Chapter II (1)

“And trow ye,” said the old woman, who, attracted from her hut by the drowning cries of the young fisherman, had remained an auditor of the mariner’s legend; “and trow ye, Mark Macmoran, that the tale of the Haunted Ships is done? I can say no to that. Mickle have my ears heard, but more mine eyes have witnessed since I came to dwell in this humble home by the side of the deep sea. I mind the night weel: it was on Hallow-e’en, the nuts were cracked, and the apples were eaten, and spell and charm were tried at my fireside; till, wearied with diving into the dark waves of futurity, the lads and lasses fairly took to the more visible blessings of kind words, tender clasps, and gentle courtship.

“Soft words in a maiden’s ear, and a kindly kiss o’ her lip, were old world matters to me, Mark Macmoran; though I mean not to say that I have been free of the folly of daundering and daffin’ with a youth in my day, and keeping tryst with him in dark and lonely places. However, as I say, these times of enjoyment were past and gone with me; the mair’s the pity that pleasure should flee sae fast away,—and as I couldna make sport I thought I would not mar any; so out I sauntered into the fresh cold air, and sat down behind that old oak, and looked abroad on the wide sea. I had my ain sad thoughts, ye may think, at the time; it was in that very bay my blythe gudeman perished, with seven more in his company; and on that very bank where ye see the waves leaping and foaming, I saw seven stately corses streeked, but the dearest was the eighth. It was a woful sight to me, a widow, with four bonnie boys, with nought to support them but these twa hands, and God’s blessing, and a cow’s grass. I have never liked to live out of sight of this bay since that time; and mony’s the moonlight night I sit looking on these watery mountains, and these waste shores; it does my heart good, whatever it may do to my head. So ye see it was Hallow-e’en; and looking on sea and land sat I; and my heart wandering to other thoughts soon made me forget my youthful company at hame. It might be near the howe hour of the night; the tide was making, and its singing brought strange old-world stories with it; and I thought on the dangers that sailors endure, the fates they meet with, and the fearful forms they see. My own blithe gude-man had seen sights that made him grave enough at times, though he aye tried to laugh them away.

“Aweel, between that very rock aneath us and the coming tide, I saw, or thought I saw (for the tale is so dream-like that the whole might pass for a vision of the night) the form of a man. His plaid was gray; his face was gray; and his hair, which hung low down till it nearly came to the middle of his back, was as white as the white sea-foam. He began to houk and dig under the bank; and God be near me! thought I, this maun be the unblessed spirit of auld Adam Gowdgowpin, the miser, who is doomed to dig for shipwrecked treasure, and count how many millions are hidden for ever from man’s enjoyment. The form found something, which in shape and hue seemed a left-foot slipper of brass; so down to the tide he marched, and placing it on the water, whirled it thrice round; and the infernal slipper dilated at every turn, till it became a bonnie barge with its sails bent, and on board leaped the form, and scudded swiftly away. He came to one of the haunted ships; and striking it with his oar, a fair ship, with mast and canvas, and mariners, started up: he touched the other haunted ship, and produced the like transformation; and away the three spectre ships bounded, leaving a track of fire behind them on the billows, which was long unextinguished.

“Now wasna that a bonnie and a fearful sight to see beneath the light of the Hallowmas moon? But the tale is far frae finished; for mariners say that once a year, on a certain night, if ye stand on the Borranpoint, ye will see the infernal shallops coming snoring through the Solway; ye will hear the same laugh, and song, and mirth, and minstrelsy, which our ancestors heard; see them bound over the sandbanks and sunken rocks like sea-gulls, cast their anchor in Blawhooly Bay, while the shadowy figures lower down the boat, and augment their numbers with the four unhappy mortals to whose memory a stone stands in the kirkyard, with a sinking ship and a shoreless sea cut upon it. Then the spectre-ships vanish, and the drowning shriek of mortals and the rejoicing laugh of fiends are heard, and the old hulls are left as a memorial that the old spiritual kingdom has not departed from the earth. But I maun away and trim my little cottage fire, and make it burn and blaze up bonnie, to warm the crickets, and my cauld and crazy bones, that maun soon be laid aneath the green sod in the eerie kirkyard.”

And away the old dame tottered to her cottage, secured the door on the inside, and soon the hearth-flame was seen to glimmer and gleam through the key-hole and the window.

“I’ll tell ye what,” said the old mariner, in a subdued tone, and with a shrewd and suspicious glance of his eye after the old sibyl, “it’s a word that may not very well be uttered, but there are many mistakes made in evening stories if old Moll Moray there, where she lives, knows not mickle more than she is willing to tell of the Haunted Ships, and their unhallowed mariners. She lives cannily and quietly; no one knows how she is fed or supported; but her dress is aye whole, her cottage ever smokes, and her table lacks neither of wine, white and red, nor of fowl and fish, and white bread and brown. It was a dear scoff to Jock Matheson, when he called old Moll the uncannie carline of Blawhooly: his boat ran round and round in the centre of the Solway—everybody said it was enchanted—and down it went head foremost; and hadna Jock been a swimmer equal to a sheldrake, he would have fed the fish; but I warrant it sobered the lad’s speech, and he never reckoned himself safe till he made auld Moll the present of a new kirtle and a stone of cheese.”

“O father,” said his granddaughter Barbara, “ye surely wrong poor old Mary Moray: what use could it be to an old woman like her, who has no wrongs to redress, no malice to work out against mankind, and nothing to seek of enjoyment save a cannie hour and a quiet grave—what use could the fellowship of the fiends, and the communion of evil spirits, be to her? I know Jenny Primrose puts rowan-tree above the doorhead when she sees old Mary coming; I know the goodwife of Kittlenacket wears rowan-berry leaves in the head-band of her blue kirtle, and all for the sake of averting the unsonsie glance of Mary’s right ee; and I know that the auld laird of Burntroutwater drives his seven cows to their pasture with a wand of witchtree, to keep Mary from milking them. But what has all that to do with haunted shallops, visionary mariners, and bottomless boats? I have heard myself as pleasant a tale about the Haunted Ships and their unworldly crews as any one would wish to hear in a winter evening. It was told me by young Benjie Macharg, one summer night, sitting on Arbiglandbank; the lad intended a sort of lovemeeting, but all that he could talk of was about smearing sheep and shearing sheep, and of the wife which the Norway elves of the Haunted Ships made for his uncle Sandie Macharg. And I shall tell ye the tale as the honest lad told it to me.

“Alexander Macharg, besides being the laird of three acres of peat-moss, two kail gardens, and the owner of seven good milch cows, a pair of horses, and six pet sheep, was the husband of one of the handsomest women in seven parishes. Many a lad sighed the day he was brided; and a Nithsdale laird and two Annandale moorland farmers drank themselves to their last linen, as well as their last shilling, through sorrow for her loss. But married was the dame; and home she was carried, to bear rule over her home and her husband, as an honest woman should. Now ye maun ken that though flesh-and-blood lovers of Alexander’s bonnie wife all ceased to love and to sue her after she became another’s, there were certain admirers who did not consider their claim at all abated, or their hopes lessened, by the kirk’s famous obstacle of matrimony.

“Ye have heard how the devout minister of Tinwald had a fair son carried away, and bedded against his liking to an unchristened bride, whom the elves and the fairies provided: ye have heard how the bonnie bride of the drunken laird of Soukitup was stolen by the fairies out at the back window of the bridal chamber the time the bridegroom was groping his way to the chamber door; and ye have heard—but why need I multiply cases? Such things in the ancient days were as common as candlelight. So ye’ll no hinder certain water-elves and sea-fairies, who sometimes keep festival and summer mirth in these old haunted hulks, from falling in love with the weel-faured wife of Laird Macharg; and to their plots and contrivances they went, how they might accomplish to sunder man and wife; and sundering such a man and such a wife was like sundering the green leaf from the summer, or the fragrance from the flower.

“So it fell on a time that Laird Macharg took his halve-net on his back, and his steel spear in his hand, and down to Blawhooly Bay gaed he, and into the water he went right between the two haunted hulks, and placing his net awaited the coming of the tide. The night, ye maun ken, was mirk, and the wind lown, and the singing of the increasing waters among the shells and the pebbles was heard for sundry miles. All at once lights began to glance and twinkle on board the two Haunted Ships from every hole and seam, and presently the sound as of a hatchet employed in squaring timber echoed far and wide. But if the toil of these unearthly workmen amazed the laird, how much more was his amazement increased when a sharp shrill voice called out, ‘Ho! brother, what are you doing now?’ A voice still shriller responded from the other haunted ship, ‘I’m making a wife to Sandie Macharg.’ And a loud quavering laugh running from ship to ship, and from bank to bank, told the joy they expected from their labour.

“Now the laird, besides being a devout and a God-fearing man, was shrewd and bold; and in plot and contrivance, and skill in conducting his designs, was fairly an overmatch for any dozen land elves. But the water elves are far more subtle; besides, their haunts and their dwellings being in the great deep, pursuit and detection are hopeless, if they succeed in carrying their prey to the waves. But ye shall hear.

“Home flew the laird, collected his family around the hearth, spoke of the signs and the sins of the times, and talked of mortification and prayer for averting calamity; and finally, taking from the shelf his father’s Bible, brass clasps, black print, and covered with calf-skin, he proceeded, without let or stint, to perform domestic worship. I should have told ye that he bolted and locked the door, shut up all inlet to the house, threw salt into the fire, and proceeded in every way like a man skilful in guarding against the plots of fairies and fiends. His wife looked on all this with wonder; but she saw something in her husband’s looks that hindered her from intruding either question or advice, and a wise woman was she.

“Near the mid-hour of the night the rush of a horse’s feet was heard, and the sound of a rider leaping from his back, and a heavy knock came to the door, accompanied by a voice, saying, ‘The cummer’s drink’s hot, and the knave bairn is expected at Laird Laurie’s to-night; sae mount, gudewife, and come.’

“‘Preserve me!’ said the wife of Sandie Macharg, ‘that’s news indeed! who could have thought it? The laird has been heirless for seventeen years. Now, Sandie, my man, fetch me my skirt and hood.’

“But he laid his arm round his wife’s neck and said—

“‘If all the lairds in Galloway go heirless, over this door threshold shall you not stir to-night; and I have said it, and I have sworn it: seek not to know why and wherefore,—but, Lord, send us Thy blessed moonlight!’

The wife looked for a moment in her husband’s eyes, and desisted from further entreaty.

“‘But let us send a civil message to the gossips, Sandie; and hadna ye better say I’m sair laid wi’ a sudden sickness?—though it’s sinful-like to send the poor messenger a mile agate with a lie in his mouth without a glass of brandy.’

“‘To such a messenger, and to those who sent him, no apology is needed,’ said the austere laird, ‘so let him depart.’

“And the clatter of a horse’s hoofs was heard, and the muttered imprecations of its rider on the churlish treatment he had experienced.

“‘Now, Sandie, my lad,’ said his wife, laying an arm particularly white and round about his neck as she spoke, ‘are you not a queer man and a stern? I have been your wedded wife now these three years, and, beside my dower, have brought you three as bonnie bairns as ever smiled aneath a summer sun. O man! you a douce man, and fitter to be an elder than even Willie Greer himsel,—I have the minister’s ain word for’t,—to put on these hard-hearted looks, and gang waving your arms that way, as if ye said, “I winna tak’ the counsel o’ sic a hempie as you.” I’m your ain leal wife, and will and maun hae an explanation.’

“To all this Sandy Macharg replied, ‘It is written, “Wives, obey your husbands;” but we have been stayed in our devotion, so let us pray;’ and down he knelt. His wife knelt also, for she was as devout as bonnie; and beside them knelt their household, and all lights were extinguished.”

“‘Now this beats a’,’ muttered his wife to herself; ‘however, I shall be obedient for a time; but if I dinna ken what all this is for before the morn by sunket-time, my tongue is nae langer a tongue, nor my hands worth wearing.’

“The voice of her husband in prayer interrupted this mental soliloquy; and ardently did he beseech to be preserved from the wiles of the fiends and the snares of Satan; ‘from witches, ghosts, goblins, elves, fairies, spunkies, and water-kelpies; from the spectre shallop of Solway; from spirits visible and invisible; from the Haunted Ships and their unearthly tenants; from maritime spirits that plotted against godly men, and fell in love with their wives’——

“‘Nay, but His presence be near us!’ said his wife in a low tone of dismay. ‘God guide my gudeman’s wits! I never heard such a prayer from human lips before. But, Sandie, my man, for Lord’s sake, rise; what fearful light is this?—barn, and byre, and stable, maun be in a blaze; and Hawkie and Hurley, Doddie and Cherrie, and Damson-plum, will be smoored with reek and scorched with flame.’

“And a flood of light, but not so gross as a common fire, which ascended to heaven and filled all the court before the house, amply justified the good wife’s suspicions. But to the terrors of fire, Sandie was as immovable as he was to the imaginary groans of the barren wife of Laird Laurie; and he held his wife, and threatened the weight of his right hand—and it was a heavy one—to all who ventured abroad, or even unbolted the door. The neighing and prancing of horses, and the bellowing of cows, augmented the horrors of the night; and to any one who only heard the din, it seemed that the whole onstead was in a blaze, and horses and cattle perishing in the flame. All wiles, common or extraordinary, were put in practice to entice or force the honest farmer and his wife to open their door; and when the like success attended every new stratagem, silence for a little while ensued, and a long, loud, and shrilling laugh wound up the dramatic efforts of the night.

“In the morning, when Laird Macharg went to the door, he found standing against one of the pilasters a piece of black ship oak, rudely fashioned into something like a human form, and which skilful people declared would have been clothed with seeming flesh and blood, and palmed upon him by elfin adroitness for his wife, had he admitted his visitants. A synod of wise men and women sat upon the woman of timber, and she was finally ordered to be devoured by fire, and that in the open air. A fire was soon made, and into it the elfin sculpture was tossed from the prongs of two pairs of pitchforks. The blaze that rose was awful to behold; and hissings, and burstings, and loud cracklings, and strange noises, were heard in the midst of the flame; and when the whole sank into ashes, a drinking cup of some precious metal was found; and this cup, fashioned no doubt by elfin skill, but rendered harmless by the purification with fire, the sons and daughters of Sandie Macharg and his wife drink out of to this day.”

A TALE OF THE MARTYRS.

BY JAMES HOGG, THE “ETTRICK SHEPHERD.”

Red Tam Harkness came into the farm-house of Garrick, in the parish of Closeburn, one day, and began to look about for some place to hide in, when the gudewife, whose name was Jane Kilpatrick, said to him in great alarm, “What’s the matter, what’s the matter, Tam Harkness!”

“Hide me, or else I’m a dead man: that’s the present matter, gudewife,” said he. “But yet, when I have time—if ever I hae mair time—I have heavy news for you. For Christ’s sake, hide me, Jane, for the killers are hard at hand.”

Jane Kilpatrick sprung to her feet, but she was quite benumbed and powerless. She ran to one press and opened it, and then to another; there was not room to stuff a clog into either of them. She looked into a bed; there was no shelter there, and her knees began to bend under her weight with terror. The voices of the troopers were by this time heard fast approaching, and Harkness had no other shift but in one moment to conceal himself behind the outer door, which was open, but the place where he stood was quite dark. He heard one of them say to another, “I fear the scoundrel is not here after all. Guard all the outhouses.”

On that three or four of the troop rushed by him, and began to search the house and examine the inmates. Harkness that moment slid out without being observed, and tried to escape up a narrow glen called Kinrivah, immediately behind the house, but unluckily two troopers, who had been in another chase, there met him in the face. When he perceived them, he turned and ran to the eastward; on which they both fired, which raised the alarm, and instantly the whole pack were after him. It was afterwards conjectured that one of the shots had wounded him, for though he, with others, had been nearly surrounded that morning, and twice waylaid, he had quite outrun the soldiers; but now it was observed that some of them began to gain ground on him, and they still continued firing, till at length he fell into a kind of slough east from the farm-house of Locherben, where they came up to him, and ran him through with their bayonets. The spot is called Red Tam’s Gutter to this day.

Jane Kilpatrick was one of the first who went to his mangled corpse—a woful sight, lying in the slough, and sore did she lament the loss of that poor and honest man. But there was more: she came to his corpse by a sort of yearning impatience to learn what was the woful news he had to communicate to her. But, alas! the intelligence was lost, and the man to whose bosom alone it had haply been confided was no more; yet Jane could scarcely prevail on herself to have any fears for her own husband, for she knew him to be in perfectly safe hiding in Glen Govar; still Tam’s last words hung heavy on her mind. They were both suspected to have been at the harmless rising at Enterkin for the relief of a favourite minister, which was effected; and that was the extent of their crime. And though it was only suspicion, four men were shot on the hills that morning without trial or examination, and their bodies forbidden Christian burial.

One of these four was John Weir of Garrick, the husband of Jane Kilpatrick, a man of great worth and honour, and universally respected. He had left his hiding-place in order to carry some intelligence to his friends, and to pray with them, but was entrapped among them and slain. Still there was no intelligence brought to his family, save the single expression that fell from the lips of Thomas Harkness in a moment of distraction. Nevertheless, Jane could not rest, but set out all the way to her sister’s house in Glen Govar, in Crawford Muir, and arrived there at eleven o’clock on a Sabbath evening. The family being at prayers when she went, and the house dark, she stood still behind the hallan, and all the time was convinced that the voice of the man that prayed was the voice of her husband, John Weir. All the time that fervent prayer lasted the tears of joy ran from her eyes, and her heart beat with gratitude to her Maker as she drank into her soul every sentence of the petitions and thanksgiving. Accordingly, when worship was ended, and the candle lighted, she went forward with a light heart and joyful countenance. Her sister embraced her, though manifestly embarrassed and troubled at seeing her there at such a time. From her she flew to embrace her husband, but he stood still like a statue, and did not meet her embrace. She gazed at him—she grew pale, and, sitting down, she covered her face with her apron. This man was one of her husband’s brothers, likewise in hiding, whom she had never before seen; but the tones of his voice, and even the devotional expressions that he used, were so like her husband’s, that she mistook them for his.

All was now grief and consternation, for John Weir had not been seen or heard of there since Wednesday evening, when he had gone to warn his friends of some impending danger; but they all tried to comfort each other as well as they could, and, in particular, by saying they were all in the Lord’s hand, and it behoved Him to do with them as seemed to Him good, with many other expressions of piety and submission. But the next morning, when the two sisters were about to part, the one says to the other,—“Jane, I cannot help telling you a strange confused dream that I had just afore ye wakened me. Ye ken I put nae faith in dreams, and I dinna want you to regard it; but it is as well for friends to tell them to ane anither, and then, if aught turn out like it in the course o’ Providence, it may bring it to baith their minds that their spirits had been conversing with God.”

“Na, na, Aggie, I want nane o’ your confused dreams. I hae other things to think o’, and mony’s the time and oft ye hae deaved me wi’ them, an’ sometimes made me angry.”

“I never bade ye believe them, Jeanie, but I likit aye to tell them to you; and this I daresay rose out o’ our conversation yestreen. But I thought I was away (ye see I dinna ken where I was); and I was feared and confused, thinking I had lost my way. And then I came to an auld man, an’ he says to me, ‘Is it the road to heaven that you are seeking, Aggie?’ An’ I said, ‘Ay,’ for I didna like to deny’t.

“‘Then I’ll tell you where you maun gang,’ said he; ‘ye maun gang up by the head of yon dark, mossy cleuch, an’ you will find ane there that will show you the road to heaven;’ and I said ‘Ay,’ for I didna like to refuse, although it was an uncouth looking road, and ane that I didna like to gang. But when I gaed to the cleuch-head, wha do I see sitting there but your ain gudeman, John Weir, and I thought I never saw him look sae weel; and when I gaed close up to him, there I saw another John Weir, lying strippet to the sark, and a’ bedded in blood. He was cauld dead, and his head turned to ae side, and when I saw siccan a sight, I was terrified, an’ held wide aff him. But I gaed up to the living John Weir, and said to him,—‘Gudeman, how’s this?’

“‘Dinna ye see how it is, sister Aggie?’ says he, ‘I’m just set to herd this poor man that’s lying here.’

“‘Then I think ye’ll no hae a sair post, John,’ says I, ‘for he disna look as if he wad rin far away.’ It was very unreverend o’ me to speak that gate, sister, but these were the words that I thought I said; an’ as it is but a dream, ye ken ye needna heed it.

“‘Alas, poor Aggie,’ says he, ‘ye are still in the gall o’ bitterness. Look ower your right shoulder, an’ ye will see what I hae to do. An’ sae I looked ower my right shoulder, and there saw a hale drove o’ foxes and wulcats, an’ fumarts, an’ martins, an’ corby-craws, an’ a hunder vile beasts, a’ staunin’ round wi’ glaring een, eager to be at the corpse of the dead John Weir; an’ then I was terribly astoundit, an’ I says to him, ‘Gudeman, how is this?’

“‘I am commissioned to keep these awa,’ said he. ‘Do you think these een that are yet open to the light o’ heaven, and that tongue that has to syllable the praises of a Redeemer far within yon sky, should be left to become a prey o’ siccan vermin as these?’

“‘Will it make sae vera muckle difference, John Weir,’ said I, ‘whether the carcass is eaten up by these or by the worms?’

“‘Ah, Aggie, Aggie! worms are worms; but ye little wot what these are,’ says he. ‘But John Weir has warred wi’ them a’ his life, an’ that to some purpose, and they maunna get the advantage o’ him now.’

“‘But which is the right John Weir?’ said I; ‘for here is ane lying stiff and lappered in his blood, and another in health and strength and sound mind.’

“‘I am the right John Weir,’ says he. ‘Did you ever think the good man o’ Garrick could die! Na, na, Aggie; Clavers could only kill the body, an’ that’s but the poorest part o’ the man. But where are you gaun this wild gate?’

“‘I was directed this way on my road to heaven,’ said I.

“‘Ay, an’ ye were directed right, then,’ says he; ‘for this is the direct path to heaven, and there is no other.’

“‘That is very extraordinary,’ says I. ‘And, pray, what is the name of this place, that I may direct my sister Jane, your wife, and all my friends by the same way.’

“‘This is Faith’s Hope,’ says he.

At the mention of this place, Jane Kilpatrick of Garrick rose slowly up to her feet, and held up both her hands. “Hold, hold, sister Aggie,” cried she, “you have told enough. Was it in the head of Faith’s Hope that you saw this vision of my dead husband?”

“Yes; but at the same time I saw your husband alive.”

“Then I fear your dream has a double meaning,” she answered; “for though it appears like a religious allegory, you do not know that there really is such a place, and that not very far from our house. I have often laughed at your dreams, sister, but this one hurries me from you to-day with a heavy and trembling heart.”

Jane left Glen Govar by the break of day, and took her way through the wild ranges of Crawford Muir, straight for the head of Faith’s Hope. She had some bread in her lap, and a little Bible that she always carried with her; and without one to assist or comfort her, she went in search of her lost husband. Before she reached the head of that wild glen, the day was far spent, and the sun wearing down. The valley of Nith lay spread far below her in all its beauty, but around her there was nothing but darkness, dread, and desolation. The mist hovered on the hills, and on the skirts of the mist the ravens sailed about in circles, croaking furiously, which had a most ominous effect on the heart of poor Jane. As she advanced further up, she perceived a fox and an eagle sitting over against each other, watching something which yet they seemed terrified to approach; and right between them, in a little green hollow, surrounded by black haggs, she found the corpse of her husband in the same manner as described by her sister. He was stripped of his coat and vest, which it was thought he had thrown from him when flying from the soldiers, to enable him to effect his escape. He was shot through the heart with two bullets, but nothing relating to his death was ever known, whether he died praying, or was shot as he fled; but there was he found lying, bathed in his blood, in the wilderness, and none of the wild beasts of the forest had dared to touch his lifeless form.

The bitterness of death was now past with poor Jane. Her staff and shield was taken from her right hand, and laid low in death by the violence of wicked men. True, she had still a home to go to, although that home was robbed and spoiled; but she found that without him it was no home, and that where his beloved form reposed, there was the home of her rest. She washed his wounds and the stains of blood from his body, tied her napkin round his face, covered him with her apron, and sat down and watched beside him all the livelong night, praying to the Almighty, and singing hymns and spiritual songs alternately. The next day she warned her friends and neighbours, who went with her the following night, and buried him privately in the northwest corner of the churchyard of Morton.

THE TOWN DRUMMER.

BY JOHN GALT.

For many a year one Robin Boss had been town drummer; he was a relic of some American war fencibles, and was, to say the truth of him, a divor body, with no manner of conduct, saving a very earnest endeavour to fill himself fou as often as he could get the means; the consequence of which was, that his face was as plooky as a curran bun, and his nose as red as a partan’s tae.

One afternoon there was need to send out a proclamation to abolish a practice that was growing into a custom, in some of the by-parts of the town, of keeping swine at large—ordering them to be confined in proper styes, and other suitable places. As on all occasions when the matter to be proclaimed was from the magistrates, Thomas, on this, was attended by the town-officers in their Sunday garbs, and with their halberts in their hands; but the abominable and irreverent creature was so drunk, that he wam’let to and fro over the drum, as if there had not been a bane in his body. He was seemingly as soople and as senseless as a bolster. Still, as this was no new thing with him, it might have passed; for James Hound, the senior officer, was in the practice, when Robin was in that state, of reading the proclamations himself. On this occasion, however, James happened to be absent on some hue and cry quest, and another of the officers (I forget which) was appointed to perform for him. Robin, accustomed to James, no sooner heard the other man begin to read than he began to curse and swear at him as an incapable nincompoop—an impertinent term that he was much addicted to. The grammar school was at the time skailing, and the boys seeing the stramash, gathered round the officer, and yelling and shouting, encouraged Robin more and more into rebellion, till at last they worked up his corruption to such a pitch, that he took the drum from about his neck, and made it fly like a bombshell at the officer’s head.

The officers behaved very well, for they dragged Robin by the lug and the horn to the tolbooth, and then came with their complaint to me. Seeing how the authorities had been set at nought, and the necessity there was of making an example, I forthwith ordered Robin to be cashiered from the service of the town; and as so important a concern as a proclamation ought not to be delayed, I likewise, upon the spot, ordered the officers to take a lad that had been also a drummer in a marching regiment, and go with him to make the proclamation.

Nothing could be done in a more earnest and zealous public spirit than this was done by me. But habit had begot in the town a partiality for the drunken ne’er-do-well, Robin; and this just act of mine was immediately condemned as a daring stretch of arbitrary power; and the consequence was, that when the council met next day, some sharp words flew among us, as to my usurping an undue authority; and the thanks I got for my pains was the mortification to see the worthless body restored to full power and dignity, with no other reward than an admonition to behave better for the future. Now, I leave it to the unbiassed judgment of posterity to determine if any public man could be more ungraciously treated by his colleagues than I was on this occasion. But, verily, the council had their reward.

The divor Robin Boss being, as I have recorded, reinstated in office, soon began to play his old tricks. In the course of the week after the Michaelmas term at which my second provostry ended, he was so insupportably drunk that he fell head foremost into his drum, which cost the town five-and-twenty shillings for a new one—an accident that was not without some satisfaction to me; and I trow I was not sparing in my derisive commendations on the worth of such a public officer. Nevertheless, he was still kept on, some befriending him for compassion, and others as it were to spite me.

But Robin’s good behaviour did not end with breaking the drum, and costing a new one. In the course of the winter it was his custom to beat, “Go to bed, Tom,” about ten o’clock at night, and the reveille at five in the morning. In one of his drunken fits he made a mistake, and instead of going his rounds as usual at ten o’clock, he had fallen asleep in a change-house, and waking about the midnight hour in the terror of some whisky dream, he seized his drum, and running into the streets, began to strike the fire-beat in the most awful manner.

It was a fine clear frosty moonlight, and the hollow sound of the drum resounded through the silent streets like thunder. In a moment everybody was afoot, and the cry of “Whaur is’t? whaur’s the fire?” was heard echoing from all sides. Robin, quite unconscious that he alone was the cause of the alarm, still went along beating the dreadful summons. I heard the noise and rose; but while I was drawing on my stockings in the chair at the bed-head, and telling Mrs Pawkie to compose herself, for our houses were all insured, I suddenly recollected that Robin had the night before neglected to go his rounds at ten o’clock as usual, and the thought came into my head that the alarm might be one of his inebriated mistakes; so, instead of dressing myself any further, I went to the window, and looked out through the glass, without opening it, for, being in my night-clothes, I was afraid of taking cold.

The street was as throng as on a market day, and every face in the moonlight was pale with fear. Men and lads were running with their coats, and carrying their breeches in their hands; wives and maidens were all asking questions at one another, and even lasses were fleeing to and fro, like waternymphs with urns, having stoups and pails in their hands. There was swearing and tearing of men, hoarse with the rage of impatience, at the tolbooth, getting out the fire-engine from its stance under the stair; and loud and terrible afar off, and over all, came the peal of alarm from drunken Robin’s drum.

I could scarcely keep my composity when I beheld and heard all this, for I was soon thoroughly persuaded of the fact. At last I saw Deacon Girdwood, the chief advocate and champion of Robin, passing down the causeway like a demented man, with a red nightcap, and his big-coat on; for some had cried that the fire was in his yard.

“Deacon,” cried I, opening the window, forgetting, in the jocularity of the moment, the risk I ran from being so naked; “whaur away sae fast, deacon?”

The deacon stopped and said, “Is’t out? is’t out?”

“Gang your ways home,” quo’ I, very coolly, “for I hae a notion that a’ this hobleshow’s but the fume of a gill in your friend Robin’s head.”

“It’s no possible!” exclaimed the deacon.

“Possible here or possible there, Mr Girdwood,” quo’ I, “it’s ower cauld for me to stand talking wi’ you here; we’ll learn the rights o’t in the morning, so good night;” and with that I pulled down the window. But scarcely had I done so, when a shout of laughter came gathering up the street, and soon after poor drunken Robin was brought along by the cuff of the neck, between two of the town-officers, one of them carrying his drum. The next day he was put out of office for ever, and folk recollecting in what manner I had acted towards him before, the outcry about my arbitrary power was forgotten in the blame that was heaped upon those who had espoused Robin’s cause against me.

THE AWFUL NIGHT.

BY D. M. MOIR (DELTA).

Ha!—’twas but a dream;
But then so terrible, it shakes my soul!
Cold drops of sweat hang on my trembling flesh;
My blood grows chilly, and I freeze with horror.
—_Richard the Third._

The Fire-King one day rather amorous felt;
He mounted his hot copper filly;
His breeches and boots were of tin, and the belt
Was made of cast-iron, for fear it should melt
With the heat of the copper colt’s belly.
Oh! then there was glitter and fire in each eye,
For two living coals were the symbols;
His teeth were calcined, and his tongue was so dry,
It rattled against them as though you should try
To play the piano on thimbles.
—_Rejected Addresses._

In the course of a fortnight from the time I parted with Maister Glen, the Lauder carrier, limping Jamie, brought his callant to our shop door in his hand. He was a tall, slender laddie, some fourteen years old, and sore grown away from his clothes. There was something genty and delicate like about him, having a pale, sharp face, blue eyes, a nose like a hawk’s, and long yellow hair hanging about his haffets, as if barbers were unco scarce cattle among the howes of the Lammermoor hills. Having a general experience of human nature, I saw that I would have something to do towards bringing him into a state of rational civilisation; but, considering his opportunities, he had been well educated, and I liked his appearance on the whole not that ill.

To divert him a while, as I did not intend yoking him to work the first day, I sent out Benjie with him, after giving him some refreshment of bread and milk, to let him see the town and all the uncos about it. I told Benjie first to take him to the auld kirk, which is a wonderful building, steeple and aisle; and as for mason work, far before anything to be seen or heard tell of in our day; syne to Lugton brig, which is a grand affair, hanging over the river Esk and the flour-mills like a rainbow; syne to the Tolbooth, which is a terror to evil-doers, and from which the Lord preserve us all! syne to the Market, where ye’ll see lamb, beef, mutton, and veal, hanging up on the cleeks, in roasting and boiling pieces—spar-rib, jiggot, shoulder, and heuk-bane, in the great prodigality of abundance; and syne down to the Duke’s gate, by looking through the bonny white painted iron-staunchels of which ye’ll see the deer running beneath the green trees; and the palace itself, in the inside of which dwells one that needs not be proud to call the king his cousin.

Brawly did I know, that it is a little after a laddie’s being loosed from his mother’s apron-string, and hurried from home, till the mind can make itself up to stay among fremit folk; or that the attention can be roused to anything said or done, however simple in the uptake. So, after Benjie brought Mungo home again, gey forfaughten and wearied-out like, I bade the wife give him his four-hours, and told him he might go to his bed as soon as he liked. Jalousing also, at the same time, that creatures brought up in the country have strange notions about them with respect to supernaturals—such as ghosts, brownies, fairies, and bogles—to say nothing of witches, warlocks, and evil-spirits, I made Benjie take off his clothes and lie down beside him, as I said, to keep him warm; but, in plain matter of fact (between friends), that the callant might sleep sounder, finding himself in a strange bed, and not very sure as to how the house stood as to the matter of a good name.

Knowing by my own common sense, and from long experience of the ways of a wicked world, that there is nothing like industry, I went to Mungo’s bedside in the morning, and wakened him betimes. Indeed, I’m leein’ there; I need not call it wakening him, for Benjie told me, when he was supping his parritch out of his luggie at breakfast-time, that he never winked an eye all night, and that sometimes he heard him greetin’ to himself in the dark—such and so powerful is our love of home and the force of natural affection. Howsoever, as I was saying, I took him ben the house with me down to the workshop, where I had begun to cut out a pair of nankeen trowsers for a young lad that was to be married the week after to a servant-maid of Mr Wiggie’s,—a trig quean, that afterwards made him a good wife, and the father of a numerous small family.

Speaking of nankeen, I would advise everyone, as a friend, to buy the Indian, and not the British kind, the expense of outlay being ill hained, even at sixpence a-yard—the latter not standing the washing, but making a man’s legs, at a distance, look like a yellow yorline.

It behoved me now as a maister, bent on the improvement of his prentice, to commence learning Mungo some few of the mysteries of our trade; so having showed him the way to crook his hough (example is better than precept, as James Batter observes), I taught him the plan of holding the needle; and having fitted his middle-finger with a bottomless thimble of our own sort, I set him to sewing the cotton-lining into one leg, knowing that it was a part not very particular, and not very likely to be seen; so that the matter was not great, whether the stitching was exactly regular, or rather in the zigzag line. As is customary with all new beginners, he made a desperate awkward hand at it, and of which I would of course have said nothing, but that he chanced to brog his thumb, and completely soiled the whole piece of work with the stains of blood; which, for one thing, could not wash out without being seen; and, for another, was an unlucky omen to happen to a marriage garment.

Every man should be on his guard: this was a lesson I learned when I was in the volunteers, at the time Buonaparte was expected to land down at Dunbar. Luckily for me in this case, I had, by some foolish mistake or another, made an allowance of a half yard over and above what I found I could manage to shape on; so I boldly made up my mind to cut out the piece altogether, it being in the back seam. In that business I trust I showed the art of a good tradesman, having managed to do it so neatly that it could not be noticed without the narrowest inspection; and, having the advantage of a covering by the coat flaps, had indeed no chance of being so, except on desperately windy days.

In the week succeeding that on which this unlucky mischance happened, an accident almost as bad befell, though not to me, further than that every one is bound by the ten commandments, to say nothing of his own conscience, to take a part in the afflictions that befall their door-neighbours.

When the voice of man was whisht, and all was sunk in the sound sleep of midnight, it chanced that I was busy dreaming that I was sitting, one of the spectators, looking at another playacting business. Before coming this length, howsoever, I should by right have observed, that ere going to bed I had eaten for my supper part of a black pudding and two sausages, that widow Grassie had sent in a compliment to my wife, being a genteel woman, and mindful of her friends—so that I must have had some sort of nightmare, and not been exactly in my seven senses, else I could not have been even dreaming of siccan a place. Well, as I was saying, in the play-house I thought I was; and all at once I heard Maister Wiggie, like one crying in the wilderness, hallooing with a loud voice through the window, bidding me flee from the snares, traps, and gin-nets of the Evil One, and from the terrors of the wrath to come. I was in a terrible funk; and just as I was trying to rise from the seat, that seemed somehow glued to my body and would not let me, to reach down my hat, which, with its glazed cover, was hanging on a pin to one side, my face all red, and glowing like a fiery furnace, for shame of being a second time caught in deadly sin, I heard the kirk-bell jow-jowing, as if it was the last trump summoning sinners to their long and black account; and Maister Wiggie thrust in his arm in his desperation, in a whirlwind of passion, claughting hold of my hand like a vice, to drag me out head foremost. Even in my sleep, howsoever, it appears that I like free-will, and ken that there are no slaves in our blessed country; so I tried with all my might to pull against him, and gave his arm such a drive back, that he seemed to bleach over on his side, and raised a hullaballoo of a yell, that not only wakened me, but made me start upright in my bed.

For all the world such a scene! My wife was roaring “Murder, murder!—Mansie Wauch, will ye no wauken?—Murder, murder! ye’ve felled me wi’ your nieve,—ye’ve felled me outright,—I’m gone for evermair,—my hale teeth are doun my throat. Will ye no wauken, Mansie Wauch?—will ye no wauken?—Murder, murder!—I say murder, murder, murder, murder!”

“Who’s murdering us?” cried I, throwing my cowl back on the pillow, and rubbing my eyes in the hurry of a tremendous fright.—“Wha’s murdering us?—where’s the robbers?—send for the town officer!”

“O Mansie!—O Mansie!” said Nanse, in a kind of greeting tone, “I daursay ye’ve felled me—but no matter, now I’ve gotten ye roused. Do ye no see the hale street in a bleeze of flames? Bad is the best; we maun either be burned to death, or out of house and hall, without a rag to cover our nakedness. Where’s my son?—where’s my dear bairn, Benjie?”

In a most awful consternation, I jumped at this out to the middle of the floor, hearing the causeway all in an uproar of voices; and seeing the flichtering of the flames glancing on the houses in the opposite side of the street, all the windows of which were filled with the heads of half-naked folks in round-eared mutches or Kilmarnocks, their mouths open, and their eyes staring with fright; while the sound of the fire-engine, rattling through the streets like thunder, seemed like the dead cart of the plague come to hurry away the corpses of the deceased for interment in the kirkyard.

Never such a spectacle was witnessed in this world of sin and sorrow since the creation of Adam. I pulled up the window and looked out; and, lo and behold! the very next house to our own was all in a lowe from cellar to garret; the burning joists hissing and cracking like mad; and the very wind blew along as warm as if it had been out of the mouth of a baker’s oven!

It was a most awful spectacle! more by token to me, who was likely to be intimately concerned with it; and beating my brow with my clenched nieve like a distracted creature, I saw that the labour of my whole life was likely to go for nought, and me to be a ruined man; all the earnings of my industry being laid out on my stock-in-trade, and on the plenishing of our bit house. The darkness of the latter days came over my spirit like a vision before the prophet Isaiah; and I could see nothing in the years to come but beggary and starvation; myself a fallen old man, with an out-at-the-elbows coat, a greasy hat, and a bald pow, hirpling over a staff, requeeshting an awmous; Nanse a broken-hearted beggar wife, torn down to tatters, and weeping like Rachel when she thought on better days; and poor wee Benjie going from door to door with a meal-pock on his back.

The thought first dung me stupid, and then drove me to desperation; and not even minding the dear wife of my bosom, that had fainted away as dead as a herring, I pulled on my trowsers like mad, and rushed out into the street, bareheaded and barefoot as the day that Lucky Bringthereout dragged me into the world.

The crowd saw in the twinkling of an eyeball that I was a desperate man, fierce as Sir William Wallace, and not to be withstood by gentle or simple. So most of them made way for me; they that tried to stop me finding it a bad job, being heeled over from right to left, on the broad of their backs, like flounders, without respect of age or person; some old women that were obstrepulous being gey sore hurt, and one of them has a pain in her hainch even to this day. When I had got almost to the doorcheek of the burning house, I found one grupping me by the back like grim death; and in looking over my shoulder, who was it but Nanse herself, that, rising up from her faint, had pursued me like a whirlwind. It was a heavy trial, but my duty to myself in the first place, and to my neighbours in the second, roused me up to withstand it; so, making a spend like a greyhound, I left the hindside of my shirt in her grasp, like Joseph’s garment in the nieve of Potiphar’s wife, and up the stairs head-foremost among the flames.