See “BROAD SCOTS GLOSSARY” at end of this work.
Note from electronic text creator: I have compiled a word list with
definitions of most of the Scottish words found in this work at the
end of the book. This list does not belong to the original work,
but is designed to help with the conversations in Broad Scots found
in this work. A further explanation of this list can be found
towards the end of this document, preceding the word list.
SIR GIBBIE.
BY
GEORGE MACDONALD, LL.D.
CONTENTS
I. THE EARRING.
II. SIR GEORGE.
III. MISTRESS CROALE.
IV. THE PARLOUR.
V. GIBBIE’S CALLING.
VI. A SUNDAY AT HOME.
VII. THE TOWN-SPARROW.
VIII. SAMBO.
IX. ADRIFT.
X. THE BARN.
XI. JANET.
XII. GLASHGAR.
XIII. THE CEILING.
XIV. HORNIE.
XV. DONAL GRANT.
XVI. APPRENTICESHIP.
XVII. SECRET SERVICE.
XVIII. THE BROONIE.
XIX. THE LAIRD.
XX. THE AMBUSH.
XXI. THE PUNISHMENT.
XXII. REFUGE.
XXIII. MORE SCHOOLING.
XXIV. THE SLATE.
XXV. RUMOURS.
XXVI. THE GAMEKEEPER
XXVII. A VOICE.
XXVIII. THE WISDOM OF THE WISE.
XXIX. THE BEAST-BOY.
XXX. THE LORRIE MEADOW.
XXXI. THEIR REWARD.
XXXII. PROLOGUE.
XXXIII. THE MAINS.
XXXIV. GLASHRUACH.
XXXV. THE WHELP.
XXXVI. THE BRANDER.
XXXVII. MR. SCLATER.
XXXVIII. THE MUCKLE HOOSE.
XXXIX. DAUR STREET.
XL. MRS. SCLATER.
XLI. INITIATION.
XLII. DONAL’S LODGING.
XLIII. THE MINISTER’S DEFEAT.
XLIV. THE SINNER.
XLV. SHOALS AHEAD.
XLVI. THE GIRLS.
XLVII. A LESSON OF WISDOM.
XLVIII. NEEDFULL ODDS AND ENDS.
XLIX. THE HOUSELESS.
L. A WALK.
LI. THE NORTH CHURCH.
LII. THE QUARRY.
LIII. A NIGHT-WATCH.
LIV. OF AGE.
LV. TEN AULD HOOSE O’ GALBRAITH.
LVI. THE LAIRD AND THE PREACHER.
LVII. A HIDING-PLACE FROM THE WIND.
LVIII. THE CONFESSION.
LIX. CATASTROPHE.
LX. ARRANGEMENT AND PREPARATION.
LXI. THE WEDDING.
LXII. THE BURN.
CHAPTER I.
THE EARRING.
“Come oot o’ the gutter, ye nickum!” cried, in harsh, half-masculine
voice, a woman standing on the curbstone of a short, narrow, dirty
lane, at right angles to an important thoroughfare, itself none of
the widest or cleanest. She was dressed in dark petticoat and print
wrapper. One of her shoes was down at the heel, and discovered a great
hole in her stocking. Had her black hair been brushed and displayed,
it would have revealed a thready glitter of grey, but all that was now
visible of it was only two or three untidy tresses that dropped from
under a cap of black net and green ribbons, which looked as if she
had slept in it. Her face must have been handsome when it was young
and fresh; but was now beginning to look tattooed, though whether the
colour was from without or from within, it would have been hard to
determine. Her black eyes looked resolute, almost fierce, above her
straight, well-formed nose. Yet evidently circumstance clave fast to
her. She had never risen above it, and was now plainly subjected to it.
About thirty yards from her, on the farther side of the main street,
and just opposite the mouth of the lane, a child, apparently about six,
but in reality about eight, was down on his knees raking with both
hands in the grey dirt of the kennel. At the woman’s cry he lifted
his head, ceased his search, raised himself, but without getting up,
and looked at her. They were notable eyes out of which he looked--of
such a deep blue were they, and having such long lashes; but more
notable far from their expression, the nature of which, although a
certain witchery of confidence was at once discoverable, was not to be
determined without the help of the whole face, whose diffused meaning
seemed in them to deepen almost to speech. Whatever was at the heart
of that expression, it was something that enticed question and might
want investigation. The face as well as the eyes was lovely--not
very clean, and not too regular for hope of a fine development, but
chiefly remarkable from a general effect of something I can only
call _luminosity_. The hair, which stuck out from his head in every
direction, like a round fur cap, would have been of the red-gold kind,
had it not been sunburned into a sort of human hay. An odd creature
altogether the child appeared, as, shaking the gutter-drops from his
little dirty hands, he gazed from his bare knees on the curbstone at
the woman of rebuke. It was but for a moment. The next he was down,
raking in the gutter again.
The woman looked angry, and took a step forward; but the sound of a
sharp imperative little bell behind her, made her turn at once, and
re-enter the shop from which she had just issued, following a man whose
pushing the door wider had set the bell ringing. Above the door was a
small board, nearly square, upon which was painted in lead-colour on a
black ground the words, “Licensed to sell beer, spirits, and tobacco to
be drunk on the premises.” There was no other sign. “Them ’at likes my
whusky ’ill no aye be speirin’ my name,” said Mistress Croale. As the
day went on she would have more and more customers, and in the evening
on to midnight, her parlour would be well filled. Then she would be
always at hand, and the spring of the bell would be turned aside from
the impact of the opening door. Now the bell was needful to recall her
from house affairs.
“The likin’ ’at cratur his for clean dirt! He’s been at it this hale
half-hoor!” she murmured to herself as she poured from a black bottle
into a pewter measure a gill of whisky for the pale-faced toper who
stood on the other side of the counter: far gone in consumption, he
could not get through the forenoon without his _morning_. “I wad
like,” she went on, as she replaced the bottle without having spoken a
word to her customer, whose departure was now announced with the same
boisterous alacrity as his arrival by the shrill-toned bell--“I wad
like, for ’is father’s sake, honest man! to thraw Gibbie’s lug. That
likin’ for dirt I canna fathom nor bide.”
Meantime the boy’s attention seemed entirely absorbed in the gutter.
Whatever vehicle passed before him, whatever footsteps behind, he
never lifted his head, but went creeping slowly on his knees along the
curb still searching down the flow of the sluggish, nearly motionless
current.
It was a grey morning towards the close of autumn. The days began and
ended with a fog, but often between, as golden a sunshine glorified the
streets of the grey city as any that ripened purple grapes. To-day the
mist had lasted longer than usual--had risen instead of dispersing;
but now it was thinning, and at length, like a slow blossoming of
the sky-flower, the sun came melting through the cloud. Between the
gables of two houses, a ray fell upon the pavement and the gutter. It
lay there a very type of purity, so pure that, rest where it might,
it destroyed every shadow of defilement that sought to mingle with
it. Suddenly the boy made a dart upon all fours, and pounced like a
creature of prey upon something in the kennel. He had found what he
had been looking for so long. He sprang to his feet and bounded with
it into the sun, rubbing it as he ran upon what he had for trousers,
of which there was nothing below the knees but a few streamers, and
nothing above the knees but the body of the garment, which had been--I
will not say made for, but last worn by a boy three times his size. His
feet, of course, were bare as well as his knees and legs. But though
they were dirty, red, and rough, they were nicely shaped little legs,
and the feet were dainty.
The sunbeams he sought came down through the smoky air like a Jacob’s
ladder, and he stood at the foot of it like a little prodigal angel
that wanted to go home again, but feared it was too much inclined for
him to manage the ascent in the present condition of his wings. But
all he did want was to see in the light of heaven what the gutter had
yielded him. He held up his _find_ in the radiance and regarded it
admiringly. It was a little earring of amethyst-coloured glass, and in
the sun looked lovely. The boy was in an ecstasy over it. He rubbed it
on his sleeve, sucked it to clear it from the last of the gutter, and
held it up once more in the sun, where, for a few blissful moments, he
contemplated it speechless. He then caused it to disappear somewhere
about his garments--I will not venture to say in a pocket--and ran off,
his little bare feet sounding _thud, thud, thud_ on the pavement, and
the collar of his jacket sticking halfway up the back of his head, and
threatening to rub it bare as he ran. Through street after street he
sped--all built of granite, all with flagged footways, and all paved
with granite blocks--a hard, severe city, not beautiful or stately with
its thick, grey, sparkling walls, for the houses were not high, and the
windows were small, yet in the better parts, nevertheless, handsome as
well as massive and strong.
To the boy the great city was but a house of many rooms, all for his
use, his sport, his life. He did not know much of what lay within the
houses; but _that_ only added the joy of mystery to possession: they
were jewel-closets, treasure-caves, indeed, with secret fountains of
life; and every street was a channel into which they overflowed.
It was in one of quite a third-rate sort that the urchin at length
ceased his trot, and drew up at the door of a baker’s shop--a divided
door, opening in the middle by a latch of bright brass. But the child
did not lift the latch--only raised himself on tiptoe by the help of
its handle, to look through the upper half of the door, which was of
glass, into the beautiful shop. The floor was of flags, fresh sanded;
the counter was of deal, scrubbed as white almost as flour; on the
shelves were heaped the loaves of the morning’s baking, along with a
large store of scones and rolls and baps--the last, the best bread in
the world--biscuits hard and soft, and those brown discs of delicate
flaky piecrust, known as buns. And the smell that came through the very
glass, it seemed to the child, was as that of the tree of life in the
Paradise of which he had never heard. But most enticing of all to the
eyes of the little wanderer of the street were the penny-loaves, hot
smoking from the oven--which fact is our first window into the ordered
nature of the child. For the main point which made them more attractive
than all the rest to him was, that sometimes he did have a penny, and
that a penny loaf was the largest thing that could be had for a penny
in the shop. So that, lawless as he looked, the desires of the child
were moderate, and his imagination wrought within the bounds of reason.
But no one who has never been blessed with only a penny to spend and
a mighty hunger behind it, can understand the interest with which he
stood there and through the glass watched the bread, having no penny
and only the hunger. There is at least one powerful bond, though it may
not always awake sympathy, between mudlark and monarch--that of hunger.
No one has yet written the poetry of hunger--has built up in verse its
stairs of grand ascent--from such hunger as Gibbie’s for a penny-loaf
up--no, no, not to an alderman’s feast; that is the way down the
mouldy cellar-stair--but up the white marble scale to the hunger after
righteousness whose very longings are bliss.
Behind the counter sat the baker’s wife, a stout, fresh-coloured woman,
looking rather dull, but simple and honest. She was knitting, and if
not dreaming, at least dozing over her work, for she never saw the
forehead and eyes which, like a young ascending moon, gazed at her over
the horizon of the opaque half of her door. There was no greed in those
eyes--only much quiet interest. He did not want to get in; had to wait,
and while waiting beguiled the time by beholding. He knew that Mysie,
the baker’s daughter, was at school, and that she would be home within
half an hour. He had seen her with tear-filled eyes as she went, had
learned from her the cause, and had in consequence unwittingly roused
Mrs. Croale’s anger, and braved it when aroused. But though he was
waiting for her, such was the absorbing power of the spectacle before
him that he never heard her approaching footsteps.
“Lat me in,” said Mysie, with conscious dignity and a touch of
indignation at being impeded on the very threshold of her father’s shop.
The boy started and turned, but instead of moving out of the way, began
searching in some mysterious receptacle hid in the recesses of his
rags. A look of anxiety once appeared, but the same moment it vanished,
and he held out in his hand the little drop of amethystine splendour.
Mysie’s face changed, and she clutched it eagerly.
“That’s rale guid o’ ye, wee Gibbie!” she cried. “Whaur did ye get it?”
He pointed to the kennel, and drew back from the door.
“I thank ye,” she said heartily, and pressing down the thumbstall of
the latch, went in.
“Wha’s that ye’re colloguin’ wi’, Mysie?” asked her mother, somewhat
severely, but without lifting her eyes from her wires. “Ye maunna be
speykin’ to loons i’ the street.”
“It’s only wee Gibbie, mither,” answered the girl in a tone of
confidence.
“Ow weel!” returned the mother, “he’s no like the lave o’ loons.”
“But what had ye to say till him?” she resumed, as if afraid her
leniency might be taken advantage of. “He’s no fit company for the
likes o’ you, ’at his a father an’ mither, an’ a chop (_shop_). Ye maun
hae little to say to sic rintheroot laddies.”
“Gibbie has a father, though they say he never hid nae mither,” said
the child.
“Troth, a fine father!” rejoined the mother, with a small scornful
laugh. “Na, but he’s something to mak mention o’! Sic a father, lassie,
as it wad be tellin’ him he had nane! What said ye till ’im?”
“I bit thankit ’im, ’cause I tint my drop as I gaed to the schuil i’
the mornin’, an’ he fan ’t till me, an’ was at the chopdoor waitin’ to
gie me ’t back. They say he’s aye fin’in’ things.”
“He’s a guid-hertit cratur!” said the mother,--“for ane, that is, ’at’s
been sae ill broucht up.”
She rose, took from the shelf a large piece of bread, composed of many
adhering penny-loaves, detached one, and went to the door.
“Here, Gibbie!” she cried as she opened it; “here’s a fine piece to ye.”
But no Gibbie was there. Up and down the street not a child was to be
seen. A sandboy with a donkey cart was the sole human arrangement in
it. The baker’s wife drew back, shut the door and resumed her knitting.