it largely so remained until Queen Victoria’s preference for North
Britain brought about a fashionable exploitation of Caledonia; but such
ignorance as that of the lady who declared she “never went to Scotland
because the crossing made her sea-sick” cannot ever have been common.
Thomas Kirke, who surely, from his name, should himself have been
a Scot, published in 1679 a “Modern Account of Scotland” which was
either a joke (in bad taste) or an attempt to exploit this ignorance.
“Scotland,” he wrote, “is compared to a louse, whose legs and engrailed
edges represent the promontories and buttings-out into the sea, with
more nooks and angles than the most conceited of my Lord Mayor’s
Custards; nor does the comparison determine here; A Louse preys upon
its own Fosterer and Preserver, and is productive of those Minute
Animals called Nitts; so Scotland, whose Proboscis joyns too close to
England, has suckt away the nutriment from Northumberland.”
Thomas Kirke, it will be observed, did not love Scotsmen. But he could
be a good deal more abusive than the specimen already quoted.
“_Nemo ne impune Læcessit_,” he continues: “true enough: whoever deals
with them shall be sure to smart for it.... The thistle was nicely
placed there, partly to show the ‘fertility’ of the country, Nature
alone producing plenty of these gay flowers; and partly as an emblem
of the people, the top thereof having some colour of a flower, but the
bulk and substance of it is only sharp, and poysonous pricks.”
[Illustration: THE DUMFRIES COACH.
[_After C. B. Newhouse._
]
[Sidenote: _USEFUL INFORMATION_]
A good deal of fine, unreliable information may be culled from the
classic pages of Thomas Kirke. Thus, “Scotland is from Scota, daughter
of Pharaoh, King of Egypt. That the Scots derived from the Egyptians is
not to be doubted, from divers considerable circumstances: the plagues
of Egypt being entailed upon them: that of Lice (being a Judgment
unrepealed) is an ample testimony. These loving animals accompanied
them from Egypt, and remain with them to this day, never forsaking them
(but as Rats leave a House) till they tumble into their Graves. The
Plague of Biles and Blains is hereditary to them, as a distinguishing
mark from the rest of the World, which (like the Devil’s cloven hoof)
warns all men to beware of them. The Judgment of Hail and Snow is
naturalized and made free Denizan here, and continues with them from
the Sun; first ingress into Aries, till he has passed the 30th degree
of Aquary.
“The Plagues of Darkness was said to be thick darkness, to be felt,
which most undoubtedly these people have a share in: the darkness being
appliable to their gross and blockish understandings (as I had it from
a scholar of their own Nation).
“Woods they have none: that suits not with the frugality of the people,
who are so far from propagating any, that they destroy those they had
upon this politick State Maxim, that Corn will not grow on the land
pestered with its Roots, and their branches harbour Birds, Animals
above their humble conversation, that exceeds not that of Hornless
Quadrupedes; marry, perhaps some of their houses lurk under the shelter
of a plump of trees (the Birds not daring so high a presumption)
like Hugh Peters Puss in her Majesty, or an Owl in an Ivy-Bush. Some
fir-woods there are in the High-lands, but so inaccessible, that they
serve for no other use than Dens for those ravenous Wolves with 2
hands, that prey upon their neighbourhood and shelter themselves under
this Covert; to whom the sight of a stranger is as surprizing as that
of a Cockatrice. The Vallies for the most part are covered with Beer or
Bigg, and the Hills with Snow.
“If the air was not so pure and well-refined by its agitation, it would
be so infected with the stinks of their Towns and the steam of the
Nasty Inhabitants that it would be pestilential and destructive.
“The people are Proud, Arrogant, Vainglorious boasters; Bloody,
Barbarous and Inhuman Butchers. Couzenage and Theft is in perfection
among them, and they are perfect English-haters. Their spirits are so
mean that they rarely rob, but they take away life first. Lying in
Ambush, they send a brace of bullets through the traveller’s body, and
to make sure work they sheath their Durks in his liveless trunk.
“Their cruelty descends to their Beasts, it being a custom in some
places to feast upon a living Cow. They tie it in the middle of them,
near a great fire, and then cut collops off this poor living beast, and
broil them on the fire, till they have mangled her all to pieces: nay,
sometimes they will only cut off as much as will satisfy their present
Appetites, and let her go till their greedy Stomachs call for a new
supply: such horrible cruelty as can scarce be paralleled in the whole
world.”
[Sidenote: _MANNERS AND CUSTOMS_]
“The Highlanders talk only Erse, the Lowlanders understand and talk
English, but they are so currish that if a stranger enquires the way in
English they will certainly answer in Erse, and find no other language
until you force it from them with a Cudgel.”
Let us hope, for the travellers’ own sakes, that they did not take this
advice. But let us follow Mr. Kirke indoors. This, according to him,
was a Scottish interior: “To enter a kitchen is to enter Hell alive:
the stew and stink enough to suffocate you,” while “Musick they have,
but not the Harmony of the Spheres, but loud Terrene noises, like the
bellowing of beasts: the loud Bagpipe is their chief delight.”
As for the inns: “Change-houses they call them, poor small cottages,
where you must be content to take what you find, perhaps Eggs with
Chicks in them, and some Long Cale; at the better sort of them a dish
of chop’d Chickens, which they esteem a dainty dish, and will take it
unkindly if you do not eat very heartily of it.”
Oddly enough, he says nothing of porridge. But St. Jerome attributed
the heresy of Pelagius to his feeding upon oatmeal porridge, which
may perhaps be responsible for more religious difficulties than we
are aware of. The heresy of Pelagius (whose real name was Morgan,
and himself therefore presumably a Welshman), was divided into six
points, chief of them being what one is tempted to characterise as the
“common-sense” view that Adam’s sin was confined to his own person. The
daring Pelagius was condemned, A.D. 418, as an heretic, but he lived
on, notwithstanding, to the age of threescore years and ten: a jolly,
fat man, by all accounts, and of distinctly anti-celibate views.
It is rarely, nowadays, you see a plaid, and not often a kilt. Nowhere
is the sight now seen that once astonished travellers: the sight of
countryfolk walking barefoot, carrying shoes and stockings in their
hands, for sake of economy, until they reached the outskirts of a
town, where, for sake of appearance, they put them on. The once poor
country has grown a great deal beyond that. But kilts formed the only
wear at the time of the rebellion of 1745, when one unhappy detachment
of rebels found them rather embarrassing. An English subaltern, in
command of a few men, had the good fortune to secure a numerically
superior body of rebels, and was sorely at a loss what to do with them
on the march to Carlisle; being afraid that they would on their way,
finding themselves more powerful, turn upon his small force and wreak a
terrible revenge. The happy idea struck him of having the waist-bands
of the prisoners’ kilts cut before the march was begun: and thus they
went; the Scotsmen being too busily engaged in holding their petticoats
up to be in any way dangerous.
Only on festive occasions is the kilt in evidence, in all its barbaric
varieties of tartan. The Royal Stuart tartan is an eye-searing affair
of bright red, with a pattern of green, black, blue, and white stripes,
calculated to make an æsthete faint. The Macmillan tartan would please
the old negress who wanted “nothing startling: just plain red and
yellow.” It is bright yellow with a plaid pattern in light red. One
of the Macdonald clans sports a nice thing in red with bright green
patterns. Such a taste in dress seems oddly at variance with the grey,
Calvinistic religious temper of Scotland, and a direct challenge to
dull northern skies.
[Sidenote: _PRACTICAL SCOTS_]
To argue from this old love of colour in dress a corresponding delight
in flowers would be a mistake, for rural Scotland has few indeed of the
English type of cottage, with clustered roses and jessamine and a very
wealth of colour in its old-fashioned garden. All through Dumfriesshire
and Lanarkshire, eighty-five miles along the road to Glasgow,
the country cottages are merely un-ornamental living-boxes, and
flower-gardens are vanities not indulged in. Perhaps we see in this,
again, the Scottish practical character that has advanced Scotland so
far along the road to material wealth, has made Glasgow what it is, and
has set Scotsmen in commanding positions.
The proverbial tenacity of the Scot has fathered many good stories,
of which that of the farmer returning from market is one of the best.
Attacked by three burly ruffians for sake of the gold he was supposed
to be carrying, he fought desperately, felling one of his assailants
with a blow that knocked him senseless, until at last a well-delivered
butt in the stomach laid him low; whereupon the footpads went
thoroughly over his pockets. But searching diligently though they did,
all they could find was a sixpenny-piece, instead of the expected
wealth.
“My goodness!” exclaimed one of them, feeling his bruised face, “if
he’d had eighteen-pence he would have killed the three of us.”
The pawky “canny” qualities of the Scots were never more admirably
illustrated than on that occasion in the football season of 1905, when
the visit of the New Zealand team, known as the “All Blacks,” was under
arrangement. The Glasgow authorities had not at the time arrived at
anything like a proper idea of the New Zealanders’ qualities, nor of
the great assemblage of spectators that any game in which they were
engaged would attract; and so they cautiously refused the offer of half
the gate-money and stipulated for a guarantee of £50 or so, conceding
the “gate” to the visitors.
An agreement was arrived at upon that basis, but as the season advanced
and the extraordinary triumphs of the New Zealanders elsewhere made
it abundantly evident that the “gate” at the Glasgow match would
be phenomenal, the Glaswegians made heroic attempts to alter the
arrangement—without success.
An incredible number of saxpences went bang over that affair, for the
Glasgow folks received £50 and paid over £1,000, taken at the gates.
And the New Zealanders won the game, in addition to pouching the
boodle. Scotland was sair humeeliated the day, ye ken, and showed
it sourly. The New Zealanders came without a welcome into the city,
were “booed” in the field, and left amid something like a hostile
demonstration.
XXXI
[Sidenote: _MERKLAND CROSS_]
There is nothing at all of the “Caledonia stern and wild” description
of scenery along these first few miles. The country becomes pleasantly
undulating, villages are placed here and there along the road, and
a railway runs companionably by, with the stream of Kirtle Water
neighbouring it. Kirkpatrick is the first village. Beyond it the
old road of pre-Telford days goes off to the right, for nearly two
miles, and joins the modern road again at Merkland, passing an ancient
granite boundary-cross surrounded by holly-bushes. A very great deal
of highly untrustworthy “history” may be acquired about this cross by
him who seeks wayside information. At the roadside smithy, hard by,
the blacksmiths tell you it is the memorial of a man who was shot from
Robgillt Tower—or “Toe-er,” in the local pronunciation. Whether the
man who was shot was worth the memorial is more than any one can say,
but the shot itself certainly would deserve a monument. A long shot,
indeed, for it is a good mile away to Robgillt Tower! Bonshaw Tower,
closer at hand, seems more likely. Another story, very popular in the
neighbourhood, is that the men of this district sold their wives here.
Passing Kirtlebridge and its railway station, and crossing Kirtle Water
and Mein Water, we come by some very pretty woodland and parklike
scenery, to Ecclefechan: a very celebrated place now, and a place of
pilgrimage since Thomas Carlyle died, in 1881. For Ecclefechan was the
native village of that latter-day prophet, hero-worshipper, and apostle
of work.
But there lies to the left of the road at the approach to Mein Water
and the park of Burnfoot, a little-known Carlyle landmark that should
be noted. The little graveyard of Pennersaughs contains the tombs of
his grandfather and great-grandfather, among others.
A great deal of argument has been expended upon the meaning of
Ecclefechan. “Ecclesia Fechanis” is said to be the origin of the name;
but who St. Fechan was, who is supposed to have founded the original
church here, is more than any one is prepared to definitely say. The
sceptical stoutly declare him a myth: a saintly “Mrs. Harris”; while
Welshmen might declare that “Ecclefechan” is “Eglwys vychan,” _i.e._
“Little Church,” and none would be able to prove himself correct.
[Illustration: ECCLEFECHAN: SHOWING BIRTHPLACE OF THOMAS CARLYLE.]
[Sidenote: _CARLYLE’S BIRTHPLACE_]
Carlyle once, in a memorable outburst, declared that “the picturesque”
to him was “a mere bore,” and that “simple knolls and fields, with
brooks and hedges among them,” were best of all for his taste. If
this was genuine, and not sheer Carlylean perversity, why then
Ecclefechan, his native village, was the ideal birthplace, for it is
the mere negation of beauty and the picturesque. Yet it has a certain
interesting quality. It has “character.” For you could not pick out any
individual house and point to its comeliness, but although Ecclefechan
is in its component parts made up of precisely the same materials as
fifty other Annandale villages, there is a distinctive personality in
it which would be evident even if the stimulating association with
Carlyle were not present. A rushing burn goes down one side of the
street and the swifts fly and scream overhead. Among the unassertive
white-faced and grey houses is one with an archway and above it a
quaint window of quasi-Jacobean character. It is the dwelling-house
built by Thomas Carlyle’s father and uncles about 1791, and over the
doorway is the plain inscription, “Birthplace of Carlyle, 4 Dec. 1795.”
Beside the doorway itself stands a boulder-stone, now graven with a
characteristic Carlylean quotation: “That idle crag”; and always,
above the shrilling of the swifts, you hear the murmur of the stream a
few feet away: “the little Kuhbach gushing kindly by.”
“The arch-house,” as it is known locally, was built with that central
archway for the convenience of those three mason-brothers, James,
Frank, and Tom, in storing the materials of their trade. There they
reared their several families.
“This umbrageous Man’s nest,” Carlyle styles it: and a very well-filled
nest it was, too. To-day it is freely open to all comers, and many and
diverse are those who come here. In the year ending August 31st, 1905,
the house was visited by 1,700 people, who gazed with reverence, with
curiosity, or with mere vacuity of mind—after their several sorts—upon
the humble interiors.
“And is this really the room in which Carlyle was born?” asked one in
that first category, a good many years ago, in an awestruck voice.
“Aye,” said the gudewife, who to be sure did not rightly comprehend the
inner meaning of all this hero-worship; “an’ oor Maggie was born here,
too.”
Homeric laughter, doubtless, at this, in that place where the literary
immortals foregather.
[Sidenote: _IN THE BIRTHPLACE_]
Professor Wilson, “Christopher North,” and his fellow-contributors
to the _Edinburgh Review_, claimed to cultivate literature on a
little oatmeal, but the claim might better be made for the author
of “Frederick the Great” and “Sartor Resartus.” Plain living and
high-thinking, you cannot fail to see, formed his life. A very
simple-living, homely man indeed, as all his intimate belongings
clearly show. His plain, commonplace inkstand, with the last pen he
used, his simple writing-table with its original table-cloth, his
tobacco-jar, together with a tobacco-cutter with which he sliced
his own tobacco, are all of the least expensive kind, and, looking
upon them, I feel vicariously ashamed for the modern authors of
“masterpieces” who, according to the literary journals of the day,
cannot feel “inspired” unless they are lapped round with every luxury.
Carlyle’s felt hat is enclosed under glass: his straw hat hangs
upon the wall, and you may put it on your own head. Most people do.
Prominent among the many tributes to his genius is the great laurel
wreath sent in 1895 by the German Emperor to mark the centenary of his
birth. It was, of course, primarily a tribute to the hero-worshipping
author of “Frederick the Great.”
[Illustration: OLD TABLET AT ECCLEFECHAN.]
Carlyle himself lies in the dour little graveyard of Ecclefechan, among
his kin and away from his wife, whose grave is in the roofless nave
of Haddington Abbey. Like most Scottish kirkyards, the gates of it are
chained and locked.
“Entepfuhl” as Carlyle in “Sartor Resartus” styles Ecclefechan, is
proud of him, largely, I suspect, because it perceives that the world
beyond Annandale thinks so much of “Tam Carl.” There is a “Resartus
Reading Room,” rather shabby with decrepit chairs, themselves sadly
wanting reseating, or, better still, renewing altogether.
An oddly designed old house-tablet recently uncovered from the many
coats of plaster and whitewash that had long concealed it, is now a
feature of the house adjoining the Carlyle birthplace, and is perhaps
the only curious item in the village.
There is a railway station nowadays at Ecclefechan, but the village
is probably a quieter place than it was in Carlyle’s early days, when
the Glasgow Mail dashed by, and the local coaches enlivened the street
twice a day. For one thing, the station lies at a considerable step
away, up along what was the new road when Telford made it, so long ago,
and called new to this day.
It is a kind of mild hog’s-back ascent out of Ecclefechan and so
along the six miles to Lockerbie, passing on the way the farmhouse
of Mainhill, where Thomas Carlyle’s father at the age of fifty-seven
started to be a farmer, striving there ten years, from 1815 to 1826.
Then comes the beautiful park of Castlemilk, seat of the Jardine
family, followed by Milk Bridge crossing the river of that name, and
the smart suburban entrance to Lockerbie.
[Sidenote: _LOCKERBIE_]
The town of Lockerbie is a thriving place, of a neatness and
cleanliness altogether remarkable: a change indeed from the time when
this rhyme was possible:
Lockerbie is a dirty place,
A kirk without a steeple,
A midden set at ilka door—
But a cantie set o’ people.
New in appearance, with a modern Town Hall in a florid version of
the Scotch baronial style, and an air of abounding prosperity. Here,
in this considerable place of shops, the Southron who knows not
Scotland first discovers what the Scottish nation can do in the way of
scones, seed-cakes, plum-cakes, baps, and bannocks, to say nothing of
shortbread. It is a liberal education, in its especial way.
Five miles north of Lockerbie, Jardine Hall is passed, with the
haunted ruin of Spedlin’s Tower away across the park. In another
mile, at Dinwoodie Green, the road again divides into old road and
new. The old road, running to the right hand, through the town of
Moffat, over Ericstane Brae and down to Elvanfoot Bridge, a distance
of twenty-three miles, is an excellent road still, but it ascends
rugged and mountainous heights, while the “new road,” avoiding Moffat
altogether, is at its highest altitude 500 feet below the summit of the
old. Between the two roads on the way to Moffat runs the river Annan,
and here and there are glens that at different times gave shelter to
Covenanters and horse-stealing rascals. Wamphray Glen was one of the
fastnesses of the Johnstones: the locality having from time immemorial
been rich in Johnstones and Jardines. There was a Johnstone who lived
in the old days at Lockerbie, in one of the numerous defensible towers
of the district. He bore a more or less knightly part in the battle of
Dryfe Sands, hard by, while at home his gentle lady with her own fair
hands dinged in the head of Lord Maxwell with the castle keys.
The new road continues, with few features on the way, on a gradual
rise, to Beattock, crossing the Annan at Johnstone Bridge, a pretty
wooded scene, with wayside post-office. Beattock was important in the
old coaching days, for here, beside the road, in a spot otherwise
lonely, stood Beattock Inn. Two miles down the road was Moffat. There
was nothing else but that change-house for mail-coach and stage.
The house remains even now, but no longer an inn, and adjoining it
stands the Beattock station of the Caledonian Railway, which abolished
coaching on this road over fifty years ago.
Nowadays there is no house of public entertainment in all the thirty
miles between Lockerbie and Crawford, on this modern road avoiding
Moffat, except the refreshment room at Beattock station: the village
that has in latter days sprung up here being quite innocent of anything
of the kind.
XXXII
[Sidenote: _THE CARLISLE AND GLASGOW ROAD_]
The town of Moffat, down below, had no place in the scheme of Telford’s
Carlisle and Glasgow Road. It had very little importance in the
councils of the Post Office; Glasgow, Carlisle, Manchester, and London
being places whose needs far outweighed any local discontent; and the
new road went straight away from Beattock, leaving the little town
aside.
[Sidenote: _RE-MAKING THE ROAD_]