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WILSON'S TALES OF THE BORDERS AND OF SCOTLAND.
Historical, Traditionary, & Imaginative.
With a Glossary.
Revised by
ALEXANDER LEIGHTON,
One of the Original Editors and Contributors.
VOL. III.
London:
Walter Scott, 14 Paternoster Square
And Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.
1885.
CONTENTS.
WIDOW OF DUNSKAITH, (_Hugh Miller_), 1
THE WHITSOME TRAGEDY, (_John Mackay Wilson_), 20
THE SURGEON'S TALES, (_Alexander Leighton_)--
THE DIVER AND THE BELL, 53
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WILLIE SMITH, (_Alexander Campbell_), 85
THE PROFESSOR'S TALES, (_Professor Thomas Gillespie_)--
PHEBE FORTUNE, 117
THE ROYAL BRIDAL, (_John Mackay Wilson_), 134
THE ROYAL RAID, (_Alexander Leighton_), 166
THE EXPERIMENTER, (_John Howell_), 198
THE YOUNG LAIRD, (_Alexander Bethune_), 230
THE RIVAL NIGHTCAPS, (_Alexander Campbell_), 263
WILSON'S
TALES OF THE BORDERS
AND OF SCOTLAND.
THE WIDOW OF DUNSKAITH.
"Oh, mony a shriek, that waefu' night,
Rose frae the stormy main;
An' mony a bootless vow was made,
An' mony a prayer vain;
An' mithers wept, an' widows mourned
For mony a weary day;
An' maidens, ance o' blithest mood,
Grew sad, and pined away."
The northern Sutor of Cromarty is of a bolder character than even the
southern one--abrupt, and stern, and precipitous as that is. It presents
a loftier and more unbroken wall of rock; and, where it bounds on the
Moray Frith, there is a savage magnificence in its cliffs and caves, and
in the wild solitude of its beach, which we find nowhere equalled on the
shores of the other. It is more exposed, too, in the time of tempest:
the waves often rise, during the storms of winter, more than a hundred
feet against its precipices, festooning them, even at that height, with
wreaths of kelp and tangle; and, for miles within the bay, we may hear,
at such seasons, the savage uproar that maddens amid its cliffs and
caverns, coming booming over the lashings of the nearer waves, like the
roar of artillery. There is a sublimity of desolation on its shores, the
effects of a conflict maintained for ages, and on a scale so gigantic.
The isolated, spire-like crags that rise along its base, are so drilled
and bored by the incessant lashings of the surf, and are ground down
into shapes so fantastic, that they seem but the wasted skeletons of
their former selves; and we find almost every natural fissure in the
solid rock hollowed into an immense cavern, whose very ceiling, though
the head turns as we look up to it, owes evidently its comparative
smoothness to the action of the waves. One of the most remarkable of
these recesses occupies what we may term the apex of a lofty promontory.
The entrance, unlike that of most of the others, is narrow and rugged,
though of great height; but it widens within into a shadowy chamber,
perplexed, like the nave of a cathedral, by uncertain cross lights, that
come glimmering into it through two lesser openings, which perforate the
opposite sides of the promontory. It is a strange, ghostly-looking
place; there is a sort of moonlight greenness in the twilight which
forms its noon, and the denser shadows which rest along its sides; a
blackness, so profound that it mocks the eye, hangs over a lofty passage
which leads from it, like a corridor, still deeper into the bowels of
the hill; the light falls on a sprinkling of half-buried bones, the
remains of animals that, in the depth of winter, have creeped into it
for shelter, and to die; and, when the winds are up, and the hoarse roar
of the waves comes reverberated from its inner recesses, or creeps
howling along its roof, it needs no over-active fancy to people its
avenues with the shapes of beings long since departed from every gayer
and softer scene, but which still rise uncalled to the imagination in
those by-corners of nature which seem dedicated, like this cavern, to
the wild, the desolate, and the solitary.
There is a little rocky bay a few hundred yards to the west, which has
been known for ages, to all the seafaring men of the place, as the Cova
Green. It is such a place as we are sometimes made acquainted with in
the narratives of disastrous shipwrecks. First, there is a broad
semicircular strip of beach, with a wilderness of insulated piles of
rock in front; and so steep and continuous is the wall of precipices
which rises behind, that, though we may see directly over head the
grassy slopes of the hill, with here and there a few straggling firs, no
human foot ever gained the nearer edge. The bay of the Cova Green is a
prison to which the sea presents the only outlet; and the numerous caves
which open along its sides, like the arches of an amphitheatre, seem but
its darker cells. It is, in truth, a wild impressive place, full of
beauty and terror, and with none of the squalidness of the mere dungeon
about it. There is a puny littleness in our brick and lime receptacles
of misery and languor which speaks as audibly of the feebleness of man,
as of his crimes or his inhumanity; but here all is great and
magnificent--and there is much, too, that is pleasing. Many of the
higher cliffs, which rise beyond the influence of the spray, are
tapestried with ivy; we may see the heron watching on the ledges beside
her bundle of withered twigs, or the blue hawk darting from her cell;
there is life on every side of us--life in even the wild tumbling of the
waves, and in the stream of pure water which, rushing from the higher
edge of the precipice in a long white cord, gradually untwists itself by
the way, and spatters ceaselessly among the stones over the entrance of
one of the caves. Nor does the scene want its old story to strengthen
its hold on the imagination.
I am wretchedly uncertain in my dates, but it must have been some time
late in the reign of Queen Anne, that a fishing yawl, after vainly
labouring for hours to enter the bay of Cromarty, during a strong gale
from the west, was forced, at nightfall, to relinquish the attempt, and
take shelter in the Cova Green. The crew consisted of but two
persons--an old fisherman and his son. Both had been thoroughly drenched
by the spray, and chilled by the piercing wind, which, accompanied by
thick snow showers, had blown all day through the opening, from off the
snowy top of Ben Wyvis; and it was with no ordinary satisfaction that,
as they opened the little bay on their last tack, they saw the red gleam
of a fire flickering from one of the caves, and a boat drawn upon the
beach.
"It must be some of the Tarbet fishermen," said the old man, "wind-bound
like ourselves; but wiser than us, in having made provision for it. I
shall feel willing enough to share their fire with them for the night."
"But see," remarked the younger, "that there be no unwillingness on the
other side. I am much mistaken if that be not the boat of my cousins the
Macinlas, who would so fain have broken my head last Rhorichie Tryst.
But, hap what may, father, the night is getting worse, and we have no
choice of quarters. Hard up your helm, or we shall barely clear the
Skerries; there now, every nail an anchor." He leaped ashore, carrying
with him the small hawser attached to the stern, which he wound securely
round a jutting crag, and then stood for a few seconds until the old
man, who moved but heavily along the thwarts, had come up to him. All
was comparatively calm under the lee of the precipices; but the wind was
roaring fearfully in the woods above, and whistling amid the furze and
ivy of the higher cliff; and the two boatmen, as they entered the cave,
could see the flakes of a thick snow shower, that had just begun to
descend, circling round and round in the eddy.
The place was occupied by three men, who were sitting beside the fire,
on blocks of stone which had been rolled from the beach. Two of them
were young, and comparatively commonplace-looking persons; the third was
a grey-headed old man, apparently of great muscular strength though long
past his prime, and of a peculiarly sinister cast of countenance. A keg
of spirits, which was placed end up in front of them, served as a table;
there were little drinking measures of tin on it, and the mask-like,
stolid expressions of the two younger men showed that they had been
indulging freely. The elder was apparently sober. They all started to
their feet on the entrance of the fishermen, and one of the younger,
laying hold of the little cask, pitched it hurriedly into a dark corner
of the cave.
"HIS peace be here!" was the simple greeting of the elder fisherman, as
he came forward. "Eachen Macinla," he continued, addressing the old man,
"we have not met for years before--not, I believe, since the death o' my
puir sister, when we parted such ill friends; but we are short-lived
creatures ourselves, Eachen--surely our anger should be short-lived too;
and I have come to crave from you a seat by your fire."
"William Beth," replied Eachen, "it was no wish of mine we should ever
meet; but to a seat by the fire you are welcome."
Old Macinla and his sons resumed their seats, the two fishermen took
their places fronting them, and for some time neither party exchanged a
word.
A fire, composed mostly of fragments of wreck and driftwood, threw up
its broad cheerful flame towards the roof; but so spacious was the
cavern that, except where here and there a whiter mass of stalactites,
or bolder projection of cliff stood out from the darkness, the light
seemed lost in it. A dense body of smoke, which stretched its blue level
surface from side to side, and concealed the roof, went rolling outwards
like an inverted river.
"This is but a gousty lodging-place," remarked the old fisherman, as he
looked round him; "but I have seen a worse. I wish the folk at home kent
we were half sae snug; and then the fire, too--I have always felt
something companionable in a fire, something consolable, as it were; it
appears, somehow, as if it were a creature like ourselves, and had life
in it." The remark seemed directed to no one in particular, and there
was no reply. In a second attempt at conversation, the fisherman
addressed himself to the old man.
"It has vexed me," he said, "that our young folk shouldna, for my
sister's sake, be on more friendly terms, Eachen. They hae been
quarrelling, an' I wish to see the quarrel made up." The old man,
without deigning a reply, knit his grey shaggy brows, and looked
doggedly at the fire.
"Nay, now," continued the fisherman, "we are getting auld men, Eachen,
an' wauld better bury our hard thoughts o' ane anither afore we come to
be buried ourselves. What if we were sent to the Cova Green the night,
just that we might part friends!"
Eachen fixed his keen scrutinizing glance on the speaker--it was but for
a moment; there was a tremulous motion of the under lip as he withdrew
it, and a setting of the teeth--the expression of mingled hatred and
anger; but the tone of his reply savoured more of sullen indifference
than of passion.
"William Beth," he said, "ye hae tricked my boys out o' the bit property
that suld hae come to them by their mother; it's no lang since they
barely escaped being murdered by your son. What more want you? But ye
perhaps think it better that the time should be passed in making hollow
lip professions o' good will, than that it suld be employed in clearing
off an old score."
"Ay," hiccuped out the elder of the two sons, "the houses might come my
way, then; an', besides, gin Helen Henry were to lose her ae joe, the
ither might hae a better chance. Rise, brither--rise, man, an' fight for
me an' your sweetheart." The younger lad, who seemed verging towards the
last stage of intoxication, struck his clenched fist against his palm,
and attempted to rise.
"Look ye, uncle," exclaimed the younger fisherman, a powerful-looking
and very handsome stripling, as he sprang to his feet, "your threat
might be spared. Our little property was my grandfather's, and naturally
descended to his only son; and, as for the affair at Rhorichie, I dare
either of my cousins to say the quarrel was of my seeking. I have no
wish to raise my hand against the sons or the husband of my aunt; but,
if forced to it, you will find that neither my father nor myself are
wholly at your mercy."
"Whisht, Earnest," said the old fisherman, laying his hand on the hand
of the young man; "sit down--your uncle maun hae ither thoughts. It is
now fifteen years, Eachen," he continued, "since I was called to my
sister's deathbed. You yourself canna forget what passed there. There
had been grief, an' cauld, an' hunger, beside that bed. I'll no say you
were willingly unkind--few folk are that but when they hae some purpose
to serve by it, an' you could have none; but you laid no restraint on a
harsh temper, and none on a craving habit that forgets everything but
itsel; and so my puir sister perished in the middle o' her days--a
wasted, heart-broken thing. It's no that I wish to hurt you. I mind how
we passed our youth thegither, among the wild Buccaneers; it was a bad
school, Eachen; an' I owre often feel I havena unlearned a' my ain
lessons, to wonder that you shouldna hae unlearned a' yours. But we're
getting old men, Eachen, an' we have now what we hadna in our young
days, the advantage o' the light. Dinna let us die fools in the sight o'
Him who is so willing to give us wisdom--dinna let us die enemies. We
have been early friends, though maybe no for good; we have fought afore
now at the same gun; we have been united by the luve o' her that's now
in the dust; an' there are our boys--the nearest o' kin to ane anither
that death has spared. But, what I feel as strongly as a' the rest,
Eachen--we hae done meikle ill thegither. I can hardly think o' a past
sin without thinking o' you, an' thinking too, that, if a creature like
me may hope he has found pardon, you shouldna despair. Eachen, we maun
be friends."
The features of the stern old man relaxed. "You are perhaps right,
William," he at length replied; "but ye were aye a luckier man than
me--luckier for this world, I'm sure, an' maybe for the next. I had aye
to seek, an' aften without finding, the good that came in your gate o'
itsel. Now that age is coming upon us, ye get a snug rental frae the
little houses, an' I hae naething; an' ye hae character an' credit, but
wha would trust me, or cares for me? Ye hae been made an elder o' the
kirk, too, I hear, an' I am still a reprobate; but we were a' born to be
just what we are, an' sae maun submit. An' your son, too, shares in your
luck; he has heart an' hand, an' my whelps hae neither; an' the girl
Henry, that scouts that sot there, likes him--but what wonder o' that?
But you are right, William--we maun be friends. Pledge me." The little
cask was produced; and, filling the measures, he nodded to Earnest and
his father. They pledged him; when, as if seized by a sudden frenzy, he
filled his measure thrice in hasty succession, draining it each time to
the bottom, and then flung it down with a short hoarse laugh. His sons,
who would fain have joined with him, he repulsed with a firmness of
manner which he had not before exhibited. "No, whelps," he said--"get
sober as fast as ye can."
"We had better," whispered Earnest to his father, "not sleep in the cave
to-night."
"Let me hear now o' your quarrel, Earnest," said Eachen--"your father
was a more prudent man than you; and, however much he wronged me, did it
without quarrelling."
"The quarrel was none of my seeking," replied Earnest. "I was insulted
by your sons, and would have borne it for the sake of what they seemed
to forget; but there was another whom they also insulted, and that I
could not bear."
"The girl Henry--and what then?"
"Why, my cousins may tell the rest. They were mean enough to take odds
against me; and I just beat the two spiritless fellows that did so."
But why record the quarrels of this unfortunate evening? An hour or two
passed away in disagreeable bickerings, during which the patience of
even the old fisherman was worn out, and that of Earnest had failed him
altogether. They both quitted the cave, boisterous as the night was, and
it was now stormier than ever; and, heaving off their boat, till she
rode at the full length of her swing from the shore, sheltered
themselves under the sail. The Macinlas returned next evening to Tarbet;
but, though the wind moderated during the day, the yawl of William Beth
did not enter the bay of Cromarty. Weeks passed away, during which the
clergyman of the place corresponded, regarding the missing fishermen,
with all the lower parts of the Frith; but they had disappeared, as it
seemed, for ever.
Where the northern Sutor sinks into the low sandy tract that nearly
fronts the town of Cromarty, there is a narrow grassy terrace raised but
a few yards over the level of the beach. It is sheltered behind by a
steep undulating bank; for, though the rock here and there juts out, it
is too rich in vegetation to be termed a precipice. To the east, the
coast retires into a semicircular rocky recess, terminating seawards in
a lofty, dark-browed precipice, and bristling, throughout all its
extent, with a countless multitude of crags, that, at every heave of the
wave, break the surface into a thousand eddies. Towards the west, there
is a broken and somewhat dreary waste of sand. The terrace itself,
however, is a sweet little spot, with its grassy slopes, that recline
towards the sun, partially covered with thickets of wild-rose and
honeysuckle, and studded, in their season, with violets, and daisies,
and the delicate rock geranium. Towards its eastern extremity, with the
bank rising immediately behind, and an open space in front, which seemed
to have been cultivated at one time as a garden, there stood a
picturesque little cottage. It was that of the widow of William Beth.
Five years had now elapsed since the disappearance of her son and
husband, and the cottage bore the marks of neglect and decay. The door
and window, bleached white by the sea winds, shook loosely to every
breeze; clusters of chickweed luxuriated in the hollows of the thatch,
or mantled over the eaves; and a honeysuckle that had twisted itself
round the chimney, lay withering in a tangled mass at the foot of the
wall. But the progress of decay was more marked in the widow herself
than in her dwelling. She had had to contend with grief and penury: a
grief not the less undermining in its effects, from the circumstance of
its being sometimes suspended by hope--a penury so extreme that every
succeeding day seemed as if won by some providential interference from
absolute want. And she was now, to all appearance, fast sinking in the
struggle. The autumn was well nigh over: she had been weak and ailing
for months before, and had now become so feeble as to be confined for
days together to her bed. But, happily, the poor solitary woman had, at
least, one attached friend in the daughter of a farmer of the parish, a
young and beautiful girl, who, though naturally of no melancholy
temperament, seemed to derive almost all she enjoyed of pleasure from
the society of the widow. Helen Henry was in her twenty-third year; but
she seemed older in spirit than in years. She was thin and pale, though
exquisitely formed; there was a drooping heaviness in her fine eyes, and
a cast of pensive thought on her forehead, that spoke of a longer
experience of grief than so brief a portion of life might be supposed to
have furnished. She had once lovers; but they had gradually dropped away
in the despair of moving her, and awed by a deep and settled pensiveness
which, in the gayest season of youth, her character had suddenly but
permanently assumed. Besides, they all knew her affections were already
engaged, and had come to learn, though late and unwillingly, that there
are cases in which no rival can be more formidable than a dead one.
Autumn, I have said, was near its close. The weather had given
indications of an early and severe winter; and the widow, whose worn-out
and delicate frame was affected by every change of atmosphere, had for a
few days been more than usually indisposed. It was now long past noon,
and she had but just risen. The apartment, however, bore witness that
her young friend had paid her the accustomed morning visit; the fire was
blazing on a clean comfortable-looking hearth, and every little piece of
furniture it contained was arranged with the most scrupulous care. Her
devotions were hardly over, when the well-known tap was again heard at
the door.
"Come in, my lassie," said the widow, and then lowering her voice, as
the light foot of her friend was heard on the threshold--"God," she
said, "has been ever kind to me--far, very far aboon my best deservings;
and, oh, may He bless and reward her who has done so meikle, meikle for
me!" The young girl entered and took her seat beside her.
"You told me, mother," she said, "that to-morrow is Earnest's birthday.
I have been thinking of it all last night, and feel as if my heart were
turning into stone. But when I am alone, it is always so. There is a
cold death-like weight at my breast that makes me unhappy, though, when
I come to you, and we speak together, the feeling passes away, and I
become cheerful."
"Ah, my bairn," replied the old woman; "I fear I'm no your friend,
meikle as I love you. We speak owre, owre often o' the lost; for our
foolish hearts find mair pleasure in that than in anything else; but ill
does it fit us for being alone. Weel do I ken your feeling--a stone
deadness o' the heart, a feeling there are no words to express, but that
seems as it were insensibility itself turning into pain; an' I ken, too,
my lassie, that it is nursed by the very means ye take to flee from it.
Ye maun learn to think mair o' the living and less o' the dead. Little,
little does it matter, how a puir worn-out creature like me passes the
few broken days o' life that remains to her; but ye are young, my Helen,
an' the world is a' before you; an' ye maun just try an' live for it."
"To-morrow," rejoined Helen, "is Earnest's birthday. Is it no strange
that, when our minds make pictures o' the dead, it is always as they
looked best, an' kindest, an' maist life-like. I have been seeing
Earnest all night long, as when I saw him on his _last_ birthday; an',
oh, the sharpness o' the pang, when, every now an' then, the back o' the
picture is turned to me, an' I see him as he is--dust!"
The widow grasped her young friend by the hand. "Helen," she said, "you
will get better when I am taken from you; but, so long as we continue to
meet, our thoughts will aye be running the one way. I had a strange
dream last night, an' must tell it you. You see yon rock to the east, in
the middle o' the little bay, that now rises through the back draught o'
the sea, like the hull o' a ship, an' is now buried in a mountain o'
foam. I dreamed I was sitting on that rock, in what seemed a bonny
summer's morning; the sun was glancin' on the water; an' I could see the
white sand far down at the bottom, wi' the reflection o' the little
wavies running o'er it in long curls o' gowd. But there was no way o'
leaving the rock, for the deep waters were round an' round me; an' I saw
the tide covering one wee bittie after another, till at last the whole
was covered. An' yet I had but little fear; for I remembered that baith
Earnest an' William were in the sea afore me; an' I had the feeling that
I could hae rest nowhere but wi' them. The water at last closed o'er me,
an' I sank frae aff the rock to the sand at the bottom. But death seemed
to have no power given him to hurt me; an' I walked as light as ever I
hae done on a gowany brae, through the green depths o' the sea. I saw
the silvery glitter o' the trout an' the salmon, shining to the sun, far
far aboon me, like white pigeons in the lift; an' around me there were
crimson starfish, an' sea-flowers, an' long trailing plants that waved
in the tide like streamers; an' at length I came to a steep rock wi' a
little cave like a tomb in it. 'Here,' I said, 'is the end o' my
journey--William is here, an' Earnest.' An', as I looked into the cave,
I saw there were bones in it, an' I prepared to take my place beside
them. But, as I stooped to enter, some one called me, an' on looking up,
there was William. 'Lillias,' he said, 'it is not night yet, nor is that
your bed; you are to sleep, not with me, but with Earnest--haste you
home, for he is waiting you.' 'Oh, take me to him! I said; an' then all
at once I found myself on the shore, dizzied an' blinded wi' the bright
sunshine; for, at the cave, there was a darkness like that o' a simmer's
gloamin; an', when I looked up for William, it was Earnest that stood
before me, life-like an' handsome as ever; an' you were beside him.'"
The day had been gloomy and lowering, and, though there was little wind,
a tremendous sea, that, as the evening advanced, rose higher and higher
against the neighbouring precipice, had been rolling ashore since
morning. The wind now began to blow in long hollow gusts among the
cliffs, and the rain to patter against the widow's casement.
"It will be a storm from the sea," she said; "the scarts an' gulls hae
been flying landward sin' daybreak, an' I hae never seen the ground
swell come home heavier against the rocks. Wae's me for the puir
sailors!"
"In the lang stormy nights," said Helen, "I canna sleep for thinking o'
them, though I have no one to bind me to them now. Only look how the sea
rages among the rocks, as if it were a thing o' life an' passion!--that
last wave rose to the crane's nest. An', look, yonder is a boat rounding
the rock wi' only one man in it. It dances on the surf as if it were a
cork, an' the wee bittie o' sail, sae black an' weet, seems scarcely
bigger than a napkin. Is it no bearing in for the boat haven below?"
"My poor old eyes," replied the widow, "are growing dim, an' surely no
wonder; but yet I think I should ken that boatman. Is it no Eachen
Macinla o' Tarbet?"
"Hard-hearted, cruel old man," exclaimed the maiden, "what can be taking
him here? Look how his skiff shoots in like an arrow on the long roll o'
the surf!--an' now she is high on the beach. How unfeeling it was o' him
to rob you o' your little property in the very first o' your grief! But,
see, he is so worn out that he can hardly walk over the rough stones.
Ah, me, he is down! wretched old man. I must run to his assistance--but
no, he has risen again. See he is coming straight to the house; an' now
he is at the door." In a moment after, Eachen entered the cottage.
"I am perishing, Lillias," he said, "with cold an' hunger, an' can gang
nae farther; surely ye'll no shut your door on me in a night like this."
The poor widow had been taught in a far different school. She
relinquished to the worn-out fisherman her seat by the fire, now
hurriedly heaped with fresh fuel, and hastened to set before him the
simple viands which her cottage afforded.
As the night darkened, the storm increased. The wind roared among the
rocks like the rattling of a thousand carriages over a paved street; and
there were times when, after a sudden pause, the blast struck the
cottage, as if it were a huge missile flung against it, and pressed on
its roof and walls till the very floor rocked, and the rafters strained
and shivered like the beams of a stranded vessel. There was a ceaseless
patter of mingled rain and snow--now lower, now louder; and the fearful
thunderings of the waves, as they raged among the pointed crags, was
mingled with the hoarse roll of the storm along the beach. The old man
sat beside the fire, fronting the widow and her companion, with his head
reclined nearly as low as his knee, and his hands covering his face.
There was no attempt at conversation. He seemed to shudder every time
the blast yelled along the roof; and, as a fiercer gust burst open the
door, there was a half-muttered ejaculation.
"Heaven itsel hae mercy on them! for what can man do in a night like
this?"
"It is black as pitch," exclaimed Helen, who had risen to draw the bolt;
"an' the drift flies sae thick that it feels to the hand like a solid
snaw wreath. An', oh, how it lightens?"
"Heaven itsel hae mercy on them!" again ejaculated the old man. "My two
boys," said he, addressing the widow, "are at the far Frith; an' how can
an open boat live in a night like this?"
There seemed something magical in the communication--something that
awakened all the sympathies of the poor bereaved woman; and she felt she
could forgive him every unkindness.
"Wae's me!" she exclaimed, "it was in such a night as this, an' scarcely
sae wild, that my Earnest perished." The old man groaned and wrung his
hands.
In one of the pauses of the hurricane, there was a gun heard from the
sea, and shortly after a second. "Some puir vessel in distress," said
the widow; "but, alas! where can succour come frae in sae terrible a
night? There is help only in Ane. Wae's me! would we no better light up
a blaze on the floor, an', dearest Helen, draw off the cover frae the
window. My puir Earnest has told me that my light has aften shewed him
his bearing frae the deadly bed o' Dunskaith. That last gun"--for a
third was now heard booming over the mingled roar of the sea and the
wind--"that last gun came frae the very rock edge. Wae's me, wae's me!
maun they perish, an' sae near!" Helen hastily lighted a bundle of more
fir, that threw up its red, sputtering blaze half-way to the roof, and,
dropping the covering, continued to wave it opposite the window. Guns
were still heard at measured intervals, but apparently from a safer
offing; and the last, as it sounded faintly against the wind, came
evidently from the interior of the bay.
"She has escaped," said the old man; "it's a feeble hand that canna do
good when the heart is willing--but what has mine been doing a' life
long?" He looked at the widow and shuddered.
Towards morning, the wind fell, and the moon, in her last quarter, rose
red and glaring out of the Frith, lighting the melancholy roll of the
waves, that still came like mountains, and the broad white belt of surf
that skirted the shores. The old fisherman left the cottage, and
sauntered along the beach. It was heaped with huge wreaths of kelp and
tangle uprooted by the storm, and in the hollow of the rocky bay lay the
scattered fragments of a boat. Eachen stooped to pick up a piece of the
wreck, in the fearful expectation of finding some known mark by which to
recognise it, when the light fell full on the swollen face of a corpse
that seemed staring at him from out a wreath of weed. It was that of his
eldest son. The body of the younger, fearfully gashed and mangled by the
rocks, lay a few yards farther to the east.
The morning was as pleasant as the night had been boisterous; and,
except that the distant hills were covered with snow, and that a heavy
swell still continued to roll in from the sea, there remained scarce any
trace of the recent tempest. Every hollow of the neighbouring hill had
its little runnel, formed by the rains of the previous night, that now
splashed and glistened to the sun. The bushes round the cottage were
well nigh divested of their leaves; but their red berries--hips and
haws, and the juicy fruit of the honeysuckle--gleamed cheerfully to the
light; and a warm steam of vapour, like that of a May morning, rose from
the roof and the little mossy platform in front. But the scene seemed to
have something more than merely its beauty to recommend it to a young
man, drawn apparently to the spot, with many others, by the fate of the
two unfortunate fishermen, and who now stood gazing on the rocks, and
the hills, and the cottage, as a lover on the features of his mistress.
The bodies had been carried to an old storehouse, which may still be
seen a short mile to the west, and the crowds that, during the early
part of the morning, had been perambulating the beach, gazing at the
wreck, and discussing the various probabilities of the accident, had
gradually dispersed. But this solitary individual, whom no one knew,
remained behind. He was a tall and swarthy, though very handsome man, of
about five-and-twenty, with a slight scar on his left cheek; his dress,
which was plain and neat, was distinguished from that of the common
seaman by three narrow stripes of gold lace on the upper part of one of
the sleeves. He had twice stepped towards the cottage door, and twice
drawn back, as if influenced by some unaccountable feeling--timidity,
perhaps, or bashfulness; and yet the bearing of the man gave little
indication of either. But, at length, as if he had gathered heart, he
raised the latch and went in.
The widow, who had had many visitors that morning, seemed to be
scarcely aware of his entrance; she was sitting on a low seat beside the
fire, her face covered with her hands, while the tremulous rocking
motion of her body showed that she was still brooding over the
distresses of the previous night. Her companion, who had thrown herself
across the bed, was fast asleep. The stranger seated himself beside the
fire, which seemed dying amid its ashes, and, turning sedulously from
the light of the window, laid his hand gently on the widow's shoulder.
She started, and looked up.
"I have strange news for you," he said. "You have long mourned for your
husband and your son; but, though the old man has been dead for years,
your son, Earnest, is still alive, and is now in the harbour of
Cromarty. He is lieutenant of the vessel whose guns you must have heard
during the night."
The poor woman seemed to have lost all power of reply.
"I am a friend of Earnest's," continued the stranger; "and have come to
prepare you for meeting with him. It is now five years since his father
and he were blown off to sea by a strong gale from the land. They drove
before it for four days, when they were picked up by an armed vessel
then cruising in the North Sea, and which soon after sailed for the
coast of Spanish America. The poor old man sank under the fatigues he
had undergone; though Earnest, better able from his youth to endure
hardship, was little affected by them. He accompanied us on our Spanish
expedition--indeed, he had no choice, for we touched at no British port
after meeting with him; and, through good fortune, and what his
companions call merit, he has risen to be the second man aboard; and has
now brought home with him gold enough, from the Spaniards, to make his
old mother comfortable. He saw your light yesterevening, and steered by
it to the roadstead, blessing you all the way. Tell me, for he anxiously
wished me to inquire of you, whether Helen Henry is yet unmarried."
"It is Earnest--it is Earnest himself!" exclaimed the maiden, as she
started from the widow's bed. In a moment after she was locked in his
arms. But why dwell on a scene which I feel myself unfitted to describe?
It was ill, before evening, with old Eachen Macinla. The fatigues of the
previous day, the grief and horror of the following night, had
prostrated his energies, bodily and mental, and he now lay tossing, in a
waste apartment of the storehouse, in the delirium of a fever. The
bodies of his two sons occupied the floor below. He muttered,
unceasingly, in his ravings, of William and Earnest Beth. They were
standing beside him, he said, and every time he attempted to pray for
his poor boys and himself, the stern old man laid his cold swollen hand
on his lips.
"Why trouble me?" he exclaimed. "Why stare with your white dead eyes on
me? Away, old man! the little black shells are sticking in your gray
hairs; away to your place! Was it I who raised the wind on the sea?--was
it I?--was it I? Uh, u!--no--no, you were asleep--you were fast asleep,
and could not see me cut the swing; and, besides, it was only a piece of
rope. Keep away--touch me not; I am a free man, and will plead for my
life. Please your honour, I did not murder these two men; I only cut the
rope that fastened their boat to the land. Ha! ha! ha! he has ordered
them away, and they have both left me unskaithed." At this moment
Earnest Beth entered the apartment, and approached the bed. The
miserable old man raised himself on his elbow, and, regarding him with a
horrid stare, shrieked out--"Here is Earnest Beth come for me a second
time!" and, sinking back on the pillow, instantly expired.
THE WHITSOME TRAGEDY.
When our forefathers were compelled to give up the ancient practice of
crossing the Borders, and of seizing and driving home whatever cattle
they could lay their hands upon, without caring or inquiring who might
be their owner--in order to supply their necessities, both as regarded
providing themselves with cattle and with articles of wearing apparel,
they were forced to become buyers or sellers at the annual and other
fairs on both sides of the Border. Hence they had, as we still have, the
fairs of Stagshawbank, Whitsunbank, St. Ninian's, St. James's, and St.
Boswell's; with the fairs of Wooler, Dunse, Chirnside, Swinton, and of
many other towns and villages. Of the latter, several fell into disuse;
and that of Whitsome was discontinued. Whitsome, or White's home, is the
name of a village and small agricultural parish in the Merse, which is
bounded by the parishes of Swinton, Ladykirk, Edrom, and Hutton. Now, as
has been stated, Whitsome, in common with many other villages, enjoyed
the privilege of having held at it an annual fair. But, though the old
practice of lifting cattle, and of every man taking what he could, had
been suppressed, the laws were not able to extinguish the ancient Border
spirit which produced such doings; and, at the annual fairs, it often
broke forth in riot, and terminated in blood. It was in consequence of
one of those scenes, and in order to suppress them, that the people of
Whitsome were deprived of a fair being held there; the particulars
whereof, in the following story, will be unfolded.
About the middle of the seventeenth century, there resided on the banks
of the Till, and a few miles above its junction with the Tweed, a widow
of the name of Barbara Moor. She had had seven sons; but they and her
husband had all fallen in the troubles of the period, and she was left
bereaved, desolate, and without a comforter. Many said that affliction
had turned her brain; but even before she was acquainted with days of
sorrow or with nights of lamentation, there was often a burning wildness
in her words, and her manners were not as those of other women. There
was a tinge of extravagance, and a character of vehemence, in all her
actions. Some of her neighbours sympathised with her, because of the
affliction that rendered her hearth desolate; but the greater part
beheld her with reverential respect, or looked upon her with fear and
trembling, believing her to be leagued with the inhabitants of the
invisible world, and familiar with the moon and stars, reading in their
courses the destinies of nations and of individuals as in a book. The
character of a being who could read the decrees of fate, and even in
some instances control the purposes of men, was certainly that which she
seemed most pleased to assume; and its wildness soothed her troubled
thoughts, or directed them into other channels.
In her youth, and before her father had been compelled to bow his head
to the authority of the wardens of the marches, she had resided in a
castellated building, of greater strength than magnitude, one of the
minor strongholds on the Border, and which might have been termed towers
for the protection of stolen cattle. But, when the two nations came
beneath the sovereignty of one monarch, and the spear of war was
transformed into a pruning-hook, there went forth a decree that the
strongholds, great and small, along the Borders should be destroyed; and
amongst those that were rendered defenceless and uninhabitable was the
turret which, for many generations, had been occupied by the ancestors
of Barbara Moor. During the life-time of her husband, she had resided in
a comfortable-looking farm-house, the appearance of which indicated that
its inhabitants were of a more peaceful character than were those who, a
few years before, had occupied the prison-like houses of strength. She
now resided in a small mud-built and turf-covered hovel, which in winter
afforded but a sorry shelter from the "pelting of the pitiless storm."
But Barbara was used to bear the scorching sun of summer and the cold
and storms of winter. She walked in the midst of the tempest, and bowed
not her head; and she held converse with the wild lightning and the
fierce hail, speaking of them as the ministers of her will. For nearly
nine months every year she was absent from her clay-built hovel, and
none knew whither she wandered.
It is necessary, however, for the development of our story, that we
here make further mention of her husband and her sons. The elder Moor
had been a daring freebooter in his youth; and often in the morning, and
even at dead of night, the "fray of support," the cry for help, and the
sudden summons for neighbours and kinsmen to rise and ride, were raised
wheresoever he trode; and the sleuth-hounds were let loose upon his
track. It was his boast that he dared to ride farther to humble an enemy
than any other reiver on either side of the Border. If he saw, or if he
heard, of a herd of cattle or a flock of sheep to his liking, he
immediately "marked it for his own," and seldom failed in securing it;
and though the property so obtained was not purchased with money, it was
often procured with a part of his own blood--and with the blood, and not
unfrequently the lives, of his friends, followers, and relatives. And
when law and justice became stronger than the reiver's right, they by no
means tamed his spirit. Though necessity, then, compelled him to be a
buyer and seller of cattle, he looked upon the occupation and the
necessity as a disgrace, and he sighed for the honoured and happier days
of his youth, when the freebooter's might was the freebooter's right.
His sons were young men deeply imbued with his spirit; and it was their
chiefest pleasure, during the long winter evenings, to sit and listen to
him, while he recorded the exploits and the hairbreadth escapes of his
early days. He frequently related to them strange adventures and
contests which he had in his youth with one Walter Cunningham, who
resided near Simprin, in Berwickshire, and who was not only regarded as
a wealthy man, but as one of the boldest on the Borders. He had often
boasted of the number of his herds, and defied the stoutest heart in
Northumberland to lay hand upon their horns. The elder Moor had heard
this defiance, and being resolved to prove that he had both a hand and a
heart to put the defiance to the test, the following is one of the
adventures which he related to his sons in connection therewith:--
"It was about the Martinmas," he said, "when the leaves were becoming
few and blighted on the trees; I was courting your mother at the time,
and her faither had consented to our marriage; but, at the same time, he
half cast up to me, that I had but an ill-plenished house to take home a
wife to--that I had neither meal in the press, kye in the byre, nor oxen
in the court-yard. His own mailing was but poorly provided at the time;
and had he looked at hame, he hardly would have ventured to throw a
reflection at me.
"'Weel, sir, said I to him, 'I dinna deny but what you say is true; but
I have supple heels, a ready hand, a good sword, and a stout heart, and
I ken a canny byre where there are threescore o' sleak beasties, weel
worth the harrying.'
"'Now ye speak like a lad of sense and mettle,' said the old man; 'and
on the first night that ye bring them hame, the plumpest and the fattest
o' them shall be slaughtered for the marriage-feast of you and Barbara.'
"Then up spoke your mother's brother, and a winsome young man he was as
ye would have found between Tweed and Tyne; and 'Jonathan,' says he to
me, 'when ye gang to drive hame the herd, I shall go wi' thee, for the
sake of a bout with the bold, bragging Cunningham, of Simprin--for I
will lay thee my sword 'gainst a tailor's bodkin, it is him ye mean.'
"'It is him, Duncan,' said I--for your uncle's name was Duncan--'though
weel do I ken that he keeps them strongly guarded, and blood will flow,
and weapons be broken, before we get them into our possession. But gie
me your hand, my lad--we two shall be a match for him and a' his
backing. What ye take shall be your own, and what I take, your sister's;
and your faither shanna cast up my toom bink and my ill-stocked
mailing.'
"'Weel spoken, bairns!' cried your grandfaither, who had been a first
hand at such ploys in his young days; 'weel spoken! I'm glad to see that
the spirits of the young generation arena gaun backward; though, since
King Jamie gaed to be King in London, as weel as at Edinburgh, our laws
are only fit for a few women, and everything is done that can be done to
banish manhood, and make it a crime.'
"'Go upon no such an errand,' said your mother to both of us; 'for there
is blood upon baith your brows, and there is death in your path.'
"'Havers, lassie!' cried her faither angrily; 'are ye at your randering
again?--what blood do ye see on their brows mair than I do, or what
death can ye perceive in their path? All your mother's Highland kinsfolk
were never able to throw their second-sighted glamour into my een, and
my own bairn shanna.
"'Call it randers, or what ye will,' answered she; 'but I see it plain
as I see the grey hairs upon your head, that death and lamentation are
gathering round my father's hearth, and are hovering and screaming owre
it, like vultures round a desolate place.'
"Her words made my flesh to creep upon my bones; for, both before that,
and a hundred times since, I have heard her say dark and strange things,
which sooner or later have owre truly come to pass. However, the foray
across to Simprin was delayed till after our marriage; and your mother
almost persuaded me to give up all thoughts of it, and instead of my
former habits of life, to cultivate the bit ground which my forefaithers
had held for two hundred years, for the consideration of an armed man's
service. But her brother taunted me, and said I was no better than
Samson lying wi' his head on the lap of Dalilah, and that I had not only
given his sister my heart to keep, but my courage also. A taunt was a
thing that I never could endure, and that I never would put up wi' from
any man that ever was born--and I hope none of ye ever will, or, as I am
your faither! ye should be no longer my sons!
"'Weel, this night be it,' said I to your uncle, 'The Tweed will be
fordable at Norham--I will have my shelty and weapons ready precisely at
eleven, and get two friends to accompany us that I can trust. Do ye the
like, and we shall see whose courage will stand firmest before morning.'
"We gave each other our hands upon it, and said it was a bargain, and
immediately set about making preparations for the excursion. Before the
appointed hour, he rode up to my door, accompanied by two of his
faither's servants; and I with my two friends were in readiness waiting
for him. Your mother was very bitter against our purpose, and her words
and her warnings made my very heart to shake within my breast. Her eyes
flashed, as if they had been balls of fire, and her very bosom heaved up
and down wi' agitation.
"'Husband!--brother!' she cried, 'listen to me, and give up the mad
errand on which ye are bent; for the bloodhound is snuffing the air and
gnashing its teeth, and the hooded crow clapping its wings for a feast,
and the owl has looked east, west, north, and south, from the auld
turret--it has screamed wi' joy, and its eyes are fixed on Simprin! Be
wise--be warned--or the moon will set and the sun rise upon unburied
bones. Cunningham of Simprin is strong and powerful; he is strong wi'
men, he is strong wi' money; and his herds and his hirsels are strongly
guarded. Again I say to ye, be wise--be warned--desist!--or auld men
will tear their grey hairs, and wives mourn; and those only that live by
the gibbet, rejoice wi' the bloodhound and bird of prey!'
"Her words made us both uncomfortable; but we had often been engaged in
such exploits before the expedition was determined on; and we couldna,
in the presence of the four men that we had engaged to accompany us,
abandon it. They were fearless and experienced hands at the trade; but
the new laws on the Borders had reduced them to great privations, and
their teeth were watering for the flesh-pots of bygone days, no matter
at what risk they were to be obtained.