no time to indulge such speculations. The hour, the place, his own
situation, and perhaps the presence or near neighbourhood of his
assailants, made self-preservation the adept’s first object. The lantern
had been thrown down and extinguished in the scuffle. The wind, which
formerly howled so loudly through the aisles of the ruin, had now
greatly fallen, lulled by the rain, which was descending very fast.
The moon, from the same cause, was totally obscured, and though
Dousterswivel had some experience of the ruins, and knew that he must
endeavour to regain the eastern door of the chancel, yet the confusion
of his ideas was such, that he hesitated for some time ere he could
ascertain in what direction he was to seek it. In this perplexity, the
suggestions of superstition, taking the advantage of darkness and his
evil conscience, began again to present themselves to his disturbed
imagination. “But bah!” quoth he valiantly to himself, “it is all
nonsense all one part of de damn big trick and imposture. Devil! that
one thick-skulled Scotch Baronet, as I have led by the nose for five
year, should cheat Herman Dousterswivel!”
As he had come to this conclusion, an incident occurred which tended
greatly to shake the grounds on which he had adopted it. Amid the
melancholy sough of the dying wind, and the plash of the rain-drops on
leaves and stones, arose, and apparently at no great distance from the
listener, a strain of vocal music so sad and solemn, as if the departed
spirits of the churchmen who had once inhabited these deserted ruins
were mourning the solitude and desolation to which their hallowed
precincts had been abandoned. Dousterswivel, who had now got upon his
feet, and was groping around the wall of the chancel, stood rooted to
the ground on the occurrence of this new phenomenon. Each faculty of his
soul seemed for the moment concentred in the sense of hearing, and all
rushed back with the unanimous information, that the deep, wild, and
prolonged chant which he now heard, was the appropriate music of one of
the most solemn dirges of the Church of Rome. Why performed in such
a solitude, and by what class of choristers, were questions which
the terrified imagination of the adept, stirred with all the German
superstitions of nixies, oak-kings, wer-wolves, hobgoblins, black
spirits and white, blue spirits and grey, durst not even attempt to
solve.
Another of his senses was soon engaged in the investigation. At the
extremity of one of the transepts of the church, at the bottom of a few
descending steps, was a small iron-grated door, opening, as far as he
recollected, to a sort of low vault or sacristy. As he cast his eye in
the direction of the sound, he observed a strong reflection of red light
glimmering through these bars, and against the steps which descended to
them. Dousterswivel stood a moment uncertain what to do; then, suddenly
forming a desperate resolution, he moved down the aisle to the place
from which the light proceeded.
[Illustration: The Funeral of the Countess]
Fortified with the sign of the cross, and as many exorcisms as his
memory could recover, he advanced to the grate, from which, unseen, he
could see what passed in the interior of the vault. As he approached
with timid and uncertain steps, the chant, after one or two wild and
prolonged cadences, died away into profound silence. The grate, when
he reached it, presented a singular spectacle in the interior of the
sacristy. An open grave, with four tall flambeaus, each about six feet
high, placed at the four corners--a bier, having a corpse in its shroud,
the arms folded upon the breast, rested upon tressels at one side of
the grave, as if ready to be interred--a priest, dressed in his cope and
stole, held open the service book--another churchman in his vestments
bore a holy-water sprinkler, and two boys in white surplices held
censers with incense--a man, of a figure once tall and commanding, but
now bent with age or infirmity, stood alone and nearest to the coffin,
attired in deep mourning--such were the most prominent figures of the
group. At a little distance were two or three persons of both sexes,
attired in long mourning hoods and cloaks; and five or six others in the
same lugubrious dress, still farther removed from the body, around the
walls of the vault, stood ranged in motionless order, each bearing
in his hand a huge torch of black wax. The smoky light from so many
flambeaus, by the red and indistinct atmosphere which it spread around,
gave a hazy, dubious, and as it were phantom-like appearance to the
outlines of this singular apparition, The voice of the priest--loud,
clear, and sonorous--now recited, from the breviary which he held in his
hand, those solemn words which the ritual of the Catholic church has
consecrated to the rendering of dust to dust. Meanwhile, Dousterswivel,
the place, the hour, and the surprise considered, still remained
uncertain whether what he saw was substantial, or an unearthly
representation of the rites to which in former times these walls were
familiar, but which are now rarely practised in Protestant countries,
and almost never in Scotland. He was uncertain whether to abide the
conclusion of the ceremony, or to endeavour to regain the chancel, when
a change in his position made him visible through the grate to one of
the attendant mourners. The person who first espied him indicated his
discovery to the individual who stood apart and nearest the coffin, by
a sign, and upon his making a sign in reply, two of the group detached
themselves, and, gliding along with noiseless steps, as if fearing to
disturb the service, unlocked and opened the grate which separated them
from the adept. Each took him by an arm, and exerting a degree of force,
which he would have been incapable of resisting had his fear permitted
him to attempt opposition, they placed him on the ground in the chancel,
and sat down, one on each side of him, as if to detain him. Satisfied he
was in the power of mortals like himself, the adept would have put some
questions to them; but while one pointed to the vault, from which the
sound of the priest’s voice was distinctly heard, the other placed
his finger upon his lips in token of silence, a hint which the German
thought it most prudent to obey. And thus they detained him until a loud
Alleluia, pealing through the deserted arches of St. Ruth, closed the
singular ceremony which it had been his fortune to witness.
When the hymn had died away with all its echoes, the voice of one of the
sable personages under whose guard the adept had remained, said, in a
familiar tone and dialect, “Dear sirs, Mr. Dousterswivel, is this you?
could not ye have let us ken an ye had wussed till hae been present
at the ceremony?--My lord couldna tak it weel your coming blinking and
jinking in, in that fashion.”
“In de name of all dat is gootness, tell me what you are?” interrupted
the German in his turn.
“What I am? why, wha should I be but Ringan Aikwood, the Knockwinnock
poinder?--and what are ye doing here at this time o’ night, unless ye
were come to attend the leddy’s burial?”
“I do declare to you, mine goot Poinder Aikwood,” said the German,
raising himself up, “that I have been this vary nights murdered, robbed,
and put in fears of my life.”
“Robbed! wha wad do sic a deed here?--Murdered! od ye speak pretty
blithe for a murdered man--Put in fear! what put you in fear, Mr.
Dousterswivel?”
“I will tell you, Maister Poinder Aikwood Ringan, just dat old miscreant
dog villain blue-gown, as you call Edie Ochiltrees.”
“I’ll neer believe that,” answered Ringan;--“Edie was ken’d to me, and
my father before me, for a true, loyal, and sooth-fast man; and, mair
by token, he’s sleeping up yonder in our barn, and has been since ten
at e’en--Sae touch ye wha liket, Mr. Dousterswivel, and whether onybody
touched ye or no, I’m sure Edie’s sackless.”
“Maister Ringan Aikwood Poinders, I do not know what you call sackless,--
but let alone all de oils and de soot dat you say he has, and I will
tell you I was dis night robbed of fifty pounds by your oil and sooty
friend, Edies Ochiltree; and he is no more in your barn even now dan I
ever shall be in de kingdom of heafen.”
“Weel, sir, if ye will gae up wi’ me, as the burial company has
dispersed, we’se mak ye down a bed at the lodge, and we’se see if Edie’s
at the barn. There was twa wild-looking chaps left the auld kirk when we
were coming up wi’ the corpse, that’s certain; and the priest, wha likes
ill that ony heretics should look on at our church ceremonies, sent twa
o’ the riding saulies after them; sae we’ll hear a’ about it frae them.”
Thus speaking, the kindly apparition, with the assistance of the mute
personage, who was his son, disencumbered himself of his cloak, and
prepared to escort Dousterswivel to the place of that rest which the
adept so much needed.
“I will apply to the magistrates to-morrow,” said the adept; “oder, I
will have de law put in force against all the peoples.”
While he thus muttered vengeance against the cause of his injury, he
tottered from among the ruins, supporting himself on Ringan and his son,
whose assistance his state of weakness rendered very necessary.
When they were clear of the priory, and had gained the little meadow
in which it stands, Dousterswivel could perceive the torches which had
caused him so much alarm issuing in irregular procession from the ruins,
and glancing their light, like that of the ignis fatuus, on the banks
of the lake. After moving along the path for some short space with a
fluctuating and irregular motion, the lights were at once extinguished.
“We aye put out the torches at the Halie-cross Well on sic occasions,”
said the forester to his guest. And accordingly no farther visible sign
of the procession offered itself to Dousterswivel, although his ear
could catch the distant and decreasing echo of horses’ hoofs in the
direction towards which the mourners had bent their course.
CHAPTER FIFTH.
O weel may the boatie row
And better may she speed,
And weel may the boatie row
That earns the bairnies’ bread!
The boatie rows, the boatie rows,
The boatie rows fu’ weel,
And lightsome be their life that bear
The merlin and the creel!
Old Ballad.
We must now introduce our reader to the interior of the fisher’s cottage
mentioned in CHAPTER eleventh of this edifying history. I wish I could
say that its inside was well arranged, decently furnished, or tolerably
clean. On the contrary, I am compelled to admit, there was confusion,--
there was dilapidation,--there was dirt good store. Yet, with all this,
there was about the inmates, Luckie Mucklebackit and her family, an
appearance of ease, plenty, and comfort, that seemed to warrant their
old sluttish proverb, “The clartier the cosier.” A huge fire, though the
season was summer, occupied the hearth, and served at once for affording
light, heat, and the means of preparing food. The fishing had been
successful, and the family, with customary improvidence, had, since
unlading the cargo, continued an unremitting operation of broiling and
frying that part of the produce reserved for home consumption, and the
bones and fragments lay on the wooden trenchers, mingled with morsels
of broken bannocks and shattered mugs of half-drunk beer. The stout and
athletic form of Maggie herself, bustling here and there among a pack of
half-grown girls and younger children, of whom she chucked one now here
and another now there, with an exclamation of “Get out o’ the gate,
ye little sorrow!” was strongly contrasted with the passive and
half-stupified look and manner of her husband’s mother, a woman advanced
to the last stage of human life, who was seated in her wonted chair
close by the fire, the warmth of which she coveted, yet hardly seemed
to be sensible of--now muttering to herself, now smiling vacantly to the
children as they pulled the strings of her toy or close cap, or twitched
her blue checked apron. With her distaff in her bosom, and her spindle
in her hand, she plied lazily and mechanically the old-fashioned
Scottish thrift, according to the old-fashioned Scottish manner. The
younger children, crawling among the feet of the elder, watched the
progress of grannies spindle as it twisted, and now and then ventured
to interrupt its progress as it danced upon the floor in those
vagaries which the more regulated spinning-wheel has now so universally
superseded, that even the fated Princess in the fairy tale might roam
through all Scotland without the risk of piercing her hand with a
spindle, and dying of the wound. Late as the hour was (and it was
long past midnight), the whole family were still on foot, and far from
proposing to go to bed; the dame was still busy broiling car-cakes
on the girdle, and the elder girl, the half-naked mermaid elsewhere
commemorated, was preparing a pile of Findhorn haddocks (that is,
haddocks smoked with green wood), to be eaten along with these relishing
provisions.
While they were thus employed, a slight tap at the door, accompanied
with the question, “Are ye up yet, sirs?” announced a visitor. The
answer, “Ay, ay,--come your ways ben, hinny,” occasioned the lifting of
the latch, and Jenny Rintherout, the female domestic of our Antiquary,
made her appearance.
“Ay, ay,” exclaimed the mistress of the family--“Hegh, sirs! can this be
you, Jenny?--a sight o’ you’s gude for sair een, lass.”
“O woman, we’ve been sae ta’en up wi’ Captain Hector’s wound up by, that
I havena had my fit out ower the door this fortnight; but he’s better
now, and auld Caxon sleeps in his room in case he wanted onything. Sae,
as soon as our auld folk gaed to bed, I e’en snodded my head up a bit,
and left the house-door on the latch, in case onybody should be wanting
in or out while I was awa, and just cam down the gate to see an there
was ony cracks amang ye.”
“Ay, ay,” answered Luckie Mucklebackit, “I see you hae gotten a’ your
braws on; ye’re looking about for Steenie now--but he’s no at hame the
night; and ye’ll no do for Steenie, lass--a feckless thing like you’s no
fit to mainteen a man.”
“Steenie will no do for me,” retorted Jenny, with a toss of her head
that might have become a higher-born damsel; “I maun hae a man that can
mainteen his wife.”
“Ou ay, hinny--thae’s your landward and burrows-town notions. My
certie!--fisherwives ken better--they keep the man, and keep the house,
and keep the siller too, lass.”
“A wheen poor drudges ye are,” answered the nymph of the land to the
nymph of the sea. “As sune as the keel o’ the coble touches the sand,
deil a bit mair will the lazy fisher loons work, but the wives maun kilt
their coats, and wade into the surf to tak the fish ashore. And then the
man casts aff the wat and puts on the dry, and sits down wi’ his pipe
and his gill-stoup ahint the ingle, like ony auld houdie, and neer a
turn will he do till the coble’s afloat again! And the wife she maun get
the scull on her back, and awa wi’ the fish to the next burrows-town,
and scauld and ban wi’ilka wife that will scauld and ban wi’her till
it’s sauld--and that’s the gait fisher-wives live, puir slaving bodies.”
“Slaves?--gae wa’, lass!--ca’ the head o’ the house slaves? little ye ken
about it, lass. Show me a word my Saunders daur speak, or a turn he daur
do about the house, without it be just to tak his meat, and his drink,
and his diversion, like ony o’ the weans. He has mair sense than to ca’
anything about the bigging his ain, frae the rooftree down to a crackit
trencher on the bink. He kens weel eneugh wha feeds him, and cleeds him,
and keeps a’ tight, thack and rape, when his coble is jowing awa in the
Firth, puir fallow. Na, na, lass!--them that sell the goods guide the
purse--them that guide the purse rule the house. Show me ane o’ yer bits
o’ farmer-bodies that wad let their wife drive the stock to the market,
and ca’ in the debts. Na, na.”
“Aweel, aweel, Maggie, ilka land has its ain lauch--But where’s Steenie
the night, when a’s come and gane? And where’s the gudeman?” *
* Note G. Gynecocracy.
“I hae putten the gudeman to his bed, for he was e’en sair forfain; and
Steenie’s awa out about some barns-breaking wi’ the auld gaberlunzie,
Edie Ochiltree: they’ll be in sune, and ye can sit doun.”
“Troth, gudewife” (taking a seat), “I haena that muckle time to stop--but
I maun tell ye about the news. Yell hae heard o’ the muckle kist o’ gowd
that Sir Arthur has fund down by at St. Ruth?--He’ll be grander than ever
now--he’ll no can haud down his head to sneeze, for fear o’ seeing his
shoon.”
“Ou ay--a’ the country’s heard o’ that; but auld Edie says that they ca’
it ten times mair than ever was o’t, and he saw them howk it up. Od, it
would be lang or a puir body that needed it got sic a windfa’.”
“Na, that’s sure eneugh.--And yell hae heard o’ the Countess o’ Glenallan
being dead and lying in state, and how she’s to be buried at St. Ruth’s
as this night fa’s, wi’ torch-light; and a’ the popist servants, and
Ringan Aikwood, that’s a papist too, are to be there, and it will be the
grandest show ever was seen.”
“Troth, hinny,” answered the Nereid, “if they let naebody but papists
come there, it’ll no be muckle o’ a show in this country, for the auld
harlot, as honest Mr. Blattergowl ca’s her, has few that drink o’ her
cup o’ enchantments in this corner o’ our chosen lands.--But what can ail
them to bury the auld carlin (a rudas wife she was) in the night-time?--I
dare say our gudemither will ken.”
Here she exalted her voice, and exclaimed twice or thrice, “Gudemither!
gudemither!” but, lost in the apathy of age and deafness, the aged sibyl
she addressed continued plying her spindle without understanding the
appeal made to her.
“Speak to your grandmither, Jenny--Od, I wad rather hail the coble half a
mile aff, and the nor-wast wind whistling again in my teeth.”
“Grannie,” said the little mermaid, in a voice to which the old woman
was better accustomed, “minnie wants to ken what for the Glenallan folk
aye bury by candle-light in the ruing of St. Ruth!”
The old woman paused in the act of twirling the spindle, turned round to
the rest of the party, lifted her withered, trembling, and clay-coloured
hand, raised up her ashen-hued and wrinkled face, which the quick
motion of two light-blue eyes chiefly distinguished from the visage of a
corpse, and, as if catching at any touch of association with the living
world, answered, “What gars the Glenallan family inter their dead by
torchlight, said the lassie?--Is there a Glenallan dead e’en now?”
“We might be a’ dead and buried too,” said Maggie, “for onything ye
wad ken about it;”--and then, raising her voice to the stretch of her
mother-in-law’s comprehension, she added,
“It’s the auld Countess, gudemither.”
“And is she ca’d hame then at last?” said the old woman, in a voice
that seemed to be agitated with much more feeling than belonged to
her extreme old age, and the general indifference and apathy of her
manner--“is she then called to her last account after her lang race o’
pride and power?--O God, forgie her!”
“But minnie was asking ye,” resumed the lesser querist, “what for the
Glenallan family aye bury their dead by torch-light?”
“They hae aye dune sae,” said the grandmother, “since the time the Great
Earl fell in the sair battle o’ the Harlaw, when they say the coronach
was cried in ae day from the mouth of the Tay to the Buck of the
Cabrach, that ye wad hae heard nae other sound but that of lamentation
for the great folks that had fa’en fighting against Donald of the Isles.
But the Great Earl’s mither was living--they were a doughty and a dour
race, the women o’ the house o’ Glenallan--and she wad hae nae coronach
cried for her son, but had him laid in the silence o’ midnight in his
place o’ rest, without either drinking the dirge, or crying the lament.
She said he had killed enow that day he died, for the widows and
daughters o’ the Highlanders he had slain to cry the coronach for them
they had lost, and for her son too; and sae she laid him in his gave wi’
dry eyes, and without a groan or a wail. And it was thought a proud word
o’ the family, and they aye stickit by it--and the mair in the latter
times, because in the night-time they had mair freedom to perform their
popish ceremonies by darkness and in secrecy than in the daylight--at
least that was the case in my time; they wad hae been disturbed in
the day-time baith by the law and the commons of Fairport--they may be
owerlooked now, as I have heard: the warlds changed--I whiles hardly ken
whether I am standing or sitting, or dead or living.”
And looking round the fire, as if in a state of unconscious uncertainty
of which she complained, old Elspeth relapsed into her habitual and
mechanical occupation of twirling the spindle.
“Eh, sirs!” said Jenny Rintherout, under her breath to her gossip, “it’s
awsome to hear your gudemither break out in that gait--it’s like the dead
speaking to the living.”
“Ye’re no that far wrang, lass; she minds naething o’ what passes the
day--but set her on auld tales, and she can speak like a prent buke.
She kens mair about the Glenallan family than maist folk--the gudeman’s
father was their fisher mony a day. Ye maun ken the papists make a great
point o’ eating fish--it’s nae bad part o’ their religion that, whatever
the rest is--I could aye sell the best o’ fish at the best o’ prices for
the Countess’s ain table, grace be wi’ her! especially on a Friday--But
see as our gudemither’s hands and lips are ganging--now it’s working in
her head like barm--she’ll speak eneugh the night. Whiles she’ll no speak
a word in a week, unless it be to the bits o’ bairns.”
“Hegh, Mrs. Mucklebackit, she’s an awsome wife!” said Jenny in reply.
“D’ye think she’s a’thegither right? Folk say she downa gang to the
kirk, or speak to the minister, and that she was ance a papist but since
her gudeman’s been dead, naebody kens what she is. D’ye think yoursell
that she’s no uncanny?”
“Canny, ye silly tawpie! think ye ae auld wife’s less canny than
anither? unless it be Alison Breck--I really couldna in conscience swear
for her; I have kent the boxes she set fill’d wi’ partans, when”--
“Whisht, whisht, Maggie,” whispered Jenny--“your gudemither’s gaun to
speak again.”
“Wasna there some ane o’ ye said,” asked the old sibyl, “or did I dream,
or was it revealed to me, that Joscelind, Lady Glenallan, is dead, an’
buried this night?”
“Yes, gudemither,” screamed the daughter-in-law, “it’s e’en sae.”
“And e’en sae let it be,” said old Elspeth; “she’s made mony a sair
heart in her day--ay, e’en her ain son’s--is he living yet?”
“Ay, he’s living yet; but how lang he’ll live--however, dinna ye mind his
coming and asking after you in the spring, and leaving siller?”
“It may be sae, Magge--I dinna mind it--but a handsome gentleman he was,
and his father before him. Eh! if his father had lived, they might hae
been happy folk! But he was gane, and the lady carried it in--ower and
out-ower wi’ her son, and garr’d him trow the thing he never suld hae
trowed, and do the thing he has repented a’ his life, and will repent
still, were his life as lang as this lang and wearisome ane o’ mine.”
“O what was it, grannie?”--and “What was it, gudemither?”--and “What was
it, Luckie Elspeth?” asked the children, the mother, and the visitor, in
one breath.
“Never ask what it was,” answered the old sibyl, “but pray to God that
ye arena left to the pride and wilfu’ness o’ your ain hearts: they may
be as powerful in a cabin as in a castle--I can bear a sad witness to
that. O that weary and fearfu’ night! will it never gang out o’ my auld
head!--Eh! to see her lying on the floor wi’ her lang hair dreeping wi’
the salt water!--Heaven will avenge on a’ that had to do wi’t. Sirs! is
my son out wi’ the coble this windy e’en?”
“Na, na, mither--nae coble can keep the sea this wind; he’s sleeping in
his bed out-ower yonder ahint the hallan.”
“Is Steenie out at sea then?”
“Na, grannie--Steenie’s awa out wi’ auld Edie Ochiltree, the gaberlunzie;
maybe they’ll be gaun to see the burial.”
“That canna be,” said the mother of the family; “we kent naething o’t
till Jock Rand cam in, and tauld us the Aikwoods had warning to attend--
they keep thae things unco private--and they were to bring the corpse a’
the way frae the Castle, ten miles off, under cloud o’ night. She has
lain in state this ten days at Glenallan House, in a grand chamber a’
hung wi’ black, and lighted wi’ wax cannle.”