Laggan, on the Nith. There took place the Bacchanalian scene which
called forth "Willie brew'd a peck o' Maat."]
* * * * *
CLXXIL.--TO MR. FRANCIS GROSE, F.S A.
DUMFRIES, 1792.
Among the many witch stories I have heard, relating to Alloway Kirk, I
distinctly remember only two or three.
Upon a stormy night, amid whistling squalls of wind, and bitter blasts
of hail; in short, on such a night as the devil would choose to take the
air in; a farmer or farmer's servant was plodding and plashing homeward
with his plough-irons on his shoulder, having been getting some repairs
on them at a neighbouring smithy. His way lay by the kirk of Alloway,
and being rather on the anxious look out in approaching a place so well
known to be a favourite haunt of the devil and the devil's friends and
emissaries, he was struck aghast by discovering through the horrors of
the storm and stormy night, a light, which on his nearer approach
plainly showed itself to proceed from the haunted edifice. Whether he
had been fortified from above on his devout supplication, as is
customary with people when they suspect the immediate presence of Satan;
or whether, according to another custom, he got courageously drunk at
the smithy, I will not pretend to determine; but so it was that he
ventured to go up to, nay, into the very kirk. As luck would have it his
temerity came off unpunished.
The members of the infernal junto were all out on some midnight business
or other, and he saw nothing but a kind of kettle or caldron, depending
from the roof, over the fire, simmering some heads of unchristened
children, limbs of executed malefactors, etc., for the business of the
night. It was in for a penny, in for a pound, with the honest ploughman:
so without ceremony he unhooked the caldron from off the fire, and,
pouring out the damn'd ingredients, inverted it on his head, and carried
it fairly home, where it remained long in the family, a living evidence
of the truth of the story.
Another story, which I can prove to be equally authentic, is as follows:
On a market day in the town of Ayr a farmer from Carrick, and
consequently whose way lay by the very gate of Alloway kirk-yard, in
order to cross the river Doon at the old Bridge, which is about two or
three hundred yards farther on than the said gate, had been detained by
his business, till by the time he reached Alloway it was the wizard
hour, between night and morning.
Though he was terrified with a blaze streaming from the kirk, yet as it
is a well-known fact that to turn back on these occasions is running by
far the greatest risk of mischief, he prudently advanced on his road.
When he had reached the gate of the kirk-yard, he was surprised and
entertained, through the ribs and arches of an old gothic window, which
still faces the highway, to see a dance of witches merrily footing it
round their old sooty blackguard master, who was keeping them all alive
with the power of his bagpipe. The farmer stopping his horse to observe
them a little, could plainly descry the faces of many old women of his
acquaintance and neighbourhood. How the gentleman was dressed tradition
does not say; but that the ladies were all in their smocks: and one of
them happening unluckily to have a smock which was considerably too
short to answer all the purpose of that piece of dress, our farmer was
so tickled that he involuntarily burst out with a loud laugh, "Weel
luppen, Maggy wi' the short sark!" and recollecting himself, instantly
spurred his horse to the top of his speed. I need not mention the
universally known fact, that no diabolical power can pursue you beyond
the middle of a running stream. Lucky it was for the poor farmer that
the river Doon was so near, for, notwithstanding the speed of his horse,
which was a good one, against he reached the middle of the arch of the
bridge, and consequently the middle of the stream, the pursuing,
vengeful hags were so close at his heels, that one of them actually
sprung to seize him; but it was too late; nothing was on her side of the
stream but the horse's tail, which immediately gave way at her infernal
grip, as if blasted by a stroke of lightning; but the farmer was beyond
her reach. However, the unsightly, tail-less condition of the vigorous
steed was to the last hour of the noble creature's life, an awful
warning to the Carrick farmers, not to stay too late in Ayr markets.
The last relation I shall give, though equally true, is not so well
identified as the two former, with regard to the scene; but as the best
authorities give it for Alloway, I shall relate it.
On a summer's evening, about the time nature puts on her sables to mourn
the expiry of the cheerful day, a shepherd boy, belonging to a farmer in
the immediate neighbourhood of Alloway kirk, had just folded his charge,
and was returning home. As he passed the kirk, in the adjoining field he
fell in with a crew of men and women, who were busy pulling stems of the
plant ragwort. He observed that as each person pulled a ragwort, he or
she got astride of it, and called out, "Up, horsie!" on which the
ragwort flew off, like Pegasus, through the air with its rider. The
foolish boy likewise pulled his ragwort, and cried with the rest, "Up,
horsie!" and, strange to tell, away he flew with the company. The first
stage at which the cavalcade stopt was a merchant's wine-cellar in
Bourdeaux, where, without saying "By your leave," they quaffed away at
the best the cellar could afford, until the morning, foe to the imps and
works of darkness, threatened to throw light on the matter, and
frightened them from their carousals.
The poor shepherd lad, being equally a stranger to the scene and the
liquor, heedlessly got himself drunk; and when the rest took horse, he
fell asleep, and was found so next day by some of the people belonging
to the merchant. Somebody that understood Scotch, asking him what he
was, he said such a-one's herd in Alloway, and by some means or other
getting home again, he lived long to tell the world the wondrous
tale.[125]
R. B.
[Footnote 125: _Cp._ _Hogg's Witch of Fife._]
* * * * *
CLXXIIL.--TO MRS. DUNLOP.
ANNAN WATER FOOT, 22_nd August_ 1792.
Do not blame me for it, Madam--my own conscience, hackneyed and
weather-beaten as it is, in watching and reproving my vagaries, follies,
indolence, etc., has continued to punish me sufficiently.
Do you think it possible, my dear and honoured friend, that I could be
so lost to gratitude for many favours; to esteem for much worth; and to
the honest, kind, pleasurable tie of, now old acquaintance, and I hope
and am sure of progressive, increasing friendship--as, for a single day,
not to think of you nor to ask the Fates what they are doing and about
to do with my much loved friend and her wide scattered connections, and
to beg of them to be as kind to you and yours as they possibly can?
Apropos! (though how it is apropos I have not leisure to explain) do you
know that I am almost in love with an acquaintance of yours?--Almost!
said I--I _am_ in love, souse! over head and ears, deep as the most
unfathomable abyss of the boundless ocean; but the word Love, owing to
the _intermingledoms_ of the good and the bad, the pure and the impure,
in this world, being rather an equivocal term for expressing one's
sentiments and sensations, I must do justice to the sacred purity of my
attachment. Know, then, that the heart-struck awe the distant humble
approach; the delight we should have in gazing upon and listening to a
Messenger of Heaven, appearing in all the unspotted purity of his
celestial home, among the coarse, polluted, far inferior sons of men, to
deliver to them tidings that make their hearts swim in joy, and their
imaginations soar in transport--such, so delighting and so pure, were
the emotions of my soul on meeting the other day with Miss Lesley
Baillie, your neighbour at Mayfield. Mr. B., with his two daughters,
accompanied by Mr. H. of G., passing through Dumfries a few days ago, on
their way to England, did me the honour of calling on me; on which I
took my horse (though God knows I could ill spare the time), and
accompanied them fourteen or fifteen miles, and dined and spent the day
with them. Twas about nine, I think, when I left them, and, riding home,
I composed the following ballad, of which you will probably think you
have a dear bargain, as it will cost you another groat of postage. You
must know that there is an old ballad beginning with--
My bonnie Lizzie Bailie,
I'll lowe thee in my plaidie, (etc,)
So I parodied it as follows, which is literally the first copy,
"unanointed, unanneal'd," as Hamlet says,--
O saw ye bonny Lesley
As she gaed o'er the border?
She's gane, like Alexander,
To spread her conquests farther, (etc.)
So much for ballads. I regret that you are gone to the east country, as
I am to be in Ayrshire in about a fortnight. This world of ours,
notwithstanding it has many good things in it, yet it has ever had this
curse, that two or three people, who would be the happier the oftener
they met together, are, almost without exception, always so placed as
never to meet but once or twice a-year, which, considering the few years
of a man's life, is a very great "evil under the sun," which I do not
recollect that Solomon has mentioned in his catalogue of the miseries of
man. I hope and believe that there is a state of existence beyond the
grave, where the worthy of this life will renew their former intimacies,
with this endearing addition, that "we meet to part no more"
Tell us, ye dead,
Will none of you in pity disclose the secret
What 'tis you are, and we must shortly be!
A thousand times have I made this apostrophe to the departed sons of
men, but not one of them has ever thought fit to answer the question. "O
that some courteous ghost would blab it out!" but it cannot be; you and
I, my friend, must make the experiment by ourselves, and for ourselves.
However, I am so convinced that an unskaken faith in the doctrines of
religion is not only necessary, by making us better men, but also by
making us happier men, that I shall take every care that your little
godson, and every little creature that shall call me father, shall be
taught them. So ends this heterogeneous letter, written at this wild
place of the world, in the intervals of my labour of discharging a
vessel of rum from Antigua.
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXXIV.--TO MR. CUNNINGHAM.
DUMFRIES, 10_th September_ 1792.
No! I will not attempt an apology. Amid all my hurry of business,
grinding the faces of the publican and the sinner on the merciless
wheels of the Excise; making ballads, and then drinking, and singing
them; and, over and above all, the correcting the press-work of two
different publications; still, still I might have stolen five minutes to
dedicate to one of the first of my friends and fellow-creatures. I might
have done, as I do at present-snatched an hour near "witching time of
night," and scrawled a page or two; I might have congratulated my friend
on his marriage; or I might have thanked the Caledonian archers for the
honour they have done me (though, to do myself justice, I intended to
have done both in rhyme, else I had done both long ere now). Well, then,
here is to your good health! for you must know, I have set a nipperkin
of toddy by me, just by way of spell, to keep away the meikle horned
deil, or any of his subaltern imps who may be on their nightly rounds.
But what shall I write to you?--"The voice said, cry," and I said, "What
shall I cry?"--O, thou spirit! whatever thou art, or wherever thou
makest thyself visible! be thou a bogle by the eerie side of an auld
thorn, in the dreary glen through which the herd-callan maun bicker in
his gloamin route frae the fauld!--Be thou a brownie, set, at dead of
night, to thy task by the blazing ingle, or in the solitary barn, where
the repercussions of thy iron flail half affright thyself, as thou
performest the work of twenty of the sons of men, ere the cock-crowing
summon thee to thy ample cog of substantial brose. Be thou a kelpie,
haunting the ford or ferry, in the starless night, mixing thy laughing
yell with the howling of the storm and the roaring of the flood, as thou
viewest the perils and miseries of man on the foundering horse, or in
the tumbling boat!--Or, lastly, be thou a ghost, paying thy nocturnal
visits to the hoary ruins of decayed grandeur; or performing thy mystic
rites in the shadow of the time-worn church, while the moon looks,
without a cloud, on the silent, ghastly dwellings of the dead around
thee; or taking thy stand by the bedside of the villain, or the
murderer, portraying on his dreaming fancy, pictures, dreadful as the
horrors of unveiled hell, and terrible as the wrath of incensed
Deity!--Come, thou spirit, but not in these horrid forms; come with the
milder, gentle, easy inspirations, which thou breathest round the wig of
a prating advocate, or the tête of a tea-sipping gossip, while their
tongues run at the light-horse gallop of clish-maclaver for ever and
ever--come and assist a poor devil who is quite jaded in the attempt to
share half an idea among half a hundred words; to fill up four quarto
pages, while he has not got one single sentence of recollection,
information, or remark worth putting pen to paper for.
I feel, I feel the presence of supernatural assistance! Circled in the
embrace of my elbow-chair, my breast labours, liked the bloated Sibyl on
her three-footed stool, and like her too, labours with Nonsense.
Nonsense, auspicious name! Tutor, friend, and finger-post in the mystic
mazes of law; the cadaverous paths of physic: and particularly in the
sightless soarings of SCHOOL DIVINITY, who, leaving Common Sense
confounded at the strength of his pinion; Reason delirious with eyeing
his giddy flight; and Truth creeping back into the bottom of her well,
cursing the hour that ever she offered her scorned alliance to the
wizard power of Theologic Vision-raves abroad on all the winds:-- "On
earth discord! a gloomy Heaven above, opening her jealous gates to the
nineteen-thousandth part of the tithe of mankind! and below, an
inescapable and inexorable hell, expanding its leviathan jaws for the
vast residue of mortals!!! "--O doctrine! comfortable and healing to the
weary wounded soul of man! Ye sons and daughters of affliction, ye
_pauvres miserables,_ to whom day brings no pleasure, and night yields
no rest, be comforted! 'Tis but _one_ to nineteen hundred thousand that
your situation will mend in this world; so, alas, the experience of the
poor and needy too often affirms; and 'tis nineteen hundred thousand to
_one,_ by the dogmas of Theology, that you will be condemned eternally
in the world to come!
But of all Nonsense, Religious Nonsense is the most nonsensical; so
enough, and more than enough, of it. Only, by-the-bye, will you, or can
you tell me, my dear Cunningham, why a sectarian turn of mind has always
a tendency to narrow and illiberalise the heart? They are orderly; they
may be just; nay, I have known them merciful: but still your children
of sanctity move among their fellow-creatures with a nostril snuffing
putrescence, and a foot spurning filth--in short, with a conceited
dignity that your titled Douglases, or any other of your Scottish
lordlings of seven centuries standing, display when they accidentally
mix among the many-aproned sons of mechanical life. I remember, in my
plough-boy days, I could not conceive it possible that a noble lord
could be a fool, or a godly man could be a knave. How ignorant are
plough-boys!--Nay, I have since discovered that a _godly woman_ may be
a--!--But hold--here's t'ye again--this rum is generous Antigua, so a
very unfit menstruum for scandal.
Apropos, how do you like, I mean _really_ like, the married life? Ah, my
friend! matrimony is quite a different thing from what your love-sick
youths and sighing girls take it to be! But marriage, we are told, is
appointed by God, and I shall never quarrel with any of His
institutions. I am a husband of older standing than you, and shall give
you my ideas of the conjugal state, (_en passant_--you know I am no
Latinist-is not _conjugal_ derived from _jugum_, a yoke?) Well, then,
the scale of good wifeship I divide into ten parts. Good-nature, four;
Good Sense, two; Wit, one; Personal Charms, viz., a sweet face, eloquent
eyes, fine limbs, graceful carriage (I would add a fine waist too, but
that is so soon spoilt, you know), all these, one; as for the other
qualities belonging to, or attending on, a wife, such as Fortune,
Connections, Education (I mean education extraordinary), Family blood,
etc., divide the two remaining degrees among them as you please; only,
remember that all these minor properties must be expressed by
_fractions,_ for there is not any one of them, in the aforesaid scale,
entitled to the dignity of an _integer_.
As for the rest of my fancies and reveries--how I lately met with Miss
Lesley Baillie, the most beautiful, elegant woman in the world--how I
accompanied her and her father's family fifteen miles on their journey,
out of pure devotion, to admire the loveliness of the works of God, in
such an unequalled display of them--how, in galloping home at night, I
made a ballad on her, of which these two stanzas make a part--
Thou, bonnie Lesley, art a queen,
Thy subjects we before thee;
Thou, bonnie Lesley, art divine,
The hearts o' men adore thee.
The very deil he could na scathe
Whatever wad belang thee!
He'd look into thy bonnie face
And say, "I canna wrang thee"--
behold all these things are written in the chronicles of my imagination,
and shall be read by thee, my dear friend, and by thy beloved spouse, my
other dear friend, at a more convenient season.
Now to thee and thy wife [_etc._--a mock benediction.]
R.B.
* * * * *
CLXXV.--To MRS. DUNLOP.
DUMFRIES, _24th September 1792_.
I have this moment, my dear Madam, yours of the twenty-third. All your
other kind reproaches, your news, etc., are out of my head when I read
and think of Mrs. Henri's[126] situation. Good God! a heart-wounded
helpless young woman--in a strange, foreign land, and that land
convulsed with every horror that can harrow the human feelings
--sick-looking, longing for a comforter, but finding none--a mother's
feelings, too:--but it is too much: He who wounded (He only can) may
He heal!
I wish the farmer great joy of his new acquisition to his family.... I
cannot say that I give Him joy of his life as a farmer. 'Tis, as a
farmer paying a dear, unconscionable rent, a _cursed life!_ As to a
laird farming his own property; sowing his own corn in hope; and reaping
it, in spite of brittle weather, in gladness; knowing that none can say
unto him, "What dost thou?"--fattening his herds; shearing his flocks;
rejoicing at Christmas; and begetting sons and daughters, until he be
the venerated, grey-haired leader of a little tribe--'tis a heavenly
life! but devil take the life of reaping the fruits that another
must eat!
Well, your kind wishes will be gratified, as to seeing me when I make my
Ayrshire visit. I cannot leave Mrs. Burns until her nine months' race is
run, which may perhaps be in three or four weeks. She, too, seems
determined to make me the patriarchal leader of a band. However, if
Heaven will be so obliging as to let me have them in the proportion of
three boys to one girl, I shall be so much the more pleased. I hope, if
I am spared with them, to show a set of boys that will do honour to my
cares and name; but I am not equal to the task of rearing girls.
Besides, I am too poor; a girl should always have a fortune. Apropos,
your little godson is thriving charmingly, but is a very deil. He,
though two years younger, has completely mastered his brother. Robert is
indeed the mildest, gentlest creature I ever saw. He has a most
surprising memory, and is quite the pride of his schoolmaster.
You know how readily we get into prattle upon a subject dear to our
heart: you can excuse it. God bless you and yours!
[Footnote 126: Her daughter, ill in France.]
* * * * *
CLXXVI.--To MRS. DUNLOP.
_Supposed to have been written on the Death of Mirs. Henri, her
daughter, at Muges._
I had been from home, and did not receive your letter until my return
the other day. What shall I say to comfort you, my much-valued,
much-afflicted friend! I can but grieve with you; consolation I have
none to offer, except that which religion holds out to the children of
affliction--_children of affliction!_--how just the expression! and
like every other family, they have matters among them which they hear,
see, and feel in a serious, all-important manner, of which the world has
not, nor cares to have, any idea. The world looks indifferently on,
makes the passing remark, and proceeds to the next novel occurrence.
Alas, Madam! who would wish for many years? What is it but to drag
existence until our joys gradually expire, and leave us in a night of
misery: like the gloom which blots out the stars, one by one, from the
face of night, and leaves us, without a ray of comfort, in the
howling waste!
I am interrupted, and must leave off. You shall soon hear from me again.
R. B.
* * * *
CLXXVII.--To MRS. DUNLOP.
DUMFRIES, _6th December 1792._
I shall be in Ayrshire, I think, next week; and, if at all possible, I
shall certainly, my much esteemed friend, have the pleasure of visiting
at Dunlop House.
Alas, Madam! how seldom do we meet in this world, that we have reason to
congratulate ourselves on accessions of happiness! I have not passed
half the ordinary term of an old man's life, and yet I scarcely look
over the obituary of a newspaper that I do not see some names that I
have known, and which I and other acquaintances little thought to meet
with there so soon. Every other instance of the mortality of our kind
makes us cast an anxious look into the dreadful abyss of uncertainty,
and shudder with apprehension for our own fate. But of how different an
importance are the lives of different individuals! Nay, of what
importance is one period of the same life more than another? A few years
ago I could have lain down in the dust, "careless of the voice of the
morning;" and now not a few, and these most helpless individuals, would,
on losing me and my exertions, lose both "staff and shield." By the way,
these helpless ones have lately got an addition--Mrs. B. having given me
a fine girl since I wrote you. There is a charming passage in Thomson's"
Edward and Eleanora:"
The valiant, _in himself_ what can he suffer?
Or what need he regard his _single_ woes? (etc.)
I do not remember to have heard you mention Thomson's dramas. I pick up
favourite quotations, and store them in my mind as ready armour,
offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence.
Of these is one, a very favourite one, from his "Alfred:"
Attach thee firmly to the virtuous deeds
And offices of life; to life itself,
With all its vain and transient joys, sit loose.
Probably I have quoted these to you formerly, as indeed, when I write
from the heart, I am apt to be guilty of repetitions. The compass of the
heart, in the musical style of expression, is much more bounded than
that of the imagination; so the notes of the former are extremely apt to
run into one another; but in return for the paucity of its compass, its
few notes are much more sweet....
I see you are in for double postage, so I shall e'en scribble out
t'other sheet. We in this country here have many alarms of the
reforming, or rather the republican spirit, of your part of the kingdom.
Indeed, we are a good deal in commotion ourselves. For me, I am a
placeman, you know; a very humble one indeed, Heaven knows, but still so
much as to gag me. What my private sentiments are, you will find out
without an interpreter.
I have taken up the subject, and the other day, for a pretty actress's
benefit night, I wrote an address, which I will give on the other page,
called "The Rights of Woman." I shall have the honour of receiving your
criticisms in person at Dunlop.
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXXVIII.--To MR. R. GRAHAM, FINTRY.
_December 1792. _
Sir,--I have been surprised, confounded, and distracted, by Mr. Mitchel,
the collector, telling me that he has received an order from your Board
to inquire into my political conduct, and blaming me as a person
disaffected to government.