consciences--"and now I am gaun to warn ye anent the future, as weel as
to admonish you o' the past. Ye'll see and hear nae mair o' puir Sandy
Peden after this day's wark is owre. See ye that puir bird" (at this
moment a hawk had darted down, in view of the whole congregation, in
pursuit of its prey)--"see ye that puir panting laverock, which has now
crossed into that dark and deep linn, for safety and for refuge from the
claws and the beak of its pursuer? I'll tell ye what, my freends--the
twasome didna drift down this way frae that dark clud, and along that
bleak heathery brae-face, for naething. They were sent, they were
commissioned; and if ye had arisen to your feet, ere they passed, and
cried, 'Shue!' ye couldna hae frichtened them oot o' their mission. They
cam to testify o' a persecuted remnant, and o' a cruel pursuing foe--o'
a kirk which will soon hae to betak hersel like a bird to the mountains,
and o' an enemy which will not allow her to rest, by night nor by day,
even in the dark recesses o' the rocks, or amidst the damp and cauld
mosses o' the hills. They cam, and they war welcome, to gie auld Sandy a
warning, too, and to bid him tak the bent as fast as possible; to flee,
even this very nicht, for the pursuer is even nigh at hand. But, hooly,
sirs, we maunna part till our wark is finished; as an auld writer has
it--'till our work is finished, we are immortal.' I hae e'en dune my
best, as saith an apostle, amang ye; and I hae this day the consolation,
and that's no sma', to think that my puir exertions hae been rewarded
wi' some sma' success. And had it been _His_ plan, or _His_ pleasure, to
have permitted me to lay down my auld banes, when I had nae mair use
for them, beneath ane o' the through-stanes there, I canna say but I wad
hae been content. But, since it's no His guid and sovereign pleasure, I
hae ae request to mak before we separate this nicht, never in this place
to meet again." (Hereupon the sobbing and the bursting forth of hitherto
suppressed sorrow was almost universal.) "Ye maun a' stand upon your
feet, and lift up your hands, and swear, before the great Head and
Master o' the Presbyterian Kirk o' Scotland" (there was a general rising
and show of hands, whilst the speaker continued), "that, till an
independent Presbyterian minister ascend the pulpit, you will never
enter the door o' that kirk mair; and let this be the solemn league and
covenant betwixt you and me, and betwixt my God and your God, in all
time coming! Amen!--so let it be!"
In this standing position, which we had thus almost insensibly assumed,
the last prayer or benediction was heard, and the concluding psalm was
sung--
"For he in his pavilion shall
Me hide in evil days,
In secret of his tent me hide,
And on a rock me raise."
I never listened to a sound or beheld a spectacle more overpowering. The
night-cloud had come down the hill above us--the sun had set. It was
twilight; and the united and full swing of the voice of praise ascended
through the veil of evening, from the thousands of lips, even to the
gate of heaven. Whilst we continued singing, our venerable pastor
descended from the tent--the Word of God in his hand, and the accents of
praise on his lips; and at the concluding line he stood fairly and
visibly out by himself, upon the entry towards the east door of the
kirk. Having shut the door and locked it, in the view and in the hearing
of the people, he knocked upon it thrice with the back of the pulpit
Bible, accompanying this action with these words, audibly and distinctly
pronounced--
"I arrest thee in my Master's name, that none ever enter by thee, save
those who enter by the door of Presbytery." So saying, he ascended the
wall at the kirk-stile, spread his arms abroad to their utmost stretch,
and in the most solemn and impressive manner dismissed the multitude.
Although Peden was thus banished from that pulpit to which, during the
civil wars, he had been elected by the unanimous voice of a most
attached people, he did not thereupon, or therefore, refrain entirely
from exercising his function as a minister of the Gospel; but, having
betaken himself to those fastnesses which lie betwixt Wigton and
Ayrshire, he was in the habit of assembling, occasionally, around him
the greater part of his congregation, as well as many belonging to the
neighbouring parishes. In the meantime, after several months' vacancy, a
young and half-educated lad from Aberdeen was appointed by the
government in the capacity of curate. This person was, of course, hated
by the parish; but this hatred was exalted to abhorrence, in consequence
of his immoral and unclerical life and conversation.
William Smith and Jessie Lawson were the children, the first of a
respectable farmer, and the other of a pious, though poor widow woman.
There had been some difficulties in the way of the lovers--
"For the course of true love never yet run smooth;"
but these had at last been removed, and the young couple were about to
be united, with the consent of relatives, in the honourable bands of
matrimony. But the young and dissolute curate had caught a glimpse of
Jessie; and, having been fascinated by her beauty, had not been backward
in signifying, both to mother and daughter, his honourable (for they
really were so in this case) intentions. Janet, however, was too sound a
Covenanter to give her consent.
"Na, na," she continued; "my bairn, I wot weel, has been baptised by the
holy Mr Welsh, and she has lang sucked in the milk o' the true and
Covenanted Word, frae worthy and godly Mr Peden, and it will ill become
her to turn her baek on her first lover, for the sake o' ony yearthly
concern whatever."
In the meantime winter drew on, with its frosts, and its blasts, and its
snows, and the lovers became more and more anxious to be united in the
bands of hallowed love, in consequence of the pressing and importunate
addresses of the curate. Here, however, a difficulty occurred, which
was, however, overcome, by bribing the schoolmaster, as session-clerk,
to proclaim them to empty benches, and by obtaining Peden's consent to
perform the marriage-ceremony on their producing the requisite evidence
of proclamation. The place appointed was the Bogle Glen, and the time
midnight, on the second day of January, 1684. The night--for such
meetings were usually held during night--was stormy; there being a
considerable degree of snow-drift; but Peden was not easily diverted
from his purpose; nor was his audience unaccustomed to such exposures.
So the night-meeting for religious worship took place beneath the Gleds'
Craig, from the brow or apron of which the minister officiated. Beneath
him, huddled together under plaids, stood his devoted and attentive
congregation, whilst the moon looked down at intervals on a landscape
over which a frosty wind was ever and anon carrying the snow-drift.
Beside the speaker were arranged, on chairs and stools, some young women
bearing children to be baptised, and the youthful couple about to be
united in marriage. The usual service proceeded, and the voice of psalms
was heard amidst the solemn stillness of the midnight hour. The
children were next baptised from an adjoining well, which presented
itself opportunely, like the waters of Meribah, from a cleft of the
rock. The young people had just been united, and Peden was in the act of
pronouncing the usual benediction, when the tramp of horses' feet was
suddenly heard; and, in an instant, a discharge of muskets indicated but
too surely the nature of the assault. All was challenge, capture, and
dispersion; through which the screams of the young bride and the
menacing voice of the curate were distinctly heard.
About four o'clock of the same eventful night, the manse of New Luce was
discovered to be on fire, and some hundreds of figures were seen
congregated in frantic and menacing attitudes around it. At last a form
was discovered, bearing off from the flames something which appeared to
be inanimate. The curate's screams were heard from his bedroom-window,
and, by the assistance of the military, who had now arrived, he was
relieved by a rope from his critical situation; and the young lovers
were next morning discovered, safe and uninjured, in their own home, and
in each other's arms.
IV.--THE PROSECUTION OF THE M'MICHAELS.
The miseries of war are not confined to the battle-field and the actual
return of the killed and wounded. There is an atmosphere of wo and
intense suffering, which hangs dense and heavy over the whole theatre of
war--the devastation and horrors of a wide-marching enemy, advancing
like the simoom of the desert, and converting into a howling wilderness
the peopled and rejoicing district. Life is extinguished by terror and
deprivation, as well as by the sword; and with this difference, too,
that the former process is so much the more severe that it is protracted
and defenceless. Civil war is, in this respect in particular, the most
revolting of all. The animosities and resentments of opposing parties
are greatly exasperated by proximity of situation and community of
country; and the revenge of the stronger directed upon the weaker party
is uniformly marked by many atrocities. Of this character was,
unhappily, the latter period of the domination of Charles II., together
with the whole four years of the Papistical infatuation of the second
James. Men, women, and children were not only shot, drowned, and spiked,
but thousands who escaped this extreme fate, were so worn out by
watchings, and cold, and hunger, and mental anxieties, as to fall under
the power of diseases from which they never recovered.
An instance illustrative of these remarks occurred, according to
invariable tradition (partly oral, and partly written), in the Pass of
Dalveen, one of the wildest and most sublime localities in
Dumfries-shire. In the days of which we speak, there were no
mail-coaches, nor did the public road from Edinburgh to Dumfries pass,
as now, through that most fearfully sublime ravine; all _then_ was
seclusion and solitude in that mountain retirement, where the winds met
and mingled from many a converging glen; and the eagle and the raven
divided the supremacy above. The site of the shepherd's shieling is
indeed still ascertainable by the depth of verdure which marks the
departed walls; and the traveller may see it by the burn-side, almost
half-way down the pass.
The family which, during the latter period of the eight-and-twenty
years' persecution, occupied this humble dwelling was named M'Michael.
There were two brothers of that name; Daniel, who was a bachelor, and
Gilbert, who was married, and the father of a son, now a lad of ten or
twelve, and two daughters, still younger. The mother of these children
was a M'Caig, a name immortalised in the annals of persecution. The two
brothers, Gilbert and Daniel, had rendered themselves peculiarly
obnoxious to the spite and revenge of the curate of Durrisdeer, by
their refusing to attend ordinances; and their obtaining baptism, and
even, as times and occasions offered, the _sealing_ ordinance of the
Supper, from the hands of worthy Mr Welsh. Besides all this, when hard
pursued one day in the pass, Daniel and Gilbert had defended themselves
against a whole troop of Douglas' dragoons, by occupying the rocky
summits of the Lowther Hills, and precipitating loose and rebounding
rocks on the pursuers beneath. It was on this occasion that "Red Rob,"
of persecuting notoriety, had his shoulder-blade dislocated; and that
Lieutenant James Douglas himself, in his extreme eagerness to scale the
steep, had two of his front teeth dislodged.
Winter 1686 was peculiarly severe, and the proximity of Drumlanrig
Castle, the residence of the Queensberry Douglases, rendered it
exceedingly unsafe for the two obnoxious brothers, in particular, to
visit their home, unless it were by snatches, and at the dead hour of
night. The natural consequence of all this was, that both brothers lost
their health, and that Gilbert, in particular, who was constitutionally
infirm, contracted, or rather exasperated, a bad cough, which threatened
serious consequences. It is quite true that a warm bed and the comforts
of home might have done much for the complaint; but Gilbert's ordinary
bedroom was the damp extremity of a hollow in a rock, without fire, and
with his plaid alone as a nightly couch and covering. It was on a cold
and drifty day in the month of January, that Gilbert, in the presence of
his family, and under hourly apprehension of a visit from the barbarous
Douglas, called his family around him, and, leaning upon the bosom of
his beloved wife, addressed them in words to the following effect:--
"My dearest wife, my dear children, and my beloved Daniel, stand round
me, for I am dying." Thereupon there was much weeping, and the poor
woman had to be carried out of the room, nearly insensible. This pause
was employed by Gilbert in secret prayer and ejaculation--
"Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace!--Lord, comfort the
widow and the fatherless!--Lord, give strength for trial, and faith for
dying like a Christian!"
When the poor widow had been so far recovered as to be able to return to
the bedside, the dying man proceeded, with frequent pauses and much
weakness, thus:--
"I hope I may say, though at an infinite distance, with the apostle
Paul, I have fought a good fight. I have kept the faith--the faith of my
Saviour, of his holy apostles, and of our Covenanted Kirk. I have kept
it in bad report, as well as in good--in the day of her extreme
suffering, as well as when godly Mr Brown was minister of Durrisdeer.
They have driven me from my humble but happy home, and from my wife and
children, to the mountain and the cave; but I have ever said--
'I to the hills will lift mine eyes,
From whence doth come mine aid,
My safety cometh from the Lord.'
And I have ever found it so. I have been shot at, pursued, hunted like a
wild beast, and exposed to disease, and pain, and extreme
weakness--whilst I was, unless at intervals, denied the voice that
soothes, the truth that cheers, and the looks of sympathy that mitigate
in the extremest suffering; and I am now, if it shall please God to
withhold for a little the foot of the merciless and the ungodly--I am
now about to close my testimony by sealing it with my latest breath."
This exertion was too much for his exhausted strength, and it seemed to
all that life had fled; when, after a few short and heavy respirations,
he again proceeded--"Lord, give me strength for this last, this parting
effort in this our covenanted cause!--Now, my dearly beloved, I leave
you; for I hear my Master's call, and the Spirit and the Bride say,
Come! I leave you with this last, this dying advice: Let nothing deprive
you of your crown, hold fast your integrity; for He whom you will serve
will come quickly, and terrible will his coming be to all his enemies."
"Enemies, indeed!" vociferated Lieutenant Douglas, who had unperceived
entered the apartment: "those enemies, friend Gibby, are nearer, I trow,
than ye wot, and ready, with leave of this good company here, to take
special care that his majesty's enemies shall be suitably provided for.
Come, budge, old Benty, and you too of the lion's den. Come--my lambs,
here, will be more difficult to manage than the _lions_ of your Jewish
namesake. Come, Mr Dan--up, and be going; for the day breaketh apace,
and it will be pleasant pastime just to give us a stave of the death
psalm under the old thorn, on the brae face yonder. Red Rob's shoulder,
here, has sworn a solemn league and covenant against you; and, as to my
two front teeth, they are complete nonconformists to Whigs and Whiggery,
through all generations. Amen!"
In vain was all this profane barbarity poured on the ears of the dead
man; old Gilbert had breathed his last at the very first perception of
Douglas' presence--his God had in mercy withdrawn him from his last and
most severe trial.
"Look there! look there! look there!" were the first articulate accents
which crossed the lips of the distracted widow; "look, ye sons o'
Belial--ye men o' bluid--on the pale and lifeless victim o' yer horrid
persecution. Ay, aff wi' him!" (for Douglas had now approached the bed,
as if to ascertain that no deception had been practised upon him)--"aff
wi' him, to the croft, or to the maiden, or to the thorn-tree! shoot
him, head him, hang him--ah!--ha!--ha!--ha!" (Hysterically screaming.)
"He has escaped ye a'. Yer bullets canna pierce him; yer flames canna
scorch him; yer malice canna reach him yonder." (Pointing at the same
time upwards.) "There, even there, whar ye and yer band shall never
enter, the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary, ay, thank God!
the weary are at rest. Rest _here_, indeed, they had none; but _there_
they shall rest, when ye shall lie tormented!"
"Come, come, Mother Testimony, give us no more of your blarney. Let us
only over the shank yonder, and you and your whelps there may yelp and
howl till the day of judgment, if you please. But as for you, friend
Dan," (speaking ironically, and imitating the Covenanting language and
manner), "does the Spirit move thee to budge?--has the Lord dealt
bountifully with thee?--and will he 'save thee from six troubles, yea,
from seven?' Come, come, friend," taking him rudely by the arm, and
pulling him, with the assistance of Red Rob, towards the door. "The
Spirit and the Bride say, 'Come;' there is a _maiden_ longing for thy
embrace--yea, a maiden whose lovers have been many, and whose embrace is
somewhat close. But she, having taken up her residence in the guid town
of Edinburgh, is afar off; but, lest thou shouldst feel disappointment,
my lambs here have become somewhat frisky of late, and they will be most
happy to give thee a little matrimonial music, to the tune of 'Make
ready, present, fire!'"
Daniel M'Michael had long been accustomed to view death as a messenger
of peace. His days--now manifestly numbered--had been sorely troubled.
His faith in his Saviour was, with him, not a fluctuating, but a fixed
principle; like Stephen, he might ascend to see heaven opened--and his
soul was long absent in fervent prayer. He prayed for a persecuted kirk,
for a persecuted remnant, for his friends, and for his enemies, even
those whose hands were raised against his life.
"The guid Lord," said he, "forgive ye, for ye know not what ye do. The
thief on the cross was forgiven; David, the murderer, was forgiven; and
e'en Judas himself may have obtained mercy. Oh, ye puir, infatuated,
godless band! it is not for myself that I pray--it is for you; for, when
the day of wrath arrives, where will ye flee to? To the hills?--they
will be cast into the sea. To the rocks?--they will have melted with
fervent heat. To the linns and the glens?--but where will ye find them,
in that great and notable day of the Lord----"
Daniel was proceeding thus, when Red Rob struck him over the head with
the handle of his sword.
"Down to the earth with thee and thy everlasting jaw. We want none of
thy prayers and petitionings. We are King Charles' men, and our God is
our captain, our reward our pay, our heaven is our mess-room, and our
eternity an hour's kissing of a bonny lass."
Here the commander interfered, and the poor victim was raised, though
scarcely able to stand on his legs, from the stun of the blow.
"And now," said Douglas, "for the last time, wilt thou conform, and
preserve thy life, or die?"
The poor man groaned, and fell on his knees. The band was removed to a
distance, and in a few seconds the smoke rose white and whirling from
the hill-side. The work of death was done!
There is a small clump of old thorns which faces the high-road from
Dumfries to Edinburgh, as it enters the Pass of Dalveen from the south.
At the lower extremity of this woodland patch, there is a grey rock or
stone, covered with a thick coating of moss. It was whilst resting
against this stone, that Daniel M'Michael was shot, about half-an-hour
posterior to the cruelties which have been narrated.
A stone, with a suitable inscription, has been placed over the mangled
remains of this good man in the churchyard of Durrisdeer; whilst a
marble and gilt monument, of the most elegant and tasteful character,
occupies the whole of the aisle or nave of the church. The latter
monument perpetuates the memory and the virtues of the noble family of
Douglas; whilst the former rude and now mutilated flag-stone mentions an
act of atrocity perpetrated by a cadet of the family. In that day when
the secrets of families and individuals shall be made known, it shall be
manifested whose memory and virtues best deserve to be perpetuated.
The eldest daughter of Mrs Janet M'Michael or M'Caig was married, after
the Revolution, to the second son (John) of Thomas Harkness of
Mitchelslacks, from whom, in a lineal descent, the author of these
scraps derives his birth. Is it to be wondered at, then, that we feel,
through every drop of blood and ramification of nerves, a devotedness to
the great cause of constitutional freedom and rational reform? But we
hope the cause of political liberty may never be mixed up with the
concerns of that Church which our ancestors founded on the dead bodies
of martyrs, and cemented with their blood. We may return to this subject
again, for we have yet many recollections to record.
THE STORY OF TOM BERTRAM.
Poor Tom Bertram! His story is a sad one; and yet I love to talk of it.
It affords me a melancholy pleasure, in my old age, to conjure up the
memories of the past, and to recall those happy days when Tom and I
enjoyed together the freshness of youth and friendship. We were born in
the same village of Roxburghshire, educated at the same Border school,
entered as reefers together in the Honourable East India Company's
service, and for fourteen years we were shipmates and firm friends.
_His_ voyage of life has long been over; and my crazy old hulk must
founder ere long. But a truce to reflection. I must proceed with my
story; and, if I do make myself tedious by my digressions, forgive the
fond garrulity of an old sailor, who loves to linger upon every trifling
recollection of a lost and valued friend.