Out of the way, in this quiet hollow of the Ayrshire hills, something
remains yet of the life of a hundred years ago. Elsewhere the puffing
of steam may have taken the place of toil by hand, but here in the long
summer days, from morning till night, the click-clack of the looms is
still to be heard, and within every second window up the length of the
village street, the dusty frames are to be seen moving regularly to and
fro. Pots of geranium and fuchsia are set sometimes in these windows,
and through the narrow doorways the cottage gardens can be seen behind,
carefully kept, and ablaze just now with wallflower borders and
pansies. Sadly, however, is the place decayed from its prosperity of
old. Little traffic comes now to the wide, empty street. The carrier’s
waggon is an object of interest when it puts in an appearance. The
baker’s van may be the only vehicle of an afternoon; and twice a week
only comes the flesher’s cart. Butcher meat, it is to be feared, is
but seldom seen on some of the village tables; and, when work is more
than usually scarce, many must put up with but “muslin-broth.” Here and
there a roofless ruin, breaking the regular line of dwellings, tells of
a decaying industry. In the sunny inn-door at the head of the village
the brown retriever may rouse himself, once in the afternoon, to
inspect the credentials of some vagrant terrier; and, but for the faint
click-clack of the looms all day, and the appearance, once in a while,
of a woman with a pair of stoups to draw water at the village well, the
place might seem asleep.
Yet a hearty trade once throve on the spot. Every house had its loom
going, sometimes two; and there was always work in plenty. Weavers’
wives could go to kirk then in black-beaded bonnets and flowered
Paisley shawls, and the Relief Kirk minister got his stipend of eighty
pounds a year nearly always paid. In those times the carrier’s cart
used to have business in the village every day; merchants from Glasgow
came bidding against each other for work in a hurry; and four of the
weavers at once have been known to have sons at college studying for
the ministry. Those were the days when the village kept a watchful
eye upon the religious and political movements of the country. Before
the Stamp Duty was removed from newspapers, the weavers subscribed in
clubs and took out their weekly sheet, which was passed from shop to
shop, read and digested, and thoroughly threshed out in the door-step
debates, when a knot of neighbours would gather between the spells of
work. In this way the great Reform Bill was fully discussed and settled
here long before it passed the House of Commons; and the absorbing
question of the Disruption, which gave birth to the Free Church, was
thoroughly argued and thought out on its merits.
True to the traditions of their craft, of course, most of the weavers
were the reddest of Radicals, and the progress of the Chartist movement
excited the keenest interest among them. The work at the looms was to a
great extent mechanical, and while they pushed the treadles and pulled
the shuttles to and fro, the weavers had time to think; and shrewd
thinkers and able debaters many of them became, ready at the hustings
with questions on the Corn Laws, the freeing of the slaves, and the
Irish grievances, which were apt to put a political candidate to some
trouble. He had not their advantage of the daily “argufying” and the
Saturday night debates at the village inn. There was a tradition that
in the room where this club met, the poet Burns had once spent an
evening, and the fact lent an additional zest to his song, which they
never tired of quoting,--“A man’s a man for a’ that.”
A king can mak’ a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, and a’ that;
But an honest man’s aboon his might,
Guid faith he maunna fa’ that.
The industry of the village has died hard. Amid decaying trade the
weavers kept to their looms, and many a pinch was suffered before one
after another laid down his shuttle. Their feelings are not difficult
to understand. As boys they had played about the village well. As young
men they had wandered with their sweethearts--that delicious time--down
the woodland roads around. Memories had grown about them and their old
homes during the long years of work. In the kirkyard not far off lay
the ashes of mother or wife or child. But the merchants had ceased to
come to the village, and it was a weary walk for the poor weavers to
carry their webs all the way to Glasgow, to hawk them from warehouse
to warehouse, and sometimes to have the choice at last of accepting a
ruinous price for them, or of taking them home again.
It was after a bootless errand of this sort that old John Gilmour was
returning to the village one night in late October some forty-three
years back. Honest soul, through all his straits he had never owed
a neighbour a penny. That night, however, his affairs had come to a
critical pass, and the morrow held a black look-out for him. His web
was still on his back, not an offer having been got for it in town,
though he knew the workmanship to be his best. Upon its sale he had
depended to pay for the winter’s coals, and the necessaries of the
morrow; for on the day previous the last of his carefully guarded
savings had been spent. Moreover, his wife and he were growing old,
and could hardly look forward to increased energy for work. And he was
bringing home bad news. Their second son (the eldest had run away to
sea eleven years before) had broken down in his attempt to teach, and,
at the same time, push his way through the Divinity Hall, and had been
ordered by the doctor to stop work for the winter altogether. How was
the old man to break all this disastrous news to his wife? The web was
heavy, but his heart was heavier.
He had reached the fork of the road close by the old disused graveyard
of the parish, and was thinking a little bitterly of the reward that
remained to him from his long life of hard work, and of how quiet and
far from care those were who lay on the other side of the low dyke
under the green sod, when a hackney carriage came up behind, and the
driver stopped to ask the way to ----.
“Keep the left road,” said the old man, and was resuming his walk, when
a bearded face appeared at the carriage window.
“That seems a heavy bundle you are carrying. Are you going my way?”
Once inside, the old weaver found his companion looking at him intently.
“You have had a long walk this day, surely? Have you no son to carry so
heavy a load for you?”
Ay, he had two sons, Gilmour said: but one was lost at sea, and the
other was struggling at college.
“You live alone, then?” asked the questioner, tremulously.
[Illustration]
No, thank God! he had a kind wife at home, who had been his consolation
through many a dark hour.
“Thank God!” echoed the younger man.
The carriage rolled on and entered the village. The weaver pointed to
his house, and they stopped there. The stranger helped him out with his
web, and entered the house with him.
“It’s just the web back, guidwife,” he said. “But dinna look sae queer
like. I’se warrant I’ll sell it the morn. An’ here’s a gentleman has
helpit me on the road. Hae ye onything i’ the hoose to offer him?”
But the wife was not thinking of the web or the distress of the morrow.
Her eyes were on the stranger, and the corners of her lips were
twitching curiously. He had not spoken, but as he removed his hat she
sprang towards him.
“It’s Willie!” she cried; “it’s Willie!” And her arms were about his
neck, and, half laughing and half crying, she buried her face on his
breast.
It was Willie. He was the first who came back to the village from the
gold-fields of Ballarat.