YEAR 1766
IT was in this Ann. Dom. that the great calamity happened, the which took
place on a Sabbath evening in the month of February. Mrs. Balwhidder had
just infused or masket the tea, and we were set round the fireside, to
spend the night in an orderly and religious manner, along with Mr. and
Mrs. Petticrew, who were on a friendly visitation to the manse, the
mistress being full cousin to Mrs. Balwhidder.—Sitting, as I was saying,
at our tea, one of the servant lasses came into the room with a sort of a
panic laugh, and said, “What are ye all doing there when the Breadland’s
in a low?”—“The Breadland in a low!” cried I.—“Oh, ay!” cried she;
“bleezing at the windows and the rigging, and out at the lum, like a
killogie.” Upon the which, we all went to the door, and there, to be
sure, we did see that the Breadland was burning, the flames crackling
high out o’er the trees, and the sparks flying like a comet’s tail in the
firmament.
Seeing this sight, I said to Mr. Petticrew, that, in the strength of the
Lord, I would go and see what could be done, for it was as plain as the
sun in the heavens that the ancient place of the Breadlands would be
destroyed; whereupon he accorded to go with me, and we walked at a lively
course to the spot, and the people from all quarters were pouring in, and
it was an awsome scene. But the burning of the house, and the droves of
the multitude, were nothing to what we saw when we got forenent the
place. There was the rafters crackling, the flames raging, the servants
running, some with bedding, some with looking-glasses, and others with
chamber utensils as little likely to be fuel to the fire, but all
testifications to the confusion and alarm. Then there was a shout,
“Whar’s Miss Girzie? whar’s the Major?” The Major, poor man, soon cast
up, lying upon a feather-bed, ill with his complaints, in the garden; but
Lady Skimmilk was nowhere to be found. At last, a figure was seen in the
upper flat, pursued by the flames, and that was Miss Girzie. Oh! it was
a terrible sight to look at her in that jeopardy at the window, with her
gold watch in the one hand and the silver teapot in the other, skreighing
like desperation for a ladder and help. But, before a ladder or help
could be found, the floor sunk down, and the roof fell in, and poor Miss
Girzie, with her idols, perished in the burning. It was a dreadful
business! I think, to this hour, how I saw her at the window, how the
fire came in behind her, and claught her like a fiery Belzebub, and bore
her into perdition before our eyes. The next morning the atomy of the
body was found among the rubbish, with a piece of metal in what had been
each of its hands, no doubt the gold watch and the silver teapot. Such
was the end of Miss Girzie; and the Breadland, which the young laird, my
pupil that was, by growing a resident at Edinburgh, never rebuilt. It
was burnt to the very ground; nothing was spared but what the servants in
the first flaught gathered up in a hurry and ran with; but no one could
tell how the Major, who was then, as it was thought by the faculty, past
the power of nature to recover, got out of the house, and was laid on the
feather-bed in the garden. However, he never got the better of that
night, and before Whitsunday he was dead too, and buried beside his
sister’s bones at the south side of the kirkyard dyke, where his cousin’s
son, that was his heir, erected the handsome monument, with the three
urns and weeping cherubims, bearing witness to the great valour of the
Major among the Hindoos, as well as other commendable virtues, for which,
as the epitaph says, he was universally esteemed and beloved, by all who
knew him, in his public and private capacity.
But although the burning of the Breadland-House was justly called the
great calamity, on account of what happened to Miss Girzie with her gold
watch and silver teapot; yet, as Providence never fails to bring good out
of evil, it turned out a catastrophe that proved advantageous to the
parish; for the laird, instead of thinking to build it up, was advised to
let the policy out as a farm, and the tack was taken by Mr. Coulter, than
whom there had been no such man in the agriculturing line among us
before, not even excepting Mr. Kibbock of the Gorbyholm, my father-in-law
that was. Of the stabling, Mr. Coulter made a comfortable
dwelling-house; and having rugget out the evergreens and other
unprofitable plants, saving the twa ancient yew-trees which the
near-begaun Major and his sister had left to go to ruin about the
mansion-house, he turned all to production, and it was wonderful what an
increase he made the land bring forth. He was from far beyond Edinburgh,
and had got his insight among the Lothian farmers, so that he knew what
crop should follow another, and nothing could surpass the regularity of
his rigs and furrows.—Well do I remember the admiration that I had, when,
in a fine sunny morning of the first spring after he took the Breadland,
I saw his braird on what had been the cows’ grass, as even and pretty as
if it had been worked and stripped in the loom with a shuttle. Truly,
when I look back at the example he set, and when I think on the method
and dexterity of his management, I must say, that his coming to the
parish was a great godsend, and tended to do far more for the benefit of
my people, than if the young laird had rebuilded the Breadland-House in a
fashionable style, as was at one time spoken of.
But the year of the great calamity was memorable for another thing:—in
the December foregoing, the wind blew, as I have recorded in the
chronicle of the last year, and broke down the bough of the tree whereon
the kirk-bell had hung from the time, as was supposed, of the
persecution, before the bringing over of King William. Mr. Kibbock, my
father-in-law then that was, being a man of a discerning spirit, when he
heard of the unfortunate fall of the bell, advised me to get the heritors
to big a steeple; but which, when I thought of the expense, I was afraid
to do. He, however, having a great skill in the heart of man, gave me no
rest on the subject; but told me, that if I allowed the time to go by
till the heritors were used to come to the kirk without a bell, I would
get no steeple at all. I often wondered what made Mr. Kibbock so fond of
a steeple, which is a thing that I never could see a good reason for,
saving that it is an ecclesiastical adjunct, like the gown and bands.
However, he set me on to get a steeple proposed, and after no little
argol-bargling with the heritors, it was agreed to. This was chiefly
owing to the instrumentality of Lady Moneyplack, who, in that winter, was
much subjected to the rheumatics, she having, one cold and raw Sunday
morning, there being no bell to announce the time, come half an hour too
soon to the kirk, made her bestir herself to get an interest awakened
among the heritors in behalf of a steeple.
But when the steeple was built, a new contention arose. It was thought
that the bell, which had been used in the ash-tree, would not do in a
stone and lime fabric; so, after great agitation among the heritors, it
was resolved to sell the old bell to a foundery in Glasgow, and buy a new
bell suitable to the steeple, which was a very comely fabric. The buying
of the new bell led to other considerations, and the old Lady Breadland,
being at the time in a decaying condition, and making her will, she left
a mortification to the parish, as I have intimated, to get a clock; so
that, by the time the steeple was finished, and the bell put up, the Lady
Breadland’s legacy came to be implemented, according to the ordination of
the testatrix.
Of the casualities that happened in this year, I should not forget to put
down, as a thing for remembrance, that an aged woman, one Nanse Birrel, a
distillator of herbs, and well skilled in the healing of sores, who had a
great repute among the quarriers and colliers—she having gone to the
physic well in the sandy hills to draw water, was found, with her feet
uppermost in the well, by some of the bairns of Mr. Lorimore’s school;
and there was a great debate whether Nanse had fallen in by accident head
foremost, or, in a temptation, thrown herself in that position, with her
feet sticking up to the evil one; for Nanse was a curious discontented
blear-eyed woman, and it was only with great ado that I could get the
people keepit from calling her a witchwife.
I should likewise place on record, that the first ass that had ever been
seen in this part of the country, came in the course of this year with a
gang of tinklers, that made horn-spoons and mended bellows. Where they
came from never was well made out; but being a blackaviced crew, they
were generally thought to be Egyptians. They tarried about a week among
us, living in tents, with their little ones squattling among the litter;
and one of the older men of them set and tempered to me two razors, that
were as good as nothing, but which he made better than when they were
new.
[Picture: The Old Ploughman]
Shortly after, but I am not quite sure whether it was in the end of this
year, or the beginning of the next, although I have a notion that it was
in this, there came over from Ireland a troop of wild Irish, seeking for
work as they said; but they made free quarters, for they herrit the
roosts of the clachan, and cutted the throat of a sow of ours, the
carcass of which they no doubt intended to steal; but something came over
them, and it was found lying at the back side of the manse, to the great
vexation of Mrs. Balwhidder; for she had set her mind on a clecking of
pigs, and only waited for the China boar, that had been brought down from
London by Lord Eaglesham, to mend the breed of pork—a profitable
commodity, that her father, Mr. Kibbock, cultivated for the Glasgow
market. The destruction of our sow, under such circumstances, was
therefore held to be a great crime and cruelty, and it had the effect to
raise up such a spirit in the clachan, that the Irish were obligated to
decamp; and they set out for Glasgow, where one of them was afterwards
hanged for a fact, but the truth concerning how he did it, I either never
heard, or it has passed from my mind, like many other things I should
have carefully treasured.