THE beginnings of things are to be well considered--we have all a little
of that art; but to end well and wisely is the gift of few. Hunters and
herds on the corri and the hill--they are at the simple end of life, and
ken the need for the task complete. The stag must be gralloched ere ye
brag of him, the drove must be at the market ere ye say anything of the
honesty of the glens ye pass through.
And what I like best about our own Gaels is their habit of bringing the
work of a day or the work of a lifetime to what (in their own notions)
is an end round and polished.
When our women die, they do it with something of a daintiness. Their
dead-clothes are in the awmrie; I have seen them with the cakes toasted
and the board set for their funerals. Travelling wide on unfriendly
foreign roads, living by sword or wit, you know that our men, the
poorest among them, with an empty sporran, kept the buttons of their
duds of good silver, to pay, if need be, for something more than a
gangrel's burial. I like to think of him in story who, at his end in
bed, made the folk trick him out in gallant style with tartan, targe,
brogue, and bonnet, and the sword in his hand.
“A Gaelic gentleman,” said he, “should come to his journey's end
somewhat snod and well-put-on.” And his son played “Cha till mi tuilidh”
(“I return no more”) on the bag-pipe by his firm command.
It is not even in this unco undertaking of Death that the polish must
be put on the task (though poor's the creature who dies clumsily); it
should be the same with every task of a day.
And so Baldi Crom, making a fine pair of shoes on a day in Carnus, put
the best skill of his fingers to every stitch. He had been working at
them since the command came in the morning, and now it was the mouth of
night, and on one of them the finest of the fine sewing was still to do.
About the place there was nobody but the old man, for he was the last,
in a way, of the old stock of Carnus (now a _larach_ of low lintels, and
the nettle over all); and he was without woman to put _caschrom_ to
his soil or hip to a creel of peats. And so he lived on the brae of
Camus--that same far up and lonely in the long glen.
“They'll be the best I ever put brog in,” said he, looking fondly at the
fine work, the yellow thread standing out on the toes, patterned like
a leaf of the whortleberry, set about with the serpent-work of the old
crosses. Bite nor sap, kail nor crowdie, did he taste all day. Working
in the light of his open door, he could see, if he had the notion, the
whole glen rolled out before him, brimming with sun, crossed in the heat
of the day by deer from Dalavich seeking for the woods of Loch Finne;
the blue reek of the townships at the far end might have cheered him
with the thought that life was in sight though his house was lonely. But
crouped over the lap-stone, he made love to his work, heeding nothing
else but the sewing of the fine pair of shoes.
It was the night before the town market. Droves of bellowing
cattle--heifers, stots, and stirks--were going down the glen from Port
Sonachan, cropping hurried mouthfuls by the way as they went and as the
dogs would let them. And three Benderloch drovers came off the road and
into Baldi Crom's house, after the night was down on the glen and he had
the cruisie lighted. They sat them down round the fire in the middle of
the floor and ate bannocks and cheese.
“How's thy family, 'Illeasbuig?” said a drover, stirring up the peat as
if he were at his own door-end. Down on the roadside the cattle, black
and yellow, crushed the sappy grass and mourned in bellows for their
lost fields.
“Splendid! splendid!” said the old man, double over his shoes, fondling
them with the fingers of a mother on a first baby. The light was low
in the cruisie, for the oil was well down, and the fire and the cruisie
made a ring of light that could scarcely slip over the backs of the men
sitting round the peats. A goat scratched his head but-and-ben against
the wattles; in corners the darkness was brown and thick.
“I hear Cailen's in the Low-country, but what has come of Tormaid?” said
one, with knee-breeches, and hose of coarse worsted.
The old man gave a quick start, and the lapstone fell from his knees,
the shoe he was at with it. He bent over and felt like a blind man for
them on the floor before he made answer.
“Tormaid, my gallant son! Ye have not heard of him lately, then?”
“Never a word, 'Illeasbuig. People on the going foot, like drovers, hear
all the world's gossip but the _sgeuls_ of their own _sgireachd_. We
have been far North since Martinmas: for us there must be many a story
to tell 'twixt here and Inneraora. A stout lad and pretty, Tormaid too,
as ever went to the beginning of fortune! Where might he be enow?”
“Here and there, friend, here and there! A restless scamp, a wanderer,
but with parts. Had he not the smart style at the game of _camanachi?_
He was namely for it in many places.”
“As neat a player as ever took shinty in hand, master! I have the name
of a fair player myself, but that much I'll allow your lad. Is he to the
West side, or farther off?”
“Farther off, friend. The pipes now--have you heard him as a player on
the chanter?”
“As a piper, 'Illeasbuig! His like was not in three shires. I have
heard him at reel and march, but these were not his fancy: for him the
_piobaireachds_ that scholarly ones play!”
“My gallant boy!” said Baldi Crom, rubbing soft on the shoe with the
palm of a hand.
“Once upon a time,” said the drover, “we were on our way to a Lowland
Tryst. Down Glen Falloch a Soccach man and I heard him fill the
nightfall with the 'Bhoilich' of Morar, with the brag of a whole clan in
his warbling. He knew piping, the fellow with me, and the tear came to
his cheek, thinking of the old days and the old ploys among the dirks
and _sgians_.”
“There was never the beat of him,” said the shoemaker.
“Throughither a bit--”
“But good, good at heart, man! With a better chance of fortune he might
be holding his head to-day as high as the best of them.” The drovers
looked at each other with a meaning that was not for the eyes of the old
man; but he had small chance of seeing it, for he was throng at his fine
pair of shoes.
“He had a name for many arts,” said the man with coarse hose, “but
they were not the arts that give a lad settlement and put money in his
purse.”
“The hot young head, man! He would have cured,” said the old man, sewing
hard. “Think of it,” said he: “was ever a more humoursome fellow to walk
a glen with? His songs, his stories, his fast jump at one's meaning,
and his trick of leaving all about him in a good key with themselves and
him. Did ever one ask a Saxon shilling from his purse that it was not a
cheery gift if the purse held it?”
“True, indeed!” said the drovers, eating bannocks and cheese.
“'Twixt heaven and hell,” said the fellow with the coarse hose, “is but
a spang. It's so easy for some folk to deserve the one gate--so many
their gifts--that the cock-sureness leaves them careless, and they
wander into the wrong place.”
“You were speaking?” said Baldi, a little angry, though he heard but
half.
“I said thy son was a fellow of many gifts,” answered the drover, in a
confusion.
“He had no unfriends that I ken of,” said the old man, busy at the
shoes; “young or old, man or woman.”
“Especially woman,” put in another drover, wrinkling at the eyes.
“I've had five sons: three in the King's service, and one in the
Low-country; here's my young wanderer, and he was--he is--the jewel of
them all!”
“You hear of him sometimes?”
“I heard of him and from him this very day,” said Baldi, busy at the
brogues, white and drawn at the face and shaking at the lips. “I have
worked at these shoes since morning, and little time is there to put bye
on them, for at Inneraora town must they be before breakfast. Solomon
Carrier, passing at three, gives me a cry and takes them.”
“They're a fine pair of shoes.”
“Fine indeed; the finest of the fine! They're for a particular one.”
“Duke John himself, perhaps?”
“No, man; a particular one, and were they not his in time a sorry man
was I. They're the best Baldi Crom ever put leather on.”
Till the turn of the night the drovers slept in their plaids, their
cattle steaming out-by in the dark, munching the coarse grass selvedge,
breathing heavy. And when the men and their beasts went in the darkness
of the morning, Baldi Crom was still throng at his fine pair of shoes.
“I'm late, I'm surely late,” said he, toiling hard, but with no
sloven-work, at his task.
The rain had come with the morning, and was threshing out-by on peat and
thatch. Inside, the fire died, and the cruisie gave warnings that its
oil was low, but Baldi Crom was too throng on the end of his task to
notice. And at last his house dropped into darkness.
“Tormaid! Tormaid! my little hero--I'm sore feared you'll die without
shoes after all,” cried the old man, staggering to the door for
daylight. He had the door but opened when he fell, a helpless lump, on
the clay floor. The rain slanted on his grey hairs and spat on a fine
shoe.
Far down the good long glen the drovers were tramping after their
cattle, and the dun morning was just before them when they got to the
gate of Inneraora. Here there was a great to-do, for the kind gallows
stood stark before the Arches. Round about it were the townspeople
waiting for a hanging.
“Who is't, and what is't for?” asked the drover with the knee-breeches
and the coarse hose, pushing into the crowd.
“Tormaid, the son of the Carnus cobbler,” said a woman with a plaid over
her head. “He killed a man in a brawl at Braleckan and raped his purse.
Little enough to put tow to a pretty lad's neck for, sure enough!”
“Stand clear there!” cried a sharp voice, and the hangman and his friend
came to the scaffold's foot with a lad in front of them, his hands
shackled behind his back. He was a strong straight lad, if anything
overly dour in the look, and he wore a good coat and tiews, but neither
boot nor bonnet. Under the beam he put back his shoulders with a jerk
and looked at the folk below, then over at Dunchuach with the mist above
the fort like smoke.
“They might have given him a pair of old baucbels, if no better, to die
in,” said the drover in the woman's ear.
“_Ochanoch!_ and they might!” she said. “The darling! He lost his shoes
in swimming Duglas Water to get clear, and they say he sent yesterday to
his father for a pair, but they're not come. Queer, indeed, is that, for
'twas the brag of the folks he came of that they aye died with a good
pair of shoon on their feet!”