THE AULD LICHTS IN ARMS
Arms and men I sing: douce Jeemsy Todd, rushing from his loom, armed
with a bed-post; Lisbeth Whamond, an avenging whirlwind; Neil Haggart,
pausing in his thanks-offerings to smite and slay; the impious foe
scudding up the bleeding Brae-head with Nemesis at their flashing
heels; the minister holding it a nice question whether the carnage was
not justified. Then came the two hours' sermons of the following
Sabbath, when Mr. Dishart, revolving like a teetotum in the pulpit,
damned every bandaged person present, individually and collectively;
and Lang Tammas, in the precentor's box with a plaster on his cheek,
included any one the minister might have by chance omitted, and the
congregation, with most of their eyes bunged up, burst into psalms of
praise.
Twice a year the Auld Lichts went demented. The occasion was the Fast
Day at Tilliedrum; when its inhabitants, instead of crowding reverently
to the kirk, swooped profanely down in their scores and tens of scores
on our God-fearing town, intent on making a day of it. Then did the
weavers rise as one man, and go forth to show the ribald crew the
errors of their way. All denominations were represented, but Auld
Lichts led. An Auld Licht would have taken no man's blood without the
conviction that he would be the better morally for the bleeding; and if
Tammas Lunan's case gave an impetus to the blows, it can only have been
because it opened wider Auld Licht eyes to Tilliedrum's desperate
condition. Mr. Dishart's predecessor more than once remarked, that at
the Creation the devil put forward a claim for Thrums, but said he
would take his chance of Tilliedrum; and the statement was generally
understood to be made on the authority of the original Hebrew.
The mustard-seed of a feud between the two parishes shot into a tall
tree in a single night, when Davit Lunan's father went to a tattie roup
at Tilliedrum and thoughtlessly died there. Twenty-four hours
afterwards a small party of staid Auld Lichts, carrying long white
poles, stepped out of various wynds and closes and picked their solemn
way to the house of mourning. Nanny Low, the widow, received them
dejectedly, as one oppressed by the knowledge that her man's death at
such an inopportune place did not fulfil the promise of his youth; and
her guests admitted bluntly that they were disappointed in Tammas.
Snecky Hobart's father's unusually long and impressive prayer was an
official intimation that the deceased, in the opinion of the session,
sorely needed everything of the kind he could get; and then the silent
driblet of Auld Lichts in black stalked off in the direction of
Tilliedrum. Women left their spinning-wheels and pirns to follow them
with their eyes along the Tenements, and the minister was known to be
holding an extra service at the manse. When the little procession
reached the boundary-line between the two parishes, they sat down on a
dyke and waited.
By and by half a dozen men drew near from the opposite direction,
bearing on poles the remains of Tammas Lunan in a closed coffin. The
coffin was brought to within thirty yards of those who awaited it, and
then roughly lowered to the ground. Its bearers rested morosely on
their poles. In conveying Lunan's remains to the borders of his own
parish they were only conforming to custom; but Thrums and Tilliedrum
differed as to where the boundary-line was drawn, and not a foot would
either advance into the other's territory. For half a day the coffin
lay unclaimed, and the two parties sat scowling at each other. Neither
dared move. Gloaming had stolen into the valley when Dite Deuchars of
Tilliedrum rose to his feet and deliberately spat upon the coffin. A
stone whizzed through the air; and then the ugly spectacle was
presented, in the grey night, of a dozen mutes fighting with their
poles over a coffin. There was blood on the shoulders that bore
Tammas's remains to Thrums.
After that meeting Tilliedrum lived for the Fast Day. Never, perhaps,
was there a community more given up to sin, and Thrums felt "called" to
its chastisement. The insult to Lunan's coffin, however, dispirited
their weavers for a time, and not until the suicide of Pitlums did they
put much fervour into their prayers. It made new men of them.
Tilliedrum's sins had found it out. Pitlums was a farmer in the parish
of Thrums, but he had been born at Tilliedrum; and Thrums thanked
Providence for that, when it saw him suspended between two hams from
his kitchen rafters. The custom was to cart suicides to the quarry at
the Galla pond and bury them near the cairn that had supported the
gallows; but on this occasion not a farmer in the parish would lend a
cart, and for a week the corpse lay on the sanded floor as it had been
cut down--an object of awe-struck interest to boys who knew no better
than to peep through the darkened window. Tilliedrum bit its lips at
home. The Auld Licht minister, it was said, had been approached on the
subject; but, after serious consideration, did not see his way to
offering up a prayer. Finally old Hobart and two others tied a rope
round the body, and dragged it from the farm to the cairn, a distance
of four miles. Instead of this incident's humbling Tilliedrum into
attending church, the next Fast Day saw its streets deserted. As for
the Thrums Auld Lichts, only heavy wobs prevented their walking erect
like men who had done their duty. If no prayer was volunteered for
Pitlums before his burial, there was a great deal of psalm-singing
after it.
By early morn on their Fast Day the Tilliedrummers were straggling into
Thrums, and the weavers, already at their looms, read the clattering of
feet and carts aright. To convince themselves, all they had to do was
to raise their eyes; but the first triumph would have been to
Tilliedrum if they had done that. The invaders--the men in Aberdeen
blue serge coats, velvet knee-breeches, and broad blue bonnets, and the
wincey gowns of the women set off with hooded cloaks of red or
tartan--tapped at the windows and shouted insultingly as they passed;
but, with pursed lips, Thrums bent fiercely over its wobs, and not an
Auld Licht showed outside his door. The day wore on to noon, and still
ribaldry was master of the wynds. But there was a change inside the
houses. The minister had pulled down his blinds; moody men had left
their looms for stools by the fire; there were rumours of a conflict in
Andra Gowrie's close, from which Kitty McQueen had emerged with her
short gown in rags; and Lang Tammas was going from door to door. The
austere precentor admonished fiery youth to beware of giving way to
passion; and it was a proud day for the Auld Lichts to find their
leading elder so conversant with apt Scripture texts. They bowed their
heads reverently while he thundered forth that those who lived by the
sword would perish by the sword; and when he had finished they took him
ben to inspect their bludgeons. I have a vivid recollection of going
the round of the Auld Licht and other houses to see the sticks and the
wrists in coils of wire.
A stranger in the Tenements in the afternoon would have noted more than
one draggled youth, in holiday attire, sitting on a doorstep with a wet
cloth to his nose; and, passing down the Commonty, he would have had to
step over prostrate lumps of humanity from which all shape had
departed. Gavin Ogilvy limped heavily after his encounter with Thrummy
Tosh--a struggle that was looked forward to eagerly as a bi-yearly
event; Chirsty Davie's development of muscle had not prevented her
going down before the terrible onslaught of Joe the miller, and Lang
Tammas's plasters told a tale. It was in the square that the two
parties, leading their maimed and blind, formed in force; Tilliedrum
thirsting for its opponents' blood, and Thrums humbly accepting the
responsibility of punching the Fast Day breakers into the ways of
rectitude. In the small ill-kept square the invaders, to the number of
about a hundred, were wedged together at its upper end, while the
Thrums people formed in a thick line at the foot. For its inhabitants
the way to Tilliedrum lay through this threatening mass of armed
weavers. No words were bandied between the two forces; the centre of
the square was left open, and nearly every eye was fixed on the
town-house clock. It directed operations and gave the signal to
charge. The moment six o'clock struck, the upper mass broke its bonds
and flung itself on the living barricade. There was a clatter of heads
and sticks, a yelling and a groaning, and then the invaders, bursting
through the opposing ranks, fled for Tilliedrum. Down the Tanage brae
and up the Braehead they skurried, half a hundred avenging spirits in
pursuit. On the Tilliedrum Fast Day I have tasted blood myself. In
the godless place there is no Auld Licht kirk, but there are two Auld
Lichts in it now who walk to Thrums to church every Sabbath, blow or
rain as it lists. They are making their influence felt in Tilliedrum.
The Auld Lichts also did valorous deeds at the Battle of Cabbylatch.
The farm land so named lies a mile or more to the south of Thrums. You
have to go over the rim of the cup to reach it. It is low-lying and
uninteresting to the eye, except for some giant stones scattered cold
and naked through the fields. No human hands reared these boulders,
but they might be looked upon as tombstones to the heroes who fell (to
rise hurriedly) on the plain of Cabbylatch.
The fight of Cabbylatch belongs to the days of what are now but dimly
remembered as the Meal Mobs. Then there was a wild cry all over the
country for bread (not the fine loaves that we know, but something very
much coarser), and hungry men and women, prematurely shrunken, began to
forget the taste of meal. Potatoes were their chief sustenance, and,
when the crop failed, starvation gripped them. At that time the
farmers, having control of the meal, had the small towns at their
mercy, and they increased its cost. The price of the meal went up and
up, until the famishing people swarmed up the sides of the carts in
which it was conveyed to the towns, and, tearing open the sacks,
devoured it in handfuls. In Thrums they had a stern sense of justice,
and for a time, after taking possession of the meal, they carried it to
the square and sold it at what they considered a reasonable price. The
money was handed over to the farmers. The honesty of this is worth
thinking about, but it seems to have only incensed the farmers the
more; and when they saw that to send their meal to the town was not to
get high prices for it, they laid their heads together and then gave
notice that the people who wanted meal and were able to pay for it must
come to the farms. In Thrums no one who cared to live on porridge and
bannocks had money to satisfy the farmers; but, on the other hand, none
of them grudged going for it, and go they did. They went in numbers
from farm to farm, like bands of hungry rats, and throttled the
opposition they not infrequently encountered. The raging farmers at
last met in council and, noting that they were lusty men and brave,
resolved to march in armed force upon the erring people and burn their
town. Now we come to the Battle of Cabbylatch.
The farmers were not less than eighty strong, and chiefly consisted of
cavalry. Armed with pitchforks and cumbrous scythes where they were
not able to lay their hands on the more orthodox weapons of war, they
presented a determined appearance; the few foot-soldiers who had no
cart-horses at their disposal bearing in their arms bundles of
fire-wood. One memorable morning they set out to avenge their losses;
and by and by a halt was called, when each man bowed his head to
listen. In Thrums, pipe and drum were calling the inhabitants to arms.
Scouts rushed in with the news that the farmers were advancing rapidly
upon the town, and soon the streets were clattering with feet. At that
time Thrums had its piper and drummer (the bellman of a later and more
degenerate age); and on this occasion they marched together through the
narrow wynds, firing the blood of haggard men and summoning them to the
square. According to my informant's father, the gathering of these
angry and startled weavers, when he thrust his blue bonnet on his head
and rushed out to join them, was an impressive and solemn spectacle.
That bloodshed was meant there can be no doubt; for starving men do not
see the ludicrous side of things. The difference between the farmers
and the town had resolved itself into an ugly and sullen hate, and the
wealthier townsmen who would have come between the people and the bread
were fiercely pushed aside. There was no nominal leader, but every man
in the ranks meant to fight for himself and his belongings; and they
are said to have sallied out to meet the foe in no disorder. The women
they would fain have left behind them; but these had their own injuries
to redress, and they followed in their husbands' wake carrying bags of
stones. The men, who were of various denominations, were armed with
sticks, blunderbusses, anything they could snatch up at a moment's
notice; and some of them were not unacquainted with fighting. Dire
silence prevailed among the men, but the women shouted as they ran, and
the curious army moved forward to the drone and squall of drum and
pipe. The enemy was sighted on the level land of Cabbylatch; and here,
while the intending combatants glared at each other, a well-known local
magnate galloped his horse between them and ordered them in the name of
the King to return to their homes. But for the farmers that meant
further depredation at the people's hands, and the townsmen would not
go back to their gloomy homes to sit down and wait for sunshine. Soon
stones (the first, it is said, cast by a woman) darkened the air. The
farmers got the word to charge, but their horses, with the best
intentions, did not know the way. There was a stampeding in different
directions, a blind rushing of one frightened steed against another;
and then the townspeople, breaking any ranks they had hitherto managed
to keep, rushed vindictively forward. The struggle at Cabbylatch
itself was not of long duration; for their own horses proved the
farmers' worst enemies, except in the cases where these sagacious
animals took matters into their own ordering and bolted judiciously for
their stables. The day was to Thrums.
Individual deeds of prowess were done that day. Of these not the least
fondly remembered by her descendants were those of the gallant matron
who pursued the most obnoxious farmer in the district even to his very
porch with heavy stones and opprobrious epithets. Once when he thought
he had left her far behind did he alight to draw breath and take a
pinch of snuff, and she was upon him like a flail. With a
terror-stricken cry he leapt once more upon his horse and fled, but not
without leaving his snuff-box in the hands of the derisive enemy.
Meggy has long gone to the kirkyard, but the snuff-mull is still
preserved.
Some ugly cuts were given and received, and heads as well as ribs were
broken; but the townsmen's triumph was short-lived. The ringleaders
were whipped through the streets of Perth, as a warning to persons
thinking of taking the law into their own hands; and all the lasting
consolation they got was that, some time afterwards, the chief witness
against them, the parish minister, met with a mysterious death. They
said it was evidently the hand of God; but some people looked
suspiciously at them when they said it.