"Peace be with them all, every man of them," said the Antiquary. "But to

return to our subject—Do you recollect, I say, any of those poems which

afforded you such amusement?"

"Very hard this," thought M'Intyre, "that he will speak with such glee

of everything which is ancient, excepting my family. "—Then, after

some efforts at recollection, he added aloud, "Yes, sir,—I think I do

remember some lines; but you do not understand the Gaelic language."

"And will readily excuse hearing it. But you can give me some idea of

the sense in our own vernacular idiom?"

"I shall prove a wretched interpreter," said M'Intyre, running over

the original, well garnished with aghes, aughs, and oughs, and similar

gutterals, and then coughing and hawking as if the translation stuck

in his throat. At length, having premised that the poem was a dialogue

between the poet Oisin, or Ossian, and Patrick, the tutelar Saint of

Ireland, and that it was difficult, if not impossible, to render the

exquisite felicity of the first two or three lines, he said the sense

was to this purpose:

"Patrick the psalm-singer,

Since you will not listen to one of my stories,

Though you never heard it before,

I am sorry to tell you

You are little better than an ass"—

"Good! good!" exclaimed the Antiquary; "but go on. Why, this is, after

all, the most admirable fooling—I dare say the poet was very right. What

says the Saint?"

"He replies in character," said M'Intyre; "but you should hear MAlpin

sing the original. The speeches of Ossian come in upon a strong deep

bass—those of Patrick are upon a tenor key."

"Like MAlpin's drone and small pipes, I suppose," said Oldbuck. "Well?

Pray go on."

"Well then, Patrick replies to Ossian:

Upon my word, son of Fingal,

While I am warbling the psalms,

The clamour of your old women's tales

Disturbs my devotional exercises."

"Excellent!—why, this is better and better. I hope Saint Patrick sung

better than Blattergowl's precentor, or it would be hang—choice between

the poet and psalmist. But what I admire is the courtesy of these two

eminent persons towards each other. It is a pity there should not be a

word of this in Macpherson's translation."

"If you are sure of that," said M'Intyre, gravely, "he must have taken

very unwarrantable liberties with his original."

"It will go near to be thought so shortly—but pray proceed."

"Then," said M'Intyre, "this is the answer of Ossian:

Dare you compare your psalms,

You son of a—"

"Son of a what?" exclaimed Oldbuck.

"It means, I think," said the young soldier, with some reluctance, "son

of a female dog:

Do you compare your psalms,

To the tales of the bare-arm'd Fenians"

"Are you sure you are translating that last epithet correctly, Hector?"

"Quite sure, sir," answered Hector, doggedly.

"Because I should have thought the nudity might have been quoted as

existing in a different part of the body."

Disdaining to reply to this insinuation, Hector proceeded in his

recitation:

"I shall think it no great harm

To wring your bald head from your shoulders—

But what is that yonder?" exclaimed Hector, interrupting himself.

"One of the herd of Proteus," said the Antiquary—"a phoca, or seal,

lying asleep on the beach."

Upon which M'Intyre, with the eagerness of a young sportsman, totally

forgot both Ossian, Patrick, his uncle, and his wound, and exclaiming—"I

shall have her! I shall have her!" snatched the walking-stick out of the

hand of the astonished Antiquary, at some risk of throwing him down, and

set off at full speed to get between the animal and the sea, to which

element, having caught the alarm, she was rapidly retreating.

Not Sancho, when his master interrupted his account of the combatants of

Pentapolin with the naked arm, to advance in person to the charge of

the flock of sheep, stood more confounded than Oldbuck at this sudden

escapade of his nephew.

"Is the devil in him," was his first exclamation, "to go to disturb

the brute that was never thinking of him!"—Then elevating his voice,

"Hector—nephew—fool—let alone the Phoca—let alone the Phoca!— they bite,

I tell you, like furies. He minds me no more than a post. There—there

they are at it—Gad, the Phoca has the best of it! I am glad to see it,"

said he, in the bitterness of his heart, though really alarmed for his

nephew's safety—"I am glad to see it, with all my heart and spirit."

In truth, the seal, finding her retreat intercepted by the light-footed

soldier, confronted him manfully, and having sustained a heavy blow

without injury, she knitted her brows, as is the fashion of the animal

when incensed, and making use at once of her fore-paws and her unwieldy

strength, wrenched the weapon out of the assailant's hand, overturned

him on the sands, and scuttled away into the sea, without doing him any

farther injury. Captain M'Intyre, a good deal out of countenance at

the issue of his exploit, just rose in time to receive the ironical

congratulations of his uncle, upon a single combat worthy to be

commemorated by Ossian himself, "since," said the Antiquary, "your

magnanimous opponent has fled, though not upon eagle's wings, from the

foe that was low—Egad, she walloped away with all the grace of triumph,

and has carried my stick off also, by way of spolia opima."

M'Intyre had little to answer for himself, except that a Highlander

could never pass a deer, a seal, or a salmon, where there was a

possibility of having a trial of skill with them, and that he had forgot

one of his arms was in a sling. He also made his fall an apology for

returning back to Monkbarns, and thus escape the farther raillery of his

uncle, as well as his lamentations for his walking-stick.

"I cut it," he said, "in the classic woods of Hawthornden, when I did

not expect always to have been a bachelor—I would not have given it for

an ocean of seals—O Hector! Hector!—thy namesake was born to be the prop

of Troy, and thou to be the plague of Monkbarns!"

CHAPTER TENTH.

Tell me not of it, friend—when the young weep,

Their tears are luke-warm brine;—from your old eyes

Sorrow falls down like hail-drops of the North,

Chilling the furrows of our withered cheeks,

Cold as our hopes, and hardened as our feeling—

Theirs, as they fall, sink sightless—ours recoil,

Heap the fair plain, and bleaken all before us.

Old Play.

The Antiquary, being now alone, hastened his pace, which had been

retarded by these various discussions, and the rencontre which had

closed them, and soon arrived before the half-dozen cottages at

Mussel-crag. They had now, in addition to their usual squalid and

uncomfortable appearance, the melancholy attributes of the house of

mourning. The boats were all drawn up on the beach; and, though the day

was fine, and the season favourable, the chant, which is used by the

fishers when at sea, was silent, as well as the prattle of the children,

and the shrill song of the mother, as she sits mending her nets by the

door. A few of the neighbours, some in their antique and well-saved

suits of black, others in their ordinary clothes, but all bearing an

expression of mournful sympathy with distress so sudden and unexpected,

stood gathered around the door of Mucklebackit's cottage, waiting till

"the body was lifted." As the Laird of Monkbarns approached, they made

way for him to enter, doffing their hats and bonnets as he passed, with

an air of melancholy courtesy, and he returned their salutes in the same

manner.

In the inside of the cottage was a scene which our Wilkie alone could

have painted, with that exquisite feeling of nature that characterises

his enchanting productions,

The body was laid in its coffin within the wooden bedstead which the

young fisher had occupied while alive. At a little distance stood the

father, whose rugged weather-beaten countenance, shaded by his

grizzled hair, had faced many a stormy night and night-like day. He was

apparently revolving his loss in his mind, with that strong feeling

of painful grief peculiar to harsh and rough characters, which almost

breaks forth into hatred against the world, and all that remain in it,

after the beloved object is withdrawn. The old man had made the most

desperate efforts to save his son, and had only been withheld by main

force from renewing them at a moment when, without the possibility

of assisting the sufferer, he must himself have perished. All this

apparently was boiling in his recollection. His glance was directed

sidelong towards the coffin, as to an object on which he could not

stedfastly look, and yet from which he could not withdraw his eyes. His

answers to the necessary questions which were occasionally put to him,

were brief, harsh, and almost fierce. His family had not yet dared to

address to him a word, either of sympathy or consolation. His masculine

wife, virago as she was, and absolute mistress of the family, as she

justly boasted herself, on all ordinary occasions, was, by this great

loss, terrified into silence and submission, and compelled to hide from

her husband's observation the bursts of her female sorrow. As he had

rejected food ever since the disaster had happened, not daring herself

to approach him, she had that morning, with affectionate artifice,

employed the youngest and favourite child to present her husband with

some nourishment. His first action was to put it from him with an angry

violence that frightened the child; his next, to snatch up the boy

and devour him with kisses. "Yell be a bra' fallow, an ye be spared,

Patie,—but ye'll never—never can be—what he was to me!—He has sailed the

coble wi' me since he was ten years auld, and there wasna the like

o' him drew a net betwixt this and Buchan-ness.—They say folks maun

submit—I will try."

And he had been silent from that moment until compelled to answer the

necessary questions we have already noticed. Such was the disconsolate

state of the father.

In another corner of the cottage, her face covered by her apron, which

was flung over it, sat the mother—the nature of her grief sufficiently

indicated by the wringing of her hands, and the convulsive agitation

of the bosom, which the covering could not conceal. Two of her gossips,

officiously whispering into her ear the commonplace topic of resignation

under irremediable misfortune, seemed as if they were endeavouring to

stun the grief which they could not console.

The sorrow of the children was mingled with wonder at the preparations

they beheld around them, and at the unusual display of wheaten bread

and wine, which the poorest peasant, or fisher, offers to the guests on

these mournful occasions; and thus their grief for their brother's death

was almost already lost in admiration of the splendour of his funeral.

But the figure of the old grandmother was the most remarkable of the

sorrowing group. Seated on her accustomed chair, with her usual air of

apathy, and want of interest in what surrounded her, she seemed every

now and then mechanically to resume the motion of twirling her spindle;

then to look towards her bosom for the distaff, although both had been

laid aside. She would then cast her eyes about, as if surprised at

missing the usual implements of her industry, and appear struck by the

black colour of the gown in which they had dressed her, and embarrassed

by the number of persons by whom she was surrounded. Then, finally, she

would raise her head with a ghastly look, and fix her eyes upon the bed

which contained the coffin of her grandson, as if she had at once,

and for the first time, acquired sense to comprehend her inexpressible

calamity. These alternate feelings of embarrassment, wonder, and grief,

seemed to succeed each other more than once upon her torpid features.

But she spoke not a word—neither had she shed a tear—nor did one of the

family understand, either from look or expression, to what extent she

comprehended the uncommon bustle around her. Thus she sat among the

funeral assembly like a connecting link between the surviving mourners

and the dead corpse which they bewailed—a being in whom the light of

existence was already obscured by the encroaching shadows of death.

When Oldbuck entered this house of mourning, he was received by a

general and silent inclination of the head, and, according to the

fashion of Scotland on such occasions, wine and spirits and bread

were offered round to the guests. Elspeth, as these refreshments were

presented, surprised and startled the whole company by motioning to the

person who bore them to stop; then, taking a glass in her hand, she rose

up, and, as the smile of dotage played upon her shrivelled features, she

pronounced, with a hollow and tremulous voice, "Wishing a' your healths,

sirs, and often may we hae such merry meetings!"

All shrunk from the ominous pledge, and set down the untasted liquor

with a degree of shuddering horror, which will not surprise those who

know how many superstitions are still common on such occasions among the

Scottish vulgar. But as the old woman tasted the liquor, she suddenly

exclaimed with a sort of shriek, "What's this?—this is wine—how should

there be wine in my son's house?—Ay," she continued with a suppressed

groan, "I mind the sorrowful cause now," and, dropping the glass from

her hand, she stood a moment gazing fixedly on the bed in which the

coffin of her grandson was deposited, and then sinking gradually into

her seat, she covered her eyes and forehead with her withered and pallid

hand.

At this moment the clergyman entered the cottage. Mr. Blattergowl,

though a dreadful proser, particularly on the subject of augmentations,

localities, teinds, and overtures in that session of the General

Assembly, to which, unfortunately for his auditors, he chanced one year

to act as moderator, was nevertheless a good man, in the old Scottish

presbyterian phrase, God-ward and man-ward. No divine was more attentive

in visiting the sick and afflicted, in catechising the youth, in

instructing the ignorant, and in reproving the erring. And hence,

notwithstanding impatience of his prolixity and prejudices, personal or

professional, and notwithstanding, moreover, a certain habitual contempt

for his understanding, especially on affairs of genius and taste,

on which Blattergowl was apt to be diffuse, from his hope of one

day fighting his way to a chair of rhetoric or belles lettres,—

notwithstanding, I say, all the prejudices excited against him by these

circumstances, our friend the Antiquary looked with great regard and

respect on the said Blattergowl, though I own he could seldom, even by

his sense of decency and the remonstrances of his womankind, be hounded

out, as he called it, to hear him preach. But he regularly took shame to

himself for his absence when Blattergowl came to Monkbarns to dinner,

to which he was always invited of a Sunday, a mode of testifying his

respect which the proprietor probably thought fully as agreeable to the

clergyman, and rather more congenial to his own habits.

To return from a digression which can only serve to introduce the honest

clergyman more particularly to our readers, Mr. Blattergowl had no

sooner entered the hut, and received the mute and melancholy salutations

of the company whom it contained, than he edged himself towards the

unfortunate father, and seemed to endeavour to slide in a few words of

condolence or of consolation. But the old man was incapable as yet of

receiving either; he nodded, however, gruffly, and shook the clergyman's

hand in acknowledgment of his good intentions, but was either unable or

unwilling to make any verbal reply.

The minister next passed to the mother, moving along the floor as

slowly, silently, and gradually, as if he had been afraid that the

ground would, like unsafe ice, break beneath his feet, or that the first

echo of a footstep was to dissolve some magic spell, and plunge the hut,

with all its inmates, into a subterranean abyss. The tenor of what he

had said to the poor woman could only be judged by her answers, as,

half-stifled by sobs ill-repressed, and by the covering which she still

kept over her countenance, she faintly answered at each pause in his

speech—"Yes, sir, yes!—Ye're very gude—ye're very gude!—Nae doubt, nae

doubt!—It's our duty to submit!—But, oh dear! my poor Steenie! the pride

o' my very heart, that was sae handsome and comely, and a help to his

family, and a comfort to us a', and a pleasure to a' that lookit on

him!—Oh, my bairn! my bairn! my bairn! what for is thou lying there!—and

eh! what for am I left to greet for ye!"

There was no contending with this burst of sorrow and natural affection.

Oldbuck had repeated recourse to his snuff-box to conceal the tears

which, despite his shrewd and caustic temper, were apt to start on such

occasions. The female assistants whimpered, the men held their bonnets

to their faces, and spoke apart with each other. The clergyman,

meantime, addressed his ghostly consolation to the aged grandmother.

At first she listened, or seemed to listen, to what he said, with the

apathy of her usual unconsciousness. But as, in pressing this theme,

he approached so near to her ear that the sense of his words became

distinctly intelligible to her, though unheard by those who stood more

distant, her countenance at once assumed that stern and expressive cast

which characterized her intervals of intelligence. She drew up her head

and body, shook her head in a manner that showed at least impatience,

if not scorn of his counsel, and waved her hand slightly, but with a

gesture so expressive, as to indicate to all who witnessed it a marked

and disdainful rejection of the ghostly consolation proffered to her.

The minister stepped back as if repulsed, and, by lifting gently and

dropping his hand, seemed to show at once wonder, sorrow, and compassion

for her dreadful state of mind. The rest of the company sympathized, and

a stifled whisper went through them, indicating how much her desperate

and determined manner impressed them with awe, and even horror.

In the meantime, the funeral company was completed, by the arrival of

one or two persons who had been expected from Fairport. The wine

and spirits again circulated, and the dumb show of greeting was anew

interchanged. The grandame a second time took a glass in her hand, drank

its contents, and exclaimed, with a sort of laugh,—"Ha! ha! I hae tasted

wine twice in ae day—Whan did I that before, think ye, cummers?—Never

since"—and the transient glow vanishing from her countenance, she set

the glass down, and sunk upon the settle from whence she had risen to

snatch at it.

As the general amazement subsided, Mr. Oldbuck, whose heart bled to

witness what he considered as the errings of the enfeebled intellect

struggling with the torpid chill of age and of sorrow, observed to the

clergyman that it was time to proceed with the ceremony. The father was

incapable of giving directions, but the nearest relation of the family

made a sign to the carpenter, who in such cases goes through the duty of

the undertaker, to proceed in his office. The creak of the screw-nails

presently announced that the lid of the last mansion of mortality was in

the act of being secured above its tenant. The last act which separates

us for ever, even from the mortal relies of the person we assemble to

mourn, has usually its effect upon the most indifferent, selfish, and

hard-hearted. With a spirit of contradiction, which we may be pardoned

for esteeming narrow-minded, the fathers of the Scottish kirk rejected,

even on this most solemn occasion, the form of an address to the

Divinity, lest they should be thought to give countenance to the rituals

of Rome or of England. With much better and more liberal judgment, it

is the present practice of most of the Scottish clergymen to seize this

opportunity of offering a prayer, and exhortation, suitable to make an

impression upon the living, while they are yet in the very presence

of the relics of him whom they have but lately seen such as they

themselves, and who now is such as they must in their time become. But

this decent and praiseworthy practice was not adopted at the time of

which I am treating, or at least, Mr. Blattergowl did not act upon it,

and the ceremony proceeded without any devotional exercise.

The coffin, covered with a pall, and supported upon hand-spikes by the

nearest relatives, now only waited the father to support the head, as is

customary. Two or three of these privileged persons spoke to him, but he

only answered by shaking his hand and his head in token of refusal. With

better intention than judgment, the friends, who considered this as

an act of duty on the part of the living, and of decency towards the

deceased, would have proceeded to enforce their request, had not

Oldbuck interfered between the distressed father and his well-meaning

tormentors, and informed them, that he himself, as landlord and master

to the deceased, "would carry his head to the grave." In spite of the

sorrowful occasion, the hearts of the relatives swelled within them at

so marked a distinction on the part of the laird; and old Alison Breck,

who was present among other fish-women, swore almost aloud, "His honour

Monkbarns should never want sax warp of oysters in the season" (of

which fish he was understood to be fond), "if she should gang to sea and

dredge for them hersell, in the foulest wind that ever blew." And such

is the temper of the Scottish common people, that, by this instance

of compliance with their customs, and respect for their persons, Mr.

Oldbuck gained more popularity than by all the sums which he had yearly

distributed in the parish for purposes of private or general charity.

The sad procession now moved slowly forward, preceded by the beadles, or

saulies, with their batons,—miserable-looking old men, tottering as if

on the edge of that grave to which they were marshalling another, and

clad, according to Scottish guise, with threadbare black coats, and

hunting-caps decorated with rusty crape. Monkbarns would probably have

remonstrated against this superfluous expense, had he been consulted;

but, in doing so, he would have given more offence than he gained

popularity by condescending to perform the office of chief-mourner. Of

this he was quite aware, and wisely withheld rebuke, where rebuke

and advice would have been equally unavailing. In truth, the Scottish

peasantry are still infected with that rage for funeral ceremonial,

which once distinguished the grandees of the kingdom so much, that a

sumptuary law was made by the Parliament of Scotland for the purpose of

restraining it; and I have known many in the lowest stations, who have

denied themselves not merely the comforts, but almost the necessaries

of life, in order to save such a sum of money as might enable their

surviving friends to bury them like Christians, as they termed it;

nor could their faithful executors be prevailed upon, though equally

necessitous, to turn to the use and maintenance of the living the money

vainly wasted upon the interment of the dead.

The procession to the churchyard, at about half-a-mile's distance, was

made with the mournful solemnity usual on these occasions,—the body was

consigned to its parent earth,—and when the labour of the gravediggers

had filled up the trench, and covered it with fresh sod, Mr. Oldbuck,

taking his hat off, saluted the assistants, who had stood by in

melancholy silence, and with that adieu dispersed the mourners.

The clergyman offered our Antiquary his company to walk homeward; but

Mr. Oldbuck had been so much struck with the deportment of the fisherman

and his mother, that, moved by compassion, and perhaps also, in some

degree, by that curiosity which induces us to seek out even what gives

us pain to witness, he preferred a solitary walk by the coast, for the

purpose of again visiting the cottage as he passed.

CHAPTER ELEVENTH

What is this secret sin, this untold tale,

That art cannot extract, nor penance cleanse?

—Her muscles hold their place;

Nor discomposed, nor formed to steadiness,

No sudden flushing, and no faltering lip.—

Mysterious Mother.