THE BLUE BANNER IS UP.
Now though at first I was grievously astonished that the daughter of
Alexander Gordon and his wife Janet Hamilton should so speak, yet when I
come to consider further of the matter it appears noways so wonderful.
For her father, when I came to know him, showed himself a great, strong,
kindly, hard-driving “nowt” of a man, with a spiritual conceit equal to
his knowledge of his bodily powers. But, for all his great pretensions,
Sandy Gordon was essentially a man carnal and of the world, ever more
ready to lay on lustily with the arm of the flesh than trust to the
sword of the Spirit.
The “Bull of Earlstoun” was he right fitly called.
And with his children his method of training would doubtless be “Believe
this! Receive that other!” Debate and appeal there would be none. So
there is nothing to wonder at in the revolt of a nature every whit as
imperious as that of her father, joined to a woman’s natural whimsies
and set within the periphery of a girl’s slender form.
And then her mother!
If Sandy Gordon had proved trying to such a mind as that of Mary Gordon,
what of Janet Hamilton, his wife?
She had been reared in the strictest sect of the Extremists. Every
breath of difference or opposition to her orthodoxies or those of her
brother Sir Robert was held rank treason to the cause. She had constant
visions, and these visions pointed ever to the cardinal truth that Janet
Hamilton was eternally right and every one else eternally wrong.
So Alexander Gordon, as often as he was at home, bullied back and forth
concerning Covenants and sufferings, while at other times his wife
worried and yammered, bitter as the east wind and irritant as a thorn in
the flesh, till the girl was driven, as it were, in self-defence into
other and as intolerant extremes.
Yet when her parents were most angered with her for this perversity,
some sudden pretty wile or quaint bairnliness would set them laughing in
spite of themselves, or a loving word of penitence bring the tears into
their eyes. And while she chose to be good Mary Gordon, the family
rebel, the disgrace of a godly home, would be again their own winsome
little May, with a smile as sweet as the Benediction after sermon on a
summer Sabbath morn, when the lilac and the hawthorn blossom scent all
the kirk.
But as for me, having had trial of none of these wiles and witchcrafts,
I was grieved indeed to hear one so fair take the part of the cruel
persecutors and murderers of our brethren, the torturers of her father,
the men to whose charge could be laid the pillage and spoiling of the
bonny house of Earlstoun, and the turning of her mother out upon the
inclement pitilessness of a stormy winter.
But with old and young alike the wearing iteration of a fretful woman’s
yammering tongue will oftentimes drive further and worse than all the
clattering horses and pricking bayonets of persecution.
Yet even then I thought within me, “Far be it from me that I should ever
dream of winning the heart of so fair and great a lady.” But if by the
wondrous grace of God, so I ever did, I should be none afraid but that
in a little blink of time she would think even as I did. And this was
the beginning of the feeling I had for Mary Gordon. Yet being but little
more than a shepherd lad from off the hills of heather she was to me
almost as one of the angels, and I thought of her not at all as a lad
thinks in his heart of a pretty lass, to whom one day if he prosper he
may even himself in the way of love.
After a day or two at Earlstoun, spent in drilling and mustering, in
which time I saw nothing more of Mary Gordon, we set off in ordered
companies towards Edinburgh. The word had been brought to us that the
Convention was in great need of support, for that Clavers (whom now they
called my Lord Dundee) was gathering his forces to disperse it, so that
every one of the true Covenant men went daily in fear of their lives.
Whereupon the whole Seven Thousand of the West and South were called up
by the Elders. And to those among us who had no arms four thousand
muskets and swords were served out, which were sent by the Convention to
the South and West under cover of a panic story that the wild Irishers
had landed and burnt Kirkcudbright.
Hob and I marched shoulder to shoulder, and our officer was of one name
with us, one Captain Clelland, a young soldier of a good stock who in
Holland had learnt the art of war. But Colonel William Gordon, the uncle
of the lass Mary, commanded all our forces.
So in time we reached the brow of the hill of Liberton and looked
northward towards the town of Edinburgh, reeling slantways down its
windy ridge, and crowned with the old Imperial coronet of St. Giles
where Knox had preached, while the castle towered in pride over all.
It was a great day for me when first I saw those grey towers against the
sky. But down in the howe of the Grassmarket there was a place that was
yet dearer--the black ugly gibbet whereon so many saints of God, dear
and precious, had counted their lives but dross that they might win the
crown of faithfulness. And when we marched through the West Port, and
passed it by, it was in our heart to cheer, for we knew that with the
tyrant’s fall all this was at an end.
But Colonel William Gordon checked us.
“Rather your bonnets off, lads,” he cried, “and put up a prayer!”
And so we did. And then we faced about and filed straight up into the
town. And as the sound of our marching echoed through the narrows of the
West Bow, the waiting faithful threw up their windows and blessed us,
hailing us as their saviours.
Company after company went by, regular and disciplined as soldiers; but
in the Lawmarket, where the great folk dwelt, there were many who peeped
in fear through their barred lattices.
“The wild Whigs of the West have risen and are marching into Edinburgh!”
so ran the cry.
We of Colonel Gordon’s Glenkens Foot were set to guard the Parliament
House, and as we waited there, though I carried a hungry belly, yet I
stood with my heart exulting proudly within me to see the downtrodden at
last set on high and those of low estate exalted.
For the sidewalks and causeways of the High-street were filled with
eager crowds, but the crown of it was kept as bare as for the passing of
a royal procession. And down it towards Holyrood tramped steadily and
ceaselessly, company by company, the soldiers of the Other Kingdom.
Stalwart men in grey homespun they were, each with his sword belted to
him, his musket over his shoulder, and his store of powder and lead by
his side. Then came squadrons of horses riding two and two, some well
mounted, and others on country nags, but all of them steady in their
saddles as King’s guards. And when these had passed, again company after
company of footmen.
Never a song or an oath from end to end, not so much as a cheer along
all the ranks as the Hill Men marched grimly in.
“Tramp! tramp! tramp!” So they passed, as if the line would never end.
And at the head of each company the blue banner of Christ’s
Covenant--the standard that had been trailed in the dust, but that could
never be wholly put down.
Then after a while among the new flags, bright with silk and blazening,
there came one tattered and stained, ragged at the edges, and pierced
with many holes. There ran a whisper. “It is the flag of Ayrsmoss!”
And at sight of its torn folds, and the writing of dulled and blistered
gold upon it, “For Christ’s Cause and Covenant,” I felt the tears well
from the heart up to my eyes, and something broke sharply with a little
audible cry in my throat.
Then an old Covenant man who had been both at Drumclog and the Brig of
Bothwell, turned quickly to me with kindly eyes.
“Nay, lad,” he said, “rather be glad! The standard that was sunken in a
sea of blood is cleansed and set up again. And now in this our day woe
be to the persecutors! The banner they trailed in the dust behind the
dripping head of Richard Cameron shall wave on the Nether Bow of
Edinburgh, where the corbies picked his eyes and his fair cheeks
blackened in the sun.”
And so it was, for they set it there betwixt the High-street and the
Canongate, and from that day forth, during all the weeks of the
Convention, the Covenant men held the city quiet as a frighted child
under their hand.