_PLUCKING A FIERY BRAND_
But there are others of whom I have better things to record, and indeed
better things shall yet be set down by me concerning Geordie Lorimer
before these short and simple annals shall have ended. For there is
nothing so joysome to record as the brightening story of a soul coming
to its real birth from the travail of its sin and struggle. For
perchance time itself is God's great midwife, and man's writhing agony
is to the end that he may soon be born.
The serious will doubtless wish to learn what befell me in my effort to
beguile the rugged Donald M'Phatter and his wife, who had quit the kirk
when the kirk quit the tokens, back to the worship of the sanctuary. It
is many years since they returned to St. Cuthbert's hallowed shrine, and
they now sing the uncreated song.
For they have joined that choir invisible whose voices, trained by God,
blend in perfect unison, but not in time; for they reckon not by days
and years where they have gone to dwell.
It may be set down as certain that I would never have won them back to
church had it not been that I abandoned argument and adopted friendship.
For argument, to my mind, satisfies a people's souls as well as a bill
of fare will suffice a hungry man; but the heart's food is a different
matter. Argument may be botany, but friendship is a flower; and one
little violet is better than one big volume, or a thousand of them, as
far as that goes. This is perhaps the same thing as to say that a living
dog is better than a dead lion, for most big books are sepulchres--but I
think that my figure hath a sweeter flavour than the other.
And when I deliver the Yale lectures to young ministers, I shall tell
them that there is a blessed guile, a holy cozenage of the heart whereby
they may win their people's souls by stealth. And if a parson hath some
obdurate parishioner or some gnarled and snarling elder, let him attack
him as a thief in the night, and turn its darkness into day.
I had to build my friendship with Donald brick by brick, and oftentimes
it swayed before his blasts. A hundred times I could have been justly
angry and forever done with him. But I knew a man, a very near relation,
with whom God might oftener have done the same, and had not; besides, I
remembered that adroit petition in the Lord's Prayer, which is the
plummet of the soul's sincerity--and I had read of One who reviled not
again.
"In days far by," he charged, "oor faithers said wi' pride as hoo the
ministers o' God were dyin' for the truth; but in thae modern days, a'
men say as hoo they're dyin' for their steepin'" (stipend).
Now this was hard to bear, for I had declined larger stipends than I
accepted from St. Cuthbert's, and some would say that this was a right
and proper time to stand upon my dignity. But what is so dignified as
the Cross, planted in the very centre of shame's garden? I had long
before determined that no man can stand on dignity, for it must be
dignity that stands upon the man, and by no act or word of his, be it
remarked, but by the high act of God. For those men who stand on dignity
are top-heavy things, pigmies upon stilts, triangles upside down.
Therefore I was patient with Donald, and guarded our infant friendship
as a lost hunter shields his last remaining match. I said little to him
about church, and much about the Highlands. For Donald was a belated
Highlander, his parents having lapsed to the lowlands, where birth took
him at a disadvantage; but he was ever struggling to recover Inverness.
"I was a hielandman afore I was born and a lowlandman after. I kind o'
flawed doon like, ye ken," he said.
I nodded acquiescence, for it is a favourite theory of mine that a man
is born of his grandparents just as much as of his father and his
mother; they are equally responsible, I hold, but have the advantage of
an earlier retreat.
It was Donald's great delight to recount the fighting stories of his
highland ancestors. In all that bloody reel he joined again with joy.
The slightest reference to it, and Donald was off--over the hills and
far away, his guid blue bonnet on his head, his burly knees as bare as
the bayonet his fathers bore, and the wild skirl of the bagpipes in his
heart. Those pagan-Christian days, those shameful splendours of feud and
raid and massacre, those mutual pleasantries of human pig-sticking,
those civilized savageries and chivalric demonries--all these were
Donald's sanguinary food.
"Mind ye," he would say, "half the time they didna ken what they were
fechtin' aboot. But they focht a' the better for that--the graun' human
principle was there; they kent that fine, an' that was a' they needit
for to ken. Forbye, they foucht when the chief bade them fecht. When he
gied the word, hieland foot was never slow and hieland bluid was never
laggin'. Man, what a graun' chief Bonyparte wad hae made, gin the
M'Phatters had ta'en him up!"
"Dinna be aye speakin' aboot yir M'Phatters," interrupted his gentle
wife, now somewhat aroused, for her maiden name was Elsie Campbell, and
she had her own share of highland memories. "They were guid eneuch
fechters in their way, nae doot, but it wasna the Campbell way. Yir
M'Phatter feet that ye're haverin' aboot was never slow when the
Campbells was comin', I'll grant ye that--the Campbells did them, ye ken
that fine, Donald."
"Hoots, wumman, ye dinna ken what yir sayin'. Div ye no' mind the battle
o' the bluidy shirt, an'----"
"Haud yir wheesht--I canna bide to hear aboot thae bluidy shirts an'
things. It's a fair scunner', and the minister hearin' ye to the
bargain," Elsie shut him off triumphantly in propriety's great name.
The first real olive branch of friendship which Donald extended to me
was under cover of the bagpipes. I knew he was relenting when he first
asked me if I would like to hear him play. I forged a pious lie,
declaring it would give me the greatest pleasure. Surely that sin has
been atoned for; I have suffered for it as no tongue can tell. The world
needeth a new Dante, to write a new _Inferno_, with the bagpipes thrown
in. Then will that sombre picture of future suffering be complete. I
make no reckless charge against those aforesaid instruments of music,
facetiously so called. The bagpipes are a good thing in their place, but
their place is with Dante and his _Inferno_.
They have survived only as bulldogs survive, from perverted sentiment,
and mal-educated taste. For the Scotsman is the most sentimental among
men, stubbornly and maliciously and relentlessly sentimental. The
bagpipes are a legacy from the grim testament of war, and the savage
breath of other days belches through them yet. Ah me! with what secret
pride I hear again far other music wafted from my native Emerald Isle!
Nor can I well conceal my joy that the emblem of Ireland, despised and
rejected though she be, is the sweetest-tongued of all music-making
things in this vale of tears. For her, no lion, tempest-crowned, for her
no prowling bear, for her no screaming eagle--but the harp, mellifluous
and tender. And although its liquid strain hath for centuries been
touched by sorrow, yet there hath been music in its voice for all the
happier listening world, and the day draweth near, please God, when its
unfleeting joy shall descend and rest on her own fields and meadows,
making glad the hearts within her humble cottages, whose only wealth is
love.
But Donald's fervent passion for this warlike weapon of his fathers was
unrestrained by thoughts of other lands. Had any man suggested that
Irish music was superior, he would doubtless have bidden him begone and
dwell with other lyres. Such suggestion I did not dare to make. On the
contrary, I smiled as he fondled his windy octopus, which he did with
mysterious tenderness. Then he adjusted the creature to his lips, while
I calmly braced myself for the gathering storm.
I had not long to wait. He paced dramatically back and forward for a
minute in a preliminary sort of way, like one who pushes his shallop
from the shore, gently pressing the huge belly of the thing with his
elbow as if to prompt it for the ensuing fray. The thing emitted one or
two sample sounds, not odious particularly, but infantile and grimly
prophetic, like the initial squeaks of some windful babe awaking from
its sleep. Then the thing seemed to feel its strength, to recognize its
dark enfranchisement, and broke into such a blasphemy of sound as hath
not been heard since the angels alighted where they fell.
I have heard the deep roar of the ocean, and have listened to the
screech of the typhoon through befiddled sails; I have shuddered at the
savage yell of the hyena, and have grown cold, even in the tropics,
before the tooting of the wounded elephant; I have heard the eagle rend
the firmament and the midnight fog-horn ring the changes on
eternity--join them all together, and they will be still but as a
village choir compared to the infinite and full-orbed bray of the
highland bagpipes.
After the first shock of sky-quake had subsided, Donald turned and
looked at me with a rapt and heavenly smile, the thing emitting sundry
noises all the while, like fragments from a crash of sound,
comparatively mild, as a stream which has just run Niagara.
I stood, dripping with noise, fearful lest the tide might rush in again,
and looking about for my hat, if haply it might have been cast up upon
the beach.
"Wasna that a graun' ane?" said the machinator. "It's nae often ye'll
hear the like o' that in Canada. There's jist ae man beside masel' can
gie ye that this side o' Inverness--and he's broke i' the win'."
"Thank God!" I ejaculated fervently, not knowing what I said.
But Donald misunderstood me and I had nothing to fear.
"Ye're richt there," he cried exultantly; "it's what I ca' a sacred
preevilege to hear the like o' that, maist as sacred as a psalm. Ma
faither used to play that verra tune at funerals i' the hielands, and
the words they aye sang till't was these:--
"'Take comfort, Christians, when your friends
In Jesus fall asleep,'
an' it used to fair owercome the mourners. If ye were gaun by a hoose
i' the hieland glens, and heard thae words and that tune, ye cud mak'
sure there was a deid corpse i' the hoose."
"I don't wonder," was my response; but he perceived nothing in the words
except reverent assent.
"Ay," went on Donald, "it's a graun' means o' rest to the weary heart.
It's fair past everything for puttin' the bairns to sleep. Mony's the
time I hae lulled them wi' that same tune when their mither cud dae
naethin' wi' them. I dinna mind as I ever heard a bairn cry when I was
gien them that tune."
"I quite believe that," I replied, burning to ask him if they ever cried
again. But I refrained, and began my retreat towards the door.
"Bide a wee; I maun gie ye 'The MacGregor's Lament.'"
But I was obstinate, having enough occasion for my own.
"Hoots, man, dinna gang--it's early yet."
"But I really feel that I must go. I would sooner hear it some other
time." At my own funeral, I meant. "Besides, Mr. M'Phatter, the bagpipes
always influence me strangely. They give me such a feeling of the other
world as kind of unfits me for my work."
Whereupon Donald let me go. As I fled along the lane I watched him
holding the thing still in his hand, and I feared even yet lest it
might slip its leash.
But I have been thankful ever since that Donald did not ask me which
other world I meant.