lover's departure, became very disconsolate, and her health ultimately
became very precarious. The more temperate air of Britain was
recommended, and her fond father had sailed with her, with the view of
placing her somewhere in Devonshire, with a near relative. He proposed
to return for a season, to wind up his affairs finally, which, of late,
had not prospered, and to spend the remainder of his days and fortune in
his native land. They had only sailed twelve hours, when, after a
desperate and unequal struggle, they were captured, and put under
hatches. During the desperate engagement which succeeded, the sequel
explains itself. They were ultimately landed in safety at the pier from
which they had started, and all slept, the following night, under Mr
Walker's roof. George Smith and Mary Walker were married in the course
of a few months, nor did her husband perceive that her health declined.
She lived to become the mother of two children--a boy and a girl--when
her father, whose affairs, from some unlooked-for losses, had become
embarrassed, died suddenly, not without some ugly surmises respecting
the cause. Smith, after this, had no heart to remain on the island; so,
collecting the remnant of a once princely fortune, he embarked, with his
beloved wife and children, for Britain. Finding, however, that he could
not succeed to his wish in his native land, he set out for Bordeaux,
where he established himself in the wine trade, and, in the language of
sacred writ, "begat sons and daughters." There he lived many years, in
domestic peace and happiness, enjoying the society and affection of a
most attached and amiable partner, and getting his family disposed of,
till only one daughter remained with him unmarried. At last, death
robbed him, in the disguise of a slow or typhus fever, of his beloved
Mary; and, with his beautiful and amiable daughter, he sought again the
shores of his own Scotland--his beloved Dumfries, his native Closeburn.
Whilst dining with his daughter at Brownhill, he had learned that his
aged mother was still alive, and an inmate of the same dwelling which he
had himself inhabited. The rest of the story can easily be anticipated:
his mother was well provided for during the few years--and they were but
few--of her _happily_ protracted existence; and his lovely and
affectionate Eliza is now the mother of seven children, and the virtuous
and beloved wife of the bumble narrator of these "Family Incidents."
HOME AND THE GIPSY MAID.
I have been at school and college, I have read considerably in books,
and have attended debating societies to satiety. Thus I have picked up a
deal of what the world calls useful knowledge and worldly wisdom. But
there is one branch of education to which I am more indebted than to any
other whatever. I was born in the retired solitude of a mountain glen. I
was myself alone amongst the mountains, with my mother and two old
women, my relatives. I did not know, at the time, that I was any way
peculiarly situated. I felt joyous and happy from morn to night; but the
cause of all this happiness was no matter of inquiry. In fact, I never
thought of causes at all. I took nature as she appeared, and put no
impertinent questions to her. There I lay by a little stream, which,
after dancing gaily down a steep and broken rock, became, all at once, a
deep _bumbling_ pool. There I lay, amidst the daisies and buttercups of
spring, on the green plot, listening to the song of a thousand throats,
and marking the suspended trout, as it rose to the fly, or floated along
in the watery sunshine. At intervals, I would stretch myself supine;
and, with my eyes half-closed, convert the clouds which covered in our
little valley into what shapes and forms my fancy pleased. The wild bee
passed in his hum; but I saw him not. The grasshopper chirruped from the
adjoining grass; but I marked not his form or his locality. The buzz of
insect life was in the air, and on the earth. I was not alone, and I
felt it; my companions were the happy, the lively, the rejoicing, the
exulting; and I partook of all their sentiments. I was, in fact, a unity
lost in the midst of countless beings--a single throb in the great
framework of animated nature. And, then, there were the woods which
embanked and enclosed me all around. The oak, with its spread stole and
broad leaf; the glorious birch, rising in pillows of green fragrance,
and overtopping all; the hazel, in its less aspiring nature, peeping
from betwixt the trees; and the sweet hawthorn, bestudding the brae,
arrayed in a wedding suit of purest white. The tall ash-tree was there,
and the rowan-tree, and the sloe-thorn, and the rasp-berry, and the
bramble. The whole valley was my own orchard; and I selected at
pleasure, without check or restraint, the nut, the sloe, and the
hind-berry. Upon the top of the tall ash, there I sat, with the mavis
for my companion on one side, and the blackbird on the other. With all
manner of birds I was familiar, from the pyat to the water-wagtail. The
searching for nests was my spring recreation, from April till July--I
could tell at once the inmate from the construction of its abode. The
eggs of the linnet, goldfinch, yorling, laverock, robin, titling,
thrush, and blackbird, were as familiar to me as the letters of the
alphabet. And if I wandered but a mile and a-half up the glen, I was in
the midst of barrenness and solitude. The shepherd loomed from the
distant horizon--the sheep roved along the steep--the goats clung to the
cliffs. There the hawk and the raven had their abode; and there hung
their nests from the projecting rock, or the horizontal tree. The heath
was the nursery of its wild inmates. The whaup, and plover, and lapwing
piped, and whistled, and fluttered around me. I was in the midst of
their nesting-ground; and they seemed disposed to sacrifice me to their
fears. Overhead were the lofty peaks of Queensberry--the greater and the
less twin pillars--over which the pediment of heaven was spread. The
mist trailed and deepened. I beheld its approach; and witnessed its
breaking up into shreds and patches. I saw the first gleam of the
sunshine, as it struggled through the density, and stood revealed in all
the glory of a full effulgence of sunlight. My fishing-rod, a hazel
sapling, was in my hand, and I pulled from streams and gullets of the
most tiny dimensions large black and yellow trouts. There they lay,
amidst the wet spret, or on the velvet fringe of the streamlet, in all
the glory of scale and fin. My soul leaped in unison to their motions;
and I absolutely danced in ecstasy. When I gained the mountain summit--O
my God! what impressions I have had of beauty and sublimity! On the one
hand, the dark, southern range, ranging away eastward in barren
magnitude; on the other, the green and softly-outlined Lead Hills,
rounded into magnificence. Before me, and stretching far southward, the
distant Criffell, lumbering on the horizon; the sunny Solway, gleaming
in light; the Nith, winding and coqueting with its fertile banks and
fruitful plains; the Annan, a younger but scarcely less lovely sister,
running its lateral course to the same ultimate destiny, the nascent
feeders of the Clyde, Carsehope, and Darr, bursting from their mossy
cradles into the wilderness around them, rejoicing in their solitudes,
and in their numerous and undisturbed inmates. Oh, what is
education--the alphabet in all its combinations and significations--to
this! When in after life I have had occasion to animate my public
addresses with simile, or to inspire them with sentiment--when at the
desk, and with the pen in my hand, I have fished in my brain for
metaphor or illustration--I have constantly recurred to my infant, my
boyish home; to my native glen, and woods, and streams, and cliffs, and
mountains; and when I have once seated myself on the Cat-craig, or on a
branch of the oak or the birch, I feel myself quite at home. I can,
indeed, call spirits, as I do now, from the depths of imagination and
feeling--I can ascend in the spiral movements of that blue smoke, which
lies so soft and silky between me and the opposite green sward. I can
sympathise with those devout and happy hearts, which, in simple female
habiliments, are now plying the wheel, or preparing the frugal repast
within. I see the domestic fowls, in their sunny happiness, flapping
their wings in the dusty corner of the kail-yard, or crowing in frolic
till the echoes are awakened. There is but one world--one sinless,
sorrowless, painless world--and this is it. Where then were the cares of
the great world, which has absorbed this one? Where the jarrings of
envy--the justlings of competition--the dread of disappointment--the
frenzy of hope--the fever of love--the whole bevy of passions, which
form the Corrievrecken of the heart! They were then, like Abraham's
posterity, in Abraham's loins; they were possibilities, mere
futurities--sleeping undisturbed and undisturbing in the limbs of
contingencies. Alas! that ever my soul awoke from this dream!--that
ever, one fine summer evening, I discovered that a change had come over
my nature--that I had crept unknowingly into youth--that there was a
soft delicious fire in my blood, which made me look beyond my humble
cottage, with its aged inmates, for gratification and happiness! Oh, the
exquisite, the ecstatic delight of this first awakening into the manhood
of feeling!--when the passion-flower is just opening--when the nerves
are troubled, for the first time, by the sensibilities of sex--when the
blooming cheek, the rosy lip, the inviting glance, and the
happily-moulded rotundities of the female form, become, for the first
time, an object of fearful, of indescribable, of trembling interest! I
ask any one of my readers, male and female, Was it not thus with you?
Did not your first perceptions of the full compass of your nature come
upon you at once? Come, no blushing now--no shuffling--it was even so;
but you never liked to speak of it to any one. You thought that, in this
respect, you were singular; but now, that you see I have turned king's
evidence, you are conscious that what I aver is true. Here, then, I fix
my landmark, with the age of puberty; all on this side is school,
college, society, the world, care, troubles, and anxieties; all before
this was that paradise from which I still pluck, as on this occasion, an
apple or two, to refresh you and me as we journey along. Come, now,
good-natured reader, and I will tell you a tale or anecdote of this
primeval state of my being.
In one of my early fishing excursions, I had the misfortune to lose
myself in a dense fog or mist. I wandered on and on, not knowing well
where I was (for it is well known that in such circumstances the most
familiar objects assume a strange and unknown aspect), till at last I
sat myself down on the brow of a peat-hag, not knowing well whether to
cry or laugh at my wanderings. Twice had I come upon a tethered horse,
and twice upon a thorn-tree with a solitary nest in it; so I found that
I was assuredly walking in a circle, the centre of which, for anything
that I could learn to the contrary, might very probably be my own
habitation. Whilst employed in listening for the response of a mountain
stream by which I might be directed, as by an old acquaintance, to a
more familiar locality, I thought I heard a kind of strange, unearthly
noise, coming from--I could not well tell by the ear--what quarter. I
listened again, and all was silent, and I began to think that the noise
had proceeded from some bird or beast in my immediate neighbourhood.
Again, however, as I moved cautiously across the moss, the sound came
upon me more distinctly--it was manifestly the sound of wailing and
moaning, intermingled with much and hysterical sobbing. What could this
mean? Night was at hand, the mist was manifestly mingling with the
coming darkness, and here I was alone, in the presence, seemingly, of
some unearthly being. My head was full of fairies, and brownies, and
such-like supernaturals; and my heart, under such apprehensions, was as
that of the bird taken in a snare. It immediately occurred to me that
this must be some decoy fairy, employed in entrapping me into that
unchristian brotherhood. The story of young "Tam Lean," which my mother
had often repeated to me, occurred opportunely to augment my
apprehensions and increase my agitation. I already felt as if mounted on
a fairy steed--I was "pawing the light clouds," and shaking my belled
bridle over my native dwelling, without the power of returning to it.
Whilst such meditations as these shook my whole frame, the awful voice
of wo was manifestly approaching me; and I immediately took to my heels,
"with all convenient speed, according to the rules of terror." But, in
endeavouring to increase the distance betwixt the object of my fears and
myself, I ran immediately and directly in upon it; and had all but
fainted, as I saw immediately before me a small female figure running
about, and crying piteously. The form came upon my vision very
indistinctly, and induced me to reverse my steps, and set off in double
swift time in a direction opposite to that in which I had advanced. To
my utter horror and amazement, the thing pursued me swiftly, and
screaming at the top of its voice. This was indeed appalling, and I
already felt as if I had taken up my residence in the dark recesses of a
fairy-knowe. I ran and screamed, whilst it ran screaming too, through
moss and pool, and spret and heath; and there we coursed it
along--startling the whaups and miresnipes with our music. At last I was
fairly overcome, and threw myself head foremost into a peat hag, whilst
my pursuer halted immediately over my person. Oh, I could have wished to
have concealed myself, at this moment, somewhere near the centre of the
earth; when a couple of shepherd's curs appeared, and instantly
afterwards James Hogg, the Mitchelslacks hind (since better known as the
Ettrick Shepherd), stood before me.
"What's a' this o't, sirs?" said Hogg, eyeing my tormentor and myself
with a look of perplexed inquiry. "What's the matter wi' ye, Tam, that
ye're derned that gate into the throat o' a moss-hole? Get up, man, an'
tell me whar ye fell in wi' this bit puir lassie."
The lassie, in the meantime, had clung to the shepherd's knees, and was
endeavouring, but unsuccessfully, to speak.
"It's a fairy!" I exclaimed. "O Jamie Hogg, it's a fairy!--hae naething
to do wi't; it has pursued me this _hour_ past" (not in reality above
two minutes!); "an' I saw a great many more fairies up by yonder. O
Jamie, dinna meddle wi't; it's uncanny, I'm sure."
Hereupon the fairy began to give utterance, in tones quite human, to a
fearful statement, implying that she had been carried off from Annan by
some gipsies, and carried away by them to the wild hills; and that,
about an hour ago, she had run away in the mist, and had fairly escaped,
but became alarmed as the darkness approached, and had followed me, as
her only guide and protector in these wild hills. I cannot tell how much
I felt relieved by this statement; and, as I began to gather up my
members into a human shape, I saw plainly that my pursuer was a fine,
well-thriven lassie, about ten or eleven years of age, and no unearthly
fairy, as I had so lately believed. Hogg laughed heartily at my mistake,
telling me that I wad find the lasses, by an' by, muckle waur than the
fairies; and that, instead o' rinnin awa frae them, I wad be rinnin
after them. At the time when these words were spoken, I did not rightly
understand their meaning; but, reading them through the spectacles of
future experience, I now understand them to the letter.
Just as this conversation was finished, a great, tall, lumbering, but
most athletic fellow bore down upon us through the mist. At sight of
him, the poor girl screamed piteously, and clung to Hogg, and begged
most imploringly that she should not be given up to that "terrible man."
Hogg had just thrown off his plaid, adjusted his staff, and put himself
determinedly betwixt the stranger and the girl, when down came two
brother shepherds, attracted in all probability by the noise, and
guessing immediately that a battle was about to ensue. When the tinker
saw that the odds were thus against him, he bent his course, as if he
had mistaken his way, in another direction, and was immediately lost in
obscurity. Home to my mother's was this poor girl conducted by Hogg and
me; and for three days and nights she partook of my home and board. Her
story was simple and consistent. She had been out pulling rushes, to
make a rush-cap, in a wood adjoining to the town of Annan, when she was
accosted by a woman, who was exceedingly kind to her, giving her some
sugar-bools, and decoying her by fair words into the centre of the
forest. There she found four or five men, with a great many women,
children, asses, &c., employed in making spoons, pans, &c., at a fire
lighted in the open air. The children immediately gathered around her,
and endeavoured to engage her in some games, whilst the "terrible man,"
as she always designated the chief of the gang, patted her on the cheek,
and said, "You must come along with me, and be my daughter."
Meantime the whole party were in motion, and the poor child was tossed
into a pannier, on the back of an ass, and, being bound down with cords,
was carried all night long, she knew not whither. By daybreak she found
herself on the banks of a mountain-stream, and no human habitation
within view. In this station she had remained for three days, being
always kindly used, but observing fearful scenes, and hearing dreadful
expressions. At last, being worn out with crying, and partly gained over
by the companionship of her playmates, she had assumed a more resigned
and contented appearance, in consequence of which she ceased to be
watched with so much vigilance. Taking advantage, however, of the mist,
and of the absence of the greater part of the women, she had edged into
the stream, along the almost dry channel of which she had run, till she
lost sight of the encampment, and had taken at once to the hill, without
knowing whither she was flying. Fatigued, however, at last, and
terrified, she had even resolved to retrace, if possible, her steps,
when the occurrence above mentioned brought her refuge and safety.
I shall never forget the scene which took place on the occasion of the
restoration of this sweet girl to her parents, who were immediately
informed by Hogg of the asylum which the poor wanderer had found. But,
as every breast in which the genuine feelings of humanity are implanted
will immediately conceive what such a meeting must have been, I shall
not attempt to describe it. We were all in tears, and the poor mother
fainted outright, as she grasped convulsively her lost lamb (as she
tenderly termed it) to her bosom.
I have lived long, and so has Jeanie Paton, the now respected mother of
a large family, and the wife of honest Willie Paton, the best fisher and
the best weaver in all Annandale. When I take my annual excursions
south, their house is my home, and a day's fishing with Willie in the
Annan is to me a treat of no ordinary delight--Jeanie welcomes us with
her best, though, to be sure, I occasionally rub her a little too hard,
in reference to the circumstance which made us first acquainted.
THE RETURN.
"Alas! regardless of their fate,
The little victims play;
No sense have they of ills to come,
No cares beyond to-day."
In passing by coach to Cheltenham, in the year 1831, I dined with a very
agreeable fellow at Carlisle. It so happened that, in the course of
conversation, I discovered that he was a class-fellow of mine, some
forty-five years ago. But we had been separated ever since; nor was
there a single feature by which I could recognise his countenance. He
wore a wig, was sallow, withered, and almost emaciated; whereas Charles
M'Murdo, the boy of my acquaintance, was a chubby, rosy imp, with a
heart as light as a feather, and feet as swift as a roe. Nevertheless,
if I did not recognise him, he soon discovered me: the change upon my
person being less remarkable, as I had never left my own country, nor
been any way exposed to extreme climate, either of heat or cold. He
having some business to transact in London, as I had in Cheltenham, we
agreed, before parting, and whilst the guard was blowing his horn, to
rendezvous, on my return, at Liverpool, and to proceed north in company
with each other. Accordingly, at the appointed day and hour, we met;
ordered a private room and a comfortable dinner at the Saddle, a bottle
of good old port, and a strict watch upon all intrusion. What a night we
had of it! All the scenes of our youth rose into review, and, as glass
after glass, and perhaps bottle after bottle, disappeared, our souls
warmed, our imaginations fired, our memories, like the churchyard at the
day of reckoning, "gave up the dead that were in them," and at last we
all but embraced each other, shaking hands from time to time, as the
toast arose to some old remembrance, some school companion now no more.
There had been twelve of us in the same class; and my friend and I were
all that remained (like Job's friends), to think or to speak of the fate
of the rest. One, two, three, had gone to Jamaica, and had perished,
sooner or later, in quest or in possession of competence or wealth; two
had been ruined by dissipated company at college, had enlisted, and
perished at Waterloo; one had done well as a surgeon at Sierra Leone,
but had fevered at last, and died. In short, the roll-call was
mournful--we were the skeleton of the class, its ghost, its shadow; but
we were alive, beside a comfortable fire, and a cheerful gas-light, and
with wine before us; and it is wonderful how soon we forgot the mournful
recollection which would ever and anon peep in upon us through the mazes
of our many-hued discourse. At last our enthusiasm began somewhat to
subside; we ordered tumblers and hot water, with the necessary
accompaniments, drew in the table closer to the fire, for it was the
month of November, and agreed each to give the narrative of his own life
and experience. My tale was soon told, nor would it be any way
interesting to the reader to hear it. I had been a home-bird, and had
attained, without much adventure or difficulty, a respectable position
in society; but my old companion had been tossed about in the world, as
he expressed it, like a _quid_ of hay in the throat of a cow; and I
shall endeavour to put the reader in possession of the outline of what
Charles M'Murdo that night, betwixt the hours of seven and eleven,
related to me in large detail.