THE little girl soon made everyone at Fairnilee happy. She was far too
young to remember her own home, and presently she was crawling up and
down the long hall and making friends with Randal. They found out that
her name was Jane Musgrave, though she could hardly say Musgrave; and
they called her Jean, with their Scotch tongues, or “Jean o’ the Kye,”
because she came when the cows were driven home again.
Soon the old nurse came to like her near as well as Randal, “her ain
bairn” (her own child), as she called him. In the summer days, Jean,
as she grew older, would follow Randal about like a little doggie. They
went fishing together, and Randal would pull the trout out of Caddon
Burn, or the Burn of Peel; and Jeanie would be very proud of him, and
very much alarmed at the big, wide jaws of the yellow trout. And Randal
would plait helmets with green rushes for her and him, and make spears
of bulrushes, and play at tilts and tournaments. There was peace in the
country; or if there was war, it did not come near the quiet valley of
the Tweed and the hills that lie round Fairnilee. In summer they were
always on the hills and by the burnsides.
You cannot think, if you have not tried, what pleasant company a burn
is. It comes out of the deep; black wells in the moss, far away on the
tops of the hills, where the sheep feed, and the fox peers from his
hole, and the ravens build in the crags. The burn flows down from the
lonely places, cutting a way between steep, green banks, tumbling in
white waterfalls over rocks, and lying in black, deep pools below the
waterfalls. At every turn it does something new, and plays a fresh game
with its brown waters. The white pebbles in the water look like gold:
often Randal would pick one out and think he had found a gold-mine,
till he got it into the sunshine, and then it was only a white stone,
what he called a “chucky--stane;” but he kept hoping for better luck
next time. In the height of summer, when the streams were very low, he
and the shepherd’s boys would build dams of stones and turf across a
narrow part of the burn, while Jean sat and watched them on a little
round knoll. Then, when plenty of water had collected in the pool, they
would break the dam and let it all run downhill in a little flood; they
called it a “hurly gush.” And in winter they would slide on the black,
smooth ice of the boat-pool, beneath the branches of the alders.
Or they would go out with _Yarrow_, the shepherd’s dog, and follow the
track of wild creatures in the snow. The rabbit makes marks like **, and
the hare makes marks like **; but the fox’s track is just as if you
had pushed a piece of wood through the snow--a number of cuts in the
surface, going straight along.
[Illustration: Tracks of Hare and Fox]
When it was very cold, the grouse and black-cocks would come into the
trees near the house, and Randal and Jean would put out porridge for
them to eat. And the great white swans floated in from the frozen lochs
on the hills, and gathered round open reaches and streams of the Tweed.
It was pleasant to be a boy then in the North. And at Hallow E’en they
would duck for apples in tubs of water, and burn nuts in the fire, and
look for the shadow of the lady Randal was to marry, in the mirror; but
he only saw Jean looking over his shoulder.
The days were very short in winter, so far North, and they would soon be
driven into the house. Then they sat by the nursery fire; and those
were almost the pleasantest hours, for the old nurse would tell them old
Scotch stories of elves and fairies, and sing them old songs. Jean would
crawl close to Randal and hold his hand, for fear the Red Etin, or some
other awful bogle, should get her: and in the dancing shadows of the
firelight she would think she saw Whuppity Stoorie, the wicked old witch
with the spinning-wheel; but it was really nothing but the shadow of the
wheel that the old nurse drove with her foot--_birr, birr_--and that
whirred and rattled as she span and told her tale.
[Illustration: Page 254]
For people span their cloth at home then, instead of buying it from
shops; and the old nurse was a great woman for spinning.
She was a great woman for stories, too, and believed in fairies, and
“bogles,” as she called them. Had not her own cousin, Andrew Tamson,
passed the Cauldshiels Loch one New Year morning? And had he not heard
a dreadful roaring, as if all the cattle on Faldonside Hill were routing
at once? And then did he not see a great black beast roll down the
hillside, like a black ball, and run into the loch, which grew white
with foam, and the waves leaped up the banks like a tide rising? What
could that be except the kelpie that lives in Cauldshiels Loch, and is
just a muckle big water bull? “And what for should there no be water kye,
if there ‘s land kye?”
Randal and Jean thought it was very likely there were “kye,” or cattle,
in the water. And some Highland people think so still, and believe they
have seen the great kelpie come roaring out of the lake; or Shellycoat,
whose skin is all crusted like a rock with shells, sitting beside the
sea.
The old nurse had other tales, that nobody believes any longer, about
Brownies. A Brownie was a very useful creature to have in a house. He
was a kind of fairy-man, and he came out in the dark, when everybody had
gone to bed, just as mice pop out at night.
He never did anyone any harm, but he sat and warmed himself at the
kitchen fire. If any work was unfinished he did it, and made everything
tidy that was left out of order. It is a pity there are no such bogles
now! If anybody offered the Brownie any payment, even if it was only a
silver penny or a new coat, he would take offence and go away.
Other stories the old nurse had, about hidden treasures and buried gold.
If you believed her, there was hardly an old stone on the hillside but
had gold under it. The very sheep that fed upon the Eildon Hills, which
Randal knew well, had yellow teeth because there was so much gold under
the grass. Randal had taken two scones, or rolls, in his pocket for
dinner, and ridden over to the Eildon Hills. He had seen a rainbow touch
one of them, and there he hoped he would find the treasure that always
lies at the tail of the rainbow. But he got very soon tired of digging
for it with his little dirk, or dagger. It blunted the dagger, and
he found nothing. Perhaps he had not marked quite the right place, he
thought. But he looked at the teeth of the sheep, and they were yellow;
so he had no doubt that there was a gold-mine under the grass, if he
could find it.
The old nurse knew that it was very difficult to dig up fairy gold.
Generally something happened just when people heard their pick-axes
clink on the iron pot that held the treasure. A dreadful storm of
thunder and lightning would break out; or the burn would be flooded, and
rush down all red and roaring, sweeping away the tools and drowning the
digger; or a strange man, that nobody had ever seen before, would come
up, waving his arms, and crying out that the Castle was on fire. Then
the people would hurry up to the Castle, and find that it was not on
fire at all. When they returned, all the earth would be just as it was
before they began, and they would give up in despair. Nobody could ever
see the man again that gave the alarm.
“Who could he be, nurse?” Randal asked.
“Just one of the good folk, I ‘m thinking; but it’s no weel to be
speaking o’ _them_.”
Randal knew that the “good folk” meant the fairies. The old nurse called
them the good folk for fear of offending them. She would not speak
much about them, except now and then, when the servants had been making
merry.
“And is there any treasure hidden near Fairnilee, nursie?” asked little
Jean.
“Treasure, my bonny doo! Mair than a’ the men about the toon could carry
away frae morning till nicht. Do ye no ken the auld rhyme?--
‘Atween the wet ground and the dry
The gold of Fairnilee doth lie.’
And there’s the other auld rhyme--
‘Between the Camp o’ Rink
And Tweed water clear,
Lie nine kings’ ransoms
For nine hundred year!’”
Randal and Jean were very glad to hear so much gold was near them as
would pay nine kings’ ransoms. They took their small spades and dug
little holes in the Camp of Rink, which is a great old circle of
stonework, surrounded by a deep ditch, on the top of a hill above the
house. But Jean was not a very good digger, and even Randal grew tired.
They thought they would wait till they grew bigger, and _then_ find the
gold.
[Illustration: Chapter Five]