quean, two or three years older than myself. I used to sit looking at
her in the kirk, and felt a droll confusion when our eyes met. It dirled
through my heart like a dart, and I looked down at my psalm-book sheepish
and blushing. Fain would I have spoken to her, but it would not do; my
courage aye failed me at the pinch, though she whiles gave me a smile
when she passed me. She used to go to the well every night with her two
stoups, to draw water after the manner of the Israelites at gloaming; so
I thought of watching to give her the two apples which I had carried in
my pocket for more than a week for that purpose. How she started when I
stappit them into her hand, and brushed by without speaking! I stood at
the bottom of the close listening, and heard her laughing till she was
like to split. My heart flap-flappit in my breast like a pair of
fanners. It was a moment of heavenly hope; but I saw Jamie Coom, the
blacksmith, who I aye jealoused was my rival, coming down to the well. I
saw her give him one of the apples; and, hearing him say, with a loud
gaffaw, "Where is the tailor?" I took to my heels, and never stopped
till I found myself on the little stool by the fireside, and the hamely
sound of my mother's wheel bum-bumming in my lug, like a gentle lullaby.
Every noise I heard flustered me, but I calmed in time, though I went to
my bed without my supper. When I was driving out the gaislings to the
grass on the next morn, who was it my ill fate to meet but the
blacksmith. "Ou, Mansie," said Jamie Coom, "are ye gaun to take me for
your best man? I hear you are to be cried in the kirk on Sunday?"
"Me!" answered I, shaking and staring.
"Yes!" said he; "Jess the minister's maid told me last night, that you
had been giving up your name at the manse. Ay, it's ower true--for she
showed me the apples ye gied her in a present. This is a bonny story,
Mansie, my man, and you only at your prenticeship yet."
Terror and despair had struck me dumb. I stood as still and as stiff as
a web of buckram. My tongue was tied, and I could not contradict him.
Jamie folded his arms, and went away whistling, turning every now and
then his sooty face over his shoulder, and mostly sticking his tune, as
he could not keep his mouth screwed for laughing. What would I not have
given to have laughed too!
There was no time to be lost; this was the Saturday. The next rising sun
would shine on the Sabbath. Ah, what a case I was in! I could mostly
have drowned myself, had I not been frighted. What could I do? My love
had vanished like lightning; but oh, I was in a terrible gliff! Instead
of gundy, I sold my thrums to Mrs Walnut for a penny, with which I bought
at the counter a sheet of paper and a pen; so that in the afternoon I
wrote out a letter to the minister, telling him what I had been given to
hear, and begging him, for the sake of mercy, not to believe Jess's word,
as I was not able to keep a wife, and as she was a leeing gipsy.
CHAPTER FIVE--CURSECOWL
But, losh me! I have come on too far already, before mentioning a
wonderful thing that happened to me when I was only seven years old. Few
things in my eventful life have made a deeper impression on me than what
I am going to relate.
It was the custom, in those times, for the different schools to have
cock-fighting on Fastern's E'en: and the victor, as he was called,
treated the other scholars to a football. Many a dust have I seen rise
out of that business--broken shins and broken heads, sore bones and sound
duckings--but this was none of these.
Our next neighbour was a flesher; and right before the window was a large
stone, on which old wives with their weans would sometimes take a rest;
so what does I, when I saw the whole hobble-shaw coming fleeing down the
street, with the kick-ba' at their noses, but up I speels upon the stone
(I was a wee chap with a daidley, a ruffled shirt, and leather cap edged
with rabbit fur) that I might see all the fun. This one fell, and that
one fell, and a third was knocked over and a fourth got a bloody nose:
and so on; and there was such a noise and din, as would have deaved the
workmen of Babel--when, lo! and behold! the ball played bounce mostly at
my feet, and the whole mob after it. I thought I should have been dung
to pieces; so I pressed myself back with all my might, and through went
my elbow into Cursecowl's kitchen. It did not stick long there. Before
you could say Jack Robinson, out flew the flesher in his killing-clothes;
his face was as red as fire, and he had his pouch full of bloody knives
buckled to his side. I skreighed out in his face when I looked at him,
but he did not stop a moment for that. With a girn that was like to rive
his mouth, he twisted his nieve in the back of my hair, and off with me
hanging by the cuff of the neck, like a kittling. My eyes were like to
loup out of my head, but I had no breath to cry. I heard him thraw the
key, for I could not look down, the skin of my face was pulled so tight;
and in he flang me like a pair of old boots into his booth, where I
landed on my knees upon a raw bloody calf's skin. I thought I would have
gone out of my wits, when I heard the door locked upon me, and looked
round me in such an unearthly place. It had only one sparred window, and
there was a garden behind; but how was I to get out? I danced round and
round about, stamping my heels on the floor, and rubbing my begritten
face with my coat sleeve. To make matters worse, it was wearing to the
darkening. The floor was all covered with lappered blood, and sheep and
calf skins. The calves and the sheep themselves, with their cuttit
throats, and glazed een, and ghastly girning faces, were hanging about on
pins, heels uppermost. Losh me! I thought on Bluebeard and his wives in
the bloody chamber!
And all the time it was growing darker and darker, and more dreary; and
all was as quiet as death itself. It looked, by all the world, like a
grave, and me buried alive within it; till the rottens came out of their
holes to lick the blood, and whisked about like wee evil spirits. I
thought on my father and my mother, and how I should never see them more;
for I was sure that Cursecowl would come in the dark, tie my hands and
feet thegither, and lay me across the killing-stool. I grew more and
more frightened; and it grew more and more dark. I thought all the
sheep-heads were looking at one another, and then girn-girning at me. At
last I grew desperate; and my hair was as stiff as wire, though it was as
wet as if I had been douking in the Esk. I began to bite through the
wooden spars with my teeth, and rugged at them with my nails, till they
were like to come off--but no, it would not do. At length, when I had
greeted myself mostly blind, and cried till I was as hoarse as a corbie,
I saw auld Janet Hogg taking in her bit washing from the bushes, and I
reeled and screamed till she heard me.--It was like being transported
into heaven; for, in less than no time, my mother, with her apron at her
eyes, was at the door; and Cursecowl, with a candle in the front of his
hat, had scarcely thrawn the key, when out I flew; and she lifted up her
foot (I dare say it was the first and last time in her life, for she was
a douce woman) and gave him such a kick and a push that he played bleach
over, head foremost, without being able to recover himself; and, as we
ran down the close, we heard him cursing and swearing in the dark, like a
devil incarnate.
CHAPTER SIX--MANSIE WAUCH ON THE PUSHING OF HIS FORTUNE
The days of the years of my prenticeship having glided cannily over on
the working-board of my respected maister, James Hosey, where I sat
sewing cross-legged like a busy bee, in the true spirit of industrious
contentment, I found myself, at the end of the seven year, so well
instructed in the tailoring trade, to which I had paid a near-sighted
attention, that, without more ado, I girt myself round about with a proud
determination of at once cutting my mother's apron string, and venturing
to go without a hold. Thinks I to myself, "faint heart never won fair
lady"; so, taking my stick in my hand, I set out towards Edinburgh, as
brave as a Highlander, in search of a journeyman's place. When I think
how many have been out of bread, month after month, making vain
application at the house of call, I may set it down to an especial
Providence, that I found a place, on the very first day, to my heart's
content, in by at the Grassmarket, where I stayed for the space of six
calendar months.
Had it not been from a real sense of the duty I owed to my future
employers, whomsoever they might be, in making myself a first-rate hand
in the cutting, shaping, and sewing line, I would not have found courage
in my breast to have helped me out through such a long and dreary time.
The change from our own town, where every face was friendly, and where I
could ken every man I saw, by the cut of his coat, at half a mile's
distance, to the bum and bustle of the High Street, the tremendous
cannons of the Castle, packed full of soldiers ready for war, and the
filthy, ill-smelling abominations of the Cowgate, where I put up, was
almost more than could be tholed by man of woman born. My lodging was up
six pair of stairs, in a room of Widow Randie's, which I rented for
half-a-crown a week, coals included; and many a time, after putting out
my candle, before stepping into my bed, I used to look out at the window,
where I could see thousands and thousands of lamps, spreading for miles
adown streets and through squares, where I did not know a living soul;
and dreeing the awful and insignificant sense of being a lonely stranger
in a foreign land. Then would the memory of past days return to me; yet
I had the same trust in Heaven as I had before, seeing that they were the
dividual stars above my head which I used to glour up at in wonder at
Dalkeith--pleasant Dalkeith! ay, how different, with its bonny river Esk,
its gardens full of gooseberry bushes and pear-trees, its grass parks
spotted with sheep, and its grand green woods, from the bullying
blackguards, the comfortless reek, and the nasty gutters of the
Netherbow.
To those, nevertheless, that take the world as they find it, there are
pleasures in all situations; nor was mine, bad though I allow it to be,
entirely destitute of them; for our work-room being at the top of the
stairs, and the light of heaven coming down through skylights, three in
number, we could, by putting out our heads, have a vizzy of the grand
ancient building of George Heriot's Hospital, with the crowds of young
laddies playing through the grass parks, with their bit brown coaties,
and shining leather caps, like a wheen puddocks; and all the sweet
country out by Barrowmuirhead, and thereaway; together with the
Corstorphine Hills--and the Braid Hills--and the Pentland Hills--and all
the rest of the hills, covered here and there with tufts of blooming
whins, as yellow as the beaten gold--spotted round about their bottoms
with green trees, and growing corn, but with tops as bare as a
gaberlunzie's coat--kepping the rowling clouds on their awful shoulders
on cold and misty days; and freckled over with the flowers of the purple
heather, on which the shy moorfowl take a delight to fatten and fill
their craps, through the cosy months of the blythe summer time.
Let nobody take it amiss, yet I must bear witness to the truth, though
the devil should have me. My heart was sea-sick of Edinburgh folk and
town manners, for the which I had no stomach. I could form no friendly
acquaintanceship with a living soul; so I abode by myself, like St John
in the Isle of Patmos, on spare allowance, making a sheep-head serve me
for three day's kitchen. I longed like a sailor that has been far at
sea, and wasted and weatherbeaten, to see once more my native home; and,
bundling up, flee from the noisy stramash to the loun dykeside of
domestic privacy. Everything around me seemed to smell of sin and
pollution, like the garments of the Egyptians with the ten plagues; and
often, after I took off my clothes to lie down in my bed, when the
watchmen that guarded us through the night in blue dreadnoughts with red
necks, and battons, and horn-bouets, from thieves, murderers, and
pickpockets, were bawling, "Half-past ten o'clock," did I commune with my
own heart, and think within myself, that I would rather be a sober, poor,
honest man in the country, able to clear my day and way by the help of
Providence, than the Provost himself, my lord though he be, or even the
Mayor of London, with his velvet gown trailing for yards in the glaur
behind him--do what he likes to keep it up; or riding about the
streets--as Joey Smith the Yorkshire Jockey, to whom I made a hunting
cap, told me--in a coach made of clear crystal, and wheels of the beaten
gold.
It was an awful business; dog on it, I ay wonder yet how I got through
with it. There was no rest for soul or body, by night or day, with
police-officers crying, "One o'clock, an' a frosty morning," knocking
Eirishmen's teeth down their throats with their battons, hauling limmers
by the lug and horn into the lock-up house, or over by to Bridewell,
where they were set to beat hemp for a small wage, and got their heads
shaved; with carters bawling, "Ye yo, yellow sand, yellow sand," with
mouths as wide as a barn-door, and voices that made the drums of your
ears dirl, and ring again like mad; with fishwives from Newhaven,
Cockenzie, and Fisherrow, skirling, "Roug-a-rug, warstling herring," as
if every one was trying to drown out her neighbour, till the very
landladies, at the top of the seventeen story houses, could hear, if they
liked to be fashed, and might come down at their leisure to buy them at
three for a penny; men from Barnton, and thereaway on the Queensferry
Road, halloing "Sour douk, sour douk"; tinklers skirmishing the edges of
brown plates they were trying to make the old wives buy--and what not.
To me it was a real hell upon earth.
Never let us repine, howsomever, but consider that all is ordered for the
best. The sons of the patriarch Jacob found out their brother Joseph in
a foreign land, and where they least expected it; so it was here--even
here, where my heart was sickening unto death, from my daily and nightly
thoughts being as bitter as gall--that I fell in with the greatest
blessing of my life, Nanse Cromie!
In the flat below our workshop lived Mrs Whitteraick, the wife of Mr
Whitteraick, a dealer in hens and hams in the poultry market, that had
been fallen in with, when her gudeman was riding out on his bit sheltie
in the Lauder direction, bargaining with the farmers for their ducks,
chickens, gaislings, geese, turkey-pouts, howtowdies, guinea-hens, and
other barn-door fowls; and, among his other calls, having happened to
make a transaction with her father, anent some Anchovy-ducks, he, by a
warm invitation, was kindly pressed to remain for the night.
The upshot of the business was, that, on mounting his pony to make the
best of his way home, next morning after breakfast, Maister Whitteraick
found he was shot through the heart with a stound of love; and that,
unless a suitable remedy could be got, there was no hope for him on this
side of time, let alone blowing out his brains, or standing before the
minister. Right it was in him to run the risk of deciding on the last;
and so well did he play his game, that, in two months from that date,
after sending sundry presents on his part to the family, of smeaked hams
and salt tongues--acknowledged on theirs, by return of carrier, in the
shape of sucking pigs, jargonelle pears, skim-milk cheeses, and such
like--matters were soldered; and Miss Jeanie Learig, made into Mrs
Whitteraick by the blessing of Dr Blether, rode away into Edinburgh in a
post-chaise, with a brown and a black horse, one blind and the other
lame, seated cheek-by-jowl with her loving spouse, who, doubtless was
busked out in his best, with a Manchester superfine blue coat, and double
gilt buttons, a waterproof hat, silk stockings, with open-steek gushats,
and bright yellow shamoy gloves.
A stranger among strangers, and not knowing how she might thole the
company and conversation of town-life, Mrs Whitteraick, that was to be,
hired a bit wench of a lassie from the neighbourhood, that was to follow
her, come the term. And who think ye should this lassie be, but Nanse
Cromie--afterwards, in the course of a kind Providence, the honoured wife
of my bosom, and the mother of bonny Benjie.
In going up and down the stairs--it being a common entry, ye observe--me
maybe going down with my everyday hat on to my dinner, and she coming up,
carrying a stoup of water, or half-a-pound of pouthered butter on a
plate, with a piece paper thrown over it--we frequently met half-way, and
had to stand still to let one another pass. Nothing came out of these
foregatherings, howsomever, for a month or two, she being as shy and
modest as she was bonny, with her clean demity short-gown, and snow-white
morning mutch, to say nothing of her cheery mouth, and her glancing eyes;
and me unco douffie, in making up to strangers. We could not help,
nevertheless, to take aye a stolen look of each other in passing; and I
was a gone man, bewitched out of my seven senses, falling from my
clothes, losing my stomach, and over the lugs in love, three weeks and
some odd days before ever a single syllable passed between us.
Gude kens how long this Quaker-meeting-like silence would have continued,
had we not chanced to foregather one gloaming; and I, having gotten a
dram from one of our customers with a hump-back, at the Crosscausey,
whose fashionable new coat I had been out fitting on, found myself as
brave as a Bengal tiger, and said to her, "This is a fine day, I say, my
dear Nancy."
The ice being once broken, every thing went on as smoothly as ye like;
so, in the long run, we went like lightning from twohanded cracks on the
stair-head, to stown walks, after work-hours, out by the West Port, and
thereaway.
If ever a man loved, and loved like mad, it was me, Mansie Wauch--and I
take no shame in the confession; but, knowing it all in the course of
nature, declare it openly and courageously in the face of the wide world.
Let them laugh who like; honest folk, I pity them; such know not the
pleasures of virtuous affection. It is not in corrupted, sinful hearts
that the fire of true love can ever burn clear. Alas, and ohon orie!
they lose the sweetest, completest, dearest, truest pleasure that this
world has in store for its children. They know not the bliss to meet,
that makes the embrace of separation bitter. They never dreamed the
dreams that make wakening to the morning light unpleasant. They never
felt the raptures that can dirl like darts through a man's soul from a
woman's eye. They never tasted the honey that dwells on a woman's lip,
sweeter than yellow marygolds to the bee; or fretted under the fever of
bliss that glows through the frame in pressing the hand of a suddenly
met, and fluttering sweetheart. But tuts-tuts--hech-how! my day has long
since passed: and this is stuff to drop from the lips of an auld fool.
Nevertheless, forgive me, friends: I cannot help all-powerful nature.
[Picture: The minister's lassie Jess]
Nanse's taste being like my own, we amused one another in abusing great
cities, which are all chokeful of the abominations of the Scarlet Woman;
and it is curious how soon I learned to be up to trap--I mean in an
honest way; for, when she said she was wearying the very heart out of her
to be home again to Lauder, which she said was her native, and the true
land of Goshen, I spoke back to her by way of answer--"Nancy, my dear,
believe me that the real land of Goshen is out at Dalkeith; and if ye'll
take up house with me, and enter into a way of doing, I daursay in a
while, ye'll come to think so too."
What will ye say there? Matters were by-and-by settled full tosh between
us; and, though the means of both parties were small, we were young, and
able and willing to help one another. Nanse, out of her wages, had
hained a trifle; and I had, safe lodged under lock-and-key in the Bank of
Scotland, against the time of my setting up, the siller which was got by
selling the bit house of granfaither's, on the death of my
ever-to-be-lamented mother, who survived her helpmate only six months,
leaving me an orphan lad in a wicked world, obliged to fend, forage and
look out for myself.
Taking matters into account, therefore, and considering that it is not
good for man to be alone, Nanse and me laid our heads together towards
the taking a bit house in the fore-street of Dalkeith; and at our leisure
kept a look-out about buying the plenishing--the expense of which, for
different littles and littles, amounted to more than we expected; yet, to
our hearts' content, we made some most famous second-hand bargains of
sprechery, amongst the old-furniture warehousemen of the Cowgate. I
might put down here the prices of the room-grate, the bachelor's oven,
the cheese-toaster, and the warming-pan, especially, which, though it had
a wheen holes in it, kept a fine polish; but, somehow or other, have lost
the receipt and cannot make true affidavy.
Certain it is, whatever cadgers may say to the contrary, that the back is
aye made for the burden; and, were all to use the means, and be
industrious, many, that wyte bad harvests, and worse times, would have,
like the miller in the auld sang, "A penny in the purse for dinner and
for supper," or better to finish the verse, "Gin ye please a guid fat
cheese, and lumps of yellow butter."
For two three days, I must confess, after Maister Wiggie had gone through
the ceremony of tying us together, and Nanse and me found ourselves in
the comfortable situation of man and wife, I was a wee dowie and
desponding, thinking that we were to have a numerous small family, and
where trade was to come from; but no sooner was my sign nailed up, with
four iron hold-fasts, by Johnny Hammer, painted in black letters on a
blue ground, with a picture of a jacket on one side and a pair of shears
on the other,--and my shop-door opened to the public, with a wheen
ready-made waistcoats, gallowses, leather-caps, and Kilmarnock cowls,
hung up at the window, than business flowed in upon us in a perfect
torrent. First one came in for his measure, and then another. A wife
came in for a pair of red worsted boots for her bairn, but would not take
them for they had not blue fringes. A bareheaded lassie, hoping to be
handsel, threw down twopence, and asked tape at three yards for a
halfpenny. The minister sent an old black coat beneath his maid's arm,
pinned up in a towel, to get docked in the tails down into a jacket;
which I trust I did to his entire satisfaction, making it fit to a hair.
The Duke's butler himself patronized me, by sending me a coat which was
all hair-powder and pomate, to get a new neck put to it. And James
Batter, aye a staunch friend of the family, dispatched a barefoot cripple
lassie down the close to me, with a brown paper parcel, tied with skinie,
and having a memorandum letter sewed on the top of it, and wafered with a
wafer. It ran as follows; "Maister Batter has sent down, per the bearer,
with his compliments to Mr Wauch, a cuttikin of corduroy, deficient in
the instep, which please let out, as required. Maister Wauch will also
please be so good as observe that three of the buttons have sprung the
thorls, which he will be obliged to him to replace, at his earliest
convenience. Please send me a message what they may be; and have the
account made out, article for article, and duly discharged, that I may
send down the bearer with the change; and to bring me back the cuttikin
and the account, to save time and trouble. I am, dear sir, your most
obedient friend, and ever most sincerely,
"JAMES BATTER."
No wonder than we attracted customers, for our sign was the prettiest ye
ever saw, though the jacket was not just so neatly painted, as for some
sand-blind creatures not to take it for a goose. I daresay there were
fifty half-naked bairns glowring their eyes out of their heads at it,
from morning till night; and, after they all were gone to their beds,
both Nanse and me found ourselves so proud of our new situation in life,
that we slipped out in the dark by ourselves, and had a prime look at it
with a lantern.
CHAPTER SEVEN--MANSIE WAUCH AND HIS FOREWARNING