sovereign. We command Anne of Ghent to give the light of heaven to that
occluded organ, which is so well entitled to see the glitter of the
sword of knighthood, and the charms of her who restores it to its
natural rights."
Anne proceeded, amidst the applause of the lords, to obey the commands
of the king. With a firm hand, but a palpitating heart, she undid the
bandage, as the Frenchman knelt at her feet.
"Rise not yet," said Bruce, when he saw the operation concluded; and,
taking his sword, he touched the back of the squire, and pronounced the
words, "Rise, Sir Rolande de Leon, one of the bravest knights that it
has been our good fortune to see fighting under the blue banner of
Scotland."
The knight rose, amidst the acclamation of the nobles. The clerk again
proceeded with his monotonous vocation of calling out the names of the
citizens. Peter, with his daughter, accompanied by Sir Rolande, left the
court-room, and proceeded to his house, where, after proper
explanations, the Fleming saw no reason to regret the taking of the
city. On that same day, William Oliphant was beheaded. The town was
quickly restored to order; and, before Bruce's army again set out on a
new expedition, Anne of Ghent became the lady of Sir Rolande de Leon.
This brave knight accompanied Bruce through all his engagements, taking
frequent opportunities, throughout the wars, of stealing a few days of
the society of his fair Anne of Ghent. In a short time he was covered
with honours; and, by the end of Scotland's period of direst strife and
danger, old Peter of Ghent died, leaving a large fortune to his
daughter. The couple, we have reason to believe, retired afterwards to a
castle somewhere in Perthshire, to enjoy the peace and happiness of a
domestic life, after so many toils and dangers. We have somewhere seen
the arms afterwards adopted by the knight, in which _three Lioncels
rampant topaz_ figure on a _field sapphire_, _crest_, wreathed with a
_riband vert_. The wreath we may easily understand; nor can we be at any
loss for the derivation of the young Lions, seeing that, according to
our authority, Anne bore Sir Rolande three sons, whose descendants,
under the name of Lion, long lived in Perthshire; and, if we are not led
astray by old writs, they afterwards intermarried with the Lions of
Strathmore.
THE PROFESSOR'S TALES.
PEAT-CASTING TIME.
In the olden times, there were certain fixed occasions when labour and
frolic went hand in hand--when professional duty and kind-hearted glee
mutually kissed each other. The "rocking" mentioned by Burns--
"On Fastening's E'en we had a rocking"--
I still see in the dim and hazy distance of the past. It is only under
the refractive medium of vigorous recollection that I can again bring up
to view (as the Witch of Endor did Samuel) those images that have been
reposing, "'midst the wreck of things that were," for more than fifty
years. Yet my early boyhood was familiar with these social senile and
juvenile festivities. _There_ still sits Janet Smith, in her toy-mutch
and check-apron, projecting at intervals the well-filled spindle into
the distance. Beside her is Isabel Kirk, elongating and twirling the yet
unwound thread. Nanny Nivison occupies a _creepy_ on the further side of
the fire (making the third Fate!), with her shears. Around, and on
bedsides, are seated Lizzy Gibson, with her favoured lad; Tam
Kirkpatrick, with his jo Jean on his knee; Rob Paton the stirk-herd; and
your humble servant. And "now the crack gaes round, and who so wilful as
to put it by?" The story of past times; the report of recent
love-matches and miscarriages; the gleeful song, bursting unbid from the
young heart, swelling forth in beauty and in brightness like the waters
from the rock of Meribah; the occasional female remonstrance against
certain _welcome_ impertinences, in shape of, "Come now, Tam--nane o'
yer nonsense." "Will! I say, be peaceable, and behave yersel afore folk.
'Od, ye'll squeeze the very breath out o' a body."
"Till, in a social glass o' strunt,
They parted off careering
On sic a night."
"Ye've heard a lilting at our ewes-milking."
How few of the present generation have ever heard of this "lilting,"
except in song. It is the gayest and sunniest season of the year. The
young lambs, in their sportive whiteness, are coursing it, and bleating
it, responsive to their dams, on the hill above. The old ewes on the
plain are marching--
"The labour much of man and dog"--
to the pen or fold. The response to the clear-toned bleat of their
woolly progeny is given, anon and anon, in a short, broken, low bass. It
is the raven conversing with the jack-daw! All is bustle, excitement,
and badinage.
"Weer up that ewe, Jenny, lass. Wha kens but her woo may yet be a
blanket for you and ye ken wha to sleep in!"
"Haud yer tongue, Tammie, and gang hame to yer books and yer schoolin.
Troth, it will be twa days ere the craws dirty your kirk riggin!"
Wouf, wouf, wouf!--hee, hee, hee!--hoch, hoch, hoch!--there _in_ they
go, and _in_ they are, their horny heads wedged over each other, and a
trio of stout, well-made damsels, with petticoats tied up "_a la
breeches_," tugging away at their well-filled dugs.
"Troth, Jenny, that ewe will waur ye; 'od I think ye hae gotten haud o'
the auld tup himsel. He's as powerfu, let me tell ye, as auld Francie,
wham ye kissed sae snug last nicht ayont the peat-mou."
"Troth, at weel, Tam, ye're a fearfu liar. They wad be fonder than I am
o' cock birds wha wad gie tippence for the stite o' a howlet."
"Howlet here, howlet there, Jenny, ye ken weel his auld brass will buy
you a new pan."
At this crisis the crack becomes general and inaudible from its
universality, mixed as it is with the bleating of ewes, the barking of
dogs, together with the singing of herd-laddies and of your humble
servant.
Harvest is a blithe time! May all the charms of "Sycorax, toads,
beetles, bats, light on him" who shall first invent a reaping-machine!
The best of all reaping-machines is "the human _arm_ divine," whether
brawny or muscular, or soft and rounded. The old woman of sixty sits all
year long at her domestic occupations--you would deem her incapable of
any out-door exertions; but, at the sound of the harvest-horn, she
renews her youth, and sallies forth into the harvest-field, with hook
over shoulder, and a heart buoyant with the spirit of the season, to
take her place and drive her rig with the youngest there. The half-grown
boy and girl of fourteen are mingled up in duty and in frolic, in jest
and jibe, and jeer and laugh, with the stoutest and the most matured.
Mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, and, above and beyond all,
"lads and lasses, lovers gay!" mix and mingle in one united band, for
honest labour and exquisite enjoyment; and when at last the joyous kirn
is won--when the maiden of straw is borne aloft and in triumph, to adorn
for twelve months the wall of the farmer's ben--when the rich and
cooling curds-and-cream have been ram-horn-spooned into as many mouths
as there are persons in the "toun"--then comes the mighty and
long-anticipated festival, the roasted ox, the stewed sheep, the big pot
enriched with the cheering and elevating draught, the punch dealt about
in ladles and in jugs, the inspiring fiddle, the maddening reel, and the
Highland fling.
"_We_ cannot but remember such things were,
And were most dear to us!"
Hay harvest, too, had its soft and delicate tints, resembling those of
the grain harvest. As the upper rainbow curves and glows with fainter
colouring around the interior and the brighter, so did the hay harvest
of yore anticipate and pre-figure, as it were, the other. The hay tedded
to the sun; the barefooted lass, her locks floating in the breeze, her
cheeks redolent of youth, and her eyes of joy, scattering or collecting,
carting or ricking, the sweetly-scented meadow produce, under a June sun
and a blue sky!
"Oh, to feel as I have felt,
Or be what I have been!"
The favoured lover, namely, of that youthful purity, now in its
fourteenth summer--myself as pure and all unthinking of aught but
affection the most intense, and feelings the most soft and
unaccountable.
"Ah, little did thy mother think,
That day she cradled thee,
What lands thou hadst to travel in,
What death thou hadst to dee!"
Poor Jeanie Johnston! I have seen her, only a few weeks ago, during the
sittings of the General Assembly, sunk in poverty, emaciated by disease,
the wife of an old soldier, himself disabled from work, tenanting a dark
hovel in Pipe's Close, Castlehill of Edinburgh.
In the upper district of Dumfries-shire--the land of my birth, and of
all those early associations which cling to me as the mistletoe to the
oak, and which are equally hallowed with that druidical
excrescence--there are no coals, but a superabundance of moss;
consequently peat-fires _are_ very _generally_ still, and _were_, at the
time of which I speak, _universally_, made use of; and a peat-fire, on a
cold, frosty night of winter, when every star is glinting and goggling
through the blue, or when the tempest raves, and
"There's no a star in a' the cary,"
is by no means to be despised. To be sure, it is short-lived--but then
it kindles soon; it does not, it is true, entertain us with fantastic
and playful jets of flame--but then its light is full, united, and
steady; the heat which it sends out on all sides is superior to that of
coals. Wood is sullen and sulky, whether in its log or faggot form. It
eats away into itself, in a cancer ignition. But the blazing peat--
"The bleezing ingle, and the clean hearth-stane"--
is the very soul of cheerfulness and comfort. But then peats must
be prepared. They do not grow in hedges, nor vegetate in meadows.
They must be cut from the black and consolidated moss; and a
peculiarly-constructed spade, with a sharp edge and crooked ear, must be
made use of for that purpose; and into the field of operation must be
brought, at casting-time, the spademen, with their spades; and the
barrowmen, and women, boys, and girls, with their barrows; and the
breakfast sowans, with their creamy milk, cut and crossed into circles
and squares; and the dinner stew, with its sappy potatoes and
gusty-onioned mutton fragments; and the rest at noon, with its active
sports and feats of agility, and, in particular, with its jumps from the
moss-brow into the soft, marshy substance beneath--and _thereby hangs my
tale_, which shall be as short and simple as possible.
One of the loveliest visions of my boyhood is Nancy Morrison. She was a
year or so older than me; but we went and returned from school together.
She was the only daughter of a poor widow woman, who supported herself,
in a romantic glen on the skirts of the Queensberry Hills, by bleaching
or whitening webs. In those days, the alkalis and acids had not yet
superseded the slower progress of whitening green linen by soap-boiling,
tramping, and alternate drying in the sun, and wetting with pure running
water. Many is the time and oft that Nanny and I have wielded the
watering-pan, in this fairy, sunny glen, all day long. Whilst the
humble-bee boomed past us, the mavis occupied the thorn-tree, and the
mother of Nanny employed herself in some more laborious department of
the same process, Nanny and I have set us down on the greensward--_in
tenaci gramine_--played at chucks, "head him and cross him," or some
such amusement. At school, Nanny had ever a faithful defender and
avenger in me; and I have even purloined apples and gooseberries from
the castle garden--and all for the love I bore "to my Nanny, oh!"
I know not that any one has rightly described a first love. It is not
the love of man and woman, though that be fervent and terrible--it is
not the love of mere boy and girlhood, though that be disinterested and
engrossing--but it is the love of the period of life which unites the
two. "Is there a man whose blood is warm within him" who does not
recollect it? Is there a woman who has passed through the novitiate of
fifteen, who has not still a distinct impression of the feeling of which
I speak. It is not sexual, and yet it can only exist betwixt the sexes.
It is the sweetest delusion under which the soul of a created being can
pass. It is modest, timid, retiring, bashful; yet, in absence of the
adored--in seclusion, in meditation, and in dreams--it is bold,
resolute, and determined. There is no plan, no design, no right
conception of _cause_; yet the _effect_ is sure and the bliss perfect.
Oh, for one hour--one little hour--from the thousands which I have
idled, sported, dreamed away in the company of my darling
school-companion, Nancy!
Will Mather was about two years older than Nancy--a fine youth,
attending the same school, and evidently an admirer of Nancy. Mine was
the love of comparative boyhood; but his was a passion gradually
ripening (as the charms of Nancy budded into womanhood) into a manly and
matrimonial feeling. I loved the girl merely as such--his eye, his
heart, his whole soul were in his future bride. Marriage in no shape
ever entered into my computations; but his eager look and heaving bosom
bespoke the definite purpose--he anticipated felicity. I don't know
exactly why, but I was never jealous of Will Mather--we were companions;
and he was high-souled and generous, and stood my friend in many
perilous quarrels. I knew that _my_ pathway in life was to be afar from
that in which Nancy and Will were likely to walk; and I felt in my heart
that, dear as this beautiful rosebud was to me, I was not _man_
enough--I was not _peasant_ enough to wear it in my bosom. Had Nancy on
any occasion turned round to be kissed by me, I would have fled over
muir and dale, to avoid her presence--and yet I had often a great desire
to obtain that favour. Once indeed, and only once, did I obtain, or
rather steal it. She was sitting beside a bird's nest, the young ones of
which she was feeding and cherishing--for the parent birds, by the
rapacity of a cat, had recently perished. As the little bills were
expanding to receive their food, her countenance beamed with pity and
benevolence. I never saw even _her_ so lovely--so, in a moment, I had
her round the neck, and clung to her lips with the tenacity of a
creature drowning. But, feeling at once the awkwardness of my position,
I took to my heels, becoming immediately invisible amidst the
surrounding brushwood.
Such was "Will Mather," and such was "Nancy Morrison" at the period of
which I am speaking. We must now advance about two or three years in our
chronology, and find Will possessed of a piece of information which bore
materially on his future fortunes. Will was an illegitimate child. His
mother had kept the secret so well that he did not know his father,
though he had frequently urged her to reveal to him privately all that
she knew of his parentage. In conversing, too, with Nancy, his now
affianced bride, he had expressed similar wishes; whilst she, with a
becoming and feminine modesty, had urged him not to press an aged parent
on so delicate a point. At last the old woman was taken seriously ill,
and, on her death-bed and at midnight, revealed to her son the secret of
his birth. He was the son of a proprietor in the parish, and a
much-respected man. The youth, so soon as he had closed his mother's
eyes, hurried off, amidst the darkness, to the abode of his father, and,
entering by a window, was in his father's bedchamber and over his body
ere he was fully awake.
"John Scott!" said the son, in a firm and terrible tone, grasping his
parent meantime convulsively round the neck--"John Scott of
Auchincleuch, _I am thy son_!"
Tho conscience-stricken culprit, being taken by surprise, and almost
imagining this a supernatural intimation from heaven, exclaimed, in
trembling accents--
"But who are you that makes this averment?"
"I am thy son, father--oh, I am thy son!"
Will could no more; for his heart was full, and his tears dropped hot
and heavy on a father's face.
"Yes," replied the parent, after a convulsive solemn sob--(O Heaven!
thou art just!)--"yes, thou _art_ indeed my son--my long-denied and
ill-used boy--whom the fear of the world's scorn has tempted me, against
all the yearnings of my better nature, to use so unjustly. But come to
my bosom--to a father's bosom _now_, for I know that voice too well to
distrust thee."
In a few months after this interesting disclosure, John Scott was
numbered with his fathers, and Will Scott (no longer Mather) became
Laird of Auchincleuch.
Poor Nancy was at first somewhat distressed at this discovery, which put
her betrothed in a position to expect a higher or genteeler match. But
there was no cause of alarm. Will was true to the back-bone, and would
as soon have burned his Bible as have sacrificed his future bride. After
much pressing for an early day on the part of the lover, it was agreed,
at last, that the marriage should take place at "Peat-casting Time," and
that Nancy should, for the last turn, assist at the casting of her
mother's peats.
I wish I could stop here, or at least proceed to give you an account of
the happy nuptials of Will Scott and Nancy Morrison, the handsomest
couple in the parish of Closeburn. But it may not be! These eyes, which
are still filled (though it is forty-eight years since) with tears, and
this pen, which trembles as I proceed, must attest and record the
catastrophe.
Nancy, the beautiful bride, and I (for I was now on the point of leaving
school for college) agreed to have a jump for the last time (often had
we jumped before) from a suitable moss-brow.
"My frolicsome days will sune be owre," she cried, laughing; "the
guidwife of Auchincleuch will hae something else to do than jump frae
the moss-brow; and, while my name is Nancy Morrison, I'll hail the
dules, or jump wi' the best o' my auld playmates."
"Weel dune, Nancy!" cried I; "you are now to be the wife o' the Laird o'
Auchincleuch, when your jumping days will be at an end, and I am soon to
be sent to college, where the only jump I may get may be from the top of
a pile of old black-letter folios--no half sae guid a point of advantage
as the moss-brow."
"There's the Laird o' Auchincleuch coming," cried Peggy Chalmers, one of
the peat-casters, who was standing aside along with several others.
"He's nae langer the daft Will Mather, wha liked a jump as weel as the
blithest swankie o' the barnyard. Siller maks sair changes; and yet, wha
wad exchange the Will Scott of Auchincleuch, your rich bridegroom,
Nancy, for the Will Mather, your auld lover? Dinna tempt Providence, my
hinny! The laird winna like to see his bride jumpin frae knowe to knowe
like a daft giglet, within a week o' her marriage."
"Tout!" cried Nancy, bursting out into a loud laugh; "see, he's awa
round by the Craw Plantin, and winna see us--and whar's the harm if he
did? Come now, Tammie, just ae spring and the last, and I'll wad ye my
kame against your cravat, that I beat ye by the length o' my marriage
slipper."
"Weel dune, Nancy!" cried several of the peat-casters, who, leaning on
their spades, stood and looked at us with pleasure and approbation.
The laird had, as Nancy said, crossed over by what was called the Craw
Plantin, and was now out of sight. To make the affair more
ludicrous--for we were all bent on fun--Nancy took out, from among her
high-built locks of auburn hair, her comb--a present from her lover--and
impledged it in the hands of Billy Watson, along with my cravat, which I
had taken off, and handed to the umpire.
"Here is a better moss-brow," cried one, at a distance.
And so to be sure it was, for it was much higher than the one we had
fixed upon, and the landing-place was soft and elastic. Our practice
was, always to jump together, so that the points of the toes could be
measured when both the competitors' feet were still fixed in the moss.
We mounted the moss-brow. I was in high spirits, and Nancy could
scarcely contain herself, for pure, boisterous, laughing glee. I went
off, but the mad girl could not follow, for she was still holding her
sides, and laughing immoderately. I asked her what she laughed at. She
could not tell. She was under the influence of one of those
extraordinary cachinnations that sometimes convulse our diaphragms,
without our being able to tell why, and certainly without our being able
to put a stop to them. Her face was flushed, and the fire of her glee
shone bright in her eye. I took my position again.
"Now!" cried I; and away we flew, and stuck deeply in the soft and
spongy moss.
I stood with my feet in the ground, that the umpire might come and mark
the distance. A loud scream broke on my ear. I looked round, and,
dreadful sight! I saw Nancy lying extended on the ground, with the blood
pouring out at her mouth in a large stream! She had burst a
blood-vessel. The fit of laughing which preceded her effort to leap had,
in all likelihood, distended her delicate veins, and predisposed her to
the unhappy result.
The loud scream had attracted the notice of the bridegroom, who came
running from the back of the Craw Plantin. The sight appalled and
stupefied him. He cried for explanation, and ran forward to his dead or
dying bride, in wild confusion. Several voices essayed an explanation,
but none were intelligible. I was as unable as the rest to satisfy the
unhappy man; but, though we could not speak intelligibly, we could act,
and several of us lifted her up. This step sealed her fate. The change
in her position produced another stream of blood. She opened her eyes
once, and fixed them for a moment on Will Scott. She then closed them,
and for ever.
I saw poor Nancy carried home. Will Scott, who upheld her head, fainted
before he proceeded twenty yards, and I was obliged to take his place. I
was almost as unfit for the task as himself; for I reproached myself as
the cause of her death. I have lived long. Will the image of that
procession ever pass from my mind? The bloodstained moss-ground, the
bleeding body, the trailing clothes, the unbound locks, are all before
me. I can proceed no further. Would that I could stop the current of my
thoughts as easily as that of this feathered chronicler of sorrow! But--
"There is a silent sorrow here,
A grief I'll ne'er impart;
It breathes no sigh, it sheds no tear,
But it consumes my heart."
I have taken up my pen to add, that Will Mather still remains a
bachelor, and that on every visit I make to Dumfries-shire, I take my
dinner, _solus cum solo_, at Auchincleuch, and that many tears are
annually shed, over a snug bottle, for poor Nancy.
THE MEDAL.
I was educated in a Scottish university, where prizes were distributed
to the most distinguished students in each class at the termination of
the session. The most distinguished prize was a gold medal, value ten
guineas, the gift of a departed _eleve_, and awarded to the best scholar
in the mathematical class. Having a natural turn or bias for
mathematical pursuits, I applied myself night and day to the attainment
of this my object of ambition; and this, too, at the expense and neglect
of all the other classes which I attended. I was a very imperfect Latin
scholar, I knew almost nothing of Greek, and held the unscientific
reasoning of logic and moral philosophy in great contempt. By great
labour, and after a severe competition, I succeeded in attaining the
distinction at which I aimed, and saw myself blazoned in several
newspapers as the holder of this distinguishing badge. My great chum at
college was a Mr Donald Ferguson, a lad of a staid and persevering
disposition, of a well-balanced and judicious mind, and without any
talents, _apparently_, which bespoke future distinction. We had been
friends and companions at school--our parents were friends before
us--and, although we differed materially in disposition, this did not
prevent the closest and most affectionate intercourse. Oh! such
recollections as now rush upon my mind!--
"Dear happy scenes of innocence and ease--
Scenes of my youth, when every sport could please!"