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AULD LICHT IDYLS
By J. M. Barrie
TO
FREDERICK GREENWOOD
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE SCHOOL-HOUSE
II. THRUMS
III. THE AULD LICHT KIRK
IV. LADS AND LASSES
V. THE AULD LICHTS IN ARMS
VI. THE OLD DOMINIE
VII. CREE QUEERY AND MYSY DROLLY
VIII. THE COURTING OF T'NOWHEAD'S BELL
IX. DAVIT LUNAN'S POLITICAL REMINISCENCES
X. A VERY OLD FAMILY
XI. LITTLE RATHIE'S “BURAL”
XII. A LITERARY CLUB
AULD LICHT IDYLS.
CHAPTER I.
THE SCHOOL-HOUSE.
Early this morning I opened a window in my school-house in the glen of
Quharity, awakened by the shivering of a starving sparrow against the
frosted glass. As the snowy sash creaked in my hand, he made off to the
waterspout that suspends its “tangles” of ice over a gaping tank, and,
rebounding from that, with a quiver of his little black breast, bobbed
through the network of wire and joined a few of his fellows in a forlorn
hop round the henhouse in search of food. Two days ago my hilarious
bantam-cock, saucy to the last, my cheeriest companion, was found frozen
in his own water-trough, the corn-saucer in three pieces by his side.
Since then I have taken the hens into the house. At meal-times they
litter the hearth with each other's feathers; but for the most part they
give little trouble, roosting on the rafters of the low-roofed kitchen
among staves and fishing-rods.
Another white blanket has been spread upon the glen since I looked out
last night; for over the same wilderness of snow that has met my gaze
for a week, I see the steading of Waster Lunny sunk deeper into the
waste. The school-house, I suppose, serves similarly as a snow-mark for
the people at the farm. Unless that is Waster Lunny's grieve foddering
the cattle in the snow, not a living thing is visible. The ghostlike
hills that pen in the glen have ceased to echo to the sharp crack of the
sportsman's gun (so clear in the frosty air as to be a warning to every
rabbit and partridge in the valley); and only giant Catlaw shows here
and there a black ridge, rearing his head at the entrance to the glen
and struggling ineffectually to cast off his shroud. Most wintry sign of
all I think, as I close the window hastily, is the open farm-stile, its
poles lying embedded in the snow where they were last flung by Waster
Lunny's herd. Through the still air comes from a distance a vibration
as of a tuning-fork: a robin, perhaps, alighting on the wire of a broken
fence.
In the warm kitchen, where I dawdle over my breakfast, the widowed
bantam-hen has perched on the back of my drowsy cat. It is needless
to go through the form of opening the school to-day; for, with the
exception of Waster Lunny's girl, I have had no scholars for nine days.
Yesterday she announced that there would be no more schooling till it
was fresh, “as she wasna comin';” and indeed, though the smoke from the
farm chimneys is a pretty prospect for a snowed-up school-master, the
trudge between the two houses must be weary work for a bairn. As for the
other children, who have to come from all parts of the hills and glen,
I may not see them for weeks. Last year the school was practically
deserted for a month. A pleasant outlook, with the March examinations
staring me in the face, and an inspector fresh from Oxford. I wonder
what he would say if he saw me to-day digging myself out of the
school-house with the spade I now keep for the purpose in my bedroom.
The kail grows brittle from the snow in my dank and cheerless garden. A
crust of bread gathers timid pheasants round me. The robins, I see, have
made the coal-house their home. Waster Lunny's dog never barks without
rousing my sluggish cat to a joyful response. It is Dutch courage with
the birds and beasts of the glen, hard driven for food; but I look
attentively for them in these long forenoons, and they have begun to
regard me as one of themselves. My breath freezes, despite my pipe, as
I peer from the door: and with a fortnight-old newspaper I retire to the
ingle-nook. The friendliest thing I have seen to-day is the well-smoked
ham suspended, from my kitchen rafters. It was a gift from the farm of
Tullin, with a load of peats, the day before the snow began to fall. I
doubt if I have seen a cart since.
This afternoon I was the not altogether passive spectator of a curious
scene in natural history. My feet encased in stout “tackety” boots, I
had waded down two of Waster Lunny's fields to the glen burn: in summer
the never-failing larder from which, with wriggling worm or garish fly,
I can any morning whip a savory breakfast; in the winter time the only
thing in the valley that defies the ice-king's chloroform. I watched the
water twisting black and solemn through the snow, the ragged ice on its
edge proof of the toughness of the struggle with the frost, from which
it has, after all, crept only half victorious. A bare wild rose-bush
on the farther bank was violently agitated, and then there ran from its
root a black-headed rat with wings. Such was the general effect. I was
not less interested when my startled eyes divided this phenomenon into
its component parts, and recognized in the disturbance on the opposite
bank only another fierce struggle among the hungry animals for
existence: they need no professor to teach them the doctrine of the
survival of the fittest. A weasel had gripped a water-hen (whit-tit
and beltie they are called In these parts) cowering at the root of the
rose-bush, and was being dragged down the bank by the terrified
bird, which made for the water as its only chance of escape. In less
disadvantageous circumstances the weasel would have made short work of
his victim; but as he only had the bird by the tail, the prospects of
the combatants were equalized. It was the tug-of-war being played with a
life as the stakes. “If I do not reach the water,” was the argument that
went on in the heaving little breast of the one, “I am a dead bird.”
“If this water-hen,” reasoned the other, “reaches the burn, my supper
vanishes with her.” Down the sloping bank the hen had distinctly the
best of it, but after that came a yard, of level snow, and here she
tugged and screamed in vain. I had so far been an unobserved spectator;
but my sympathies were with the beltie, and, thinking it high time to
interfere, I jumped into the water. The water-hen gave one mighty final
tug and toppled into the burn; while the weasel viciously showed me
his teeth, and then stole slowly up the bank to the rose-bush, whence,
“girning,” he watched me lift his exhausted victim from the water, and
set off with her for the school-house. Except for her draggled tail,
she already looks wonderfully composed, and so long as the frost holds I
shall have little difficulty in keeping her with me. On Sunday I found
a frozen sparrow, whose heart had almost ceased to beat, in the disused
pigsty, and put him for warmth into my breast-pocket. The ungrateful
little scrub bolted without a word of thanks about ten minutes
afterward, to the alarm of my cat, which had not known his whereabouts.
I am alone in the school-house. On just such an evening as this last
year my desolation drove me to Waster Lunny, where I was storm-stayed
for the night. The recollection decides me to court my own warm hearth,
to challenge my right hand again to a game at the “dambrod” against
my left. I do not lock the school-house door at nights; for even a
highwayman (there is no such luck) would be received with open arms, and
I doubt if there be a barred door in all the glen. But it is cosier to
put on the shutters. The road to Thrums has lost itself miles down the
valley. I wonder what they are doing out in the world. Though I am the
Free Church precentor in Thrums (ten pounds a year, and the little town
is five miles away), they have not seen me for three weeks. A packman
whom I thawed yesterday at my kitchen fire tells me that last Sabbath
only the Auld Lichts held service. Other people realized that they were
snowed up. Far up the glen, after it twists out of view, a manse
and half a dozen thatched cottages that are there may still show a
candle-light, and the crumbling gravestones keep cold vigil round the
gray old kirk. Heavy shadows fade into the sky to the north. A flake
trembles against the window; but it is too cold for much snow to-night.
The shutter bars the outer world from the school-house.