl scarce
seventeen, the gentlest of her sex, both in temper and appearance,
who had witnessed with her own eyes such a scene as he had used to
conjure up in his imagination, as only occurring in ancient times,
and spoke of it coolly, as one very likely to recur. He felt at
once the impulse of curiosity, and that slight sense of danger
which only serves to heighten its interest. He might have said
with Malvolio, '"I do not now fool myself, to let imagination jade
me!" I am actually in the land of military and romantic
adventures, and it only remains to be seen what will be my own
share in them.'
The whole circumstances now detailed concerning the state of the
country seemed equally novel and extraordinary. He had indeed
often heard of Highland thieves, but had no idea of the systematic
mode in which their depredations were conducted; and that the
practice was connived at, and even encouraged, by many of the
Highland chieftains, who not only found the creaghs, or forays,
useful for the purpose of training individuals of their clan to
the practice of arms, but also of maintaining a wholesome terror
among their Lowland neighbours, and levying, as we have seen, a
tribute from them, under colour of protection-money.
Bailie Macwheeble, who soon afterwards entered, expatiated still
more at length upon the same topic. This honest gentleman's
conversation was so formed upon his professional practice, that
Davie Gellatley once said his discourse was like a 'charge of
horning.' He assured our hero, that 'from the maist ancient times
of record, the lawless thieves, limmers, and broken men of the
Highlands, had been in fellowship together by reason of their
surnames, for the committing of divers thefts, reifs, and herships
upon the honest men of the Low Country, when they not only
intromitted with their whole goods and gear, corn, cattle, horse,
nolt, sheep, outsight and insight plenishing, at their wicked
pleasure, but moreover made prisoners, ransomed them, or concussed
them into giving borrows (pledges) to enter into captivity again;
--all which was directly prohibited in divers parts of the Statute
Book, both by the act one thousand five hundred and sixty-seven,
and various others; the whilk statutes, with all that had followed
and might follow thereupon, were shamefully broken and vilipended
by the said sorners, limmers, and broken men, associated into
fellowships, for the aforesaid purposes of theft, stouthreef,
fire-raising, murther, raptus mulierum, or forcible abduction of
women, and such like as aforesaid.'
It seemed like a dream to Waverley that these deeds of violence
should be familiar to men's minds, and currently talked of as
falling within the common order of things, and happening daily in
the immediate vicinity, without his having crossed the seas, and
while he was yet in the otherwise well-ordered island of Great
Britain.