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Transcriber's note:
The volume from which this e-book was created contained two books,
_Auld Licht Idylls_ and _Better Dead_. The Introduction discusses
both.
The Novels, Tales and Sketches of J. M. Barrie
AULD LICHT IDYLLS
[Frontispiece: Photograph of J. M. Barrie]
Published in New York by
Charles Scribner's Sons
1896
Author's Edition
Copyright, 1896, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
TO
FREDERICK GREENWOOD
INTRODUCTION
This is the only American edition of my books produced with my
sanction, and I have special reasons for thanking Messrs. Scribner for
its publication; they let it be seen, by this edition, what are my
books, for I know not how many volumes purporting to be by me, are in
circulation in America which are no books of mine. I have seen several
of these, bearing such titles as "Two of Them," "An Auld Licht Manse,"
"A Tillyloss Scandal," and some of them announce themselves as author's
editions, or published by arrangement with the author. They consist of
scraps collected and published without my knowledge, and I entirely
disown them. I have written no books save those that appear in this
edition.
I am asked to write a few lines on the front page of each of these
volumes, to say something, as I take it, about how they came into
being. Well, they were written mainly to please one woman who is now
dead, but as I am writing a little book about my mother I shall say no
more of her here.
Many of the chapters in "Auld Licht Idylls" first appeared in a
different form in the _St. James's Gazette_, and there is little doubt
that they would never have appeared anywhere but for the encouragement
given to me by the editor of that paper. It was pressure from him that
induced me to write a second "Idyll" and a third after I thought the
first completed the picture, he set me thinking seriously of these
people, and though he knew nothing of them himself, may be said to have
led me back to them. It seems odd, and yet I am not the first nor the
fiftieth who has left Thrums at sunrise to seek the life-work that was
all the time awaiting him at home. And we seldom sally forth a second
time. I had always meant to be a novelist, but London, I thought, was
the quarry.
For long I had an uneasy feeling that no one save the editor read my
contributions, for I was leading a lonely life in London, and not
another editor could I find in the land willing to print the Scotch
dialect. The magazines, Scotch and English, would have nothing to say
to me--I think I tried them all with "The Courting of T'nowhead's
Bell," but it never found shelter until it got within book-covers. In
time, however, I found another paper, the _British Weekly_, with an
editor as bold as my first (or shall we say he suffered from the same
infirmity?). He revived my drooping hopes, and I was again able to
turn to the only kind of literary work I now seemed to have much
interest in. He let me sign my articles, which was a big step for me
and led to my having requests for work from elsewhere, but always the
invitations said "not Scotch--the public will not read dialect." By
this time I had put together from these two sources and from my
drawerful of rejected stories this book of "Auld Licht Idylls," and in
its collected form it again went the rounds. I offered it to certain
firms as a gift, but they would not have it even at that. And then, on
a day came actually an offer for it from Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton.
For this, and for many another kindness, I had the editor of the
_British Weekly_ to thank. Thus the book was published at last, and as
for Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton I simply dare not say what a generous
firm I found them, lest it send too many aspirants to their doors.
But, indeed, I have had the pleasantest relations with all my
publishers.
"Better Dead" is, by my wish, no longer on sale in Great Britain, and I
should have preferred not to see it here, for it is in no way worthy of
the beautiful clothes Messrs. Scribner have given it. Weighted with
"An Edinburgh Eleven" it would rest very comfortably in the mill dam,
but the publishers have reasons for its inclusion; among them, I
suspect, is a well-grounded fear that if I once began to hack and hew,
I should not stop until I had reduced the edition to two volumes. This
juvenile effort is a field of prickles into which none may be advised
to penetrate--I made the attempt lately in cold blood and came back
shuddering, but I had read enough to have the profoundest reason for
declining to tell what the book is about. And yet I have a sentimental
interest in "Better Dead," for it was my first--published when I had
small hope of getting any one to accept the Scotch--and there was a
week when I loved to carry it in my pocket and did not think it dead
weight. Once I almost saw it find a purchaser. She was a pretty girl
and it lay on a bookstall, and she read some pages and smiled, and then
retired, and came back and began another chapter. Several times she
did this, and I stood in the background trembling with hope and fear.
At last she went away without the book, but I am still of opinion that,
had it been just a little bit better, she would have bought it.
CONTENTS
I. THE SCHOOLHOUSE
II. THRUMS
III. THE AULD LICHT KIRK
IV. LADS AND LASSES
V. THE AULD LICHTS IN ARMS
VI. THE OLD DOMINIE
VII. CREE QUEERY AND MYSY DROLLY
VIII. THE COURTING OF T'NOWHEAD'S BELL
IX. DAVIT LUNAN'S POLITICAL REMINISCENCES
X. A VERY OLD FAMILY
XI. LITTLE RATHIE'S "BURAL"
XII. A LITERARY CLUB
ILLUSTRATIONS
J. M. BARRIE . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
Sabbath at T'nowhead
AULD LIGHT IDYLLS
CHAPTER I
THE SCHOOLHOUSE
Early this morning I opened a window in my schoolhouse in the glen of
Quharity, awakened by the shivering of a starving sparrow against the
frosted glass. As the snowy sash creaked in my hand, he made off to
the water-spout that suspends its "tangles" of ice over a gaping tank,
and, rebounding from that, with a quiver of his little black breast,
bobbed through the network of wire and joined a few of his fellows in a
forlorn hop round the henhouse in search of food. Two days ago my
hilarious bantam-cock, saucy to the last, my cheeriest companion, was
found frozen in his own water-trough, the corn-saucer in three pieces
by his side. Since then I have taken the hens into the house. At
meal-times they litter the hearth with each other's feathers; but for
the most part they give little trouble, roosting on the rafters of the
low-roofed kitchen among staves and fishing-rods.
Another white blanket has been spread upon the glen since I looked out
last night; for over the same wilderness of snow that has met my gaze
for a week, I see the steading of Waster Lunny sunk deeper into the
waste. The schoolhouse, I suppose, serves similarly as a snowmark for
the people at the farm. Unless that is Waster Lunny's grieve foddering
the cattle in the snow, not a living thing is visible. The ghostlike
hills that pen in the glen have ceased to echo to the sharp crack of
the sportsman's gun (so clear in the frosty air as to be a warning to
every rabbit and partridge in the valley); and only giant Catlaw shows
here and there a black ridge, rearing its head at the entrance to the
glen and struggling ineffectually to cast off his shroud. Most wintry
sign of all, I think as I close the window hastily, is the open
farm-stile, its poles lying embedded in the snow where they were last
flung by Waster Lunny's herd. Through the still air comes from a
distance a vibration as of a tuning-fork: a robin, perhaps, alighting
on the wire of a broken fence.
In the warm kitchen, where I dawdle over my breakfast, the widowed
bantam-hen has perched on the back of my drowsy cat. It is needless to
go through the form of opening the school to-day; for, with the
exception of Waster Lunny's girl, I have had no scholars for nine days.
Yesterday she announced that there would be no more schooling till it
was fresh, "as she wasna comin';" and indeed, though the smoke from the
farm chimneys is a pretty prospect for a snowed-up schoolmaster, the
trudge between the two houses must be weary work for a bairn. As for
the other children, who have to come from all parts of the hills and
glen, I may not see them for weeks. Last year the school was
practically deserted for a month. A pleasant outlook, with the March
examinations staring me in the face, and an inspector fresh from
Oxford. I wonder what he would say if he saw me to-day digging myself
out of the schoolhouse with the spade I now keep for the purpose in my
bedroom.
The kail grows brittle from the snow in my dank and cheerless garden.
A crust of bread gathers timid pheasants round me. The robins, I see,
have made the coalhouse their home. Waster Lunny's dog never barks
without rousing my sluggish cat to a joyful response. It is Dutch
courage with the birds and beasts of the glen, hard driven for food;
but I look attentively for them in these long forenoons, and they have
begun to regard me as one of themselves. My breath freezes, despite my
pipe, as I peer from the door; and with a fortnight-old newspaper I
retire to the ingle-nook. The friendliest thing I have seen to-day is
the well-smoked ham suspended from my kitchen rafters. It was a gift
from the farm of Tullin, with a load of peats, the day before the snow
began to fall. I doubt if I have seen a cart since.
This afternoon I was the not altogether passive spectator of a curious
scene in natural history. My feet encased in stout "tackety" boots, I
had waded down two of Waster Lunny's fields to the glen burn: in summer
the never-failing larder from which, with wriggling worm or garish fly,
I can any morning whip a savoury breakfast; in the winter-time the only
thing in the valley that defies the ice-king's chloroform. I watched
the water twisting black and solemn through the snow, the ragged ice on
its edge proof of the toughness of the struggle with the frost, from
which it has, after all, crept only half victorious. A bare wild
rosebush on the further bank was violently agitated, and then there ran
from its root a black-headed rat with wings. Such was the general
effect. I was not less interested when my startled eyes divided this
phenomenon into its component parts, and recognized in the disturbance
on the opposite bank only another fierce struggle among the hungry
animals for existence: they need no professor to teach them the
doctrine of the survival of the fittest. A weasel had gripped a
water-hen (whit-rit and beltie they are called in these parts) cowering
at the root of the rose-bush, and was being dragged down the bank by
the terrified bird, which made for the water as its only chance of
escape. In less disadvantageous circumstances the weasel would have
made short work of his victim; but as he only had the bird by the tail,
the prospects of the combatants were equalized. It was the tug-of-war
being played with a life as the stakes. "If I do not reach the water,"
was the argument that went on in the heaving little breast of the one,
"I am a dead bird." "If this water-hen," reasoned the other, "reaches
the burn, my supper vanishes with her." Down the sloping bank the hen
had distinctly the best of it, but after that came a yard of level
snow, and here she tugged and screamed in vain. I had so far been an
unobserved spectator; but my sympathies were with the beltie, and,
thinking it high time to interfere, I jumped into the water. The
water-hen gave one mighty final tug and toppled into the burn; while
the weasel viciously showed me his teeth, and then stole slowly up the
bank to the rose-bush, whence, "girning," he watched me lift his
exhausted victim from the water, and set off with her for the
schoolhouse. Except for her draggled tail, she already looks
wonderfully composed, and so long as the frost holds I shall have
little difficulty in keeping her with me. On Sunday I found a frozen
sparrow, whose heart had almost ceased to beat, in the disused pig-sty,
and put him for warmth into my breast-pocket. The ungrateful little
scrub bolted without a word of thanks about ten minutes afterwards to
the alarm of my cat, which had not known his whereabouts.
I am alone in the schoolhouse. On just such an evening as this last
year my desolation drove me to Waster Lunny, where I was storm-stayed
for the night. The recollection decides me to court my own warm
hearth, to challenge my right hand again to a game at the "dambrod"
against my left. I do not lock the schoolhouse door at nights; for
even a highwayman (there is no such luck) would be received with open
arms, and I doubt if there be a barred door in all the glen. But it is
cosier to put on the shutters. The road to Thrums has lost itself
miles down the valley. I wonder what they are doing out in the world.
Though I am the Free Church precentor in Thrums (ten pounds a year, and
the little town is five miles away), they have not seen me for three
weeks. A packman whom I thawed yesterday at my kitchen fire tells me,
that last Sabbath only the Auld Lichts held service. Other people
realized that they were snowed up. Far up the glen, after it twists
out of view, a manse and half a dozen thatched cottages that are there
may still show a candle light, and the crumbling gravestones keep cold
vigil round the grey old kirk. Heavy shadows fade into the sky to the
north. A flake trembles against the window; but it is too cold for
much snow to-night. The shutter bars the outer world from the
schoolhouse.