that is, indeed, from Castleton to Inchrory, amid the storms of
winter. Not a vestige of a house by the way. Many a poor wretch
has perished in the snow, amidst these trackless wastes. Not to go
very far back, there was a terrible snow storm about the Martinmas
time in the 1829. It roared, and blew, and drifted so fast, that
it was mid-day or ever Mrs. Shaw of Inchrory ventured to put her
head out beyond the threshold of her own door, to look at the thick
and dreary shroud of white in which dead nature was wrapped, and
which covered the whole lonely scene of hill and valley around her,
and was in many places blown into wreathes of a great depth. There
was not a speck of colour, nor any moving thing to vary the glazed
unbroken surface, except on one distant hillock, where a single
human figure was seen, wandering to and fro, as if in a maze, like
some one bereft of reason. The male inhabitants of the house were
all out looking after the stock belonging to the grazing farm; and,
as Mrs. Shaw was in doubt whether the person she beheld might not in
reality be some one who was deranged, as his movements rather seemed
to indicate, she was afraid to venture to approach him. But curiosity
as well as pity made her cast many a look towards him during that
afternoon, as he still continued to move slowly round the hillock,
and backwards and forwards, without any apparent sense or meaning,
and stopping now and then, as if utterly bewildered. At length,
as it was drawing towards night, Mrs. Shaw observed that the figure
had either fallen, or lain down among the snow, and her charitable
feelings then overcoming all her apprehensions, she proceeded to wade
through the snow towards the hillock where he lay. Having, with very
considerable difficulty, made her way to the spot, she found him lying
on his back, as composedly as if he had lain down in his bed. The
intense cold had so benumbed his intellects, indeed, that he did not
seem to be in the least aware of his own melancholy situation.--"Wha
are ye? and what are ye wantin?" said he, to Mrs. Shaw, with a faint
smile on his emaciated face, as he beheld her stooping over him with
an anxious gaze of inquiry. "I came to help you," replied Mrs. Shaw;
"Will you let me try to lift you up?"--"Thank you, I can rise mysel',"
replied he, making a vain effort to get up.--"You had better let me
help you," said Mrs. Shaw.--"Ou, na, thank ye," replied he again;
"I can rise weel eneugh mysel."--"Do so, then," said Mrs. Shaw,
whilst at the same time she prepared herself for giving him her best
assistance during his attempt. In this way, a strong effort on her part
enabled her at last to succeed in getting the poor man on his legs;
and then, after the expenditure of as much time as might have easily
enabled her to have gone five or six miles, and with immense labour and
fatigue, this heroic woman was finally successful in supporting him,
or rather, I should say, in half carrying him to Inchrory. When she
had got him fairly out of the snow, and into the house, she had the
horror to discover, that not only were his shoes and stockings gone,
but that even the very flesh was worn off his feet. When help arrived,
they got him into bed, and did all for him that charitable Christians
could do. Food was brought to him, but it was some time before he
could be made to swallow any portion of it, and that only by feeding
him like a child. The poor fellow turned out to be a young man of
the name of Thomas Macintosh, servant to the Rev. Mr. MacEachan,
the Roman Catholic priest at Castleton, which place he had left on
the Wednesday morning, and he had wandered among the snow, without
food or shelter, and becoming every moment more and more bewildered,
until the Friday evening, when Mrs. Shaw's praiseworthy exertions
brought him to her house. On the Saturday, the good people carried
him down the valley to the next farm, on his way to the doctor. But,
alas! no doctor was ever destined to do him any good, for he died that
same evening. Two one pound notes, and a few shillings, were found
in his pocket, which sum went to pay the expense of his interment in
the newly made church-yard at Tomantoul, of which, as it so happened,
he was the second tenant.
Grant.--What a melancholy fate!
Serjeant.--Sad, indeed, sir. But there are many stories of the same
kind connected with this wild path through these desolate mountains.
Author.--Do you remember any more of them, Archy?
Serjeant.--Ou, yes, sir. It was upon that terrible night of drift,
the 25th of November, 1826, no farther gone, when so many poor people
perished, that a man, three women, and two horses, were buried in
the snow upon yon hill, which is called Cairn Elsach, as they were
on their way back from the Tomantoul market. So deep was the snow
in many places, that one of the horses was found frozen stiff dead,
and the beast was so supported in it, as to be sticking upright upon
his legs, and a woman was discovered standing dead beside him. Some
little time afterwards, a shepherd, who happened to have occasion to
cross the hill, had his attention attracted by some long hair which was
seen above the icy surface, waving in the wintry blast. On scraping
away the snow, he found that it was attached to a woman's head, who
had unfortunately perished. He procured the assistance of some of his
friends, who were afraid to dig out the body for fear it might have
become offensive. I, who chanced to be there, had no such scruples,
first, because I knew very well that the snow must have preserved it,
and, secondly, because, if it had been otherwise, I knew that I had
lost my sense of smelling in consequence of the desperate wound in my
jaw, of which I told you. When the snow was removed, the poor young
woman's body was found quite fresh and entire, but it was perfectly
blue in colour.
Author.--These are melancholy details; yet, it must be confessed,
they are quite in harmony with the wild and lonely scenery now before
our eyes.
Grant.--They remind one of the horrors of the Alps.
Clifford.--The gaunt wolves are wanting, though, to make up the
picture completely.
Serjeant.--We had the wolves also ourselves once upon a time, sir;
and now the corby, and the hill-fox, and the eagle, do their best to
make up for the want of them. But such a wilderness as this, covered
deep with snow, and the howling wind carrying the drift across it,
has quite terrors enough in it for my taste.
Author.--I am quite of your opinion, Archy.
Serjeant.--Yet it is wonderful how Providence will interfere to
preserve people alive, amidst such complicated horrors. I remember a
story of a man of the name of Macintosh, who left Braemar, with his
wife, to come over this way. A dreadful snow storm came upon them, and,
being blinded by the snow-drift, and encumbered in the deep and heavy
wreathes, the poor people were separated from each other. The man made
his way, with great difficulty, to a whisky bothy, where he arrived
much exhausted, and quite inconsolable for the loss of his wife. Being
thus saved himself, he procured the assistance of people to help him
to look for the corpse of his lost partner. For two whole days they
sought in vain; when, just as they were about to abandon their search,
till the surface of the ground should become less burdened with snow,
they observed a figure coming slowly and wearily down the hill of
Gart. This, as it drew nearer, appeared to be a woman; and, on her
approaching nearer still, the overjoyed husband discovered that she
was his living wife, for whom he had been weeping as dead. She had
been wandering for nearly three days, without either food or shelter,
amid the mountain snows, but, although she was dreadfully exhausted,
she eventually recovered.
Grant.--That was indeed the support of Providence, Archy!
Author.--Most wonderful indeed! Her preservation was little short of
a miracle.
Serjeant.--Aye, truly, you may well say that, sir. Nothing but a
miracle could have preserved the poor woman from so many perils as
she must have encountered in her wanderings,--not to mention those of
cold, hunger, and fatigue. It was the hand of Providence, assuredly,
that supported her. By what means he worked, we have no opportunity
of knowing. But surely it was strange that he could have enabled any
human being, and especially a woman, to have come through so much
fatigue and suffering alive.
Clifford.--Truly, most miraculous!
Serjeant.--And then, gentlemen, how very strangely--so far as we
blind mortals can perceive--are others permitted to perish at the
very door, as it were, of help. I think it is now about sixteen
years ago--and, if I remember rightly, it was about the Christmas
time--that James Stewart, son of the miller of Delnabo, perished, on
the very haugh there, just below the House of Inchrory. The poor fellow
passed by this place, on his way over to Braemar, one morning that I
happened to be here. He stopped a few minutes with me, and had some
talk.--"I'm likely to get a fine day for crossing the hill, Archy,"
said he.--"Well," said I, "I hope you will, and I wish you may. Yet I
don't altogether like yon mountaneous heap of white tumbling-looking
clouds, that are casting up afar off over the hill-top yonder."--"They
dinna look awthegither weel, to be sure," said Jemmy; "but I houp I
may be in weel kent land lang or they break."--We parted. The snow
came on in a dreadful storm, about mid-day; and I had two or three
anxious thoughts about Jemmy Stewart, as the recollection of him was
ever and anon brought back to me, during the night, by the fearful
whistling of the wind, and the rattling of the hail. Next morning,
I, and some of the other men about the place, found a human track,
running in a bewildered, irregular, and uncertain line, between the
house of Inchrory and the burn yonder, which must be a width of not
much more than forty yards. We had not followed this far, when we
came to the poor man, whose worn-out feet had made these prints. His
walking-stick was standing erect among the snow beside him,--and
there lay poor Jemmy Stewart, on his face; his hands were closed,
and his head rested on them, just as if he had lain quietly down to
sleep. The lads who were with me, stupid gomerills that they were,
had a superstitious dread of touching him; but, deeply as I grieved
for the poor fellow, I had seen too many dead men in my time to have
any such scruples. I accordingly turned him, and found, alas! that he
was quite gone. It appeared that he had been suddenly surprised and
bewildered by the snow-drift among the hills, and that, having lost
all knowledge of his way, he had unconsciously wandered in the very
opposite direction to that in which he had intended to go. Becoming
more and more confused, as he wandered and wandered, he became at last
so entirely stupified by the multiplied terrors of that awful night,
that he ultimately yielded to the last drowsiness of death, and so
laid himself down to court its fatal repose. Alas! he was unhappily
ignorant that he was within a few yards of the friendly house which he
had passed on his way upwards on the previous morning, to the reviving
shelter of which, the least possible additional exertion might have
easily brought him, had he but known in what direction to have made it.
Clifford.--What a sad and fearful story!
Serjeant.--Aye, sir, sad and fearful indeed! Is it not dreadful to
think how often the recollection of him crossed my mind during that
fatal night, and how little trouble, on my part, would have saved him,
had I only known that he was wandering in the snow so near me? Aye,
and to think that I should have lain ignorantly all the while in my
warm bed, allowing him so cruelly to perish! Willing would I have
been to have travelled all night through the drift to have saved poor
Jemmy Stewart!
Author.--No one can doubt that, Archy.
Serjeant.--Well, but sir, you see these matters are in the hand of
God, and at his wise disposal; and although we, blind moles of the
yearth as we are, cannot easily descry why a worthy well-doing young
man like Jemmy Stewart should be permitted thus wretchedly to die,
without aid, either human or divine, we cannot doubt the justice and
wisdom of God's ways, which are inscrutable, and past man's finding
out. Well, I did all I could for the poor fellow, for I had his corpse
carried down to his afflicted father at Delnabo, and I saw him buried
at Dounan, near the Bridge of Livat.
Clifford.--That, indeed, was all you could do for the poor man,
Archy; and the manner in which you did that little, together with
all the sentiments that you have uttered regarding him, are enough to
convince any one that you would not have scrupled to peril your life,
if you could have thereby saved that of a fellow-creature, still more
that of a friend.
Serjeant.--Thank you, sir, for your good opinion of me; but, as I
said before, these matters are in the hand of God: and, whilst he
allows the strong to perish, he can, if he so wills it, preserve
the weakest. I remember an extraordinary circumstance that happened
about eighteen or twenty years ago, which I may mention to you as
an example of the truth of this observe of mine. Four women, who
had been in the south country at the harvest, were on their return
home over these mountains, when they were caught in a storm. The
snow came on so thickly upon them, and the wind raised so great a
land-drift, that they became bewildered, lost their way, and, after
much wandering, they at last got into the ruins of an old bothy,
near the side of the river Gairden, which runs, as I may tell ye,
beyond those farther hills there to the south. By this time their
shoes were worn off. They were without food--without all means of
making a fire--and the cold came on so intense during the night, that
the poor things were all frozen to death. There they were found in
the morning by a party of smugglers, who had been early a-stir after
their trade. The whole of the four women were cold and stiff. But the
most wonderful, as well as the most touching circumstance of all was,
that a female child, of about sixteen months old, was found alive,
vainly attempting to draw nourishment from its mother's breast. The
poor woman's maternal anxiety had enabled her to use precautions to
keep her babe warm and in life, which she had failed to exercise for
her own preservation. The child was taken charge of by Donald Shaw of
Lagganall, and brought up by him under the name of Kirstock; and she
afterwards went to service in Glen Livat, where----But mark me now,
gentlemen! Here we are at Caochan-Seirceag, of which you heard so
much from me in my Legend of the Clan-Allan Stewarts.
Clifford.--I see there are no trees here now, as you say there were
in the days of Sir Patrick Stewart of Clan-Allan.
Grant.--The cliffs are fine though, and the ravine itself romantic. How
comes it that some of these rocks are so brilliantly white? They
absolutely shine like alabaster amid the dazzling radiance of that
setting sun.
Author.--If I answer your question, it will draw me into a disquisition
which may bring an attack upon us from Clifford, for prosing about
geology to one another.
Grant.--Never mind him; he may shut his ears, if he likes.
Author.--Those brilliant streaks of alabastrine white, are nothing more
than incrustations of calcareous stalactites, formed on those rocks
of gneiss, by the evaporation of these trickling rills, the water
of which holds lime in solution, probably derived from the little
aquatic marl snail in the moss above, from which they drain themselves.
Clifford.--I'd advise you to think less of your alabastrine
incrustations of calcareous stalactites on gneiss, and more of your
necks and limbs, during this steep and somewhat hazardous descent,
else you may evaporate like some of those trickling rills you are
speaking of. These fellows you told us of, Mr. Serjeant, must have
had some little difficulty in carrying the Lady Catherine down and
up here. But tell me, I pray you, what is the meaning of the name
of Caochan-Seirceag? for I know that all your Gaelic names of places
are highly poetical and descriptive.
Serjeant.--The meaning of Caochan-Seirceag, sir, so far as I can make
it out, is the rivulet of the beloved maiden.
Clifford.--Poetical in the highest degree!--Why, what scope does it
not afford to the poet's mind to fancy the ardour of the passion of
the lovers who must have made the romantic bed of this rivulet their
trysting place, as well as the beauty of the maiden by whose beloved
image the youth thus happily chose to distinguish it--to imagine all
the obstacles which the pure stream of their love may have encountered
in its course, and of which this vexed and tortured little brook may
have formed but too lively a type, until at length it glided into a
peaceful channel, as this does in its passage across the green meadow
yonder below! What a glorious poetical romance might be suggested by
these rocks and rills!--Confound them!--I had nearly tumbled headlong
over this slippery stone!--What a fall I should have had!
Grant.--You made a narrow escape there, indeed, Clifford. I would have
you to remember, that it would have been quite as bad to have died
the victim of romantic enthusiasm, as of dry geological speculation.
Clifford.--I beg your pardon, my good fellow, you are quite
wrong there. I at least would have infinitely preferred to have
died from thinking of the beloved maiden, than from a confusion
of brain occasioned by a mixture of alabastrine incrustations of
calcareous stalactites and gneiss and marl snails! But to return to
my speculations as to the rivulet of the beloved maiden,--why may it
not have had its name from the Lady Catherine Forbes herself?
Serjeant.--As I shall answer, you have hit the very thing, sir. There
cannot be a doubt that it was from her that the rill was so called.
Clifford.--See now how lucky it was for you, Mister Archy, that I
was not killed by a fall, as I had so nearly been, else had you been
deprived of my ingenious elucidation of this most difficult point. But
now, thank heaven, we are all safe in the meadow, and I shall have
one touch at the trouts yet ere the light goes away entirely.
Author.--I wish you great success, Clifford. Pray do your best,
my good fellow, for I know not what commons we may have in this our
hostel of Inchrory here.
Clifford.--Aha! you see that my rod and my piscatorial skill are not
without their use. Depend upon it, you shan't go without a supper,
if I can help it.
As I suspected, we found that our accommodations at Inchrory were
rather of the simplest description. But the good people of the house
showed every disposition to do the best, for our comfort, that lay
in their power. A dozen and a half of large trouts, which Clifford
soon brought in, added to some of those provisions which we carried
with us, made up the best part of our repast, and we very speedily
prepared ourselves for the intellectual enjoyment of the evening.
Clifford.--One would think that the worthy people here, had been
forewarned of our story-telling propensities, and that they had made
especial provision accordingly for the serjeant's long yarns. Did you
ever see a more magnificent pair of wax candles on any table? Why,
these would see out all the narratives that ever were told by Sindbad
the Sailor.
Grant.--Who could have expected to have met with wax candles, such
as these, in an humble place like this, in the midst of these lonely
mountains, and so far from the haunts of men? Nay, who could have
expected to have met with any candles at all here?
Author.--How happens it, Archy, that they can give us candles so
superb as these, in a place like this, where they have so little else
to produce, and nothing at all that can in the least degree correspond
with them? They are of enormous size--nearly three inches in diameter,
I should say. I have seen no such candles as these, except in a Roman
Catholic church, or procession.
Serjeant.--Troth, sir, I imagine you have solved the mystery. The truth
is, as I told you before, that the great mass of the population of
this Highland country consists of Roman Catholics; and it is probable
that these candles, which have been originally used for some religious
rite, have, from necessity, been this night lighted for your use.
Clifford.--Come, then, serjeant, do you proceed to use the candles
as fast as may be. Open your budget, my good man, and give us one of
your many legends.
Grant.--You had better allow the serjeant to mix a tumbler of warm
stuff in the first place, and whilst he is doing so, he can be
considering as to what he had best give us.
Serjeant.--Thank you, sir. I'll just be doing that same. Would you have
any objections to another legend of the Clan-Allan Stewarts, gentlemen?
Author.--Certainly not, Archy, if it be only as good as the last you
gave us.
Serjeant.--It is not for me to speak in its praise, sir, though I
must e'en say that I think it no worse than the last. But it is a
hantel longer.
Grant.--The longer the better, if it be good. We have a long night,
and great candles before us, so that you may give your tongue its
fullest licence.
Serjeant.--Well, gentlemen, it's a good thing to be neither gagged
in the mouth, nor stinted in the bicker.
Author.--Depend upon it, Archy, you shall be neither the one nor
the other.
Clifford.--Come away, then, serjeant, begin as soon as you please.
Archy then took a long snuff out of the box which I handed to him,
during which he seemed to be collecting his ideas, and then he
began his narrative. Although I regret that I cannot always give the
precise words used by him, I shall endeavour to preserve as faithful
an outline of its particulars as I can, and that in language which
I hope may be at least as intelligible.
END OF VOLUME FIRST.
NOTES
[1] Accidental, and rarely occurring.
[2] A swing.
[3] Mòr, great, and Beg or Beag, little, are well known Highland
cognomina, employed like Dubh, black, Ruadh, red, and Bàn, white,
to distinguish different individuals of the same name.
[4] That is, having sixteen or more tynes upon his antlers.
[5] Or Ruadh, red.
[6] Power.