"Others apart sat on a hill retired,
In thoughts more elevate; and reasoned high
Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate--
Fixed fate, freewill, foreknowledge absolute;
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost."--MILTON.
Spring came on, and brought with it its round of labour--quarrying,
building, and stone-cutting; but labour had now no terrors for me: I
wrought hard during the hours allotted to toil, and was content; and
read, wrote, or walked, during the hours that were properly my own, and
was happy. Early in May, however, we had finished all the work for which
my master had previously contracted; and as trade was unusually dull at
the time, he could procure no further contracts, and the squad was
thrown out of employment. I rushed to the woods and rocks, and got on
with my lessons in geology and natural science; but my master, who had
no lessons to learn, wearied sadly of doing nothing; and at length, very
unwillingly--for he had enacted the part of the employer, though on a
small scale, for a full quarter of a century--he set himself to procure
work as a journeyman. He had another apprentice at the time; and he,
availing himself of the opportunity which the old man's inability of
employing him furnished, quitted his service, and commenced work on his
own behalf--a step to which, though the position of a journeyman's
apprentice seemed rather an anomalous one, I could not see my way. And
so, as work turned up for both master and apprentice at a place about
twenty miles distant from Cromarty, I set out with him, to make trial,
for the first time, of the sort of life that is spent in bothies and
barracks. Our work was to consist, I was informed, of building and
hewing at an extensive farm-steading on the banks of the river Conon,
which one of the wealthier proprietors of the district was getting built
for himself, not on contract, but by the old mode of employing
operatives on day's wages; and my master was to be permitted to rate as
a full journeyman, though now considerably in his decline as a workman,
on condition that the services of his apprentice should be rated so much
lower than their actual value as to render master and man regarded as
one lot--a fair bargain to the employer, and somewhat more. The
arrangement was not quite a flattering one for me; but I acquiesced in
it without remark, and set out with my master for Conon-side.
The evening sun was gleaming delightfully as we neared the scene of our
labours, on the broad reaches of the Conon, and lighting up the fine
woods and noble hills beyond. It would, I knew, be happiness to toil for
some ten hours or so per day in so sweet a district, and then to find
the evening all my own; but on reaching the work, we were told that we
would require to set out in the morning for a place about four miles
further to the west, where there were a few workmen engaged in building
a jointure-house for the lady of a Ross-shire proprietor lately dead,
and which lay off the river in a rather unpromising direction. And so, a
little after sun-rise, we had to take the road with our tools slung
across our backs, and before six o'clock we reached the rising
jointure-house, and set to work. The country around was somewhat bare
and dreary--a scene of bogs and moors, overlooked by a range of tame
heathy hills; but in our immediate neighbourhood there was a picturesque
little scene--rather a vignette than a picture--that in some degree
redeemed the general deformity. Two meal-mills--the one small and old,
the other larger and more modern--were placed beside each other, on
ground so unequal, that, seen in front, the smaller seemed perched on
the top of the larger; a group of tall graceful larches rose immediately
beside the lower building, and hung their slim branches over the huge
wheel; while a few aged ash-trees that encircled the mill-pond, which,
in sending its waters down the hill, supplied both wheels in succession,
sprang up immediately beside the upper erection, and shot their branches
over its roof. On closing our labours for the evening, we repaired to
the old mansion-house, about half a mile away, in which the dowager lady
for whom we wrought still continued to reside, and where we expected to
be accommodated, like the other workmen, with beds for the night. We had
not been expected, however, and there were no beds provided for us; but
as the Highland carpenter who had engaged to execute the woodwork of the
new building had an entire bed to himself, we were told we might, if we
pleased, lie three a-bed with him. But though the carpenter was, I
daresay, a most respectable man, and a thorough Celt, I had observed
during the day that he was miserably affected by a certain skin disease,
which, as it was more prevalent in the past of Highland history than
even at this time, must have rendered his ancestors of old very
formidable, even without their broadswords; and so I determined on no
account to sleep with him. I gave my master fair warning, by telling him
what I had seen; but uncle David, always insensible to danger, conducted
himself on the occasion as in the sinking boat or under the falling
bank, and so went to bed with the carpenter; while I, stealing out, got
into the upper story of an out-house; and, flinging myself down in my
clothes on the floor, on a heap of straw, was soon fast asleep. I was,
however, not much accustomed at the time to so rough a bed: every time I
turned me in my lair, the strong, stiff straw rustled against my face;
and about midnight I awoke.
I rose to a little window which opened upon a dreary moor, and commanded
a view in the distance, of a ruinous chapel and solitary burying-ground,
famous in the traditions of the district as the chapel and
burying-ground of Gillie-christ. Dr. Johnson relates, in his "Journey,"
that when eating, on one occasion, his dinner in Skye to the music of
the bagpipe, he was informed by a gentleman, "that in some remote time,
the Macdonalds of Glengarry having been injured or offended by the
inhabitants of Culloden, and resolving to have justice, or vengeance,
they came to Culloden on a Sunday, when, finding their enemies at
worship, they shut them up in the church, which they set on fire; and
this, said he, is the tune that the piper played while they were
burning." Culloden, however, was not the scene of the atrocity: it was
the Mackenzies of Ord that their fellow-Christians and
brother-Churchmen, the Macdonalds of Glengarry, succeeded in converting
into animal charcoal, when the poor people were engaged, like good
Catholics, in attending mass; and in this old chapel of Gillie-christ
was the experiment performed. The Macdonalds, after setting fire to the
building, held fast the doors until the last of the Mackenzies of Ord
had perished in the flames; and then, pursued by the Mackenzies of
Brahan, they fled into their own country, to glory ever after in the
greatness of the feat. The evening was calm and still, but dark for the
season, for it was now near mid-summer; and every object had disappeared
in the gloom, save the outlines of a ridge of low hills that rose beyond
the moor; but I could determine where the chapel and churchyard lay; and
great was my astonishment to see a light flickering amid the
grave-stones and the ruins. At one time seen, at another hid, like the
revolving lantern of a lighthouse, it seemed to be passing round and
round the building; and, as I listened, I could hear distinctly what
appeared to be a continuous screaming of most unearthly sound,
proceeding from evidently the same spot as the twinkle of the light.
What could be the meaning of such an apparition, with such
accompaniments--the time of its appearance midnight--the place a
solitary burying-ground? I was in the Highlands: was there truth, after
all, in the many floating Highland stories of spectral dead-lights and
wild supernatural sounds, seen and heard by nights in lonely places of
sepulture, when some sudden death was near? I did feel my blood run
somewhat cold, for I had not yet passed the credulous time of life--and
had some thoughts of stealing down to my master's bedside, to be within
reach of the human voice, when I saw the light quitting the churchyard,
and coming downwards across the moor in a straight line, though tossed
about in the dead calm, in many a wave and flourish; and further, I
could ascertain, that what I had deemed a persistent screaming was in
reality a continuous singing, carried on at the pitch of a powerful
though somewhat cracked voice. In a moment after, one of the servant
girls of the mansion-house came rushing out half-dressed to the door of
an outer-building in which the workmen and the farm-servant lay, and
summoned them immediately to rise. Mad Bell had again broke out, she
said, and would set them on fire a second time.
The men rose, and, as they appeared at the door, I joined them; but on
striking out a few yards into the moor, we found the maniac already in
the custody of two men, who had seized and were dragging her towards her
cottage, a miserable hovel, about half a mile away. She never once spoke
to us, but continued singing, though in a lower and more subdued tone of
voice than before, a Gaelic song. We reached her hut, and, making use of
her own light, we entered. A chain of considerable length, attached by a
stopple in one of the Highland _couples_ of the erection, showed that
her neighbours had been compelled on former occasions to abridge her
liberty; and one of the men, in now making use of it, so wound it round
her person as to bind her down, instead of giving her the scope of the
apartment, to the damp uneven floor. A very damp and uneven floor it
was. There were crevices in the roof above, which gave free access to
the elements; and the turf walls, perilously bulged by the leakage in
several places, were green with mould. One of the masons and I
simultaneously interfered. It would never do, we said, to pin down a
human creature in that way to the damp earth. Why not give her what the
length of the chain permitted--the full range of the room? If we did
that, replied the man, she would be sure to set herself free before
morning, and we would just have to rise and bind her again. But we
resolved, we rejoined, whatever might happen, that she should _not_ be
tied down in that way to the filthy floor; and ultimately we succeeded
in carrying our point. The song ceased for a moment: the maniac turned
round, presenting full to the light the strongly-marked, energetic
features of a woman of about fifty-five; and, surveying us with a keen,
scrutinizing glance, altogether unlike that of the idiot, she
emphatically repeated the sacred text, "Blessed are the merciful, for
they shall obtain mercy." She then began singing, in a low, mournful
tone, an old Scotch ballad; and, as we left the cottage, we could hear
her voice gradually heightening as we retired, until it had at length
attained to its former pitch and wildness of tone.
Before daybreak the maniac succeeded in setting herself free; but the
paroxysm of the fit had meanwhile passed over; and when she visited me
next morning at the place where I was hewing--a little apart from the
other workmen, who were all engaged in building on the walls--save for
the strongly-marked features, I would scarce have recognised her. She
was neatly dressed, though her gown was neither fine nor new; her clean
white cap was nicely arranged; and her air seemed to be rather that of
the respectable tradesman's wife or daughter, than of the ordinary
country woman. For some little time she stood beside me without
speaking, and then somewhat abruptly asked,--"What makes _you_ work as a
mason?" I made some commonplace reply; but it failed to satisfy her.
"All your fellows are real masons," she said; "but you are merely in the
disguise of a mason; and I have come to consult you about the deep
matters of the soul." The matters she had come to inquire regarding were
really very deep indeed; she had, I found, carefully read Flavel's
"Treatise on the Soul of Man"--a volume which, fortunately for my
credit, I also had perused; and we were soon deep together in the rather
bad metaphysics promulgated on the subject by the Schoolmen, and
republished by the divine. It seemed clear, she said, that every human
soul was created--not transmitted--created, mayhap, at the time when it
began to be; but if so, how, or on what principle did it come under the
influence of the Fall? I merely remarked, in reply, that she was of
course acquainted with the views of the old theologians--_such as
Flavel_--men who really knew as much about such things as could be
known, and perhaps a little more: was she not satisfied with them? Not
dissatisfied, she said; but she wanted more light. Could a soul not
derived from our first parents be rendered vile simply by being put into
a body derived from them? One of the passages in Flavel, on this special
point, had luckily struck me, from its odd obscurity of expression, and
I was able to quote it in nearly the original words. You know, I
remarked, that a great authority on the question "declined confidently
to affirm that the moral infection came by way of physical agency, as a
rusty scabbard infects and defiles a bright sword when sheathed therein:
it might be," he thought, "by way of natural concomitancy, as Estius
will have it; or, to speak as Dr. Reynolds doth, by way of ineffable
resultancy and emanation." As this was perfectly unintelligible, it
seemed to satisfy my new friend. I added, however, that, like herself, I
was waiting for more light on the difficulty, and might set myself to it
in right earnest, when I found it fully demonstrated that the Creator
could not, or did not, make man equally the descendant in soul as in
body of the original progenitors of the race. I believed, with the great
Mr. Locke, that he could do it; nor was I aware he had anywhere said
that what he could do in the matter he had not done. Such was the first
of many strange conversations with the maniac, who, with all her sad
brokenness of mind, was one of the most intellectual women I ever knew.
Humble as were the circumstances in which I found her, her brother, who
was at this time about two years dead, had been one of the best-known
ministers of the Scottish Church in the Northern Highlands. To quote
from an affectionate notice by the editor of a little volume of his
sermons, published a few years ago--the Rev. Mr. Mackenzie of North
Leith--"he was a profound divine, an eloquent preacher, a
deeply-experienced Christian, and, withal, a classical scholar, a
popular poet, a man of original genius, and eminently a man of prayer."
And his poor sister Isabel, though grievously vexed at times by a dire
insanity, seemed to have received from nature powers mayhap not inferior
to his.
We were not always engaged with the old divines; Isabel's tenacious
memory was stored with the traditions of the district; and many an
anecdote could she tell of old chieftains, forgotten on the lands which
had once been their own, and of Highland poets, whose songs had been
sung for the last time. The story of the "Raid of Gillie-christ" has
been repeatedly in print since I first heard it from her: it forms the
basis of the late Sir Thomas Dick Lander's powerful tale of "Allan with
the Red Jacket;" and I have seen it in its more ordinary traditionary
dress, in the columns of the _Inverness Courier_. But at this time it
was new to me; and on no occasion could it have lost less by the
narrator. She was herself a Mackenzie; and her eyes flashed a wild fire
when she spoke of the barbarous and brutal Macdonalds, and of the
measured march and unfaltering notes of their piper outside the burning
chapel, when her perishing ancestors were shrieking in their agony
within. She was acquainted also with the resembling story of that Cave
of Eigg, in which a body of the Macdonalds themselves, consisting of
men, women, and children--the entire population of the island--had been
suffocated wholesale by the Macleods of Skye; and I have heard from her
more good sense on the subject of the Highland character "ere the gospel
changed it," as illustrated by these passages in their history, than
from some Highlanders sane enough on other matters, but carried away by
a too indiscriminating respect for the wild courage and half-instinctive
fidelity of the old race. The ancient Highlanders were bold, faithful
dogs, she has said, ready to die for their masters, and prepared to do,
at their bidding, like other dogs, the most cruel and wicked actions;
and as dogs often were they treated; nay, even still, after religion had
made them men (as if condemned to suffer for the sins of their parents),
they were frequently treated as dogs. The pious martyrs of the south had
contended in God's behalf; whereas the poor Highlanders of the north had
but contended in behalf of their chiefs; and so, while God had been kind
to the descendants of _His_ servants, the chiefs had been very unkind to
the descendants of theirs. From excellent sense, however, in these
conversations, my new companion used often to wander into deplorable
insanity. Her midnight visits to the old chapel of Gillie-christ were
made, she said, in order that she might consult her father in her
difficulties; and the good man, though often silent for nights together,
rarely failed to soothe and counsel her from the depths of his quiet
grave, on every occasion when her unhappiness became extreme. It was
acting on his advice, however, that she had set fire to a door that had
for a time excluded her from the burying-ground, and burnt it down. She
had been married in early life; and I have rarely heard anything wilder
or more ingenious than the account she gave of a quarrel with her
husband, that terminated in their separation.
After living happily with him for several years, she all at once, she
said, became most miserable, and everything in their household went on
ill. But though her husband seemed to have no true conception of the
cause of their new-born misery, she had. He used, from motives of
economy, to keep a pig, which, when converted into bacon, was always
useful in the family; and an occasional ham of the animal now and then
found its way to her brother's manse, as a sort of friendly
acknowledgment of the many good things received from him. One wretched
pig, however--a little black thing, only a few weeks old--which her
husband had purchased at a fair, was, she soon discovered, possessed by
an evil spirit, that had a strange power of quitting the animal to do
mischief in her dwelling, and an ability of not only rendering her
fearfully unhappy, but even of getting at times into her husband. The
husband himself, poor blinded man! could see nothing of all this; nor
would he believe _her_, who could and did see it; nor yet could she
convince him that it was decidedly his duty to get rid of the pig. She
was not satisfied that she herself had a clear right to kill the
creature: it was undoubtedly her husband's property, not hers; but could
she only succeed in placing it in circumstances in which it might be
free either to kill itself or not, and were it, in these circumstances,
to destroy itself, she was sure all the better divines would acquit her
of aught approaching to moral guilt in the transaction; and the relieved
household would be free from both the evil spirit and the little pig.
The mill-pond was situated immediately beside her dwelling: its steep
sides, which were walled with stone, were unscaleable by at least little
pigs; and among the aged ashes which sprang up immediately at its edge,
there was one that shot out a huge bough, like a bent arm, directly over
it, far beyond the stonework, so that the boys of the neighbourhood used
to take their seat on it, and fish for little trout that sometimes found
their way into the pond. On the projecting branch one day, when her
husband's back was turned, and there was no one to see or interfere, she
placed the pig. It stood for a while: there was no doubt, therefore, it
_could_ stand; but, unwilling to stand any longer, it
sprawled--slipped--fell--dropped into the water, in short--and
ultimately, as it could not make its way up the bank, was drowned. And
thus ended the pig. It would seem, however, as if the evil spirit had
got into her husband instead--so extreme was his indignation at the
transaction. He would accept of neither apology nor explanation; and,
unable of course to live any longer under the same roof with a man so
unreasonable, she took the opportunity, when he was quitting that part
of the country for employment at a distance, to remain behind in her old
cottage--the same in which she at that time resided. Such was the
maniac's account of her quarrel with her husband; and, when listening to
men chopping little familiar logic on one of the profoundest mysteries
of Revelation--a mystery which, once received as an article of faith,
serves to unlock many a difficulty, but which is itself wholly
irreducible by the human intellect--I have been sometimes involuntarily
led to think of her ingenious but not very sound argumentation on the
fall of the pig. It is dangerous to attempt explaining, in the
theological province, what in reality cannot be explained. Some weak
abortion of the human reason is always substituted, in the attempt, for
some profound mystery in the moral government of God; and men
ill-grounded in the faith are led to confound the palpable abortion with
the inscrutable mystery, and are injured in consequence.
I succeeded in getting a bed in the mansion-house, without, like Marsyas
of old, perilling my skin; and though there was but little of interest
in the immediate neighbourhood, and not much to be enjoyed within
doors--for I could procure neither books nor congenial
companionship--with the assistance of my pencil and sketch-book I got
over my leisure hours tolerably well. My new friend Isabel would have
given me as much of her conversation as I liked; for there was many a
point on which she had to consult me, and many a mystery to state, and
secret to communicate; but, though always interested in her company, I
was also always pained, and invariably quitted her, after each
lengthened _tete-a-tete_, in a state of low spirits, which I found it
difficult to shake off. There seems to be something peculiarly
unwholesome in the society of a strong-minded maniac; and so I contrived
as much as possible--not a little, at times, to her mortification--to
avoid her. For hours together, however, I have seen her perfectly sane;
and, on these occasions, she used to speak much about her brother, for
whom she entertained a high reverence, and gave me many anecdotes
regarding him, not uninteresting in themselves, which she told
remarkably well. Some of these my memory still retains. "There were two
classes of men," she has said, "for whom he had a special
regard--Christian men of consistent character; and men who, though they
made no profession of religion, were honest in their dealings, and of
kindly dispositions. And with people of this latter kind he used to have
a great deal of kindly intercourse, cheerful enough at times--for he
could both make a joke and take one--but which usually did his friends
good in the end. So long as my father and my mother lived, he used to
travel across the country once every year to pay them a visit; and he
was accompanied, on one of these journeys, by one of this less religious
class of his parishioners, who had, however, a great regard for him, and
whom he liked, in turn, for his blunt honesty, and obliging disposition.
They had baited for some time at a house in the outer skirts of my
brother's parish, where there was a child to baptize, and where, I fear,
Donald must have got an extra dram; for he was very argumentative all
the evening after; and finding he could not agree with my brother on any
one subject, he suffered him to shoot a-head for a few hundred yards,
and did not again come up with him, until, in passing through a thick
clump of natural wood, he found him standing, lost in thought, before a
singularly-shaped tree. Donald had never seen such a strange-looking
tree in all his days before. The lower part of it was twisted in and
out, and backwards and forwards, like an ill-made cork-screw; while the
higher shot straight upwards, direct as a line; and its taper top
seemed like a finger pointing at the sky. 'Come, tell me, Donald,' said
my brother, 'what you think this tree is like?' 'Indeed, I kenna, Mr.
Lachlan,' replied Donald; 'but if you let me take that straight bit aff
the tap o't, it will be gey an' like the _worm_ o' a whisky still.' 'But
I cannot want the straight bit,' said my brother; 'the very pith and
point of my comparison lies in the straight bit. One of the old fathers
would perhaps have said, Donald, that that tree resembled the course of
the Christian. His early progress has turns and twists in it, just like
the lower part of that tree; one temptation draws him to the
left--another to the right: his upward course is a crooked one; but it
is an upward course for all that; for he has, like the tree, the
principle of sky-directed growth within him: the disturbing influences
weaken as grace strengthens, and appetite and passion decay; and so the
early part of his career is not more like the warped and twisted trunk
of that tree, than his latter years resemble its taper top. He shoots
off heavenward in a straight line.'" Such is a specimen of the anecdotes
of this poor woman. I saw her once afterwards, though for only a short
time; when she told me that, though people could not understand _us_,
there was meaning in both her thoughts and in mine; and some years
subsequently, when I was engaged as a journeyman mason in the south of
Scotland, she walked twenty miles to pay my mother a visit, and stayed
with her for several days. Her death was a melancholy one. When fording
the river Conon in one of her wilder moods, she was swept away by the
stream and drowned, and her body cast upon the bank a day or two after.
Our work finished at this place, my master and I returned on a Saturday
evening to Conon-side, where we found twenty-four workmen crowded in a
rusty corn-kiln, open from gable to gable, and not above thirty feet in
length. A row of rude beds, formed of undressed slabs, ran along the
sides; and against one of the gables there blazed a line of fires, with
what are known as masons' setting-irons, stuck into the stonework
behind, for suspending over them the pots used in cooking the food of
the squad. The scene, as we entered, was one of wild confusion. A few of
the soberer workmen were engaged in "baking and firing" oaten cakes, and
a few more occupied, with equal sobriety, in cooking their evening
porridge; but in front of the building there was a wild party of
apprentices, who were riotously endeavouring to prevent a Highland
shepherd from driving his flock past them, by shaking their aprons at
the affrighted animals; and a party equally bent on amusement inside
were joining with burlesque vehemence in a song which one of the men,
justly proud of his musical talents, had just struck up. Suddenly the
song ceased, and with wild uproar a bevy of some eight or ten workmen
burst out into the green in full pursuit of a squat little fellow, who
had, they said, insulted the singer. The cry rose wild and high, "A
ramming! a ramming!" The little fellow was seized and thrown down; and
five men--one holding his head, and one stationed at each arm and
leg--proceeded to execute on his body the stern behests of barrack-law.
He was poised like an ancient battering-ram, and driven endlong against
the wall of the kiln,--that important part of his person coming in
violent contact with the masonry, "where," according to Butler, "a kick
hurts honour" very much. After the third blow, however, he was released,
and the interrupted song went on as before. I was astonished, and
somewhat dismayed, by this specimen of barrack-life; but, getting
quietly inside the building, I succeeded in cooking for my uncle and
myself some porridge over one of the unoccupied fires, and then stole
off, as early as I could, to my lair in a solitary hay-loft--for there
was no room for us in the barrack--where, by the judicious use of a
little sulphur and mercury, I succeeded in freeing my master from the
effects of the strange bed-fellowship which our recent misery had made,
and preserving myself from infection. The following Sabbath was a day
of quiet rest; and I commenced the labours of the week, disposed to
think that my lot, though rather a rough one, was not altogether
unendurable; and that, even were it worse than it was, it would be at
once wise and manly, seeing that winter would certainly come, cheerfully
to acquiesce in and bear up under it.
I had, in truth, entered a school altogether new--at times, as I have
just shown, a singularly noisy and uproarious one, for it was a school
without master or monitor; but its occasional lessons were,
notwithstanding, eminently worthy of being scanned. All know that there
exists such a thing as professional character. On some men, indeed,
nature imprints so strongly the stamp of individuality, that the feebler
stamp of circumstance and position fails to impress them. Such cases,
however, must always be regarded as exceptional. On the average masses
of mankind, the special employments which they pursue, or the kinds of
business which they transact, have the effect of moulding them into
distinct classes, each of which bears an artificially induced character
peculiarly its own. Clergymen, as such, differ from merchants and
soldiers, and all three from lawyers and physicians. Each of these
professions has long borne in our literature, and in common opinion, a
character so clearly appreciable by the public generally, that, when
truthfully reproduced in some new work of fiction, or exemplified by
some transaction in real life, it is at once recognised as marked by the
genuine class-traits and peculiarities. But the professional
characteristics descend much lower in the scale than is usually
supposed. There is scarce a trade or department of manual labour that
does not induce its own set of peculiarities--peculiarities which,
though less within the range of the observation of men in the habit of
recording what they remark, are not less real than those of the man of
physic or of law. The barber is as unlike the weaver, and the tailor as
unlike both, as the farmer is unlike the soldier, or as either farmer
or soldier is unlike the merchant, lawyer, or minister. And it is only
on the same sort of principle that all men, when seen from the top of a
lofty tower, whether they be tall or short, seem of the same stature,
that these differences escape the notice of men in the higher walks.
Between the workmen that pass sedentary lives within doors, such as
weavers and tailors, and those who labour in the open air, such as
masons and ploughmen, there exists a grand generic difference. Sedentary
mechanics are usually less contented than laborious ones; and as they
almost always work in parties, and as their comparatively light, though
often long and wearily-plied employments, do not so much strain their
respiratory organs but that they can keep up an interchange of idea when
at their toils, they are generally much better able to state their
grievances, and much more fluent in speculating on their causes. They
develop more freely than the laborious out-of-door workers of the
country, and present, as a class, a more intelligent aspect. On the
other hand, when the open-air worker does so overcome his difficulties
as to get fairly developed, he is usually of a fresher or more vigorous
type than the sedentary one. Burns, Hogg, Allan Cunningham, are the
literary representatives of the order; and it will be found that they
stand considerably in advance of the Thoms, Bloomfields, and Tannahills,
that represent the sedentary workmen. The silent, solitary, hard-toiled
men, if nature has put no better stuff in them than that of which
stump-orators and Chartist lecturers are made, remain silent, repressed
by their circumstances; but if of a higher grade, and if they once do
get their mouths fairly opened, they speak with power, and bear with
them into our literature the freshness of the green earth and the
freedom of the open sky.
The specific peculiarities induced by particular professions are not
less marked than the generic ones. How different, for instance, the
character of a sedentary tailor, as such, from that of the equally
sedentary barber! Two imperfectly-taught young lads, of not more than
the average intellect, are apprenticed, the one to the hair-dresser, the
other to the fashionable clothes-maker of a large village. The barber
has to entertain his familiar round of customers, when operating upon
their heads and beards. He must have no controversies with them; that
might be disagreeable, and might affect his command of the scissors or
razor; but he is expected to communicate to them all he knows of the
gossip of the place; and as each customer supplies him with a little, he
of course comes to know more than anybody else. And as his light and
easy work lays no stress on his respiration, in course of time he learns
to be a fast and fluent talker, with a great appetite for news, but
little given to dispute. He acquires, too, if his round of customers be
good, a courteous manner; and if they be in large proportion
Conservatives, he becomes, in all probability, a Conservative too. The
young tailor goes through an entirely different process. He learns to
regard dress as the most important of all earthly things--becomes
knowing in cuts and fashions--is taught to appreciate, in a way no other
individual can, the aspect of a button, or the pattern of a vest; and as
his work is cleanly, and does not soil his clothes, and as he can get
them more cheaply, and more perfectly in the fashion, than other
mechanics, the chances are ten to one that he turns out a beau. He
becomes great in that which he regards as of all things greatest--dress.
A young tailor may be known by the cut of his coat and the merits of his
pantaloons, among all other workmen; and as even fine clothes are not
enough of themselves, it is necessary that he should also have fine
manners; and not having such advantages of seeing polite society as his
neighbour the barber, his gentlemanly manners are always less fine than
grotesque. Hence more ridicule of tailors among working men than of any
other class of mechanics. And such--if nature has sent them from her
hand ordinary men, for the extraordinary rise above all the modifying
influences of profession--are the processes through which tailors and
hair-dressers put on then distinctive characters as such. A village
smith hears well-nigh as much gossip as a village barber; but he
develops into an entirely different sort of man. He is not bound to
please his customers by his talk; nor does his profession leave his
breath free enough to talk fluently or much; and so he listens in grim
and swarthy independence--strikes his iron while it is hot--and when,
after thrusting it into the fire, he bends himself to the bellows, he
drops, in rude phrase, a brief judicial remark, and again falls sturdily
to work. Again, the shoemaker may be deemed, in the merely mechanical
character of his profession, near of kin to the tailor. But such is not
the case. He has to work amid paste, wax, oil, and blacking, and
contracts a smell of leather. He cannot keep himself particularly clean;
and although a nicely-finished shoe be all well enough in its way, there
is not much about it on which conceit can build. No man can set up as a
beau on the strength of a prettily-shaped shoe; and so a beau the
shoemaker is not, but, on the contrary, a careless, manly fellow, who,
when not overmuch devoted to Saint Monday, gains usually, in his course
through life, a considerable amount of sense. Shoemakers are often in
large proportions intelligent men; and Bloomfield, the poet, Gifford the
critic and satirist, and Carey the missionary, must certainly be
regarded as thoroughly respectable contributions from the profession, to
the worlds of poetry, criticism, and religion.
The professional character of the mason varies a good deal in the
several provinces of Scotland, according to the various circumstances in
which he is placed. He is in general a blunt, manly, taciturn fellow,
who, without much of the Radical or Chartist about him, especially if
wages be good and employment abundant, rarely touches his hat to a
gentleman. His employment is less purely mechanical than many others: he
is not like a man ceaselessly engaged in pointing needles or fashioning
pin-heads. On the contrary, every stone he lays or hews demands the
exercise of a certain amount of judgment for itself; and so he cannot
wholly suffer his mind to fall asleep over his work. When engaged, too,
in erecting some fine building, he always experiences a degree of
interest in marking the effect of the design developing itself
piecemeal, and growing up under his hands; and so he rarely wearies of
what he is doing. Further, his profession has this advantage, that it
educates his sense of sight. Accustomed to ascertain the straightness of
lines at a glance, and to cast his eye along plane walls, or the
mouldings of entablatures or architraves, in order to determine the
rectitude of the masonry, he acquires a sort of mathematical precision
in determining the true bearings and position of objects, and is usually
found, when admitted into a rifle club, to equal, without previous
practice, its second-rate shots. He only falls short of its first-rate
ones, because, uninitiated by the experience of his profession in the
mystery of the parabolic curve, he fails, in taking aim, to make the
proper allowance for it. The mason is almost always a silent man: the
strain on his respiration is too great, when he is actively employed, to
leave the necessary freedom to the organs of speech; and so at least the
provincial builder or stone-cutter rarely or never becomes a democratic
orator. I have met with exceptional cases in the larger towns; but they
were the result of individual idiosyncrasies, developed in clubs and
taverns, and were not professional.
It is, however, with the character of our north-country masons that I
have at present chiefly to do. Living in small villages, or in cottages
in the country, they can very rarely procure employment in the
neighbourhood of their dwellings, and so they are usually content to
regard these as simply their homes for the winter and earlier spring
months, when they have nothing to do, and to remove for work to other
parts of the country, where bridges, or harbours, or farm-steadings are
in the course of building--to be subjected there to the influences of
what is known as the barrack, or rather bothy life. These barracks or
bothies are almost always of the most miserable description. I have
lived in hovels that were invariably flooded in wet weather by the
overflowings of neighbouring swamps, and through whose roofs I could
tell the hour at night, by marking from my bed the stars that were
passing over the openings along the ridge: I have resided in other
dwellings of rather higher pretensions, in which I have been awakened
during every heavier night-shower by the rain-drops splashing upon my
face where I lay a-bed. I remember that Uncle James, in urging me not to
become a mason, told me that a neighbouring laird, when asked why he
left a crazy old building standing behind a group of neat modern
offices, informed the querist that it was not altogether through bad
taste the hovel was spared, but from the circumstance that he found it
of great convenience every time his speculations brought a _drove of
pigs_ or _a squad of masons_ the way. And my after experience showed me
that the story might not be in the least apocryphal, and that masons had
reason at times for not touching their hats to gentlemen.
In these barracks the food is of the plainest and coarsest description:
oatmeal forms its staple, with milk, when milk can be had, which is not
always; and as the men have to cook by turns, with only half an hour or
so given them in which to light a fire, and prepare the meal for a dozen
or twenty associates, the cooking is invariably an exceedingly rough and
simple affair. I have known mason-parties engaged in the central
Highlands in building bridges, not unfrequently reduced, by a tract of
wet weather, that soaked their only fuel the turf, and rendered it
incombustible, to the extremity of eating their oatmeal raw, and merely
moistened by a little water, scooped by the hand from a neighbouring
brook. I have oftener than once seen our own supply of salt fail us; and
after relief had been afforded by a Highland smuggler--for there was
much smuggling in salt in those days, ere the repeal of the duties--I
have heard a complaint from a young fellow regarding the hardness of our
fare, at once checked by a comrade's asking him whether he was not an
ungrateful dog to grumble in that way, seeing that, after living on
fresh poultices for a week, we had actually that morning got porridge
with salt in it. One marked effect of the annual change which the
north-country mason has to undergo, from a life of domestic comfort to a
life of hardship in the bothy, if he has not passed middle life, is a
great apparent increase in his animal spirits. At home he is in all
probability a quiet, rather dull-looking personage, not much given to
laugh or joke; whereas in the bothy, if the squad be a large one, he
becomes wild, and a humorist--laughs much, and grows ingenious in
playing off pranks on his fellows. As in all other communities, there
are certain laws recognised in the barrack as useful for controlling at
least its younger members, the apprentices; but in the general tone of
merriment, even these lose their character, and, ceasing to be a terror
to evildoers, become in the execution mere occasions of mirth. I never,
in all my experience, saw a serious punishment inflicted. Shortly after
our arrival at Conon-side, my master, chancing to remark that he had not
wrought as a journeyman for twenty-five years before, was voted a
"ramming," for taking, as was said, such high ground with his brother
workmen; but, though sentence was immediately executed, they dealt
gently with the old man, who had good sense enough to acquiesce in the
whole as a joke. And yet, amid all this wild merriment and license,
there was not a workman who did not regret the comforts of his quiet
home, and long for the happiness which was, he felt, to be enjoyed only
there. It has been long known that gaiety is not solid enjoyment; but
that the gaiety should indicate little else than the want of solid
enjoyment, is a circumstance not always suspected. My experience of
barrack-life has enabled me to receive without hesitation what has been
said of the occasional merriment of slaves in America and elsewhere,
and fully to credit the often-repeated statement, that the abject serfs
of despotic Governments laugh more than the subjects of a free country.
Poor fellows! If the British people were as unhappy as slaves or serfs,
they would, I daresay, learn in time to be quite as merry. There are,
however, two circumstances that serve to prevent the bothy life of the
north-country mason from essentially injuring his character in the way
it almost never fails to injure that of the farm-servant. As he has to
calculate on being part of every winter, and almost every spring,
unemployed, he is compelled to practise a self-denying economy, the
effect of which, when not carried to the extreme of a miserly
narrowness, is always good; and Hallow-day returns him every season to
the humanizing influences of his home.