CHAPTER I.

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OLD MORTALITY

by Sir Walter Scott

Volume I.

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[Illustration: Dedication]

[Illustration: First Series]

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION TO OLD MORTALITY.

The origin of “Old Mortality,” perhaps the best of Scott’s historical

romances, is well known. In May, 1816, Mr. Joseph Train, the gauger

from Galloway, breakfasted with Scott in Castle Street. He brought

gifts in his hand,--a relic of Rob Roy, and a parcel of traditions.

Among these was a letter from Mr. Broadfoot, schoolmaster in

Pennington, who facetiously signed himself “Clashbottom.” To cleish, or

clash, is to “flog,” in Scots. From Mr. Broadfoot’s joke arose Jedediah

Cleishbotham, the dominie of Gandercleugh; the real place of

Broadfoot’s revels was the Shoulder of Mutton Inn, at Newton Stewart.

Mr. Train, much pleased with the antiques in “the den” of Castle

Street, was particularly charmed by that portrait of Claverhouse which

now hangs on the staircase of the study at Abbotsford. Scott expressed

the Cavalier opinions about Dundee, which were new to Mr. Train, who

had been bred in the rural tradition of “Bloody Claver’se.”[1] “Might

he not,” asked Mr. Train, “be made, in good hands, the hero of a

national romance as interesting as any about either Wallace or Prince

Charlie?” He suggested that the story should be delivered “as if from

the mouth of Old Mortality.” This probably recalled to Scott his own

meeting with Old Mortality in Dunnottar Churchyard, as described in the

Introduction to the novel.

[1] The Editor’s first acquaintance with Claverhouse was obtained

through an old nurse, who had lived on a farm beside a burn where,

she said, the skulls of Covenanters shot by Bloody Claver’se were

still occasionally found. The stream was a tributary of the

Ettrick.

The account of the pilgrim, as given by Sir Walter from Mr. Train’s

memoranda, needs no addition. About Old Mortality’s son, John, who went

to America in 1776 (? 1774), and settled in Baltimore, a curious romantic

myth has gathered. Mr. Train told Scott more, as his manuscript at

Abbotsford shows, than Scott printed. According to Mr. Train, John

Paterson, of Baltimore, had a son Robert and a daughter Elizabeth. Robert

married an American lady, who, after his decease, was married to the

Marquis of Wellesley. Elizabeth married Jerome Bonaparte! Sir Walter

distrusted these legends, though derived from a Scotch descendant of Old

Mortality. Mr. Ramage, in March, 1871, wrote to “Notes and Queries”

dispelling the myth.

According to Jerome Bonaparte’s descendant, Madame Bonaparte, her family

were Pattersons, not Patersons. Her Baltimore ancestor’s will is extant,

has been examined by Old Mortality’s great-grandson, and announces in a

kind of preamble that the testator was a native of Donegal; his Christian

name was William (“Notes and Queries,” Fourth Series, vol. vii. p. 219,

and Fifth Series, August, 1874). This, of course, quite settles the

question; but the legend is still current among American descendants of

the old Roxburghshire wanderer.

“Old Mortality,” with its companion, “The Black Dwarf,” was published on

December 1, 1816, by Mr. Murray in London, and Mr. Blackwood in

Edinburgh.

The name of “The Author of ‘Waverley’” was omitted on the title-page. The

reason for a change of publisher may have been chiefly financial

(Lockhart, v. 152). Scott may have also thought it amusing to appear as

his own rival in a new field. He had not yet told his secret to Lady

Abercorn, but he seems to reveal it (for who but he could have known so

much about the subject?) in a letter to her, of November 29, 1816. “You

must know the Marquis well,--or rather you must be the Marquis himself!”

quoth Dalgetty. Here follow portions of the letter:

I do not like the first story, “The Black Dwarf,” at all; but the

long one which occupies three volumes is a most remarkable

production. . . . I should like to know if you are of my opinion as

to these new volumes coming from the same hand. . . . I wander about

from nine in the morning till five at night with a plaid about my

shoulders and an immensely large bloodhound at my heels, and stick

in sprigs which are to become trees when I shall have no eyes to

look at them. . . .

I am truly glad that the Tales have amused you. In my poor opinion

they are the best of the four sets, though perhaps I only think so

on account of their opening ground less familiar to me than the

manners of the Highlanders. . . . If Tom--[His brother, Mr. Thomas

Scott.]--wrote those volumes, he has not put me in his secret. . . .

General rumour here attributes them to a very ingenious but most

unhappy man, a clergyman of the Church of Scotland, who, many years

since, was obliged to retire from his profession, and from society,

who hides himself under a borrowed name. This hypothesis seems to

account satisfactorily for the rigid secrecy observed; but from what

I can recollect of the unfortunate individual, these are not the

kind of productions I should expect from him. Burley, if I mistake

not, was on board the Prince of Orange’s own vessel at the time of

his death. There was also in the Life Guards such a person as

Francis Stewart, grandson of the last Earl of Bothwell. I have in my

possession various proceedings at his father’s instance for

recovering some part of the Earl’s large estates which had been

granted to the Earls of Buccleugh and Roxburgh. It would appear that

Charles I. made some attempts to reinstate him in those lands, but,

like most of that poor monarch’s measures, the attempt only served

to augment his own enemies, for Buccleugh was one of the first who

declared against him in Scotland, and raised a regiment of twelve

hundred men, of whom my grandfather’s grandfather (Sir William Scott

of Harden) was lieutenant-colonel. This regiment was very active at

the destruction of Montrose’s Highland army at Philiphaugh. In

Charles the Second’s time the old knight suffered as much through

the nonconformity of his wife as Cuddie through that of his mother.

My father’s grandmother, who lived to the uncommon age of

ninety-eight years, perfectly remembered being carried, when a

child, to the field-preachings, where the clergyman thundered from

the top of a rock, and the ladies sat upon their side-saddles, which

were placed upon the turf for their accommodation, while the men

stood round, all armed with swords and pistols. . . . Old Mortality

was a living person; I have myself seen him about twenty years ago

repairing the Covenanters’ tombs as far north as Dunnottar.

If Lady Abercorn was in any doubt after this ingenuous communication, Mr.

Murray, the publisher, was in none. (Lockhart, v. 169.) He wrote to Scott

on December 14, 1816, rejoicing in the success of the Tales, “which must

be written either by Walter Scott or the Devil. . . . I never experienced

such unmixed pleasure as the reading of this exquisite work has afforded

me; and if you could see me, as the author’s literary chamberlain,

receiving the unanimous and vehement praises of those who have read it,

and the curses of those whose needs my scanty supply could not satisfy,

you might judge of the sincerity with which I now entreat you to assure

the Author of the most complete success.” Lord Holland had said, when Mr.

Murray asked his opinion, “Opinion! We did not one of us go to bed last

night,--nothing slept but my gout.”

The very Whigs were conquered. But not the Scottish Whigs, the Auld

Leaven of the Covenant,--they were still dour, and offered many

criticisms. Thereon Scott, by way of disproving his authorship, offered

to review the Tales in the “Quarterly.” His true reason for this step was

the wish to reply to Dr. Thomas McCrie, author of the “Life of John

Knox,” who had been criticising Scott’s historical view of the Covenant,

in the “Edinburgh Christian Instructor.” Scott had, perhaps, no better

mode of answering his censor. He was indifferent to reviews, but here his

historical knowledge and his candour had been challenged. Scott always

recognised the national spirit of the Covenanters, which he remarks on in

“The Heart of Mid-Lothian,” and now he was treated as a faithless

Scotsman. For these reasons he reviewed himself; but it is probable, as

Lockhart says, that William Erskine wrote the literary or aesthetic part

of the criticism (Lockhart, v.174, note).

Dr. McCrie’s review may be read, or at least may be found, in the fourth

volume of his collected works (Blackwood, Edinburgh 1857). The critique

amounts to about eighty-five thousand words. Since the “Princesse de

Cleves” was reviewed in a book as long as the original, never was so

lengthy a criticism. As Dr. McCrie’s performance scarcely shares the

popularity of “Old Mortality,” a note on his ideas may not be

superfluous, though space does not permit a complete statement of his

many objections. The Doctor begins by remarks on novels in general, then

descends to the earlier Waverley romances. “The Antiquary” he pronounces

to be “tame and fatiguing.” Acknowledging the merits of the others, he

finds fault with “the foolish lines” (from Burns), “which must have been

foisted without the author’s knowledge into the title page,” and he

denounces the “bad taste” of the quotation from “Don Quixote.” Burns and

Cervantes had done no harm to Dr. McCrie, but his anger was aroused, and

he, like the McCallum More as described by Andrew Fairservice, “got up

wi’ an unco’ bang, and garr’d them a’ look about them.” The view of the

Covenanters is “false and distorted.” These worthies are not to be

“abused with profane wit or low buffoonery.” “Prayers were not read in

the parish churches of Scotland” at that time. As Episcopacy was restored

when Charles II. returned “upon the unanimous petition of the Scottish

Parliament” (Scott’s Collected Works, vol. xix. p. 78) it is not

unnatural for the general reader to suppose that prayers would be read by

the curates. Dr. McCrie maintains that “at the Restoration neither the

one nor the other” (neither the Scotch nor English Prayer Books) “was

imposed,” and that the Presbyterians repeatedly “admitted they had no

such grievance.” No doubt Dr. McCrie is correct. But Mr. James Guthrie,

who was executed on June 1, 1661, said in his last speech, “Oh that there

were not many who study to build again what they did formerly

unwarrantably destroy: I mean Prelacy and the Service Book, a mystery of

iniquity that works amongst us, whose steps lead unto the house of the

great Whore, Babylon, the mother of fornication,” and so forth. Either

this mystery of iniquity, the Book of Common Prayer, “was working amongst

us,” or it was not. If it was not, of what did Mr. Guthrie complain? If

it was “working,” was read by certain curates, as by Burnet, afterwards

Bishop of Salisbury, at Saltoun, Scott is not incorrect. He makes Morton,

in danger of death, pray in the words of the Prayer Book, “a circumstance

which so enraged his murderers that they determined to precipitate his

fate.” Dr. McCrie objects to this incident, which is merely borrowed, one

may conjecture, from the death of Archbishop Sharpe. The assassins told

the Archbishop that they would slay him. “Hereupon he began to think of

death. But (here are just the words of the person who related the story)

behold! God did not give him the grace to pray to Him without the help of

a book. But he pulled out of his pocket a small book, and began to read

over some words to himself, which filled us with amazement and

indignation.” So they fired their pistols into the old man, and then

chopped him up with their swords, supposing that he had a charm against

bullets! Dr. McCrie seems to have forgotten, or may have disbelieved the

narrative telling how Sharpe’s use of the Prayer Book, like Morton’s,

“enraged” his murderers. The incident does not occur in the story of the

murder by Russell, one of the murderers, a document published in C. K.

Sharpe’s edition of Kirkton. It need not be true, but it may have

suggested the prayer of Morton.

If Scott thought that the Prayer Book was ordained to be read in Scotch

churches, he was wrong; if he merely thought that it might have been read

in some churches, was “working amongst us,” he was right: at least,

according to Mr. James Guthrie.

Dr. McCrie argues that Burley would never have wrestled with a soldier in

an inn, especially in the circumstances. This, he says, was inconsistent

with Balfour’s “character.” Wodrow remarks, “I cannot hear that this

gentleman had ever any great character for religion among those that knew

him, and such were the accounts of him, when abroad, that the reverend

ministers of the Scots congregation at Rotterdam would never allow him to

communicate with them.” In Scott’s reading of Burley’s character, there

was a great deal of the old Adam. That such a man should so resent the

insolence of a soldier is far from improbable, and our sympathies are

with Burley on this occasion.

Mause Headrigg is next criticised. Scott never asserted that she was a

representative of sober Presbyterianism. She had long conducted herself

prudently, but, when she gave way to her indignation, she only used such

language as we find on many pages of Wodrow, in the mouths of many

Covenanters. Indeed, though Manse is undeniably comic, she also commands

as much respect as the Spartan mother when she bids her only son bear

himself boldly in the face of torture. If Scott makes her grotesque, he

also makes her heroic. But Dr. McCrie could not endure the ridiculous

element, which surely no fair critic can fail to observe in the speeches

of the gallant and courageous, but not philosophical, members of the

Covenant’s Extreme Left. Dr. McCrie talks of “the creeping loyalty of the

Cavaliers.” “Staggering” were a more appropriate epithet. Both sides were

loyal to principle, both courageous; but the inappropriate and

promiscuous scriptural language of many Covenanters was, and remains,

ridiculous. Let us admit that the Covenanters were not averse to all

games. In one or two sermons they illustrate religion by phrases derived

from golf!

When Dr. McCrie exclaims, in a rich anger, “Your Fathers!” as if Scott’s

must either have been Presbyterians or Cavaliers, the retort is cleverly

put by Sir Walter in the mouth of Jedediah. His ancestors of these days

had been Quakers, and persecuted by both parties.

Throughout the novel Scott keeps insisting that the Presbyterians had

been goaded into rebellion, and even into revenge, by cruelty of

persecution, and that excesses and bloodthirstiness were confined to the

“High Flyers,” as the milder Covenanters called them. Morton represents

the ideal of a good Scot in the circumstances. He comes to be ashamed of

his passive attitude in the face of oppression. He stands up for “that

freedom from stripes and bondage” which was claimed, as you may read in

Scripture, by the Apostle Paul, and which every man who is free-born is

called upon to defend, for his own sake and that of his countrymen. The

terms demanded by Morton from Monmouth before the battle of Bothwell

Bridge are such as Scott recognises to be fair. Freedom of worship, and a

free Parliament, are included.

Dr. McCrie’s chief charges are that Scott does not insist enough on the

hardships and brutalities of the persecution, and that the ferocity of

the Covenanters is overstated. He does not admit that the picture drawn

of “the more rigid Presbyterians” is just. But it is almost impossible to

overstate the ferocity of the High Flyers’ conduct and creed. Thus

Wodrow, a witness not quite unfriendly to the rigid Presbyterians, though

not high-flying enough for Patrick Walker, writes “Mr. Tate informs me

that he had this account front Mr. Antony Shau, and others of the

Indulged; that at some time, under the Indulgence, there was a meeting of

some people, when they resolved in one night . . . to go to every house

of the Indulged Ministers and kill them, and all in one night.”

This anecdote was confirmed by Mr. John Millar, to whose father’s house

one of these High Flyers came, on this errand. This massacre was not

aimed at the persecutors, but at the Poundtexts. As to their creed,

Wodrow has an anecdote of one of his own elders, who told a poor woman

with many children that “it would be an uncouth mercy” if they were all

saved.

A pleasant evangel was this, and peacefully was it to have been

propagated!

Scott was writing a novel, not history. In “The Minstrelsy of the

Scottish Border” (1802-3) Sir Walter gave this account of the

persecutions. “Had the system of coercion been continued until our day,

Blair and Robertson would have preached in the wilderness, and only

discovered their powers of eloquence and composition by rolling along a

deeper torrent of gloomy fanaticism. . . . The genius of the persecuted

became stubborn, obstinate, and ferocious.” He did not, in his romance,

draw a complete picture of the whole persecution, but he did show, by

that insolence of Bothwell at Milnwood, which stirs the most sluggish

blood, how the people were misused. This scene, to Dr. McCrie’s mind, is

“a mere farce,” because it is enlivened by Manse’s declamations. Scott

displays the abominable horrors of the torture as forcibly as literature

may dare to do. But Dr. McCrie is not satisfied, because Macbriar, the

tortured man, had been taken in arms. Some innocent person should have

been put in the Boot, to please Dr. McCrie. He never remarks that

Macbriar conquers our sympathy by his fortitude. He complains of what the

Covenanters themselves called “the language of Canaan,” which is put into

their mouths, “a strange, ridiculous, and incoherent jargon compounded of

Scripture phrases, and cant terms peculiar to their own party opinions in

ecclesiastical politics.” But what other language did many of them speak?

“Oh, all ye that can pray, tell all the Lord’s people to try, by mourning

and prayer, if ye can taigle him, taigle him especially in Scotland, for

we fear, he will depart from it.” This is the theology of a savage, in

the style of a clown, but it is quoted by Walker as Mr. Alexander

Peden’s.’ Mr. John Menzie’s “Testimony” (1670) is all about “hardened

men, whom though they walk with you for the present with horns of a lamb,

yet afterward ye may hear them speak with the mouth of a dragon, pricks

in your eyes and thorns in your sides.” Manse Headrigg scarcely

caricatures this eloquence, or Peden’s “many and long seventy-eight years

left-hand defections, and forty-nine years right-hand extremes;” while

“Professor Simson in Glasgow, and Mr. Glass in Tealing, both with Edom’s

children cry Raze, raze the very foundation!” Dr. McCrie is reduced to

supposing that some of the more absurd sermons were incorrectly reported.

Very possibly they were, but the reports were in the style which the

people liked. As if to remove all possible charge of partiality, Scott

made the one faultless Christian of his tale a Covenanting widow, the

admirable Bessie McLure. But she, says the doctor, “repeatedly banns and

minces oaths in her conversation.” This outrageous conduct of Bessie’s

consists in saying “Gude protect us!” and “In Heaven’s name, who are ye?”

Next the Doctor congratulates Scott on his talent for buffoonery. “Oh, le

grand homme, rien ne lui peut plaire.” Scott is later accused of not

making his peasants sufficiently intelligent. Cuddie Headrigg and Jenny

Dennison suffice as answers to this censure.

Probably the best points made by Dr. McCrie are his proof that biblical

names were not common among the Covenanteers and that Episcopal eloquence

and Episcopal superstition were often as tardy and as dark as the

eloquence and superstition of the Presbyterians. He carries the war into

the opposite camp, with considerable success. His best answer to “Old

Mortality” would have been a novel, as good and on the whole as fair,

written from the Covenanting side. Hogg attempted this reply, not to

Scott’s pleasure according to the Shepherd, in “The Brownie of Bodsbeck.”

The Shepherd says that when Scott remarked that the “Brownie” gave an

untrue description of the age, he replied, “It’s a devilish deal truer

than yours!” Scott, in his defence, says that to please the friends of

the Covenanters, “their portraits must be drawn without shadow, and the

objects of their political antipathy be blackened, hooved, and horned ere

they will acknowledge the likeness of either.” He gives examples of

clemency, and even considerateness, in Dundee; for example, he did not

bring with him a prisoner, “who laboured under a disease rendering it

painful to him to be on horseback.” He examines the story of John Brown,

and disproves the blacker circumstances. Yet he appears to hold that

Dundee should have resigned his commission rather than carry out the

orders of Government? Burley’s character for ruthlessness is defended by

the evidence of the “Scottish Worthies.” As Dr. McCrie objects to his

“buffoonery,” it is odd that he palliates the “strong propensity” of Knox

“to indulge his vein of humour,” when describing, with ghoul-like mirth,

the festive circumstances of the murder and burial of Cardinal Beaton.

The odious part of his satire, Scott says, is confined to “the fierce and

unreasonable set of extra-Presbyterians,” Wodrow’s High Flyers. “We have

no delight to dwell either upon the atrocities or absurdities of a people

whose ignorance and fanaticism were rendered frantic by persecution.”

To sum up the controversy, we may say that Scott was unfair, if at all,

in tone rather than in statement. He grants to the Covenanters dauntless

resolution and fortitude; he admits their wrongs; we cannot see, on the

evidence of their literature, that he exaggerates their grotesqueness,

their superstition, their impossible attitude as of Israelites under a

Theocracy, which only existed as an ideal, or their ruthlessness on

certain occasions. The books of Wodrow, Kirkton, and Patrick Walker, the

sermons, the ghost stories, the dying speeches, the direct testimony of

their own historians, prove all that Scott says, a hundred times over.

The facts are correct, the testimony to the presence of another, an

angelic temper, remains immortal in the figure of Bessie McLure. But an

unfairness of tone may be detected in the choice of such names as

Kettledrummle and Poundtext: probably the “jog-trot” friends of the

Indulgence have more right to complain than the “high-flying” friends of

the Covenant. Scott had Cavalier sympathies, as Macaulay had Covenanting

sympathies. That Scott is more unjust to the Covenanters than Macaulay to

Claverhouse historians will scarcely maintain. Neither history or fiction

would be very delightful if they were warless. This must serve as an

apology more needed by Macaulay--than by Sir Walter. His reply to Dr.

McCrie is marked by excellent temper, humour, and good humor. The

“Quarterly Review” ends with the well known reference to his brother

Tom’s suspected authorship: “We intended here to conclude this long

article, when a strong report reached us of certain transatlantic

confessions, which, if genuine (though of this we know nothing), assign a

different author to those volumes than the party suspected by our

Scottish correspondents. Yet a critic may be excused for seizing upon the

nearest suspected person, or the principle happily expressed by

Claverhouse in a letter to the Earl of Linlithgow. He had been, it seems,

in search of a gifted weaver who used to hold forth at conventicles: ‘I

sent for the webster, they brought in his brother for him: though he,

maybe, cannot preach like his brother, I doubt not but he is as well

principled as he, wherefore I thought it would be no great fault to give

him the trouble to go to jail with the rest.’”

Nobody who read this could doubt that Scott was, at least, “art and part”

in the review. His efforts to disguise himself as an Englishman, aided by

a Scotch antiquary, are divertingly futile. He seized the chance of

defending his earlier works from some criticisms on Scotch manners

suggested by the ignorance of Gifford. Nor was it difficult to see that

the author of the review was also the author of the novel. In later years

Lady Louisa Stuart reminded Scott that “Old Mortality,” like the Iliad,

had been ascribed by clever critics to several hands working together. On

December 5, 1816, she wrote to him, “I found something you wot of upon my

table; and as I dare not take it with me to a friend’s house, for fear of

arousing curiosity”--she read it at once. She could not sleep afterwards,

so much had she been excited. “Manse and Cuddie forced me to laugh out

aloud, which one seldom does when alone.” Many of the Scotch words “were

absolutely Hebrew” to her. She not unjustly objected to Claverhouse’s use

of the word “sentimental” as an anachronism. Sentiment, like nerves, had

not been invented in Claverhouse’s day.

The pecuniary success of “Old Mortality” was less, perhaps, than might

have been expected. The first edition was only of two thousand copies.

Two editions of this number were sold in six weeks, and a third was

printed. Constable’s gallant enterprise of ten thousand, in “Rob Roy,”

throws these figures into the shade.

“Old Mortality” is the first of Scott’s works in which he invades history

beyond the range of what may be called living oral tradition. In

“Waverley,” and even in “Rob Roy,” he had the memories of Invernahyle, of

Miss Nairne, of many persons of the last generation for his guides. In

“Old Mortality” his fancy had to wander among the relics of another age,

among the inscribed tombs of the Covenanters, which are common in the

West Country, as in the churchyards of Balmaclellan and Dalry. There the

dust of these enduring and courageous men, like that of Bessie Bell and

Marion Gray in the ballad, “beiks forenenst the sun,” which shines on

them from beyond the hills of their wanderings, while the brown waters of

the Ken murmur at their feet.

Here now in peace sweet rest we take,

Once murdered for religion’s sake,

says the epitaph on the flat table-stone, beneath the wind tormented

trees of Iron Gray. Concerning these _Manes Presbyteriani_, “Guthrie’s

and Giffan’s Passions” and the rest, Scott had a library of rare volumes

full of prophecies, “remarkable Providences,” angelic ministrations,

diabolical persecutions by The Accuser of the Brethren,--in fact, all

that Covenanteers had written or that had been written about

Covenanteers. “I’ll tickle ye off a Covenanter as readily as old Jack

could do a young Prince; and a rare fellow he is, when brought forth in

his true colours,” he says to Terry (November 12, 1816). He certainly was

not an unprejudiced witness, some ten years earlier, when he wrote to

Southey, “You can hardly conceive the perfidy, cruelty, and stupidity of

these people, according to the accounts they have themselves preserved.

But I admit I had many prejudices instilled into me, as my ancestor was a

Killiecrankie man.” He used to tease Grahame of “The Sabbath,” “but never

out of his good humour, by praising Dundee, and laughing at the

Covenanters.” Even as a boy he had been familiar with that godly company

in “the original edition of the lives of Cameron and others, by Patrick

Walker.” The more curious parts of those biographies were excised by the

care of later editors, but they may all be found now in the “Biographia

Presbyteriana” (1827), published by True Jock, chief clerk to “Leein’

Johnnie,” Mr. John Ballantyne. To this work the inquirer may turn, if he

is anxious to see whether Scott’s colouring is correct. The true blue of

the Covenant is not dulled in the “Biographia Presbyteriana.”

With all these materials at his command, Scott was able almost to dwell

in the age of the Covenant hence the extraordinary life and brilliance of

this, his first essay in fiction dealing with a remote time and obsolete

manners. His opening, though it may seem long and uninviting to modern

readers, is interesting for the sympathetic sketch of the gentle

consumptive dominie. If there was any class of men whom Sir Walter could

not away with, it was the race of schoolmasters, “black cattle” whom he

neither trusted nor respected. But he could make or invent exceptions, as

in the uncomplaining and kindly usher of the verbose Cleishbotham. Once

launched in his legend, with the shooting of the Popinjay, he never

falters. The gallant, dauntless, overbearing Bothwell, the dour Burley,

the handful of Preachers, representing every current of opinion in the

Covenant, the awful figure of Habakkuk Mucklewrath, the charm of goodness

in Bessie McLure, are all immortal, deathless as Shakspeare’s men and

women. Indeed here, even more than elsewhere, we admire the life which

Scott breathes into his minor characters, Halliday and Inglis, the

troopers, the child who leads Morton to Burley’s retreat in the cave,

that auld Laird Nippy, old Milnwood (a real “Laird Nippy” was a neighbour

of Scott’s at Ashiestiel), Ailie Wilson, the kind, crabbed old

housekeeper, generous in great things, though habitually niggardly in

things small. Most of these are persons whom we might still meet in

Scotland, as we might meet Cuddie Headrigg--the shrewd, the blithe, the

faithful and humorous Cuddie. As to Miss Jenny Dennison, we can hardly

forgive Scott for making that gayest of soubrettes hard and selfish in

married life. He is too severe on the harmless and even beneficent race

of coquettes, who brighten life so much, who so rapidly “draw up with the

new pleugh lad,” and who do so very little harm when all is said. Jenny

plays the part of a leal and brave lass in the siege of Tillietudlem,

hunger and terror do not subdue her spirit; she is true, in spite of many

temptations, to her Cuddie, and we decline to believe that she was untrue

to his master and friend. Ikuse, no doubt, is a caricature, though Wodrow

makes us acquainted with at least one Mause, Jean Biggart, who “all the

winter over was exceedingly straitened in wrestling and prayer as to the

Parliament, and said that still that place was brought before her, Our

hedges are broken down!” (“Analecta,” ii. 173.) Surely even Dr. McCrie

must have laughed out loud, like Lady Louisa Stuart, when Mause exclaims:

“Neither will I peace for the bidding of no earthly potsherd, though it

be painted as red as a brick from the tower o’ Babel, and ca’ itsel’ a

corporal.” Manse, as we have said, is not more comic than heroic, a

mother in that Sparta of the Covenant. The figure of Morton, as usual, is

not very attractive. In his review, Scott explains the weakness of his

heroes as usually strangers in the land (Waverley, Lovel, Mannering,

Osbaldistone), who need to have everything explained to them, and who are

less required to move than to be the pivots of the general movement. But

Morton is no stranger in the land. His political position in the juste

milieu is unexciting. A schoolboy wrote to Scott at this time, “Oh, Sir

Walter, how could you take the lady from the gallant Cavalier, and give

her to the crop-eared Covenanter?” Probably Scott sympathised with his

young critic, who longed “to be a feudal chief, and to see his retainers

happy around him.” But Edith Bellenden loved Morton, with that love

which, as she said, and thought, “disturbs the repose of the dead.” Scott

had no choice. Besides, Dr. McCrie might have disapproved of so fortunate

an arrangement. The heroine herself does not live in the memory like Di

Vernon; she does not even live like Jenny Dennison. We remember Corporal

Raddlebanes better, the stoutest fighting man of Major Bellenden’s

acquaintance; and the lady of Tillietudlem has admirers more numerous and

more constant. The lovers of the tale chiefly engage our interest by the

rare constancy of their affections.

The most disputed character is, of course, that of Claverhouse. There is

no doubt that, if Claverhouse had been a man of the ordinary mould, he

would never have reckoned so many enthusiastic friends in future ages.

But Beauty, which makes Helen immortal, had put its seal on Bonny Dundee.

With that face “which limners might have loved to paint, and ladies to

look upon,” he still conquers hearts from his dark corner above the

private staircase in Sir Walter’s deserted study. He was brave, he was

loyal when all the world forsook his master; in that reckless age of

revelry he looks on with the austere and noble contempt which he wears in

Hell among the tippling shades of Cavaliers. He died in the arms of

victory, but he lives among

The chiefs of ancient names

Who swore to fight and die beneath the banner of King James,

And he fell in Killiecrankie Pass, the glory of the Grahames.

Sentiment in romance, not in history, may be excused for pardoning the

rest.

Critics of the time, as Lady Louisa Stuart reminds Sir Walter, did not

believe the book was his, because it lacked his “tedious descriptions.”

The descriptions, as of the waterfall where Burley had his den, are

indeed far from “tedious.” There is a tendency in Scott to exalt into

mountains “his own grey hills,” the _bosses verdatres_ as Prosper Merimee

called them, of the Border. But the horrors of such linns as that down

which Hab Dab and Davie Dinn “dang the deil” are not exaggerated.

“Old Mortality” was the last novel written by Scott before the malady

which tormented his stoicism in 1817-1820. Every reader has his own

favourite, but few will place this glorious tale lower than second in the

list of his incomparable romances.

ANDREW LANG.

INTRODUCTION TO THE TALES OF MY LANDLORD.

As I may, without vanity, presume that the name and official description

prefixed to this Proem will secure it, from the sedate and reflecting

part of mankind, to whom only I would be understood to address myself,

such attention as is due to the sedulous instructor of youth, and the

careful performer of my Sabbath duties, I will forbear to hold up a

candle to the daylight, or to point out to the judicious those

recommendations of my labours which they must necessarily anticipate from

the perusal of the title-page. Nevertheless, I am not unaware, that, as

Envy always dogs Merit at the heels, there may be those who will whisper,

that albeit my learning and good principles cannot (lauded be the

heavens) be denied by any one, yet that my situation at Gandercleugh hath

been more favourable to my acquisitions in learning than to the

enlargement of my views of the ways and works of the present generation.

To the which objection, if, peradventure, any such shall be started, my

answer shall be threefold:

First, Gandercleugh is, as it were, the central part--the navel (_si fas

sit dicere_) of this our native realm of Scotland; so that men, from

every corner thereof, when travelling on their concernments of business,

either towards our metropolis of law, by which I mean Edinburgh, or

towards our metropolis and mart of gain, whereby I insinuate Glasgow, are

frequently led to make Gandercleugh their abiding stage and place of rest

for the night. And it must be acknowledged by the most sceptical, that I,

who have sat in the leathern armchair, on the left-hand side of the fire,

in the common room of the Wallace Inn, winter and summer, for every

evening in my life, during forty years bypast, (the Christian Sabbaths

only excepted,) must have seen more of the manners and customs of various

tribes and people, than if I had sought them out by my own painful travel

and bodily labour. Even so doth the tollman at the well-frequented

turnpike on the Wellbrae-head, sitting at his ease in his own dwelling,

gather more receipt of custom, than if, moving forth upon the road, he

were to require a contribution from each person whom he chanced to meet

in his journey, when, according to the vulgar adage, he might possibly be

greeted with more kicks than halfpence.

But, secondly, supposing it again urged, that Ithacus, the most wise of

the Greeks, acquired his renown, as the Roman poet hath assured us, by

visiting states and men, I reply to the Zoilus who shall adhere to this

objection, that, _de facto_, I have seen states and men also; for I have

visited the famous cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, the former twice, and

the latter three times, in the course of my earthly pilgrimage. And,

moreover, I had the honour to sit in the General Assembly (meaning, as an

auditor, in the galleries thereof,) and have heard as much goodly

speaking on the law of patronage, as, with the fructification thereof in

mine own understanding, hath made me be considered as an oracle upon that

doctrine ever since my safe and happy return to Gandercleugh.

Again,--and thirdly, If it be nevertheless pretended that my information

and knowledge of mankind, however extensive, and however painfully

acquired, by constant domestic enquiry, and by foreign travel, is,

natheless, incompetent to the task of recording the pleasant narratives

of my Landlord, I will let these critics know, to their own eternal shame

and confusion, as well as to the abashment and discomfiture of all who

shall rashly take up a song against me, that I am NOT the writer,

redacter, or compiler, of the “Tales of my Landlord;” nor am I, in one

single iota, answerable for their contents, more or less. And now, ye

generation of critics, who raise yourselves up as if it were brazen

serpents, to hiss with your tongues, and to smite with your stings, bow

yourselves down to your native dust, and acknowledge that yours have been

the thoughts of ignorance, and the words of vain foolishness. Lo! ye are

caught in your own snare, and your own pit hath yawned for you. Turn,

then, aside from the task that is too heavy for you; destroy not your

teeth by gnawing a file; waste not your strength by spurning against a

castle wall; nor spend your breath in contending in swiftness with a

fleet steed; and let those weigh the “Tales of my Landlord,” who shall

bring with them the scales of candour cleansed from the rust of prejudice

by the hands of intelligent modesty. For these alone they were compiled,

as will appear from a brief narrative which my zeal for truth compelled

me to make supplementary to the present Proem.

It is well known that my Landlord was a pleasing and a facetious man,

acceptable unto all the parish of Gandercleugh, excepting only the Laird,

the Exciseman, and those for whom he refused to draw liquor upon trust.

Their causes of dislike I will touch separately, adding my own refutation

thereof.

His honour, the Laird, accused our Landlord, deceased, of having

encouraged, in various times and places, the destruction of hares,

rabbits, fowls black and grey, partridges, moor-pouts, roe-deer, and

other birds and quadrupeds, at unlawful seasons, and contrary to the laws

of this realm, which have secured, in their wisdom, the slaughter of such

animals for the great of the earth, whom I have remarked to take an

uncommon (though to me, an unintelligible) pleasure therein. Now, in

humble deference to his honour, and in justifiable defence of my friend

deceased, I reply to this charge, that howsoever the form of such animals

might appear to be similar to those so protected by the law, yet it was a

mere _deceptio visus_; for what resembled hares were, in fact, hill-kids,

and those partaking of the appearance of moor-fowl, were truly wood

pigeons, and consumed and eaten _eo nomine_, and not otherwise.

Again, the Exciseman pretended, that my deceased Landlord did encourage

that species of manufacture called distillation, without having an

especial permission from the Great, technically called a license, for

doing so. Now, I stand up to confront this falsehood; and in defiance of

him, his gauging-stick, and pen and inkhorn, I tell him, that I never

saw, or tasted, a glass of unlawful aqua vitae in the house of my

Landlord; nay, that, on the contrary, we needed not such devices, in

respect of a pleasing and somewhat seductive liquor, which was vended and

consumed at the Wallace Inn, under the name of mountain dew. If there is

a penalty against manufacturing such a liquor, let him show me the

statute; and when he does, I’ll tell him if I will obey it or no.

Concerning those who came to my Landlord for liquor, and went thirsty

away, for lack of present coin, or future credit, I cannot but say it has

grieved my bowels as if the case had been mine own. Nevertheless, my

Landlord considered the necessities of a thirsty soul, and would permit

them, in extreme need, and when their soul was impoverished for lack of

moisture, to drink to the full value of their watches and wearing

apparel, exclusively of their inferior habiliments, which he was

uniformly inexorable in obliging them to retain, for the credit of the

house. As to mine own part, I may well say, that he never refused me that

modicum of refreshment with which I am wont to recruit nature after the

fatigues of my school. It is true, I taught his five sons English and

Latin, writing, book-keeping, with a tincture of mathematics, and that I

instructed his daughter in psalmody. Nor do I remember me of any fee or

honorarium received from him on account of these my labours, except the

compotations aforesaid. Nevertheless this compensation suited my humour

well, since it is a hard sentence to bid a dry throat wait till

quarter-day.

But, truly, were I to speak my simple conceit and belief, I think my

Landlord was chiefly moved to waive in my behalf the usual requisition of

a symbol, or reckoning, from the pleasure he was wont to take in my

conversation, which, though solid and edifying in the main, was, like a

well-built palace, decorated with facetious narratives and devices,

tending much to the enhancement and ornament thereof. And so pleased was

my Landlord of the Wallace in his replies during such colloquies, that

there was no district in Scotland, yea, and no peculiar, and, as it were,

distinctive custom therein practised, but was discussed betwixt us;

insomuch, that those who stood by were wont to say, it was worth a bottle

of ale to hear us communicate with each other. And not a few travellers,

from distant parts, as well as from the remote districts of our kingdom,

were wont to mingle in the conversation, and to tell news that had been

gathered in foreign lands, or preserved from oblivion in this our own.

Now I chanced to have contracted for teaching the lower classes with a

young person called Peter, or Patrick, Pattieson, who had been educated

for our Holy Kirk, yea, had, by the license of presbytery, his voice

opened therein as a preacher, who delighted in the collection of olden

tales and legends, and in garnishing them with the flowers of poesy,

whereof he was a vain and frivolous professor. For he followed not the

example of those strong poets whom I proposed to him as a pattern, but

formed versification of a flimsy and modern texture, to the compounding

whereof was necessary small pains and less thought. And hence I have chid

him as being one of those who bring forward the fatal revolution

prophesied by Mr. Robert Carey, in his Vaticination on the Death of the

celebrated Dr. John Donne:

Now thou art gone, and thy strict laws will be

Too hard for libertines in poetry;

Till verse (by thee refined) in this last age

Turn ballad rhyme.

I had also disputations with him touching his indulging rather a flowing

and redundant than a concise and stately diction in his prose

exercitations. But notwithstanding these symptoms of inferior taste, and

a humour of contradicting his betters upon passages of dubious

construction in Latin authors, I did grievously lament when Peter

Pattieson was removed from me by death, even as if he had been the

offspring of my own loins. And in respect his papers had been left in my

care, (to answer funeral and death-bed expenses,) I conceived myself

entitled to dispose of one parcel thereof, entitled, “Tales of my

Landlord,” to one cunning in the trade (as it is called) of book

selling. He was a mirthful man, of small stature, cunning in

counterfeiting of voices, and in making facetious tales and responses,

and whom I have to laud for the truth of his dealings towards me.

Now, therefore, the world may see the injustice that charges me with

incapacity to write these narratives, seeing, that though I have proved

that I could have written them if I would, yet, not having done so, the

censure will deservedly fall, if at all due, upon the memory of Mr. Peter

Pattieson; whereas I must be justly entitled to the praise, when any is

due, seeing that, as the Dean of St. Patrick’s wittily and logically

expresseth it,

That without which a thing is not,

Is Causa sine qua non.

The work, therefore, is unto me as a child is to a parent; in the which

child, if it proveth worthy, the parent hath honour and praise; but, if

otherwise, the disgrace will deservedly attach to itself alone.

I have only further to intimate, that Mr. Peter Pattieson, in arranging

these Tales for the press, hath more consulted his own fancy than the

accuracy of the narrative; nay, that he hath sometimes blended two or

three stories together for the mere grace of his plots. Of which

infidelity, although I disapprove and enter my testimony against it, yet

I have not taken upon me to correct the same, in respect it was the will

of the deceased, that his manuscript should be submitted to the press

without diminution or alteration. A fanciful nicety it was on the part of

my deceased friend, who, if thinking wisely, ought rather to have

conjured me, by all the tender ties of our friendship and common

pursuits, to have carefully revised, altered, and augmented, at my

judgment and discretion. But the will of the dead must be scrupulously

obeyed, even when we weep over their pertinacity and self-delusion. So,

gentle reader, I bid you farewell, recommending you to such fare as the

mountains of your own country produce; and I will only farther premise,

that each Tale is preceded by a short introduction, mentioning the

persons by whom, and the circumstances under which, the materials thereof

were collected.

JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM.

INTRODUCTION TO OLD MORTALITY.

The remarkable person, called by the title of Old Mortality, was we’ll

known in Scotland about the end of the last century. His real name was

Robert Paterson. He was a native, it is said, of the parish of Closeburn,

in Dumfries-shire, and probably a mason by profession--at least educated

to the use of the chisel. Whether family dissensions, or the deep and

enthusiastic feeling of supposed duty, drove him to leave his dwelling,

and adopt the singular mode of life in which he wandered, like a palmer,

through Scotland, is not known. It could not be poverty, however, which

prompted his journeys, for he never accepted anything beyond the

hospitality which was willingly rendered him, and when that was not

proffered, he always had money enough to provide for his own humble

wants. His personal appearance, and favourite, or rather sole occupation,

are accurately described in the preliminary chapter of the following

work.

It is about thirty years since, or more, that the author met this

singular person in the churchyard of Dunnottar, when spending a day or

two with the late learned and excellent clergyman, Mr. Walker, the

minister of that parish, for the purpose of a close examination of the

ruins of the Castle of Dunnottar, and other subjects of antiquarian

research in that neighbourhood. Old Mortality chanced to be at the same

place, on the usual business of his pilgrimage; for the Castle of

Dunnottar, though lying in the anti-covenanting district of the Mearns,

was, with the parish churchyard, celebrated for the oppressions sustained

there by the Cameronians in the time of James II.

It was in 1685, when Argyle was threatening a descent upon Scotland, and

Monmouth was preparing to invade the west of England, that the Privy

Council of Scotland, with cruel precaution, made a general arrest of more

than a hundred persons in the southern and western provinces, supposed,

from their religious principles, to be inimical to Government, together

with many women and children. These captives were driven northward like a

flock of bullocks, but with less precaution to provide for their wants,

and finally penned up in a subterranean dungeon in the Castle of

Dunnottar, having a window opening to the front of a precipice which

overhangs the German Ocean. They had suffered not a little on the

journey, and were much hurt both at the scoffs of the northern

prelatists, and the mocks, gibes, and contemptuous tunes played by the

fiddlers and pipers who had come from every quarter as they passed, to

triumph over the revilers of their calling. The repose which the

melancholy dungeon afforded them, was anything but undisturbed. The

guards made them pay for every indulgence, even that of water; and when

some of the prisoners resisted a demand so unreasonable, and insisted on

their right to have this necessary of life untaxed, their keepers emptied

the water on the prison floor, saying, “If they were obliged to bring

water for the canting whigs, they were not bound to afford them the use

of bowls or pitchers gratis.”

In this prison, which is still termed the Whig’s Vault, several died of

the diseases incidental to such a situation; and others broke their

limbs, and incurred fatal injury, in desperate attempts to escape from

their stern prison-house. Over the graves of these unhappy persons, their

friends, after the Revolution, erected a monument with a suitable

inscription.

This peculiar shrine of the Whig martyrs is very much honoured by their

descendants, though residing at a great distance from the land of their

captivity and death. My friend, the Rev. Mr. Walker, told me, that being

once upon a tour in the south of Scotland, probably about forty years

since, he had the bad luck to involve himself in the labyrinth of

passages and tracks which cross, in every direction, the extensive waste

called Lochar Moss, near Dumfries, out of which it is scarcely possible

for a stranger to extricate himself; and there was no small difficulty in

procuring a guide, since such people as he saw were engaged in digging

their peats--a work of paramount necessity, which will hardly brook

interruption. Mr. Walker could, therefore, only procure unintelligible

directions in the southern brogue, which differs widely from that of the

Mearns. He was beginning to think himself in a serious dilemma, when he

stated his case to a farmer of rather the better class, who was employed,

as the others, in digging his winter fuel. The old man at first made the

same excuse with those who had already declined acting as the traveller’s

guide; but perceiving him in great perplexity, and paying the respect due

to his profession, “You are a clergyman, sir?” he said. Mr. Walker

assented. “And I observe from your speech, that you are from the

north?”--“You are right, my good friend,” was the reply. “And may I ask

if you have ever heard of a place called Dunnottar?”--“I ought to know

something about it, my friend,” said Mr. Walker, “since I have been

several years the minister of the parish.”--“I am glad to hear it,” said

the Dumfriesian, “for one of my near relations lies buried there, and

there is, I believe, a monument over his grave. I would give half of what

I am aught, to know if it is still in existence.”--“He was one of those

who perished in the Whig’s Vault at the castle?” said the minister; “for

there are few southlanders besides lying in our churchyard, and none, I

think, having monuments.”--“Even sae--even sae,” said the old Cameronian,

for such was the farmer. He then laid down his spade, cast on his coat,

and heartily offered to see the minister out of the moss, if he should

lose the rest of the _day’s dargue_. Mr. Walker was able to requite him

amply, in his opinion, by reciting the epitaph, which he remembered by

heart. The old man was enchanted with finding the memory of his

grandfather or great-grandfather faithfully recorded amongst the names of

brother sufferers; and rejecting all other offers of recompense, only

requested, after he had guided Mr. Walker to a safe and dry road, that he

would let him have a written copy of the inscription.

It was whilst I was listening to this story, and looking at the monument

referred to, that I saw Old Mortality engaged in his daily task of

cleaning and repairing the ornaments and epitaphs upon the tomb. His

appearance and equipment were exactly as described in the Novel. I was

very desirous to see something of a person so singular, and expected to

have done so, as he took up his quarters with the hospitable and

liberal-spirited minister. But though Mr. Walker invited him up after

dinner to partake of a glass of spirits and water, to which he was

supposed not to be very averse, yet he would not speak frankly upon the

subject of his occupation. He was in bad humour, and had, according to

his phrase, no freedom for conversation with us.

His spirit had been sorely vexed by hearing, in a certain Aberdonian

kirk, the psalmody directed by a pitch-pipe, or some similar instrument,

which was to Old Mortality the abomination of abominations. Perhaps,

after all, he did not feel himself at ease with his company; he might

suspect the questions asked by a north-country minister and a young

barrister to savour more of idle curiosity than profit. At any rate, in

the phrase of John Bunyan, Old Mortality went on his way, and I saw him

no more.

The remarkable figure and occupation of this ancient pilgrim was recalled

to my memory by an account transmitted by my friend Mr. Joseph Train,

supervisor of excise at Dumfries, to whom I owe many obligations of a

similar nature. From this, besides some other circumstances, among which

are those of the old man’s death, I learned the particulars described in

the text. I am also informed, that the old palmer’s family, in the third

generation, survives, and is highly respected both for talents and worth.

While these sheets were passing through the press, I received the

following communication from Mr. Train, whose undeviating kindness had,

during the intervals of laborious duty, collected its materials from an

indubitable source.

“In the course of my periodical visits to the Glenkens, I have

become intimately acquainted with Robert Paterson, a son of Old

Mortality, who lives in the little village of Balmaclellan; and

although he is now in the 70th year of his age, preserves all the

vivacity of youth--has a most retentive memory, and a mind stored

with information far above what could be expected from a person in

his station of life. To him I am indebted for the following

particulars relative to his father, and his descendants down to the

present time.

“Robert Paterson, alias Old Mortality, was the son of Walter

Paterson and Margaret Scott, who occupied the farm of Ilaggisha, in

the parish of Hawick, during nearly the first half of the eighteenth

century. Here Robert was born, in the memorable year 1715.

“Being the youngest son of a numerous family, he, at an early age,

went to serve with an elder brother, named Francis, who rented, from

Sir John Jardine of Applegarth, a small tract in Comcockle Moor,

near Lochmaben. During his residence there, he became acquainted

with Elizabeth Gray, daughter of Robert Gray, gardener to Sir John

Jardine, whom he afterwards married. His wife had been, for a

considerable time, a cook-maid to Sir Thomas Kirkpatrick of

Closeburn, who procured for her husband, from the Duke of

Queensberry, an advantageous lease of the freestone quarry of

Gatelowbrigg, in the parish of Morton. Here he built a house, and

had as much land as kept a horse and cow. My informant cannot say,

with certainty, the year in which his father took up his residence

at Gatelowbrigg, but he is sure it must have been only a short time

prior to the year 1746, as, during the memorable frost in 1740, he

says his mother still resided in the service of Sir Thomas

Kirkpatrick. When the Highlanders were returning from England on

their route to Glasgow, in the year 1745-6, they plundered Mr.

Paterson’s house at Gatelowbrigg, and carried him a prisoner as far

as Glenbuck, merely because he said to one of the straggling army,

that their retreat might have been easily foreseen, as the strong

arm of the Lord was evidently raised, not only against the bloody

and wicked house of Stewart, but against all who attempted to

support the abominable heresies of the Church of Rome. From this

circumstance it appears that Old Mortality had, even at that early

period of his life, imbibed the religious enthusiasm by which he

afterwards became so much distinguished.

“The religious sect called Hill-men, or Cameronians, was at that

time much noted for austerity and devotion, in imitation of Cameron,

their founder, of whose tenets Old Mortality became a most strenuous

supporter. He made frequent journeys into Galloway to attend their

conventicles, and occasionally carried with him gravestones from his

quarry at Gatelowbrigg, to keep in remembrance the righteous whose

dust had been gathered to their fathers. Old Mortality was not one

of those religious devotees, who, although one eye is seemingly

turned towards heaven, keep the other steadfastly fixed on some

sublunary object. As his enthusiasm increased, his journeys into

Galloway became more frequent; and he gradually neglected even the

common prudential duty of providing for his offspring. From about

the year 1758, he neglected wholly to return from Galloway to his

wife and five children at Gatelowbrigg, which induced her to send

her eldest son Walter, then only twelve years of age, to Galloway,

in search of his father. After traversing nearly the whole of that

extensive district, from the Nick of Benncorie to the Fell of

Barullion, he found him at last working on the Cameronian monuments,

in the old kirkyard of Kirkchrist, on the west side of the Dee,

opposite the town of Kirkcudbright. The little wanderer used all the

influence in his power to induce his father to return to his family;

but in vain. Mrs. Paterson sent even some of her female children

into Galloway in search of their father, for the same purpose of

persuading him to return home; but without any success. At last, in

the summer of 1768, she removed to the little upland village of

Balmaclellan, in the Glenkens of Galloway, where, upon the small

pittance derived from keeping a little school, she supported her

numerous family in a respectable manner.

“There is a small monumental stone in the farm of the Caldon, near

the House of the Hill, in Wigtonshire, which is highly venerated as

being the first erected, by Old Mortality, to the memory of several

persons who fell at that place in defence of their religious tenets

in the civil war, in the reign of Charles Second.

“From the Caldon, the labours of Old Mortality, in the course of

time, spread over nearly all the Lowlands of Scotland. There are few

churchyards in Ayrshire, Galloway, or Dumfries-shire, where the work

of his chisel is not yet to be seen. It is easily distinguished from

the work of any other artist by the primitive rudeness of the

emblems of death, and of the inscriptions which adorn the ill-formed

blocks of his erection. This task of repairing and erecting

gravestones, practised without fee or reward, was the only

ostensible employment of this singular person for upwards of forty

years. The door of every Cameronian’s house was indeed open to him

at all times when he chose to enter, and he was gladly received as

an inmate of the family; but he did not invariably accept of these

civilities, as may be seen by the following account of his frugal

expenses, found, amongst other little papers, (some of which I have

likewise in my possession,) in his pocket-book after his death.

Gatehouse of Fleet, 4th February, 1796.

ROBERT PATERBON debtor to MARGARET CHRYSTALE.

To drye Lodginge for seven weeks,....... 0 4 1

To Four Auchlet of Ait Meal,............ 0 3 4

To 6 Lippies of Potatoes................ 0 1 3

To Lent Money at the time of Mr. Reid’s

Sacrament,......................... 0 6 0

To 3 Chappins of Yell with Sandy the

Keelman,*.......................... 0 0 9

L.0 15 5

Received in part,....................... 0 10 0

Unpaid,............................... L.0 5 5

*[“A well-known humourist, still alive, popularly called by the name

of Old Keelybags, who deals in the keel or chalk with which farmers

mark their flocks.”]

“This statement shows the religious wanderer to have been very poor in

his old age; but he was so more by choice than through necessity, as at

the period here alluded to, his children were all comfortably situated,

and were most anxious to keep their father at home, but no entreaty could

induce him to alter his erratic way of life. He travelled from one

churchyard to another, mounted on his old white pony, till the last day

of his existence, and died, as you have described, at Bankhill, near

Lockerby, on the 14th February, 1801, in the 86th year of his age. As

soon as his body was found, intimation was sent to his sons at

Balmaclellan; but from the great depth of the snow at that time, the

letter communicating the particulars of his death was so long detained by

the way, that the remains of the pilgrim were interred before any of his

relations could arrive at Bankhill.

“The following is an exact copy of the account of his funeral

expenses,--the original of which I have in my possession:--

“Memorandum of the Funral Charges of Robert Paterson,

who dyed at Bankhill on the 14th day of February, 1801.

To a Coffon................... L.0 12 0

To Munting for do............... 0 2 8

To a Shirt for him.............. 0 5 6

To a pair of Cotten Stockings... 0 2 0

To Bread at the Founral......... 0 2 6

To Chise at ditto............... 0 3 0

To 1 pint Rume.................. 0 4 6

To I pint Whiskie............... 0 4 0

To a man going to Annam......... 0 2 0

To the grave diger.............. 0 1 0

To Linnen for a sheet to him.... 0 2 8

L.2 1 10

Taken off him when dead,.........1 7 6

L.0 14 4

“The above account is authenticated by the son of the deceased.

“My friend was prevented by indisposition from even going to Bankhill to

attend the funeral of his father, which I regret very much, as he is not

aware in what churchyard he was interred.

“For the purpose of erecting a small monument to his memory, I have made

every possible enquiry, wherever I thought there was the least chance of

finding out where Old Mortality was laid; but I have done so in vain, as

his death is not registered in the session-book of any of the

neighbouring parishes. I am sorry to think, that in all probability, this

singular person, who spent so many years of his lengthened existence in

striving with his chisel and mallet to perpetuate the memory of many less

deserving than himself, must remain even without a single stone to mark

out the resting place of his mortal remains.

“Old Mortality had three sons, Robert, Walter, and John; the former, as

has been already mentioned, lives in the village of Balmaclellan, in

comfortable circumstances, and is much respected by his neighbours.

Walter died several years ago, leaving behind him a family now

respectably situated in this point. John went to America in the year

1776, and, after various turns of fortune, settled at Baltimore.”

Old Nol himself is said to have loved an innocent jest. (See Captain

Hodgson’s Memoirs.) Old Mortality somewhat resembled the Protector in

this turn to festivity. Like Master Silence, he had been merry twice and

once in his time; but even his jests were of a melancholy and sepulchral

nature, and sometimes attended with inconvenience to himself, as will

appear from the following anecdote:--

The old man was at one time following his wonted occupation of repairing

the tombs of the martyrs, in the churchyard of Girthon, and the sexton of

the parish was plying his kindred task at no small distance. Some roguish

urchins were sporting near them, and by their noisy gambols disturbing

the old men in their serious occupation. The most petulant of the

juvenile party were two or three boys, grandchildren of a person well

known by the name of Cooper Climent. This artist enjoyed almost a

monopoly in Girthon and the neighbouring parishes, for making and selling

ladles, caups, bickers, bowls, spoons, cogues, and trenchers, formed of

wood, for the use of the country people. It must be noticed, that

notwithstanding the excellence of the Cooper’s vessels, they were apt,

when new, to impart a reddish tinge to whatever liquor was put into them,

a circumstance not uncommon in like cases.

The grandchildren of this dealer in wooden work took it into their head

to ask the sexton, what use he could possibly make of the numerous

fragments of old coffins which were thrown up in opening new graves. “Do

you not know,” said Old Mortality, “that he sells them to your

grandfather, who makes them into spoons, trenchers, bickers, bowies, and

so forth?” At this assertion, the youthful group broke up in great

confusion and disgust, on reflecting how many meals they had eaten out of

dishes which, by Old Mortality’s account, were only fit to be used at a

banquet of witches or of ghoules. They carried the tidings home, when

many a dinner was spoiled by the loathing which the intelligence

imparted; for the account of the materials was supposed to explain the

reddish tinge which, even in the days of the Cooper’s fame, had seemed

somewhat suspicious. The ware of Cooper Climent was rejected in horror,

much to the benefit of his rivals the muggers, who dealt in earthenware.

The man of cutty-spoon and ladle saw his trade interrupted, and learned

the reason, by his quondam customers coming upon him in wrath to return

the goods which were composed of such unhallowed materials, and demand

repayment of their money. In this disagreeable predicament, the forlorn

artist cited Old Mortality into a court of justice, where he proved that

the wood he used in his trade was that of the staves of old wine-pipes

bought from smugglers, with whom the country then abounded, a

circumstance which fully accounted for their imparting a colour to their

contents. Old Mortality himself made the fullest declaration, that he had

no other purpose in making the assertion, than to check the petulance of

the children. But it is easier to take away a good name than to restore

it. Cooper Climent’s business continued to languish, and he died in a

state of poverty.

[Illustration: Frontispiece]

VOLUME I.

CHAPTER I.

Preliminary.

Why seeks he with unwearied toil

Through death’s dim walks to urge his way,

Reclaim his long-asserted spoil,

And lead oblivion into day?

Langhorne.

“Most readers,” says the Manuscript of Mr Pattieson, “must have witnessed

with delight the joyous burst which attends the dismissing of a

village-school on a fine summer evening. The buoyant spirit of childhood,

repressed with so much difficulty during the tedious hours of discipline,

may then be seen to explode, as it were, in shout, and song, and frolic,

as the little urchins join in groups on their play-ground, and arrange

their matches of sport for the evening. But there is one individual who

partakes of the relief afforded by the moment of dismission, whose

feelings are not so obvious to the eye of the spectator, or so apt to

receive his sympathy. I mean the teacher himself, who, stunned with the

hum, and suffocated with the closeness of his school-room, has spent the

whole day (himself against a host) in controlling petulance, exciting

indifference to action, striving to enlighten stupidity, and labouring to

soften obstinacy; and whose very powers of intellect have been confounded

by hearing the same dull lesson repeated a hundred times by rote, and

only varied by the various blunders of the reciters. Even the flowers of

classic genius, with which his solitary fancy is most gratified, have

been rendered degraded, in his imagination, by their connexion with

tears, with errors, and with punishment; so that the Eclogues of Virgil

and Odes of Horace are each inseparably allied in association with the

sullen figure and monotonous recitation of some blubbering school-boy. If

to these mental distresses are added a delicate frame of body, and a mind

ambitious of some higher distinction than that of being the tyrant of

childhood, the reader may have some slight conception of the relief which

a solitary walk, in the cool of a fine summer evening, affords to the

head which has ached, and the nerves which have been shattered, for so

many hours, in plying the irksome task of public instruction.

“To me these evening strolls have been the happiest hours of an unhappy

life; and if any gentle reader shall hereafter find pleasure in perusing

these lucubrations, I am not unwilling he should know, that the plan of

them has been usually traced in those moments, when relief from toil and

clamour, combined with the quiet scenery around me, has disposed my mind

to the task of composition.

“My chief haunt, in these hours of golden leisure, is the banks of the

small stream, which, winding through a ‘lone vale of green bracken,’

passes in front of the village school-house of Gandercleugh. For the

first quarter of a mile, perhaps, I may be disturbed from my meditations,

in order to return the scrape, or doffed bonnet, of such stragglers among

my pupils as fish for trouts or minnows in the little brook, or seek

rushes and wild-flowers by its margin. But, beyond the space I have

mentioned, the juvenile anglers do not, after sunset, voluntarily extend

their excursions. The cause is, that farther up the narrow valley, and in

a recess which seems scooped out of the side of the steep heathy bank,

there is a deserted burial-ground, which the little cowards are fearful

of approaching in the twilight. To me, however, the place has an

inexpressible charm. It has been long the favourite termination of my

walks, and, if my kind patron forgets not his promise, will (and probably

at no very distant day) be my final resting-place after my mortal

pilgrimage. [Note: Note, by Mr Jedediah Cleishbotham.--That I kept my

plight in this melancholy matter with my deceased and lamented friend,

appeareth from a handsome headstone, erected at my proper charges in this

spot, bearing the name and calling of Peter Pattieson, with the date of

his nativity and sepulture; together also with a testimony of his merits,

attested by myself, as his superior and patron.--J. C.]

“It is a spot which possesses all the solemnity of feeling attached to a

burial-ground, without exciting those of a more unpleasing description.

Having been very little used for many years, the few hillocks which rise

above the level plain are covered with the same short velvet turf. The

monuments, of which there are not above seven or eight, are half sunk in

the ground, and overgrown with moss. No newly-erected tomb disturbs the

sober serenity of our reflections by reminding us of recent calamity, and

no rank-springing grass forces upon our imagination the recollection,

that it owes its dark luxuriance to the foul and festering remnants of

mortality which ferment beneath. The daisy which sprinkles the sod, and

the harebell which hangs over it, derive their pure nourishment from the

dew of heaven, and their growth impresses us with no degrading or

disgusting recollections. Death has indeed been here, and its traces are

before us; but they are softened and deprived of their horror by our

distance from the period when they have been first impressed. Those who

sleep beneath are only connected with us by the reflection, that they

have once been what we now are, and that, as their relics are now

identified with their mother earth, ours shall, at some future period,

undergo the same transformation.

“Yet, although the moss has been collected on the most modern of these

humble tombs during four generations of mankind, the memory of some of

those who sleep beneath them is still held in reverent remembrance. It is

true, that, upon the largest, and, to an antiquary, the most interesting

monument of the group, which bears the effigies of a doughty knight in

his hood of mail, with his shield hanging on his breast, the armorial

bearings are defaced by time, and a few worn-out letters may be read at

the pleasure of the decipherer, Dns. Johan--de Hamel,--or Johan--de

Lamel--And it is also true, that of another tomb, richly sculptured with

an ornamental cross, mitre, and pastoral staff, tradition can only aver,

that a certain nameless bishop lies interred there. But upon other two

stones which lie beside, may still be read in rude prose, and ruder

rhyme, the history of those who sleep beneath them. They belong, we are

assured by the epitaph, to the class of persecuted Presbyterians who

afforded a melancholy subject for history in the times of Charles II. and

his successor. [Note: James, Seventh King of Scotland of that name, and

Second according to the numeration of the Kings of England.--J. C.] In

returning from the battle of Pentland Hills, a party of the insurgents

had been attacked in this glen by a small detachment of the King’s

troops, and three or four either killed in the skirmish, or shot after

being made prisoners, as rebels taken with arms in their hands. The

peasantry continued to attach to the tombs of those victims of prelacy an

honour which they do not render to more splendid mausoleums; and, when

they point them out to their sons, and narrate the fate of the sufferers,

usually conclude, by exhorting them to be ready, should times call for

it, to resist to the death in the cause of civil and religious liberty,

like their brave forefathers.

“Although I am far from venerating the peculiar tenets asserted by those

who call themselves the followers of those men, and whose intolerance and

narrow-minded bigotry are at least as conspicuous as their devotional

zeal, yet it is without depreciating the memory of those sufferers, many

of whom united the independent sentiments of a Hampden with the suffering

zeal of a Hooper or Latimer. On the other hand, it would be unjust to

forget, that many even of those who had been most active in crushing what

they conceived the rebellious and seditious spirit of those unhappy

wanderers, displayed themselves, when called upon to suffer for their

political and religious opinions, the same daring and devoted zeal,

tinctured, in their case, with chivalrous loyalty, as in the former with

republican enthusiasm. It has often been remarked of the Scottish

character, that the stubbornness with which it is moulded shows most to

advantage in adversity, when it seems akin to the native sycamore of

their hills, which scorns to be biassed in its mode of growth even by the

influence of the prevailing wind, but, shooting its branches with equal

boldness in every direction, shows no weather-side to the storm, and may

be broken, but can never be bended. It must be understood that I speak of

my countrymen as they fall under my own observation. When in foreign

countries, I have been informed that they are more docile. But it is time

to return from this digression.

“One summer evening, as in a stroll, such as I have described, I

approached this deserted mansion of the dead, I was somewhat surprised to

hear sounds distinct from those which usually soothe its solitude, the

gentle chiding, namely, of the brook, and the sighing of the wind in the

boughs of three gigantic ash-trees, which mark the cemetery. The clink of

a hammer was, on this occasion, distinctly heard; and I entertained some

alarm that a march-dike, long meditated by the two proprietors whose

estates were divided by my favourite brook, was about to be drawn up the

glen, in order to substitute its rectilinear deformity for the graceful

winding of the natural boundary. [Note: I deem it fitting that the reader

should be apprised that this limitary boundary between the conterminous

heritable property of his honour the Laird of Gandercleugh, and his

honour the Laird of Gusedub, was to have been in fashion an agger, or

rather murus of uncemented granite, called by the vulgar a drystane dyke,

surmounted, or coped, _cespite viridi_, i.e. with a sodturf. Truly their

honours fell into discord concerning two roods of marshy ground, near the

cove called the Bedral’s Beild; and the controversy, having some years

bygone been removed from before the judges of the land, (with whom it

abode long,) even unto the Great City of London and the Assembly of the

Nobles therein, is, as I may say, adhuc in pendente.--J. C.] As I

approached, I was agreeably undeceived. An old man was seated upon the

monument of the slaughtered presbyterians, and busily employed in

deepening, with his chisel, the letters of the inscription, which,

announcing, in scriptural language, the promised blessings of futurity to

be the lot of the slain, anathematized the murderers with corresponding

violence. A blue bonnet of unusual dimensions covered the grey hairs of

the pious workman. His dress was a large old-fashioned coat of the coarse

cloth called hoddingrey, usually worn by the elder peasants, with

waistcoat and breeches of the same; and the whole suit, though still in

decent repair, had obviously seen a train of long service. Strong clouted

shoes, studded with hobnails, and gramoches or leggins, made of thick

black cloth, completed his equipment. Beside him, fed among the graves a

pony, the companion of his journey, whose extreme whiteness, as well as

its projecting bones and hollow eyes, indicated its antiquity. It was

harnessed in the most simple manner, with a pair of branks, a hair

tether, or halter, and a sunk, or cushion of straw, instead of bridle and

saddle. A canvass pouch hung around the neck of the animal, for the

purpose, probably, of containing the rider’s tools, and any thing else he

might have occasion to carry with him. Although I had never seen the old

man before, yet from the singularity of his employment, and the style of

his equipage, I had no difficulty in recognising a religious itinerant

whom I had often heard talked of, and who was known in various parts of

Scotland by the title of Old Mortality.

[Illustration: The Graveyard--006]

“Where this man was born, or what was his real name, I have never been

able to learn; nor are the motives which made him desert his home, and

adopt the erratic mode of life which he pursued, known to me except very

generally. According to the belief of most people, he was a native of

either the county of Dumfries or Galloway, and lineally descended from

some of those champions of the Covenant, whose deeds and sufferings were

his favourite theme. He is said to have held, at one period of his life,

a small moorland farm; but, whether from pecuniary losses, or domestic

misfortune, he had long renounced that and every other gainful calling.

In the language of Scripture, he left his house, his home, and his

kindred, and wandered about until the day of his death, a period of

nearly thirty years.

“During this long pilgrimage, the pious enthusiast regulated his circuit

so as annually to visit the graves of the unfortunate Covenanters, who

suffered by the sword, or by the executioner, during the reigns of the

two last monarchs of the Stewart line. These are most numerous in the

western districts of Ayr, Galloway, and Dumfries; but they are also to be

found in other parts of Scotland, wherever the fugitives had fought, or

fallen, or suffered by military or civil execution. Their tombs are often

apart from all human habitation, in the remote moors and wilds to which

the wanderers had fled for concealment. But wherever they existed, Old

Mortality was sure to visit them when his annual round brought them

within his reach. In the most lonely recesses of the mountains, the

moor-fowl shooter has been often surprised to find him busied in cleaning

the moss from the grey stones, renewing with his chisel the half-defaced

inscriptions, and repairing the emblems of death with which these simple

monuments are usually adorned. Motives of the most sincere, though

fanciful devotion, induced the old man to dedicate so many years of

existence to perform this tribute to the memory of the deceased warriors

of the church. He considered himself as fulfilling a sacred duty, while

renewing to the eyes of posterity the decaying emblems of the zeal and

sufferings of their forefathers, and thereby trimming, as it were, the

beacon-light, which was to warn future generations to defend their

religion even unto blood.

“In all his wanderings, the old pilgrim never seemed to need, or was

known to accept, pecuniary assistance. It is true, his wants were very

few; for wherever he went, he found ready quarters in the house of some

Cameronian of his own sect, or of some other religious person. The

hospitality which was reverentially paid to him he always acknowledged,

by repairing the gravestones (if there existed any) belonging to the

family or ancestors of his host. As the wanderer was usually to be seen

bent on this pious task within the precincts of some country churchyard,

or reclined on the solitary tombstone among the heath, disturbing the

plover and the black-cock with the clink of his chisel and mallet, with

his old white pony grazing by his side, he acquired, from his converse

among the dead, the popular appellation of Old Mortality.

“The character of such a man could have in it little connexion even with

innocent gaiety. Yet, among those of his own religious persuasion, he is

reported to have been cheerful. The descendants of persecutors, or those

whom he supposed guilty of entertaining similar tenets, and the scoffers

at religion by whom he was sometimes assailed, he usually termed the

generation of vipers. Conversing with others, he was grave and

sententious, not without a cast of severity. But he is said never to have

been observed to give way to violent passion, excepting upon one

occasion, when a mischievous truant-boy defaced with a stone the nose of

a cherub’s face, which the old man was engaged in retouching. I am in

general a sparer of the rod, notwithstanding the maxim of Solomon, for

which school-boys have little reason to thank his memory; but on this

occasion I deemed it proper to show that I did not hate the child.--But I

must return to the circumstances attending my first interview with this

interesting enthusiast.

“In accosting Old Mortality, I did not fail to pay respect to his years

and his principles, beginning my address by a respectful apology for

interrupting his labours. The old man intermitted the operation of the

chisel, took off his spectacles and wiped them, then, replacing them on

his nose, acknowledged my courtesy by a suitable return. Encouraged by

his affability, I intruded upon him some questions concerning the

sufferers on whose monument he was now employed. To talk of the exploits

of the Covenanters was the delight, as to repair their monuments was the

business, of his life. He was profuse in the communication of all the

minute information which he had collected concerning them, their wars,

and their wanderings. One would almost have supposed he must have been

their contemporary, and have actually beheld the passages which he

related, so much had he identified his feelings and opinions with theirs,

and so much had his narratives the circumstantiality of an eye-witness.

“‘We,’ he said, in a tone of exultation,--‘we are the only true whigs.

Carnal men have assumed that triumphant appellation, following him whose

kingdom is of this world. Which of them would sit six hours on a wet

hill-side to hear a godly sermon? I trow an hour o’t wad staw them. They

are ne’er a hair better than them that shamena to take upon themsells the

persecuting name of bludethirsty tories. Self-seekers all of them,

strivers after wealth, power, and worldly ambition, and forgetters alike

of what has been dree’d and done by the mighty men who stood in the gap

in the great day of wrath. Nae wonder they dread the accomplishment of

what was spoken by the mouth of the worthy Mr Peden, (that precious

servant of the Lord, none of whose words fell to the ground,) that the

French monzies [Note: Probably monsieurs. It would seem that this was

spoken during the apprehensions of invason from France.--Publishers.]

sall rise as fast in the glens of Ayr, and the kenns of Galloway, as ever

the Highlandmen did in 1677. And now they are gripping to the bow and to

the spear, when they suld be mourning for a sinfu’ land and a broken

covenant.’

“Soothing the old man by letting his peculiar opinions pass without

contradiction, and anxious to prolong conversation with so singular a

character, I prevailed upon him to accept that hospitality, which Mr

Cleishbotham is always willing to extend to those who need it. In our way

to the schoolmaster’s house, we called at the Wallace Inn, where I was

pretty certain I should find my patron about that hour of the evening.

After a courteous interchange of civilities, Old Mortality was, with

difficulty, prevailed upon to join his host in a single glass of liquor,

and that on condition that he should be permitted to name the pledge,

which he prefaced with a grace of about five minutes, and then, with

bonnet doffed and eyes uplifted, drank to the memory of those heroes of

the Kirk who had first uplifted her banner upon the mountains. As no

persuasion could prevail on him to extend his conviviality to a second

cup, my patron accompanied him home, and accommodated him in the

Prophet’s Chamber, as it is his pleasure to call the closet which holds a

spare bed, and which is frequently a place of retreat for the poor

traveller. [Note: He might have added, and for the rich also; since, I

laud my stars, the great of the earth have also taken harbourage in my

poor domicile. And, during the service of my hand-maiden, Dorothy, who

was buxom and comely of aspect, his Honour the Laird of Smackawa, in his

peregrinations to and from the metropolis, was wont to prefer my

Prophet’s Chamber even to the sanded chamber of dais in the Wallace Inn,

and to bestow a mutchkin, as he would jocosely say, to obtain the freedom

of the house, but, in reality, to assure himself of my company during the

evening.--J. C.]

“The next day I took leave of Old Mortality, who seemed affected by the

unusual attention with which I had cultivated his acquaintance and

listened to his conversation. After he had mounted, not without

difficulty, the old white pony, he took me by the hand and said, ‘The

blessing of our Master be with you, young man! My hours are like the ears

of the latter harvest, and your days are yet in the spring; and yet you

may be gathered into the garner of mortality before me, for the sickle of

death cuts down the green as oft as the ripe, and there is a colour in

your cheek, that, like the bud of the rose, serveth oft to hide the worm

of corruption. Wherefore labour as one who knoweth not when his master

calleth. And if it be my lot to return to this village after ye are gane

hame to your ain place, these auld withered hands will frame a stane of

memorial, that your name may not perish from among the people.’

“I thanked Old Mortality for his kind intentions in my behalf, and heaved

a sigh, not, I think, of regret so much as of resignation, to think of

the chance that I might soon require his good offices. But though, in all

human probability, he did not err in supposing that my span of life may

be abridged in youth, he had over-estimated the period of his own

pilgrimage on earth. It is now some years since he has been missed in all

his usual haunts, while moss, lichen, and deer-hair, are fast covering

those stones, to cleanse which had been the business of his life. About

the beginning of this century he closed his mortal toils, being found on

the highway near Lockerby, in Dumfries-shire, exhausted and just

expiring. The old white pony, the companion of all his wanderings, was

standing by the side of his dying master. There was found about his

person a sum of money sufficient for his decent interment, which serves

to show that his death was in no ways hastened by violence or by want.

The common people still regard his memory with great respect; and many

are of opinion, that the stones which he repaired will not again require

the assistance of the chisel. They even assert, that on the tombs where

the manner of the martyrs’ murder is recorded, their names have remained

indelibly legible since the death of Old Mortality, while those of the

persecutors, sculptured on the same monuments, have been entirely

defaced. It is hardly necessary to say that this is a fond imagination,

and that, since the time of the pious pilgrim, the monuments which were

the objects of his care are hastening, like all earthly memorials, into

ruin or decay.

“My readers will of course understand, that in embodying into one

compressed narrative many of the anecdotes which I had the advantage of

deriving from Old Mortality, I have been far from adopting either his

style, his opinions, or even his facts, so far as they appear to have

been distorted by party prejudice. I have endeavoured to correct or

verify them from the most authentic sources of tradition, afforded by the

representatives of either party.

“On the part of the Presbyterians, I have consulted such moorland farmers

from the western districts, as, by the kindness of their landlords, or

otherwise, have been able, during the late general change of property, to

retain possession of the grazings on which their grandsires fed their

flocks and herds. I must own, that of late days, I have found this a

limited source of information. I have, therefore, called in the

supplementary aid of those modest itinerants, whom the scrupulous

civility of our ancestors denominated travelling merchants, but whom, of

late, accommodating ourselves in this as in more material particulars, to

the feelings and sentiments of our more wealthy neighbours, we have

learned to call packmen or pedlars. To country weavers travelling in

hopes to get rid of their winter web, but more especially to tailors,

who, from their sedentary profession, and the necessity, in our country,

of exercising it by temporary residence in the families by whom they are

employed, may be considered as possessing a complete register of rural

traditions, I have been indebted for many illustrations of the narratives

of Old Mortality, much in the taste and spirit of the original.

“I had more difficulty in finding materials for correcting the tone of

partiality which evidently pervaded those stores of traditional learning,

in order that I might be enabled to present an unbiassed picture of the

manners of that unhappy period, and, at the same time, to do justice to

the merits of both parties. But I have been enabled to qualify the

narratives of Old Mortality and his Cameronian friends, by the reports of

more than one descendant of ancient and honourable families, who,

themselves decayed into the humble vale of life, yet look proudly back on

the period when their ancestors fought and fell in behalf of the exiled

house of Stewart. I may even boast right reverend authority on the same

score; for more than one nonjuring bishop, whose authority and income

were upon as apostolical a scale as the greatest abominator of Episcopacy

could well desire, have deigned, while partaking of the humble cheer of

the Wallace Inn, to furnish me with information corrective of the facts

which I learned from others. There are also here and there a laird or

two, who, though they shrug their shoulders, profess no great shame in

their fathers having served in the persecuting squadrons of Earlshall and

Claverhouse. From the gamekeepers of these gentlemen, an office the most

apt of any other to become hereditary in such families, I have also

contrived to collect much valuable information.

“Upon the whole, I can hardly fear, that, at this time, in describing the

operation which their opposite principles produced upon the good and bad

men of both parties, I can be suspected of meaning insult or injustice to

either. If recollection of former injuries, extra-loyalty, and contempt

and hatred of their adversaries, produced rigour and tyranny in the one

party, it will hardly be denied, on the other hand, that, if the zeal for

God’s house did not eat up the conventiclers, it devoured at least, to

imitate the phrase of Dryden, no small portion of their loyalty, sober

sense, and good breeding. We may safely hope, that the souls of the brave

and sincere on either side have long looked down with surprise and pity

upon the ill-appreciated motives which caused their mutual hatred and

hostility, while in this valley of darkness, blood, and tears. Peace to

their memory! Let us think of them as the heroine of our only Scottish

tragedy entreats her lord to think of her departed sire:--

‘O rake not up the ashes of our fathers!

Implacable resentment was their crime,

And grievous has the expiation been.’”