CREE QUEERY AND MYSY DROLLY
The children used to fling stones at Grinder Queery because he loved
his mother. I never heard the Grinder's real name. He and his mother
were Queery and Drolly, contemptuously so called, and they answered to
these names. I remember Cree best as a battered old weaver, who bent
forward as he walked, with his arms hanging limp as if ready to grasp
the shafts of the barrow behind which it was his life to totter uphill
and downhill, a rope of yarn suspended round his shaking neck, and
fastened to the shafts, assisting him to bear the yoke and slowly
strangling him. By and by there came a time when the barrow and the
weaver seemed both palsy-stricken, and Cree, gasping for breath, would
stop in the middle of a brae, unable to push his load over a stone.
Then he laid himself down behind it to prevent the barrow's slipping
back. On those occasions only the barefooted boys who jeered at the
panting weaver could put new strength into his shrivelled arms. They
did it by telling him that he and Mysy would have to go to the
"poorshouse" after all, at which the grey old man would wince, as if
"joukin" from a blow, and, shuddering, rise and, with a desperate
effort, gain the top of the incline. Small blame perhaps attached to
Cree if, as he neared his grave, he grew a little dottle. His loads of
yarn frequently took him past the workhouse, and his eyelids quivered
as he drew near. Boys used to gather round the gate in anticipation of
his coming, and make a feint of driving him inside. Cree, when he
observed them, sat down on his barrow-shafts terrified to approach, and
I see them now pointing to the workhouse till he left his barrow on the
road and hobbled away, his legs cracking as he ran.
It is strange to know that there was once a time when Cree was young
and straight, a callant who wore a flower in his buttonhole, and tried
to be a hero for a maiden's sake.
Before Cree settled down as a weaver, he was knife and scissor-grinder
for three counties, and Mysy, his mother, accompanied him wherever he
went. Mysy trudged alongside him till her eyes grew dim and her limbs
failed her, and then Cree was told that she must be sent to the
pauper's home. After that a pitiable and beautiful sight was to be
seen. Grinder Queery, already a feeble man, would wheel his grindstone
along the long high road, leaving Mysy behind. He took the stone on a
few hundred yards, and then, hiding it by the roadside in a ditch or
behind a paling, returned for his mother. Her he led--sometimes he
almost carried her--to the place where the grindstone lay, and thus by
double journeys kept her with him. Every one said that Mysy's death
would be a merciful release--every one but Cree.
Cree had been a grinder from his youth, having learned the trade from
his father, but he gave it up when Mysy became almost blind. For a
time he had to leave her in Thrums with Dan'l Wilkie's wife, and find
employment himself in Tilliedrum. Mysy got me to write several letters
for her to Cree, and she cried while telling me what to say. I never
heard either of them use a term of endearment to the other, but all
Mysy could tell me to put in writing was--"Oh, my son Cree; oh, my
beloved son; oh, I have no one but you; oh, thou God watch over my
Cree!" On one of these occasions Mysy put into my hands a paper,
which, she said, would perhaps help me to write the letter. It had
been drawn up by Cree many years before, when he and his mother had
been compelled to part for a time, and I saw from it that he had been
trying to teach Mysy to write. The paper consisted of phrases such as
"Dear son Cree," "Loving mother," "I am takin' my food weel,"
"Yesterday," "Blankets," "The peats is near done," "Mr. Dishart," "Come
home, Cree." The Grinder had left this paper with his mother, and she
had written letters to him from it.
When Dan'l Wilkie objected to keeping a cranky old body like Mysy in
his house Cree came back to Thrums and took a single room with a
hand-loom in it. The flooring was only lumpy earth, with sacks spread
over it to protect Mysy's feet. The room contained two dilapidated old
coffin-beds, a dresser, a high-backed arm-chair, several three-legged
stools, and two tables, of which one could be packed away beneath the
other. In one corner stood the wheel at which Cree had to fill his own
pirns. There was a plate-rack on one wall, and near the chimney-piece
hung the wag-at-the-wall clock, the timepiece that was commonest in
Thrums at that time, and that got this name because its exposed
pendulum swung along the wall. The two windows in the room faced each
other on opposite walls, and were so small that even a child might have
stuck in trying to crawl through them. They opened on hinges, like a
door. In the wall of the dark passage leading from the outer door into
the room was a recess where a pan and pitcher of water always stood
wedded, as it were, and a little hole, known as the "bole," in the wall
opposite the fireplace contained Cree's library. It consisted of
Baxter's "Saints' Rest," Harvey's "Meditations," the "Pilgrim's
Progress," a work on folk-lore, and several Bibles. The saut-backet,
or salt-bucket, stood at the end of the fender, which was half of an
old cart-wheel. Here Cree worked, whistling "Ower the watter for
Chairlie" to make Mysy think that he was as gay as a mavis. Mysy grew
querulous in her old age, and up to the end she thought of poor, done
Cree as a handsome gallant. Only by weaving far on into the night
could Cree earn as much as six shillings a week. He began at six
o'clock in the morning, and worked until midnight by the light of his
cruizey. The cruizey was all the lamp Thrums had in those days, though
it is only to be seen in use now in a few old-world houses in the
glens. It is an ungainly thing in iron, the size of a man's palm, and
shaped not unlike the palm when contracted, and deepened to hold a
liquid. Whale-oil, lying open in the mould, was used, and the wick was
a rash with the green skin peeled off. These rashes were sold by
herd-boys at a halfpenny the bundle, but Cree gathered his own wicks.
The rashes skin readily when you know how to do it. The iron mould was
placed inside another of the same shape, but slightly larger, for in
time the oil dripped through the iron, and the whole was then hung by a
deck or hook close to the person using it. Even with three wicks it
gave but a stime of light, and never allowed the weaver to see more
than the half of his loom at a time. Sometimes Cree used threads for
wicks. He was too dull a man to have many visitors, but Mr. Dishart
called occasionally and reproved him for telling his mother lies. The
lies Cree told Mysy were that he was sharing the meals he won for her,
and that he wore the overcoat which he had exchanged years before for a
blanket to keep her warm.
There was a terrible want of spirit about Grinder Queery. Boys used to
climb on to his stone roof with clods of damp earth in their hands,
which they dropped down the chimney. Mysy was bed-ridden by this time,
and the smoke threatened to choke her; so Cree, instead of chasing his
persecutors, bargained with them. He gave them fly-hooks which he had
busked himself, and when he had nothing left to give he tried to
flatter them into dealing gently with Mysy by talking to them as men.
One night it went through the town that Mysy now lay in bed all day
listening for her summons to depart. According to her ideas this would
come in the form of a tapping at the window, and their intention was to
forestall the spirit. Dite Gow's boy, who is now a grown man, was
hoisted up to one of the little windows, and he has always thought of
Mysy since as he saw her then for the last time. She lay sleeping, so
far as he could see, and Cree sat by the fireside looking at her.
Every one knew that there was seldom a fire in that house unless Mysy
was cold. Cree seemed to think that the fire was getting low. In the
little closet, which, with the kitchen, made up his house, was a corner
shut off from the rest of the room by a few boards, and behind this he
kept his peats. There was a similar receptacle for potatoes in the
kitchen. Cree wanted to get another peat for the fire without
disturbing Mysy. First he took off his boots, and made for the peats
on tiptoe. His shadow was cast on the bed, however, so he next got
down on his knees and crawled softly into the closet. With the peat in
his hands, he returned in the same way, glancing every moment at the
bed where Mysy lay. Though Tammy Gow's face was pressed against a
broken window he did not hear Cree putting that peat on the fire. Some
say that Mysy heard, but pretended not to do so for her son's sake,
that she realized the deception he played on her, and had not the heart
to undeceive him. But it would be too sad to believe that. The boys
left Cree alone that night.
The old weaver lived on alone in that solitary house after Mysy left
him, and by and by the story went abroad that he was saving money. At
first no one believed this except the man who told it, but there seemed
after all to be something in it. You had only to hit Cree's trouser
pocket to hear the money chinking, for he was afraid to let it out of
his clutch. Those who sat on dykes with him when his day's labour was
over said that the weaver kept his hand all the time in his pocket, and
that they saw his lips move as he counted his hoard by letting it slip
through his fingers. So there were boys who called "Miser Queery"
after him instead of Grinder, and asked him whether he was saving up to
keep himself from the workhouse.
But we had all done Cree wrong. It came out on his deathbed what he
had been storing up his money for. Grinder, according to the doctor,
died of getting a good meal from a friend of his earlier days after
being accustomed to starve on potatoes and a very little oatmeal
indeed. The day before he died this friend sent him half a sovereign,
and when Grinder saw it he sat up excitedly in his bed and pulled his
corduroys from beneath his pillow. The woman who, out of kindness,
attended him in his last illness, looked on curiously, while Cree added
the sixpences and coppers in his pocket to the half-sovereign. After
all they only made some two pounds, but a look of peace came into
Cree's eyes as he told the woman to take it all to a shop in the town.
Nearly twelve years previously Jamie Lownie had lent him two pounds,
and though the money was never asked for, it preyed on Cree's mind that
he was in debt. He payed off all he owed, and so Cree's life was not,
I think, a failure.