IN WHICH BETTY COMPLAINS OF GROWING-PAINS.
It was the Halflin that brought me word that Betty was not so well, and
would I be coming to see her.
"What is her complaint?" said I.
"It iss the growing-pains, in her old legs, and in the top of her
oxters--wild, bad, ay, terrible bad."
There was a great change in the old one, it seemed to me, when I was
seeing her. She would be so very wee-looking in her bed, and her
spirits so low. She looked at the lotions and mixtures I had fetched
with me, and then shook her head sadly, and cried in the Gaelic, "The
hour of my departure is come. Hamish, Hamish, is the whisky to be not
any more use?"
"There are the good words I could be saying," says she in a whisper,
"but the minister is no' for them."
"Whatna good words?"
"Och, chust to be calling on the saints, St Peter and St Paul--mora,
but Paul wass the lad," and she brisked up a wee at that, and
whispered, "There are them I could be naming, Hamish, that St Paul
would be curing. Ay, bodies and beasts I have seen the good words
working a cure on, but wae's me, Hamish, I will never be hearing the
cuckoo again. I am loath to part wi' this bonny place, calm and
peaceful for a body's old age, and I will be missing the fine smell of
the grass when it will be newly cut, and the clink of the stones on the
cutting-hooks."
"Well, Betty, it will be the road we all must go at the hinder end--a
fine road, Betty, from the point at the Gorton to the Island; for it
was in her mind to be in the old burial-ground, and you will be lying
there among your folk, on yon holy place, with the sun beating down and
the cool blue sea at your feet, and all the friends sitting on the
Mount of Weeping above the Brae, thrang at the greeting; and maybe on
an east-wind night the spirit of ye will be hearing the rattle of
halyards and the plash of the anchors, when the boats come in for
shelter--and Bryde's among them. . . ."
"Bryde, Hamish--och, the limber lad. . . . Are you thinking it is all
over wi' Betty, Hamish?"
"Ay, Betty."
"_Well, it's no'_--give me a little spirits," said she, a look of
indomitable courage on her face, and pursing her lips into a thin line.
When I put the spirits into her hand she sipped a little, and coughed
politely at the strength of it, and then turned herself towards me.
"A grain o' water," said she. "You will be liking it plain yourself,
but I would aye be liking a little water--after it. Many's the day
have I been waiting for the coming of Bryde, the dear one, the limber
lad, and I will be tholing yet a wee, for I will be seeing him before I
will be going to my own place."
And with that Margaret came to be speaking to the old one, and for
myself I made my way outside to where I could be laughing in comfort,
for the sight of Betty's face when she had made up her mind to be
tholing a little longer was too much for me.
It was after this visit to Betty that Margaret would be asking me to be
taking the dogs and catching her a pair or two, maybe, of young
rabbits, for they were well grown, and she took butter in the blade of
a kail, and such-like truck, and went to see Mhari nic Cloidh.
She was come of a great race this Mhari nic Cloidh, a race that has
given the old names to glens and to burns, a race that led the
Brandanes of the Kings; but she was old and lived alone, except maybe
when the young lassies would be doing the scouring of her blankets,
tramping like all that, and among the lassies was the saying that Mhari
nic Cloidh had the gift.
Well, for that I will not be saying, but she would aye have a dram for
kent folk, and Dan McBride took me with him there many a time. Well,
well, the young boys would be tormenting the old lady--they would be
lighting green branches in the fire in her sleeping-place, to smeek her
out, not meaning any ill, but just for a ploy, and to see her lindging
at them with the stick from her bed, and craking and raging at them
time about, to be taking the divot off the top of the lum. And that
was the great diversion for them; but when Margaret went to her this
time she was thrang at the building of her stack of peat, and there was
with her a younger woman, and Mhari nic Cloidh was not in good wind,
for the first of her words came to us: "A traill," says she to her
helper. "Traill," it seems to me, would be meaning in the English,
"lazy, useless, bedraggled"; but there is no word in English that would
be giving the contempt of that word, which I am thinking would have
some connection with the Norse word "troll," but I am not sure of it.
But there was no end to her kindness for Margaret.
"It was in me that you would be coming, mo leanabh, fresh and beautiful
like the bloom on the hawthorn, a maiden of the morning, bringing gifts
in her hands."
So I left them in the house, and tried my hand at the building of the
peats till I was seeing that the traill was well contented to be
sitting watching me and doing nothing; and at that I left the rick, for
I cannot put up with idleness; besides, I was not making a very good
hand at the building. When I put my head into the room again, Mhari
nic Cloidh was thrang at the talking in a droll sing-song voice, and
this was the air of it--
"The word will come over the water--soon it will be coming--ay,
soon--there will be one coming from the sea."
Now I was jalousing that Margaret was like the lave of lassies, very
keen to be at the probing into the future, a thing that is not canny to
be having any belief in, and not in accordance with the Scriptures; but
for all that--
"What havers was it the old one would be telling you, and me outside at
the peats?"
"She will be getting old and thinking droll thoughts, Hamish--just old
wives' havers, about the crops and the wars that will be coming. . . ."
"And the word from the sea, Margaret? Will that be news of a battle
maybe?"
"I am not sure I was understanding that," said she, looking away. "I
am thinking that would be not anything at all," but I could see her
hiding a smile.
"I am hoping there is no harm come to Bryde," said I, "and the word
coming home on a ship."
At that the sly smile (for it was sly) was quick to vanish from the
lass's face, and she turned to me then.
"I am hating you when you croak like a raven, wishing evil," she
cried--"there will be no harm to Bryde. I will be having news of him
soon, and I will be going on a journey with him. . . ."
"Well, my lass, could you not have been telling me" (for she was angry
and nearly weeping), "instead of talking about crops and wars," said I.
"Are you not always telling me it is havers," she cried out, "and not
for sensible folk to be listening to, and putting belief in. I am
thinking you are worse than me," and at that she left me in a fine
flare of temper.
* * * * * *
Now on the shore from Bealach an sgadan till you come well below the
rise of the hill of the fort there is a roughness of grass and sprits
that will put a fine skin on grazing beasts, maybe from the strength of
the salt in the ground and the wrack, for with high tides the place is
often flooded. We would graze young beasts there all the summer with a
herd-boy at the watching of them. A lonely eerie place for a night
vigil, with nothing but waterfowl and cushies for company; and on a
Sabbath I went there (for a man must see his beasts, no matter for the
evil example of stravaging on the Lord's Day), and when I would be
through with the queys I walked on the little path, on the short turf
well past the grazing, to the place where the rocks on the shore are
very large, and set in droll positions, as though maybe a daft giant of
the old days had cocked them up for his play, and at this place, lying
curled between the smaller boulders, was a man twisting a bit of
tattered rope into fantastic knots, and eyeing his work with a droll
half-pleased look, and his head a little to one side.
I gave him good-day, and he started round suddenly all alert, like a
man well used to handling himself.
"Ay," said he, "there will be mackerel there," and he pointed to the
sea, all a-louping with the fish, and then he unravelled his knots, and
smoothed the strands with hands brown as a bark sail, and hard-looking
as an oak.
"You will be following the sea?"
"Just that," said he, "this long while--seven years maybe. I was at
the herdin' before that with my father--it is a homely thing to be
hearing the crying o' the sheep in the hills. Many's the time I would
be thinking on that when the fog would be round us, and naething to be
listening for but the creaking o' a block in the rigging. Maist
sailor-men have the notion o' a farm," says he, "when they will be at
sea. I am thinking it will come to that wi' me too, when my father is
old and my mother."
"Where is your place?" said I. "Are you from these parts?" for there
was a look about him I kent, and yet could not be naming it.
"Ronald McKinnon is my father," said he.
"And you went to sea years ago," I cried at him, "just before the fair
on the green. You are Angus McKinnon, and Ronald, your father, will be
the proud man."
"Yea, I was thinking you would be kennin' me soon," said he, laughing;
"and my father was telling me you would be walking here on a Sunday.
It will be very sedate in our house this day, and McGilp, that was
master of the _Gull_, waling the Bible for stories of sailing craft;
and my father reading about Jacob, and yon droll tricks he would be
doing with the cattle o' his mother's brother--yon was sailin' near the
win'.
"I was seein' beasts like yon, speckled and spotted and runnin' wild"
(he would be thinking of Laban's herd), "in an island in the Indies,"
said Ronald's son after a while.
"A herd?"
"A herd--ay, kye in legions. We made a slaughter o' them and
smoke-cured the flesh for the harnish casks--the Frenchmen are the
clever ones at that work--'boucan,' they would be saying; and, man, it
aye minded me o' a bochan wi' the smoke and that"; and I was thinking
while Angus McKinnon was speaking of the wee black huts that our folk
will be calling bochans to this day, and wondering if the French had
put that name on them, for smoky they are indeed.
"It was _that_ I was coming to," said the sailor; "it would be there I
fell in with your kinsman."
"Ay," said I, sitting up and thinking of Mhari nic Cloidh; "is it Bryde
McBride you are meaning?"
"Just that," said he, looking far to sea; "a devil o' a man yon, with
eyes that would drill a hole in an oak timber. He came there in a
privateer--Captain Cook, I think, was master of her, Bryde McBride
mate--lieutenant, the crew would be saying, for the schooner carried
letters o' marque--a fast ship and well found; the _Spray_ was the name
of her."
"And Bryde McBride--had you speech with him?"
"I had that--ay, we yarned for long and long, him in his fine clothes
an' all, and very pressing with the rum. He would be speaking about
you, and telling me if I was seeing you ever to be saying he would be
doing finely, and very full of notions about growing fine crops when he
would be back again. It was droll to be listening to him yarning about
his crops, and me with all the stories I would be hearing from the crew
of his schooner."
"Ay, man; but what like is the boy?"
"The boy," says he, and laughed. "Lord, he is a boy, ye may weel say
it, quiet and smiling, and fond of throwing back the head of him and
laughing. He will aye be doing that; but there is no man will run foul
o' him, drunk or sober, in these seas, and there are bold sailor-men in
the Indies, ay, bold stark men. He carries a long lean sword wi' a
bonny grip--the maiden, he will be calling her,--she will have kissed
many, they were saying. . . ."
"And is he coming home?"
"He would be settling that," said the sailor; "but there were stories
o' bonny bright eyes in Jamaica and the towns there-away--ay there is
dancing and devilry in these bonny places"; and McKinnon's son sighed
in a way that would have brought no pleasure to the ears of his mother,
Mirren Stuart, that used to ride the Uist pony in her young days.
The grass was wet with dew when I left the sailor and made my road
home, and I mind that I looked away to the suthard for a sail, and
there was a queer gladness and a sorrow in me, and a grave doubt about
that old woman Mhari nic Cloidh and her havers.