YEAR 1788
IT had been often remarked by ingenious men, that the Brawl burn, which
ran through the parish, though a small, was yet a rapid stream, and had a
wonderful capability for damming, and to turn mills. From the time that
the Irville water deserted its channel this brook grew into repute, and
several mills and dams had been erected on its course. In this year a
proposal came from Glasgow to build a cotton-mill on its banks, beneath
the Witch-linn, which being on a corner of the Wheatrig, the property of
Mr. Cayenne, he not only consented thereto, but took a part in the profit
or loss therein; and, being a man of great activity, though we thought
him, for many a day, a serpent-plague sent upon the parish, he proved
thereby one of our greatest benefactors. The cotton-mill was built, and
a spacious fabric it was—nothing like it had been seen before in our day
and generation—and, for the people that were brought to work in it, a new
town was built in the vicinity, which Mr. Cayenne, the same being founded
on his land, called Cayenneville, the name of the plantation in Virginia
that had been taken from him by the rebellious Americans. From that day
Fortune was lavish of her favours upon him; his property swelled, and
grew in the most extraordinary manner, and the whole country side was
stirring with a new life. For, when the mill was set a-going, he got
weavers of muslin established in Cayenneville; and shortly after, but
that did not take place till the year following, he brought women all the
way from the neighbourhood of Manchester, in England, to teach the lassie
bairns in our old clachan tambouring.
Some of the ancient families, in their turreted houses, were not pleased
with this innovation, especially when they saw the handsome dwellings
that were built for the weavers of the mills, and the unstinted hand that
supplied the wealth required for the carrying on of the business. It
sank their pride into insignificance, and many of them would almost
rather have wanted the rise that took place in the value of their lands,
than have seen this incoming of what they called o’er-sea speculation.
But, saving the building of the cotton-mill, and the beginning of
Cayenneville, nothing more memorable happened in this year, still it was
nevertheless a year of a great activity. The minds of men were excited
to new enterprises; a new genius, as it were, had descended upon the
earth, and there was an erect and outlooking spirit abroad that was not
to be satisfied with the taciturn regularity of ancient affairs. Even
Miss Sabrina Hooky, the schoolmistress, though now waned from her
meridian, was touched with the enlivening rod, and set herself to learn
and to teach tambouring, in such a manner as to supersede by precept and
example that old time-honoured functionary, as she herself called it, the
spinning-wheel, proving, as she did one night to Mr. Kibbock and me,
that, if more money could be made by a woman tambouring than by spinning,
it was better for her to tambour than to spin.
But, in the midst of all this commercing and manufacturing, I began to
discover signs of decay in the wonted simplicity of our country ways.
Among the cotton-spinners and muslin weavers of Cayenneville were several
unsatisfied and ambitious spirits, who clubbed together, and got a London
newspaper to the Cross-Keys, where they were nightly in the habit of
meeting and debating about the affairs of the French, which were then
gathering towards a head. They were represented to me as lads by common
in capacity, but with unsettled notions of religion. They were, however,
quiet and orderly; and some of them since, at Glasgow, Paisley, and
Manchester, even, I am told, in London, have grown into a topping way.
It seems they did not like my manner of preaching, and on that account
absented themselves from public worship; which, when I heard, I sent for
some of them, to convince them of their error with regard to the truth of
divers points of doctrine; but they confounded me with their objections,
and used my arguments, which were the old and orthodox proven opinions of
the Divinity Hall, as if they had been the light sayings of a vain man.
So that I was troubled, fearing that some change would ensue to my
people, who had hitherto lived amidst the boughs and branches of the
gospel unmolested by the fowler’s snare, and I set myself to watch
narrowly, and with a vigilant eye, what would come to pass.
There was a visible increase among us of worldly prosperity in the course
of this year; insomuch that some of the farmers, who were in the custom
of taking their vendibles to the neighbouring towns on the Tuesdays, the
Wednesdays, and Fridays, were led to open a market on the Saturdays in
our own clachan, the which proved a great convenience. But I cannot take
it upon me to say, whether this can be said to have well begun in the
present Ann. Dom., although I know that in the summer of the ensuing year
it was grown into a settled custom; which I well recollect by the
Macadams coming with their bairns to see Mrs. Malcolm, their mother,
suddenly on a Saturday afternoon; on which occasion me and Mrs.
Balwhidder were invited to dine with them, and Mrs. Malcolm bought in the
market for the dinner that day, both mutton and fowls, such as twenty
years before could not have been got for love or money on such a pinch.
Besides, she had two bottles of red and white wine from the Cross-Keys,
luxuries which, saving in the Breadland House in its best days, could not
have been had in the whole parish, but must have been brought from a
borough town; for Eaglesham Castle is not within the bounds of
Dalmailing, and my observe does not apply to the stock and stores of that
honourable mansion, but only to the dwellings of our own heritors, who
were in general straitened in their circumstances, partly with upsetting,
and partly by the eating rust of family pride, which hurt the edge of
many a clever fellow among them, that would have done well in the way of
trade, but sunk into divors for the sake of their genteelity.