RORY OF THE SHELTIES.
The Broomielaw has not borne a broom ‘cow’ for many a year. ‘Ane little
quay’ has gradually extended to a long line of wharves, where traffic
reigns. Warehouses abound with goods from the four quarters of the
globe, shops with a seafaring flavour, though the sea is not at hand,
and they deal in the common necessaries of shore life; the homely
dwellings of these humbler shopkeepers, sailors’ lodging-houses,
commercial hotels, look down upon the busy thoroughfare and the river
highway.
Among the crowd of shipping, steamboats, multiplied mightily since Henry
Bell’s little _Comet_ plied between Glasgow and Greenock, and was the
wonder of the day--arrive at all hours at the Broomielaw. Many of them
are Highland boats from ‘Glasgow down the water,’ the villa settlements
that fringe the Clyde and the lochs. And far beyond the islands that
begin with Bute and Arran is a Scotch archipelago--shaggy, heathery,
rocky, castle-crowned here and there, guarded by savage mountains and
wild sounds. That is the region of green Morven near thunder-haunted
Knapdale, pillared Staffa, sacred Iona, lonely Barra and Canna, and the
primitive, desolate Western Hebrides, in which Stornoway ranks as a big
town.
The communication between all these places and the more civilized south
is by water, and mainly by steamboat. The passengers and the cargo in
these Highland boats, when the first do not consist of enterprising
English and American tourists, and the second of their baggage, are
sometimes strange enough, but they are sufficiently common in that
quarter of the world to attract little attention. Besides, people are
too much engrossed with their own affairs to have notice to spare for
those of their neighbours. Thus nobody looked and nobody cared, when, on
a rainy April afternoon, an odd figure stepped out of one of the boats
that touched at some of the farthest-off islands, shook himself,
clutched an ancient knapsack that might have seen service in the
Peninsular War, and stumbled along, casting wary glances out of the
red-lashed eyes, right and left, like a spy reconnoitring a new country.
The stranger was a man a little over thirty, weather-beaten, and with
the shambling gait that often accompanies a defective intellect, which
makes up in cunning what it lacks in strength. The Highlander did not
wear the kilt, which he perhaps regarded as inappropriate in the low
country. He had compounded with the claims of the Sassenach in his own
territory, by assuming one of his few remaining articles of dress--a
pair of tartan trews, in which the greens and reds were faded into
sickly olives and dingy browns. With these he had on a little tartan
coat originally made for a much smaller man, so that the waist was
between his shoulders, and the sleeves ended not far below his elbows.
The dress was completed by a Glengarry of the same set, perched on the
wearer’s shock head of red hair. His face was as ugly as a ferret
complexion, high cheek bones, a wide mouth twisted slightly to one side,
and the longest chin on record, could make it.
But in the middle of this man’s ugliness and the guile which blinked out
of his eyes, there was a strain of simplicity and patience in the whole
aspect of the creature. There was also a manifest determination not to
betray any surprise at whatever he might see, but to affect that his
native clachan was as fine a place as Glasgow any day. He glanced at the
long lines of houses that opened from the quay, and betrayed, by the
blankness of his gaze, that he did not expect to see a living soul he
knew, amongst the thousands in the great city. He instinctively turned
his eyes from the eating-houses and provision-shops, conveying a
suspicion that he was both hungry and thirsty, but dare not indulge in a
supererogatory meal, till he had ascertained where he should find and
what he should pay for the cheapest and humblest of suppers and beds.
He wandered along Clyde Street, not caring to ask his way, past the old
Gaol, giving a doubtful, almost timorous look at its sombre exterior,
and came out upon the Green--the glory of East-End Glasgow. If the Earl
of Moray were to see it now, would he know it to be the same Green on
which he encamped his army before he crossed the river to win, under
Mary’s despairing eyes, the battle of Langside? Would Prince Charlie
recognise the spot where he reviewed his Highlanders on their return
from Derby, after their rags had been exchanged for the twelve thousand
linen shirts, the six thousand cloth coats, and the thousand blue
bonnets required by the rebels from the Whig town which flourished by
the preaching of the Word? Even the Chartists, who not more than thirty
years ago gathered there, ten thousand strong, with wolfish
famine-pinched faces and bony hands, brandishing the iron bars torn from
the railing, or the guns snatched from the locksmiths, would not have
felt themselves at home on the smooth turf, amidst the flower-beds,
resting on the seats provided for wayfarers, gazing their fill at the
water which, though it is less clear than when Moray and Prince Charlie
crossed it, is still dear to the born and bred Glaswegian.
Rory of the Shelties, who had travelled all the way from the farther
Uist, where he had left his charge of rough ponies behind him, was much
puzzled by the Green. He thought he had strayed into some gentleman’s
grounds, and with due consideration for the gloomy building he had
passed near the entrance, he behaved himself most gingerly, and sought
anxiously for the nearest mode of exit. Then he remarked the style of
the occupants of some of the benches, and proceeded far enough to come
on the spot set aside for the operation of carpet-beating, which was
going on briskly; and even his dull brain took in the conception that
those fine walks were somehow free after the fashion of his own bare
hills, and that he might, without fear of being called to order, sit
down, as he could not do in the street, and consider what should be his
next movement.
Rory dropped promiscuously on a seat, and stared rather vacantly at an
empty and stationary merry-go-round, which waited for the Fair, to
revolve with a noisy load. Rory had never seen anything like it before,
and was inclined to think it was some new-fangled threshing mill,
though why put down so far from any trace of a farm, he could not
pretend to say. The only sign he had given that he observed a
fellow-sitter near him, was his clutching more tightly his old knapsack.
Rory’s neighbour was an aged man with a nut-cracker face, and his
fustians so clean as to suggest an infirmary or a poorhouse, or at least
that their wearer was beyond work, with possibly a notable wife or
daughter who took pride in the respectability of a well-washed and
whole, though patched, suit for the ‘man body’ of the house. But if the
bent body and feeble, wrinkled hands, grasping and sustaining themselves
on a blackthorn stick, were beyond labour, the bleared eyes were not
beyond observation or the tongue seen between the shrivelled lips and
nearly toothless jaws destitute of the power of wagging whenever the
opportunity of ‘a crack’ presented itself. With a little cough by way of
introduction, the patriarch began the conversation most affably:
‘Frien’, I’m no a Gaelishioner myself; but my faither’s auntie married a
Dumbarton chap, so that I’ve cousins on the edge of the Hielants. But
you maybe canna speak the English?’ he interrupted himself to ask, led
to do it by the stony suspicious look of the new-comer in return for his
politeness.
‘Ye’re wrang there,’ said Rory half-haughtily, half with a childish
satisfaction; ‘I have the English.’
‘That’s lucky, for the Gaelic is deein’ oot, though there’s mony a
Hielant man an’ woman that could understand you in your ain tongue in
the Sautmarket or the Gallowgate; still, ye ken, ye michtna licht on
them without a deeficulty.’
‘I telled ye I had the English,’ said the stranger, with dry offence in
his tones.
‘Weel, I said the better aff ye were the day,’ returned the other,
declining to be offended in turn, or held at arm’s length. ‘Ye’ll hae
come for the hairst? but ye’re fu’ soon, Tonalt.’
‘My name’s not Tonalt,’ snarled the Highlander; ‘and I’m not for the
hairst.’
‘Ye’ll be seeking a porter’s job? that’s aye in season,’ persisted the
untroubled questioner. ‘There was a rowth [plenty] o’ Hielant porters
when I was a young lad; but we haena so mony now. We rear a breed o’ oor
ain, I’m thinking;’ and he finished by a cackling laugh.
Rory glared at his tormentor.
‘I’m no a porter any more than a shearer,’ he spluttered indignantly.
‘You’ll ask, perhaps, if I’m a beggar-man next. When I’m at home I’m
Rory o’ the Shelties, no less, to Maclean of Cairnbreck; and I’m come to
Glasgy on my ain private business.’
‘I wish it may thrive,’ said the old man, still with a suspicion of
mischief and mockery in his words. ‘Is it with the Lord Provost, or ony
of the great shipbuilders or boilermakers? I was an engineer aince on a
time mysel’, my lad; and I could work long hours at a stretch when
orders were thrang and men scarce. Whiles, as I sit here doing naething,
a dream comes ower me, and I hear the rattle of the locomotives, and the
whiz of the steam-valves, and the swing and ring of the hammers, and
it’s like the sweetest music I ever heard. But it never comes to you,
man, I see by your face.’ His own old face, which had lighted up, lost
its faint glow, and the former monkey-like mischief hovered again about
its lines and furrows. ‘Your erran’ maun be to the sugar-trade or the
cotton-mills, or aiblins to the whisky-shops to spier whether Campbelton
or Glenlivat’s maist in favour.’
Rory hunched rather than shrugged his shoulders, then suddenly rose up
and walked away, lugging his knapsack.
‘I think he has his fortune in that bit boxie,’ reflected the humble
student of mankind sardonically, ‘but I jalouse he’s no better than a
born natural. However, I maun hame to Jenny for my fower-hours, and syne
it will be time for my bed.’
Rory quitted the Green, where, in place of an inspiration coming to him,
he had been badgered by an impertinent fool, old enough to be his
grandfather--as old as his grandmother Morag when she left him the kit
and the treasure which was to make his fortune. It was not his fortune
yet which he carried in the soldier’s kit that might have been at the
wars with some old Maclean, it was only the materials of which that
fortune was to be made.
He strayed up the Saltmarket and got into the Gallowgate. There, in the
dirt and din and crush, he saw an occasional man with a Glengarry, or a
bareheaded woman with a tartan plaid over her head, or round her
shoulders, frequently binding a child to her--Highland fashion. The
sight bore out the statement of Rory’s single acquaintance in Glasgow,
that here were countrymen and women who might listen to his story and
take an interest in his fortunes. But the stranger was bent on keeping
his secret as far as he could, lest the sharers in it should steal a
march on him and rob him of its price.
As he wandered on, he noticed, side by side with the whisky-shops of
which he had been told, so many milk-shops and dairies, that the days
when the Cowcaddens received its name might have returned, and Glasgow
again have had its staple article of produce in the milk which the
students at the college and the brethren in the religious houses
consumed. It might be the most baseless scandal that mountaindew flowed
freely there, and as many crowns were cracked on Saturday night as in
any city in the kingdom; while luckless wights, boasting that the moon
would ‘bide a wee,’ before she served as their lantern to guide them
home, staggered blindly into the brimming Clyde, and the waters closed
sullenly over human loves and hates, hopes and fears.
At the most crowded and noisy crossing, where waggons, carts and
barrows, and a stray cab or two were in lively contest with the
pedestrians, Rory was unexpectedly brought up by one of the women who
still retained the tartan screen--though no longer the honourable curch
of old custom:
‘What pairt of the country are ye frae? It’ll no be Ballachulish? Ye’ll
no ken M‘Leish--the auld sodger wi’ the wudden leg up at the big hoose,
ye ken?’ She put her questions in rapid succession, without waiting for
a separate answer, till she had opened out the whole budget.
Rory, who was taken aback, while he was now both tired and faint in the
unaccustomed scene, stared at her in silence with a dazed look. She was
untidy, but not sordid or wretched in her dress. There was a certain
lingering comeliness and kindly impulsiveness in her middle-aged face,
though the lines had worn stronger, and the fresh colour grown mottled
and hard. She broke the silence by a laugh at herself, in which there
was no bitterness.
‘I’m an auld fule,’ she said. ‘I daur say ye never heard of Ballachulish
or Col M‘Leish--that’s the uncle who was gude to me when I was a
mitherless bairn with a randy of a step-mother. I’ll no say she had
nocht to complain o’ though, for I’ve grown a hantle wiser since I had a
man and bairns of my ain. But, eh, I wuss I could hear tell o’ the auld
man, gin he be in the land of the living yet, and how he’s farin’. They
would mind his comforts up at the big hoose; but maybe, ye see, they’re
a’ gane too. My man winna let me write--no that I’m a scholar, but I
micht manage a scrape o’ the pen--only he threeps [insists] I micht
bring a burden upon mysel’ and him, and there’s seven mooths o’ bairns
to fill, and the farther he wull gang on the strike, though I were to
lay the hairs o’ my head aneath his feet to prevent it. I’m aye speerin’
and speerin’ whenever I can get the chance, but I never hear a word.’
The speaker bestowed her confidence with the utmost candour on the
bewildered listener, who had enough to do to protect himself and his
knapsack from the jostling occasioned by the two stopping the way.
‘Losh! man, can ye no speak?’ she asked in sudden surprise, not
unmingled with consternation. ‘You’re a Hielanter, by the cut o’ ye. It
is mony a day since I ran awa’ from Ballachulish, and my tongue has lost
the Gaelic; but my ears can tak’ it in yet, gin it’s yeer only speech.’
‘No,’ said Rory, piqued once more by not getting credit for the
education he had acquired; ‘I have the English as well as any man in
North Uist. But I div not know Ballachulish or any M‘Leish, and my head
is bizzin’ a bit, what with comin’ aff the water and this confounded
whirl.’
‘Puir chiel!’ said the good-natured woman, with a quick change to
patronizing pity in her accent, ‘ye’ll be strange to a muckle toon. I
mind the feeling mysel’. Hae ye ony acquaintance here, or ony hole to
gang to? If ye like, ye can come my gate--I live in the next street--and
have a bite, till ye see what ye’re to do. Andry Sed--that’s my
man--canna find faut wi’ a ca’, forbye he’s no at hame at this hour. Noo
when I think o’t, ye’ll meet anither lad frae the hills, a ludger we’ve
had for as gude as a week; but he’s bund for his maister’s place the
morn. He’s weel-to-do, a credit to the North; he’s at the head of the
kennels at Semple Barns--no less!’
Roaming at random as he was in the deafening smothering city, without a
clue to his object, Rory could not resist the frank invitation, though
he was not guiltless of a suspicion that his countrywoman had
penetrated somehow into the bowels of his knapsack, and was cherishing
insidious designs upon its contents.
Mrs. Sed or Seth’s house made up in heartiness and ease for what it
lacked in dignity and refinement. That wet blanket, her Lowland husband,
did not turn up to extinguish her Celtic hospitality. The bairns were at
school or at their various trades, and so were not in the way to engross
their mother’s energies. The ‘ludger,’ a profitable guest, crammed into
a space cleared out for him, gave himself no airs, though he had
attained the high degree of being the supreme authority over the dogs at
Semple Barns. He was pleased with himself and with the world--this
strapping, black (instead of red) headed, kilted man, an effusive,
gossiping Highlander, a male example of the type to which Mrs. Seth
belonged, with the same inclination to find his heart warm to any ‘John
Hielantman,’ the rawer the better, whom he met among the crowds in the
Low country.
Under these benign influences, including whangs of a goat-milk kebbock,
a ‘stack’ of oat-cakes, a newly-baked loaf, a couple of bottles of ale,
and sundry tastings of the peat-reekiest whisky, Rory thawed
perceptibly. He did not yet tell his errand, but he began to throw out
dark hints of its importance, and to fish for such straws of information
as he could gather from the talk of his companions, better versed than
he was in the intricacies of Lowland and city life.
‘You’ll be knowing most o’ the fine folk in Glasgow?’ he addressed Mrs.
Seth insinuatingly.
‘The deil’s in the man! is he makin’ fun of me?’ exclaimed his hostess,
with a dash of anger in her tones; ‘or is his ignorance just past
believing? What trade have I wi’ leddies in their carriages, or wi’
gentlemen that dine aff cheeny and silver?’
‘By name, mistress; I was only meaning by name!’ exclaimed the inquirer,
in some alarm.
‘Oo, I ken a feck [number] o’ them by name, whatever,’ she granted
placably, the moment she was relieved from the disgrace of being laughed
at by a ‘bogle’ like her new acquaintance. ‘I was in gude enough places
when I was at service afore I took a man, and sair fashed I was with
fikes [finical ways] about keeping mysel’ clean and tidy.’
‘As if dirt didna bode [promise] luck, and there was no sic saw [saying]
in braid Scots--not in Gaelic--as “the clartier the cosier.” [the more
sluttish the warmer],’ interposed the keeper of the kennels, glancing
down at the kilt he wore, which was by no means spotless, and having a
fellow-feeling derived from similar trials.
‘Deed, ay, Sandy Macnab, if ye’re no ower muckle up in the buckle [too
proud] to be ca’d Sandy by a woman that kenned your mither--moreover,
she was living in a land [a pile of building] in this very street, and
you were a loon no bigger than wee Andry, who’s that dour he’ll reive
his faither’s bannet some day. But what need they have made sic a stour
aboot jappet tails [muddy skirts] or a wheen blades on a brat [spots on
an apron] or bauchled shoon [shoes down at heel]!’ exclaimed Mrs. Seth,
with a broad smile of superior wisdom.
Then she began to tell of her great employers. ‘There were the Gilroys,
where I was bairn’s-maid. He was in the hoose-pentin’ business, and he
made a heap o’ money, and left her a rich widdy, to fling hersel’ awa’
on a fule of a lad from Ayr. There were the Leishmans, where I was
under-kitchen maid. He was a grosser with a grand connection, and his
sons at college, and his dochters in furrin pairts for an eddication
they would have been better without. And there were the Ores in the
ship-chandler line, with a braw hoose at the West-End and a villy on
the Clyde, where I gaed for a day at a time after I was married, when
there was nae bairn in my arms, and they were oot o’ servants or
changing them at term-time. But eh! man, it would take a year to gang
owre the bare names o’ the big Glasgy folk.’
Rory’s face fell a little, as if he were overpowered with the number of
the great of the earth.
‘But even among so mony,’ he said again, after a pause, ‘you micht come
across certain titles.’
‘Speak oot, man, among your country-folk and frien’s, and dinna gang for
ever about the buss!’ the man of dogs adjured him. ‘Wha are you
seekin’?--name him.’
‘I div not want ony man,’ insisted Rory; ‘only I micht like to hear a
name.’
‘Weel, whatna name, and be hanged to ye for a sly, half-daft deevil!’
Sandy Macnab muttered the last half of his sentence in his beard.
Thus pressed, Rory took heart, stroked his long chin, and suggested,
‘You’ll have heard of Mackinnon?’
‘There’s a wale [choice] o’ Mackinnons,’ announced Mrs. Seth; ‘not that
I pretend to be thick wi’ ony of them. But whilk Mackinnon are you
after?’
‘It micht be Mackinnon of Drysdale Haugh,’ admitted Rory, but, if
possible, more reluctantly and dubiously than ever.
‘You’re wrang there,’ Sandy Macnab contradicted him flatly. ‘I ken about
Drysdale Haugh. It is the bleaching and dye-works that belong to the
maister of Drysdale Ha’. He’s a friend of my maister’s. His young leddy
dochter was biding with us at Semple Barns last week. She’s thrang
[intimate] with my leddy. There’s no Mackinnon of Drysdale Haugh, but
Drysdale of Drysdale Ha’ and Haugh an’ a’.’
Mrs. Seth confirmed the tale.
‘They are braw warks. I kenned a lass that married a bleacher; and I
took my fit in my hand and gaed out and see’d her aince.’
‘There micht have been mention of a Drysdale,’ said Rory cautiously,
‘but it was ane Mackinnon of Drysdale Haugh that the concern was wi’.’
‘It’s Drysdale the noo, onyway,’ maintained Sandy, unshaken in his
testimony. ‘I’m as sure of that as that my head’s on my shoulders. But
there’s Captain Mackinnon, a sodger lad, a frien’ of the young
maister’s, if that will serve you.’
Rory shook his head, but did not absolutely reject the suggestion.
‘What will be his whole name?’
‘How should I ken? Stop, it was half furrin, but I’ve heard it in the
North; “Eneas,” “captain,” or “major,” I’m not pertikler about the
milintary handle to the name. “Eneas Mackinnon”--I’ve read it on his
valise. He kens a dug when he sees him, and he’s often doun at the
kennels when he’s at Semple Barns.’
‘No, it will not be Eneas,’ said Rory, letting his head fall
disconsolately on his breast.
‘Cheer up, auld shaver!’ cried the brotherly Sandy, using a term which
was not strictly of Gaelic origin, but, to tell the truth, borrowed from
the slang vocabulary of the young master of Semple Barns. Sandy punched
Rory in the chest with a vigorous arm as he spoke. ‘You’ve hit on
Drysdale Haugh, and that’s the main thing, I’m thinking, and Drysdale
Ha’ is end on to Semple Barns. I’ll gie you a leg up for the sake of the
North and auld lang syne. But you maun mind what ye’re after, and behave
yoursel’, or I swear I’ll have naething to do with you. I’m an honest,
‘sponsible man, and I’ll no fling aboot my maister’s money like
chuckie-stanes [pebbles] without work in return. We’re wantin’ a
dug-laddie, and you may do as weel as anither gin you’ll obey orders.
You’re an able-bodied chiel enough, and you’ve as muckle wut as a
hafflin callant [half-grown lad], I daur say. Whatever berth you’ve had
in the Uist, ye’re no like to get a better offer here. You’ll be cheek
for jowl with Drysdale Ha’, and can mak’ up your mind wha and what you
want without starving in the street, or being coupet [overturned] back
the road you came to your muirlan’ pariss--just when the minister, and
the dominie [school-master], and the bethel [church officer] think
they’re weel quit of you. Is’t a bargain?’
‘Eh! you’ll be a fule gin you refuse,’ chimed in Mrs. Seth, with
benevolent urgency. ‘Sandy Macnab’s a gude sort, and Semple Barns is a
canny doon-sitting--even among the dugs. My laddies are wild to get a
day there when the haws and the hips are ripe, and the gentlemen are oot
with their guns, and there’s pappin’ o’ shot and drappin’ o’ birds on a’
hands. That’s a’ very weel at a time, but the faither says the big
toon’s the place to lippen [trust] to for laddies that want to mak’
their way in the world, unless maybe they come from the hill-country and
lo’e their freedom in the open air better than ony wage, and are as keen
as the gentles on the sport, like Sandy there.’
* * * * *
Rory of the Shelties accepted the good advice, not seeing how he could
make any better of his quest, till he had tracked his game. He was
promised one thing, he would be set down ‘end on’ to Drysdale Haugh.