the parish--"a leeshance." Nor, for a year or two, was such a permit
necessary; as we confined ourselves almost exclusively to sparrows. Not
that we had any personal animosity to the sparrow individually--on the
contrary, we loved him, and had a tame one--a fellow of infinite
fancy--with comb and wattles of crimson cloth like a gamecock. But their
numbers, without number numberless, seemed to justify the humanest of
boys in killing any quantity of sprauchs. Why, they would sometimes
settle on the clipped half-thorn and half-beech hedge of the Manse
garden in myriads, midge-like; and then out any two of us, whose day it
happened to be, used to sally with Muckle-mou'd Meg and the Lang Gun,
charged two hands and a finger; and, with a loud shout, startling them
from their roost like the sudden casting of a swarm of bees, we let
drive into the whirr--a shower of feathers was instantly seen swimming
in the air, and flower-bed and onion-bed covered with scores of the
mortally wounded old cocks with black heads, old hens with brown, and
the pride of the eaves laid low before their first crop of pease! Never
was there such a parish for sparrows. You had but to fling a stone into
any stack-yard, and up rose a sprauch-shower. The thatch of every
cottage was drilled by them like honey-combs. House-spouts were of no
use in rainy weather--for they were all choked up by sprauch-nests. At
each particular barn-door, when the farmers were at work, you might have
thought you saw the entire sparrow population of the parish. Seldom a
Sabbath, during pairing, building, breeding, nursing, and training
season, could you hear a single syllable of the sermon for their sakes,
all a-huddle and a-chirp in the belfry and among the old loose slates.
On every stercoraceous deposit on coach, cart, or bridle road, they
were busy on grain and pulse; and, in spite of cur and cat, legions
embrowned every cottage garden. Emigration itself in many million
families would have left no perceptible void; and the inexterminable
multitude would have laughed at the Plague.
The other small birds of the parish began to feel their security from
our shot, and sung their best, unscared on hedge, bush, and tree.
Perhaps, too, for sake of their own sweet strains, we spared the lyrists
of Scotland, the linnet and the lark, the one in the yellow broom, the
other beneath the rosy cloud--while there was ever a sevenfold red
shield before Robin's breast, whether flitting silent as a falling leaf,
or trilling his autumnal lay on the rigging or pointed gable-end of barn
or byre. Now and then the large bunting, conspicuous on a top-twig, and
proud of his rustic psalmody, tempted his own doom--or the cunning
stone-chat, glancing about the old dykes, usually shot at in vain--or
yellow-hammer, under the ban of the national superstition, with a drop
of the devil's blood beneath his pretty crest, pretty in spite of that
cruel creed--or green-finch, too rich in plumage for his poorer song--or
shilfa, the beautiful nest-builder, shivering his white-plumed wings in
shade and sunshine, in joy the most rapturous, in grief the most
despairing of all the creatures of the air--or redpole, balanced on the
down of the thistle or flower of the bunweed on the old clovery lea--or,
haply twice seen in a season, the very goldfinch himself, a radiant and
gorgeous spirit brought on the breeze from afar, and worthy, if only
slightly wounded, of being enclosed within a silver cage from Fairy
Land.
But we waxed more ambitious as we grew old--and then woe to the rookery
on the elm-tree grove! Down dropt the dark denizens in dozens,
rebounding with a thud and a skraigh from the velvet moss, which under
that umbrage formed firm floor for Titania's feet--while others kept
dangling dead or dying by the claws, cheating the crusted pie, and all
the blue skies above were intercepted by cawing clouds of distracted
parents, now dipping down in despair almost within shot, and now, as if
sick of this world, soaring away up into the very heavens, and
disappearing to return no more--till sunset should bring silence, and
the night air roll off the horrid smell of sulphur from the desolated
bowers; and then indeed would they come all flying back upon their
strong instinct, like black-sailed barks before the wind, some from the
depth of far-off fir-woods, where they had lain quaking at the ceaseless
cannonade, some from the furrows of the new-brairded fields aloof on the
uplands, some from deep dell close at hand, and some from the middle of
the moorish wilderness.
Happiest of all human homes, beautiful Craig-Hall! For so even now dost
thou appear to be--in the rich, deep, mellow, green light of imagination
trembling on tower and tree--art thou yet undilapidated and undecayed,
in thy old manorial solemnity almost majestical, though even then thou
hadst long been tenanted but by a humble farmer's family--people of low
degree. The evening-festival of the First Day of the Books--nay, scoff
not at such an anniversary--was still held in thy ample kitchen--of old
the bower of brave lords and ladies bright--while the harper, as he sung
his song of love or war, kept his eyes fixed on her who sat beneath the
dais. The days of chivalry were gone--and the days had come of curds and
cream, and, preferred by some people though not by us, of cream-cheese.
Old men and old women, widowers and widows, yet all alike cheerful and
chatty at a great age, for often as they near the dead, how more
lifelike seem the living! Middle-aged men and middle-aged women,
husbands and wives, those sedate, with hair combed straight on their
foreheads, sunburnt faces, and horny hands established on their
knees--these serene, with countenances many of them not unlovely--comely
all--and with arms decently folded beneath their matronly bosoms--as
they sat in their holiday dresses, feeling as if the season of youth had
hardly yet flown by, or were, on such a merry meeting, for a blink
restored! Boys and virgins--those bold even in their bashfulness--these
blushing whenever eyes met eyes,--nor would they--nor could they--have
spoken in the hush to save their souls; yet ere the evening star arose,
many a pretty maiden had, down-looking and playing with the hem of her
garment, sung linnet-like her ain favourite auld Scottish sang! and many
a sweet sang even then delighted Scotia's spirit, though Robin Burns was
but a youth--walking mute among the wildflowers on the moor--nor aware
of the immortal melodies soon to breathe from his impassioned heart!
Of all the year's holidays, not even excepting the First of May, this
was the most delightful. The First of May, longed for so passionately
from the first peep of the primrose, sometimes came deformed with mist
and cloud, or cheerless with whistling winds, or winter-like with a
sudden fall of snow. And thus all our hopes were dashed--the roomy
hay-waggon remained in its shed--the preparations made for us in the
distant moorland farmhouse were vain--the fishing-rods hung useless on
the nails--and disconsolate schoolboys sat moping in corners, sorry,
ashamed, and angry with Scotland's springs. But though the "leafy month
of June" be frequently showery, it is almost always sunny too. Every
half-hour there is such a radiant blink that the young heart sings aloud
for joy; summer rain makes the hair grow, and hats are of little or no
use towards the Longest Day; there is something cheerful even in
thunder, if it be not rather too near; the lark has not yet ceased
altogether to sing, for he soars over his second nest, unappalled
beneath the sablest cloud; the green earth repels from her refulgent
bosom the blackest shadows, nor will suffer herself to be saddened in
the fulness and brightness of her contentment; through the heaviest
flood the blue skies will still be making their appearance with an
impatient smile, and all the rivers and burns, with the multitude of
their various voices, sing praises unto Heaven.
Therefore, bathing our feet in beauty, we went bounding over the flowery
fields and broomy braes to the grove-girdled Craig-Hall. During the long
noisy day, we thought not of the coming evening, happy as we knew it was
to be; and during the long and almost as noisy evening, we forgot all
the pastime of the day. Weeks before, had each of us engaged his partner
for the first country dance, by right his own when supper came, and to
sit close to him with her tender side, with waist at first stealthily
arm-encircled, and at last boldly and almost with proud display. In the
churchyard, before or after Sabbath-service, a word whispered into the
ear of blooming and blushing rustic sufficed; or if that opportunity
failed, the angler had but to step into her father's burnside cottage,
and with the contents of his basket leave a tender request, and from
behind the gable-end carry away a word, a smile, a kiss, and a waving
farewell.
Many a high-roofed hall have we, since those days, seen made beautiful
with festoons and garlands, beneath the hand of taste and genius
decorating, for some splendid festival, the abode of the noble expecting
a still nobler guest. But oh! what pure bliss, and what profound, was
then breathed into the bosom of boyhood from that glorious branch of
hawthorn, in the chimney--itself almost a tree, so thick--so deep--so
rich its load of blossoms--so like its fragrance to something breathed
from heaven--and so transitory in its sweetness too, that as she
approached to inhale it, down fell many a snow-flake to the virgin's
breath--in an hour all melted quite away! No broom that nowadays grows
on the brae, so yellow as the broom--the golden broom--the broom that
seemed still to keep the hills in sunlight long after the sun himself
had sunk--the broom in which we first found the lintwhite's nest--and of
its petals, more precious than pearls, saw framed a wreath for the dark
hair of that dark-eyed girl, an orphan, and melancholy even in her
merriment--dark-haired and dark-eyed indeed, but whose forehead, whose
bosom, were yet whiter than the driven snow. Greenhouses--conservatories--
orangeries--are exquisitely balmy still--and, in presence of these
strange plants, one could believe that he had been transported to some
rich foreign clime. But now we carry the burden of our years along with
us--and that consciousness bedims the blossoms, and makes mournful the
balm, as from flowers in some fair burial-place, breathing of the tomb.
But oh! that Craig-Hall hawthorn! and oh! that Craig-Hall broom! they
send their sweet rich scent so far into the hushed air of memory, that
all the weary worn-out weaknesses of age drop from us like a garment,
and even now--the flight of that swallow seems more aerial--more alive
with bliss his clay-built nest--the ancient long-ago blue of the sky
returns to heaven--not for many a many a long year have we seen so
fair--so frail--so transparent and angel-mantle-looking a cloud! The
very viol speaks--the very dance responds in Craig-Hall: this--this is
the very Festival of the First Day of the Rooks--Mary Mather, the pride
of the parish--the county--the land--the earth--is our partner--and long
mayest thou, O moon! remain behind thy cloud--when the parting kiss is
given--and the love-letter, at that tenderest moment, dropped into her
bosom!
But we have lost the thread of our discourse, and must pause to search
for it, even like a spinster of old, in the dis arranged spindle of one
of those pretty little wheels now heard no more in the humble ingle,
hushed by machinery clink-clanking with power-looms in every town and
city of the land. Another year, and we often found ourselves--alone--or
with one chosen comrade; for even then we began to have our sympathies
and antipathies, not only with roses and lilies, or to cats and cheese,
but with or to the eyes, and looks, and foreheads, and hair, and voices,
and motions, and silence, and rest of human beings, loving them with a
perfect love--we must not say hating them with a perfect hatred--alone
or with a friend, among the mists and marshes of moors, in silent and
stealthy search of the solitary curlew, that is, the Whaup! At first
sight of his long bill aloft above the rushes, we could hear our heart
beating quick time in the desert; at the turning of his neck, the body
being yet still, our heart ceased to beat altogether--and we grew sick
with hope when near enough to see the wild beauty of his eye. Unfolded,
like a thought, was then the brown silence of the shy creature's ample
wings--and with a warning cry he wheeled away upon the wind, unharmed by
our ineffectual hail, seen falling far short of the deceptive distance,
while his mate that had lain couched--perhaps in her nest of eggs or
young, exposed yet hidden--within killing range, half-running,
half-flying, flapped herself into flight, simulating lame leg and
wounded wing; and the two disappearing together behind the hills, left
us in our vain reason thwarted by instinct, to resume with live hopes
rising out of the ashes of the dead, our daily disappointed quest over
the houseless mosses. Yet now and then to our steady aim the bill of the
whaup disgorged blood--and as we felt the feathers in our hand, and from
tip to tip eyed the outstretched wings, Fortune, we felt, had no better
boon to bestow, earth no greater triumph.
Hush--stoop--kneel--crawl--for by all our hopes of mercy--a heron--a
heron! An eel dangling across his bill! And now the water-serpent has
disappeared! From morning dawn hath the fowl been fishing here--perhaps
on that very stone--for it is one of those days when eels are a-roaming
in the shallows, and the heron knows that they are as likely to pass by
that stone as any other--from morning dawn--and 'tis now past meridian,
half-past two! Be propitious, oh ye Fates! and never--never--shall he
again fold his wings on the edge of his gaping nest, on the trees that
overtop the only tower left of the old castle. Another eel! and we too
can crawl silent as the sinuous serpent. Flash! Bang! over he goes
dead--no, not dead--but how unlike that unavailing flapping, as
head-over-heels he goes spinning over the tarn, to the serene unsettling
of himself from sod or stone, when, his hunger sated, and his craw
filled with fish for his far-off brood, he used to lift his blue bulk
into the air, and with long depending legs, at first floated away like a
wearied thing, but soon, as his plumes felt the current of air homewards
flowing, urged swifter and swifter his easy course--laggard and lazy no
more--leaving leagues behind him, ere you had shifted your motion in
watching his cloudlike career, soon invisible among the woods!
The disgorged eels are returned--some of them alive--to their native
element--the mud. And the dead heron floats away before small winds and
waves into the middle of the tarn. Where is he--the matchless
Newfoundlander--_nomine gaudens_ FRO, because white as the froth of the
sea? Off with a collie. So--stript with the first intention, we plunge
from a rock, and,
"Though in the scowl of heaven, the tarn
Grows dark as we are swimming,"
Draco-like, breast-high, we stem the surge, and with the heron floating
before us, return to the heather-fringed shore, and give three cheers
that startle the echoes, asleep from year's end to year's end, in the
Grey-Linn Cairn.
Into the silent twilight of many a wild rock-and-river scene, beautiful
and bewildering as the fairy work of sleep, will he find himself brought
who knows where to seek the heron in all its solitary haunts. For often
when the moors are storm-swept, and his bill would be baffled by the
waves of tarn and loch, he sails away from his swinging-tree, and
through some open glade dipping down to the secluded stream, alights
within the calm chasm, and folds his wings in the breezeless air. The
clouds are driving fast aloft in a carry from the sea--but they are all
reflected in that pellucid pool--so perfect the cliff-guarded repose. A
better day--a better hour--a better minute for fishing could not have
been chosen by Mr Heron, who is already swallowing a par. Another--and
another--but something falls from the rock into the water; and
suspicious, though unalarmed, he leisurely addresses himself to a short
flight up the channel--round that tower-like cliff standing strangely by
itself, with a crest of self-sown flowering shrubs; and lo! another
vista, if possible, just a degree more silent--more secluded--more
solitary--beneath the mid-day night of woods! To shoot thee there--would
be as impious as to have killed a sacred Ibis stalking in the shade of
an Egyptian temple. Yet it is fortunate for thee--folded up there, as
thou art, as motionless as thy sitting-stone--that at this moment we
have no firearms--for we had heard of a fish-like trout in that very
pool, and this--O Heron--is no gun but a rod. Thou believest thyself to
be in utter solitude--no sportsman but thyself in the chasm--for the
otter, thou knowest, loves not such very rocky rivers; and fish with
bitten shoulder seldom lies here--that epicure's tasted prey. Yet within
ten yards of thee lies couched thy enemy, who once had a design upon
thee, even in the very egg. Our mental soliloquy disturbs not thy
watchful sense--for the air stirs not when the soul thinks, or feels, or
fancies about man, bird, or beast. We feel, O Heron! that there is not
only humanity--but poetry, in our being. Imagination haunts and
possesses us in our pastimes, colouring them even with serious, solemn,
and sacred light--and thou assuredly hast something priest-like and
ancient in thy look--and about thy light-blue plume robes, which the
very elements admire and reverence--the waters wetting them not--nor the
winds ruffling--and moreover we love thee--Heron--for the sake of that
old castle, beside whose gloom thou utteredst thy first feeble cry! A
Ruin nameless, traditionless--sole, undisputed property of Oblivion!
Hurra!--Heron--hurra! why, that was an awkward tumble--and very nearly
had we hold of thee by the tail! Didst thou take us for a water-kelpie?
A fright like that is enough to leave thee an idiot all the rest of thy
life. 'Tis a wonder thou didst not go into fits--but thy nerves must be
sorely shaken--and what an account of this adventure will certainly be
shrieked unto thy mate, to the music of the creaking boughs! Not, even
wert thou a secular bird of ages, wouldst thou ever once again revisit
this dreadful place. For fear has a wondrous memory in all dumb
creatures--and rather wouldst thou see thy nest die of famine, than
seek for fish in this man-monster-haunted pool. Farewell! farewell!
Many are the hundreds of hill and mountain lochs to us as familiarly
known, round all their rushy or rocky margins, as that pond there in the
garden of Buchanan Lodge. That pond has but one goose and one gander,
and nine goslings--about half-a-dozen trouts, if indeed they have not
sickened and died of Nostalgia, missing in the stillness the gurgle of
their native Tweed--and a brace of perch, now nothing but prickle. But
the lochs--the hill, the mountain lochs now in our mind's eye and our
mind's ear,--heaven and earth! the bogs are black with duck, teal, and
widgeon--up there "comes for food or play" to the holla of the winds, a
wedge of wild geese, piercing the marbled heavens with clamour--and lo!
in the very centre of the mediterranean, the Royal Family of the Swans!
Up springs the silver sea-trout in the sunshine--see Sir Humphrey!--a
salmon--a salmon fresh run in love and glory from the sea!
For how many admirable articles are there themes in the above short
paragraph! Duck, teal, and widgeon, wild-geese, swans! And first, duck,
teal, and widgeon. There they are, all collected together, without
regard to party politics, in their very best attire, as thick as the
citizens of Edinburgh, their wives, sweethearts, and children, on the
Calton Hill, on the first day of the King's visit to Scotland. As thick,
but not so steady--for what swimming about in circles--what ducking and
diving is there!--all the while accompanied with a sort of low, thick,
gurgling, not unsweet, nor unmusical quackery, the expression of the
intense joy of feeding, freedom, and play. Oh! Muckle-mou'd Meg! neither
thou nor the "Lang Gun" are of any avail here--for that old drake, who,
together with his shadow, on which he seems to be sitting, is almost as
big as a boat in the water, the outermost landward sentinel, near as he
seems to be in the deception of the clear frosty air, is yet better than
three hundred yards from the shore--and, at safe distance, cocks his eye
at the fowler. There is no boat on the loch, and knowing that, how
tempting in its unapproachable reeds and rushes, and hut-crested
knoll--a hut built perhaps by some fowler, in the olden time--yon
central Isle! But be still as a shadow--for lo! a batch of
Whig-seceders, paddling all by themselves towards that creek--and as
surely as our name is Christopher, in another quarter of an hour they
will consist of killed, wounded, and missing. On our belly--with
unhatted head just peering over the knowe--and Muckle mou'd Meg slowly
and softly stretched out on the rest, so as not to rustle a
windle-strae, we lie motionless as a maukin, till the coterie collects
together for simultaneous dive down to the aquatic plants and insects of
the fast-shallowing bay; and, just as they are upon the turn with their
tails, a single report, loud as a volley, scatters the unsparing slugs
about their doups, and the still clear water, in sudden disturbance, is
afloat with scattered feathers, and stained with blood.
Now is the time for the snow-white, here and there ebon-spotted Fro--who
with burning eyes has lain couched like a spaniel, his quick breath ever
and anon trembling on a passionate whine, to bounce up, as if discharged
by a catapulta, and first with immense and enormous high-and-far leaps,
and then, fleet as any greyhound, with a breast-brushing brattle down
the brae, to dash, all-fours, like a flying squirrel fearlessly from his
tree, many yards into the bay with one splashing and momentarily
disappearing spang, and then, head and shoulders and broad line of back
and rudder tail, all elevated above or level with the wavy water-line,
to mouth first that murdered mawsey of a mallard, lying as still as if
she had been dead for years, with her round, fat, brown bosom towards
heaven--then that old Drake, in a somewhat similar posture, but in more
gorgeous apparel, his belly being of a pale grey, and his back
delicately pencilled and crossed with numberless waved dusky
lines--precious prize to one skilled like us in the angling
art--next--nobly done, glorious Fro--that cream-colour-crowned widgeon,
with bright rufus chestnut breast, separated from the neck by loveliest
waved ash-brown and white lines, while our mind's eye feasteth on the
indescribable and changeable green beauty-spot of his wings--and now, if
we mistake not, a Golden Eye, best described by his name--finally, that
exquisite little duck the Teal; yes, poetical in its delicately
pencilled spots as an Indian shell, and when kept to an hour, roasted to
a minute, gravied in its own wild richness, with some few other means
and appliances to boot, carved finely--most finely--by razor-like knife,
in a hand skilful to dissect and cunning to divide--tasted by a tongue
and palate both healthily pure as the dewy petal of a morning
rose--swallowed by a gullet felt gradually to be extending itself in its
intense delight--and received into a stomach yawning with greed and
gratitude,--Oh! surely the thrice-blessed of all web-footed birds; the
apex of Apician luxury; and able, were anything on the face of this
feeble earth able, to detain a soul, on the very brink of fate, a short
quarter of an hour from an inferior Elysium!
How nobly, like a craken or sea-serpent, Fro reareth his massy head
above the foam, his gathered prey seized--all four--by their limber
necks, and brightening, like a bunch of flowers, as they glitter towards
the shore! With one bold body-shake, felt to the point, of each
particular hair, he scatters the water from his coat like mist,
reminding one of that glorious line in Shakespeare,
"Like dewdrops from the Lion's mane,"
advancing with sinewy legs seemingly lengthened by the drenching flood,
and dripping tail stretched out in all its broad longitude, with hair
almost like white hanging plumes--magnificent as tail of the Desert-Born
at the head of his seraglio in the Arabian Sands. Half-way his master
meets his beloved Fro on the slope; and first proudly and haughtily
pausing to mark our eye, and then humbly, as beseemeth one whom nature,
in his boldest and brightest bearing, hath yet made a slave--he lays the
offering at our feet, and having felt on his capacious forehead the
approving pressure of our hand,
"While, like the murmur of a dream,
He hears us breathe his name,"
he suddenly flings himself round with a wheel of transport, and in many
a widening circle pursues his own uncontrollable ecstasies with
whirlwind speed; till, as if utterly joy-exhausted, he brings his
snow-white bulk into dignified repose on a knoll, that very moment
illuminated by a burst of sunshine!