Bonny lassie, will ye go, will ye go, will ye go,
Bonny lassie, will ye go to the Birks of Aberfeldy?
BURNS.
For a tailor is a man, a man, a man,
And a tailor is a man.
_Popular Heroic Song_.
The long and the short is, that I was sent to school, where I learned to
read and spell, making great progress in the Single and Mother's
Carritch. No, what is more, few could fickle me in the Bible, being
mostly able to spell it all over, save the second of Ezra and the seventh
of Nehemiah, which the Dominie himself could never read through twice in
the same way, or without variations.
My father, to whom I was born, like Isaac to Abraham, in his old age, was
an elder in the Relief Kirk, respected by all for his canny and douce
behaviour, and, as I have observed before, a weaver to his trade. The
cot and the kail-yard were his own, and had been auld granfaither's; but
still he had to ply the shuttle from Monday to Saturday, to keep all
right and tight. The thrums were a perquisite of my own, which I
niffered with the gundy-wife for Gibraltar-rock, cut-throat, gib, or
bull's-eyes.
Having come into the world before my time, and being of a pale face and
delicate make, Nature never could have intended me for the naval or
military line, or for any robustious trade or profession whatsoever. No,
no, I never liked fighting in my life; peace was aye in my thoughts. When
there was any riot in the streets, I fled, and scougged myself at the
chimley-lug as quickly as I dowed; and, rather than double a nieve to a
schoolfellow, I pocketed many shabby epithets, got my paiks, and took the
coucher's blow from laddies that could hardly reach up to my waistband.
Just after I was put to my prenticeship, having made free choice of the
tailoring trade, I had a terrible stound of calf-love. Never shall I
forget it. I was growing up, long and lank as a willow-wand. Brawns to
my legs there were none, as my trowsers of other years too visibly
effected to show. The long yellow hair hung down, like a flax-wig, the
length of my lantern jaws, which looked, notwithstanding my yapness and
stiff appetite, as if eating and they had broken up acquaintanceship. My
blue jacket seemed in the sleeves to have picked a quarrel with the
wrists, and had retreated to a tait below the elbows. The
haunch-buttons, on the contrary, appeared to have taken a strong liking
to the shoulders, a little below which they showed their tarnished
brightness. At the middle of the back the tails terminated, leaving the
well-worn rear of my corduroys, like a full moon seen through a dark
haze. Oh! but I must have been a bonny lad.
My first flame was the minister's lassie, Jess, a buxom and forward
quean, two or three years older than myself. I used to sit looking at
her in the kirk, and felt a droll confusion when our eyes met. It dirled
through my heart like a dart, and I looked down at my psalm-book sheepish
and blushing. Fain would I have spoken to her, but it would not do; my
courage aye failed me at the pinch, though she whiles gave me a smile
when she passed me. She used to go to the well every night with her two
stoups, to draw water after the manner of the Israelites at gloaming; so
I thought of watching to give her the two apples which I had carried in
my pocket for more than a week for that purpose. How she started when I
stappit them into her hand, and brushed by without speaking! I stood at
the bottom of the close listening, and heard her laughing till she was
like to split. My heart flap-flappit in my breast like a pair of
fanners. It was a moment of heavenly hope; but I saw Jamie Coom, the
blacksmith, who I aye jealoused was my rival, coming down to the well. I
saw her give him one of the apples; and hearing him say, with a loud
gaffaw, "Where is the tailor?" I took to my heels, and never stopped
till I found myself on the little stool by the fireside, and the hamely
sound of my mother's wheel bum-bumming in my lug, like a gentle lullaby.
Every noise I heard flustered me, but I calmed in time, though I went to
my bed without my supper. When I was driving out the gaislings to the
grass on the next morn, who was it my ill fate to meet but the
blacksmith. "Ou, Mansie," said Jamie Coom, "are ye gaun to take me for
your best-man? I hear you are to be cried in the kirk on Sunday?"
"Me!" answered I, shaking and staring.
"Yes!" said he; "Jess the minister's maid told me last night, that you
had been giving up your name at the manse. Ay, it's ower true--for she
showed me the apples ye gied her in a present. This is a bonny story,
Mansie, my man, and you only at your prenticeship yet."
Terror and despair had struck me dumb. I stood as still and as stiff as
a web of buckram. My tongue was tied, and I could not contradict him.
Jamie folded his arms, and went away whistling, turning every now and
then his sooty face over his shoulder, and mostly sticking his tune, as
he could not keep his mouth screwed for laughing. What would I not have
given to have laughed too!
There was no time to be lost: this was the Saturday. The next rising sun
would shine on the Sabbath. Ah, what a case I was in! I could mostly
have drowned myself, had I not been frighted. What could I do? My love
had vanished like lightning; but oh, I was in a terrible gliff! Instead
of gundy, I sold my thrums to Mrs Walnut for a penny, with which I bought
at the counter a sheet of paper and a pen; so that in the afternoon I
wrote out a letter to the minister, telling him what I had been given to
hear, and begging him, for the sake of mercy, not to believe Jess's word,
as I was not able to keep a wife, and as she was a leeing gipsy.