Every forenoon and evening between that and the marriage-day, Daniel and

his intended enjoyed a delightful _tête-à-tête_ in the lady’s garden,

walking arm-in-arm, and talking, doubtless, of home-concerns and Elysian

prospects that awaited them. The pair would have formed a fit subject

for the pencil of a Hogarth,—about “to become one flesh,” and so

different in appearance. The lady, long-visaged and wrinkled,

stiff-backed and awkward, long as a maypole; the bridegroom, jolly-faced

like Bacchus, stumpy like an alder-tree, and round as a beer-barrel.

Ere Friday had beheld its meridian sunshine, two carriages, drawn up at

the door, the drivers with white favours and Limerick gloves, told the

attentive world that Dr Redbeak had made them one flesh. Shortly after

the ceremony, the happy couple drove away amid the cheering of an

immense crowd of neighbours, who had planted themselves round the door

to make observations on what was going on. Another coincidence worthy of

remark also occurred on this auspicious day. At the same hour, had the

fair widow Martha yielded up her lily-white hand to the whiskered,

ferocious-looking, but gallant Captain Thwackeray; and the carriages

containing the respective marriage-parties passed one another in the

street at a good round pace. The postilions, with their large flaunting

ribbon-knots, huzza’d in meeting, brandishing their whips in the air, as

if betokening individual victory. The captain looking out, saw Miss

Jenny, in maiden pride, sitting stately beside her chosen tobacconist;

and Daniel, glancing to the left, beheld Mrs Martha blushing by the side

of her moustachioed warrior. Both waved their hands in passing, and

pursued their destinies.—_Janus; or, the Edinburgh Literary Almanac._

THE HAUNTED SHIPS.

BY ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.

Though my mind’s not

Hoodwinked with rustic marvels, I do think

There are more things in the grove, the air, the flood,

Yea, and the charnelled earth, than what wise man,

Who walks so proud as if his form alone

Filled the wide temple of the universe,

Will let a frail mind say. I’d write i’ the creed

O’ the sagest head alive, that fearful forms,

Holy or reprobate, do page men’s heels;

That shapes, too horrid for our gaze, stand o’er

The murderer’s dust, and for revenge glare up,

Even till the stars weep fire for very pity.

CHAPTER I.

Along the sea of Solway—romantic on the Scottish side, with its

woodlands, its bays, its cliffs, and headlands; and interesting on the

English side, with its many beautiful towns with their shadows on the

water, rich pastures, safe harbours, and numerous ships—there still

linger many traditional stories of a maritime nature, most of them

connected with superstitions singularly wild and unusual. To the

curious, these tales afford a rich fund of entertainment, from the many

diversities of the same story; some dry and barren, and stripped of all

the embellishments of poetry; others dressed out in all the riches of a

superstitious belief and haunted imagination. In this they resemble the

inland traditions of the peasants; but many of the oral treasures of the

Galwegian or the Cumbrian coast have the stamp of the Dane and the

Norseman upon them, and claim but a remote or faint affinity with the

legitimate legends of Caledonia. Something like a rude prosaic outline

of several of the most noted of the northern ballads—the adventures and

depredations of the old ocean kings—still lend life to the evening tale;

and, among others, the story of the Haunted Ships is still popular among

the maritime peasantry.

One fine harvest evening I went on board the shallop of Richard Faulder,

of Allanbay, and committing ourselves to the waters, we allowed a gentle

wind from the east to waft us at its pleasure towards the Scottish

coast. We passed the sharp promontory of Siddick, and skirting the land

within a stone-cast, glided along the shore till we came within sight of

the ruined Abbey of Sweetheart. The green mountain of Criffell ascended

beside us; and the bleat of the flocks from its summit, together with

the winding of the evening horn of the reapers, came softened into

something like music over land and sea. We pushed our shallop into a

deep and wooded bay, and sat silently looking on the serene beauty of

the place. The moon glimmered in her rising through the tall shafts of

the pines of Caerlaverock; and the sky, with scarce a cloud, showered

down on wood, and headland, and bay, the twinkling beams of a thousand

stars, rendering every object visible. The tide, too, was coming with

that swift and silent swell observable when the wind is gentle; the

woody curves along the land were filling with the flood, till it touched

the green branches of the drooping trees; while in the centre current

the roll and the plunge of a thousand pellecks told to the experienced

fisherman that salmon were abundant.

As we looked, we saw an old man emerging from a path that winded to the

shore through a grove of doddered hazel; he carried a halve-net on his

back, while behind him came a girl bearing a small harpoon, with which

the fishers are remarkably dexterous in striking their prey. The senior

seated himself on a large gray stone, which overlooked the bay, laid

aside his bonnet, and submitted his bosom and neck to the refreshing sea

breeze; and taking his harpoon from his attendant, sat with the gravity

and composure of a spirit of the flood, with his ministering nymph

behind him. We pushed our shallop to the shore, and soon stood at their

side.

“This is old Mark Macmoran, the mariner, with his granddaughter

Barbara,” said Richard Faulder, in a whisper that had something of fear

in it; “he knows every creek, and cavern, and quicksand in Solway,—has

seen the Spectre Hound that haunts the Isle of Man; has heard him bark,

and at every bark has seen a ship sink; and he has seen, too, the

Haunted Ships in full sail; and, if all tales be true, has sailed in

them himself;—he’s an awful person.”

Though I perceived in the communication of my friend something of the

superstition of the sailor, I could not help thinking that common rumour

had made a happy choice in singling out old Mark to maintain her

intercourse with the invisible world. His hair, which seemed to have

refused all acquaintance with the comb, hung matted upon his shoulders;

a kind of mantle, or rather blanket, pinned with a wooden skewer round

his neck, fell mid-leg down, concealing all his nether garments as far

as a pair of hose, darned with yarn of all conceivable colours, and a

pair of shoes, patched and repaired till nothing of the original

structure remained, and clasped on his feet with two massive silver

buckles.

If the dress of the old man was rude and sordid, that of his

granddaughter was gay, and even rich.

She wore a boddice of fine wool, wrought round the bosom with alternate

leaf and lily, and a kirtle of the same fabric, which almost touching

her white and delicate ankle, showed her snowy feet, so fairy-light and

round that they scarcely seemed to touch the grass where she stood. Her

hair—a natural ornament which woman seeks much to improve—was of a

bright glossy brown, and encumbered rather than adorned with a snood,

set thick with marine productions, among which the small clear pearl

found in the Solway was conspicuous. Nature had not trusted to a

handsome shape, and a sylph-like air, for young Barbara’s influence over

the heart of man; but had bestowed a pair of large bright blue eyes,

swimming in liquid light, so full of love, and gentleness, and joy, that

all the sailors, from Annanwater to far St Bees, acknowledged their

power, and sung songs about the bonnie lass of Mark Macmoran. She stood

holding a small gaff-hook of polished steel in her hand, and seemed not

dissatisfied with the glances I bestowed on her from time to time, and

which I held more than requited by a single glance of those eyes which

retained so many capricious hearts in subjection.

The tide, though rapidly augmenting, had not yet filled the bay at our

feet. The moon now streamed fairly over the tops of Caerlaverock pines,

and showed the expanse of ocean dimpling and swelling, on which sloops

and shallops came dancing, and displaying at every turn their extent of

white sail against the beam of the moon. I looked on old Mark the

Mariner, who, seated motionless on his gray stone, kept his eye fixed on

the increasing waters with a look of seriousness and sorrow in which I

saw little of the calculating spirit of a mere fisherman. Though he

looked on the coming tide, his eyes seemed to dwell particularly on the

black and decayed hulls of two vessels, which, half immersed in the

quicksand, still addressed to every heart a tale of shipwreck and

desolation. The tide wheeled and foamed around them; and creeping inch

by inch up the side, at last fairly threw its waters over the top, and a

long and hollow eddy showed the resistance which the liquid element

received.

The moment they were fairly buried in the water, the old man clasped his

hands together, and said—

“Blessed be the tide that will break over and bury ye for ever! Sad to

mariners, and sorrowful to maids and mothers, has the time been you have

choked up this deep and bonnie bay. For evil were you sent, and for evil

have you continued. Every season finds from you its song of sorrow and

wail, its funeral processions, and its shrouded corses. Woe to the land

where the wood grew that made ye? Cursed be the axe that hewed ye on the

mountains, the bands that joined ye together, the bay that ye first swam

in, and the wind that wafted ye here! Seven times have ye put my life in

peril; three fair sons have ye swept from my side, and two bonnie

grandbairns; and now, even now, your waters foam and flash for my

destruction, did I venture my frail limbs in quest of food in your

deadly bay. I see by that ripple and that foam, and hear by the sound

and singing of your surge, that ye yearn for another victim, but it

shall not be me or mine.”

Even as the old mariner addressed himself to the wrecked ships, a young

man appeared at the southern extremity of the bay, holding his halve-net

in his hand, and hastening into the current. Mark rose, and shouted, and

waved him back from a place which, to a person unacquainted with the

dangers of the bay, real and superstitious, seemed sufficiently

perilous: his granddaughter, too, added her voice to his, and waved her

white hands; but the more they strove the faster advanced the peasant,

till he stood to his middle in the water, while the tide increased every

moment in depth and strength. “Andrew, Andrew!” cried the young woman,

in a voice quavering with emotion, “turn, turn, I tell you. O the ships,

the haunted ships!” But the appearance of a fine run of fish had more

influence with the peasant than the voice of bonnie Barbara, and forward

he dashed, net in hand. In a moment he was borne off his feet, and

mingled like foam with the water, and hurried towards the fatal eddies

which whirled and reared round the sunken ships. But he was a powerful

young man, and an expert swimmer: he seized on one of the projecting

ribs of the nearest hulk, and clinging to it with the grasp of despair,

uttered yell after yell, sustaining himself against the prodigious rush

of the current.

From a sheiling of turf and straw within the pitch of a bar from the

spot where we stood, came out an old woman bent with age, and leaning on

a crutch. “I heard the voice of that lad Andrew Lammie; can the chield

be drowning, that he skirls sae uncannily?” said the old woman, seating

herself on the ground and looking earnestly at the water. “Ou ay,” she

continued, “he’s doomed, he’s doomed; heart and hand never can save him;

boats, ropes, and man’s strength and wit, all vain! vain! he’s doomed,

he’s doomed!”

By this time I had thrown myself into the shallop, followed reluctantly

by Richard Faulder, over whose courage and kindness of heart

superstition had great power; and with one push from the shore, and some

exertion in sculling, we came within a quoit-cast of the unfortunate

fisherman. He stayed not to profit by our aid; for when he perceived us

near, he uttered a piercing shriek of joy, and bounded toward us through

the agitated element the full length of an oar. I saw him for a second

on the surface of the water; but the eddying current sucked him down;

and all I ever beheld of him again was his hand held above the flood,

and clutching in agony at some imaginary aid. I sat gazing in horror on

the vacant sea before us; but a breathing-time before, a human being,

full of youth, and strength, and hope, was there: his cries were still

ringing in my ears, and echoing in the woods; and now nothing was seen

or heard save the turbulent expanse of water, and the sound of its

chafing on the shores. We pushed back our shallop, and resumed our

station on the cliff beside the old mariner and his descendant.

“Wherefore sought ye to peril your own lives fruitlessly,” said Mark,

“in attempting to save the doomed? Whoso touches these infernal ships

never survives to tell the tale. Woe to the man who is found nigh them

at midnight when the tide has subsided, and they arise in their former

beauty, with forecastle, and deck, and sail, and pennon, and shroud!

Then is seen the streaming of lights along the water from their cabin

windows, and then is heard the sound of mirth and the clamour of tongues

and the infernal whoop and halloo, and song, ringing far and wide. Woe

to the man who comes nigh them!”

To all this my companion listened with a breathless attention. I felt

something touched with a superstition to which I partly believed I had

seen one victim offered up; and I inquired of the old mariner—

“How and when came these haunted ships there? To me they seem but the

melancholy relics of some unhappy voyagers, and much more likely to warn

people to shun destruction, than entice and delude them to it.”

“And so,” said the old man with a smile, which had more of sorrow in it

than of mirth; “and so, young man, these black and shattered hulks seem

to the eye of the multitude. But things are not what they seem: that

water, a kind and convenient servant to the wants of man, which seems so

smooth, and so dimpling, and so gentle, has swallowed up a human soul

even now; and the place which it covers, so fair and so level, is a

faithless quicksand out of which none escape. Things are otherwise than

they seem. Had you lived as long as I have had the sorrow to live; had

you seen the storms, and braved the perils, and endured the distresses

which have befallen me; had you sat gazing out on the dreary ocean at

midnight on a haunted coast; had you seen comrade after comrade, brother

after brother, and son after son, swept away by the merciless ocean from

your very side; had you seen the shapes of friends, doomed to the wave

and the quicksand, appearing to you in the dreams and visions of the

night; then would your mind have been prepared for crediting the strange

legends of mariners; and the two haunted Danish ships would have had

their terrors for you, as they have for all who sojourn on this coast.

“Of the time and cause of their destruction,” continued the old man, “I

know nothing certain; they have stood as you have seen them for

uncounted time; and while all other ships wrecked on this unhappy coast

have gone to pieces, and rotted, and sunk away in a few years, these two

haunted hulks have neither sunk in the quicksand, nor has a single spar

or board been displaced. Maritime legend says, that two ships of Denmark

having had permission, for a time, to work deeds of darkness and dolour

on the deep, were at last condemned to the whirlpool and the sunken

rock, and were wrecked in this bonnie bay, as a sign to seamen to be

gentle and devout. The night when they were lost was a harvest evening

of uncommon mildness and beauty: the sun had newly set; the moon came

brighter and brighter out; and the reapers, laying their sickles at the

root of the standing corn, stood on rock and bank, looking at the

increasing magnitude of the waters, for sea and land were visible from

St Bees to Barnhourie.

“The sails of the two vessels were soon seen bent for the Scottish

coast; and with a speed outrunning the swiftest ship, they approached

the dangerous quicksands and headland of Borranpoint. On the deck of the

foremost ship not a living soul was seen, or shape, unless something in

darkness and form resembling a human shadow could be called a shape,

which flitted from extremity to extremity of the ship, with the

appearance of trimming the sails, and directing the vessel’s course. But

the decks of its companion were crowded with human shapes; the captain,

and mate, and sailor, and cabin boy, all seemed there; and from them the

sound of mirth and minstrelsy echoed over land and water. The coast

which they skirted along was one of extreme danger; and the reapers

shouted to warn them to beware of sandbank and rock; but of this

friendly counsel no notice was taken, except that a large and famished

dog, which sat on the prow, answered every shout with a long, loud, and

melancholy howl. The deep sandbank of Carsethorn was expected to arrest

the career of these desperate navigators; but they passed, with the

celerity of waterfowl, over an obstruction which had wrecked many pretty

ships.

“Old men shook their heads, and departed, saying, ‘We have seen the

fiend sailing in a bottomless ship; let us go home and pray:’ but one

young and wilful man said, ‘Fiend! I’ll warrant it’s nae fiend, but

douce Janet Withershins, the witch, holding a carouse with some of her

Cumberland cummers, and mickle red wine will be spilt atween them. ’Od,

I would gladly have a toothfu’! I’ll warrant it’s nane o’ your cauld

sour slae-water, like a bottle of Bailie Skrinkie’s port, but right

drap-o’-my-heart’s-blood stuff, that would waken a body out of their

last linen. I wonder whaur the cummers will anchor their craft?’

“‘And I’ll vow,’ said another rustic, ‘the wine they quaff is none of

your visionary drink, such as a drouthy body has dished out to his lips

in a dream; nor is it shadowy and unsubstantial, like the vessels they

sail in, which are made out of a cockle-shell, or a cast-off slipper, or

the paring of a seaman’s right thumb-nail. I once got a handsel out of a

witch’s quaigh myself;—auld Marion Mathers of Dustiefoot, whom they

tried to bury in the old kirkyard of Dunscore; but the cummer raise as

fast as they laid her down, and naewhere else would she lie but in the

bonnie green kirkyard of Kier, among douce and sponsible folk. So I’ll

vow that the wine of a witch’s cup is as fell liquor as ever did a

kindly turn to a poor man’s heart; and be they fiends, or be they

witches, if they have red wine asteer, I’ll risk a droukit sark for ae

glorious tout on’t.’

“‘Silence, ye sinners,’ said the minister’s son of a neighbouring

parish, who united in his own person his father’s lack of devotion with

his mother’s love of liquor. ‘Whisht! Speak as if ye had the fear of

something holy before ye. Let the vessels run their own way to

destruction: who can stay the eastern wind, and the current of the

Solway sea? I can find ye Scripture warrant for that: so let them try

their strength on Blawhooly rocks, and their might on the broad

quicksand. There’s a surf running there would knock the ribs together of

a galley built by the imps of the pit, and commanded by the Prince of

Darkness. Bonnily and bravely they sail away there; but before the blast

blows by they’ll be wrecked; and red wine and strong brandy will be as

rife as dykewater, and we’ll drink the health of bonnie Bell Blackness

out of her left foot slipper.’

“The speech of the young profligate was applauded by several of his

companions, and away they flew to the bay of Blawhooly, from whence they

never returned. The two vessels were observed all at once to stop in the

bosom of the bay, on the spot where their hulls now appear: the mirth

and the minstrelsy waxed louder than ever; and the forms of the maidens,

with instruments of music and wine-cups in their hands, thronged the

decks. A boat was lowered; and the same shadowy pilot who conducted the

ships made it start towards the shore with the rapidity of lightning,

and its head knocked against the bank where the four young men stood,

who longed for the unblest drink. They leaped in with a laugh, and with

a laugh were they welcomed on deck; wine cups were given to each, and as

they raised them to their lips the vessels melted away beneath their

feet; and one loud shriek, mingled with laughter still louder, was heard

over land and water for many miles. Nothing more was heard or seen till

the morning, when the crowd who came to the beach saw with fear and

wonder the two Haunted Ships, such as they now seem, masts and tackle

gone; nor mark, nor sign, by which their name, country, or destination,

could be known, was left remaining. Such is the tradition of the

mariners.”

CHAPTER II.

“And trow ye,” said the old woman, who, attracted from her hut by the

drowning cries of the young fisherman, had remained an auditor of the

mariner’s legend; “and trow ye, Mark Macmoran, that the tale of the

Haunted Ships is done? I can say no to that. Mickle have my ears heard,

but more mine eyes have witnessed since I came to dwell in this humble

home by the side of the deep sea. I mind the night weel: it was on

Hallow-e’en, the nuts were cracked, and the apples were eaten, and spell

and charm were tried at my fireside; till, wearied with diving into the

dark waves of futurity, the lads and lasses fairly took to the more

visible blessings of kind words, tender clasps, and gentle courtship.

“Soft words in a maiden’s ear, and a kindly kiss o’ her lip, were old

world matters to me, Mark Macmoran; though I mean not to say that I have

been free of the folly of daundering and daffin’ with a youth in my day,

and keeping tryst with him in dark and lonely places. However, as I say,

these times of enjoyment were past and gone with me; the mair’s the pity

that pleasure should flee sae fast away,—and as I couldna make sport I

thought I would not mar any; so out I sauntered into the fresh cold air,

and sat down behind that old oak, and looked abroad on the wide sea. I

had my ain sad thoughts, ye may think, at the time; it was in that very

bay my blythe gudeman perished, with seven more in his company; and on

that very bank where ye see the waves leaping and foaming, I saw seven

stately corses streeked, but the dearest was the eighth. It was a woful

sight to me, a widow, with four bonnie boys, with nought to support them

but these twa hands, and God’s blessing, and a cow’s grass. I have never

liked to live out of sight of this bay since that time; and mony’s the

moonlight night I sit looking on these watery mountains, and these waste

shores; it does my heart good, whatever it may do to my head. So ye see

it was Hallow-e’en; and looking on sea and land sat I; and my heart

wandering to other thoughts soon made me forget my youthful company at

hame. It might be near the howe hour of the night; the tide was making,

and its singing brought strange old-world stories with it; and I thought

on the dangers that sailors endure, the fates they meet with, and the

fearful forms they see. My own blithe gude-man had seen sights that made

him grave enough at times, though he aye tried to laugh them away.

“Aweel, between that very rock aneath us and the coming tide, I saw, or

thought I saw (for the tale is so dream-like that the whole might pass

for a vision of the night) the form of a man. His plaid was gray; his

face was gray; and his hair, which hung low down till it nearly came to

the middle of his back, was as white as the white sea-foam. He began to

houk and dig under the bank; and God be near me! thought I, this maun be

the unblessed spirit of auld Adam Gowdgowpin, the miser, who is doomed

to dig for shipwrecked treasure, and count how many millions are hidden

for ever from man’s enjoyment. The form found something, which in shape

and hue seemed a left-foot slipper of brass; so down to the tide he

marched, and placing it on the water, whirled it thrice round; and the

infernal slipper dilated at every turn, till it became a bonnie barge

with its sails bent, and on board leaped the form, and scudded swiftly

away. He came to one of the haunted ships; and striking it with his oar,

a fair ship, with mast and canvas, and mariners, started up: he touched

the other haunted ship, and produced the like transformation; and away

the three spectre ships bounded, leaving a track of fire behind them on

the billows, which was long unextinguished.

“Now wasna that a bonnie and a fearful sight to see beneath the light of

the Hallowmas moon? But the tale is far frae finished; for mariners say

that once a year, on a certain night, if ye stand on the Borranpoint, ye

will see the infernal shallops coming snoring through the Solway; ye

will hear the same laugh, and song, and mirth, and minstrelsy, which our

ancestors heard; see them bound over the sandbanks and sunken rocks like

sea-gulls, cast their anchor in Blawhooly Bay, while the shadowy figures

lower down the boat, and augment their numbers with the four unhappy

mortals to whose memory a stone stands in the kirkyard, with a sinking

ship and a shoreless sea cut upon it. Then the spectre-ships vanish, and

the drowning shriek of mortals and the rejoicing laugh of fiends are

heard, and the old hulls are left as a memorial that the old spiritual

kingdom has not departed from the earth. But I maun away and trim my

little cottage fire, and make it burn and blaze up bonnie, to warm the

crickets, and my cauld and crazy bones, that maun soon be laid aneath

the green sod in the eerie kirkyard.”

And away the old dame tottered to her cottage, secured the door on the

inside, and soon the hearth-flame was seen to glimmer and gleam through

the key-hole and the window.

“I’ll tell ye what,” said the old mariner, in a subdued tone, and with a

shrewd and suspicious glance of his eye after the old sibyl, “it’s a

word that may not very well be uttered, but there are many mistakes made

in evening stories if old Moll Moray there, where she lives, knows not

mickle more than she is willing to tell of the Haunted Ships, and their

unhallowed mariners. She lives cannily and quietly; no one knows how she

is fed or supported; but her dress is aye whole, her cottage ever

smokes, and her table lacks neither of wine, white and red, nor of fowl

and fish, and white bread and brown. It was a dear scoff to Jock

Matheson, when he called old Moll the uncannie carline of Blawhooly: his

boat ran round and round in the centre of the Solway—everybody said it

was enchanted—and down it went head foremost; and hadna Jock been a

swimmer equal to a sheldrake, he would have fed the fish; but I warrant

it sobered the lad’s speech, and he never reckoned himself safe till he

made auld Moll the present of a new kirtle and a stone of cheese.”

“O father,” said his granddaughter Barbara, “ye surely wrong poor old

Mary Moray: what use could it be to an old woman like her, who has no

wrongs to redress, no malice to work out against mankind, and nothing to

seek of enjoyment save a cannie hour and a quiet grave—what use could

the fellowship of the fiends, and the communion of evil spirits, be to

her? I know Jenny Primrose puts rowan-tree above the doorhead when she

sees old Mary coming; I know the goodwife of Kittlenacket wears

rowan-berry leaves in the head-band of her blue kirtle, and all for the

sake of averting the unsonsie glance of Mary’s right ee; and I know that

the auld laird of Burntroutwater drives his seven cows to their pasture

with a wand of witchtree, to keep Mary from milking them. But what has

all that to do with haunted shallops, visionary mariners, and bottomless

boats? I have heard myself as pleasant a tale about the Haunted Ships

and their unworldly crews as any one would wish to hear in a winter

evening. It was told me by young Benjie Macharg, one summer night,

sitting on Arbiglandbank; the lad intended a sort of lovemeeting, but

all that he could talk of was about smearing sheep and shearing sheep,

and of the wife which the Norway elves of the Haunted Ships made for his

uncle Sandie Macharg. And I shall tell ye the tale as the honest lad

told it to me.

“Alexander Macharg, besides being the laird of three acres of peat-moss,

two kail gardens, and the owner of seven good milch cows, a pair of

horses, and six pet sheep, was the husband of one of the handsomest

women in seven parishes. Many a lad sighed the day he was brided; and a

Nithsdale laird and two Annandale moorland farmers drank themselves to

their last linen, as well as their last shilling, through sorrow for her

loss. But married was the dame; and home she was carried, to bear rule

over her home and her husband, as an honest woman should. Now ye maun

ken that though flesh-and-blood lovers of Alexander’s bonnie wife all

ceased to love and to sue her after she became another’s, there were

certain admirers who did not consider their claim at all abated, or

their hopes lessened, by the kirk’s famous obstacle of matrimony.

“Ye have heard how the devout minister of Tinwald had a fair son carried

away, and bedded against his liking to an unchristened bride, whom the

elves and the fairies provided: ye have heard how the bonnie bride of

the drunken laird of Soukitup was stolen by the fairies out at the back

window of the bridal chamber the time the bridegroom was groping his way

to the chamber door; and ye have heard—but why need I multiply cases?

Such things in the ancient days were as common as candlelight. So ye’ll

no hinder certain water-elves and sea-fairies, who sometimes keep

festival and summer mirth in these old haunted hulks, from falling in

love with the weel-faured wife of Laird Macharg; and to their plots and

contrivances they went, how they might accomplish to sunder man and

wife; and sundering such a man and such a wife was like sundering the

green leaf from the summer, or the fragrance from the flower.

“So it fell on a time that Laird Macharg took his halve-net on his back,

and his steel spear in his hand, and down to Blawhooly Bay gaed he, and

into the water he went right between the two haunted hulks, and placing

his net awaited the coming of the tide. The night, ye maun ken, was

mirk, and the wind lown, and the singing of the increasing waters among

the shells and the pebbles was heard for sundry miles. All at once

lights began to glance and twinkle on board the two Haunted Ships from

every hole and seam, and presently the sound as of a hatchet employed in

squaring timber echoed far and wide. But if the toil of these unearthly

workmen amazed the laird, how much more was his amazement increased when

a sharp shrill voice called out, ‘Ho! brother, what are you doing now?’

A voice still shriller responded from the other haunted ship, ‘I’m

making a wife to Sandie Macharg.’ And a loud quavering laugh running

from ship to ship, and from bank to bank, told the joy they expected

from their labour.

“Now the laird, besides being a devout and a God-fearing man, was shrewd

and bold; and in plot and contrivance, and skill in conducting his

designs, was fairly an overmatch for any dozen land elves. But the water

elves are far more subtle; besides, their haunts and their dwellings

being in the great deep, pursuit and detection are hopeless, if they

succeed in carrying their prey to the waves. But ye shall hear.

“Home flew the laird, collected his family around the hearth, spoke of

the signs and the sins of the times, and talked of mortification and

prayer for averting calamity; and finally, taking from the shelf his

father’s Bible, brass clasps, black print, and covered with calf-skin,

he proceeded, without let or stint, to perform domestic worship. I

should have told ye that he bolted and locked the door, shut up all

inlet to the house, threw salt into the fire, and proceeded in every way

like a man skilful in guarding against the plots of fairies and fiends.

His wife looked on all this with wonder; but she saw something in her

husband’s looks that hindered her from intruding either question or

advice, and a wise woman was she.

“Near the mid-hour of the night the rush of a horse’s feet was heard,

and the sound of a rider leaping from his back, and a heavy knock came

to the door, accompanied by a voice, saying, ‘The cummer’s drink’s hot,

and the knave bairn is expected at Laird Laurie’s to-night; sae mount,

gudewife, and come.’

“‘Preserve me!’ said the wife of Sandie Macharg, ‘that’s news indeed!

who could have thought it? The laird has been heirless for seventeen

years. Now, Sandie, my man, fetch me my skirt and hood.’

“But he laid his arm round his wife’s neck and said—

“‘If all the lairds in Galloway go heirless, over this door threshold

shall you not stir to-night; and I have said it, and I have sworn it:

seek not to know why and wherefore,—but, Lord, send us Thy blessed

moonlight!’

The wife looked for a moment in her husband’s eyes, and desisted from

further entreaty.

“‘But let us send a civil message to the gossips, Sandie; and hadna ye

better say I’m sair laid wi’ a sudden sickness?—though it’s sinful-like

to send the poor messenger a mile agate with a lie in his mouth without

a glass of brandy.’

“‘To such a messenger, and to those who sent him, no apology is needed,’

said the austere laird, ‘so let him depart.’

“And the clatter of a horse’s hoofs was heard, and the muttered

imprecations of its rider on the churlish treatment he had experienced.

“‘Now, Sandie, my lad,’ said his wife, laying an arm particularly white

and round about his neck as she spoke, ‘are you not a queer man and a

stern? I have been your wedded wife now these three years, and, beside

my dower, have brought you three as bonnie bairns as ever smiled aneath

a summer sun. O man! you a douce man, and fitter to be an elder than

even Willie Greer himsel,—I have the minister’s ain word for’t,—to put

on these hard-hearted looks, and gang waving your arms that way, as if

ye said, “I winna tak’ the counsel o’ sic a hempie as you.” I’m your ain

leal wife, and will and maun hae an explanation.’

“To all this Sandy Macharg replied, ‘It is written, “Wives, obey your

husbands;” but we have been stayed in our devotion, so let us pray;’ and

down he knelt. His wife knelt also, for she was as devout as bonnie; and

beside them knelt their household, and all lights were extinguished.”

“‘Now this beats a’,’ muttered his wife to herself; ‘however, I shall be

obedient for a time; but if I dinna ken what all this is for before the

morn by sunket-time, my tongue is nae langer a tongue, nor my hands

worth wearing.’

“The voice of her husband in prayer interrupted this mental soliloquy;

and ardently did he beseech to be preserved from the wiles of the fiends

and the snares of Satan; ‘from witches, ghosts, goblins, elves, fairies,

spunkies, and water-kelpies; from the spectre shallop of Solway; from

spirits visible and invisible; from the Haunted Ships and their

unearthly tenants; from maritime spirits that plotted against godly men,

and fell in love with their wives’——

“‘Nay, but His presence be near us!’ said his wife in a low tone of

dismay. ‘God guide my gudeman’s wits! I never heard such a prayer from

human lips before. But, Sandie, my man, for Lord’s sake, rise; what

fearful light is this?—barn, and byre, and stable, maun be in a blaze;

and Hawkie and Hurley, Doddie and Cherrie, and Damson-plum, will be

smoored with reek and scorched with flame.’

“And a flood of light, but not so gross as a common fire, which ascended

to heaven and filled all the court before the house, amply justified the

good wife’s suspicions. But to the terrors of fire, Sandie was as

immovable as he was to the imaginary groans of the barren wife of Laird

Laurie; and he held his wife, and threatened the weight of his right

hand—and it was a heavy one—to all who ventured abroad, or even unbolted

the door. The neighing and prancing of horses, and the bellowing of

cows, augmented the horrors of the night; and to any one who only heard

the din, it seemed that the whole onstead was in a blaze, and horses and

cattle perishing in the flame. All wiles, common or extraordinary, were

put in practice to entice or force the honest farmer and his wife to

open their door; and when the like success attended every new stratagem,

silence for a little while ensued, and a long, loud, and shrilling laugh

wound up the dramatic efforts of the night.

“In the morning, when Laird Macharg went to the door, he found standing

against one of the pilasters a piece of black ship oak, rudely fashioned

into something like a human form, and which skilful people declared

would have been clothed with seeming flesh and blood, and palmed upon

him by elfin adroitness for his wife, had he admitted his visitants. A

synod of wise men and women sat upon the woman of timber, and she was

finally ordered to be devoured by fire, and that in the open air. A fire

was soon made, and into it the elfin sculpture was tossed from the

prongs of two pairs of pitchforks. The blaze that rose was awful to

behold; and hissings, and burstings, and loud cracklings, and strange

noises, were heard in the midst of the flame; and when the whole sank

into ashes, a drinking cup of some precious metal was found; and this

cup, fashioned no doubt by elfin skill, but rendered harmless by the

purification with fire, the sons and daughters of Sandie Macharg and his

wife drink out of to this day.”

A TALE OF THE MARTYRS.

BY JAMES HOGG, THE “ETTRICK SHEPHERD.”

Red Tam Harkness came into the farm-house of Garrick, in the parish of

Closeburn, one day, and began to look about for some place to hide in,

when the gudewife, whose name was Jane Kilpatrick, said to him in great

alarm, “What’s the matter, what’s the matter, Tam Harkness!”

“Hide me, or else I’m a dead man: that’s the present matter, gudewife,”

said he. “But yet, when I have time—if ever I hae mair time—I have heavy

news for you. For Christ’s sake, hide me, Jane, for the killers are hard

at hand.”

Jane Kilpatrick sprung to her feet, but she was quite benumbed and

powerless. She ran to one press and opened it, and then to another;

there was not room to stuff a clog into either of them. She looked into

a bed; there was no shelter there, and her knees began to bend under her

weight with terror. The voices of the troopers were by this time heard

fast approaching, and Harkness had no other shift but in one moment to

conceal himself behind the outer door, which was open, but the place

where he stood was quite dark. He heard one of them say to another, “I

fear the scoundrel is not here after all. Guard all the outhouses.”

On that three or four of the troop rushed by him, and began to search

the house and examine the inmates. Harkness that moment slid out without

being observed, and tried to escape up a narrow glen called Kinrivah,

immediately behind the house, but unluckily two troopers, who had been

in another chase, there met him in the face. When he perceived them, he

turned and ran to the eastward; on which they both fired, which raised

the alarm, and instantly the whole pack were after him. It was

afterwards conjectured that one of the shots had wounded him, for though

he, with others, had been nearly surrounded that morning, and twice

waylaid, he had quite outrun the soldiers; but now it was observed that

some of them began to gain ground on him, and they still continued

firing, till at length he fell into a kind of slough east from the

farm-house of Locherben, where they came up to him, and ran him through

with their bayonets. The spot is called Red Tam’s Gutter to this day.

Jane Kilpatrick was one of the first who went to his mangled corpse—a

woful sight, lying in the slough, and sore did she lament the loss of

that poor and honest man. But there was more: she came to his corpse by

a sort of yearning impatience to learn what was the woful news he had to

communicate to her. But, alas! the intelligence was lost, and the man to

whose bosom alone it had haply been confided was no more; yet Jane could

scarcely prevail on herself to have any fears for her own husband, for

she knew him to be in perfectly safe hiding in Glen Govar; still Tam’s

last words hung heavy on her mind. They were both suspected to have been

at the harmless rising at Enterkin for the relief of a favourite

minister, which was effected; and that was the extent of their crime.

And though it was only suspicion, four men were shot on the hills that

morning without trial or examination, and their bodies forbidden

Christian burial.

One of these four was John Weir of Garrick, the husband of Jane

Kilpatrick, a man of great worth and honour, and universally respected.

He had left his hiding-place in order to carry some intelligence to his

friends, and to pray with them, but was entrapped among them and slain.

Still there was no intelligence brought to his family, save the single

expression that fell from the lips of Thomas Harkness in a moment of

distraction. Nevertheless, Jane could not rest, but set out all the way

to her sister’s house in Glen Govar, in Crawford Muir, and arrived there

at eleven o’clock on a Sabbath evening. The family being at prayers when

she went, and the house dark, she stood still behind the hallan, and all

the time was convinced that the voice of the man that prayed was the

voice of her husband, John Weir. All the time that fervent prayer lasted

the tears of joy ran from her eyes, and her heart beat with gratitude to

her Maker as she drank into her soul every sentence of the petitions and

thanksgiving. Accordingly, when worship was ended, and the candle

lighted, she went forward with a light heart and joyful countenance. Her

sister embraced her, though manifestly embarrassed and troubled at

seeing her there at such a time. From her she flew to embrace her

husband, but he stood still like a statue, and did not meet her embrace.

She gazed at him—she grew pale, and, sitting down, she covered her face

with her apron. This man was one of her husband’s brothers, likewise in

hiding, whom she had never before seen; but the tones of his voice, and

even the devotional expressions that he used, were so like her

husband’s, that she mistook them for his.

All was now grief and consternation, for John Weir had not been seen or

heard of there since Wednesday evening, when he had gone to warn his

friends of some impending danger; but they all tried to comfort each

other as well as they could, and, in particular, by saying they were all

in the Lord’s hand, and it behoved Him to do with them as seemed to Him

good, with many other expressions of piety and submission. But the next

morning, when the two sisters were about to part, the one says to the

other,—“Jane, I cannot help telling you a strange confused dream that I

had just afore ye wakened me. Ye ken I put nae faith in dreams, and I

dinna want you to regard it; but it is as well for friends to tell them

to ane anither, and then, if aught turn out like it in the course o’

Providence, it may bring it to baith their minds that their spirits had

been conversing with God.”

“Na, na, Aggie, I want nane o’ your confused dreams. I hae other things

to think o’, and mony’s the time and oft ye hae deaved me wi’ them, an’

sometimes made me angry.”

“I never bade ye believe them, Jeanie, but I likit aye to tell them to

you; and this I daresay rose out o’ our conversation yestreen. But I

thought I was away (ye see I dinna ken where I was); and I was feared

and confused, thinking I had lost my way. And then I came to an auld

man, an’ he says to me, ‘Is it the road to heaven that you are seeking,

Aggie?’ An’ I said, ‘Ay,’ for I didna like to deny’t.

“‘Then I’ll tell you where you maun gang,’ said he; ‘ye maun gang up by

the head of yon dark, mossy cleuch, an’ you will find ane there that

will show you the road to heaven;’ and I said ‘Ay,’ for I didna like to

refuse, although it was an uncouth looking road, and ane that I didna

like to gang. But when I gaed to the cleuch-head, wha do I see sitting

there but your ain gudeman, John Weir, and I thought I never saw him

look sae weel; and when I gaed close up to him, there I saw another John

Weir, lying strippet to the sark, and a’ bedded in blood. He was cauld

dead, and his head turned to ae side, and when I saw siccan a sight, I

was terrified, an’ held wide aff him. But I gaed up to the living John

Weir, and said to him,—‘Gudeman, how’s this?’

“‘Dinna ye see how it is, sister Aggie?’ says he, ‘I’m just set to herd

this poor man that’s lying here.’

“‘Then I think ye’ll no hae a sair post, John,’ says I, ‘for he disna

look as if he wad rin far away.’ It was very unreverend o’ me to speak

that gate, sister, but these were the words that I thought I said; an’

as it is but a dream, ye ken ye needna heed it.

“‘Alas, poor Aggie,’ says he, ‘ye are still in the gall o’ bitterness.

Look ower your right shoulder, an’ ye will see what I hae to do. An’ sae

I looked ower my right shoulder, and there saw a hale drove o’ foxes and

wulcats, an’ fumarts, an’ martins, an’ corby-craws, an’ a hunder vile

beasts, a’ staunin’ round wi’ glaring een, eager to be at the corpse of

the dead John Weir; an’ then I was terribly astoundit, an’ I says to

him, ‘Gudeman, how is this?’

“‘I am commissioned to keep these awa,’ said he. ‘Do you think these een

that are yet open to the light o’ heaven, and that tongue that has to

syllable the praises of a Redeemer far within yon sky, should be left to

become a prey o’ siccan vermin as these?’

“‘Will it make sae vera muckle difference, John Weir,’ said I, ‘whether

the carcass is eaten up by these or by the worms?’

“‘Ah, Aggie, Aggie! worms are worms; but ye little wot what these are,’

says he. ‘But John Weir has warred wi’ them a’ his life, an’ that to

some purpose, and they maunna get the advantage o’ him now.’

“‘But which is the right John Weir?’ said I; ‘for here is ane lying

stiff and lappered in his blood, and another in health and strength and

sound mind.’

“‘I am the right John Weir,’ says he. ‘Did you ever think the good man

o’ Garrick could die! Na, na, Aggie; Clavers could only kill the body,

an’ that’s but the poorest part o’ the man. But where are you gaun this

wild gate?’

“‘I was directed this way on my road to heaven,’ said I.

“‘Ay, an’ ye were directed right, then,’ says he; ‘for this is the

direct path to heaven, and there is no other.’

“‘That is very extraordinary,’ says I. ‘And, pray, what is the name of

this place, that I may direct my sister Jane, your wife, and all my

friends by the same way.’

“‘This is Faith’s Hope,’ says he.

At the mention of this place, Jane Kilpatrick of Garrick rose slowly up

to her feet, and held up both her hands. “Hold, hold, sister Aggie,”

cried she, “you have told enough. Was it in the head of Faith’s Hope

that you saw this vision of my dead husband?”

“Yes; but at the same time I saw your husband alive.”

“Then I fear your dream has a double meaning,” she answered; “for though

it appears like a religious allegory, you do not know that there really

is such a place, and that not very far from our house. I have often

laughed at your dreams, sister, but this one hurries me from you to-day

with a heavy and trembling heart.”

Jane left Glen Govar by the break of day, and took her way through the

wild ranges of Crawford Muir, straight for the head of Faith’s Hope. She

had some bread in her lap, and a little Bible that she always carried

with her; and without one to assist or comfort her, she went in search

of her lost husband. Before she reached the head of that wild glen, the

day was far spent, and the sun wearing down. The valley of Nith lay

spread far below her in all its beauty, but around her there was nothing

but darkness, dread, and desolation. The mist hovered on the hills, and

on the skirts of the mist the ravens sailed about in circles, croaking

furiously, which had a most ominous effect on the heart of poor Jane. As

she advanced further up, she perceived a fox and an eagle sitting over

against each other, watching something which yet they seemed terrified

to approach; and right between them, in a little green hollow,

surrounded by black haggs, she found the corpse of her husband in the

same manner as described by her sister. He was stripped of his coat and

vest, which it was thought he had thrown from him when flying from the

soldiers, to enable him to effect his escape. He was shot through the

heart with two bullets, but nothing relating to his death was ever

known, whether he died praying, or was shot as he fled; but there was he

found lying, bathed in his blood, in the wilderness, and none of the

wild beasts of the forest had dared to touch his lifeless form.

The bitterness of death was now past with poor Jane. Her staff and

shield was taken from her right hand, and laid low in death by the

violence of wicked men. True, she had still a home to go to, although

that home was robbed and spoiled; but she found that without him it was

no home, and that where his beloved form reposed, there was the home of

her rest. She washed his wounds and the stains of blood from his body,

tied her napkin round his face, covered him with her apron, and sat down

and watched beside him all the livelong night, praying to the Almighty,

and singing hymns and spiritual songs alternately. The next day she

warned her friends and neighbours, who went with her the following

night, and buried him privately in the northwest corner of the

churchyard of Morton.

THE TOWN DRUMMER.

BY JOHN GALT.

For many a year one Robin Boss had been town drummer; he was a relic of

some American war fencibles, and was, to say the truth of him, a divor

body, with no manner of conduct, saving a very earnest endeavour to fill

himself fou as often as he could get the means; the consequence of which

was, that his face was as plooky as a curran bun, and his nose as red as

a partan’s tae.

One afternoon there was need to send out a proclamation to abolish a

practice that was growing into a custom, in some of the by-parts of the

town, of keeping swine at large—ordering them to be confined in proper

styes, and other suitable places. As on all occasions when the matter to

be proclaimed was from the magistrates, Thomas, on this, was attended by

the town-officers in their Sunday garbs, and with their halberts in

their hands; but the abominable and irreverent creature was so drunk,

that he wam’let to and fro over the drum, as if there had not been a

bane in his body. He was seemingly as soople and as senseless as a

bolster. Still, as this was no new thing with him, it might have passed;

for James Hound, the senior officer, was in the practice, when Robin was

in that state, of reading the proclamations himself. On this occasion,

however, James happened to be absent on some hue and cry quest, and

another of the officers (I forget which) was appointed to perform for

him. Robin, accustomed to James, no sooner heard the other man begin to

read than he began to curse and swear at him as an incapable

nincompoop—an impertinent term that he was much addicted to. The grammar

school was at the time skailing, and the boys seeing the stramash,

gathered round the officer, and yelling and shouting, encouraged Robin

more and more into rebellion, till at last they worked up his corruption

to such a pitch, that he took the drum from about his neck, and made it

fly like a bombshell at the officer’s head.

The officers behaved very well, for they dragged Robin by the lug and

the horn to the tolbooth, and then came with their complaint to me.

Seeing how the authorities had been set at nought, and the necessity

there was of making an example, I forthwith ordered Robin to be

cashiered from the service of the town; and as so important a concern as

a proclamation ought not to be delayed, I likewise, upon the spot,

ordered the officers to take a lad that had been also a drummer in a

marching regiment, and go with him to make the proclamation.

Nothing could be done in a more earnest and zealous public spirit than

this was done by me. But habit had begot in the town a partiality for

the drunken ne’er-do-well, Robin; and this just act of mine was

immediately condemned as a daring stretch of arbitrary power; and the

consequence was, that when the council met next day, some sharp words

flew among us, as to my usurping an undue authority; and the thanks I

got for my pains was the mortification to see the worthless body

restored to full power and dignity, with no other reward than an

admonition to behave better for the future. Now, I leave it to the

unbiassed judgment of posterity to determine if any public man could be

more ungraciously treated by his colleagues than I was on this occasion.

But, verily, the council had their reward.

The divor Robin Boss being, as I have recorded, reinstated in office,

soon began to play his old tricks. In the course of the week after the

Michaelmas term at which my second provostry ended, he was so

insupportably drunk that he fell head foremost into his drum, which cost

the town five-and-twenty shillings for a new one—an accident that was

not without some satisfaction to me; and I trow I was not sparing in my

derisive commendations on the worth of such a public officer.

Nevertheless, he was still kept on, some befriending him for compassion,

and others as it were to spite me.

But Robin’s good behaviour did not end with breaking the drum, and

costing a new one. In the course of the winter it was his custom to

beat, “Go to bed, Tom,” about ten o’clock at night, and the reveille at

five in the morning. In one of his drunken fits he made a mistake, and

instead of going his rounds as usual at ten o’clock, he had fallen

asleep in a change-house, and waking about the midnight hour in the

terror of some whisky dream, he seized his drum, and running into the

streets, began to strike the fire-beat in the most awful manner.

It was a fine clear frosty moonlight, and the hollow sound of the drum

resounded through the silent streets like thunder. In a moment everybody

was afoot, and the cry of “Whaur is’t? whaur’s the fire?” was heard

echoing from all sides. Robin, quite unconscious that he alone was the

cause of the alarm, still went along beating the dreadful summons. I

heard the noise and rose; but while I was drawing on my stockings in the

chair at the bed-head, and telling Mrs Pawkie to compose herself, for

our houses were all insured, I suddenly recollected that Robin had the

night before neglected to go his rounds at ten o’clock as usual, and the

thought came into my head that the alarm might be one of his inebriated

mistakes; so, instead of dressing myself any further, I went to the

window, and looked out through the glass, without opening it, for, being

in my night-clothes, I was afraid of taking cold.

The street was as throng as on a market day, and every face in the

moonlight was pale with fear. Men and lads were running with their

coats, and carrying their breeches in their hands; wives and maidens

were all asking questions at one another, and even lasses were fleeing

to and fro, like waternymphs with urns, having stoups and pails in their

hands. There was swearing and tearing of men, hoarse with the rage of

impatience, at the tolbooth, getting out the fire-engine from its stance

under the stair; and loud and terrible afar off, and over all, came the

peal of alarm from drunken Robin’s drum.

I could scarcely keep my composity when I beheld and heard all this, for

I was soon thoroughly persuaded of the fact. At last I saw Deacon

Girdwood, the chief advocate and champion of Robin, passing down the

causeway like a demented man, with a red nightcap, and his big-coat on;

for some had cried that the fire was in his yard.

“Deacon,” cried I, opening the window, forgetting, in the jocularity of

the moment, the risk I ran from being so naked; “whaur away sae fast,

deacon?”

The deacon stopped and said, “Is’t out? is’t out?”

“Gang your ways home,” quo’ I, very coolly, “for I hae a notion that a’

this hobleshow’s but the fume of a gill in your friend Robin’s head.”

“It’s no possible!” exclaimed the deacon.

“Possible here or possible there, Mr Girdwood,” quo’ I, “it’s ower cauld

for me to stand talking wi’ you here; we’ll learn the rights o’t in the

morning, so good night;” and with that I pulled down the window. But

scarcely had I done so, when a shout of laughter came gathering up the

street, and soon after poor drunken Robin was brought along by the cuff

of the neck, between two of the town-officers, one of them carrying his

drum. The next day he was put out of office for ever, and folk

recollecting in what manner I had acted towards him before, the outcry

about my arbitrary power was forgotten in the blame that was heaped upon

those who had espoused Robin’s cause against me.

THE AWFUL NIGHT.

BY D. M. MOIR (DELTA).

Ha!—’twas but a dream;

But then so terrible, it shakes my soul!

Cold drops of sweat hang on my trembling flesh;

My blood grows chilly, and I freeze with horror.

—_Richard the Third._

The Fire-King one day rather amorous felt;

He mounted his hot copper filly;

His breeches and boots were of tin, and the belt

Was made of cast-iron, for fear it should melt

With the heat of the copper colt’s belly.

Oh! then there was glitter and fire in each eye,

For two living coals were the symbols;

His teeth were calcined, and his tongue was so dry,

It rattled against them as though you should try

To play the piano on thimbles.

—_Rejected Addresses._

In the course of a fortnight from the time I parted with Maister Glen,

the Lauder carrier, limping Jamie, brought his callant to our shop door

in his hand. He was a tall, slender laddie, some fourteen years old, and

sore grown away from his clothes. There was something genty and delicate

like about him, having a pale, sharp face, blue eyes, a nose like a

hawk’s, and long yellow hair hanging about his haffets, as if barbers

were unco scarce cattle among the howes of the Lammermoor hills. Having

a general experience of human nature, I saw that I would have something

to do towards bringing him into a state of rational civilisation; but,

considering his opportunities, he had been well educated, and I liked

his appearance on the whole not that ill.

To divert him a while, as I did not intend yoking him to work the first

day, I sent out Benjie with him, after giving him some refreshment of

bread and milk, to let him see the town and all the uncos about it. I

told Benjie first to take him to the auld kirk, which is a wonderful

building, steeple and aisle; and as for mason work, far before anything

to be seen or heard tell of in our day; syne to Lugton brig, which is a

grand affair, hanging over the river Esk and the flour-mills like a

rainbow; syne to the Tolbooth, which is a terror to evil-doers, and from

which the Lord preserve us all! syne to the Market, where ye’ll see

lamb, beef, mutton, and veal, hanging up on the cleeks, in roasting and

boiling pieces—spar-rib, jiggot, shoulder, and heuk-bane, in the great

prodigality of abundance; and syne down to the Duke’s gate, by looking

through the bonny white painted iron-staunchels of which ye’ll see the

deer running beneath the green trees; and the palace itself, in the

inside of which dwells one that needs not be proud to call the king his

cousin.

Brawly did I know, that it is a little after a laddie’s being loosed

from his mother’s apron-string, and hurried from home, till the mind can

make itself up to stay among fremit folk; or that the attention can be

roused to anything said or done, however simple in the uptake. So, after

Benjie brought Mungo home again, gey forfaughten and wearied-out like, I

bade the wife give him his four-hours, and told him he might go to his

bed as soon as he liked. Jalousing also, at the same time, that

creatures brought up in the country have strange notions about them with

respect to supernaturals—such as ghosts, brownies, fairies, and

bogles—to say nothing of witches, warlocks, and evil-spirits, I made

Benjie take off his clothes and lie down beside him, as I said, to keep

him warm; but, in plain matter of fact (between friends), that the

callant might sleep sounder, finding himself in a strange bed, and not

very sure as to how the house stood as to the matter of a good name.

Knowing by my own common sense, and from long experience of the ways of

a wicked world, that there is nothing like industry, I went to Mungo’s

bedside in the morning, and wakened him betimes. Indeed, I’m leein’

there; I need not call it wakening him, for Benjie told me, when he was

supping his parritch out of his luggie at breakfast-time, that he never

winked an eye all night, and that sometimes he heard him greetin’ to

himself in the dark—such and so powerful is our love of home and the

force of natural affection. Howsoever, as I was saying, I took him ben

the house with me down to the workshop, where I had begun to cut out a

pair of nankeen trowsers for a young lad that was to be married the week

after to a servant-maid of Mr Wiggie’s,—a trig quean, that afterwards

made him a good wife, and the father of a numerous small family.

Speaking of nankeen, I would advise everyone, as a friend, to buy the

Indian, and not the British kind, the expense of outlay being ill

hained, even at sixpence a-yard—the latter not standing the washing, but

making a man’s legs, at a distance, look like a yellow yorline.

It behoved me now as a maister, bent on the improvement of his prentice,

to commence learning Mungo some few of the mysteries of our trade; so

having showed him the way to crook his hough (example is better than

precept, as James Batter observes), I taught him the plan of holding the

needle; and having fitted his middle-finger with a bottomless thimble of

our own sort, I set him to sewing the cotton-lining into one leg,

knowing that it was a part not very particular, and not very likely to

be seen; so that the matter was not great, whether the stitching was

exactly regular, or rather in the zigzag line. As is customary with all

new beginners, he made a desperate awkward hand at it, and of which I

would of course have said nothing, but that he chanced to brog his

thumb, and completely soiled the whole piece of work with the stains of

blood; which, for one thing, could not wash out without being seen; and,

for another, was an unlucky omen to happen to a marriage garment.

Every man should be on his guard: this was a lesson I learned when I was

in the volunteers, at the time Buonaparte was expected to land down at

Dunbar. Luckily for me in this case, I had, by some foolish mistake or

another, made an allowance of a half yard over and above what I found I

could manage to shape on; so I boldly made up my mind to cut out the

piece altogether, it being in the back seam. In that business I trust I

showed the art of a good tradesman, having managed to do it so neatly

that it could not be noticed without the narrowest inspection; and,

having the advantage of a covering by the coat flaps, had indeed no

chance of being so, except on desperately windy days.

In the week succeeding that on which this unlucky mischance happened, an

accident almost as bad befell, though not to me, further than that every

one is bound by the ten commandments, to say nothing of his own

conscience, to take a part in the afflictions that befall their

door-neighbours.

When the voice of man was whisht, and all was sunk in the sound sleep of

midnight, it chanced that I was busy dreaming that I was sitting, one of

the spectators, looking at another playacting business. Before coming

this length, howsoever, I should by right have observed, that ere going

to bed I had eaten for my supper part of a black pudding and two

sausages, that widow Grassie had sent in a compliment to my wife, being

a genteel woman, and mindful of her friends—so that I must have had some

sort of nightmare, and not been exactly in my seven senses, else I could

not have been even dreaming of siccan a place. Well, as I was saying, in

the play-house I thought I was; and all at once I heard Maister Wiggie,

like one crying in the wilderness, hallooing with a loud voice through

the window, bidding me flee from the snares, traps, and gin-nets of the

Evil One, and from the terrors of the wrath to come. I was in a terrible

funk; and just as I was trying to rise from the seat, that seemed

somehow glued to my body and would not let me, to reach down my hat,

which, with its glazed cover, was hanging on a pin to one side, my face

all red, and glowing like a fiery furnace, for shame of being a second

time caught in deadly sin, I heard the kirk-bell jow-jowing, as if it

was the last trump summoning sinners to their long and black account;

and Maister Wiggie thrust in his arm in his desperation, in a whirlwind

of passion, claughting hold of my hand like a vice, to drag me out head

foremost. Even in my sleep, howsoever, it appears that I like free-will,

and ken that there are no slaves in our blessed country; so I tried with

all my might to pull against him, and gave his arm such a drive back,

that he seemed to bleach over on his side, and raised a hullaballoo of a

yell, that not only wakened me, but made me start upright in my bed.

For all the world such a scene! My wife was roaring “Murder,

murder!—Mansie Wauch, will ye no wauken?—Murder, murder! ye’ve felled me

wi’ your nieve,—ye’ve felled me outright,—I’m gone for evermair,—my hale

teeth are doun my throat. Will ye no wauken, Mansie Wauch?—will ye no

wauken?—Murder, murder!—I say murder, murder, murder, murder!”

“Who’s murdering us?” cried I, throwing my cowl back on the pillow, and

rubbing my eyes in the hurry of a tremendous fright.—“Wha’s murdering

us?—where’s the robbers?—send for the town officer!”

“O Mansie!—O Mansie!” said Nanse, in a kind of greeting tone, “I daursay

ye’ve felled me—but no matter, now I’ve gotten ye roused. Do ye no see

the hale street in a bleeze of flames? Bad is the best; we maun either

be burned to death, or out of house and hall, without a rag to cover our

nakedness. Where’s my son?—where’s my dear bairn, Benjie?”

In a most awful consternation, I jumped at this out to the middle of the

floor, hearing the causeway all in an uproar of voices; and seeing the

flichtering of the flames glancing on the houses in the opposite side of

the street, all the windows of which were filled with the heads of

half-naked folks in round-eared mutches or Kilmarnocks, their mouths

open, and their eyes staring with fright; while the sound of the

fire-engine, rattling through the streets like thunder, seemed like the

dead cart of the plague come to hurry away the corpses of the deceased

for interment in the kirkyard.

Never such a spectacle was witnessed in this world of sin and sorrow

since the creation of Adam. I pulled up the window and looked out; and,

lo and behold! the very next house to our own was all in a lowe from

cellar to garret; the burning joists hissing and cracking like mad; and

the very wind blew along as warm as if it had been out of the mouth of a

baker’s oven!

It was a most awful spectacle! more by token to me, who was likely to be

intimately concerned with it; and beating my brow with my clenched nieve

like a distracted creature, I saw that the labour of my whole life was

likely to go for nought, and me to be a ruined man; all the earnings of

my industry being laid out on my stock-in-trade, and on the plenishing

of our bit house. The darkness of the latter days came over my spirit

like a vision before the prophet Isaiah; and I could see nothing in the

years to come but beggary and starvation; myself a fallen old man, with

an out-at-the-elbows coat, a greasy hat, and a bald pow, hirpling over a

staff, requeeshting an awmous; Nanse a broken-hearted beggar wife, torn

down to tatters, and weeping like Rachel when she thought on better

days; and poor wee Benjie going from door to door with a meal-pock on

his back.

The thought first dung me stupid, and then drove me to desperation; and

not even minding the dear wife of my bosom, that had fainted away as

dead as a herring, I pulled on my trowsers like mad, and rushed out into

the street, bareheaded and barefoot as the day that Lucky Bringthereout

dragged me into the world.

The crowd saw in the twinkling of an eyeball that I was a desperate man,

fierce as Sir William Wallace, and not to be withstood by gentle or

simple. So most of them made way for me; they that tried to stop me

finding it a bad job, being heeled over from right to left, on the broad

of their backs, like flounders, without respect of age or person; some

old women that were obstrepulous being gey sore hurt, and one of them

has a pain in her hainch even to this day. When I had got almost to the

doorcheek of the burning house, I found one grupping me by the back like

grim death; and in looking over my shoulder, who was it but Nanse

herself, that, rising up from her faint, had pursued me like a

whirlwind. It was a heavy trial, but my duty to myself in the first

place, and to my neighbours in the second, roused me up to withstand it;

so, making a spend like a greyhound, I left the hindside of my shirt in

her grasp, like Joseph’s garment in the nieve of Potiphar’s wife, and up

the stairs head-foremost among the flames.

Mercy keep us all! what a sight for mortal man to glower at with his

living eyes! The bells were tolling amid the dark, like a summons from

above for the parish of Dalkeith to pack off to another world; the drums

were beat-beating as if the French were coming, thousand on thousand, to

kill, slay, and devour every maid and mother’s son of us; the

fire-engine pump-pump-pumping like daft, showering the water like

rainbows, as if the windows of heaven were opened, and the days of old

Noah come back again; and the rabble throwing the good furniture over

the windows like onion peelings, where it either felled the folk below,

or was dung to a thousand shivers on the causey. I cried to them for the

love of goodness to make search in the beds, in case there might be any

weans there, human life being still more precious than human means; but

not a living soul was seen but a cat, which, being raised and wild with

the din, would on no consideration allow itself to be catched. Jacob

Dribble found that to his cost; for right or wrong, having a drappie in

his head, he swore like a trooper that he would catch her, and carry her

down beneath his oxter; so forward he weired her into a corner,

crouching on his hunkers. He had much better have let it alone; for it

fuffed over his shoulder like wildfire, and, scarting his back all the

way down, jumped like a lamplighter head-foremost through the flames,

where, in the raging and roaring of the devouring element, its pitiful

cries were soon hushed to silence for ever and ever.

At long and last, a woman’s howl was heard on the street, lamenting,

like Hagar over young Ishmael in the wilderness of Beersheba, and crying

that her old grannie, that was a lameter, and had been bedridden for

four years come the Martinmas following, was burning to a cinder in the

fore-garret. My heart was like to burst within me when I heard this

dismal news, remembering that I myself had once an old mother, that was

now in the mools; so I brushed up the stair like a hatter, and burst

open the door of the fore-garret—for in the hurry I could not find the

sneck, and did not like to stand on ceremony. I could not see my finger

before me, and did not know my right hand from the left, for the smoke;

but I groped round and round, though the reek mostly cut my breath, and

made me cough at no allowance, till at last I catched hold of something

cold and clammy, which I gave a pull, not knowing what it was, but found

out to be the old wife’s nose. I cried out as loud as I was able for the

poor creature to hoise herself up into my arms; but, receiving no

answer, I discovered in a moment that she was suffocated, the foul air

having gone down her wrong hause; and, though I had aye a terror at

looking at, far less handling, a dead corpse, there was something brave

within me at the moment, my blood being up; so I caught hold of her by

the shoulders, and hurling her with all my might out of her bed, got her

lifted on my back heads and thraws in the manner of a boll of meal, and

away as fast as my legs could carry me.

There was a providence in this haste; for ere I was half-way down the

stair, the floor fell with a thud like thunder; and such a combustion of

soot, stour, and sparks arose, as was never seen or heard tell of in the

memory of man since the day that Samson pulled over the pillars in the

house of Dagon, and smoored all the mocking Philistines as flat as

flounders. For the space of a minute I was as blind as a beetle, and was

like to be choked for want of breath; however, as the dust began to

clear up, I saw an open window, and hallooed down to the crowd for the

sake of mercy to bring a ladder, to save the lives of two perishing

fellow-creatures, for now my own was also in imminent jeopardy. They

were long of coming, and I did not know what to do; so thinking that the

old wife, as she had not spoken, was maybe dead already, I was once

determined just to let her drop down upon the street, but I knew that

the so doing would have cracked every bone in her body, and the glory of

my bravery would thus have been worse than lost. I persevered,

therefore, though I was ready to fall down under the dead weight, she

not being able to help herself, and having a deal of beef in her skin

for an old woman of eighty; but I got a lean, by squeezing her a wee

between me and the wall.

I thought they would never have come, for my shoeless feet were all

bruised and bleeding from the crunched lime and the splinters of broken

stones; but, at long and last, a ladder was hoisted up, and having

fastened a kinch of ropes beneath her oxters, I let her slide down over

the upper step, by way of a pillyshee, having the satisfaction of seeing

her safely landed in the arms of seven old wives, that were waiting with

a cosey warm blanket below. Having accomplished this grand manœuvre,

wherein I succeeded in saving the precious life of a woman of eighty,

that had been four long years bedridden, I tripped down the steps myself

like a nine-year-old, and had the pleasure, when the roof fell in, to

know that I for one had done my duty; and that, to the best of my

knowledge, no living creature, except the poor cat, had perished within

the jaws of the devouring element.

But bide a wee; the work was, as yet, only half done. The fire was still

roaring and raging, every puff of wind that blew through the black

firmament driving the red sparks high into the air, where they died away

like the tail of a comet, or the train of a sky-rocket; the joisting

crazing, cracking, and tumbling down; and now and then the bursting cans

playing flee in a hundred flinders from the chimney-heads. One would

have naturally enough thought that our engine could have drowned out a

fire of any kind whatsoever in half a second, scores of folks driving

about with pitcherfuls of water, and scaling half of it on one another

and the causey in their hurry; but, woe’s me! it did not play puh on the

red-het stones that whizzed like iron in a smiddy trough; so, as soon as

it was darkness and smoke in one place, it was fire and fury in another.

My anxiety was great. Seeing that I had done my best for my neighbours,

it behoved me now, in my turn, to try and see what I could do for

myself; so, notwithstanding the remonstrances of my friend James

Batter—whom Nanse, knowing I had bare feet, had sent out to seek me,

with a pair of shoon in his hand, and who, in scratching his head,

mostly rugged out every hair of his wig with sheer vexation—I ran off,

and mounted the ladder a second time, and succeeded, after muckle

speeling, in getting upon the top of the wall; where, having a bucket

slung up to me by means of a rope, I swashed down such showers on the

top of the flames, that I soon did more good, in the space of five

minutes, than the engine and the ten men, that were all in a broth of

perspiration with pumping it, did the whole night over; to say nothing

of the multitude of drawers of water, men, wives, and weans, with their

cuddies, leglins, pitchers, pails, and water-stoups; having the

satisfaction, in a short time, to observe everything getting as black as

the crown of my hat, and the gable of my own house becoming as cool as a

cucumber.

Being a man of method, and acquainted with business, I could have liked

to have given a finishing stitch to my work before descending the

ladder; but, losh me! sic a whingeing, girning, greeting, and roaring

got up all of a sudden, as was never seen or heard of since Bowed

Joseph[23] raised the mealmob, and burned Johnnie Wilkes in effigy, and,

looking down, I saw Benjie, the bairn of my own heart, and the callant

Glen, my apprentice on trial, that had both been as sound as tops till

this blessed moment, standing in their nightgowns and their little red

cowls, rubbing their eyes, cowering with cold and fright, and making an

awful uproar, crying on me to come down and not be killed. The voice of

Benjie especially pierced through and through my heart, like a two-edged

sword, and I could on no manner of account suffer myself to bear it any

longer, as I jaloused the bairn would have gone into convulsion fits if

I had not heeded him; so, making a sign to them to be quiet, I came my

ways down, taking hold of one in ilka hand, which must have been a

fatherly sight to the spectators that saw us. After waiting on the crown

of the causey for half-an-hour, to make sure that the fire was

extinguished, and all tight and right, I saw the crowd scaling, and

thought it best to go in too, carrying the two youngsters along with me.

When I began to move off, however, siccan a cheering of the multitude

got up as would have deafened a cannon; and, though I say it myself, who

should not say it, they seemed struck with a sore amazement at my heroic

behaviour, following me with loud cheers, even to the threshold of my

own door.

Footnote 23:

A noted Edinburgh character.

From this folk should condescend to take a lesson, seeing that, though

the world is a bitter bad world, yet that good deeds are not only a

reward to themselves, but call forth the applause of Jew and Gentile;

for the sweet savour of my conduct, on this memorable night, remained in

my nostrils for goodness knows the length of time, many praising my

brave humanity in public companies and assemblies of the people, such as

strawberry ploys, council meetings, dinner parties, and so forth; and

many in private conversation at their own ingle-cheek, by way of

two-handed crack; in stage-coach confab, and in causey talk in the

forenoon, before going in to take their meridians. Indeed, between

friends, the business proved in the upshot of no small advantage to me,

bringing to me a sowd of strange faces, by way of customers, both gentle

and simple, that I verily believe had not so muckle as ever heard of my

name before, and giving me many a coat to cut, and cloth to shape, that,

but for my gallant behaviour on the fearsome night aforesaid, would

doubtless have been cut, sewed, and shaped by other hands. Indeed,

considering the great noise the thing made in the world, it is no wonder

that every one was anxious to have a garment of wearing apparel made by

the individual same hands that had succeeded, under Providence, in

saving the precious life of an old woman of eighty, that had been

bedridden, some say, four years come Yule, and others, come Martinmas.

When we got to the ingle-side, and, barring the door, saw that all was

safe, it was now three in the morning; so we thought it by much the best

way of managing, not to think of sleeping any more, but to be on the

look-out—as we aye used to be when walking sentry in the volunteers—in

case the flames should, by ony mischancy accident or other, happen to

break out again. My wife blamed my hardihood muckle, and the rashness

with which I had ventured at once to places where even masons and

slaters were afraid to put foot on; yet I saw, in the interim, that she

looked on me with a prouder eye—knowing herself the helpmate of one that

had courageously risked his neck, and every bone in his skin, in the

cause of humanity. I saw this as plain as a pikestaff, as, with one of

her kindest looks, she insisted on my putting on a better happing to

screen me from the cold, and on my taking something comfortable inwardly

towards the dispelling of bad consequences. So, after half a minute’s

stand-out, by way of refusal like, I agreed to a cupful of het-pint, as

I thought it would be a thing Mungo Glen might never have had the good

fortune to have tasted, and as it might operate by way of a cordial on

the gallant Benjie, who kept aye smally and in a dwining way. No sooner

said than done, and off Nanse brushed in a couple of hurries to make the

het-pint.

After the small beer was put into the pan to boil, we found, to our

great mortification, that there was no eggs in the house, and Benjie was

sent out with a candle to the hen-house, to see if any of the hens had

laid since gloaming, and fetch what he could get. In the middle of the

meantime, I was expatiating to Mungo on what taste it would have, and

how he had never seen anything finer than it would be, when in ran

Benjie, all out of breath, and his face as pale as a dish-clout.

“What’s the matter, Benjie, what’s the matter?” said I to him, rising up

from my chair in a great hurry of a fright. “Has onybody killed ye? or

is the fire broken out again? or has the French landed? or have ye seen

a ghost? or are”—

“Eh, crifty!” cried Benjie, coming till his speech, “they’re a’ aff—cock

and hens and a’; there’s naething left but the rotten nest-egg in the

corner!”

This was an awful dispensation. In the midst of the desolation of the

fire—such is the depravity of human nature—some ne’er-do-weels had taken

advantage of my absence to break open the hen-house door; and our whole

stock of poultry, the cock along with our seven hens—two of them tappit,

and one muffled—were carried away bodily, stoop and roop.

On this subject, howsoever, I shall say no more, but merely observe in

conclusion, that, as to our het-pint, we were obliged to make the best

of a bad bargain, making up with whisky what it wanted in eggs; though

our banquet could not be called altogether a merry one, the joys of our

escape from the horrors of the fire being damped, as it were by a wet

blanket, on account of the nefarious pillaging of our hen-house.

ROSE JAMIESON.

I looked on thy death-cold face, my lassie,—

I looked on thy death-cold face;

Thou seemed a lily new cut i’ the bud,

And fading at its place.

Thy lips were ruddy and calm, my lassie,—

Thy lips were ruddy and calm;

But gane was the holy breath o’ heaven,

To sing the evening psalm.—_Allan Cunningham._

Andrew Jamieson was a thorough-paced Cameronian. He held hats in

abomination, as they savoured of Erastianism; abhorred boots, because

the troopers of 1685 wore them while galloping over the wilds of

Dumfriesshire in quest of the persecuted remnant; testified against the

use of “fanners” in the process of separating the chaff from the wheat,

as a tacit renunciation of the doctrine of a superintending Providence.

He judged of the excellences or defects of a sermon by its length; and

on that of prayer by the colloquial familiarity which the clergyman held

with the Deity; pronounced on his orthodoxy by the complexion of his

text; and lifted up his voice against gowns, bands, and white

pocket-handkerchiefs, as frippery belonging to the scarlet lady.

Academical honours were his loathing, as he knew that, like plenary

indulgences, they are, and were, to be had for money; nor would his

prejudice allow him to distinguish between the man who received a

D.D.-ship as the honourable reward of a life devoted to sacred

literature, and him who carried it by lodging a professor’s wife and

daughter during the race week.

Sermons in MS., though they had been the composition of a Chalmers, and

read with the classic elocution of a Thomson, appeared to him as

sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal; or, in his own vernacular phrase,

“in at the tae lug, and out at the tither.” ’Twas the pride of his heart

to travel twenty or thirty miles on foot to hear a favourite preacher;

or to attend sacramental occasions in the air, in unfrequented

districts, in imitation of the heroes of the covenant, who scorned to

square their creed to the mandates of a tyrannical government; and I

verily believe that a slight touch of persecution would have added to

his enjoyments in this sublunary sphere; but this, as he frequently

hinted, was too great a privilege to hope for from a government “neither

cold nor hot.”

Andrew was a small farmer in the uplands of Nithsdale, had been prudent

to a proverb in worldly matters, and consequently was rich, not only in

his hopes of futurity, but in the more tangible currency of this sinful

world. Frugality had been one of his most prominent characteristics; and

while many less wealthy neighbours sported broad cloth at fairs and

preachings, according to his inimitable countryman—

His garb was gude gray hodden,—

His bonnet was a broad one;

which garb, and which bonnet, had been familiar to the frequenters of

“tent preachings” for the greater part of forty years. Such was the

father of Rose Jamieson, the beautiful, the meek, the modest Rose

Jamieson, whose fame extended for many a mile round her father’s

dwelling; and whose fortune perhaps lent her an additional charm in the

eyes of the less worthy of her suitors. Beautiful women have been so

often described by master-spirits, that it would be presumptuous in me

to attempt it. I entreat the reader, therefore, to place before his

mind’s eye Milton’s Eve, or Thomson’s Lavinia, or Campbell’s Gertrude,

or some of the still more glorious creations of Scott or Shakspeare;

’twill serve my purpose a thousand times better, and save me a world of

trouble. Having thus briefly disposed of her bodily and mental

attractions, it is needless to add that she was sought in marriage by

the flower of the peasantry, and even by many above that rank in life,

but shrunk from their society, as the sensitive plant shrinks from the

human touch, or the sunflower when its idol withdraws to his ocean bed.

Her pursuits were of an intellectual nature. She loved literature

immensely; and though her parent was sufficiently rigid and unbending in

general, relative to what he designated the “vanities,” yet he gladly

supplied her with the means of gratifying her taste for books, and even

condescended at intervals to direct her in the choice of their “mute

friends;” but his selections generally consisted of those tremendous

folios of divinity, both doctrinal and controversial, which even yet may

be seen on the shelves of our more unsophisticated peasantry; and her

masculine mind was not slow in making herself mistress of their

voluminous contents.

By a careful perusal, however, of the immaculate Volume which the great

Founder of Christianity left as a guide to His followers, she perceived

that her father’s favourite authors did not always resemble their Divine

Master in the milder virtues—such as charity, which thinketh no evil;

brotherly kindness, which is ever and anon ready to bear with an erring

being; and that humility of spirit which is ever ready to esteem another

better than one’s self. As her mind got emancipated from the thraldom of

the austere dogmas which had been inculcated on it from infancy, she saw

a very great deal to admire, nay, to love, in the doctrines of those

very persons whom her father had branded with the name of “prelatists”

and “malignants;” and hence she began to examine more closely into the

merits of the controversy which raged with so much violence between

persons worshipping the same God, through the mediation of the same

Redeemer.

The result was, that she saw much to praise and much to blame on both

sides, and she endeavoured to cover the failings of either party with

the mantle of Christian love. That many of the Episcopalian clergy of

that unhappy period, when the lieges were forced to attend the parish

church at the point of the bayonet, disgraced their sacred profession,

and brought obloquy on the holy name by which they were called, can

neither be denied nor disputed. That some of them acted like

incarnations of the devil, will not be controverted even in our own

times, when truth, like the meridian sun, has dissipated the clouds of

error and prejudice; but it is equally true, that there were men among

them who adorned their profession by a walk and conversation becoming

the Gospel, and who lamented in secret the evils which their

circumscribed influence could not avert. Who does not revere the memory

of the great and good Leighton, whose philanthropy extended to all

mankind—whose whole existence was a living commentary on the great

doctrine which was ever on his lips—namely, that the Founder of

Christianity came to proclaim “peace on earth, good-will to men?” After

the Revolution, when Presbyterianism again unfurled her banners to the

mountain-breezes of our country—banners which, alas! had been wofully

trampled under foot, and in defending which the best blood in Scotland

had been poured out like water—the son of one of the ejected curates

settled in the parish of —— as a farmer, retaining, however, the

religious principles in which he had been educated, and which were now

doubly dear to him in the hour of his church’s adversity.

Like his father, he was a Christian, not only in theory, but in

practice; his faith was evinced, not by vague declamation, not by

ultra-sanctimoniousness, but by its genuine fruits—namely, good works.

Son succeeded sire in the same district and the same principles; and it

seemed that a peculiar blessing had descended on the whole race; as

whatever things were lovely, or of good report, these things they did;

and the promise to the meek was fulfilled them, for they literally

“inherited the earth.”

Their flocks and herds were numerous; their corn and pasture fields

ample;—they enlarged their borders, and, at the time this sketch

commences, they mingled with the aristocracy of the county.

The youngest son of a branch of this family had studied at the

University of Oxford, with a view to the Church of which his family had

been such distinguished members. He was a youth not only of ardent

piety, but of intense application; he fearlessly grappled with the most

abstruse subjects; he divested philosophy of its jargon, and divinity of

its verbosity; and nothing was so dear to his heart as when he

discovered truth like a diamond amidst the heaps of rubbish which had

been accumulating for ages.

But, alas! like the gentle Kirke White, while his mind was expanding and

luxuriating amid the treasures of Greece and Rome, and the still more

sacred stores of Palestine, his body was declining with corresponding

rapidity; therefore, with attenuated frame and depressed spirits, he

sought once more his native vale, to inhale health with its invigorating

breezes.

Secluded from the great world, and debarred from pursuing his favourite

studies, he sought the society of Rose Jamieson as an antidote to that

_ennui_ which will inevitably obtrude itself on the mind amid the

solitudes of a thinly peopled country. The great poet of nature has told

us that the recluse may find—

Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

And I have no doubt that the amiable and interesting student would have

been sufficiently charmed with the beauties of external nature, and

instructed by her eloquence, had there not been “metal more attractive”

in the beautiful being who shared his walks and his friendship.

The lovely Rose Jamieson became his ministering angel; her smile chased

away the languor that brooded over his intelligent countenance; her

sweet voice quickened his sluggish pulse, and made his heart thrill with

an indescribable joy—a heretofore unknown rapture; her sunny glances

diffused life, light, and gladness through his whole frame.

The golden hours on angel wing

flew over them; the summer day became too short for them;

their walks became Eden, and their day-dreams Elysium; they

loved—fervently—mutually.

Soon as morning gleamed on the mountains, the fond pair were to be seen

brushing the dew from the clover, by the banks of the romantic Nith, or

climbing the daisied uplands with elastic steps and buoyant hearts—for

the mountain air had already renovated the youth’s enfeebled frame, and

hope had animated his spirits, and given vivacity to his conversation.

They expatiated on the beauty and sublimity of the scenery around

them—on the power and goodness of the Deity, displayed alike in the

creation of the sun in the firmament, and the production of the myriads

of wild-flowers which enamelled the green sward beneath their feet. The

rushing of the mighty river to a still mightier ocean, and the diamond

dewdrop hid in the petal of the half-opened rose; the wide-spreading and

venerable oak of a century, and the lowly gowan of yesterday, afforded

inexhaustible themes for discussion; and the conclusion which invariably

forced itself on their attention, was that of the pious Addison—

In Reason’s ear they all rejoice,

And utter forth a glorious voice;

For ever singing, as they shine,

“The hand that made us is divine.”

The summer months glided over the youthful pair imperceptibly; but with

returning health, imperative duty impelled the enamoured scholar to

resume his studies; to resign the delicious society of her he loved for

the musty tome, the midnight lamp, and the emulation approaching

hostility, within the time-hallowed walls of Oxford. Already had his

trunks been packed, the day of his departure fixed, and his adieus

uttered—all but _one_.

They met for this purpose one Sabbath evening in a sequestered glen; the

larch and laburnum formed a rude arbour over them, and a nameless

streamlet murmured at their feet. The stock-doves uttered mournful

cadences, and the plovers over the neighbouring heath sent forth ominous

wailings. The early autumnal breeze moaned through the thick foliage,

and the rustle of the overhanging leaves gave a dreary response. ’Twas a

sad hour; they vowed eternal fidelity—mingled their tears—exchanged

Bibles—and parted—he to the crowded haunts of science, she to the

solitude of her own little apartment, to brood over the waking dreams of

bliss which she had so lately experienced. On opening the little Bible

which she had received from the hands of her lover, she found the

following text written on the fly-leaf, in a tremulous hand:—“Thou shalt

not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths,” and

she could trace, moreover, certain globular stains, the cause of which

was not ill to define. “Yes!” she exclaimed, while the tears started

from her large blue eyes, “I will perform all I have vowed to thee, to

the very letter. I will love thee as woman never loved—in sorrow and in

sickness, in poverty and in exile—nay, in death itself I will love thee;

neither shall the influence of wealth, rank, talent, manly beauty, nor

shall the authority, which preponderates more than all these together,

even that of my only parent, ever alienate my affections from thee, thou

chosen of my heart!”

At this moment the door was opened, and her father stood before her. A

harsh expression pervaded his rigid countenance; there was a stern

inflexibility in his eye, and his lip quivered with emotion; he held his

staff with a convulsive grasp, and his whole frame trembled with

conflicting passions.

“Daughter,” said he, in a tremulous and hollow voice, “daughter, I had

indeed suspected that the corbie was attempting to gain the dove’s

nest—that the descendant of the malignant, with malicious wile, was

endeavouring to secure an interest in thine affections, and bitterly do

I rue that I did not put a stop to it sooner. But little did I think

that thou, the child of my love, the only daughter of thy sainted

mother, whom I have cherished like the apple of mine eye, wouldst have

so far forgotten thy duty as to vow love and obedience to a scion of an

abjured prelatical stock, against whom thy father and thy father’s

fathers have lifted up their testimony, since the glorious carved work

of the sanctuary has been defaced by their unhallowed hands. Did they

not shed the blood of the saints in torrents? Were they not butchered in

the face of the sun, and in cold blood? And did not their cries

enter—but my blood curdles to enumerate the half of their enormities,

and I shall therefore refrain from adverting to branding, mutilation,

fine, imprisonment, exile, and death. Daughter,” said he, in a

sepulchral voice, “thou must break off all intercourse and connection

with this young man instantly; between us there is an impassable gulf.

And if thou perseverest in thine ill-starred choice; if thou art

disobedient to thy hoary-headed father; if thou cherish his image in thy

bosom, or even at some future period, when I am gathered to my fathers,

become his wife, I shall bequeath thee my malison for thy dowry, and my

ban for thine inheritance.”

So saying, he flung himself out of the chamber in a paroxysm of rage.

His beauteous daughter, meanwhile, had become inanimate on the couch.

The usual remedies in these cases were promptly resorted to; and after a

short interval, she opened her eyes, but it was only to gaze on vacancy.

The “silver cord was loosed, and the golden bow was broken.” Her reason

had fled, and never returned. In one month she was where the wicked

cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest. Her father,

though he deemed he had only done an imperative duty, could not

withstand the shock. Nature sunk beneath the unlooked-for calamity; he

mourned, and he _would not_ be comforted. In a few weeks he breathed his

last; and another tenant was added to the house appointed for all

living.

But who may paint the misery of the unhappy youth when he learnt the

harrowing intelligence? Sorrow is sacred, and we shall not enter into

its detail. Suffice it to say, that he gave up his studies, returned to

his native vale with a broken heart; and in the words of his celebrated

countryman (who no doubt had the pair in his mind’s eye when he penned

the touchingly simple ballad), he is reported to have said—

Low there thou lies, my lassie,

Low there thou lies;

A bonnier form ne’er went to the yird,

Nor frae it will arise!

There’s nought but dust now mine, lassie,

There’s nought but dust now mine;

My soul’s with thee in the cauld, cauld grave,

And why should I stay behin’?

A NIGHT AT THE HERRING FISHING.

BY HUGH MILLER.

In the latter end of August 1819, I went out to the fishing then

prosecuted on Guilliam in a Cromarty boat. The evening was remarkably

pleasant. A low breeze from the west scarcely ruffled the surface of the

frith, which was varied in every direction by unequal stripes and

patches of a dead calmness. The bay of Cromarty, burnished by the rays

of the declining sun until it glowed like a sheet of molten fire, lay

behind, winding in all its beauty beneath purple hills and jutting

headlands; while before stretched the wide extent of the Moray Frith,

speckled with fleets of boats which had lately left their several ports,

and were now all sailing in one direction. The point to which they were

bound was the bank of Guilliam, which, seen from betwixt the Sutors,

seemed to verge on the faint blue line of the horizon; and the fleets

which had already arrived on it had, to the naked eye, the appearance of

a little rough-edged cloud resting on the water. As we advanced, this

cloud of boats grew larger and darker; and soon after sunset, when the

bank was scarcely a mile distant, it assumed the appearance of a thick

leafless wood covering a low brown island.

The tide, before we left the shore, had risen high on the beach, and was

now beginning to recede. Aware of this, we lowered sail several hundred

yards to the south of the fishing ground; and after determining the

point from whence the course of the current would drift us direct over

the bank, we took down the mast, cleared the hinder part of the boat,

and began to cast out the nets. Before the Inlaw appeared in the line of

the Gaelic Chapel (the landmark by which the southernmost extremity of

Guilliam is ascertained), the whole drift was thrown overboard and made

fast to the swing. Night came on. The sky assumed a dead and leaden hue.

A low dull mist roughened the outline of the distant hills, and in some

places blotted them out from the landscape. The faint breeze that had

hitherto scarcely been felt now roughened the water, which was of a dark

blue colour, approaching to black. The sounds which predominated were in

unison with the scene. The almost measured dash of the waves against the

sides of the boat and the faint rustle of the breeze were incessant;

while the low dull moan of the surf breaking on the distant beach, and

the short sudden cry of an aquatic fowl of the diving species,

occasionally mingled with the sweet though rather monotonous notes of a

Gaelic song. “It’s ane o’ the Gairloch fishermen,” said our skipper;

“puir folk, they’re aye singin’ an’ thinkin’ o’ the Hielands.”

Our boat, as the tides were not powerful, drifted slowly over the bank.

The buoys stretched out from the bows in an unbroken line. There was no

sign of fish, and the boatmen, after spreading the sail over the beams,

laid themselves down on it. The scene was at the time so new to me, and,

though of a somewhat melancholy cast, so pleasing, that I stayed up. A

singular appearance attracted my notice. “How,” said I to one of the

boatmen, who a moment before had made me an offer of his greatcoat, “how

do you account for that calm silvery spot on the water, which moves at

such a rate in the line of our drift?” He started up. A moment after he

called on the others to rise, and then replied, “That moving speck of

calm water covers a shoal of herrings. If it advances a hundred yards

farther in that direction, we shall have some employment for you.” This

piece of information made me regard the little patch, which, from the

light it caught, and the blackness of the surrounding water, seemed a

bright opening in a dark sky, with considerable interest. It moved

onward with increased velocity. It came in contact with the line of the

drift, and three of the buoys immediately sunk. A few minutes were

suffered to elapse, and we then commenced hauling. The two strongest of

the crew, as is usual, were stationed at the cork, the two others at the

ground baulk. My assistance, which I readily tendered, was pronounced

unnecessary, so I hung over the gunwale watching the nets as they

approached the side of the boat. The three first, from the phosphoric

light of the water, appeared as if bursting into flames of a pale green

colour. The fourth was still brighter, and glittered through the waves

while it was yet several fathoms away, reminding me of an intensely

bright sheet of the aurora borealis. As it approached the side, the pale

green of the phosphoric matter appeared as if mingled with large flakes

of snow. It contained a body of fish. “A white horse! a white horse!”

exclaimed one of the men at the cork baulk; “lend us a haul.” I

immediately sprung aft, laid hold on the rope, and commenced hauling. In

somewhat less than half an hour we had all the nets on board, and rather

more than twelve barrels of herrings.

The night had now become so dark, that we could scarcely discern the

boats which lay within gunshot of our own; and we had no means of

ascertaining the position of the bank except by sounding. The lead was

cast, and soon after the nets shot a second time. The skipper’s bottle

was next produced, and a dram of whisky sent round in a tin measure

containing nearly a gill. We then folded down the sail, which had been

rolled up to make way for the herrings, and were soon fast asleep.

Ten years have elapsed since I laid myself down on this couch, and I was

not then so accustomed to a rough bed as I am now, when I can look back

on my wanderings as a journeyman mason over a considerable part of both

the Lowlands and Highlands of Scotland. About midnight I awoke quite

chill, and all over sore with the hard beams and sharp rivets of the

boat. Well, thought I, this is the tax I pay for my curiosity. I rose

and crept softly over the sail to the bows, where I stood, and where, in

the singular beauty of the scene, which was of a character as different

from that I had lately witnessed as is possible to conceive, I soon lost

all sense of every feeling that was not pleasure. The breeze had died

into a perfect calm. The heavens were glowing with stars, and the sea,

from the smoothness of the surface, appeared a second sky, as bright and

starry as the other, but with this difference, that all its stars

appeared comets. There seemed no line of division at the horizon, which

rendered the allusion more striking. The distant hills appeared a chain

of dark thundery clouds sleeping in the heavens. Tn short, the scene was

one of the strangest I ever witnessed; and the thoughts and imaginations

which it suggested were of a character as singular. I looked at the boat

as it appeared in the dim light of midnight, a dark irregularly-shaped

mass; I gazed on the sky of stars above, and the sky of comets below,

and imagined myself in the centre of space, far removed from the earth

and every other world—the solitary inhabitant of a planetary fragment.

This allusion, too romantic to be lasting, was dissipated by an incident

which convinced me that I had not yet left the world. A crew of south

shore fishermen, either by accident or design, had shot their nets right

across those of another boat, and, in disentangling them, a quarrel

ensued. Our boat lay more than half a mile from the scene of contention,

but I could hear, without being particularly attentive, that on the one

side there were terrible threats of violence, immediate and bloody; and

on the other, threats of the still more terrible pains and penalties of

the law. In a few minutes, however, the entangled nets were freed, and

the roar of altercation gradually sunk into a silence as dead as that

which had preceded it.

An hour before sunrise, I was somewhat disheartened to find the view on

every side bounded by a dense low bank of fog, which hung over the

water, while the central firmament remained blue and cloudless. The

neighbouring boats appeared through the mist huge misshapen things,

manned by giants. We commenced hauling, and found in one of the nets a

small rock-cod and a half-starved whiting, which proved the whole of our

draught. I was informed by the fishermen, that even when the shoal is

thickest on the Guilliam, so close does it keep by the bank, that not a

solitary herring is to be caught a gunshot from the edge on either side.

We rowed up to the other boats, few of whom had been more successful in

their last haul than ourselves, and none equally so in their first. The

mist prevented us from ascertaining, by known landmarks, the position of

the bank, which we at length discovered in a manner that displayed much

of the peculiar art of the fisherman. The depth of the water, and the

nature of the bottom, showed us that it lay to the south. A faint

tremulous heave of the sea, which was still calm, was the only remaining

vestige of the gale which had blown from the west in the early part of

the night, and this heave, together with the current, which at this

stage of the flood runs in a southwestern direction, served as our

compass. We next premised how far our boat had drifted down the frith

with the ebb-tide, and how far she had been carried back again by the

flood. We then turned her bows in the line of the current, and in rather

less than half an hour were, as the lead informed us, on the eastern

extremity of Guilliam, where we shot our nets for the third time.

Soon after sunrise the mist began to dissipate, and the surface of the

water to appear for miles around roughened as if by a smart breeze,

though there was not the slightest breath of wind at the time. “How do

you account for that appearance?” said I to one of the fishermen. “Ah,

lad, that is by no means so favourable a token as the one you asked me

to explain last night. I had as lief see the _Bhodry-more_.” “Why, what

does it betoken? and what is the _Bhodry-more_?” “It betokens that the

shoal have spawned, and will shortly leave the frith; for when the fish

are sick and weighty they never rise to the surface in that way. But

have you never heard of the _Bhodry-more_?” I replied in the negative.

“Well, but you shall.” “Nay,” said another of the crew, “leave that for

our return; do you not see the herrings playing by thousands round our

nets, and not one of the buoys sinking in the water? There is not a

single fish swimming so low as the upper baulks of our drift. Shall we

not shorten the buoy-ropes, and take off the sinkers?” This did not meet

the approbation of the others, one of whom took up a stone, and flung it

in the middle of the shoal. The fish immediately disappeared from the

surface for several fathoms round. “Ah, there they go!” he exclaimed;

“if they go but low enough; four years ago I startled thirty barrels of

light fish into my drift just by throwing a stone among them.”

The whole frith at this time, so far as the eye could reach, appeared

crowded with herrings; and its surface was so broken by them as to

remind one of the pool of a waterfall. They leaped by millions a few

inches into the air, and sunk with a hollow plumping noise, somewhat

resembling the dull rippling sound of a sudden breeze; while to the eye

there was a continual twinkling, which, while it mocked every effort

that attempted to examine in detail, showed to the less curious glance

like a blue robe sprinkled with silver. But it is not by such

comparisons that so singular a scene is to be described so as to be

felt. It was one of those which, through the living myriads of creation,

testify of the infinite Creator.

About noon we hauled for the third and last time, and found nearly eight

barrels of fish. I observed when hauling that the natural heat of the

herring is scarcely less than that of quadrupeds or birds; that when

alive its sides are shaded by a beautiful crimson colour which it loses

when dead; and that when newly brought out of the water, it utters a

sharp faint cry somewhat resembling that of a mouse. We had now twenty

barrels on board. The _easterly har_, a sea-breeze so called by

fishermen, which in the Moray Frith, during the summer months, and first

month of autumn, commonly comes on after ten o’clock A.M., and fails at

four o’clock P.M., had now set in. We hoisted our mast and sail, and

were soon scudding right before it.

The story of the _Bhodry-more_, which I demanded of the skipper as soon

as we had trimmed our sail, proved interesting in no common degree, and

was linked with a great many others. The _Bhodry-more_[24] is an active,

mischievous fish of the whale species, which has been known to attack

and even founder boats. About eight years ago, a very large one passed

the town of Cromarty through the middle of the bay, and was seen by many

of the townsfolks leaping out of the water in the manner of a salmon,

fully to the height of a boat’s mast. It appeared about thirty feet in

length. This animal may almost be regarded as the mermaid of modern

times: for the fishermen deem it to have fully as much of the demon as

of the fish. There have been instances of its pursuing a boat under sail

for many miles, and even of its leaping over it from side to side. It

appears, however, that its habits and appetites are unlike those of the

shark; and that the annoyance which it gives the fisherman is out of no

desire of making him its prey, but from its predilection for amusement.

It seldom meddles with a boat when at anchor, but pursues one under

sail, as a kitten would a rolling ball of yarn. The large physalus whale

is comparatively a dull, sluggish animal; occasionally, however, it

evinces a partiality for the amusements of the _Bhodry-more_. Our

skipper said, that when on the Caithness coast, a few years before, an

enormous fish of the species kept direct in the wake of his boat for

more than a mile, frequently rising so near the stern as to be within

reach of the boat-hook. He described the expression of its large goggle

eyes as at once frightful and amusing; and so graphic was his narrative

that I could almost paint the animal stretching out for more than sixty

feet behind the boat, with his black marble-looking skin and cliff-like

fins. He at length grew tired of its gambols, and with a sharp fragment

of rock struck it between the eyes. It sunk with a sudden plunge, and

did not rise for ten minutes after, when it appeared a full mile

a-stern. This narrative was but the first of I no not know how many, of

a similar cast, which presented to my imagination the _Bhodry-more_

whale and hun-fish in every possible point of view. The latter, a

voracious formidable animal of the shark species, frequently makes great

havoc among the tackle with which cod and haddock are caught. Like the

shark, it throws itself on its back when in the act of seizing its prey.

The fishermen frequently see it lying motionless, its white belly

glittering through the water, a few fathoms from the boat’s side,

employed in stripping off every fish from their hooks as the line is

drawn over it. This formidable animal is from six to ten feet in length,

and formed like the common shark.

Footnote 24:

Properly, perhaps, the musculous whale.

One of the boatmen’s stories, though somewhat in the Munchausen style, I

shall take the liberty of relating. Two Cromarty men, many years ago,

were employed on a fine calm day in angling for coal-fish and rock-cod,

with rods and hand-lines. Their little skiff rode to a large oblong

stone, which served for an anchor, nearly opposite a rocky spire termed

the chapel, three miles south of Shandwick. Suddenly the stone was

raised from the bottom with a jerk, and the boat began to move. “What

can this mean!” exclaimed the elder of the men, pulling in his rod, “we

have surely broken loose; but who could have thought that there ran such

a current here!” The other, a young daring fellow, John Clark by name,

remarked in reply, that the apparent course of the skiff was directly

contrary to that of the current. The motion, which was at first gentle,

increased to a frightful velocity; the rope a-head was straitened until

the very stem cracked; and the sea rose upon either bows into a furrow

that nearly overtopped the gunwale. “Old man,” said the young fellow,

“didst thou ever see the like o’ that!” “Guid save us, boy,” said the

other; “cut, cut the swing.” “Na, na, bide a wee first, I manna skaith

the rape: didst thou ever see the like o’ that!”

In a few minutes, according to the story, they were dragged in this

manner nearly two miles, when the motion ceased as suddenly as it had

begun, and the skiff rode to the swing as before.

THE TWIN SISTERS.

BY ALEXANDER BALFOUR.

One of these men is genius to the other;

And so, of these which is the natural man,

And which the spirit? Who decyphers them?

_Shakspeare._

Emma and Emily Graham were twin daughters of a respectable farmer and

cattle-dealer in Perthshire. The girls bore such a striking resemblance

to each other, that their mother found it necessary to clothe them in

different colours, as the only method by which they could be

distinguished. As they grew up, their similarity became, if possible,

more perfect; the colour of their eyes and hair had no shade of

difference; and, indeed, every feature of their faces, their form and

stature, were so exactly alike, that the same distinction of different

dresses continued necessary. They had a brother, Edward, about fifteen

months younger, who bore as great a likeness to both as they did to each

other. When the girls arrived at nine or ten years of age, they gave

promise of being rather above the ordinary stature of their sex, with a

very considerable share of personal beauty. But it was only in externals

that the resemblance was complete; for, although both had excellent

dispositions, with a large share of good nature, their minds were in

most respects dissimilar.

Emma was sedate and modest, even to bashfulness; while Emily was so free

and lively, that many thought her forward, and her lightheartedness akin

to levity. Edward’s mind resembled that of his younger sister as closely

as his personal appearance. She was all mirth and frolic, and, by

changing clothes with her sister, amused, perplexed, and sometimes

fretted her parents; in all which Edward delighted to bear a part. At

school there was an ample field for these sportive tricks; and the

teacher himself was often sadly teased by their playful metamorphoses.

When the sisters completed their seventeenth year, they had more the

appearance of grown women than is common at that age; and their

resemblance still continued perfect. Their voices, although slightly

masculine, were pleasant and musical; and both had the same tone and

sound, pitched to the same key. The dispositions which they had

exhibited in childhood still seemed to “grow with their growth, and

strengthen with their strength.” In one thing they, however, agreed,

which was, that whenever they appeared in public, they dressed perfectly

alike, and were frequently amused and delighted with the mistakes

produced by the uniformity. To distinguish their clothes, every article

belonging to Emma was marked Em. G., and those of Emily with E. G. only.

As Edward grew up, his striking likeness to his sisters continued; even

their difference of voice could be distinguished only by a fine and

delicate ear; and with this close resemblance he was so highly pleased,

that he used every means by which it could be preserved. To add to the

perplexity of their friends, Emma would assume more than her usual

vivacity, while Emily would put herself under some restraint; although

the one was apt to become suddenly grave, and the other relax into

lightheartedness. But they were now divided; for Emma went to reside

with an aunt, at fifty miles’ distance, and there she continued for a

considerable time.

Both the girls had been courted occasionally by the young men of their

acquaintance; but their hearts had never felt a reciprocal passion.

There was, in particular, an old widower, Francis Meldrum, who had

become enamoured of Emily; and, as he was rich, her parents anxiously

wished to promote the match. But their daughter shrunk from it with the

most decided aversion: no repulse, however, could release her from the

importunity of his addresses, as he was countenanced and encouraged by

her parents.

During the summer, their father was in the practice of going into

England with a drove of cattle, sometimes not returning till the

approach of harvest. He now departed on his usual excursion; and, soon

after, the mother was called away to visit her sick grandmother, from

whom the family had considerable expectations. The farm and house were

thus left under the charge of Edward and Emily, both willing to do their

duty, but both thoughtless, and delighting in frolic; which, now that

they were relieved from the surveillance and remonstrances of the sedate

Emma, they had a better opportunity of indulging.