THE BARMKYN OF CAIRNTABLE.
"Dark grew the sky, the wind was still,
The sun in blood arose;
But oh! how many a gallant man
Ne'er saw that evening close!"--HOGG.
A few hours' march among the knolls and hollows, which exhibited here
and there a solitary square tower, or an old thatched sheep farm,
shaded by ash trees, and nestling on the holm land of the strath
through which the Douglas winds, brought the soldiers of Vipont to
the base of the Cairntable, a beautiful green mountain, sixteen
hundred feet in height. One half was darkly rounded into shadow, on
the other shone the bright splendour of the meridian sun, which lit
up all the windings of the various little pastoral glens, through
which the Peniel, the Glespin, the Kinnox, and other mountain
tributaries, flowed to feed the Douglas at its base.
On a small spot of table-land, a shoulder of the hill, and sheltered
by its giant ridge from the south-west wind, which usually prevails
there, stood the fortified grange, or barmkyn, of Baldwin Fleming.
Boasting of his lineal descent from Theobald le Fleming, who is said
to have possessed all that country before the rise of the Douglases,
and their gradual acquisition of the whole district, this sturdy
retainer of the encroaching Lords of Angus, though neither laird nor
lesser baron, but merely a goodman, who held his feu of a feudal
chief, and followed his banner in battle, had procured (through the
good offices of his kinsman Redhall) a crown charter, empowering him
to fortify his farm, which he had done with a strength that made it
second only to Castle Douglas, and the envy of all the fierce barons
in that warlike district.
This vast building formed an exact square, and had four square towers
on each of its four faces. These were all strongly vaulted for
holding grain, while the great yard within served for securing
cattle. The twelve towers, and the curtain walls between them, were
battlemented on the top, studded with loopholes below, and all
strongly, though roughly, built with stone quarried from the adjacent
rocks.
The most perfect example of a similar edifice now in Scotland, is the
fortified grange of Sir John Seton of Barns, which crowns a height
southward of Haddington, where its ruined towers resemble the remains
of an ancient city, from their strength and extent.
Within the barmkyn, on one side, stood the strong and substantial,
but thatched, dwelling of the farmer; along the other three sides
were barns, stables, and houses for his men. At a certain distance
round the whole, a deep ditch was drawn; the margin was used as a
kitchen garden, and was stocked with common potherbs, and a few small
fruit trees, sheltered by boor-tree hedges and stockades.
The bridge was up; and opposite the gate stood a clump of large oak
trees; and on a branch of one, which was conspicuous for its size and
foliage, the dead body of a man was hanging by the neck, with the
gleds flying about it.
"Oho!" said Roland, as a turn of the glen brought him suddenly in
view of this goodly farm; "so the goodman of this grange hath a power
of pit and gallows! His oaks bear other fruit than acorns."
"A peasant rascal!" replied Leslie; "and yet he tieth a tassel to his
tree, like the best feudal lord in the land."
While approaching this formidable edifice, they had heard the distant
blowing of bugle-horns, the springing of wooden rattles, and the
incessant jangle of a large bell. These notes of alarm, together
with the appearance of armed horsemen, galloping in various
directions over the green hill sides, lessened the surprise of Vipont
and his soldiers, when, on coming in view of the grange of
Cairntable, they saw the whole line of its walls glistening with
pike-heads and glittering with steel caps; while a scarlet banner,
bearing the chevron of the Flemings within its flowering and
counterflowering fleurs-de-lys, was unfurled in defiance; for (thanks
to the cunning and amiable intentions of Nichol Birrel) such was the
dinner prepared by the sturdy proprietor for his unwelcome visitors.
What the tenor of Birrel's falsehoods and misinformation may have
been, we have now no means of ascertaining; but they were such, that
the gudeman had all his horses secured in stall; his vast herds of
cattle in their pens, his stacks of grain stowed away in vault and
barn; while all the men over whom he had authority, to the number of
three hundred, with their families, were in garrison, and stood to
their arms, with the intention of resolutely obeying his orders,
whatever they might be.
A brownie, in the shape of a little rough man, with a broad bonnet
and long beard, attended the family of Fleming. He rocked the
cradles of the infants, and performed various other kind and domestic
services; especially foddering the horses and cattle, sweeping the
kitchen floor, and filling the water-stoups for the servant girls;
all of which self-imposed duties were performed by this goodnatured
imp in the night, for the brownie was a being unseen by day; and to
propitiate him, a libation of milk and wort were nightly poured into
a rude font in the yard, called the _broonie's stane_--for in those
days every thrifty housewife set apart a portion of food for the
brownie, that his favour and protection, as well as his future
services, might be thereby ensured. If a piece of money were left,
an eldritch yell announced that the insulted brownie had found it,
and fled in resentment--for from that moment he invariably abandoned
the family and for ever. This familiar and usually amiable spirit,
with which Scottish superstition furnished the household of every old
race, was pacific, generous, and unvarying in his services; but if
once offended, implacable in his revenge.
On the night preceding this eventful day, the brownie of Cairntable
had been heard to utter the most doleful lamentations, and "the wee
manikin with his lang beard and braid bannet," had been seen (as
several of the servitors averred) to pass round the towers of the
barmkyn, wringing his hands and weeping piteously, which had caused
the gudeman to look well to his defences, and to his horses and
armour. Thus in two hours after the arrival of his kinsman's
follower, Nichol Birrel, everything was in fighting order within the
grange when the king's troops approached it.
"Halt!" cried Roland Vipont.
"By my faith!" said Leslie, "we shall have no dinner here to-day,
which I regret exceedingly, as this hath all the aspect and
reputation of being an exceedingly well-stocked grange."
"There is some mistake here. They surely have not seen the royal
standard," said Vipont, angrily, as he shaded his eyes with his hand,
which was cased in a glove of steel.
"Ah! you wished for some fighting!"
"Just now I wish most for dinner; and so, Balquhan, ride thou forward
with a white flag, and make open door for us."
"Dost think I am another St. Colm, to make bolts unbar and doors open
by simply signing the cross?"
"No; but by threatening them with cannon shot."
Leslie tied a white handkerchief to the point of his long sword, and
galloped fearlessly forward to the edge of the ditch, from whence he
could distinctly see the grim faces that, from under battered
morions, peered at him between the embrasures of the wall above;
while from the deep-mouthed loopholes below peeped forth the keen
pike-heads and the iron muzzle of many an arquebuse and pistol.
"Art thou the gudeman of the Cairntable?" asked Leslie of a stout man
of great stature, whose polished coat of mail betokened a superiority
over the others around him.
"At your service, my braw gallant," he replied, bending over the
tower; "but what may your errand be here?"
"To learn wherefore ye receive the king's soldiers in this fashion,
with closed gates, and your helmets on?"
"Gif gaff makes gude friends," replied the other, surlily; "but I
trow, gif gaff shall make you none here; so, in God's name, pass on
in peace. Here ilka man must just ride the ford as he finds it."
"Dost think we will burn thy house after it hath lodged us, poor
devil!" said Leslie, with a lofty and patronizing air.
The buirdly farmer laughed hoarsely, as he looked to the right and
left along the strong walls, which were lined by so many tall fellows
in helmets and breast-plates.
"Away, away!" said he, waving his gauntleted hand; "what brings ye
frae Holyrood to this puir sheep country? It's a gay place, that
Holyrood! Ah, there are plenty of vacant priories, lay abbacies,
captainries of castles, and other braw perquisites to be picked up
there; so I marvel mickle that you left so pleasant a climate, to
come here among the spirit-broken and impoverished Douglases, and the
fogs o' the Cairntable, where there's nothing but rocks, whinstones,
and cold iron to be had."
"Then you will not lower your bridge, and afford free entrance to the
king's soldiers."
"If a' the fiends of hell came, I carena a brass bodle; so away wi'
ye, or ye may fare the worse. Tell thy captain my name is Baldwin
the Fleming--as good a man as he."
"Peasant hound, thou shalt rue this dearly!" replied Leslie, who was
about to turn away, when he perceived the rascal whom they had met at
St. Bryde's Well levelling an arquebuse full at him, from a loophole;
and he had just time to make his horse rear, so that the ball, which
would have pierced his own breast, entered that of the poor animal,
which snorted and plunged wildly. Escaping, however, several other
balls which whistled past him, Leslie forced it back at full speed to
the side of Roland, where it fell down, and was dead almost ere the
rider could disengage himself from the stirrups.
"To your arquebuses, Leslie," exclaimed Roland, "while I shall unbend
my cannon. Ah, white-livered cowards!" he added, shaking his
clenched hand towards the hostile grange, "I will maul you sorely for
this defiance! Soldiers! they are all traitors to the king, for they
have fired on his royal standard. To your guns my brave
cannoniers--to your linstocks, and unlimber! Quick! and make me good
service against this contumacious villain and his foolish knaves."
While the cannon were wheeled round, the tumbrils cast off, the
magazines opened, and powder and shot taken therefrom; and while the
cannoniers commenced pointing and charging them home, Leslie formed
his hundred arquebusiers behind a knoll, where they fixed their rests
into the turf, and opened a fire as close and rapid as it was
possible for soldiers to maintain with these cumbrous fire-arms,
which carried balls of two, and even three ounces; which were loaded
by means of a powder-horn; were levelled over forks, and were fired
by means of a matchlock. The reports were loud and deep, and the
rocks of the Cairntable repeated them with a thousand reverberations.
White as snow, the smoke of arquebuse and pistolette broke (but at
long intervals) from the strong dark walls of the grange, and their
balls tore up the soft turf, as they fell among the little band of
besiegers, or whistled over their heads; for so well were they
posted, that during two hours of incessant firing not one was ever
touched.
"Batter me down the entrance-gate!" cried Roland to his gunners;
"'Tis easier to punch holes in an oak plank than a stone rampart; so
down with it, my brave cannoniers--for this night we will carry the
place by assault or die in its ditches!"
"Art thou quite prepared for that?" asked Leslie.
"A true soldier is prepared for everything," replied the elated
Vipont; "let us only have yonder gate beaten down by daylight, and,
with my sword for a wand, I will act your gentleman usher when night
falls."
The cannon were carefully levelled and pointed; fire flashed from
their muzzles; smoke curled up in the sunshine; and their reports
rang like thunder among the windings of the Douglas. One shot
crashed through the massive gate, beating a large hole in it; the
other struck the battlements, and threw down a heap of masonry, which
fell, amid a cloud of dust, into the ditch below. Hereupon high
words ensued between old Lintstock and the lance-spesade, whose thumb
was placed upon the vent of the culverin, which he was reloading.
"It ill becomes a gle'ed gunner like you," Roland heard him say, "to
heed me less than an auld pair o' boots; but lang enough before you
saw the blessed light o' day I had levelled everything like a cannon,
frae a quarter Moyenne up to auld Monce Meg herself; and here now, I
will wager you a stoup o' Bourdeaux, that my next shot will go
straight to the keyhole."
"Done!" replied the lance-spesade; "twa stoups if you like--and here
is my thumb on't."
The lance-spesade levelled the culverin; applied his right eye to
three sides of the breech, carefully adjusted the quoins, and fired.
The ball struck a coat of arms above the gate, and threw a cloud of
splinters around it in every direction.
"She throws high," said the soldier, throwing down his match,
discomfited.
Lintstock grinned as he reloaded, and thereafter applied his single
orb to the breach and quoins, looking carefully along the polished
brass gun. At that moment the ball of a falconet came whizz from the
barmkyn, and was splintered on its muzzle; but the cool old soldier,
whose brains had so narrowly escaped being dashed out by it, neither
winced nor appeared the least disturbed in his aim; but took one pace
to the left, stretched out his right hand with the match, and in his
turn fired. Then, where the dark keyhole of the ponderous gate had
been but a moment before, a large round breach was visible, with the
sunshine streaming through it. Upon this, a shout arose within the
barmkyn, and the shrill cries of women and children were distinctly
heard.
"Well done, my true cannonier!" said Roland. "A few more of these
bitter almonds, and the gudeman of the Cairntable will be forced to
afford us open house, whether he will or not. To thy cannon again,
my old Lintstock: for thou hast but one eye--Saint Mary! 'tis the eye
of a gazehound. Aim well with your cannon and arquebuses, my gallant
comrades--aim well, and level low! There are many good things in
yonder walls, all of which are yours by the law of war. How now, my
bold Balquhan--art thou shot?" he asked, on seeing Leslie reel.
"As surely as if with an elf-arrow," replied the lieutenant, whose
left arm had been wounded by the ball of a hand-gun, which had beaten
his armour into the orifice, and caused him excessive pain; "but it
matters not--four of my best men are lying stiff enough, among the
broom, now."
"Zounds! this night's lodgings is likely to cost us dear!--but, 'fore
God, I will make it dearer to the rascal who holds yonder barmkyn
against us."
With his scarf, Roland bound up Leslie's arm; and having decided on
his tactics, commanded the arquebusiers to cease firing; to lie down
close under the brow of a knoll, and to reserve their arms and
matches for service at night. Meanwhile, the culverins incessantly
battered the barmkyn, the gate of which, by the time that the setting
sun reddened the wild summit of Cairntable, was beaten down, with a
great part of the wall, thus affording an open passage into the heart
of the place.
"Thank Heaven, the night will be cloudy and dark!" said Roland,
looking at the sky; "so, by day-dawn, I will show thee, Balquhan, the
Red Lion waving where the chevron of Fleming floats upon yonder
barmkyn. A thousand thanks, my brave cannoniers--and chiefly thou,
old Lintstock, for a troop of knights might ride abreast through
yonder breach."
"True; but thou forgettest the ditch," said Leslie.
"Nay; I have bethought me of that, too."
Black and gloomy the night came on; a high wind growled along the
valley; and with the deepening obscurity, it seemed as if the brawl
of the Douglas over its stony bed became louder, for its rush was
heard distinctly amid the dark and dewy hills, from which it
descended into that lonely and pastoral strath through which it winds.
Pale and sharp as a spear-head, a horn of the new moon appeared at
times above the black outline of the Craintable; and when old
Lintstock saw it, he carefully took out his purse (which, however,
contained only four of James the Third's black farthings), and having
turned it over thrice, wished himself good luck, according to a
Scottish superstition existing unto the present day.
When the gloom had deepened, so that nothing could be discerned of
the barmkyn but its bold outline and sable towers, standing on a
shoulder of the mountain, Roland ordered the arquebusiers to pile
their arms, and to tear down the roof and planking of an old barn
that stood near; and thereafter to bind some ten or fifteen of the
rafters together with ropes of straw, so that, being laid close
together, they should (with the assistance of a few planks) form a
temporary bridge, or passage, across the fosse of the barmkyn, the
breadth of which, with military exactness, he had measured with his
eye.
Two hours sufficed for this, and, about midnight, he prepared to
assault the place, resolving to chastise the gudeman severely for his
resistance. Notwithstanding his wound, the gallant Leslie insisted
on accompanying him, and, armed with a Jethart staff, Lintstock left
the cannoniers to follow his master.
As the arquebusiers approached in close order, the glow of their
lighted matches must have announced their approach, for although all
was still in the barmkyn (save the incessant lowing of the cattle in
their pens), the moment they were within range, a storm of missiles
was poured upon them. Arquebuse and pistolette, hacque, dague, and
iron-drake, flashed redly upon the darkness of the night, and many an
arrow, and many a bullet, whistled among the close ranks of the
Guard. Several fell, killed or wounded; but the rest pressed forward
bravely, and Roland, with his helmet closed, and sword in hand, led
them on.
Thick and fast fell bolt and bullet, and the hearty shouts of the
little band of stormers were soon lost in the roar of tumultuous
sounds that arose within the barmkyn; for the cries of Fleming's
followers and kinsmen, as they animated each other at loophole and
battlement, the shrieks of their wives and daughters, the lowing of
the cattle, the barking of dogs, and the ceaseless ringing of a large
alarum bell, added to the incessant explosion of fire-arms, made a
united din, that gave a strange horror to a scene which had no other
lamps to light its dangers than the flashes of those deadly weapons,
which shot forth their contents from every nook and angle of the
strong dark walls.
"Down with the posts and planks! Quick--Quick!" cried Roland,
through his helmet. "Close your ranks, and now again to your
arquebuses! Fire, and club them! Club them, and on--on, for Vipont
and the King!"
This rude substitute for a bridge was laid, and the ditch crossed, in
less time than we have taken to relate it. Shoulder to shoulder, in
the gap of the gate and drawbridge, stood a close array of pikemen;
but, being somewhat less accustomed to arms than the soldiers of the
Guard, they were thrown into immediate confusion by a volley from the
arquebuses, which were instantly clubbed against them for close
combat.
"Forward! forward!" cried Roland, hewing a passage with his sword,
and shredding down the pike heads like ears of wheat; his strength,
stature, weight of arm, and admirable coat of mail, rendering him
invulnerable, like a knight of romance.
In the court of the barmkyn, and just within the gate, a close and
terrible conflict ensued in the dark; for there the sturdy farmer met
the assailants in person, at the head of his hynds and followers, all
cased in iron, cuirassed and barbed to the teeth.
A powerful man, of vast bulk and height, Fleming was sufficiently
formidable, without his other accessories of a coat of mail of the
fifteenth century, jagged with twelve iron beaks, and one of those
enormous iron-studded mauls, which were used in Scotland until the
battle of Pinkey, where they proved perfectly futile against the
Spanish and German hackbuttiers, who were the main means of winning
that battle for the English. The giant was giving all around him to
death and destruction; three soldiers, the best men of the Guard, had
fallen before him; for, by three separate blows, their brains and
casques had been crushed like ripe pumpkins, before Roland could
reach him through the press; and, with no other sentiments in his
heart than those of rage, the blind and clamorous longing to avenge
and to destroy that is sure to arise in one's heart at such a time,
he fell furiously upon him.
At this crisis, Roland could perceive a man in a close helmet, who,
armed with an arquebuse, kept close behind Fleming, and more than
once fired in the most cowardly manner over his shoulder. One ball
tore the cone of Roland's helmet, and another grazed his shoulder.
"Notch me the head of that rascal with thine axe, Lintstock," cried
he; "and leave me to deal alone with this rough tilter."
Swaying his enormous maul like a giant warrior of the dark ages,
Fleming made many a feint, before pouring forth all his strength and
fury, by swinging his club from the back of his head in one sheer
downward blow, that in a moment would have annihilated Vipont, had he
not sprung nimbly back, and escaped it as well as another shot from
the fellow with the arquebuse, who killed the lance-spesade, and so
deprived Lintstock of his stoup of Bordeaux. But ere Fleming could
recover his guard, Roland darted forward, and by one tremendous lunge
drove his long keen rapier through his body, just one inch below the
corselet. Fleming fell instantly to the ground, and the soldiers
pressed forward over him; but as Roland passed, the tremendous grasp
of the dying man was fastened on his foot, and he was dragged to the
earth, where a furious struggle ensued between them.
In the dark, Roland's fall was unseen by his soldiers, who advanced
fighting hand to hand into the heart of the barmkyn, driving before
them the retainers of Baldwin Fleming. Groaning with rage and pain,
and wallowing in his blood, the latter rolled over Roland, and
retained him in a grasp which gathered fresh energy from the pangs of
death, till it seemed to possess the power of an iron vice. One hand
encircled his throat; the other grasped a poniard, with which he made
many a fruitless effort to stab him to the heart. Five times he
struck, and, glancing from the tempered corselet, five times the
dagger sunk harmlessly into the ground.
During this struggle there suddenly burst upon the darkness a broad
and lurid gleam of light, that illuminated the whole arena of the
barmkyn, its battered gate and ruined wall, its corpse-strewn court
and striking architecture; and then Roland could perceive the ghastly
visage of that powerful foe who grasped him--powerful even in death,
for sight had all but left his glazed and sunken eyes; yet the
vengeance of a demon seemed to burn in his despairing heart, and to
add strength to his muscular gripe. In confusion and agony he had
dropped his poniard, and now with both hands he clutched Roland's
throat, and frantically endeavoured, by compressing his steel gorget,
to strangle, since he had failed to stab him; and with every futile
effort, the hot fierce blood welled forth from his gaping wound and
clammy mouth.
Tighter and tighter grew that deadly clutch; the yielding steel
compressed at last, and Roland felt his eyes starting and his brain
whirling, while a thousand lights began to dance before him. An icy
terror, such as never had been there before, now thrilled through his
heart; he thought of Jane; and made one superhuman effort to free
himself and to shout for succour; but both failed, and he thought
that all was now over and for ever, when the gleam of light which
shot through the barmkyn saved him. For a moment, attracted by this
strange glow that flashed upon his sightless orbs, strong Fleming
relaxed his iron grasp, and, fatally for himself, permitted Roland to
respire.
Bearing in mind his master's injunctions, Nichol Birrel had thrice
taken a deadly aim at Roland, and thrice had failed, for his bullets
slew other men, when his arquebuse was dashed aside by Lintstock's
Jethart axe. Then, finding that he was not likely to achieve much by
dint of arms, on observing the strange combat between Roland and
Fleming in the gateway--a struggle which he alone had observed, a new
idea occurred to him; and, rushing to the summit of the walls, he
cried:
"The kye! the kye! save your kye! or they will all become the prize
and spulzie of the soldiers!" From the parapets he threw down
several enormous bundles of blazing straw among the close-packed
herds: already excited and terrified by the din of the combat and the
report of the firearms, they were at once driven mad and furious by
the descent of this burning shower.
Like a living torrent they poured into the court and rushed through
the gateway, in their flight and terror plunging and galloping,
jostling, crushing, and goring each other with their horns, as they
irresistibly swept all before them, trampling the dead and the
wounded in the mire of their track.
"St. Mary's knot!" cried Lintstock, hewing at their heels with his
Jethart axe; "hough and hamstring! tie their legs with St. Mary's
knot!"
Five hundred head of infuriated cattle poured from the barmkyn into
the dark glen below, where they spread over the mountains in all
directions.
Practised to such tactics in the Border war, the blaze of the straw
and the wild lowing of the cattle instantly acquainted Roland with
what was to ensue; but unable to free himself from the Herculean
grasp of Fleming, he suddenly clasped him in his arms. Then by one
tremendous effort he dragged his body over himself, and there
retained it as a shield from the forest of legs and hoofs that,
rushing from the pen, like a living whirlwind swept over them in
hundreds for the space of five minutes; but long before the fifth of
these minutes had passed, the nervous grasp of Fleming had relaxed,
and his fierce spirit had fled. Breathless, panting, and infuriated
by the whole encounter, Roland Vipont rose from the gory mud and
mire, regained his sword, and with a tottering gait and swimming head
looked around him for his followers.
By this time the conflict was over, and his little band of brave
soldiers had gained complete possession of the barmkyn, the whole
surviving defenders of which had effected their escape by one of
those subterranean sally-ports with which every fortified house in
Scotland was furnished, as a means of secret egress in the last
extremity.
The lance-spesade of the cannoniers and fifteen soldiers of the Guard
are said to have been slain in the assault.