THE RENT COURT.
I shall never forget the emotion of shame that glowed within me on
finding myself compelled to avoid this miserable worm.
'He is coming! he is coming!' exclaimed Minnie, wringing her hands,
as we perceived from the dining-room window two mounted figures
appear in the gorge of the glen.
'Oclion! ochon! ochon!' chorused old Mhari, lifting up her hands,
'the sorrows that have fallen upon us would sink the blessed ship of
Clanronald.'
Callum uttered a hearty oath in Gaelic, and pulled his bonnet over
his knitted brow.
Mr. Snaggs dismounted at the door and gave his green bag to Minnie,
on whom he smiled familiarly, and then perceiving that she was
pretty, he pinched her rosy cheek, and eyed her with a glance that
had more of a leer than benignity in it; but he was always singularly
_suave_ to Minnie. Being too indisposed to receive him, my mother
remained in her own room, and I--knowing that we had not the cash to
meet his demands, took my rod and went to the Loch nan Spiordan for
our supper; as there the _tarr-dhiargan_, or red-bellied char, were
in great plenty, and the banks were a favourite ride of Laura
Everingham. For Snaggs I left a note, filled with the old excuses,
of wet weather, bad crops, corn destroyed by the south-west wind,
sheep with the rot, cattle with the murrain, hard times, and so
forth. He read it over--smiled faintly, and after carefully folding
and docketing it, he seated himself at a table which was placed in
front of the house under an ancient lime, on the branches of which
many a cateran from the isles had swung in the wind. There his clerk
arranged his papers, and while the poor dejected defaulters came
slowly down the glen communing sorrowfully together, Mr. Snaggs
regaled himself on bread, cheese, and a dram which Callum Dhu placed
before him, with more of old Highland hospitality than the factor
merited.
The excitement was general; thirty-two families the remnant of our
once powerful tribe, all linked and connected together by ties of
blood, descent, and misfortune, hovered on the brink of ruin.
One by one, the tenants approached bonnet in hand, and before this
man of power and parchment bent their heads that under braver
auspices would not have stooped to the whistle of a cannon-ball.
Poor people! their tremulous but earnest excuses for the lack of
money, though their small rents varied only from fifteen to twenty
pounds or so, and the half-uttered prayers for mercy, from those who
could no more pay this, than liquidate the National Debt, were all
the same.
One named Ian Mac Raonuil had been ten years a soldier, and though
thrice wounded, was unpensioned, as there was a break in his service,
having enlisted twice. Latterly he had earned a scanty subsistence
by fishing in the salt lochs beyond Ben Ora; he was now sixty years
of age, and had seven children. He could pay the old rent, but was
totally unable to pay the new, which was exactly triple what had ever
been paid for his poor cottage within the memory of man. The factor
shook his legal head---made an entry in his black-book--handed to the
haggard-eyed Mac Raonuil (as he did to all) a pious tract, and
summoned the next on his fatal roll.
'Alisdair Mac Gouran.'
A fine-looking old Highlander, upwards of seventy years of age
stepped forward. His tall and erect figure was clad in coarse blue
cloth, and his long locks, which were white as snow, glittered in the
sun, when he politely removed his bonnet before the grand vizier of
the new proprietor, with the usual greeting, as he knew no language
but Gaelic,
'Failte na maiduin duibh'--(Hail--good morning to you).
'_You_ have your rent at least, I hope, Alisdair?' said Snaggs, with
a grin on his thin lips.
'I have the old rent,' replied the cotter with a sickly smile.
'But the _new_?'
'A chial! what would you be asking of me? I have the old rent, and
by the sweat of my brow and the toil of my children's tender hands
have I earned it. It is here. Have mercy on us, Ephraim Snaggs, and
do not double the rent. You stand between us and Sir Horace--between
us and starvation. He will be advised by you for good or for
evil--he is an Englishman, and like a Lowlander, can know no better.
You are aware that my croft is small, and that my eight children have
to support themselves by fishing; but the famine was sore three years
ago; our potatoes failed, and as you know well our little crop of
wheat was literally thrashed on the mountain by the wind. All that
remained was devoured by the game of the Duchess. I then fell into
arrears. I, like my fathers before me, for more generations than I
can number, have regularly paid rent and kain to the uttermost
farthing--for God and Mary's sake, take pity on us now, Mr. Snaggs.
Accept the old rental, but spare us the new--for a little time at
least, or eleven human beings, including my old and bedridden mother,
now past her ninetieth year, will be homeless and houseless!'
'Mac Gouran,' said Mr. Snaggs, with mock impressiveness, while his
malevolent eye belied his bland voice; 'the divine Walton says, "can
_you_ or any man charge God that he hath not given enough to make
life happy?"'
'God gave, but the duke, the lord, and the earl, have taken away,'
answered the Highlander, sharply.
Snaggs grinned again--took the money, gave a receipt, and with it a
printed tract. Then he made another entry in his fatal book, and a
groan escaped the breast of Mac Gouran, for too well did he know what
that entry meant. His cot was in a picturesque place where Sir
Horace wished to plant some coppice; so the humble roof, where twenty
generations of brave and hardy peasants had reared their sturdy
broods, was doomed to be swept away.
All who came forward had the same, or nearly the same, excuses to
make.
Gillespie Ruadh--or Red Archibald--Minnie's uncle, was also in
default; but Snaggs, who had cast favourable eyes on his pretty
niece, spoke to him with such excessive suavity that old Archy was
quite puzzled.
Many professed their readiness and ability to pay the old rent, but
their total incapacity to meet the new and exorbitant one, which they
knew too well was but the plea, the pretence, on which they were to
be driven from the glen, that it might be well stocked with deer and
black cock. The last summoned by the factor was Callum Dhu Mac Ian.
My fosterer, who was viewed as a kind of champion by the people,
pressed the hand of Minnie to reassure her, and with one stride
appeared before Snaggs in his tattered Highland dress. He carried a
gun in his hand, and had a couple of red foxes, hanging dead over his
left shoulder. A dark cloud was hovering on Callum's brow and a
lurid spark was gleaming in his eye, both indicative of the fire he
was smothering in his heart--a fire fanned by the lamentations of the
people, who were now collected in little family groups and communing
together.
'How are you, Callum?' asked Snaggs, with a sardonic grin, holding
out his left hand, as his right held a pen: but Callum drew back,
saying proudly,
'Thank you--but I would not take the _left_ hand of a king.'
'Well then, neer-do-weel,' said Snaggs, surveying the tall and
handsome hunter with an eye of ill-disguised antipathy, 'what have
you to say?'
'I am no neer-do-weel, Mr. Snaggs,' replied Callum loftily, and
disdaining to touch his bonnet or bend his head.
'Pay up then,' was the pithy rejoinder.
'I never was asked for rent before. I and mine have dwelt rent-free
under the Mac Innons of Glen Ora since these hills had a name. We
were hunters, father and son in succession, as you know well, and
paid neither rent nor kain; we owed nothing to the chief but an armed
man's service in time of war and feud; so I see no reason why it
should be otherwise now.'
'I am afraid, my fine fellow, that the sheriff and the law will tell
you another story.'
'D--n both, with all my heart!'
'What--dare you say so of the law?'
'Yes--and it must learn, that instead of me paying to Sir Horace, he
must, as his betters did of old, pay to me a sum for every fox's head
I bring to his hall.'
'You are three years in arrear, Callum.'
'Three hundred and more, perhaps, by your way of reckoning; but the
last proprietor is dead--our debts died with him.'
'Your idea is a very common one among these ignorant people,'
rejoined Snaggs, with a smile on his mouth and a glare in his wolfish
eye; 'but I must condescend to inform you, that the law of Scotland
says, when a landlord or overlord dies, the rents past due belong to
his executors. Sir Horace took the estate with all its debts, and
the half-year's rent then current, with all arrears, are his due; and
this rule applies especially to grass-farms, as you will find in the
case of Elliot _versus_ Elliot, before the Lords of Council and
Session in 1792; and the landlord has a hypothec for his rent over
the crop and stocking; hence your furniture and plenishing are the
property of Sir Horace Everingham.'
'Ha-ha-ha! A broken table, two creepies, a kail-pot and crocan; an
old cashcroim, some mouldy potatoes, and a milk bowie!'
'And remember,' added Snaggs, impressively, 'when a tenant who is
bankrupt, remains, notwithstanding a notice to remove, the landlord
may forcibly eject him in six days, as you will find in a case before
the Lords of Council and Session in 1756. This is the wisdom, not
the cunning of the law, my dear friend, for, as the learned Johnson
says, "cunning differs from wisdom as much as twilight from open
day."'
'A nis! a nis!' cried Callum, in fierce irony, as he stamped his
right foot passionately on the ground, and struck the butt of his gun
on the turf; 'Snake! by the Black Stone of Scone you come to it now!'
Minnie clung in terror to her fiery lover.
'Laoighe mo chri,' she whispered, 'be calm and tempt him not!'
'Mr. Snaggs, I am but a half-lettered Highlandman, and know not what
you mean; but this I know--and here I speak for my chief Glen Ora, as
well as for his people--the sun shines as bright, and the woods are
as green, as ever they were twenty centuries ago, and yet we starve
where our fathers lived in plenty! Why is this?'
'Because you are a pack of lazy and idle fellows.'
'We are not,' retorted Callum, fiercely; 'the dun hills swarm with
fatted deer; the green woods are alive with game, and the blue rivers
teem with fish; but who among us dares to use a net or gun? For now
the land, with all that is in its waters, its woods, and in the air,
belong to the stranger. God was kind to the poor Celts, Mr. Snaggs,
in the days before you were born,' he continued, with unintentional
irony. 'He gave us all those things, because He saw that the land,
though beautiful, was very barren; but you, and such as you, have
robbed us of them, and one day God will call you to an account for
this. Listen: in the days of the kelp manufacture, we made twenty
thousand tons of it annually, here on the western coast alone--ay, we
_lazy Highlandmen_, raising _two hundred thousand pounds sterling
every year_. This work, with a cow's milk, butter, and cheese, a few
potatoes, and a few sheep, for food and clothes, kept many a large
family in happiness, in health, and comfort; rents were paid strictly
and regularly in rent and kain, and arrears were never heard of. But
the Parliament, influenced by the English manufacturers, DESTROYED us
by taking the duty off barilla; and when Lord Binning said, that a
hundred thousand clansmen in the West would starve, the English
Chancellor of the Exchequer replied--"Let them starve--I care not!"
may God and St. Colme forgive his soul the sin. There were only
forty-five Scotsmen--time-serving and tongue-tied Scotsmen--in that
House, opposed to six hundred wordy Englishmen, so how could our case
be otherwise? Now, this was only thirty years ago, and since then
arrears, ruin, misery, and famine have fallen upon the people of the
glens; the castles of their chiefs have become English grouse-lodges,
and the West Highlands are well nigh a voiceless wilderness, from the
Mull of Cantyre to the Kyle of Duirness--two hundred and fifty good
miles, Mr. Snaggs.'
'Where the deuce did _you_ pick up all this stuff--this Lay of the
Last Outlaw?' sneered Snaggs, with unfeigned surprise, while a murmur
of assent from the poor tenantry followed Callum's words.
'I could tell you more, Snaggs, esquire and factor,' replied Callum,
still maintaining his fire; 'esquire means nothing now in this world,
though _factor_ may have a terrible signification in the next; I can
tell you, that these poor people whom you are about to evict--for I
know their doom is sealed--have a right in the soil superior to that
claimed by any landlord or overlord either. The Lowlanders, like the
English, were feudal serfs, while we--the Celts--were freemen, and
our land belonged not to the chiefs, but to _the people_; it was
ours; but lawyers came with their feu-charters and damnable
legalities, and then the patriarchal clansman became what you find
him now, something between a slave and an outcast--a wretch to be
retained or expelled at the will of his landlord. The chief was a
thing of our breath, whom we could make or unmake; but the land, with
its mountains, woods, and waters, was the unalienable birthright of
the people; it was their home--their dwelling-place--their grave!
The King of Scotland could neither give it nor take it away, for it
was the patrimony of the tribes of the Gael; and it was for this
patriarchal right in the land that John of Moidart and Ranald Galda
died at the battle of Blairleine!'
'And so the land belonged to the Gael,' continued Snaggs, with his
calm sneer; 'but who gave it to them?'
'God!' replied Callum, lifting his bonnet with reverence; 'but no
doubt, Mr. Snaggs, a lawyer like you will have more faith in
feu-charters, and bonds, and bank-notes, than in Him; it is only to
be expected of one of your dirty trade; and now I have only a few
words more.'
'I am glad to hear it.'
'It would be a blessing for Scotland if you, and every man such as
you, were groping among the weeds at the bottom of Loch Ora, each
with a good-sized stone at his neck; and it would be a greater
blessing if the unwieldy estates of her absentee proprietors were
held by residents who would spend their rents--not in London and in
Paris--but among the people from whom they are drawn, and on the soil
from whence they are raised; and for this reason, Mr. Snaggs, and
many others, the sooner Scotland is rid of her fustian chiefs and
so-called nobility the better for herself. So much, Mr. Snaggs, for
the Lay of the Last Outlaw!'
With these words Callum gave the table a kick, that sent it flying
right over the head of Snaggs, whose religious tracts, rent-books,
papers, and luncheon, were scattered in every direction by this
champion of Celtic rights, who shouldered his fowling-piece, and
hastened up the glen to meet me; and relate all that had passed.