CREE QUEERY AND MYSY DROLLY.
The children used to fling stones at Grinder Queery because he loved his
mother. I never heard the Grinder's real name. He and his mother were
Queery and Drolly, contemptuously so called, and they answered to these
names. I remember Cree best as a battered old weaver, who bent forward
as he walked, with his arms hanging limp as if ready to grasp the shafts
of the barrow behind which it was his life to totter up hill and down
hill, a rope of yarn suspended round his shaking neck and fastened to
the shafts, assisting him to bear the yoke and slowly strangling him.
By and by there came a time when the barrow and the weaver seemed both
palsy-stricken, and Cree, gasping for breath, would stop in the middle
of a brae, unable to push his load over a stone. Then he laid himself
down behind it to prevent the barrow's slipping back. On those occasions
only the barefooted boys who jeered at the panting weaver could put new
strength into his shrivelled arms. They did it by telling him that he
and Mysy would have to go to the “poorshouse” after all, at which the
gray old man would wince, as if “joukin” from a blow, and, shuddering,
rise and, with a desperate effort, gain the top of the incline. Small
blame perhaps attached to Cree if, as he neared his grave, he grew a
little dottle. His loads of yarn frequently took him past the workhouse,
and his eyelids quivered as he drew near. Boys used to gather round
the gate in anticipation of his coming, and make a feint of driving
him inside. Cree, when he observed them, sat down on his barrow-shafts
terrified to approach, and I see them now pointing to the workhouse till
he left his barrow on the road and hobbled away, his legs cracking as he
ran.
It is strange to know that there was once a time when Cree was young and
straight, a callant who wore a flower in his button-hole and tried to be
a hero for a maiden's sake.
Before Cree settled down as a weaver, he was knife and scissor grinder
for three counties, and Mysy, his mother, accompanied him wherever he
went. Mysy trudged alongside him till her eyes grew dim and her limbs
failed her, and then Cree was told that she must be sent to the pauper's
home. After that a pitiable and beautiful sight was to be seen. Grinder
Queery, already a feeble man, would wheel his grindstone along the
long high-road, leaving Mysy behind. He took the stone on a few hundred
yards, and then, hiding it by the roadside in a ditch or behind a
paling, returned for his mother. Her he led--sometimes he almost carried
her--to the place where the grindstone lay, and thus by double journeys
kept her with him. Every one said that Mysy's death would be a merciful
release--every one but Cree.
Cree had been a grinder from his youth, having learned the trade from
his father, but he gave it up when Mysy became almost blind. For a
time he had to leave her in Thrums with Dan'l Wilkie's wife, and find
employment himself in Tilliedrum. Mysy got me to write several letters
for her to Cree, and she cried while telling me what to say. I never
heard either of them use a term of endearment to the other, but all Mysy
could tell me to put in writing was: “Oh, my son Cree; oh, my beloved
son; oh, I have no one but you; oh, thou God watch over my Cree!” On one
of these occasions Mysy put into my hands a paper, which she said would
perhaps help me to write the letter. It had been drawn up by Cree many
years before, when he and his mother had been compelled to part for a
time, and I saw from it that he had been trying to teach Mysy to write.
The paper consisted of phrases such as “Dear son Cree,” “Loving mother,”
“I am takin' my food weel,” “Yesterday,” “Blankets,” “The peats is near
done,” “Mr. Dishart,” “Come home, Cree.” The grinder had left this paper
with his mother, and she had written letters to him from it.
When Dan'l Wilkie objected to keeping a cranky old body like Mysy in his
house, Cree came back to Thrums and took a single room with a hand-loom
in it. The flooring was only lumpy earth, with sacks spread over it to
protect Mysy's feet. The room contained two dilapidated old coffin-beds,
a dresser, a high-backed arm-chair, several three-legged stools, and
two tables, of which one could be packed away beneath the other. In one
corner stood the wheel at which Cree had to fill his own pirns. There
was a plate-rack on one wall, and near the chimney-piece hung the
wag-at-the-wall clock, the time-piece that was commonest in Thrums at
that time, and that got this name because its exposed pendulum swung
along the wall. The two windows in the room faced each other on opposite
walls, and were so small that even a child might have stuck in trying to
crawl through them. They opened on hinges, like a door. In the wall of
the dark passage leading from the outer door into the room was a recess
where a pan and pitcher of water always stood wedded, as it were, and
a little hole, known as the “bole,” in the wall opposite the fire-place
contained Cree's library. It consisted of Baxter's “Saints' Rest,”
Harvey's “Meditations,” the “Pilgrim's Progress,” a work on folk-lore,
and several Bibles. The saut-backet, or salt-bucket, stood at the end
of the fender, which was half of an old cart-wheel. Here Cree worked,
whistling “Ower the watter for Chairlie” to make Mysy think that he was
as gay as a mavis. Mysy grew querulous in her old age, and up to the end
she thought of poor, done Cree as a handsome gallant. Only by weaving
far on into the night could Cree earn as much as six shillings a week.
He began at six o'clock in the morning, and worked until midnight by the
light of his cruizey. The cruizey was all the lamp Thrums had in those
days, though it is only to be seen in use now in a few old-world houses
in the glens. It is an ungainly thing in iron, the size of a man's palm,
and shaped not unlike the palm when contracted and deepened to hold a
liquid. Whale-oil, lying open in the mould, was used, and the wick was a
rash with the green skin peeled off. These rashes were sold by herd-boys
at a halfpenny the bundle, but Cree gathered his own wicks. The rashes
skin readily when you know how to do it. The iron mould was placed
inside another of the same shape, but slightly larger, for in time the
oil dripped through the iron, and the whole was then hung by a cleek or
hook close to the person using it. Even with three wicks it gave but a
stime of light, and never allowed the weaver to see more than the half
of his loom at a time. Sometimes Cree used threads for wicks. He was too
dull a man to have many visitors, but Mr. Dishart called occasionally
and reproved him for telling his mother lies. The lies Cree told Mysy
were that he was sharing the meals he won for her, and that he wore the
overcoat which he had exchanged years before for a blanket to keep her
warm.
There was a terrible want of spirit about Grinder Queery. Boys used
to climb on to his stone roof with clods of damp earth in their hands,
which they dropped down the chimney. Mysy was bedridden by this time,
and the smoke threatened to choke her; so Cree, instead of chasing his
persecutors, bargained with them. He gave them fly-hooks which he had
busked himself, and when he had nothing left to give he tried to flatter
them into dealing gently with Mysy by talking to them as men. One night
it went through the town that Mysy now lay in bed all day listening for
her summons to depart. According to her ideas this would come in the
form of a tapping at the window, and their intention was to forestall
the spirit. Dite Gow's boy, who is now a grown man, was hoisted up to
one of the little windows, and he has always thought of Mysy since as
he saw her then for the last time. She lay sleeping, so far as he could
see, and Cree sat by the fireside looking at her.
Every one knew that there was seldom a fire in that house unless Mysy
was cold. Cree seemed to think that the fire was getting low. In the
little closet, which, with the kitchen, made up his house, was a corner
shut off from the rest of the room by a few boards, and behind this
he kept his peats. There was a similar receptacle for potatoes in the
kitchen. Cree wanted to get another peat for the fire without disturbing
Mysy. First he took off his boots, and made for the peats on tip-toe.
His shadow was cast on the bed, however, so he next got down on his
knees and crawled softly into the closet. With the peat in his hands he
returned in the same way, glancing every moment at the bed where Mysy
lay. Though Tammy Gow's face was pressed against a broken window, he did
not hear Cree putting that peat on the fire. Some say that Mysy heard,
but pretended not to do so for her son's sake; that she realized the
deception he played on her and had not the heart to undeceive him.
But it would be too sad to believe that. The boys left Cree alone that
night.
The old weaver lived on alone in that solitary house after Mysy left
him, and by and by the story went abroad that he was saving money. At
first no one believed this except the man who told it, but there seemed
after all to be something in it. You had only to hit Cree's trouser
pocket to hear the money chinking, for he was afraid to let it out of
his clutch. Those who sat on dykes with him when his day's labor was
over said that the wearer kept his hand all the time in his pocket, and
that they saw his lips move as he counted his hoard by letting it slip
through his fingers. So there were boys who called “Miser Queery” after
him instead of Grinder, and asked him whether he was saving up to keep
himself from the workhouse.
But we had all done Cree wrong. It came out on his death-bed what he had
been storing up his money for. Grinder, according to the doctor, died
of getting a good meal from a friend of his earlier days after being
accustomed to starve on potatoes and a very little oatmeal indeed.
The day before he died this friend sent him half a sovereign, and when
Grinder saw it he sat up excitedly in his bed and pulled his corduroys
from beneath his pillow. The woman who, out of kindness, attended him in
his last illness, looked on curiously while Cree added the sixpences and
coppers in his pocket to the half-sovereign. After all they only made
some two pounds, but a look of peace came into Cree's eyes as he told
the woman to take it all to a shop in the town. Nearly twelve years
previously Jamie Lownie had lent him two pounds, and though the money
was never asked for, it preyed on Cree's mind that he was in debt. He
paid off all he owed, and so Cree's life was not, I think, a failure.