How then was the Devil drest!
He was in his Sunday's best;
His coat was red, and his breeches were blue,
With a hole behind where his tail came thro'.
Over the hill, and over the dale,
And he went over the plain:
And backward and forward he switch'd his tail,
As a gentleman switches his cane.
COLERIDGE.
About this time there arose a great sough and surmise, that some loons
were playing false with the kirkyard, howking up the bodies from their
damp graves, and harling them away to the College. Words cannot describe
the fear, and the dool, and the misery it caused. All flocked to the
kirk-yett; and the friends of the newly buried stood by the mools, which
were yet dark, and the brown newly cast divots, that had not yet taken
root, looking, with mournful faces, to descry any tokens of sinking in.
I'll never forget it. I was standing by when three young lads took
shools, and, lifting up the truff, proceeded to houk down to the coffin,
wherein they had laid the grey hairs of their mother. They looked wild
and bewildered like, and the glance of their een was like that of folk
out of a mad-house; and none dared in the world to have spoken to them.
They did not even speak to one another; but wrought on with a great
hurry, till the spades struck on the coffin lid--which was broken. The
dead-clothes were there huddled together in a nook, but the dead was
gone. I took hold of Willie Walker's arm, and looked down. There was a
cold sweat all over me;--losh me! but I was terribly frighted and eerie.
Three more graves were opened, and all just alike; save and except that
of a wee unchristened wean, which was off bodily, coffin and all.
There was a burst of righteous indignation throughout the parish; nor
without reason. Tell me that doctors and graduates must have the dead;
but tell it not to Mansie Wauch, that our hearts must be trampled in the
mire of scorn, and our best feelings laughed at, in order that a bruise
may be properly plaistered up, or a sore head cured. Verily, the remedy
is worse than the disease.
But what remead? It was to watch in the session-house, with loaded guns,
night about, three at a time. I never liked to go into the kirkyard
after darkening, let-a-be to sit there through a long winter night, windy
and rainy it may be, with none but the dead around us. Save us! it was
an unco thought, and garred all my flesh creep; but the cause was good--my
corruption was raised--and I was determined not to be dauntened.
I counted and counted, but the dread day at length came and I was
summoned. All the live-long afternoon, when ca'ing the needle upon the
board, I tried to whistle Jenny Nettles, Neil Gow, and other funny tunes,
and whiles crooned to myself between hands; but my consternation was
visible, and all would not do.
It was in November; and the cold glimmering sun sank behind the
Pentlands. The trees had been shorn of their frail leaves, and the misty
night was closing fast in upon the dull and short day; but the candles
glittered at the shop windows, and leery-light-the-lamps was brushing
about with his ladder in his oxter, and bleezing flamboy sparking out
behind him. I felt a kind of qualm of faintness and down-sinking about
my heart and stomach, to the dispelling of which I took a thimbleful of
spirits, and, tying my red comforter about my neck, I marched briskly to
the session-house. A neighbour (Andrew Goldie, the pensioner) lent me
his piece, and loaded it to me. He took tent that it was only half-cock,
and I wrapped a napkin round the dog-head, for it was raining. Not being
well acquaint with guns, I kept the muzzle aye away from me; as it is
every man's duty not to throw his precious life into jeopardy.
A furm was set before the session-house fire, which bleezed brightly, nor
had I any thought that such an unearthly place could have been made to
look half so comfortable either by coal or candle; so my spirits rose up
as if a weight had been taken off them, and I wondered, in my bravery,
that a man like me could be afraid of anything. Nobody was there but a
touzy, ragged, halflins callant of thirteen, (for I speired his age,)
with a desperate dirty face, and long carroty hair, tearing a speldrin
with his teeth, which looked long and sharp enough, and throwing the skin
and lugs into the fire.
We sat for mostly an hour together, cracking the best way we could in
such a place; nor was anybody more likely to cast up. The night was now
pitmirk; the wind soughed amid the head-stones and railings of the
gentry, (for we must all die,) and the black corbies in the steeple-holes
cackled and crawed in a fearsome manner. All at once we heard a lonesome
sound; and my heart began to play pit-pat--my skin grew all rough, like a
pouked chicken--and I felt as if I did not know what was the matter with
me. It was only a false alarm, however, being the warning of the clock;
and, in a minute or two thereafter, the bell struck ten. Oh, but it was
a lonesome and dreary sound! Every chap went through my breast like the
dunt of a fore-hammer.
Then up and spak the red-headed laddie:--"It's no fair; anither should
hae come by this time. I wad rin awa hame, only I am frighted to gang
out my lane.--Do ye think the doup of that candle wad carry i' my cap?"
"Na, na, lad; we maun bide here, as we are here now.--Leave me alane?
Lord safe us! and the yett lockit, and the bethrel sleeping with the key
in his breek pouches!--We canna win out now though we would," answered I,
trying to look brave, though half frightened out of my seven senses:--"Sit
down, sit down; I've baith whisky and porter wi' me. Hae, man, there's a
cawker to keep your heart warm; and set down that bottle," quoth I,
wiping the saw-dust affn't with my hand, "to get a toast; I'se warrant it
for Deacon Jaffrey's best brown stout."
The wind blew higher, and like a hurricane; the rain began to fall in
perfect spouts; the auld kirk rumbled and rowed, and made a sad soughing;
and the branches of the bourtree behind the house, where auld Cockburn
that cut his throat was buried creaked and crazed in a frightful manner;
but as to the roaring of the troubled waters, and the bumming in the lum-
head, they were past all power of description. To make bad worse, just
in the heart of the brattle, the grating sound of the yett turning on its
rusty hinges was but too plainly heard. What was to be done? I thought
of our both running away; and then of our locking ourselves in, and
firing through the door; but who was to pull the trigger?
Gudeness watch over us! I tremble yet when I think on it. We were
perfectly between the de'il and the deep sea--either to stand still and
fire our gun, or run and be shot at. It was really a hang choice. As I
stood swithering and shaking, the laddie flew to the door, and, thrawing
round the key, clapped his back to it. Oh! how I looked at him, as he
stood for a gliff, like a magpie hearkening with his lug cocked up, or
rather like a terrier watching a rotten. "They're coming! they're
coming!" he cried out; "cock the piece, ye sumph;" while the red hair
rose up from his pow like feathers; "they're coming, I hear them tramping
on the gravel!" Out he stretched his arms against the wall, and brizzed
his back against the door like mad; as if he had been Samson pushing over
the pillars in the house of Dagon. "For the Lord's sake, prime the gun,"
he cried out, "or our throats will be cut frae lug to lug before we can
cry Jack Robison! See that there's priming in the pan."
I did the best I could; but my whole strength could hardly lift up the
piece, which waggled to and fro like a cock's tail on a rainy day; my
knees knocked against one another, and though I was resigned to die--I
trust I was resigned to die--'od, but it was a frightful thing to be out
of one's bed, and to be murdered in an old session-house, at the dead
hour of night, by unearthly resurrection men, or rather let me call them
deevils incarnate, wrapt up in dreadnoughts, with blacked faces, pistols,
big sticks, and other deadly weapons.
A snuff-snuffing was heard; and, through below the door, I saw a pair of
glancing black een. 'Od, but my heart nearly louped off the bit--a
snouff, and a gur-gurring, and over all the plain tramp of a man's heavy
tackets and cuddy-heels among the gravel. Then came a great slap like
thunder on the wall; and the laddie, quitting his grip, fell down,
crying, "Fire, fire!--murder! holy murder!"
"Wha's there?" growled a deep rough voice; "open, I'm a freend."
I tried to speak, but could not; something like a halfpenny roll was
sticking in my throat, so I tried to cough it up, but it would not come.
"Gie the pass-word then," said the laddie, staring as if his eyes would
loup out; "gie the pass-word!"
First came a loud whistle, and then "Copmahagen," answered the voice. Oh!
what a relief! The laddie started up, like one crazy with joy. "Ou!
ou!" cried he, thrawing round the key, and rubbing his hands; "by jingo,
it's the bethrel--it's the bethrel--it's auld Isaac himsell."
First rushed in the dog, and then Isaac, with his glazed hat, slouched
over his brow, and his horn bowet glimmering by his knee. "Has the
French landed, do ye think? Losh keep us a'," said he, with a smile on
his half-idiot face, (for he was a kind of a sort of a natural, with an
infirmity in his leg,) "'od sauf us, man, put by your gun. Ye dinna mean
to shoot me, do ye? What are ye about here with the door lockit? I just
keppit four resurrectioners louping ower the wall."
"Gude guide us!" I said, taking a long breath to drive the blood from my
heart, and something relieved by Isaac's company--"Come now, Isaac, ye're
just gieing us a fright. Isn't that true, Isaac?"
"Yes, I'm joking--and what for no?--but they might have been, for
onything ye wad hae hindered them to the contrair, I'm thinking. Na, na,
ye maunna lock the door; that's no fair play."
When the door was put ajee, and the furm set fornent the fire, I gave
Isaac a dram to keep his heart up on such a cold stormy night. 'Od, but
he was a droll fellow, Isaac. He sung and leuch as if he had been
boozing in Luckie Thamson's, with some of his drucken cronies. Feint a
hair cared he about auld kirks, or kirkyards, or vouts, or
through-stanes, or dead folk in their winding-sheets, with the wet grass
growing over them; and at last I began to brighten up a wee myself; so
when he had gone over a good few funny stories, I said to him, quoth I,
"Mony folk, I daresay, mak mair noise about their sitting up in a
kirkyard than it's a' worth. There's naething here to harm us?"
"I beg to differ wi' ye there," answered Isaac, taking out his horn mull
from his coat pouch, and tapping on the lid in a queer style--"I could
gie anither version of that story. Did ye no ken of three young
doctors--Eirish students--alang with some resurrectioners, as waff and
wild as themsells, firing shottie for shottie with the guard at
Kirkmabreck, and lodging three slugs in ane of their backs, forbye firing
a ramrod through anither ane's hat?"
This was a wee alarming--"No," quoth I; "no, Isaac, man; I never heard of
it."
"But, let alane resurrectioners, do ye no think there is sic a thing as
ghaists? Guide ye, man, my grannie could hae telled as muckle about them
as would have filled a minister's sermons from June to January."
"Kay--kay--that's all buff," I said. "Are there nae cutty-stool
businesses--are there nae marriages going on just now, Isaac?" for I was
keen to change the subject.
"Ye may kay--kay, as ye like, though; I can just tell ye this:--Ye'll
mind auld Armstrong with the leather breeks, and the brown three-story
wig--him that was the grave-digger? Weel, he saw a ghaist wi' his
leeving een--aye, and what's better, in this very kirkyard too. It was a
cauld spring morning, and daylight just coming in, whan he cam to the
yett yonder, thinking to meet his man, paidling Jock--but Jock had
sleepit in, and wasna there. Weel, to the wast corner ower yonder he
gaed, and throwing his coat ower a headstane, and his hat on the tap o't,
he dug away with his spade, casting out the mools, and the coffin
handles, and the green banes and sic like, till he stoppit a wee to take
breath.--What! are ye whistling to yoursell?" quoth Isaac to me, "and no
hearing what's God's truth?"
"Ou, ay," said I; "but ye didna tell me if onybody was cried last
Sunday?"--I would have given every farthing I had made by the needle, to
have been at that blessed time in my bed with my wife and wean. Ay, how
I was gruing! I mostly chacked off my tongue in chittering.--But all
would not do.
"Weel, speaking of ghaists--when he was resting on his spade he looked up
to the steeple, to see what o'clock it was, wondering what way Jock hadna
come, when lo! and behold, in the lang diced window of the kirk yonder,
he saw a lady a' in white, with her hands clasped thegither, looking out
to the kirkyard at him.
"He couldna believe his een, so he rubbit them with his sark sleeve, but
she was still there bodily; and, keeping ae ee on her, and anither on his
road to the yett, he drew his coat and hat to him below his arm, and aff
like mad, throwing the shool half a mile ahint him. Jock fand that; for
he was coming singing in at the yett, when his maister ran clean ower the
tap o' him, and capsized him like a toom barrel; never stopping till he
was in at his ain house, and the door baith bolted and barred at his
tail.
"Did ye ever hear the like of that, Mansie? Weel, man, I'll explain the
hail history of it to ye. Ye see--'Od! how sound that callant's
sleeping," continued Isaac; "he's snoring like a nine-year-auld!"
I was glad he had stopped, for I was like to sink through the ground with
fear; but no, it would not do.
"Dinna ye ken--sauf us! what a fearsome night this is! The trees will be
all broken. What a noise in the lum! I daresay there's some auld hag of
a witch-wife gaun to come rumble doun't. It's no the first time, I'll
swear. Hae ye a silver sixpence? Wad ye like that?" he bawled up the
chimney. "Ye'll hae heard," said he, "lang ago, that a wee murdered wean
was buried--didna ye hear a voice?--was buried below that corner--the
hearth-stane there, where the laddie's lying on?"
I had now lost my breath, so that I could not stop him.
"Ye never heard tell o't, didna ye? Weel, I'se tell't ye--Sauf us, what
swurls of smoke coming doun the chimley--I could swear something no
canny's stopping up the lum head--Gang out, and see!"
At that moment a clap like thunder was heard--the candle was driven
over--the sleeping laddie roared "Help!" and "Murder!" and "Thieves!"
and, as the furm on which we were sitting played flee backwards, cripple
Isaac bellowed out, "I'm dead!--I'm killed--shot through the head!--Oh!
oh! oh!"
Surely I had fainted away; for, when I came to myself, I found my red
comforter loosed; my face all wet--Isaac rubbing down his waistcoat with
his sleeve--the laddie swigging ale out of a bicker--and the brisk brown
stout, which, by casting its cork, had caused all the alarm,
whizz--whizz--whizzing in the chimley lug.