alive rather than bite a child: see, he offers you a paw--take it
without trembling; nay, he will let thee ride on his back, my pretty
dear--won't thou, O'Bronte?--and scamper with thee up and down the
knolls like her coal-black charger rejoicing to bear the Fairy Queen.
Thou tellest us thy father and mother, sisters and brothers, all are
dead; yet with a voice cheerful as well as plaintive. Smile--laugh--
sing--as thou wert doing a minute ago--as thou hast done for many a
morning--and shalt do for many a morning more on thy way to the well--in
the woods--on the braes--in the house,--often all by thyself when the
old people are out of doors not far off--or when sometimes they have for
a whole day been from home out of the glen. Forget not our words--and no
evil can befall thee that may not, weak as thou art, be borne,--and
nothing wicked that is allowed to walk the earth will ever be able to
hurt a hair on thy head.
My stars! what a lovely little animal! A tame fawn, by all that is
wild--kneeling down--to drink--no--no--at his lady's feet. The collie
catched it--thou sayest--on the edge of the Auld wood--and by the time
its wounds were cured, it seemed to have forgot its mother, and soon
learnt to follow thee about to far-off places quite out of sight of
this--and to play gamesome tricks like a creature born among human
dwellings. What! it dances like a kid--does it--and sometimes you put a
garland of wildflowers round its neck--and pursue it like a huntress, as
it pretends to be making its escape into the forest?
Look, child, here is a pretty green purse for you, that opens and shuts
with a spring--so--and in it there is a gold coin, called a sovereign,
and a crooked sixpence. Don't blush--that was a graceful curtsy. Keep
the crooked sixpence for good-luck, and you never will want. With the
yellow fellow buy a Sunday gown and a pair of Sunday shoes, and what
else you like; and now--you two, lead the way--try a race to the
door--and old Christopher North will carry the pitcher--balancing it on
his head--thus--ha! O'Bronte galloping along as umpire. The Fawn has it,
and by a neck has beat Camilla.
We shall lunch ere we go--and lunch well too--for this is a poor man's,
not a pauper's hut, and Heaven still grants his prayer--"give us this
day our daily bread." Sweeter--richer bannocks of barley-meal never met
the mouth of mortal man--nor more delicious butter. "We salt it, sir,
for a friend in Glasgow--but now and then we tak a bite of the fresh--do
oblige us a', sir, by eatin, and you'll maybe find the mutton-ham no
that bad, though I've kent it fatter--and, as you hae a lang walk afore
you, excuse me, sir, for being sae bauld as to suggeest a glass o'
speerit in your milk. The gudeman is temperate, and he's been sae a' his
life--but we keep it for a cordial--and that bottle--to be sure it's a
gey big ane--and would thole replenishing--has lasted us sin'
Whitsuntide."
So presseth us to take care of number one the gudewife, while the
gudeman, busy as ourselves, eyes her with a well-pleased face, but saith
nothing, and the bonny wee bit lassie sits on her stool at the wunnock
wi' her coggie ready to do any service at a look, and supping little or
nothing, out of bashfulness in presence of Christopher North, who she
believes is a good, and thinks may, perhaps, be some great man. Our
third bannock has had the gooseberry jam laid on it thick by "the
gudewife's ain hand,"--and we suspect at that last wide bite we have
smeared the corners of our mouth--but it will only be making matters
worse to attempt licking it off with our tongue. Pussie! thou hast a
cunning look--purring on our knees--and though those glass een o' thine
are blinking at the cream on the saucer--with which thou jalousest we
intend to let thee wet thy whiskers,--we fear thou mak'st no bones of
the poor birdies in the brake, and that many an unlucky leveret has lost
its wits at the spring of such a tiger. Cats are queer creatures, and
have an instinctive liking to Warlocks.
And these two old people have survived all their children--sons and
daughters! They have told us the story of their life--and as calmly as
if they had been telling of the trials of some other pair. Perhaps, in
our sympathy, though we say but little, they feel a strength that is not
always theirs--perhaps it is a relief from silent sorrow to speak to one
who is a stranger to them, and yet, as they may think, a brother in
affliction--but prayer like thanksgiving assures us that there is in
this hut a Christian composure, far beyond the need of our pity, and
sent from a region above the stars.
There cannot be a cleaner cottage. Tidiness, it is pleasant to know, has
for a good many years past been establishing itself in Scotland among
the minor domestic virtues. Once established it will never decay; for it
must be felt to brighten, more than could be imagined by our fathers,
the whole aspect of life. No need for any other household fairy to sweep
this floor. An orderly creature we have seen she is, from all her
movements out and in doors--though the guest of but an hour. They have
told us that they had known what are called better days--and were once
in a thriving way of business in a town. But they were born and bred in
the country; and their manners, not rustic but rural, breathe of its
serene and simple spirit--at once Lowland and Highland--to us a pleasant
union, not without a certain charm of grace.
What loose leaves are those lying on the Bible? A few odd numbers of the
SCOTTISH CHRISTIAN HERALD. We shall take care, our friends, that all the
Numbers, bound in three large volumes, shall, ere many weeks elapse, be
lying for you at the Manse. Let us recite to you, our worthy friends, a
small sacred Poem, which we have by heart. Christian, keep your eye on
the page, and if we go wrong, do not fear to set us right. Can you say
many psalms and hymns? But we need not ask--for
"Piety is sweet to infant minds;"
what they love they remember--for how easy--how happy--to get dear
things by heart! Happiest of all--the things held holy on earth as in
heaven--because appertaining here to Eternal Life.
TO THE SCOTTISH CHRISTIAN HERALD.
BY THE REV. DUNCAN GRANT, A.M., MINISTER OF FORRES.
"Beauteous on our heath-clad mountains,
May our HERALD'S feet appear;
Sweet, by silver lakes and fountains,
May his voice be to our ear.
Let the tenants of our rocks,
Shepherds watching o'er their flocks,
Village swain and peasant boy,
Thee salute with songs of joy!
CHRISTIAN HERALD! spread the story
Of Redemption's wondrous plan;
'Tis Jehovah's brightest glory,
'Tis His highest gift to man;
Angels on their harps of gold,
Love its glories to unfold;
Heralds who its influence wield,
Make the waste a fruitful field.
To the fount of mercy soaring,
On the wings of faith and love;
And the depths of grace exploring,
By the light shed from above;
Show us whence life's waters flow,
And where trees of blessing grow,
Bearing fruit of heavenly bloom,
Breathing Eden's rich perfume.
Love to God and man expressing,
In thy course of mercy speed;
Lead to springs of joy and blessing,
And with heavenly manna feed
Scotland's children high and low,
Till the Lord they truly know:
As to us our fathers told,
He was known by them of old.
To the young, in season vernal,
Jesus in His grace disclose;
As the tree of life eternal,
'Neath whose shade they may repose,
Shielded from the noontide ray,
And from ev'ning's tribes of prey;
And refresh'd with fruits of love,
And with music from above.
CHRISTIAN HERALD! may the blessing
Of the Highest thee attend,
That, this chiefest boon possessing,
Thou may'st prove thy country's friend
Tend to make our land assume
Something of its former bloom,
When the dews of heaven were seen
Sparkling on its pastures green,
When the voice of warm devotion
To the throne of God arose--
Mighty as the sound of ocean,
Calm as nature in repose;
Sweeter, than when Araby
Perfume breathes from flow'r and tree,
Rising 'bove the shining sphere,
To Jehovah's list'ning ear."
It is time we were going--but we wish to hear how thy voice sounds,
Christian, when it reads. So read these same verses, first "into
yourself," and then to us. They speak of mercies above your
comprehension, and ours, and all men's; for they speak of the infinite
goodness and mercy of God--but though thou hast committed in thy short
life no sins, or but small, towards thy fellow-creatures--how couldst
thou? yet thou knowest we are all sinful in His eyes, and thou knowest
on whose merits is the reliance of our hopes of Heaven. Thank you,
Christian. Three minutes from two by your house-clock--she gives a clear
warning--and three minutes from two by our watch--rather curious this
coincidence to such a nicety--we must take up our Crutch and go. Thank
thee, bonny wee Christian--in wi' the bannocks intil our pouch--but we
fear you must take us for a sad glutton.
"Zickety, dickety, dock,
The mouse ran up the nock;
The nock struck one,
Down the mouse ran,
Zickety, dickety, dock."
Come closer, Christian--and let us put it to thine ear. What a pretty
face of wonder at the chime! Good people, you have work to do in the
hay-field--let us part--God bless you--Good-by--farewell!
Half an hour since we parted--we cannot help being a little sad--and
fear we were not so kind to the old people--not so considerate as we
ought to have been--and perhaps, though pleased with us just now, they
may say to one another before evening that we were too merry for our
years. Nonsense. We were all merry together--daft Uncle among the
lave--for the creature came stealing in and sat down on his own stool in
the corner; and what's the use of wearing a long face at all times like
a Methodist minister? A Methodist minister! Why, John Wesley was facete,
and Whitfield humorous, and Rowland Hill witty--though he, we believe,
was not a Methody; yet were their hearts fountains of tears--and ours is
not a rock--if it be, 'tis the rock of Horeb.
Ha, Hamish! Here we are beneath the Merlin Crag. What sport? Why, five
brace is not so much amiss--and they are thumpers. Fifteen brace in all.
Ducks and flappers. Seven leash. We are getting on.
"But what are these,
So wither'd and so wild in their attire;
That look not like th' inhabitants o' the earth,
And yet are on't? Live you? or are you aught
That man may question? You seem to understand me,
By each at once her choppy finger laying
Upon her skinny lips:--you should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so!"
Shakespeare is not familiar, we find, among the natives of Loch-Etive
side--else these figures would reply,
"All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Glammis!"
But not satisfied with laying their choppy fingers on their skinny lips,
they now put them to their plooky noses, having first each dipped fore
and thumb in his mull, and gibber Gaelic, to us unintelligible as the
quacking of ducks, when a Christian auditor has been prevented from
catching its meaning by the gobbling of turkeys.
Witches at the least, and about to prophesy to us some pleasant events,
that are to terminate disastrously in after years. Is there no nook of
earth perfectly solitary--but must natural or supernatural footsteps
haunt the remotest and most central places? But now we shall have our
fortunes told in choice Erse, for sure these are the Children of the
Mist, and perhaps they will favour us with a running commentary on
Ossian. Stout, grim, heather-legged bodies they are, one and all, and
luckily we are provided with snuff and tobacco sufficient for the whole
crew. Were they even ghosts they will not refuse a sneeshin, and a
Highland spirit will look picturesque puffing a cigar!--Hark! we know
them and their vocation. These are the Genii of the Mountain-dew; and
their hidden enginery, depend on't, is not far off, but buried in the
bowels of some brae. See!--a faint mist dissipating itself over the
heather! There--at work, shaming the idle waste, and in use and wont to
break even the Sabbath-day, is a STILL!
Do we look like Excisemen? The Crutch has indeed a suspicious family
resemblance to a gauging-rod; and literary characters, like us, may well
be mistaken for the Supervisor himself. But the smuggler's eye knows his
enemy at a glance, as the fox knows a hound; and the whispering group
discern at once that we are of a nobler breed. That one fear dispelled,
Highland hospitality bids us welcome, even into the mouth of the
malt-kiln, and, with a smack on our loof, the Chief volunteers to
initiate us into the grand mysteries of the Worm.
The turf-door is flung outward on its lithe hinges, and already what a
gracious smell! In we go, ushered by unbonneted Celts, gentlemen in
manners wherever the kilt is worn; for the tartan is the symbol of
courtesy, and Mac a good password all the world over between man and
man. Lowland eyes are apt to water in the peat-reek, but ere long we
shall have another "drappie in our ee," and drink to the Clans in the
"uuchristened cretur." What a sad neglect in our education, among all
the acquired lingoes extant, to have overlooked the Gaelic! Yet nobody
who has ever heard P. R. preach an Erse Sermon, need despair of
discoursing in that tongue after an hour's practice; so let us forget,
if possible, every word of English, and the language now needed will
rise up in its place.
And these figures in men's coats and women's petticoats are females? We
are willing to believe it in spite of their beards. One of them
absolutely suckling a child! Thank you, my dear sir, but we cannot
swallow the contents of that quaich. Yet, let us try.--A little too
warm, and rather harsh; but meat and drink to a man of age. That seems
to be goat-milk cheese, and the scones are barley; and they and the
speerit will wash one another down in an amicable plea, nor quarrel at
close quarters. Honey too--heather-honey of this blessed year's produce.
Hecate's forefinger mixes it in a quaich with mountain-dew--and that is
Atholl-brose?
There cannot be the least doubt in the world that the Hamiltonian
system of teaching languages is one of the best ever invented. It will
enable any pupil of common-run powers of attention to read any part of
the New Testament in Greek in some twenty lessons of an hour each. But
what is that to the principle of the Worm? Half a blessed hour has not
elapsed since we entered into the door of this hill-house, and we offer
twenty to one that we read Ossian _ad aperturam libri_, in the original
Gaelic. We feel as if we could translate the works of Jeremy Bentham
into that tongue--ay, even Francis Maximus Macnab's Theory of the
Universe. We guarantee ourselves to do both, this identical night before
we go to sleep, and if the printers are busy during the intermediate
hours, to correct the press in the morning. Why, there are not above
five thousand roots--but we are getting a little gizzy--into a state of
civilation in the wilderness--and, gentlemen, let us drink--in solemn
silence--the "Memory of Fingal."
O St Cecilia! we did not lay our account with a bagpipe! What is the
competition of pipers in the Edinburgh Theatre, small as it is, to this
damnable drone in an earth-cell, eight feet by six! Yet while the drums
of our ears are continuing to split like old parchment title-deeds to
lands nowhere existing, and all our animal economy, from finger to toe,
is one agonising dirl, Aeolus himself sits as proud as Lucifer in
Pandemonium; and as the old soldiers keep tending the Worm in the reek
as if all were silence, the male-looking females, and especially the
he-she with the imp at her breast, nod, and smirk, and smile, and snap
their fingers, in a challenge to a straspey--and, by all that is
horrible, a red hairy arm is round our neck, and we are half choked with
the fumes of whisky-kisses. An hour ago we were dreaming of Malvina! and
here she is with a vengeance, while we in the character of Oscar are
embraced till almost all the Lowland breath in our body expires.
And this is STILL-LIFE.
Extraordinary it is, that, go where we will, we are in a wonderfully
short time discovered to be Christopher North. A few years ago, the
instant we found our feet in a mine in Cornwall, after a descent of
about one-third the bored earth's diameter, we were saluted by name by a
grim Monops who had not seen the upper regions for years, preferring the
interior of the planet; and forthwith "Christopher North," "Christopher
North," reverberated along the galleries, while the gnomes came flocking
in all directions, with safety-lamps, to catch a glimpse of the famous
Editor. On another occasion, we remember, when coasting the south of
Ireland in our schooner, falling in with a boat like a cockle-shell,
well out of the Bay of Bantry, and of the three half-naked Paddies that
were ensnaring the finny race, two smoked us at the helm, and bawled up,
"Kitty go bragh!" Were we to go up in a balloon, and by any accident
descend in the interior of Africa, we have not the slightest doubt that
Sultan Belloo would know us in a jiffy, having heard our person so
frequently described by Major Denham and Captain Clapperton. So we are
known, it seems, in the Still--by the men of the Worm? Yes--the
principal proprietor in the concern is a schoolmaster over about
Loch-Earn-Head--a man of no mean literary abilities, and an occasional
contributor to the Magazine. He visits The Shop in breeches--but now
mounts the kilt--and astonishes us by the versatility of his talents. In
one of the most active working bees we recognise a cadie, formerly in
Auld Reekie ycleped "The Despatch," now retired to the Braes of
Balquhidder, and breathing strongly the spirit of his youth. With that
heather-houghed gentleman, fiery-tressed as the God of Day, we were, for
the quarter of a century that we held a large grazing farm, in the
annual practice of drinking a gill at the Falkirk Tryst; and--wonderful,
indeed, to think how old friends meet--we were present at the amputation
of the right leg of that timber-toed hero with the bushy whiskers--in
the Hospital of Rosetta--having accompanied Sir David Baird's splendid
Indian army into Egypt.
Shying, for the present, the question in Political Economy, and viewing
the subject in a moral, social, and poetical light, what, pray, is the
true influence of THE STILL? It makes people idle. Idle? What species of
idleness is that which consists in being up night and day--traversing
moors and mountains in all weathers--constantly contriving the most
skilful expedients for misleading the Excise, and which, on some
disastrous day, when dragoons suddenly shake the desert--when all is
lost except honour--hundreds of gallons of wash (alas! alas! a-day!)
wickedly wasted among the heather-roots, and the whole beautiful
Apparatus lying battered and spiritless in the sun beneath the accursed
blows of the Pagans--returns, after a few weeks set apart to natural
grief and indignation, with unabated energy, to the self-same work, even
within view of the former ruins, and pouring out a libation of the first
amalgamated hotness that deserves the name of speerit, devotes the whole
Board of Excise to the Infernal Gods?
The argument of idleness has not a leg to stand on, and falls at once to
the ground.--But the Still makes men dishonest. We grant that there is a
certain degree of dishonesty in cheating the Excise; and we shall allow
yourself to fix it, who give as fine a caulker from the sma' still as
any moral writer on Honesty with whom we have the pleasure occasionally
to take a family dinner. But the poor fellows either grow or purchase
their own malt. They do not steal it; and many is the silent benediction
that we have breathed over a bit patch of barley, far up on its stony
soil among the hills, bethinking us that it would yield up its precious
spirit unexcised! Neither do they charge for it any very extravagant
price--for what is twelve, fourteen, twenty shillings a-gallon for such
drink divine as is now steaming before us in that celestial caldron?
Having thus got rid of the charge of idleness and dishonesty, nothing
more needs to be said on the Moral Influence of the Still; and we come
now, in the second place, to consider it in a Social Light. The biggest
bigot will not dare to deny, that without whisky the Highlands of
Scotland would be uninhabitable. And if all the population were gone, or
extinct, where then would be your social life? Smugglers are seldom
drunkards; neither are they men of boisterous manners or savage
dispositions. In general, they are grave, sedate, peaceable characters,
not unlike elders of the Kirk. Even Excisemen admit them, except on rare
occasions when human patience is exhausted, to be merciful. Four
pleasanter men do not now exist in the bosom of the earth, than the
friends with whom we are now on the hobnob. Stolen waters are sweet--a
profound and beautiful reflection--and no doubt originally made by some
peripatetic philosopher at a Still. The very soul of the strong drink
evaporates with the touch of the gauger's wand. An evil day would it
indeed be for Scotland, that should witness the extinguishment of all
her free and unlicensed mountain stills! The charm of Highland
hospitality would be wan and withered, and the _doch-an-dorras_, instead
of a blessing, would sound like a ban.
We have said that smugglers are never drunkards, not forgetting that
general rules are proved by exceptions; nay, we go farther, and declare
that the Highlanders are the soberest people in Europe. Whisky is to
them a cordial, a medicine, a life-preserver. Chief of the umbrella and
wraprascal! were you ever in the Highlands? We shall produce a single
day from any of the fifty-two weeks of the year that will out-argue you
on the present subject, in half an hour. What sound is that? The rushing
of rain from heaven, and the sudden outcry of a thousand waterfalls.
Look through a chink in the bothy, and far as you can see for the mists,
the heath-covered desert is steaming like the smoke of a smouldering
fire. Winds biting as winter come sweeping on their invisible chariots
armed with scythes, down every glen, and scatter far and wide over the
mountains the spray of the raging lochs. Now you have a taste of the
summer cold, more dangerous far than that of Yule, for it often strikes
"aitches" into the unprepared bones, and congeals the blood of the
shelterless shepherd on the hill. But one glorious gurgle of the speerit
down the throat of a storm-stayed man! and bold as a rainbow he faces
the reappearing sun, and feels assured (though there he may be mistaken)
of dying at a good old age.
Then think, oh think, how miserably poor are most of those men who have
fought our battles, and so often reddened their bayonets in defence of
our liberties and our laws! Would you grudge them a little whisky? And
depend upon it, a little is the most, taking one day of the year with
another, that they imbibe. You figure to yourself two hundred thousand
Highlanders, taking snuff, and chewing tobacco, and drinking whisky, all
year long. Why, one pound of snuff, two of tobacco, and two gallons of
whisky, would be beyond the mark of the yearly allowance of every
grown-up man! Thousands never taste such luxuries at all--meal and
water, potatoes and salt, their only food. The animal food, sir, and the
fermented liquors of various kinds, Foreign and British, which to our
certain knowledge you have swallowed within the last twelve months,
would have sufficed for fifty families in our abstemious region of mist
and snow. We have known you drink a bottle of champagne, a bottle of
port, and two bottles of claret, frequently at a sitting, equal, in
prime cost, to three gallons of the best Glenlivet! And YOU (who, by the
way, are an English clergyman, a circumstance we had entirely forgotten,
and have published a Discourse against Drunkenness, dedicated to a
Bishop) pour forth the Lamentations of Jeremiah over the sinful
multitude of Small Stills! Hypocrisy! hypocrisy! where shalt thou hide
thy many-coloured sides?