Allan, whom I have often seen and heard, particularly at the
Kelso Races. He was an admirable piper, yet a desperate
reprobate. The last time I saw him he was in absolute
beggary, and had behaved himself so ill at my uncle's
(Thomas Scott of Monklaw) house, that the old gentleman,
himself a most admirable piper, would not on any account
give him quarters, though I interceded earnestly for him,
"the knave," as Davie tells Justice Shallow, "being my very
good friend." He was then quite like a pauper, with his
wife, and an ass, in the true gipsy fashion. When I first
saw him at Kelso Races, he wore the Northumberland livery, a
blue coat, with a silver crescent on his arm.' (Allan was
piper to Her Grace the Duchess of Northumberland.)
"The father of Jamie Allan was named Willie, and he also was
a good piper, besides being an excellent fisher and a keen
otter-hunter. He had two favourite dogs for the latter
sport,--Charley and Phoebe,--and such was the wisdom of the
former that he used to say, If Charley could speak he would
sell the otter's skin.' Probably Crab may have been of this
kind.
"James Davidson of Hindlee was a great fox hunter, and his
breed of terriers--the pepper-and-mustard class--were the
best over all the country. I have seen the genuine breed
long ago at Ned Dunn's of the Whitelee at the head of
Redesdale. Among common dogs they were something like the
Black Dwarf among men, long-bodied animals with strong short
legs, wiry haired, and at the first look not unlike a low
four-footed stool, such as I have seen in houses in the
south of Scotland forty years ago. They were sent in to the
fox when he was earthed, and fought him there. They seemed
at first when out of doors to be shy, timid things, and
would have slunk away from a fierce collie dog, but if he
seized one of them, and the blood of the little creature got
up, it just took a hold of him in a biting place, and held
on, never quitting till he found to his cost he had caught a
tartar."
"I am now convinced, from_ what I have gleaned of the life
of James Allan, and a notice in Mackenzie's History of
Northiunberland, that your Piper Allan was William, the
father of James. He was born at Bellingham in 1704. He was
nearly six feet high, of a ruddy complexion, and had much
shrewdness, wit, and independence of mind. In early life he
became a good player on the bagpipes. He mended pots and
pans, made spoons, baskets, and besoms, ana was a keen and
excellent fisher. In the Valley of Coquet he married a gipsy
girl, named Betty, who bore him six children, and James was
the youngest save one; but she died in the prime of life. He
was married a second time to an unfortunate daughter of a
Presbyterian minister.
"Among his other pursuits, he excelled especially in the
hunting of otters, and kept eight or ten dogs for that
particular sport. Please turn to my previous letter, and in
the passage, 'if Charley could speak,' etc., dele Charley
and insert Peachem. This dog was Will's chief favourite, and
such confidence had he in the animal, that when hunting he
would at times observe, 'When my Peachem gi'es mouth, I
durst always sell the otter's skin.' Charley was also an
excellent dog. Lord Ravensworth once employed Willie to kill
the otters that infested his pond at Eslington Hall, which
he soon accomplished; and on going away, the steward, Mr.
Bell, offered, in his Lordship's name, to buy Charley at the
Piper's own price. Will turned round very haughtily, and
exclaimed, 'By the wuns, his hale estate canna buy Charley!
"He was a capital piper, and composed two popular tunes, 1
We'll a' to the Coquet and Woo,' and 'Salmon Tails up the
Water.' These I never heard, and probably they may be lost.
When his end drew near, he was something like Rob Roy in his
neglect of religious impressions. When reminded that he was
dying, he exclaimed, 'By Jing, I'll get foul play, then, to
dee before my billie, wha's ten years aulder!' When still
closer pressed to ponder on his condition, he said, 'Gi'e me
my pipes, and I'll play ye ''Dorrington Lads" yet.' Thus he
exhausted his last breath in playing his favourite strain.
He died 18th February 1779, aged seventy-five years, and was
buried in Rothbury Churchyard. His son James was born at
Hepple, in Coquetdale, March 1734.
"The following verses on old Will are in the ' Lay of the
Reedwater Minstrel:'--
"A stalwart Tinkler wight was he,
And weel could mend a pot or pan;
And deftly IVull could thraw a flee,
An' neatly weave the willow-wan'.
"An' sweetly wild were Allan's strains,
An' mony a jig an' reel he blew;
Wi' merry lilts he charm'd the swains,
Wi' barbed spear the otter slew.
'Nae mair he'll scan, wi' anxious eye,
The sandy shores of winding Reed;
Nae mair he'll tempt the finny fry,--
The king O' Tinklers, Allan's dead.
"Nae mair at Mell or Merry Night
The cheering bagpipes Wull shall blaw;
Nae mair the village throng delight,
Grim death has laid the minstrel law.
"Now trouts, exulting, cut the wave;
Triumphant see the otter glide,
Their deadly foe lies in his grave.
Charley and Phcebe by his side.
I add another bit from Mr. White, too characteristic of that
mixture of kindness and cruelty, of tenderness and pluck,--
Dandie Dinmont,--and of the exercise, called one-sidedly
"sport." It ends happily, which is more than the bigstore-
farmer wished:--
"The mother of the far-famed Peppers and Mustards was a
dark-coloured, rough-haired bitch of the name of Tar.
Davidson wanted a cat from some of the cottages at a
distance from Hindlee, that he might have the young dogs
tried upon it. One of his shepherds chanced to call at
Andrew Telfer's house (the grandfather, I believe, of my
late friend), where he saw baudrons sitting on the end of
adresser near the door; and the house being low and dark, he
swept her into his plaid-neuk on going out, and carried her
home. Next morning she was introduced to a covered drain,
which ran across the road, the said drain being closed up at
one end, whereby she was compelled to give battle to her
foes. A young terrier was the first to oppose her, and paid
for its rashness by retreating from the drain with the skin
almost torn from its nose. Another of the same age met with
the same punishment, and Davidson, considerably irritated,
brought forward Tar, the old dame, who, by her age and
experience, he considered, would be more than a match for
the cat. There was sore fighting for a time, till again Puss
was victorious, and Tar withdrew from the conflict in such a
condition that her master exclaimed, 1 Confoond the cat,
she's tumblt an e'e oot o' the bitch!' which indeed was the
case. 'Tak awathe stanes frae the tapo' the cundy,' said
Davidson, 'and we'll ha'e her worried at ance.' The stones
were removed, and out leapt the cat in the middle of her
enemies. Fortunately for her, however, it happened that a
stone wall was continued up the side of the road, which she
instantly mounted, and, running along the top thereof, with
the dogs in full cry after her she speedily reached a
plantation, and eluded all pursuit. No trace of her could be
discovered; and the next time the shepherd called at Andrew
Telfer's house, my lady was seated on the dresser, as demure
as if nothing in her whole life had ever disturbed her
tranquillity."
[Illustration: 0079]
|John Pym was a smaller dog than Crab, of more fashionable blood, being a son of Mr. Somner's famous Shem, whose father and brother are said to have been found dead in a drain into which the hounds had run a fox. It had three entrances; the father was put in at one hole, the son at another, and speedily the fox bolted out at the third, but no appearance of the little terriers, and, on digging, they were found dead, locked in each other's jaws; they had met, and it being dark, and there being no time for explanations, they had throttled each other. John was made of the same sort of stuff, and was as combative and victorious as his great namesake, and not unlike him in some of his not so creditable qualities. He must, I think, have been related to a certain dog to whom "life was full o' sairiousness," but in John's case the same cause produced an opposite effect. John was gay and light-hearted, even when there was not "enuff o' fechtin," which, however, seldom happened, there being a market every week in Melrose, and John appearing most punctually at the cross to challenge all comers, and being short-legged, he inveigled every dog into an engagement by first attacking him, and then falling down on his back, in which posture he latterly fought and won all his battles.
[Illustration: 0083]
What can I say of _PUCK_ *--the thoroughbred--the simple-hearted--the purloiner of eggs warm from the hen--the flutterer of all manner of Volscians--the bandy-legged, dear, old, dilapidated buffer? I got him from my brother, and only parted with him because William's stock was gone. He had to the end of life a simplicity which was quite touching. One summer day --a dog-day--when all dogs found straying were hauled away to the police-office, and killed off in twenties with strychnine, I met Puck trotting along Princes Street with a policeman, a rope round his neck, he looking up in the fatal, official, but kindly countenance in the most artless and cheerful manner, wagging his tail and trotting along. In ten minutes he would have been in the next world; for I am one of those who believe dogs _have_ a next world, and why not? Puck ended his days as the best dog in Roxburghshire. _Placide quiescas!_
$DICK
Still lives, and long may he live! As he was never born, possibly he may never die; be it so, he will miss us when we are gone. I could say much of him, but agree with the lively and admirable Dr. Jortin, when, in his dedication of his _Remarks on Ecclesiastical History_ to the then (1752) Archbishop of Canterbury, he excuses himself for not following the modern custom of praising his Patron, by reminding his Grace "that it was a custom amongst the ancients, _not to sacrifice to heroes till after sunset_." I defer my sacrifice till Dick's sun is set.
* In The Dog, by Stonehenge, an excellent book, there is a
woodcut of Puck, and "Dr. Wm. Brown's celebrated dog John
Pym" is mentioned Their pedigrees are given--here is Puck's,
which shows his "strain" is of the pure azure blood--"Got by
John Pym, out of Tib; bred by Purves of Leaderfoot; sire.
Old Dandie, the famous dog of old John Stoddart of Selkirk--
dam Whin." How Homeric all this sounds! I cannot help
quoting what follows--"Sometime a Dandie pup of a good
strain may appear not to be game at an early age; but he
should not be parted with on this account, because many of
them do not show their courage till nearly two years old,
and then nothing can beat them; this apparent softness
arising, as I suspect, from kindness of heart"--a suspicion,
my dear "Stonehenge," which is true and shows your own
"kindness of heart," as well as sense.
[Illustration: 0087]
I think every family should have a dog; it is like having a perpetual baby; it is the plaything and crony of the whole house. It keeps them all young. All unite upon Dick. And then he tells no tales, betrays no secrets, never sulks, asks no troublesome questions, never gets into debt, never coming down late for breakfast, or coming in by his Chubb _too early_ to bed--is always ready for a bit of fun, lies in wait for it, and you may, if choleric, to your relief, kick him instead of some one else, who would not take it so meekly, and, moreover, would certainly not, as he does, ask your pardon for being kicked.
Never put a collar on your dog--it only gets him stolen; give him only one meal a day, and let that, as Dame Dorothy, Sir Thomas Browne's wife, would say, be "rayther under." Wash him once a week, and always wash the soap out; and let him be carefully combed and brushed twice a week.
By the bye, I was wrong in saying that it was Burns who said Man is the god of the Dog--he got it from Bacon's _Essay on Atheism_, or perhaps more truly--Bacon had it first.
$QUEEN MARY'S CHILD-GARDEN.
If any one wants a pleasure that is sure to please, one over which he needn't growl the sardonic beatitude of the great Dean, let him, when the Mercury is at "Fair," take the nine A.M. train to the North, and a return ticket for Callander, and when he arrives at Stirling, let him ask the most obliging and knowing of station-masters to telegraph to "the Dreadnought" for a carriage to be in waiting. When passing Dunblane Cathedral, let him resolve to write to the _Scotsman_, advising the removal of a couple of shabby trees which obstruct the view of that beautiful triple end-window which Mr. Ruskin and everybody else admires, and by the time he has written this letter in his mind, and turned the sentences to it, he will find himself at Callander and the carriage all ready. Giving the order for the _Port of Monteith_, he will rattle through this hard-featured, and to our eye comfortless village, lying ugly amid so much grandeur and beauty, and let him stop on the crown of the bridge, and fill his eyes with the perfection of the view up the Pass of Leny--the Teith lying diffuse and asleep, as if its heart were in the Highlands and it were loath to go, the noble Ben Ledi imaged in its broad stream. Then let him make his way across a bit of pleasant moorland--flushed with maiden-hair and white with cotton-grass; and fragrant with the _Orchis conopsia_, well deserving its epithet _odoratissima_.
He will see from the turn of the hillside the Blair of Drummond waving with corn and shadowed with rich woods, where eighty years ago there was a black peatmoss; and far off, on the horizon, Damyat and the Touch Fells; and at his side the little loch of Ruskie, in which he may see five Highland cattle, three tawny brown and two brindled, standing in the still water--themselves as still, all except their switching tails and winking ears--the perfect images of quiet enjoyment. By this time he will have come in sight of the Lake of Monteith, set in its woods, with its magical shadows and soft gleams. There is a loveliness, a gentleness and peace about it more like "lone St. Mary's Lake," or Derwent Water, than of any of its sister lochs. It is lovely rather than beautiful, and is a sort of gentle prelude, in the _minor_ key, to the coming glories and intenser charms of Loch Ard and the true Highlands beyond.
You are now at the Port, and have passed the secluded and cheerful manse, and the parish kirk with its graves, close to the lake, and the proud aisle of the Grahams of Gartmore washed by its waves. Across the road is the modest little inn, a Fisher's Tryst. On the unruffled water lie several islets, plump with rich foliage, brooding like great birds of calm. You somehow think of them as on, not in the lake, or like clouds lying in a nether sky--"like ships waiting for the wind." You get a coble, and _yould_ old Celt, its master, and are rowed across to _Inch-mahome, the Isle of Rest_. Here you find on landing huge Spanish chestnuts, one lying dead, others standing stark and peeled, like gigantic antlers, and others flourishing in their _viridis senectus_, and in a thicket of wood you see the remains of a monastery of great beauty, the design and workmanship exquisite. You wander through the ruins, overgrown with ferns and Spanish filberts, and old fruit-trees, and at the corner of the old monkish garden you come upon one of the strangest and most touching sights you ever saw--an oval space of about eighteen feet by twelve, with the remains of a double row of boxwood all round, the plants of box being about fourteen feet high, and eight or nine inches in diameter, healthy, but plainly of great age.
What is this? it is called in the guide-books Queen Mary's Bower; but besides its being plainly not in the least a bower, what could the little Queen, then five years old, and "fancy free," do with a bower? It is plainly, as was, we believe, first suggested by our keen-sighted and diagnostic Professor of Clinical Surgery, * _the Child-Queen's
Garden_, with her little walk, and its rows of boxwood, left to themselves for three hundred years.
* The same seeing eye and understanding mind, when they were
eighteen years of age discovered and published the Solvent
of Caoutchouc, for which patent was taken out afterwards by
the famous Mackintosh. If the young discoverer had secured
the patent, he might have made a fortune as large as his
present reputation--I don't suppose he much regrets that he
didn't.
[Illustration: 0091]
Yes, without doubt, "here is that first garden of her simpleness." Fancy the little, lovely royal child, with her four Marys, her playfellows, her child maids of honour, with their little hands and feet, and their innocent and happy eyes, pattering about that garden all that time ago, laughing, and running, and gardening as only children do and can. As is well known, Mary was placed by her mother in this Isle of Rest before sailing from the Clyde for France. There is something "that tirls the heartstrings a' to the life" in standing and looking on this unmistakable living relic of that strange and pathetic old time. Were we Mr. Tennyson, we would write an Idyll of that child Queen, in that garden of hers, eating her bread and honey--getting her teaching from the holy men, the monks of old, and running off in wild mirth to her garden and her flowers, all unconscious of the black, lowering thunder-cloud on Ben Lomond's shoulder.
"Oh, blessed vision! happy child!
Thou art so exquisitely wild:
I think of thee with many fears
Of what may be thy lot in future years.
I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest,
Lord of thy house and hospitality,
And Grief, uneasy lover! never rest
But when she sat within the touch of thee.
What hast thou to do with sorrow,
Or the injuries of to-morrow?"
You have ample time to linger there amid
"The gleams, the shadows, and the peace profound,"
and get your mind informed with quietness and beauty, and fed with thoughts of other years, and of her whose story, like Helen of Troy's, will continue to move the hearts of men as long as the grey hills stand round about that gentle lake, and are mirrored at evening in its depths. You may do and enjoy all this, and be in Princes Street by nine P.M.; and we wish we were as sure of many things as of your saying, "Yes, this _is_ a pleasure that has pleased, and will please again; this was something expected which did not disappoint."
There is another garden of Queen Mary's, which may still be seen, and which has been left to itself like that in the Isle of Rest. It is in the grounds at Chatsworth, and is moated, walled round, and raised about fifteen feet above the park. Here the Queen, when a prisoner under the charge of "Old Bess of Hardwake," was allowed to walk without any guard. How different the two! and how different she who took her pleasure in them!
Lines written on the steps of a small moated garden at Chatsworth, called
"Queen Mary's Bower.
"The moated bower is wild and drear,
And sad the dark yew's shade;
The flowers which bloom in silence here,
In silence also fade.
"The woodbine and the light wild rose
Float o'er the broken wall;
And here the mournful nightshade blows,
To note the garden's fall.
"Where once a princess wept her woes,
The bird of night complains;
And sighing trees the tale disclose
They learnt from Mary's strains.
"A. H."
$'ATXINOIA--NEARNESS OF THE NOUS--PRESENCE OF MIND.
'ERTOXIA: HAPPY GUESSING.
"_Depend upon it, a lucky guess is never merely luck--there is always some Talent in it."--Miss Austen, in "Emma_."
|Dr. Chalmers used to say that in the dynamics of human affairs, two qualities were essential to greatness--Power and Promptitude. One man might have both, another power without promptitude, another promptitude without power. We must all feel the common sense of this, and can readily see how it applies to a general in the field, to a pilot in a storm, to a sportsman, to a fencer, to a debater. It is the same with an operating surgeon at all times, and may be at any time with the practitioner of the art of healing. He must be ready for what are called emergencies--cases which rise up at your feet, and must be dealt with on the instant,--he must have power and promptitude.
It is a curious condition of mind that this requires: it is like sleeping with your pistol under your pillow, and it on full cock; a moment lost and all may be lost. There is the very nick of time. This is what we mean by presence of mind; by a man having such a subject at his finger-ends; that part of the mind lying nearest the outer world, and having to act on it through the bodily organs, through the will--the outposts must be always awake. It is of course, so to speak, only a portion of the mind that is thus needed and thus available; if the whole mind were for ever at the advanced post, it would soon lose itself in this endeavour to keep it. Now, though the thing needed to be done maybe simple enough, what goes to the doing of it, and to the being at once ready and able to do it, involves much; the wedge would not be a wedge, or do a wedge's work, without the width behind as well as the edge in front. Your men of promptitude without genius or power, including knowledge and will, are those who present the wedge the wrong way. Thus your extremely prompt people are often doing the wrong thing, which is almost always worse than nothing. Our vague friend who bit "Yarrow's" tail instead of "the Chicken's" was full of promptitude; as was also that other man, probably a relative, who barred the door with a boiled carrot: each knew what was needed--the biting the tail, the barring the door; both erred as to the means--the one by want of presence of mind, the other by lack of mind itself. We must have just enough of the right knowledge and no more; we must have the habit of using this; we must have self-reliance, and the consentaneousness of the entire mind; and whatsoever our hand finds to do, we must do it with our might. Therefore it is that this master act of the man, under some sudden and great unexpected crisis, is in a great measure performed unconsciously as to its mental means. The man is so _totus in illo_, that there is no bit of the mind left to watch and record the acts of the rest; therefore men, when they have done some signal feat of presence of mind, if asked how they did it, generally don't very well know--they just did it: it was, in fact, done and then thought of, not thought of and then done, in which case it would likely never have been done. Not that the act was uncaused by mind; it is one of the highest powers of mind thus to act; but it is done, if I may use the phrase, by an acquired instinct. You will find all this in that wonderful old Greek who was Alexander the Great's and the old world's schoolmaster, and ours if we were wise,--whose truthfulness and clear insight one wonders at the longer he lives. He seems to have seen the human mind as a bird or an engineer does the earth--he knew the plan of it. We now-a-days see it as one sees a country, athwart and in perspective, and from the side; he saw it from above and from below. There are therefore no shadows, no fore-shortenings, no clear-obscure, indeed no disturbing- medium; it is as if he examined everything _in vacuo_. I refer my readers to what he says on [GREEK] *
* [----As I am now, to my sorrow and shame, too much of a
mediate Grecian, I give a Balliol friend's note on these two
words:--"What you have called 'presence of mind' and 'happy
guessing' may, I think, be identified respectively with
Aristotle's [Greek] and evaroxia-- The latter of these,
[Greek], Aristotle mentions incidentally when treating of
[Greek], or good deliberation. Eth. Nic. bk. vi. ch. 9.
Good deliberation, he says, is not eûoTOxîa, for the former
is a slow process, whereas the latter is not guided by
reason, and is rapid. In the same passage he tells us that
[Greek] is a sort of [Greek]. But he speaks of [Greek]
more fully in Ana. Post. 1. 34:--[Greek] is a sort of
happy guessing at the intermediate, when there is not time
for consideration: as when a man, seeing that the bright
side of the moon is always turned towards the sun,
comprehends that her light is borrowed from the sun; or
concludes, from seeing one conversing with a capitalist that
he wants to borrow money; or infers that people are friends
from the fact of their having common enemies.' And then he
goes on to make these simple observations confused and
perplexing by reducing them to his logical formula.