Saw ye Johnie coming? quo' she,
Saw ye Johnie coming?
Wi' his blue bonnet on his head,
And his doggie running.
_Old Ballad_.
The welfare of the human race and the improvement of society being my
chief aim, in this record of my sayings and doings through the pilgrimage
of life, I make bold at the instigation of Nanse, my worthy wife, to
record in black and white a remarkably curious thing, to which I was an
eyewitness in the course of nature. I have little reluctance to consent,
not only because the affair was not a little striking in itself--as the
reader will soon see--but because, like AEsop's Fables, it bears a good
moral at the end of it.
Many a time have I thought of the business alluded to, which happened to
take place in our fore-shop one bonny summer afternoon, when I was
selling a coallier wife, from the Marquis of Lothian's upper hill, a yard
of serge at our counter-side. At the time she came in, although busied
in reading an account of one of Buonaparte's battles in the Courant
newspaper, I observed at her foot a bonny wee doggie, with a bushy black
tail, of the dancing breed--that could sit on its hind-legs like a
squirrel, cast biscuit from its nose, and play a thousand other most
diverting tricks. Well, as I was saying, I saw the woman had a pride in
the bit creature--it was just a curiosity like--and had belonged to a
neighbour's son that volunteered out of the Berwickshire militia, (the
Birses, as they were called,) into a regiment that was draughted away
into Egypt, Malta, or the East Indies, I believe--so, it seems, the lad's
father and mother thought much more about it, for the sake of him that
was off and away--being to their fond eyes a remembrancer, and to their
parental hearts a sort of living keepsake.
After bargaining about the serge--and taking two or three other things,
such as a leather-cap edged with rabbit-fur for her little nevoy--a dozen
of plated buttons for her goodman's new waistcoat, which was making up at
Bonnyrig by Nicky Sharpshears, my old apprentice--and a spotted silk
napkin for her own Sunday neck wear--I tied up the soft articles with
grey paper and skinie, and was handing over the odd bawbees of change,
when, just as she was lifting the leather-cap from the counter, she said
with a terrible face, looking down to the ground as if she was
short-sighted--"Pity me! what's that?"
I could not imagine, gleg as I generally am, what had happened; so came
round about the far end of the counter, with my spectacles on, to see
what it was, when, lo and behold! I perceived a dribbling of blood all
along the clean sanded floor, up and down, as if somebody had been
walking about with a cut finger; but, after looking around us for a
little, we soon found out the thief--and that we did.
The bit doggie was sitting cowering and shivering, and pressing its back
against the counter, giving every now and then a mournful whine, so we
plainly saw that every thing was not right. On the which, the wife,
slipping a little back, snapped her finger and thumb before its nose, and
cried out--"Hiskie, poor fellow!" but no--it would not do. She then
tried it by its own name, and bade it rise, saying, "Puggie, Puggie!"
when--would ever mortal man of woman born believe it?--its bit black,
bushy, curly tail, was off by the rump--docked and away, as if it had
been for a wager.
"Eh, megstie!" cried the woman, laying down the leather-cap and the tied-
up parcel, and holding out both her hands in astonishment. "Eh, my
goodness, what's come o' the brute's tail? Lovy ding! just see, it's
clean gane! Losh keep me! that's awfu'! Div ye keep rotten-fa's about
your premises, Maister Wauch? See, a bonny business as ever happened in
the days of ane's lifetime!"
As a furnishing tailor, as a Christian, and as an inhabitant of Dalkeith,
my corruption was raised--was up like a flash of lightning, or a cat's
back. Such doings in an enlightened age and a civilized country!--in a
town where we have three kirks, a grammar school, a subscription library,
a ladies' benevolent society, a mechanics' institution, and a debating
club! My heart burned within me like dry tow; and I could mostly have
jumped up to the ceiling with vexation and anger--seeing as plain as a
pikestaff, though the simple woman did not, that it was the handiwork of
none other than our neighbour Reuben Cursecowl, the butcher. Dog on it,
it was too bad--it was a rascally transaction; so, come of it what would,
I could not find it in my heart to screen him. "I'll wager, however,"
said I, in a kind of off-hand way, not wishing exactly, ye observe, to be
seen in the business, "that it will have been running away with
beef-steaks, mutton-chops, sheep feet, or something else out of the
booth; and some of his prentice laddies may have come across its hind-
quarters accidentally with the cleaver."
"Mistake here, or mistake there," said the woman, her face growing as red
as the sleeve of a soldier's jacket, and her two eyes burning like live
coals--"'Od the butcher, but I'll butcher him, the nasty, ugly,
ill-faured vagabond; the thief-like, cruel, malicious, ill-hearted, down-
looking blackguard! He would go for to offer for to presume for to dare
to lay hands on an honest man's son's doug! It sets him weel, the
bloodthirsty Gehazi, the halinshaker ne'er-do-weel! I'll gie him sic a
redding up as he never had since the day his mother boor him!" Then
looting down to the poor bit beast, that was bleeding like a sheep--"Ay,
Puggie, man," she said in a doleful voice, "they've made ye an unco
fright; but I'll gie them up their fit for't; I'll show them, in a couple
of hurries, that they have catched a Tartar!"--and with that out went the
woman, paper parcel, leather-cap and all, randying like a tinkler from
Yetholm; the wee wretchie cowering behind her, with the mouse-wabs
sticking on the place I had put them to stop the bleeding; and looking,
by all the world, like a sight I once saw, when I was a boy, on a visit
to my father's half-cousin, Aunt Heatherwig, on the Castle-hill of
Edinburgh--to wit, a thief going down Leith Walk, on his road to be
shipped for transportation to Botany Bay, after having been pelted for a
couple of hours with rotten eggs in the pillory.
Knowing the nature of the parties concerned, and that intimately on both
sides, I jealoused directly that there would be a stramash; so not
liking, for sundry reasons, to have my neb seen in the business, I shut
to the door, and drew the long bolt; while I hastened ben to the room,
and, softly pulling up a jink of the window, clapped the side of my head
to it; that, unobserved, I might have an opportunity of overhearing the
conversation between Reuben Cursecowl and the coallier wife; which, weel-
a-wat, was likely to become public property.
"Hollo! you man, do ye ken onything about that?" cried the randy
woman;--but wait a moment, till I give a skiff of description of our
neighbour Reuben.
By this time--it was ten years after James Batter's tragedy--Mr Cursecowl
was an oldish man--he is gathered to his fathers now--and was
considerably past his best, as his wife, douce, honest woman, used to
observe. His dress was a little in the Pagan style, and rendered him
kenspeckle to the eye of observation. Instead of a hat, he generally
wore a long red Kilmarnock nightcap, with a cherry on the top of it,
through foul weather and fair; and having a kind of trot in his walk,
from a bink forward in his knees, it dang-dangled behind him, like the
cap of Mr Merryman with the painted face, the show-folks' fool. On the
afternoon alluded to, he was in full killing-dress, having on an auld
blue short coatie, once long, but now docked in the tails, so that the
pocket-flaps and the hainch-buttons were not above three inches from the
place where his wife had snibbed it across by; and, from long use in his
bloodthirsty occupation, his sleeves flashed in the daylight as if they
had been double japanned. Tied round his beer-barrel-like waist was a
stripped apron, blue and white; and at his left side hung a bloody gaping
leather pouch, as if he had been an Israelite returned from the slaughter
of the Philistines, filled with steels and knives, straight and crooked,
that had done ample execution in their day, I'll warrant them. Up his
thighs were rolled his coarse rig-and-fur stockings, as if it were to
gird him for the battle, and his feet were slipped into a pair of
bauchles--that is, the under part of old boots cut from the legs. As to
his face, lo and behold! the moon shining in the Nor-west--yea, the sun
blazing in all his glory--had not a more crimson aspect than Reuben. Like
the pig-eyed Chinese folk on tea-cups, his peepers were diminutive and
twinkling; but his nose made up for them--and that it did--being portly
in all its dimensions broad and long, and as to colour, liker a radish
than any other production in nature. In short, he was as bonny a figure
as ever man of woman born clapped eye on; and was cleaving away, most
devoutly, at a side of black-faced mutton, when the woman, as I said
before, cried out, "Hollo! you man, do ye ken onything about that?"
pointing to the dumb animal that crawled and crouched behind her.
"Aweel, what o't?" cried Cursecowl, still hacking and cleaving away at
the meat.
"What o't? i' faith, billy, that's a gude ane," answered the wife. "But
ye'll no get aff that way; catch me, my man. My name's no Jenny
Mathieson an I haena ye afore your betters. I'll learn ye what
soommenses are."
Looking at her with a look of lightning for a couple of seconds--"Aff wi'
ye, gin you're wise," quo' Cursecowl, still cleaving away--"or I'll maybe
bring ye in for the sheep's-head it was trying to make off with in its
teeth. Do ye understand that?" And he gave a girn, that stretched his
mouth from ear to ear.
This was too much for the subterranean daughter of Eve; it was like
putting a red-hot poker among the coals of her own pit. "Oh, ye
incarnate cannibal!" she bawled out, doubling her nieve, and shaking it
in Reuben's face; "If ye have a conscience at a', think black-burning
shame o' yoursell! Just look, ye bluidy salvage; just take a look there,
my bonny man, o' your handiwark now. Isn't that very pretty?"--"Aff wi'
ye," continued Cursecowl, still cleaving away with the chopping-axe, and
muttering a volley of curses through the knife, which he held between his
teeth--"Aff wi' ye; and keep a calm sough."
"The dog's no mine, or I wadna have cared sae muckle. Siccan a like
beast! Siccan a fright to be seen!!! I'faith I think shame to tak' it
hame again!! Ay, man, ye're a pretty fellow! Ye've run fast when the
noses were dealing; ye're a bonny man to hack off a poor dumb animal's
tail. If it had been a Christian like yoursell, it wad have mattered
less--but a puir bit dumb, harmless animal!"
"Aff wi' ye there, and nane o' your chatter," thundered Reuben, stopping
in his cleaving, and turning the side of his red face round to the woman.
"Flee--vanish--and be cursed to ye--baith you and your doug thegither, ye
infernal limmer! It's weel for't, luckie, it was not its head instead of
its tail. Ye had better steik your gab--cut your stick--and pack off,
gin ye be wise."
"Think shame--think shame--think black-burning shame o' yoursell, ye born
and bred ruffian!" roared out the wife at the top story of her
voice--shaking her doubled nieve before him--stamping her heels on the
causey--then, drawing herself up, and holding her hands on her
hainches--"Just look, I tell ye, you unhanged blackguard, at your
precious handywark! Just look, what think ye of that, now? Tak' another
look now, ower that fief-like fiery nose o' yours, ye regardless Pagan!"
Flesh and blood could stand this no longer; and I saw Cursecowl's anger
boiling up within him, as in a red-hot fiery furnace.
"Wait a wee, my woman," muttered Cursecowl to himself, as, swearing
between his teeth, he hurried into the killing-booth.
Furious as the woman, however, was, she had yet enough of common sense
remaining within her to dread skaith; so, apprehending the bursting
storm, she had just taken to her heels, when out he came, rampauging
after her like a Greenland bear, with a large liver in each hand;--the
one of which, after describing a circle round his head, flashed after her
like lightning, and hearted her between the shoulders like a clap of
thunder; while the other, as he was repeating the volley, slipping
sideways from his fingers while he was driving it with all his force,
played drive directly through the window where I was standing, and gave
me such a yerk on the side of the head, that it could be compared to
nothing else but the lines written on the stucco image of Shakspeare, the
great playactor, on our parlour chimneypiece,
"The great globe itself,
Yea, all that it inherits, shall dissolve;"
and I lay speechless on the floor for goodness knows the length of time.
Even when I came to my recollection, it was partly to a sense of torment;
for Nanse, coming into the room, and not knowing the cause of my
disastrous overthrow, attributed it all to a fit of the apoplexy; and, in
her frenzy of affliction, had blistered all my nose with her Sunday scent-
bottle of aromatic vinegar.
For some weeks after there was a bumming in my ears, as if all the bee-
skeps on the banks of the Esk had been pent up within my head; and though
Reuben Cursecowl paid, like a gentleman, for the four panes he had
broken, he drove into me, I can assure him, in a most forcible and
striking manner, the truth of the old proverb--which is the moral of this
chapter--that "listeners seldom hear any thing to their own advantage."