I had a dream which was not all a dream.
BYRON.
Coming events cast their shadows before.
CAMPBELL.
On first commencing business, I have freely confessed, I believe, that I
was unco solicitous of custom, though less from sinful, selfish motives,
than from the, I trust, laudable fear I had about becoming in a jiffy the
father of a small family, every one with a mouth to fill and a back to
cleid--helpless bairns, with nothing to look to or lean on, save and
except the proceeds of my daily handiwork. Nothing, however, is sure in
this world, as Maister Wiggie more than once took occasion to observe,
when lecturing on the house built by the foolish man on the sea-sands;
for months passed on, and better passed on; and these, added together by
simple addition, amounted to three years; and still neither word nor
wittens of a family, to perpetuate our name to future generations,
appeared to be forthcoming.
Between friends, I make no secret of the matter, that this was a
catastrophe which vexed me not a little, for more reasons than one. In
the first place, youngsters being a bond of mutual affection between man
and wife, sweeter than honey from the comb, and stronger than the Roman
cement with which the old Picts built their bridges, that will last till
the day of doom. In the second place, bairns toddling round a bit ingle
make a house look like itself, especially in the winter time, when
hailstanes rattle on the window, and winds roar like the voices of mighty
giants at the lum-head; for then the maister of the dwelling finds
himself like an ancient patriarch, and the shepherd of a flock, tender as
young lambs, yet pleasant to his eye, and dear to his heart. And, in the
third place, (for I'll speak the truth and shame the deil,) as I could
not thole the gibes and idle tongues of a wheen fools, that, for their
diversion, would be asking me, "How the wife and bairns were; and if I
had sent my auldest laddie to the school yet?"
I have swithered within myself for more than half-an-hour whether I
should relate a circumstance bordering a little on the supernatural line,
that happened to me, as connected with the business of the bairns of
which I have just been speaking; and, were it for no other reason, but
just to plague the scoffer that sits in his elbow-chair, I have
determined to jot down the whole miraculous paraphernally in black and
white. With folk that will not listen to the voice of reason, it is
needless to be wasterful of words; so them that like, may either prin
their faith to my coat-sleeve, about what I am going to relate, or
not--just as they choose. All that I can say in my defence, and as an
affidavy to my veracity, is, that I have been thirty year an elder of
Maister Wiggie's kirk--and that is no joke. The matter I make free to
consider is not a laughing concern, nor any thing belonging to the Merry-
Andrew line; and, if folk were but strong in the faith, there is no
saying what may come to pass for their good. One might as well hold up
their brazen face, and pretend not to believe any thing--neither the
Witch of Endor raising up Samuel; nor Cornel Gardener's vision; nor
Johnny Wilkes and the De'il; nor Peden's prophecies.
Nanse and me aye made what they call an anniversary of our wedding-day,
which happened to be the fifth of November, the very same as that on
which the Gunpowder Plot chances to be occasionally held--Sundays
excepted. According to custom, this being the fourth year, we collected
a good few friends to a tea-drinking; and had our cracks and a glass or
two of toddy. Thomas Burlings, if I mind, was there, and his wife; and
Deacon Paunch, he was a bachelor; and likewise James Batter; and David
Sawdust and his wife, and their four bairns, good customers; and a wheen
more, that, without telling a lie, I could not venture to particularize
at this moment, though maybe I may mind them when I am not wanting--but
no matter.--Well, as I was saying, after they all went away, and Nanse
and me, after locking the door, slipped to our bed, I had one of the most
miraculous dreams recorded in the history of man; more especially if we
take into consideration where, when, and to whom it happened.
At first I thought I was sitting by the fireside, where the cat and the
kittling were playing with a mouse they had catched in the meal-kit,
cracking with James Batter on check-reels for yarn, and the cleverest way
of winding pirns, when, all at once, I thought myself transplanted back
to the auld world--forgetting the tailoring trade; broad and narrow
cloth; worsted boots and Kilmarnock cowls; pleasant Dalkeith; our late
yearly ploy; my kith and kindred; the friends of the people; the Duke's
parks; and so on--and found myself walking beneath beautiful trees, from
the branches of which hung apples, and oranges, and cocky-nuts, and figs,
and raisins, and plumdamases, and corry-danders, and more than the tongue
of man can tell, while all the birds and beasts seemed as tame as our
bantings; in fact, just as they were in the days of Adam and Eve--Bengal
tigers passing by on this hand, and Russian bears on that, rowing
themselves on the grass, out of fun; while peacocks, and magpies, and
parrots, and cockytoos, and yorlins, and grey-linties, and all birds of
sweet voice and fair feather, sported among the woods, as if they had
nothing to do but sit and sing in the sweet sunshine, having dread
neither of the net of the fowler, the double-barrelled gun of the
gamekeeper, nor the laddies' girn set with moolings of bread. It was
real paradise; and I found myself fairly lifted off my feet and
transported out of my seven senses.
While sauntering about at my leisure, with my Sunday hat on, and a pair
of clean white cotton stockings, in this heavenly mood, under the green
trees, and beside the still waters, out of which beautiful salmon trouts
were sporting and leaping, methought in a moment I fell down in a trance,
as flat as a flounder, and I heard a voice visibly saying to me, "Thou
shalt have a son; let him be christened Benjamin!" The joy that this
vision brought my spirit thrilled through my bones, like the sounds of a
blind man grinding "Rule Britannia" out of an organ, and my senses
vanished from me into a kind of slumber on rousing from which I thought I
found myself walking, all dressed, with powdered hair, and a long tye
behind, just like a grand gentleman, with a valuable bamboo walking-stick
in my hand, among green yerbs and flowers, like an auncient hermit far
away among the hills, at the back of beyont; as if broad cloth and
buckram had never been heard tell of, and serge, twist, pocket-linings,
and shamoy leather, were matters with which mortal man had no concern.
Speak of auld-light or new-light as ye like, for my own part I am not
much taken up with any of your warlock and wizard tribe; I have no brew
of your auld Major Weir, or Tam o' Shanter, or Michael Scott, or Thomas
the Rhymer's kind, knocking in pins behind doors to make decent folk
dance, jig, cut, and shuffle themselves to death--splitting the hills as
ye would spelder a haddy, and playing all manner of evil pranks, and
sinful abominations, till their crafty maister, Auld Nick, puts them to
their mettle, by setting them to twine ropes out of sea-sand, and such
like. I like none of your paternosters, and saying of prayers backwards,
or drawing lines with chalk round ye, before crying,
"Redcowl, redcowl, come if ye daur;
Lift the sneck, and draw the bar.
I never, in the whole course of my life, was fond of lending the sanction
of my countenance to any thing that was not canny; and, even when I was a
wee smout of a callant, with my jacket and trowsers buttoned all in one,
I never would play, on Hallo'-e'en night, at any thing else but douking
for apples, burning nuts, pulling kail-runts, foul water and clean,
drapping the egg, or trying who was to be your sweetheart out of the
lucky-bag.
As I have often thought, and sometimes taken occasion to observe, it
would be well for us all to profit by experience--"burned bairns should
dread the fire," as the proverb goes. After the miserable catastrophe of
the playhouse, for instance--which I shall afterwards have occasion to
commemorate in due time, and in a subsequent chapter of my eventful
life--I would have been worse than mad, had I persisted, night after
night, to pay my shilling for a veesy of vagrants in buckram, and limmers
in silk, parading away at no allowance--as kings and queens, with their
tale--speaking havers that only fools have throats wide enough to
swallow, and giving themselves airs to which they have no more earthly
title than the man in the moon. I say nothing, besides, of their
throwing glamour in honest folks een; but I'll not deny that I have been
told by them who would not lie, and were living witnesses of the
transaction, that, as true as death, they had seen the tane of these
ne'er-do-weels spit the other, through and through, with a
weel-sharpened, old, Highland, forty-second Andrew Ferrary, in single
combat; whereupon, as might reasonably be expected, he would, in the
twinkling of a farthing rushlight, fall down as dead as a bag of sand;
yet, by their rictum-ticktum, rise-up-Jack, slight-of-hand, hocus-pocus
way, would be on his legs, brushing the stour from his breeches knees,
before the green curtain was half-way down. James Batter himself once
told me, that, when he was a laddie, he saw one of these clanjamphrey go
in behind the scenes with nankeen trowsers, a blue coat out at the
elbows, and fair hair hanging over his ears, and in less than no time
come out a real negro, as black as Robinson Crusoe's man Friday, with a
jacket on his back of Macgregor tartan, and as good a pair of buckskin
breeches as jockey ever mounted horse in at a Newmarket race. Where the
silk stockings were wrought, and the Jerusalem sandals made, that he had
on his feet, James Batter used doucely to observe he would leave every
reasonable man to guess at a venture.
A good story not being the worse of being twice told, I repeat it over
again, that I would have been worse than daft, after the precious warning
it was my fortune to get, to have sanctioned such places with my
presence, in spite of the remonstrances of my conscience--and of Maister
Wiggie--and of the kirk-session. Whenever any thing is carried on out of
the course of nature, especially when accompanied with dancing and
singing, toot-tooing of clarionets, and bumming of bass-fiddles, ye may
be as sure as you are born, that ye run a chance of being deluded out of
your right senses--that the sounds are by way of lulling the soul
asleep--and that, to the certainty of a without-a-doubt, you are in the
heat and heart of one of the devil's rendevooses.
To say no more, I was once myself, for example, at one of our Dalkeith
fairs, present in a hay-loft--I think they charged threepence at the
door, but let me in with a grudge for twopence, but no matter--to see a
punch and puppie-show business, and other slight-of-hand work. Well, the
very moment I put my neb within the door, I was visibly convinced of the
smell of burnt roset, with which I understand they make lightning, and
knew, as well as maybe, what they had been trafficking about with their
black art; but, nevertheless, having a stout heart, I determined to sit
still, and see what they would make of it, knowing well enough, that, as
long as I had the Psalm-book in my pocket, they would be gay and clever
to throw any of their blasted cantrips over me.
What do ye think they did? One of them, a wauf, drucken-looking
scoundrel, fired a gold ring over the window, and mostly set fire to the
thatch house opposite--which was not insured. Yet where think ye did the
ring go to? With my living een I saw it taken out of auld Willie
Turneep's waistcoat pouch, who was sitting blind fou, with his mouth
open, on one of the back seats; so, by no earthly possibility could it
have got there, except by whizzing round the gable, and in through the
steeked door by the key-hole.
Folk may say what they chuse by way of apology, but I neither like nor
understand such on-going as changing sterling silver half-crowns into
copper penny-pieces, or mending a man's coat--as they did mine, after
cutting a blad out of one of the tails--by the black-art.
But, hout-tout, one thing and another coming across me, had almost clean
made me forget explaining to the world, the upshot of my extraordinary
vision; but better late than never--and now for it.
Nanse, on finding herself in a certain way, was a thought dumfoundered;
and instead of laughing, as she did at first, when I told her my dream,
she soon came to regard the matter as one of sober earnest. The very
prospect of what was to happen threw a gleam of comfort round our bit
fireside: and, long ere the day had come about which was to crown our
expectations, Nanse was prepared with her bit stock of baby's wearing
apparel, and all necessaries appertaining thereto--wee little mutches
with lace borders, and side-knots of blue three-ha'penny ribbon--long
muslin frockies, vandyked across the breast, drawn round the waist with
narrow nittings, and tucked five rows about the tail--Welsh-flannel
petticoaties--demity wrappers--a coral gum-stick, and other uncos, which
it does not befit the like of me to particularize. I trust, on my part,
as far as in me lay, I was not found wanting; having taken care to
provide a famous Dunlop cheese, at fivepence-halfpenny the pound--I
believe I paled fifteen, in Joseph Gowdy's shop, before I fixed on it;--to
say nothing of a bottle, or maybe two, of real peat-reek, Farintosh,
small-still Hieland whisky--Glenlivat, I think, is the name o't--half a
peck of shortbread, baken by Thomas Burlings, with three pounds of
butter, and two ounces of carvie-seeds in it, let alone orange-peel, and
a pennyworth of ground cinnamon--half a mutchkin of best cony brandy, by
way of change--and a Musselburgh ankerstoke, to slice down for
tea-drinkings and posset cups.
Every one has reason to be thankful, and me among the rest; for many a
worse provided for, and less welcome down-lying has taken place, time out
of mind, throughout broad Scotland. I say this with a warm heart, as I
am grateful for all my mercies. To hundreds above hundreds such a
catastrophe brings scarcely any joy at all; but it was far different with
me, who had a Benjamin to look for.
If the reader will be so kind as to look over the next chapter, he will
find whether or not I was disappointed in my expectations.