was unco solicitous of custom, though less from sinful, selfish motives,
than from the, I trust, laudable fear I had about becoming in a jiffy the
father of a small family, every one with a mouth to fill and a back to
cleid--helpless bairns, with nothing to look to or lean on, save and
except the proceeds of my daily handiwork. Nothing, however, is sure in
this world, as Maister Wiggie more than once took occasion to observe,
when lecturing on the house built by the foolish man on the sea-sands;
for months passed on, and better passed on; and these, added together by
simple addition, amounted to three years; and still neither word nor
wittens of a family, to perpetuate our name to future generations,
appeared to be forthcoming.
Between friends, I make no secret of the matter, that this was a
catastrophe which vexed me not a little, for more reasons than one. In
the first place, youngsters being a bond of mutual affection between man
and wife, sweeter than honey from the comb, and stronger than the Roman
cement with which the old Picts built their bridges, that will last till
the day of doom. In the second place, bairns toddling round a bit ingle
make a house look like itself, especially in the winter time, when
hailstanes rattle on the window, and winds roar like the voices of mighty
giants at the lum-head; for then the maister of the dwelling finds
himself like an ancient patriarch, and the shepherd of a flock, tender as
young lambs, yet pleasant to his eye, and dear to his heart. And, in the
third place (for I'll speak the truth and shame the deil) as I could not
thole the gibes and idle tongues of a wheen fools that, for their
diversion, would be asking me, "How the wife and bairns were; and if I
had sent my auldest laddie to the school yet?"
I have swithered within myself for more than half-an-hour, whether I
should relate a circumstance bordering a little on the supernatural line,
that happened to me, as connected with the business of the bairns of
which I have just been speaking; and, were it for no other reason, but
just to plague the scoffer that sits in his elbow-chair, I have
determined to jot down the whole miraculous paraphernally in black and
white. With folk that will not listen to the voice of reason, it is
needless to be wasterful of words; so them that like, may either prin
their faith to my coat-sleeve, about what I am going to relate, or
not--just as they choose. All that I can say in my defence, and as an
affidavy to my veracity, is that I have been thirty year an elder of
Maister Wiggie's kirk--and that is no joke. The matter I make free to
consider is not a laughing concern, nor anything belonging to the
Merry-Andrew line; and, if folk were but strong in the faith, there is no
saying what may come to pass for their good. One might as well hold up
their brazen face, and pretend not to believe any thing--neither the
Witch of Endor raising up Samuel; nor Cornel Gardener's vision; nor
Johnny Wilkes and the De'il; nor Peden's prophecies.
Nanse and me aye made what they call an anniversary of our wedding-day,
which happened to be the fifth of November, the very same as that on
which the Gunpowder Plot chances to be occasionally held--Sundays
excepted. According to custom, this being the fourth year, we collected
a good few friends to a tea-drinking; and had our cracks and a glass or
two of toddy. Thomas Burlings, if I mind, was there, and his wife; and
Deacon Paunch, he was a bachelor; and likewise James Batter; and David
Sawdust and his wife, and their four bairns, good customers; and a wheen
more, that, without telling a lie, I could not venture to particularize
at this moment, though maybe I may mind them when I am not wanting--but
no matter. Well, as I was saying, after they all went away, and Nanse
and me, after locking the door, slipped to our bed, I had one of the most
miraculous dreams recorded in the history of man; more especially if we
take into consideration where, when, and to whom it happened.
At first I thought I was sitting by the fireside, where the cat and the
kittling were playing with a mouse they had catched in the meal-kit,
cracking with James Batter on check-reels for yarn, and the cleverest way
of winding pirns, when, all at once, I thought myself transplanted back
to the auld world--forgetting the tailoring-trade; broad and narrow
cloth; worsted boots and Kilmarnock cowls; pleasant Dalkeith; our late
yearly ploy; my kith and kindred; the friends of the people; the Duke's
parks; and so on--and found myself walking beneath beautiful trees, from
the branches of which hung apples, and oranges, and cocky-nuts, and figs,
and raisins, and plumdamases, and corry-danders, and more than the tongue
of man can tell, while all the birds and beasts seemed as tame as our
bantings; in fact, just as they were in the days of Adam and Eve--Bengal
tigers passing by on this hand, and Russian bears on that, rowing
themselves on the grass, out of fun; while peacocks, and magpies, and
parrots, and cockytoos, and yorlins, and grey-linties, and all birds of
sweet voice and fair feather, sported among the woods, as if they had
nothing to do but sit and sing in the sweet sunshine, having dread
neither of the net of the fowler, the double-barrelled gun of the
gamekeeper, nor the laddies' girn set with moorlings of bread. It was
real paradise; and I found myself fairly lifted off my feet and
transported out of my seven senses.
While sauntering about at my leisure, with my Sunday hat on, and a pair
of clean white cotton stockings, in this heavenly mood, under the green
trees, and beside the still waters, out of which beautiful salmon trouts
were sporting and leaping, methought in a moment I fell down in a trance,
as flat as a flounder, and I heard a voice visibly saying to me, "Thou
shalt have a son; let him be christened Benjamin!" The joy that this
vision brought my spirit thrilled through my bones, like the sounds of a
blind man grinding "Rule Britannia" out of an organ, and my senses
vanished from me into a kind of slumber, on rousing from which I thought
I found myself walking, all dressed, with powdered hair, and a long tye
behind, just like a grand gentleman, with a valuable bamboo walking-stick
in my hand, among green yerbs and flowers, like an auncient hermit far
away among the hills, at the back of beyont; as if broad cloth and
buckram had never been heard tell of, and serge, twist, pocket-linings,
and shamoy leather, were matters with which mortal man had no concern.
Speak of auld-light or new-light as ye like, for my own part I am not
much taken up with any of your warlock and wizard tribe; I have no brew
of your auld Major Weir, or Tam o' Shanter, or Michael Scott, or Thomas
the Rhymer's kind, knocking in pins behind doors to make decent folk
dance, jig, cut, and shuffle themselves to death--splitting the hills as
ye would spelder a haddy, and playing all manner of evil pranks, and
sinful abominations, till their crafty maister, Auld Nick, puts them to
their mettle, by setting them to twine ropes out of sea-sand, and such
like. I like none of your paternosters, and saying of prayers backwards,
or drawing lines with chalk round ye, before crying,
"Redcowl, redcowl, come if ye daur;
Lift the sneck, and draw the bar."
I never, in the whole course of my life, was fond of lending the sanction
of my countenance to any thing that was not canny; and, even when I was a
wee smout of a callant, with my jacket and trowsers buttoned all in one,
I never would play, on Hallo'-'een night, at anything else but douking
for apples, burning nuts, pulling kail-runts, foul water and clean,
drapping the egg, or trying who was to be your sweetheart out of the
lucky-bag.
As I have often thought, and sometimes taken occasion to observe, it
would be well for us all to profit by experience--"burned bairns should
dread the fire," as the proverb goes. After the miserable catastrophe of
the playhouse, for instance--which I shall afterwards have occasion to
commemorate in due time, and in a subsequent chapter of my eventful
life--I would have been worse than mad, had I persisted, night after
night, to pay my shilling for a veesy of vagrants in buckram, and limmers
in silk, parading away at no allowance--as kings and queens, with their
tale--speaking havers that only fools have throats wide enough to
swallow, and giving themselves airs to which they have no more earthly
title than the man in the moon. I say nothing, besides, of their
throwing glamour in honest folks een; but I'll not deny that I have been
told by them who would not lie, and were living witnesses of the
transaction, that, as true as death, they had seen the tane of these
ne'er-do-weels spit the other, through and through, with a
weel-sharpened, old, Highland, forty-second Andrew Ferrary, in single
combat; whereupon, as might reasonably be expected, he would, in the
twinkling of a farthing rushlight, fall down as dead as a bag of sand;
yet, by their rictum-ticktum, rise-up-Jack, slight-of-hand, hocus-pocus
way, would be on his legs, brushing the stour from his breeches knees,
before the green curtain was half-way down. James Batter himself once
told me, that, when he was a laddie, he saw one of these clanjamphrey go
in behind the scenes with nankeen trowsers, a blue coat out at the
elbows, and fair hair hanging over his ears, and in less than no time,
come out a real negro, as black as Robinson Crusoe's man Friday, with a
jacket on his back of Macgregor tartan, and as good a pair of buckskin
breeches as jockey ever mounted horse in at a Newmarket race. Where the
silk stockings were wrought, and the Jerusalem sandals made, that he had
on his feet, James Batter used doucely to observe he would leave every
reasonable man to guess at a venture.
A good story not being the worse of being twice told, I repeat it over
again, that I would have been worse than daft, after the precious warning
it was my fortune to get, to have sanctioned such places with my
presence, in spite of the remonstrances of my conscience--and of Maister
Wiggie--and of the kirk-session. Whenever any thing is carried on out of
the course of nature, especially when accompanied with dancing and
singing, toot-tooing of clarionets, and bumming of bass-fiddles, ye may
be as sure as you are born, that ye run a chance of being deluded out of
your right senses--that the sounds are by way of lulling the soul
asleep--and that, to the certainty of a without-a-doubt, you are in the
heat and heart of one of the devil's rendevooses.
To say no more, I was once myself, for example, at one of our Dalkeith
fairs, present in a hay-loft--I think they charged threepence at the
door, but let me in with a grudge for twopence, but no matter--to see a
punch and puppie-show business, and other slight-of-hand work. Well, the
very moment I put my neb within the door, I was visibly convinced of the
smell of burnt roset, with, which I understand they make lightning, and
knew, as well as maybe, what they had been trafficking about with their
black art; but, nevertheless, having a stout heart, I determined to sit
still, and see what they would make of it, knowing well enough, that, as
long as I had the Psalm-book in my pocket, they would be gay and clever
to throw any of their blasted cantrips over me.
What do ye think they did? One of them, a wauf, drucken-looking
scoundrel, fired a gold ring over the window, and mostly set fire to the
thatch house opposite--which was not insured. Yet where think ye did the
ring go to? With my living een I saw it taken out of auld Willie
Turneep's waistcoat pouch, who was sitting blind fou, with his mouth
open, on one of the back seats; so, by no earthly possibility could it
have got there, except by whizzing round the gable, and in through the
steeked door by the key-hole.
Folk may say what they chuse by way of apology, but I neither like nor
understand such on-going as changing sterling silver half-crowns into
copper penny-pieces, or mending a man's coat--as they did mine, after
cutting a blad out of one of the tails--by the black-art.
But, hout-tout, one thing and another coming across me, had almost clean
made me forget explaining to the world, the upshot of my extraordinary
vision; but better late than never--and now for it.
Nanse, on finding herself in a certain way, was a thought dumfoundered;
and instead of laughing, as she did at first, when I told her my dream,
she soon came to regard the matter as one of sober earnest. The very
prospect of what was to happen threw a gleam of comfort round our bit
fireside; and, long ere the day had come about which was to crown our
expectations, Nanse was prepared with her bit stock of baby's wearing
apparel, and all necessaries appertaining thereto--wee little mutches
with lace borders, and side-knots of blue three-ha'penny ribbon--long
muslin frockies, vandyked across the breast, drawn round the waist with
narrow nittings and tucked five rows about the tail--Welsh-flannel
petticoaties--demity wrappers--a coral gumstick, and other uncos, which
it does not befit the like of me to particularize. I trust, on my part,
as far as in me lay, I was not found wanting; having taken care to
provide a famous Dunlop cheese, at fivepence-halfpenny the pound--I
believe I paled fifteen, in Joseph Gowdy's shop, before I fixed on
it;--to say nothing of a bottle, or maybe two, of real peat-reek,
Farintosh, small-still Hieland whisky--Glenlivat, I think, is the name
o't--half a peck of shortbread, baken by Thomas Burlings, with three
pounds of butter, and two ounces of carvie-seeds in it, let alone
orange-peel, and a pennyworth of ground cinnamon--half a mutchkin of best
cony brandy, by way of change--and a Musselburgh ankerstoke, to slice
down for tea-drinkings and posset cups.
Everyone has reason to be thankful, and me among the rest; for many a
worse provided for, and less welcome down-lying has taken place, time out
of mind, throughout broad Scotland. I say this with a warm heart, as I
am grateful for my all mercies. To hundreds above hundreds such a
catastrophe brings scarcely any joy at all; but it was far different with
me, who had a Benjamin to look for.
If the reader will be so kind as to look over the next chapter, he will
find whether or not I was disappointed in my expectations.
CHAPTER EIGHT--LETTING LODGINGS
It would be curious if I passed over a remarkable incident, which at this
time fell out. Being but new beginners in the world, the wife and I put
our heads constantly together to contrive for our forward advancement, as
it is the bounden duty of all to do. So our housie being rather large
(two rooms and a kitchen, not speaking of the coal-cellar and a
hen-house,) and having as yet only the expectation of a family, we
thought we could not do better than get John Varnish the painter, to do
off a small ticket, with "A Furnished Room to Let" on it, which we nailed
out at the window; having collected into it the choicest of our
furniture, that it might fit a genteeler lodger and produce a better
rent--And a lodger soon we got.
Dog on it! I think I see him yet. He was a blackaviced Englishman, with
curled whiskers and a powdered pow, stout round the waistband, and fond
of good eating, let alone drinking, as we found to our cost. Well, he
was our first lodger. We sought a good price, that we might, on
bargaining, have the merit of coming down a tait; but no, no--go away wi'
ye; it was dog-cheap to him. The half-guinea a-week was judged perfectly
moderate; but if all his debts were--yet I must not cut before the cloth.
Hang expenses! was the order of the day. Ham and eggs for breakfast, let
alone our currant jelly. Roast-mutton cold, and strong ale at twelve, by
way of check, to keep away wind from the stomach. Smoking roast-beef,
with scraped horse raddish, at four precisely; and toasted cheese, punch,
and porter, for supper. It would have been less, had all the things been
within ourselves. Nothing had we but the cauler new-laid eggs; then
there was Deacon Heukbane's butcher's account; and John Cony's spirit
account; and Thomas Burlings' bap account; and deevil kens how many more
accounts, that came all in upon us afterwards. But the crowning of all
was reserved for the end. It was no farce at the time, and kept our
heads down at the water edge for many a day. I was just driving the hot
goose along the seams of a Sunday jacket I was finishing for Thomas Clod
the ploughman, when the Englisher came in at the shop door, whistling
"Robert Adair," and "Scots wha ha'e wi' Wallace bled," and whiles, maybe,
churming to himself like a young blackbird;--but I have not patience to
go through with it. The long and the short of the matter, however, was,
that, after rummaging among my two or three webs of broadcloth on the
shelf, he pitched on a Manchester blue, five quarters wide, marked
CXD.XF, which is to say, three-and-twenty shillings the yard. I told him
it was impossible to make a pair of pantaloons to him in two hours; but
he insisted upon having them, alive or dead, as he had to go down the
same afternoon to dine with my Lord Duke, no less. I convinced him, that
if I was to sit up all night, he could get them by five next morning, if
that would do, as I would keep my laddie, Tammy Bodkin, out of his bed;
but no--I thought he would have jumped out of his seven senses. "Just
look," he said, turning up the inside seam of the leg--"just see--can any
gentleman make a visit in such things as these? they are as full of holes
as a coal-sieve. I wonder the devil why my baggage has not come forward.
Can I get a horse and boy to ride express to Edinburgh for a ready-made
article?"
[Picture: Mansie's father]
A thought struck me; for I had heard of wonderful advancement in the
world, for those who had been so lucky as help the great at a pinch. "If
ye'll no take it amiss, sir," said I, making my obedience, "a notion has
just struck me."
"Well, what is it?" said he briskly.
"Well, sir, I have a pair of knee-breeches, of most famous velveteen,
double tweel, which have been only once on my legs, and that no farther
gone than last Sabbath. I'm pretty sure they would fit ye in the
meantime; and I would just take a pleasure in driving the needle all
night, to get your own ready."
"A clever thought," said the Englisher. "Do you think they would fit
me?--Devilish clever thought, indeed."
"To a hair," I answered; and cried to Nanse to bring the velveteens.
I do not think he was ten minutes, when lo, and behold! out at the door
he went, and away past the shop-window like a lamplighter. The buttons
on the velveteens were glittering like gold at the knees. Alas! it was
like the flash of the setting sun; I never beheld them more. He was to
have been back in two or three hours, but the laddie, with the box on his
shoulder, was going through the street crying "Hot penny-pies" for
supper, and neither word nor wittens of him. I began to be a thought
uneasy, and fidgeted on the board like a hen on a hot girdle. No man
should do anything when he is vexed, but I could not help giving Tammy
Bodkin, who was sewing away at the lining of the new pantaloons, a
terrible whisk in the lug for singing to himself. I say I was vexed for
it afterwards; especially as the laddie did not mean to give offence; and
as I saw the blae marks of my four fingers along his chaft-blade.
The wife had been bothering me for a new gown, on strength of the payment
of our grand bill; and in came she, at this blessed moment of time, with
about twenty swatches from Simeon Calicoe's pinned on a screed of paper.
"Which of these do you think bonniest?" said Nanse, in a flattering way;
"I ken, Mansie, you have a good taste."
"Cut not before the cloth," answered I, "gudewife," with a wise shake of
my head. "It'll be time enough, I daresay, to make your choice
to-morrow."
Nanse went out as if her nose had been blooding. I could thole it no
longer; so, buttoning my breeches-knees, I threw my cowl into a corner,
clapped my hat on my head, and away down in full birr to the Duke's gate.
I speired at the porter, if the gentleman with the velveteen breeches and
powdered hair, that was dining with the Duke, had come up the avenue yet?
"Velveteen breeches and powdered hair!" said auld Paul laughing, and
taking the pipe out of his cheek, "whose butler is't that ye're after?"
"Well," said I to him, "I see it all as plain as a pikestaff. He is off
bodily; but may the meat and the drink he has taken off us be like drogs
to his inside; and may the velveteens play crack, and cast the steeks at
every step he takes!" It was no Christian wish; and Paul laughed till he
was like to burst, at my expense. "Gang your ways hame, Mansie," said he
to me, clapping me on the shoulder as if I had been a wean, "and give
over setting traps, for ye see you have catched a Tartar."
This was too much; first to be cheated by a swindling loon, and then made
game of by a flunkie; and, in my desperation, I determined to do some
awful thing.
Nanse followed me in from the door, and asked what news?--I was ower big,
and ower vexed to hear her; so, never letting on, I went to the little
looking-glass on the drawers' head, and set it down on the table. Then I
looked myself in it for a moment, and made a gruesome face. Syne I
pulled out the little drawer, and got the sharping strap, the which I
fastened to my button. Syne I took my razor from the box, and gave it
five or six turns along first one side and then the other, with great
precision. Syne I tried the edge of it along the flat of my hand. Syne
I loosed my neckcloth, and laid it over the back of the chair; and syne I
took out the button of my shirt neck, and folded it back. Nanse, who
was, all time, standing behind, looking what I was after, asked me, "if I
was going to shave without hot water?" when I said to her in a fierce and
brave manner, (which was very cruel, considering the way she was in,)
"I'll let you see that presently." The razor looked desperate sharp; and
I never liked the sight of blood; but oh, I was in a terrible flurry and
fermentation. A kind of cold trembling went through me; and I thought it
best to tell Nanse what I was going to do, that she might be something
prepared for it. "Fare ye well, my dear!" said I to her, "you will be a
widow in five minutes--for here goes!" I did not think she could have
mustered so much courage, but she sprang at me like a tiger; and,
throwing the razor into the ass-hole, took me round the neck, and cried
like a bairn. First she was seized with a fit of the hystericks, and
then with her pains. It was a serious time for us both, and no joke; for
my heart smote me for my sin and cruelty. But I did my best to make up
for it. I ran up and down like mad for the Howdie, and at last brought
her trotting along with me by the lug. I could not stand it. I shut
myself up in the shop with Tammy Bodkin, like Daniel in the lions' den;
and every now and then opened the door to spier what news. Oh, but my
heart was like to break with anxiety! I paced up and down, and to and
fro, with my Kilmarnock on my head, and my hands in my breeches pockets,
like a man out of Bedlam. I thought it would never be over; but, at the
second hour of the morning, I heard a wee squeel, and knew that I was a
father; and so proud was I, that notwithstanding our loss, Lucky
Bringthereout and me whanged away at the cheese and bread, and drank so
briskly at the whisky and foot-yill, that, when she tried to rise and go
away, she could not stir a foot. So Tammy and I had to oxter her out
between us, and deliver the howdie herself--safe in at her own door.
CHAPTER NINE--BENJIE'S CHRISTENING
At the christening of our only bairn, Benjie, two or three remarkable
circumstances occurred, which it behoves me to relate.
It was on a cold November afternoon; and really when the bit room was all
redd up, the fire bleezing away, and the candles lighted, every thing
looked full tosh and comfortable. It was a real pleasure, after looking
out into the drift that was fleeing like mad from the east, to turn one's
neb inwards, and think that we had a civilized home to comfort us in the
dreary season. So, one after another, the bit party we had invited to
the ceremony came papping in; and the crack began to get loud and hearty;
for, to speak the truth, we were blessed with canny friends, and a good
neighbourhood. Notwithstanding, it was very curious, that I had no mind
of asking down James Batter, the weaver, honest man, though he was one of
our own elders; and in papped James, just when the company had haffins
met, with his stocking-sleeves on his arms, his nightcap on his head, and
his blue-stained apron hanging down before him, to light his pipe at our
fire.