amidst the roar of the merciless hurricane we remember the words of
Burns--the peerless Peasant. Simple as they are, with what profound
pathos are they charged!
"List'ning the doors an' winnocks rattle;
I think me on the ourie cattle,
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle
O' winter war,
And thro' the drift, deep-lairing sprattle,
Beneath a scaur!
Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing,
That, in the merry months o' spring,
Delighted me to hear thee sing,
What comes o' thee?
Whar wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing,
An' close thy ee?
Ev'n you on murdering errands toil'd,
Lone from your savage homes exiled,
The blood-stain'd roost, and sheep-cot spoil'd,
My heart forgets,
While pitiless the tempest wild
Sore on you beats."
Burns is our Lowland bard--but poetry is poetry all over the world, when
streamed from the life-blood of the human heart. So sang the Genius of
inspired humanity in his bleak "auld clay-biggin," on one of the braes
of Coila, and now our heart responds the strain, high up among the
Celtic cliffs, central among a sea of mountains hidden in a snow-storm
that enshrouds the day. Ay--the one single door of this Hut--the one
single "winnock," does "rattle"--by fits--as the blast smites it, in
spite of the white mound drifted hill-high all round the buried
dwelling. Dim through the peat-reek cower the figures in tartan--fear
has hushed the cry of the infant in the swinging cradle--and all the
other imps are mute. But the household is thinner than usual at the
meal-hour; and feet that loved to follow the red-deer along the bent,
now fearless of pitfalls, since the first lour of morning light have
been traversing the tempest. The shepherds, who sit all day long when
summer hues are shining, and summer flowerets are blowing, almost idle
in their plaids, beneath the shadow of some rock watching their flocks
feeding above, around, and below, now expose their bold breasts to all
the perils of the pastoral life. This is our Arcadia--a realm of
wrath--woe--danger, and death. Here are bred the men whose blood--when
the bagpipe blows--is prodigally poured forth on a thousand shores. The
limbs strung to giant-force by such snows as these, moving in line of
battle within the shadow of the Pyramids,
"Brought from the dust the sound of liberty,"
while the Invincible standard was lowered before the heroes of the Old
Black Watch, and victory out of the very heart of defeat arose on "that
thrice-repeated cry" that quails all foes that madly rush against the
banners of Albyn. The storm that has frozen in his eyrie the eagle's
wing, driven the deer to the comb beneath the cliffs, and all night
imprisoned the wild-cat in his cell, hand-in-hand as is their wont when
crossing a stream or flood, bands of Highlanders now face in its
strongholds all over the ranges of mountains, come it from the wrathful
inland or the more wrathful sea.
"They think upon the ourie cattle
And silly sheep,"
and man's reason goes to the help of brute instinct.
How passing sweet is that other stanza, heard like a low hymn amidst the
noise of the tempest! Let our hearts once more recite it,--
"Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing,
That, in the merry months o' spring,
Delighted me to hear thee sing,
What comes o' thee?
Whar wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing,
An' close thy ee?"
The whole earth is for a moment green again--trees whisper--streamlets
murmur--and the "merry month o' Spring" is musical through all her
groves. But in another moment we know that almost all those
sweet-singers are now dead--or that they "cow'r the chittering
wing"--never more to flutter through the woodlands, and "close the ee"
that shall never more be re-illumined with love, when the Season of
Nests is at hand, and bush, tree, and tower are again all a-twitter with
the survivors of some gentler climate.
The poet's heart, humanised to utmost tenderness by the beauty of its
own merciful thoughts, extends its pity to the poor beasts of prey. Each
syllable tells--each stroke of the poet-painter's pencil depicts the
life and sufferings of the wretched creatures. And then, feeling that at
such an hour all life is subject to one lot, how profound the pathos
reflected back upon our own selves and our mortal condition, by these
few simplest words,--
"My heart forgets,
While pitiless the tempest wild
Sore on you beats!"
They go to help the "ourie cattle" and the "silly sheep;" but who knows
that they are not _sent_ on an errand of higher mercy, by Him whose ear
has not been shut to the prayer almost frozen on the lips of them about
to perish!--an incident long forgotten, though on the eve of that day on
which the deliverance happened, so passionately did we all regard it,
that we felt that interference providential--as if we had indeed seen
the hand of God stretched down through the mist and snow from heaven. We
all said that it would never leave our memory; yet all of us soon forgot
it--but now, while the tempest howls, it seems again of yesterday.
One family lived in Glencreran, and another in Glenco--the families of
two brothers--seldom visiting each other on working-days--seldom meeting
even on Sabbaths, for theirs was not the same parish-kirk--seldom coming
together on rural festivals or holidays, for in the Highlands now these
are not so frequent as of yore; yet all these sweet seldoms, taken
together, to loving hearts made a happy many, and thus, though each
family passed its life in its own home, there were many invisible
threads stretched out through the intermediate air, connecting the two
dwellings together--as the gossamer keeps floating from one tree to
another, each with its own secret nest. And nest-like both dwellings
were. _That_ in Glenco, built beneath a treeless but high-heathered
rock--lown in all storms--with greensward and garden on a slope down to
a rivulet, the clearest of the clear (oh! once woefully reddened!) and
_growing_--so it seems in the mosses of its own roof, and the huge
stones that overshadow it--out of the earth. _That_ in Glencreran, more
conspicuous, on a knoll among the pastoral meadows, midway between
mountain and mountain, so that the grove which shelters it, except when
the sun is shining high, is darkened by their meeting shadows, and dark
indeed even in the sunshine, for 'tis a low but wide-armed grove of old
oak-like pines. A little further down, and Glencreran is very sylvan;
but this dwelling is the highest up of all, the first you descend upon,
near the foot of that wild hanging staircase between you and Glen-Etive;
and, except this old oak-like grove of pines, there is not a tree, and
hardly a bush, on bank or brae, pasture or hay-field, though these are
kept by many a rill there mingling themselves into one stream, in a
perpetual lustre, that seems to be as native to the grass as its light
is to the glow-worm. Such are the two Huts--for they are huts and no
more--and you may see them still, if you know how to discover the
beautiful sights of nature from descriptions treasured in your
heart--and if the spirit of change, now nowhere at rest on the earth,
not even in its most solitary places, have not swept from the scenes
they beautified the humble but hereditary dwellings that ought to be
allowed, in the fulness of the quiet time, to relapse back into the
bosom of nature, through insensible and unperceived decay.
These Huts belonged to brothers--and each had an only child--a son and a
daughter--born on the same day--and now blooming on the verge of youth.
A year ago, and they were but mere children--but what wondrous growth of
frame and spirit does nature at that season of life often present before
our eyes! So that we almost see the very change going on between morn
and morn, and feel that these objects of our affection are daily brought
closer to ourselves, by partaking daily more and more in all our most
sacred thoughts, in our cares and in our duties, and in knowledge of the
sorrows as well as the joys of our common lot. Thus had these cousins
grown up before their parents' eyes, Flora Macdonald--a name hallowed of
yore--the fairest, and Ranald Cameron, the boldest of all the living
flowers in Glenco and Glencreran. It was now their seventeenth birthday,
and never had a winter sun smiled more serenely over a hush of snow.
Flora, it had been agreed on, was to pass that day in Glencreran, and
Ranald to meet her among the mountains, that he might bring her down the
many precipitous passes to his parents' hut. It was the middle of
February, and the snow had lain for weeks with all its drifts unchanged,
so calm had been the weather, and so continued the frost. At the same
hour, known by horologe on the cliff touched by the finger of dawn, the
happy creatures left each their own glen, and mile after mile of the
smooth surface glided away past their feet, almost as the quiet water
glides by the little boat that in favouring breezes walks merrily along
the sea. And soon they met at the trysting-place--a bank of birch-trees
beneath a cliff that takes its name from the Eagles.
On their meeting seemed not to them the whole of nature suddenly
inspired with joy and beauty? Insects unheard by them before, hummed and
glittered in the air--from tree-roots, where the snow was thin, little
flowers, or herbs flower-like, now for the first time were seen looking
out as if alive--the trees themselves seemed budding as if it were
already spring--and rare as in that rocky region are the birds of song,
a faint trill for a moment touched their ears, and the flutter of a
wing, telling them that somewhere near there was preparation for a nest.
Deep down beneath the snow they listened to the tinkle of rills
unreached by the frost--and merry, thought they, was the music of these
contented prisoners. Not Summer's self, in its deepest green, so
beautiful had ever been to them before, as now the mild white of Winter;
and as their eyes were lifted up to heaven, when had they ever seen
before a sky of such perfect blue, a sun so gentle in its brightness, or
altogether a week-day in any season, so like a Sabbath in its stillness,
so like a holyday in its joy! Lovers were they--although as yet they
scarcely knew it; for from love only could have come such bliss as now
was theirs, a bliss that while it beautified was felt to come from the
skies.
Flora sang to Ranald many of her old songs to those wild Gaelic airs
that sound like the sighing of winds among fractured cliffs, or the
branches of storm-tossed trees when the subsiding tempest is about to
let them rest. Monotonous music! But irresistible over the heart it has
once awakened and enthralled, so sincere seems to be the mournfulness it
breathes--a mournfulness brooding and feeding on the same note that is
at once its natural expression and its sweetest aliment--of which the
singer never wearieth in her dream, while her heart all the time is
haunted by all that is most piteous, by the faces of the dead in their
paleness returning to the shades of life, only that once more they may
pour from their fixed eyes those strange showers of unaccountable tears!
How merry were they between those mournful airs! How Flora trembled to
see her lover's burning brow and flashing eyes, as he told her tales of
great battles fought in foreign lands, far across the sea--tales which
he had drunk in with greedy ears from the old heroes scattered all over
Lochaber and Badenoch, on the brink of the grave still garrulous of
blood!
"The sun sat high in his meridian tower,"
but time had not been with the youthful lovers, and the blessed beings
believed that 'twas but a little hour since beneath the Eagle Cliff they
had met in the prime of the morn!
The boy starts to his feet--and his keen eye looks along the ready
rifle--for his sires had all been famous deer-stalkers, and the passion
of the chase was hereditary in his blood, Lo! a deer from Dalness,
hound-driven or sullenly astray, slowly bearing his antlers up the glen,
then stopping for a moment to snuff the air, and then away--away! The
rifle-shot rings dully from the scarce echoing snow-cliffs, and the
animal leaps aloft, struck by a certain but not sudden death-wound. Oh!
for Fingal now to pull him down like a wolf! But labouring and lumbering
heavily along, the snow spotted as he bounds with blood, the huge animal
at last disappears round some rocks at the head of the glen. "Follow me,
Flora!" the boy-hunter cries--and flinging down their plaids, they turn
their bright faces to the mountain, and away up the long glen after the
stricken deer. Fleet was the mountain-girl--and Ranald, as he ever and
anon looked back to wave her on, with pride admired her lightsome motion
as she bounded along the snow. Redder and redder grew that snow, and
more heavily trampled, as they winded round the rocks. Yonder is the
deer staggering up the mountain, not half a mile off--now standing at
bay, as if before his swimming eyes came Fingal, the terror of the
forest, whose howl was known to all the echoes, and quailed the herd
while their antlers were yet afar off. "Rest, Flora! rest! while I fly
to him with my rifle--and shoot him through the heart!"
Up--up--up the interminable glen, that kept winding and winding round
many a jutting promontory, and many a castellated cliff, the red-deer
kept dragging his gore-oozing bulk, sometimes almost within, and then,
for some hundreds of yards, just beyond rifle-shot; while the boy,
maddened by the chase, pressed forwards, now all alone, nor any more
looking behind for Flora, who had entirely disappeared; and thus he was
hurried on for miles by the whirlwind of passion--till at last he struck
the noble quarry, and down sank the antlers in the snow, while the air
was spurned by the convulsive beatings of feet. Then leaped Ranald upon
the Red-deer like a beast of prey, and lifted up a look of triumph to
the mountain-tops.
Where is Flora? Her lover has forgotten her--and he is alone--nor knows
it--he and the Red-deer--an enormous animal--fast stiffening in the
frost of death.
Some large flakes of snow are in the air, and they seem to waver and
whirl, though an hour ago there was not a breath. Faster they fall and
faster--the flakes are almost as large as leaves--and overhead whence so
suddenly has come that huge yellow cloud? "Flora, where are you? where
are you, Flora?" and from the huge hide the boy leaps up, and sees that
no Flora is at hand. But yonder is a moving speck far off upon the snow!
'Tis she--'tis she--and again Ranald turns his eyes upon the quarry, and
the heart of the hunter burns within him like a new-stirred fire. Shrill
as the eagle's cry disturbed in his eyrie, he sends a shout down the
glen--and Flora, with cheeks pale and bright by fits, is at last at his
side. Panting and speechless she stands--and then dizzily sinks on his
breast. Her hair is ruffled by the wind that revives her, and her face
all moistened by the snow-flakes, now not falling but driven--for the
day has undergone a dismal change, and all over the skies are now
lowering savage symptoms of a fast-coming night-storm.
Bare is poor Flora's head, and sorely drenched her hair, that an hour or
two ago glittered in the sunshine. Her shivering frame misses now the
warmth of the plaid, which almost no cold can penetrate, and which had
kept the vital current flowing freely in many a bitter blast. What would
the miserable boy give now for the coverings lying far away, which, in
his foolish passion, he flung down to chase that fatal deer! "Oh! Flora!
if you would not fear to stay here by yourself--under the protection of
God, who surely will not forsake you--soon will I go and come from the
place where our plaids are lying; and under the shelter of the deer we
may be able to outlive the hurricane--you wrapped up in them--and
folded--O my dearest sister--in my arms!"--"I will go with you down the
glen, Ranald!" and she left his breast--but, weak as a day-old lamb,
tottered and sank down on the snow. The cold--intense as if the air were
ice--had chilled her very heart, after the heat of that long race; and
it was manifest that here she must be for the night--to live or to die.
And the night seemed already come, so full was the lift of snow; while
the glimmer every moment became gloomier, as if the day were expiring
long before its time. Howling at a distance down the glen was heard a
sea-born tempest from the Linnhe-Loch, where now they both knew the tide
was tumbling in, bringing with it sleet and snow-blasts from afar; and
from the opposite quarter of the sky an inland tempest was raging to
meet it, while every lesser glen had its own uproar, so that on all
hands they were environed with death.
"I will go--and, till I return, leave you with God."--"Go, Ranald!" and
he went and came--as if he had been endowed with the raven's wings!
Miles away--and miles back had he flown--and an hour had not been with
his going and his coming--but what a dreary wretchedness meanwhile had
been hers! She feared that she was dying--that the cold snow-storm was
killing her--and that she would never more see Ranald, to say to him
farewell. Soon as he was gone, all her courage had died. Alone, she
feared death, and wept to think how hard it was for one so young thus
miserably to die. He came--and her whole being was changed. Folded up in
both the plaids, she felt resigned. "Oh! kiss me--kiss me, Ranald--for
your love--great as it is--is not as my love. You must never forget me,
Ranald--when your poor Flora is dead."
Religion with these two young creatures was as clear as the light of the
Sabbath-day--and their belief in heaven just the same as in earth. The
will of God they thought of just as they thought of their parents'
will--and the same was their loving obedience to its decrees. If she was
to die--supported now by the presence of her brother--Flora was utterly
resigned; if she were to live, her heart imaged to itself the very forms
of her grateful worship. But all at once she closed her eyes--ceased
breathing--and, as the tempest howled and rumbled in the gloom that fell
around them like blindness, Ranald almost sank down, thinking that she
was dead.
"Wretched sinner that I am!--my wicked madness brought her here to die
of cold!" And he smote his breast--and tore his hair--and feared to look
up, lest the angry eye of God were looking on him through the storm.
All at once, without speaking a word, Ranald lifted Flora in his arms,
and walked away up the glen--here almost narrowed into a pass.
Distraction gave him supernatural strength, and her weight seemed that
of a child. Some walls of what had once been a house, he had suddenly
remembered, were but a short way off--whether or not they had any roof,
he had forgotten; but the thought even of such shelter seemed a thought
of salvation. There it was--a snow-drift at the opening that had once
been a door--snow up the holes once windows--the wood of the roof had
been carried off for fuel, and the snow-flakes were falling in, as if
they would soon fill up the inside of the ruin. The snow in front was
all trampled as if by sheep; and carrying in his burden under the low
lintel, he saw the place was filled with a flock that had foreknown the
hurricane, and that all huddled together looked on him as on the
shepherd come to see how they were faring in the storm.
And a young shepherd he was, with a lamb apparently dying in his arms.
All colour--all motion--all breath seemed to be gone--and yet something
convinced his heart that she was yet alive. The ruined hut was roofless,
but across an angle of the walls some pine-branches had been flung as a
sort of shelter for the sheep or cattle that might repair thither in
cruel weather--some pine-branches left by the woodcutters who had felled
the few trees that once stood at the very head of the glen. Into that
corner the snow-drift had not yet forced its way, and he sat down there
with Flora in the cherishing of his embrace, hoping that the warmth of
his distracted heart might be felt by her who was as cold as a corpse.
The chill air was somewhat softened by the breath of the huddled flock,
and the edge of the cutting wind blunted by the stones. It was a place
in which it seemed possible that she might revive--miserable as it was
with mire-mixed snow--and almost as cold as one supposes the grave. And
she did revive--and under the half-open lids the dim blue appeared to be
not yet life-deserted. It was yet but the afternoon--night-like though
it was--and he thought, as he breathed upon her lips, that a faint red
returned, and that they felt the kisses he dropt on them to drive death
away.
"Oh! father, go seek for Ranald, for I dreamt to-night he was perishing
in the snow!"--"Flora, fear not--God is with us." "Wild swans, they say,
are come to Loch-Phoil--let us go, Ranald, and see them--but no
rifle--for why kill creatures said to be so beautiful?" Over them where
they lay bended down the pine-branch roof, as if it would give way
beneath the increasing weight;--but there it still hung--though the
drift came over their feet and up to their knees, and seemed stealing
upwards to be their shroud. "Oh! I am overcome with drowsiness, and
fain would be allowed to sleep. Who is disturbing me--and what noise is
this in our house?"--"Fear not--fear not, Flora--God is with us."
"Mother! am I lying in your arms? My father surely is not in the storm!
Oh! I have had a most dreadful dream!" and with such mutterings as these
Flora relapsed again into that perilous sleep--which soon becomes that
of death.
Night itself came--but Flora and Ranald knew it not--and both lay now
motionless in one snow-shroud. Many passions--though earth-born,
heavenly all--pity, and grief, and love, and hope, and at last
despair--had prostrated the strength they had so long supported; and the
brave boy--who had been for some time feeble as a very child after a
fever--with a mind confused and wandering, and in its perplexities sore
afraid of some nameless ill, had submitted to lay down his head beside
his Flora's, and had soon become like her insensible to the night and
all its storms!
Bright was the peat-fire in the hut of Flora's parents in Glenco--and
they were among the happiest of the humbly happy, blessing this the
birthday of their blameless child. They thought of her singing her sweet
songs by the fireside of the hut in Glencreran--and tender thoughts of
her cousin Ranald were with them in their prayers. No warning came to
their ears in the sugh or the howl; for Fear it is that creates its own
ghosts, and all its own ghost-like visitings, and they had seen their
Flora in the meekness of the morning, setting forth on her way over the
quiet mountains, like a fawn to play. Sometimes too Love, who starts at
shadows as if they were of the grave, is strangely insensible to
realities that might well inspire dismay. So was it now with the
dwellers in the hut at the head of Glencreran. Their Ranald had left
them in the morning--night had come, and he and Flora were not
there--but the day had been almost like a summer-day, and in their
infatuation they never doubted that the happy creatures had changed
their minds, and that Flora had returned with him to Glenco. Ranald had
laughingly said, that haply he might surprise the people in that glen by
bringing back to them Flora on her birthday--and, strange though it
afterwards seemed to her to be, that belief prevented one single fear
from touching his mother's heart, and she and her husband that night lay
down in untroubled sleep.