A HIGHLAND FARM.
There was such a bustle at the farm as had not been seen for many a day.
At the first alarm of company landing, the girls of the family unyoked
themselves from the harrow which they were drawing over the light, sandy
soil, and hastened into the house, where their mother had already begun
her preparations. One of them set about fanning the smouldering peat
fire with the torn skirt of her woollen petticoat, while the other
climbed upon the settle to take down one of the regiment of smoked geese
which hung overhead from a pole, in somewhat the same kind of
arrangement in which they had once winged their flight through the upper
air. Lean, black, and coarse, the bird would have been little tempting
to the appetite of a stranger; but as all the approaching company were
not strangers, it stood a fair chance of being eaten with relish. The
mother, while calling to one or another to bring out a cheese from the
press, and barley-cakes from the cupboard, was now engaged in bringing
potatoes to light from under her own bed, and taking off the cream from
pans which were hidden from common observation by a curtain of
peat-smoke.
The goose being set to boil, and the potatoes ready to be put into the
same pot in due time, (possibly in order that the oil from the bird
might save the trouble of buttering them when they came to table,) the
readiest of the two maidens hastened to exhibit the snow-white cloth of
ancient home manufacture, which covered, on rare festivals, the table in
Callum’s apartment. By the time it was spread out to view, it displayed,
besides all its varieties of pattern, a further diversity, not intended
by the original designer. Here a streak of yellow oil imbibed from the
goose; there a brush of mould from a potatoe; here a few harmless drops
of cream, and there a corner dabbled in more fragrant whisky, were all
new for the occasion. The next thing to be done, was to unpack the
baskets of provisions which, out of consideration for the stomachs of
the strangers, had been sent in the boat by the laird’s housekeeper.
What jostling of helpers, what jingling of bottles, what spilling of
everything that could be spilt, what soiling of all that was solid! It
was well for those who were to eat, that they saw nothing of this
household preparation; if they had, neither the fresh sea-breeze, nor
the exercise they had taken, would have availed to give a relish to
their meal. To beguile the impatience they began to feel for their
dinner, some surveyed the farm, some seated themselves on a bench beside
the door, to regale their eyes with the splendid view of sea and islands
which presented itself: and these occasionally conversed with the
farmer’s sons,—two boys, who stood staring at a little distance, and
were, after much perseverance, prevailed upon to speak.
“What is your name?” asked a lady of the younger boy.
He put three fingers in his mouth and stared, but made no reply; and it
was some minutes before it appeared that his name was Rob.
“Well; now you have told me your own name, tell me the name of that
island, that looks so black with the shadow of the cloud upon it.”
“That’s Ilachanu.”
“No, no. Ilachanu lies the other way, and we have just come from it. Use
your eyes, my man. How should you know which I mean if you stand with
your back to it?”
“It’s Garveloch, maybe.”
“Nay; this is Garveloch that we stand upon. One would think it had no
name, by the little you know about it.”
“It has not any name,” cried the boy brightening.
“Well; why could not you say so before? Do you ever go there?”
“I have been there.”
“What do you go there for?”
“Father takes me in the boat.”
“And what do you do when you get there?”
“We go and then we come back again.”
“I suppose so: but do you fish, or get eggs, or visit your friends, or
what?”
Rob laughed, stared, and then looked at his brother, who conveyed with
some trouble that nobody lived there. The lady next tried to make
something of him.
“What do you go to that desert island for, my lad?”
“Why was you wanting to know?”
“Only out of curiosity. If your errand there is a secret, say so, and I
will not ask you.”
The boy laughed, and said they went sometimes for one thing and
sometimes for another; and this was all that could be made out.—What was
the distance? was the next question.
“It may be twelve mile.”
“Twelve! it cannot be so much surely.”
“Maybe ’tis five.”
“I do not believe it is more than two.”
“Indeed, I’m thinking ye’re right.”
“You do not seem to know much about the matter.”
“Indeed, I know nothing about it.”
And so forth, upon every subject started: nor did their father appear
much more enlightened in his way.
“The cattle seem to have done your field a world of mischief,” observed
an English gentleman, “and no wonder, with such a pretence of a fence as
that. How long has it been broken down?”
“Indeed I can’t remember.”
“Not this year, or last,” said his landlord, “for I remember advising
you three seasons ago to make your boys clear the ground of these
stones, which would have built up your wall presently.—You said you
would, and I suppose you still mean to do it some day.”
“O aye, some day; and I have spoken to the lads many a time.”
“Speaking does not seem to have done much good.”
“Indeed, your honour’s right.”
“Set about it yourself, I advise you, and then perhaps they will work
with you, if you can’t prevail upon them by other means.”
“Maybe I will some day.”
“I see no stock except a shaggy pony or two, or the few black cattle on
the moor there,” observed the English gentleman.
“There are both pigs and poultry, if you could find out where they are,”
said the laird laughing.
The gentleman looked round in vain, and then applied to farmer Murdoch
himself.
“Do ye think we’ve no more cattle than them?” asked he proudly. “There
are many more of the kine down below fishing.”
“Cattle fishing! What do you mean?”
“I just mean what I say,—the kine are getting fish for themselves in the
pools below, and the pigs——”
The laird explained to his friend that all domestic animals, even
horses, relish fish when their other food is poor of its kind; and that
it is the custom of the native cattle to go down to the beach at low
water, and help themselves out of the pools in which fish have been left
by the retiring tide.
“Well, Murdoch; and your pigs and poultry,—where are they? Do your pigs
live on wild ducks, and your fowls on sea-weed?”
“Na, na,” said Murdoch. “Where should they be but yonder? Ye’ll see them
when ye go in to dinner.”
“What! in the house?”
“To be sure,” said the laird. “As soon as you enter, the pig will run
between your legs, and the fowls will perch upon each shoulder, and then
you will be asked where the poor beasts could be better. If ever
accident should oblige you to sleep in a farm-house hereabouts, examine
your bed lest a sucking-pig should have taken possession before you, and
in the morning, look for eggs in your shoes before you slip your feet
into them.—But see, you must make acquaintance with these domestics out
of doors for once. Here comes the old grunter, and there are the fowls
fluttering as if they liked the day-light no better than bats.”
In honour of the guests, the house was cleared of live stock, and their
banishment was a sign that dinner was ready at last.—The meal was
conducted with tolerable decency, as in addition to the boatmen who
waited on the guests, Callum had arrived to keep things in order, and do
the honours of his apartment. By dint of swearing at one, flinging his
Highland bonnet at another, and coaxing a third, he procured a change of
trenchers, when his guests turned from fish to fowl, and thence to
cheese. This change did not much matter to those who ate of the
provisions of the farm-house, for everything had a smack of the sea. The
cream was fishy, the cheese was fishy, and the barley bannocks
themselves had a salt and bitter flavour as if they had been dipped in
sea-water; so at least the English gentlemen thought, remembering how
the cattle fed, and having seen the land manured with sea-weed. As it
was certainly pure fancy as far as the barley-cakes were concerned, it
might have been so in the other cases; but he turned with much greater
relish to the provisions which had been brought from the mainland.
Ella arrived before the meal was over, and waited outside till the laird
could speak with her. His first question, when he took his seat on the
bench beside the door, and his tenant stood before him, was, what had
made her brothers so unlike the boys within, and most of the other lads
belonging to the islands? He knew that they had been early taught
industry by their father’s example; but who had instructed them to
husband that industry, to make use of eyes, ears, and understanding as
well as limbs? Who had made them intelligent and skilful as well as
laborious?
“How does your honour know they are so?” asked Ella, for once following
the Highland fashion of answering one question by another.
“I saw at a glance that they were intelligent, and Ronald told me enough
while we were waiting for you to show that you know better how to live
with a little than these cousins of yours with much. How did you all
learn?”
“Did Ronald tell you about Angus?” asked Ella, her eye for the first
time sinking under that of the laird.
“Merely that Angus taught you the management of a boat, as he had
learned it in dangerous places abroad. Angus is a relation, I suppose,
or only a friend?”
“A friend; and he taught us all many things that are little thought of
here. My father ever said we should do well if we had Angus at hand to
advise us.”
“I suppose he will come and advise you again, Ella, at such an important
time as this. Will you not send for him? Can I carry any message to the
mainland, for I hear that it was from over the water that he used to
come.”
Ella answered in a somewhat stern voice, that if ever he came again it
must be from over the water, for that he had been in foreign parts for
five years, and nothing had been heard of him for long.
“Five years! then he could not have taught her brothers much, so young
as they must have been when he went away.” Ella replied that he taught
her whatever her father could not, and her brothers learned of her.
“Perhaps,” said the laird, “if his friends expected to hear of him,
something prevented his sending to them.”
“No doubt,” replied Ella.
“What do you imagine it could be, Ella?”
“Perhaps he is dead,” said she quietly, but still looking on the ground.
“You do not suppose he has forgotten his old friends? yet, such things
do sometimes happen, Ella.”
She made no answer; and the laird saw by the deep colour which made
itself seen through her weather-worn complexion, that he had gone too
far. He was very sorry; and now wondered at his own slowness in
perceiving the true state of the case; but there was so little in her
appearance to suggest the idea, and she seemed so wholly devoted to her
brothers, that he had fancied the connexion with Angus one of pure
friendship,—of that friendship which bears in the Highlands a character
of warmth, simplicity, and familiarity, not very common in some other
places.
To relieve Ella, the laird spoke immediately of business, relating what
was to be done to make the cottage and field tenantable, and explaining
to her that, twenty shillings a year being the interest upon the capital
laid out, twenty shillings a year was the sum he would take, if she
thought she could pay it.—Ella had no doubt of it.
“Try it for a year,” said the laird, “and then if either party is
discontented, we can change our terms. I hope you will meet with no
disturbance from any one, and that you may find all your little plans
answer well, so that you may be able to pay rent whenever the time comes
for neighbours to settle down beside you and increase the cost of the
place you hold. That time will come, I give you warning; and when it
comes, I hope you will be rich enough to meet it.”
“Surely, your honour, we hope to improve the land, and so to be able to
pay more than for the fencing; but how are we to improve the sea, or the
ledges where we cut weed?”
“You cannot improve them, Ella; but if you are in a more favourable
situation than your neighbours for obtaining their produce, you must
expect to pay for the advantage. If I were to ask a rent to-day for the
fishing in your bay, neither you nor others would pay it; you would say
‘I will go to some other situation as good, where there is no rent to
pay,’ and you would settle yourself down in Ilachanu or elsewhere, and
keep all you could obtain. But when all these best situations are taken
possession of, other comers say to me, ‘We will pay you a part of what
we get if you will let us have a line of shore that shelves conveniently
for our kelping, or where fish is plentiful.’”
“And then,” said Ella, “we must pay as much as they offer, if we mean to
stay; or take up with a worse situation if we will not pay. Well; I
doubt not we can pay your honour duly when that time comes, over and
above the twenty shillings for the house and fences. It may be in fish
or kelp, instead of money, but we will manage to pay, if Mr. Callum be
not hard upon us.”
“I shall tell Callum to receive my interest in any shape that it may
suit you best to pay it; in fish, or in kelp, or in grain, or even in
peat. This is but fair considering how far you are from any market. As
for the real rent, do not trouble your head about that at present. It
will be long before you will be called on for any; and I only mentioned
it to show you what you have to expect if you grow rich.”
“Will our growing rich make us liable to pay what your honour calls real
rent? You will excuse my asking, but I like to know what is before us.”
“Your growing rich will tempt people to come and try their fortune; and
then, as I said, the best situations must pay for being the best. Is not
this fair?”
“To be sure; your honour would not ask any thing unfair.”
“That is not enough, Ella. If there should be a new laird by that time—”
“God forbid!” exclaimed Ella. “A new laird would not come to Garveloch
in this way, like your honour, or listen to what your people have to
say.”
“But answer me,” said the laird, smiling, “Would you object to pay rent,
in the case I speak of, whoever might be laird?”
“Surely no,” replied Ella, “unless I could better myself by moving;
which I could not do if all situations as good as my own were taken up.”
“And how much would you be willing to pay?”
“Let’s see. If we had over and above, at the end of the year, two
barrels of herrings and half a ton of kelp, we’ll say,—I would find out
how much we should have over and above, in the same time, in the next
best place; and if it was one barrel of herrings and a quarter of a ton
of kelp, I would pay the difference,—that is one barrel of herrings and
a quarter of a ton of kelp, rather than move.”
“Very right; and then you would be as well off in the one place as in
the other. There would still be a fair profit on both.”
“And I am sure your honour would not ask more than our profits would
come to.”
“There would be little use in my asking, even if I wished it, Ella; for
it would not be paid. Your neighbour would not settle beside you, unless
the place answered to him; and if I demanded more of you than the
difference between your profits and his, you would, of course, move to a
situation like his?”
“I should be sorry to move,” said Ella, looking downwards to her new
place of abode, “but, in such a case, I must.”
“Such a case will not occur, Ella; for we are not so foolish as to let
our farms and cottages stand empty from our asking more rent than they
can pay.”
“I am not afraid, sir, of having to give up our place. Whenever there is
a rent, it will be small at first, I suppose?”
“Yes, and it will grow very slowly in a wild place like this, and it may
be years before it bears any at all. In the meanwhile, tell your
brothers what I have been telling you.”
Ella promised and then proceeded to the one thing more she had to say.
It was a request on Archie’s behalf,—a petition that he might amuse
himself as he pleased upon the Storr, a high rock, formed like a
pyramid, that stood out from one point in the bay in which Ella’s
cottage stood. This rock was an island at high water, being joined to
Garveloch only by a strip of sand, which was overflowed twice every day.
Myriads of sea-birds haunted this rock; and Archie having once found his
way to these, his favourite companions, could not, his sister believed,
be kept from going continually. The laird gave ready permission, only
offering a caution against the perils of the tide, rising and falling as
it did perpetually in the very path. Of this, Ella had no fear; for not
the most skilful seamen could be more cautious, or appear more knowing
than Archie, when he had to do with the tide. His sister observed that
he had never put life or limb in the way of peril; and this caution so
peculiar to children in Archie’s state, went far to confirm the island
superstition that the poor boy was under special invisible protection,
and therefore screened from ill usage at the hand of man, as well as
from natural perils.
The Storr being yielded to Archie as freely as the rocks to Ronald and
the peat-moss to Fergus, Ella’s business was done, and her gratitude
secured,—gratitude offered as soon as deserved, and in greater abundance
than the laird thought the occasion required, however Mr. Callum might
complain of the absence of this prime qualification of a tenant. Ella’s
gratitude was not eloquent, but the laird saw enough of its effects upon
her countenance and manner to wonder at the degree of satisfaction
caused by the present arrangement. He kindly bade Ella farewell, and
while she rapidly descended the rocks by one path, he sought his party
by another.
He found his companions in great consternation, and the boatmen looking
about on the beach, as if for something which had been dropped. What
were they looking for,—a bracelet, a brooch, or was it a watch?
Ornaments and valuables should not be trusted abroad on such
expeditions.—O it was nothing of that kind; it was the boat they were
looking for! The boat! and did they expect to find it among the
shingles, or hidden under the sea-weeds? Who had drawn it up on the
beach or moored it in the cove? Nobody could lay claim to the praise of
such a service; the boat had been left to itself, and had, of course,
drifted down the Sound with the tide, and was probably dashed to pieces.
While the responsible persons were bandying reproaches, the English
gentleman began to anticipate the fate he had been warned of,—a pig for
his pillow, and eggs in his shoes, if indeed he could hope for the
luxury of a bed, or of liberty to put off his clothes. The laird ordered
the only measure now in their power,—to borrow the boat in which Ella
and her brothers were about to return home. The farmer promised to house
his relations for the night, and to send them back when his boat should
return the next morning.
After waiting more than an hour, the people appeared at a great distance
on the beach bearing the boat, instead of on the sea, being borne by the
boat. The farmer explained that this was, perhaps, the shorter way, as
the jutting rocks must have compelled them to make a wide circuit.
“Where are the oars?” said the laird, as they approached; whereupon they
once more looked around them, saying, they thought the oars had been
safe enough though the boat was gone. It was not the case, however, and
more messengers were dispatched for Ella’s oars. The ladies began to
shiver and look at each other, when one of their companions observed it
would be terribly late and very dark before they could get home.
“Late, but not dark,” said the laird; “you forget how long our twilight
lasts. We shall be able to see our way till midnight.—Come, make haste
with your stowage, my good man. But look here! how are you to row? The
pins are out that should fix your oars.”
They had disappeared since morning, Fergus said, and he could not
imagine how; he and his brother never pretended to row without, and it
was not they who had loosened the pins. It was of more importance to
supply the pins than to find who had taken them. Farmer Murdoch sent his
boys to pull some teeth out of his wooden harrow, and, after another
hour, they were fitted in, the boat launched with the ladies in it, and
all apparently ready at last. No sooner, however, had the little vessel
left the cove, than it was found to be a pity that there was no sail, as
the wind seemed likely to be favourable, and might make up for lost
time. In the midst of doubt and debate, the rowers put back, waving
their bonnets to Murdoch and his party, who were ascending the rock.
“What’s your will?” cried all on shore.
“A sail! a mast!” answered all in the boat. One went one way and another
another, to find a pole for the mast, and a broomstick for the yard, and
blankets to make a sail. There was no step for a mast, nor provision for
a rudder; but no matter! The pole was tied with twine to one of the
benches, and an oar was held at the helm, while the blankets were pinned
together with wooden skewers, and managed by means of a scarlet garter
tied to the corner, and thus transferred from the knee of one of the
boatmen to his hand. The preparations being completed, the progress of
the party was again watched by Ella, who anxiously observed the length
of the shadows from the rocks upon the bay. When the boat emerged from
the shadow and was caught by the wind, it appeared likely to be blown
due north, and the party might have been landed very wide of their
destination, if a little puff of wind had not carried the sail
overboard, and obliged the men to take to their oars after all. It was
evident, from there being no delay, that nobody was lost or injured, and
Farmer Murdoch was, therefore, at liberty to laugh when he saw his
blankets, with their scarlet ornaments, gently floated down the Sound,
and seeming to excite the curiosity of the sea birds, which made a dip,
in their evening flight homewards, to look at this new marine
production.
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