insensible to all that they could say. The first name on the missing list
was that of my gallant son. When the first shock was over, and I had
composed myself a little, I also strove to console Agnes; but it was with
great difficulty that we could convince her that Robin was not dead, and
that the papers did not say he was wounded.
"Oh, then!" she cried, "what do they say about him. Tell me at once. Roger
Goldie! how can ye, as the faither o' my bairn, keep me in suspense."
"O, dear Agnes," said I, "endeavour, if it be possible, to moderate your
grief; I am sure ye know that I would not keep ye in suspense if I could
avoid it. The papers only say that Robin is _amissing_."
"And what mean they by that?" she cried.
"Why," said I to her, "they mean that he, perhaps, pursued the enemy too
far--or possibly that he may have fallen into their hands, and be a
prisoner--but that he had not cast up when the accounts came away."
"Yes! yes!" she exclaimed with great bitterness, "and it perhaps means that
his body is lying dead upon the field, but hasna been found."
And she burst out into louder lamentations, and all our endeavours to
comfort her were in vain; though, in fact, my sufferings were almost as
great as hers.
We waited in the deepest anxiety for several days, always hoping that we
would hear some tidings concerning him, but none came. I therefore wrote to
the War-Office, and I wrote also to his Colonel. From the War-Office I
received a letter from a clerk, saying that he was commanded to inform me,
that they could give me no information relative to Lieutenant Goldie,
beyond what was contained in the public prints. The whole letter did not
exceed three lines. You would have said that the writer had been employed
to write a certain number of letters in a day, at so much a day, and the
sooner he got through his work the better. I set it down in my mind that he
had never had a son amissing on the field of battle, or he never would have
written an anxious and sorrowing father such a cold scrawl. He did not even
say that, if they got any tidings concerning my son, they would make me
acquainted with them. He was only commanded to tell me that they did not
know what I was, beyond every thing on earth, desirous to ascertain. Though
perhaps, I ought to admit that, in a time of war, the clerks in the
War-Office had something else to do than enter particularly into the
feelings of every father that had a son in the army, and to answer all his
queries.
From the Colonel, however, I received a long, and a very kind letter. He
said many flattering things in praise of my gallant laddie, and assured me
that the whole regiment deplored his being separated from them. He,
however, had no doubt but that he had fallen into the hands of the enemy,
and that, in some exchange of prisoners, or in the event of a peace, he
would be restored to his parents and country again.
This letter gave us some consolation. It encouraged us to cherish the hope
of pressing our beloved son again to our breasts, and of looking on his
features, weeping and wondering at the alterations which time, war, and
imprisonment had wrought upon them. But more than three years passed away,
and not a syllable did we hear concerning him, that could throw the least
light upon where he was, or whether he was dead or living. Anxiety preyed
sadly upon his mother's health as well as upon her spirits, and I could not
drive away a settled melancholy.
About that time a brother of mine, who was a bachelor, died in the East
Indies, and left me four thousand pounds. This was a great addition to our
fortune, and we hardly knew what to do with it. I may say that it made us
more unhappy, for we thought that we had nobody to leave it to; and he who
ought to have inherited it, and whom it would have made independent, we
knew not whether he was in the land of the living, or a strange corpse in a
foreign grave. Yet I resolved that, for his sake, I would not spend one
farthing of it, but let it lie at interest; and I even provided in a will
which I made, that unless he cast up, and claimed it, no one should derive
any benefit from either principal or interest until fifty years after my
death.
I have said, that the health of Agnes had broken down beneath her weight of
sadness, and as she had a relation, who was a gentleman of much
respectability, that then resided in the neighbourhood of Kelso, it was
agreed that we should spend a few weeks in the summer at his house. I
entertained the hope that society, and the beautiful scenery around Kelso,
with the white chalky braes[A] overhung with trees, and the bonny islands
in the Tweed, with mansions, palaces, and ruins, all embosomed in a
paradise as fair and fertile as ever land could boast of, would have a
tendency to cheer her spirits, and ease, if not remove, the one heavy and
continuing sorrow, which lay like an everlasting nightmare upon her heart,
weighing her to the grave.
Her relation was a well-educated man, and he had been an officer in the
army in his youth, and had seen foreign parts. He was also quite
independent in his worldly circumstances, and as hospitable as he was
independent. There were at that period a number of French officers,
prisoners, at Kelso, and several of them, who were upon their parole, were
visiters at the house of my wife's relation.
There was one amongst them, a fine, though stern-looking man of middle age,
and who was addressed by the appellation of Count Berthe. He spoke our
language almost as well as if he had been a native. He appeared to be
interested when he heard that my name was Goldie, and one day after dinner,
when the cloth was withdrawn, and my wife's relation had ordered the punch
upon the table--"Ha! Goldie! Goldie!" said the Count, repeating my name--"I
can tell one story--which concerns me much--concerning, one Monsieur
Goldie. When I was governor of the castle La----, (he called it by some
foreign name, which I cannot repeat to you), there was brought to me, (he
added), to be placed under my charge, a young British officer, whose name
was Goldie. I do not recollect the number of his regiment, for he was not
in uniform when brought to me. He was a handsome man, but represented as a
terrible one, who had made a violent attempt to escape after being taken
prisoner, and his desperate bravery in the field was also recorded. I was
requested to treat him with the respect due to a brave man, but, at the
same time, to keep a strict watch over him, and to allow him even less
liberty than I might do to an ordinary prisoner. His being a captive did
not humble him; he treated his keepers and his guards with as much contempt
as though he had been their conqueror on the field. We had confined his
body, but there was no humbling of his spirit. I heard so much of him, that
I took an interest in the haughty Briton. But he treated me with the same
sullen disdain that he showed towards my inferiors. I had a daughter, who
was as dear to me as life itself, for she had had five brothers, and they
had all fallen in the cause of the great emperor, with the tricolor on
their brow, and the wing of the eagle over them. She was
beautiful--beautiful as her sainted mother, than whom Italy boasted not a
fairer daughter, (for she was a native of Rome.) Hers was not a beauty that
you may see every day amongst a thousand in the regions of the north--hers
was the rare beauty amongst ten thousand of the daughters of the sunny
south, with a face beaming with as bright a loveliness, and I would say
divinity, as the Medici. Of all the children which that fair being bore
unto me, I had but one, a daughter, left--beautiful as I have
said--beautiful as her mother. I had a garden beneath the castle, and over
it was a terrace, in which the British prisoner, Goldie, was allowed to
walk. They saw each other. They became acquainted with each other. He had
despised all who approached; he had even treated me, who had his life in my
hand, as a dog. But he did not so treat my daughter. I afterwards learned,
when it was too late, that they had been seen exchanging looks, words, and
signs with each other. He had been eighteen months my prisoner; and one
morning when I awoke, I was told that my daughter was not to be found, and
that the English prisoner, Lieutenant Goldie, also had escaped. I cursed
both in my heart; for they had robbed me of my happiness--he had robbed me
of my child; though she only could have accomplished it. Shortly after
this, (and perhaps because of it,) I was again called into active service,
where, in my first engagement, it was my lot to be made a prisoner, and
sent here; and since then I have heard nothing of my daughter--my one, dear
child--the image of her mother; and nothing of him--the villain who seduced
her from me."
"Oh, sir," exclaimed I, "do not call him a villain, for if it be he that I
hope it was, who escaped through the intrumentality of your daughter, and
took her with him, he has not a drop of villain's blood in his whole body.
Sir! sir! I have a son--a Lieutenant Goldie; and he has (as I hope) been a
French prisoner from the time ye speak of. Therefore, tell me, I implore
ye, what was he like. Was he six inches taller than his father, with light
complexion, yellowish hair, an aqualine nose; full blue eyes, a mole upon
his right cheek, and, at the time ye saw him, apparently, perhaps, from
two-and-twenty to three-and-twenty years of age? Oh, sir--Count, or
whatever they call ye--if it be my son that your daughter has liberated and
gone away with, she has fallen upon her feet; she has married a good, a
kind, and a brave lad; and, though I should be the last to say it, the son
of an honest man, who will leave him from five to six thousand pounds,
beside his commission."
By the description which he gave me, I had no doubt but that my poor Robie,
and the laddie who had run away with his daughter, (or, I might say, the
laddie with whom his daughter had run away,) were one and the same person.
I ran into the next room, crying, "Agnes! Agnes! hear, woman! I have got
news of Robie!"
"News o' my bairn!" she cried, before she saw me. "Speak, Roger! speak!"
I could hardly tell her all that the French Count had told me, and I could
hardly get her to believe what she heard. But I took her into the room to
him, and he told her everything over again. A hundred questions were asked
backward and forward upon both sides, and there was not the smallest doubt,
on either of our parts, but that it was my Robie that his daughter had
liberated from the prison, and run off with.
"But oh, sir," said Agnes, "where are they now--baith o my bairns--as you
say I have twa? Where shall I find them?"
He said that he had but little doubt that they were safe, for his daughter
had powerful friends in France, and that as soon as a peace took place,
(which he hoped would not be long,) we should all see them again.
Well, the long-wished-for peace came at last--and in both countries the
captives were released from the places of their imprisonment. I have
already twice mentioned the infirm state of my wife's health; and we were
residing at Spittal, for the benefit of the sea air and bathing, and the
Spa Well, (though it had not then gained its present fashionable
popularity,) when a post-chaise drove to the door of our lodgings. An
elderly gentleman stepped off from the dicky beside the driver, and out of
the chaise came a young lady, a gentleman, and two bonny bairns. In a
moment I discovered the elderly gentleman to be my old friend the French
Count. But, oh! how--how shall I tell you the rest! I had hardly looked
upon the face of the younger stranger, when I saw my own features in the
countenance of my long lost Robie! The lady was his wife--the Count's bonny
daughter; and the bairns were their bairns. It is in vain for me to
describe to you the feelings of Agnes; she was at first speechless and
senseless, and then she threw her arms round Robie, and she threw them
round his wife, and she took his bairns on her knee--and, oh! but she was
proud at seeing herself a grandmother! We have all lived together in
happiness from that day to this; and the more I see of Robie's wife, the
more I think she is like an angel; and so thinks his mother. I have only to
inform you that bold Jonathan Barlowman was forced to leave the
country-side shortly after his valiant display of courage, and since then
nobody in Dunse has heard whether he be dead or living and nobody cares.
This is all I have to tell ye respecting the _false alarm_, and I hope ye
are satisfied.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] It is evidently from the beautiful chalk cliff near Ednam House (though
now not a very prominent object) that Kelso derives its name--as is proved
by the ancient spelling.
HOGMANAY;
OR, THE LADY OF BALLOCHGRAY.
The last fifty years of mortal regeneration and improvement have effected
more changes in the old fasts, and feasts, and merrymakings of Scotland,
than twice and twice over that time of any other period since it became a
nation. Every year we see the good old customs dying out, or strangled by
the Protaean imp Fashion, who, in the grand march of improvement of which we
are so proud, in the perking conceit of heirs-apparent of the millennium,
seems to be the only creature that derives benefit from the eternal changes
that, by-and-by, we fear, will turn our heads, and make us look _back_ for
the true period of happiness and wisdom. But what enrageth us the more is,
that, while all our fun of Beltane, Halloween, Hogmanay, Hanselmonday, and
all our old merrymakings, are gone with our absentee lords and thanes--
"Wha will their tenants pyke and squeize,
And purse up all their rent;
Syne wallop it to far courts, and bleize
Till riggs and schaws are spent"--
and to whose contempt of our old customs we attribute a great part of their
decay--we, in the very midst of the glorious improvement that has
succeeded, are still cheated, belied, robbed, and plundered on all hands by
political adventurers, private jobbers, and saintly hypocrites, in an
artful, clean-fingered, and beautiful style of the trade, a thousand times
more provoking than the clumsy, old-fashioned, _honest_ kind of roguery
that used to be in fashion, when folk were not too large for innocent
mirth, and not too wise for enjoying what was liked by their ancestors. The
people cry improvement--so do we; but we cherish a theory that has no
charm, in these days of absolute faith in politics and parliament for the
regeneration of man, that the true good of society--that is, the
improvement of the heart and morals of a great country--lies in a sphere
far humbler than the gorgeous recesses of Westminster--the fireside; a
place that in former days, was revered, and honoured, and cherished, not
only as the cradle of morals, but the abode of soul-stirring joys, and the
scene of the celebration of many old and sacred amusements which humanized
the young heart, and moulded and prepared it for the reception of those
feelings which are interwoven with the very principle of social good. A
political wrangle is a poor substitute for the old moral tales of the
winter evenings of old Scotland. Even our legends of superstitious fear
carried in them the boon of heartfelt obligation, which, when the subject
was changed for the duties of life, still retained its strength, and
wrought for good. These things are all gone; and, dissatisfied as we are
with the bold substitutes of modern wisdom, let us use that which they
cannot take from us, our books of "auld lear," and refresh ourselves with a
peep at Leslie, in the Hogmanay of 16--. Who has not heard of "Christ's
Kirk" in the kingdom of Fife, that place so celebrated by King James, in
his incomparable "Christ's Kirk on the Green," for the frolics of wooers
and "kittys washen clean," and "damsels bright," and "maidens mild?" That
celebrated town was no other than our modern Leslie; and, though we cannot
say that that once favoured haunt of the satyrs of merrymaking has escaped
the dull blight that comes from the sleepy eye of the owl of modern wisdom,
we have good authority for asserting that long after James celebrated the
place for its unrivalled festivities, the character of the inhabitants was
kept for many an after-day; and Hogmanay was a choice outlet for the
exuberant spirits of the votaries of Momus.
The day we find chronicled as remarkable for an exhibition of the true
spirit of the Leslieans, went off as all days that precede a glorious
jubilee at night generally do. The ordinary work of the "yape" expectants
was, no doubt, apparently going on; but the looking of "twa ways" for
gloaming was, necessarily, exclusive of much interest in the work of the
day. The sober matrons, as they sat at the door on the "stane settle,"
little inclined to work, considered themselves entitled to a _feast_ of
gossip; and even the guidman did not feel himself entitled to curb the glib
tongue of his dame, or close up her ears with prudential maxims against the
bad effects of darling, heart-stirring, soul-inspiring scandal. On that day
there was no excise of the commodities of character. They might be bought
or sold at a wanworth, or handed or banded about in any way that suited the
tempers of the people. The bottle and the bicker had already, even in the
forenoon, been, to a certain extent, employed as a kind of outscouts of the
array that was to appear at night, and the gossipers were in that blessed
state, between partial possession and full expectation, that makes every
part of the body languid and lazy except the tongue. Around them the
younkers, "hasty hensures" and "wanton winklots," were busy preparing the
habiliments of the guysers--whose modes of masking and disguising were
often regulated by the characters they were to assume, or the songs they
had learned to chant for the occasion. Nor were these mimes limited to the
urchin caste; for, in these days, wisdom had not got so conceited as to be
ashamed of innocent mirth; and gaucy queens and stalwarth chiels exhibited
their superiority only in acting a higher mask, and singing a loftier
strain. The gossips did not hesitate to suspend the honeyed topic, to give
sage counsel on the subject of the masking "bulziements;" and anon they
turned a side look at the minor actors, the imps of devilry, who passed
along with their smoking horns often made of the stem or "runt" of a winter
cabbage, wherewith that night they would inevitably smoke out of "house and
hauld" every devil's lamb of every gossip that did not open her hand and
"deal her bread" to the guysers. Both parties, gossips and urchins,
understood each other--like two belligerent powers asserting mutual rights,
and contemplating each other with that look of half-concealed contention
and defiance, which only tended to make the attack more inevitable.
The evening set in, and the witching hour--the keystone of night's black
arch, twelve o'clock--was approaching. To go to bed on such an occasion,
would have been held no better than for a jolly toper to shirk his bicker,
a lover to eschew the trysting thorn, or a warrior to fly the scene of his
country's glory; neither would it have been safe, for no good guyser of the
old school would take the excuse of being in bed in lieu of the buttered
pease-bannock--the true hogmanay cake, to which he was entitled, by "the
auld use and wont" of Scotland; and far better breathe the smoke of the
"smeikin horn" on foot, and with the means of self-defence at command, than
lie choked in bed, and "deaved" by the stock and horn, the squalling
bagpipe, and the eternal--
"Hery, Hary, Hubblischow,
See ye not quha is come now!"
ringing in one's ears during the whole night. The young were out; the old
were in; but all were equally up and doing the honours of the occasion. At
auld Wat Wabster's door, one minstrel company were singing--"Great is my
sorrow;" and Marion, his daughter, with
"Her glitterand hair, that was sae gowden,"
dealt out, with leal hand, the guyser's bannock. At the very next door, Meg
Johnston was in the act of being "smecked oot" by a covey of twelve devils,
who had inserted into every cranny a horn, and were blowing, with puffed
cheeks, a choking death in every blast. One kept watch, to give the
concerted signal when Meg should appear with her stick. On which occasion
they were off in an instant; but only to return when Meg had let out the
smoke, and satisfied herself that she would be no more tormented that
night, to blow her up and out again, with greater vigour and a denser smoke
than before. Farther on, Gib Dempster's dame, Kate, is at her door, with
the bottle in her hand, to give another menyie of maskers their "hogmanay,"
in the form of a dram; and Gib is at her back, eyeing her with a squint, to
count how many interlusive applications of the cordial she will make to her
own throat before she renounce her _opportunity_. In the middle of the
street, Gossip Simson is hurrying along, with the necessaries in her lap,
to treat her "cusin," Christy Lowrie, with a bit and a drop; and ever and
anon she says, "a guid e'en" to this one, and "a guid e'en" to that; and,
between the parties, her head is ever thrown back, as if she were counting
the stars; and, every time the act is repeated, the bottle undergoes a
perceptible diminution of its contents, till, by the time she reaches her
"luving cusin's" door, it is empty; and honest John Simson, at her return,
greets her with--"My feth, Jenny, ye've been at mony a hoose in Christ's
Kirk this nicht, if ane may judge by yer bottle." At the same instant,
"Oh, leddy, help yer prisoneer
This last nicht o' the passing year,"
is struck up at the door; the stock and horn sounds lustily in the ears of
her whose bottle is empty; and, obliged to send them away without either
cake or sup, she hears sounding in her confused ears--
"The day will come when ye'll be dead.
An' ye'll neither care for meal nor bread;"
and, in a short time after, "Jamie the wight," an impling, with a tail of
half-a-dozen minor and subordinate angels, begin blowing their smoking
horns in at both door and window, till honest John is fairly smoked out,
crying, as he hastens to the door--"This comes, Jenny, o' yer lavish
kindness to yer cusins, that we hae naethin left in oor bottle, either to
keep oot thae deevils' breath or wash't oot o' oor choking craigs." He is
no sooner at the door than Geordie Jamieson accosts him in the usual style,
and says he has come for his "hogmanay;" but John, knowing the state of the
bottle, begins a loud cough, in the midst of the smoke, and cries, as he
runs away from his house and visitor, (whom he pretends not to see for the
smoke.) "It's a deevil o' a hardship to be smeeked oot o' ane's ain hoose."
"Now," mutters Jenny, as she hears him run away, "I'll no see his face till
mornin; an' he'll come in as blind's a bat." And out she flies to catch
him; but, in her hurry, she overturns Geordie, just as his lips are
manufacturing the ordinary "Guid e'en to ye, Jenny!"
"The same to ye, Geordie," says she; and, with that boon, leaves him on her
flight.
The truth was, that John had the same instinctive antipathy against a house
where there was an empty bottle as rats have against deserted granaries.
But, if honest John Simson's house was deserted because Jenny had made too
free with the bottle, Wat Webster's was full, from a reason precisely the
very opposite; for the fair Marion--who had
"Brankit fast and made her bonny"--
was, in the midst of a company, distributing the cakes and bannocks with
maidenly grace; and many a swain that night was glad, while
"He quhissilit and he pypit baith,
To mak her blyth that meeting--
My hony heart, how says the sang,
There sall be mirth at oor greeting."