David Macbeth Moir was born at Musselburgh, Scotland, Jan. 5,
1798, and educated at the grammar school of the Royal Burgh
and at Edinburgh University, from which he received the
diploma of surgeon in 1816. He practised as a physician in his
native town from 1817 until 1843, when, health failing, he
practically withdrew from the active duties of his profession.
Moir began to write in both prose and verse for various
periodicals when quite a youth, but his long connection with
"Blackwood's Magazine" under the pen name of "Delta",
began in 1820, and he became associated with
Christopher North, the Ettrick Shepherd, and others of the
Edinburgh coterie distinguished in "Noctes Ambrosianae." He
contributed to "Blackwood," histories, biographies, essays,
and poems, to the number of about 400. His poems were esteemed
beyond their merits by his generation, and his reputation now
rests almost solely on the caustic humour of his
"Autobiography of Mansie Wauch," published in 1828, a series
of sketches of the manner of life in the shop-keeping and
small-trading class of a Scottish provincial town at the
beginning of the nineteenth century. Moir died at Dumfries on
July 6, 1851.
_I.--Mansie's Forebears and Early Life_
Some of the rich houses and great folk pretend to have histories of the
ancientness of their families, which they can count back on their
fingers almost to the days of Noah's Ark, and King Fergus the First, but
it is not in my power to come further back than auld grand-faither, who
died when I was a growing callant. I mind him full well. To look at him
was just as if one of the ancient patriarchs had been left on the earth,
to let succeeding survivors witness a picture of hoary and venerable
eld.
My own father, auld Mansie Wauch, was, at the age of thirteen, bound a
'prentice to the weaver trade, which he prosecuted till a mortal fever
cut through the thread of his existence. Alas, as Job says, "How time
flies like a weaver's shuttle!" He was a decent, industrious,
hard-working man, doing everything for the good of his family, and
winning the respect of all who knew the value of his worth. On the
five-and-twentieth year of his age he fell in love with, and married, my
mother, Marion Laverock.
I have no distinct recollection of the thing myself, but there is every
reason to believe that I was born on October 13, 1765, in a little house
in the Flesh-Market Gate, Dalkeith, and the first thing I have any clear
memory of was being carried on my auntie's shoulders to see the Fair
Race. Oh! but it was a grand sight! I have read since the story of
Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp, but that fair and the race, which was won by a
young birkie who had neither hat nor shoon, riding a philandering beast
of a horse thirteen or fourteen years auld, beat it all to sticks.
In time, I was sent to school, where I learned to read and spell, making
great progress in the Single and Mother's Carritch. What is more, few
could fickle me in the Bible, being mostly able to spell it all over,
save the second of Ezra and the seventh of Nehemiah, which the Dominie
himself could never read through twice in the same way, or without
variation.
Being of a delicate make--nature never intended me for the naval or
military line, or for any robustious profession--I was apprenticed to
the tailoring trade. Just afterwards I had a terrible stound of
calf-love, my first flame being the minister's lassie, Jess, a buxom and
forward queen, two or three years older than myself. I used to sit
looking at her in the kirk, and felt a droll confusion when our eyes
met. It dirled through my heart like a dart. Fain would I have spoken to
her, but aye my courage failed me, though whiles she gave me a smile
when she passed. She used to go to the well every night with her two
stoups to draw water, so I thought of watching to give her two apples
which I had carried in my pocket for more than a week for that purpose.
How she started when I stappit them into her hand, and brushed by
without speaking!
Jamie Coom, the blacksmith, who I aye jealoused was my rival, came up
and asked Jess, with a loud guffaw, "Where is the tailor?" When I heard
that, I took to my heels till I found myself on the little stool by the
fireside with the hamely sound of my mother's wheel bum-bumming in my
lug, like a gentle lullaby.
The days of the years of my 'prenticeship having glided cannily over, I
girt myself round about with a proud determination of at once cutting my
mother's apron-string. So I set out for Edinburgh in search of a
journeyman's place, which I got the very first day in the Grassmarket.
My lodging was up six pairs of stairs, in a room which I rented for
half-a-crown a week, coals included; but my heart was sea-sick of
Edinburgh folk and town manners, for which I had no stomach. I could
form no friendly acquaintanceship with a living soul. Syne I abode by
myself, like St. John in the Isle of Patmos, on spare allowance, making
a sheep-head serve me for three days' kitchen.
Everything around me seemed to smell of sin and pollution, and often did
I commune with my own heart, that I would rather be a sober, poor,
honest man in the country, able to clear my day and way by the help of
Providence, than the provost himself, my lord though he be, or even the
mayor of London, with his velvet gown trailing for yards in the glaur
behind him, or riding about the streets in a coach made of clear crystal
and wheels of beaten gold.
But when my heart was sickening unto death, I fell in with the greatest
blessing of my life, Nanse Cromie, a bit wench of a lassie frae the
Lauder direction, who had come to be a servant in the flat below our
workshop, and whom I often met on the stairs.
If ever a man loved, and loved like mad, it was me; and I take no shame
in the confession. Let them laugh who like; honest folk, I pity them;
such know not the pleasures of virtuous affection. Matters were by and
bye settled full tosh between us; and though the means of both parties
were small, we were young, and able and willing to help one another.
Nanse and me laid our heads together towards the taking a bit house in
the fore-street of Dalkeith, and at our leisure bought the plenishing.
Two or three days after Maister Wiggie, the minister, had gone through
the ceremony of tying us together, my sign was nailed up, painted in
black letters on a blue ground, with a picture of a jacket on one side
and a pair of shears on the other; and I hung up a wheen ready-made
waistcoats, caps, and Kilmarnock cowls in the window. Business in fact,
flowed in upon us in a perfect torrent.
Both Nanse and I found ourselves so proud of our new situation that we
slipped out in the dark and had a prime look with a lantern at the sign,
which was the prettiest ye ever saw, although some sandblind creatures
had taken the neatly painted jacket for a goose.
_II.--The Resurrection Men_
A year or two after the birth and christening of wee Benjie, my son, I
was cheated by a swindling black-aviced Englishman out of some weeks'
lodgings and keep, and a pair of new velveteen knee-breeches.
Then there arose a great surmise that some loons were playing false with
the kirkyard; and, on investigation, it was found that four graves had
been opened, and the bodies harled away to the college. Words cannot
describe the fear, the dool, and the misery it caused, and the righteous
indignation that burst through the parish.
But what remead? It was to watch in the session-house with loaded guns,
night about, three at a time. It was in November when my turn came. I
never liked to go into the kirkyard after darkening, let-a-be sit
through a long winter night with none but the dead around us. I felt a
kind of qualm of faintness and downsinking about my heart and stomach,
to the dispelling of which I took a thimbleful of spirits, and, tying my
red comforter about my neck, I marched briskly to the session-house.
Andrew Goldie, the pensioner, lent me his piece and loaded it to me. Not
being well acquaint with guns, I kept the muzzle aye away from me, as it
is every man's duty not to throw his precious life into jeopardy. A
bench was set before the sessions-house fire, which bleezed brightly. My
spirits rose, and I wondered, in my bravery, that a man like me should
be afraid of anything. Nobody was there but a towzy, carroty-haired
callant.
The night was now pitmirk. The wind soughed amid the headstones and
railings of the gentry (for we must all die), and the black corbies in
the steeple-holes cackled and crawed in a fearsome manner. Oh, but it
was lonesome and dreary; and in about an hour the laddie wanted to rin
awa hame; but, trying to look brave, though half-frightened out of my
seven senses, I said, "Sit down, sit down; I've baith whiskey and porter
wi' me. Hae, man, there's a cawker to keep your heart warm; and set down
that bottle of Deacon Jaffrey's best brown stout to get a toast."
The wind blew like a hurricane; the rain began to fall in perfect
spouts. Just in the heart of the brattle the grating of the yett turning
on its rusty hinges was but too plainly heard.
"The're coming; cock the piece, ye sumph!" cried the laddie, while his
red hair rose, from his pow like feathers. "I hear them tramping on the
gravel," and he turned the key in the lock and brizzed his back against
the door like mad, shouting out, "For the Lord's sake, prime the gun, or
our throats will be cut before you can cry Jack Robinson."
I did the best I could, but the gun waggled to and fro like a cock's
tail on a rainy day. I trust I was resigned to die, but od' it was a
frightful thing to be out of one's bed to be murdered in an old
session-house at the dead hour of the night by devils incarnate of
ressurrection men with blacked faces, pistols, big sticks, and other
deadly weapons.
After all, it was only Isaac, the bethrel, who, when we let him in, said
that he had just keppit four ressurrectioners louping over the wall. But
that was a joke. I gave Isaac a dram to kep his heart up, and he sung
and leuch as if he had been boozing with some of his drucken cronies;
for feint a hair cared he about auld kirkyards, or vouts, or dead folk
in their winding-sheets, with the wet grass growing over them. Then,
although I tried to stop him, he began to tell stories of Eirish
ressurrectioners, and ghaists, seen in the kirkyard at midnight.
Suddenly a clap like thunder was heard, and the laddie, who had fallen
asleep on the bench, jumped up and roared "Help!" "Murder!" "Thieves!"
while Isaac bellowed out, "I'm dead! I'm killed!--shot through the head!
Oh, oh, oh!" Surely, I had fainted away, for, when I came to myself, I
found my red comforter loosed, my face all wet, Isaac rubbing down his
waistcoat with his sleeve--the laddie swigging ale out of a bicker--and
the brisk brown stout, which, by casting its cork, had caused all the
alarm, whizz-whizz, whizzing in the chimney lug.
_III.--The Friends of the People_
The sough of war and invasion flew over the land at this time, like a
great whirlwind; and the hearts of men died within their persons with
fear and trembling. Abroad the heads of crowned kings were cut off, and
great dukes and lords were thrown into dark dungeons, or obligated to
flee for their lives to foreign countries.
But worst of all the trouble seemed a smittal one, and even our own land
began to show symptoms of the plague spot. Agents of the Spirit of
Darkness, calling themselves the Friends of the People, held secret
meetings, and hatched plots to blow up our blessed king and
constitution. Yet the business, though fearsome in the main, was in some
parts almost laughable. Everything was to be divided, and everyone made
alike. Houses and lands were to be distributed by lots, and the mighty
man and the beggar--the old man and the hobble-de-hoy--the industrious
man and the spendthrift, the maimed, the cripple, and the blind, the
clever man of business, and the haveril simpleton, made all just
brethern, and alike. Save us! but to think of such nonsense! At one of
their meetings, held at the sign of the Tappet Hen and the Tankard,
there was a prime fight of five rounds between Tammy Bowsie, the snab,
and auld Thrashem, the dominie, about their drawing cuts which was to
get Dalkeith Palace, and which Newbottle Abbey! Oh, sic riff-raff!
It was a brave notion of the king to put the loyalty of the land to the
test, that the daft folk might be dismayed, and that the clanjamphrey
might be tumbled down before their betters, like the windle-straes in a
hurricane. And so they were. Such crowds came forward when the names of
the volunteers were taken down. I will never forget the first day that I
got my regimentals on, and when I looked myself in the glass, just to
think I was a sodger who never in my life could thole the smell of
powder! Oh, but it was grand! I sometimes fancied myself a general, and
giving the word of command. Big Sam, who was a sergeant in the
fencibles, and enough to have put five Frenchmen to flight any day of
the year, whiles came to train us; but as nature never intended me for
the soldiering trade, I never got out of the awkward squad, though I had
two or three neighbours to keep me in countenance.
We all cracked very crouse about fighting; but one dark night we got a
fleg in sober earnest. Jow went the town bell, and row-de-dow gaed the
drums, and all in a minute was confusion and uproar in ilka street. I
was seized with a severe shaking of the knees and a flapping at the
heart, when, through the garret window, I saw the signal posts were in a
bleeze, and that the French had landed. This was in reality to be a
soldier! I never got such a fright since the day I was cleckit. There
was such a noise and hullabaloo in the streets, as if the Day of
Judgment had come to find us all unprepared.
Notwithstanding, we behaved ourselves like true-blue Scotsmen, called
forth to fight the battles of our country, and if the French had come,
as they did not come, they would have found that to their cost, as sure
as my name is Mansie. However, it turned out that it was a false alarm,
and that the thief Buonaparte had not landed at Dunbar, as it was
jealoused; so, after standing under arms for half the night, we were
sent home to our beds.
But next day we were taken out to be taught the art of firing. We went
through our motions bravely--to load, ram down the cartridge, made
ready, present, fire. But so flustered and confused was I that I never
had mind to pull the tricker, though I rammed down a fresh cartridge at
the word of command. At the end of the firing the sergeant of the
company ordered all that had loaded pieces to come to the front, and six
of us stepped out in a little line in face of the regiment. Our pieces
were cocked, and at the word "Fire!" off they went. It was an act of
desperation on my part to draw the tricker, and I had hardly well shut
my blinkers when I got such a thump on the shoulder as knocked me
backwards, head over heels, on the grass. When I came to my senses and
found myself not killed outright, and my gun two or three ells away, I
began to rise up. Then I saw one of the men going forward to lift the
fatal piece, but my care for the safety of others overcame the sense of
my own peril. "Let alane, let alane!" cried I to him, "and take care of
yoursell, for it has to gang off five times yet." I thought in my
innocence that we should hear as many reports as I had crammed
cartridges down her muzzle. This was a sore joke against me for a length
of time; but I tholed it patiently, considering cannily within myself,
that even Johnny Cope himself had not learned the art of war in a single
morning.
_IV.--My First and Last Play_
Maister Glen, a farmer from the howes of the Lammermoor, Hills, a
far-awa cousin of our neighbour Widow Grassie, came to Dalkeith to buy a
horse at our fair. He put up free of expense at the widow's, who asked
me to join him and her at a bit warm dinner, as may be, being a
stranger, he would not like to use the freedom of drinking by himself--a
custom which is at the best an unsocial one--especially with none but
women-folk near him.
When we got our joy filled for the second time, and began to be better
acquainted, we became merry, and cracked away just like two pen-guns. I
asked him, ye see, about sheep and cows, and ploughing and thrashing,
and horses and carts, and fallow land and lambing-time, and such like;
and he, in his turn, made inquiries regarding broad and narrow cloth,
Shetland hose, and mittens, thread, and patent shears, measuring, and
all other particulars belonging to our trade, which he said, at long and
last, after we had joked together, was a power better one than the
farming line; and he promised to bind his auldest callant 'prentice to
me to the tailoring trade.
On the head of this auld Glen and I had another jug, three being cannie,
after which we were both a wee tozymozy. Mistress Grassie saw plainly
that we were getting into a state where we could not easily make a halt,
and brought in the tea-things and told us that a company of strolling
players had come to the town and were to give an exhibition in Laird
Wheatley's barn. Many a time I had heard of play-acting, and I
determined to run the risk of Maister Wiggie, our minister's rebuke, for
the transgression. Auld Glen, being as full of nonsense and as fain to
gratify his curiosity as myself, volunteered to pay the ransom of a
shilling for admission, so we went to the barn, which had been browley
set out for the occasion by Johnny Hammer, the joiner.
The place was choke-full, just to excess, and when the curtain was
hauled up in came a decent old gentleman in great distress, and implored
all the powers of heaven and earth to help him find his runaway daughter
that had decamped with some ne'er-do-weel loon of a half-pay captain.
Out he went stumping on the other side, determined, he said, to find
them, though he should follow them to Johnny Groat's house, or something
to that effect. Hardly was his back turned than in came the birkie and
the very young lady the old gentleman described, arm-and-arm together,
laughing like daft Dog on it! It was a shameless piece of business. As
true as death, before all the crowd of folk, he put his arm round her
waist and called her his sweetheart, and love, and dearie, and darling,
and everything that is fine.
In the middle of their goings on, the sound of a coming foot was heard,
and the lassie, taking guilt to her, cried out, "Hide me, hide me, for
the sake of goodness, for yonder comes my old father!" No sooner said
than done. In he stappit her into a closit, and, after shutting the door
on her, he sat down upon a chair, pretending to be asleep in the
twinkling of a walking-stick. The old father came bounsing in, shook him
up, and gripping him by the cuff of the neck, aske him, in a fierce
tone, what he had made of his daughter. Never since I was born did I
ever see such brazen-faced impudence! The rascal had the face to say at
once that he had not seen the lassie for a month. As a man, as a father,
as an elder of our kirk, my corruption was raised, for I aye hated lying
as a poor cowardly sin, so I called out, "Dinna believe him, auld
gentleman; he's telling a parcel of lees. Never saw her for a month!
Just open that press-door, and ye'll see whether I am speaking truth or
not!" The old man stared and looked dumfounded; and the young one,
instead of running forward with his double nieves to strike me, began
a-laughing, as if I had done him a good turn.
But never since I had a being did I ever witness such an uproar and
noise as immediately took place. The whole house was so glad that the
scoundrel had been exposed that they set up siccan a roar of laughter,
and thumped away at siccan a rate with their feet that down fell the
place they called the gallery, all the folk in't being hurl'd
topsy-turvy among the sawdust on the floor below.
Then followed cries of "Murder," "Hold off me," "My ribs are in," "I'm
killed," "I'm speechless." There was a rush to the door, the lights were
knocked out, and such tearing, swearing, tumbling, and squealing was
never witnessed in the memory of man since the building of Babel. I was
carried off my feet, my wind was fairly gone, and a sick qualm came over
me, which entirely deprived me of my senses. On opening my eyes in the
dark, I found myself leaning with my broadside against the wall on the
opposite side of the close, with the tail of my Sunday coat docked by
the hainch buttons. So much for plays and play-actors--the first and the
last I trust in grace that I shall ever see.
Next morning I had to take my breakfast in bed, a thing very uncommon to
me, except on Sunday mornings whiles, when each one according to the
bidding of the Fourth Commandment, has a licence to do as he likes.
Having a desperate sore head, our wife, poor body, put a thimbleful of
brandy into my first cup of tea which had a wonderful virtue in putting
all things to rights.
In the afternoon Thomas Burlings, the ruling elder in the kirk, popped
into the shop, and, in our two-handed crack, after asking me in a dry,
curious way if I had come by no skaith in the business of the play, he
said the thing had now spread far and wide, and was making a great noise
in the world. I thought the body a wee sharp in his observe, so I
pretended to take it quite lightly. Then he began to tell me a wheen
stories, each one having to do with drinking.
"It's a wearyfu' thing that whisky," said Thomas. "I wish it could be
banished to Botany Bay."
"It is that," said I. "Muckle and nae little sin does it breed and
produce in this world."
"I'm glad," quoth Thomas, stroking down his chin in a slee way, "I'm
glad the guilty should see the folly o' their ain ways; it's the first
step, ye ken, till amendment. And indeed I tell't Maister Wiggie, when
he sent me here, that I could almost become guid for your being mair
wary of your conduct for the future time to come."
This was a thunder-clap to me, but I said briskly, "So ye're after some
session business in this visit, are ye?"
"Ye've just guessed it," answered Thomas, sleeking down his front hair
with his fingers in a sober way. "We had a meeting this forenoon, and it
was resolved ye should stand a public rebuke in the meeting house next
Sunday."
"Hang me if I do!" answered I. "Not for all the ministers and elders
that were ever cleckit. I was born a free man, I live in a free country,
I am the subject of a free king and constitution, and I'll be shot
before I submit to such rank diabolical papistry."
"Hooly and fairly, Mansie," quoth Thomas. "They'll maybe no be sae hard
as they threaten. But ye ken, my friend, I'm speaking to you as a
brither; it was an unco'-like business for an elder, not only to gang
till a play, which is ane of the deevil's rendevouses, but to gan there
in a state of liquor, making yourself a world's wonder, and you an elder
of our kirk! I put the question to yourself soberly."
His threatening I could despise; but ah, his calm, brotherly, flattering
way I could not thole with. So I said till him, "Weel, weel, Thomas, I
ken I have done wrong, and I am sorry for't; they'll never find me in
siccan a scrape again."
Thomas Burlings, in a friendly way, shook hands with me; telling that he
would go back and plead with the session in my behalf. To do him justice
he was not worse than his word, for I have aye attended the kirk as
usual, standing, when it came to my rotation, at the plate, and nobody,
gentle or simple, ever spoke to me on the subject of the playhouse, or
minted the matter of the rebuke from that day to this.
_V.--Benjie a Barber_
When wee Benjie came to his thirteenth year, many and long were the
debates between his fond mother and me what trade we would bring him up
to. His mother thought that he had just the physog of an admiral, and
when the matter was put to himsell, Benjie said quite briskly he would
like to be a gentleman. At which I broke through my rule never to lift
my fist to the bairn, and gave him such a yerk in the cheek with the
loof of my hand, as made, I am sure, his lugs ring, and sent him dozing
to the door like a peerie.
We discussed, among other trades and professions, a lawyer's advocatt, a
preaching minister, a doctor, a sweep, a rowley-powley man, a
penny-pie-man, a man-cook, that easiest of all lives, a gentleman's
gentleman; but in the end Nanse, when I suggested a barber, gave a
mournful look and said in a state of Christian resignation, "Tak' your
ain way, gudeman."
And so Benjie was apprenticed to be a barber, for, as I made the
observe, "Commend me to a safe employment, and a profitable. They may
give others the nick, and draw blood, but catch them hurting themselves.
The foundations of the hair-cutting and the shaving line are as sure as
that of the everlasting rocks; beards being likely to roughen, and heads
to require polling as long as wood grows and water runs."
Benjie is now principal shop-man in a Wallflower Hair-Powder and Genuine
Macassar Oil Warehouse, kept by three Frenchmen, called Moosies
Peroukey, in the West End of London. But, though our natural enemies, he
writes me that he has found them agreeable and shatty masters, full of
good manners and pleasant discourse, and, except in their language,
almost Christians.
I aye thought Benjie was a genius, and he is beginning to show himself
his father's son, being in thoughts of taking out a patent for making a
hair-oil from rancid butter. If he succeeds it will make the callant's
fortune. But he must not marry Madamoselle Peroukey without my special
consent, as Nance says that her having a French woman for a
daughter-in-law would be the death of her.
As for myself, I have now retired from business with my guid wife Nanse
to our ain cottage at Lugton, with a large garden and henhouse attached,
there to spend the evening of our days. I have enjoyed a pleasant run of
good health through life, reading my Bible more in hope than fear; our
salvation, and not our destruction, being, I should suppose, its
purpose. And I trust that the overflowing of a grateful heart will not
be reckoned against me for unrighteousness.
* * * * *