Illustrations of the Author of Waverley

YE LEADENHALLE PRESSE, LONDON, E.C.
T. 3253.

Preface by Author.

This Work first appeared in November, 1822. It was a juvenile production, and, of course, deformed with all the faults and extravagances of nineteen. The Public, however, received it with some degree of encouragement; and, a second edition being now called for, I have gladly seized the opportunity of repairing early errors, by greater correctness of language and more copious information. The present volume will be found to contain thrice the quantity of letterpress, and a much greater variety of interesting details.

R. C.

Edinburgh, India Place, 8th March, 1825.

Addendum

BY AUTHOR’S SON.

In the belief that there are many admirers of Sir Walter Scott who would gladly welcome the reappearance of a work which many years ago was, in connection with his novels, eagerly perused, the “Illustrations of the Author of Waverley” have been again printed.

R. C. (Secundus).

Edinburgh, 339, High Street, 1884.

Contents.

CHAPTER I. — HIGHLAND FAITH AND HONOUR. — BRADWARDINE. — SCOTTISH FOOLS. — RORY DALL, THE HARPER. [7] — “CLAW FOR CLAW, AS CONAN SAID TO SATAN.” — TULLY-VEOLAN. — THE BODACH GLAS.

Waverley.

(The Plot of the Novel.)

hen the Highlanders, upon the morning of the battle of Prestonpans, made their memorable attack, a battery of four field-pieces was stormed and carried by the Camerons and Stuarts of Appine. The late Alexander Stuart of Invernahyle was one of the foremost in the charge, and observed an officer of the king’s forces, who, scorning to join the flight of all around, remained with his sword in his hand, as if determined to the very last to defend the post assigned to him. The Highland gentleman commanded him to surrender, and received for reply a thrust, which he caught in his target. The officer was now defenceless, and the battle-axe of a gigantic Highlander (the miller of Invernahyle’s mill), was uplifted to dash his brains out, when Mr. Stuart with difficulty prevailed on him to surrender. He took charge of his enemy’s property, protected his person, and finally obtained him liberty on parole. The officer proved to be Colonel Allan Whiteford, of Ballochmyle, in Ayrshire, a man of high character and influence, and warmly attached to the House of Hanover; yet such was the confidence existing between these two honourable men, though of different political principles, that, while the civil war was raging, and straggling officers from the Highland army were executed without mercy, Invernahyle hesitated not to pay his late captive a visit, as he went back to the Highlands to raise fresh recruits, when he spent a few days among Colonel Whiteford’s whig friends as pleasantly and good humouredly as if all had been at peace around him.

“After the battle of Culloden, it was Colonel Whiteford’s turn to strain every nerve to obtain Mr. Stuart’s pardon. He went to the Lord Justice Clerk, to the Lord Advocate, and to all the officers of State, and each application was answered by the production of a list, in which the name of Invernahyle appeared ‘marked with the sign of the beast!’ At length Colonel Whiteford went to the Duke of Cumberland. From him also he received a positive refusal. He then limited his request, for the present, to a protection for Stuart’s house, wife, children, and property. This was also refused by the Duke; on which Colonel Whiteford, taking his commission from his bosom, laid it on the table before his Royal Highness, and asked permission to retire from the service of a king who did not know how to spare a vanquished enemy. The Duke was struck, and even affected. He bade the Colonel take up his commission, and granted the protection he requested with so much earnestness. It was issued just in time to save the house, corn, and cattle at Invernahyle from the troops who were engaged in laying waste what it was the fashion to call ‘the country of the enemy.’ A small encampment was formed on Invernahyle’s property, which they spared while plundering the country around, and searching in every direction for the leaders of the insurrection, and for Stuart in particular. He was much nearer them than they suspected; for, hidden in a cave, (like the Baron of Bradwardine,) he lay for many days within hearing of the sentinels as they called their watchword. His food was brought him by one of his daughters, a child of eight years old, whom Mrs. Stuart was under the necessity of trusting with this commission, for her own motions and those of all her inmates were closely watched. With ingenuity beyond her years, the child used to stray out among the soldiers, who were rather kind to her, and watch the moment when she was unobserved, to steal into the thicket, when she deposited whatever small store of provisions she had in charge, at some marked spot, where her father might find it. Invernahyle supported life for several weeks by means of these precarious supplies; and, as he had been wounded in the battle of Culloden, the hardships which he endured were aggravated by great bodily pain. After the soldiers had removed their quarters, he had another remarkable escape. As he now ventured to the house at night, and left it in the morning, he was espied during the dawn by a party who pursued and fired at him. The fugitive being fortunate enough to escape their search, they returned to the house, and charged the family with harbouring one of the proscribed traitors. An old woman had presence of mind enough to maintain that the man they had seen was the shepherd. “Why did he not stop when we called to him?” said the soldiers. “He is as deaf, poor man, as a peat-stack,” answered the ready-witted domestic. “Let him be sent for directly.” The real shepherd accordingly was brought from the hill, and, as there was time to tutor him by the way, he was as deaf, when he made his appearance, as was necessary to maintain his character. Stuart of Invernahyle was afterwards pardoned under the act of indemnity.

“He was a noble specimen of the old Highlander, far-descended, gallant, courteous, and brave even to chivalry. He had been out in 1715 and 1745; was an active partaker in all the stirring scenes which passed in the Highlands between these memorable eras; and was remarkable, among other exploits, for having fought with and vanquished Rob Roy, in a trial of skill at the broadsword, a short time previous to the death of that celebrated hero, at the clachan of Balquhidder. He chanced to be in Edinburgh when Paul Jones came into the Firth of Forth, and, though then an old man, appeared in arms, and was heard to exult (to use his own words) in the prospect of ‘drawing his claymore once more before he died.’”

This pleasing anecdote is given in a critique upon the first series of the “Tales of my Landlord,” (supposed to be written by Sir Walter Scott,) in the thirty-second number of the Quarterly Review; and we heartily concur with the learned Baronet in thinking it the groundwork of “Waverley.”

Yet it is somewhat remarkable that the name of a Major Talbot, as well as that of Lieutenant-Colonel Whiteford, occurs in the list of prisoners published by the Highland army, after their victory at Prestonpans.

The late Alexander Campbell, author of the “History of Poetry in Scotland,” and editor of “Albyn’s Anthology,” a gentleman whose knowledge of his native Highlands was at once extensive and accurate, used to assert that it was the younger sister, not the daughter of Mr. Stuart, that brought his food. He had heard an account of the affecting circumstance from her own mouth.

Stuart of Invernahyle marked his attachment to the cause of the exiled Prince by the composition of a beautiful song, which is to be found in Mr. Hogg’s “Jacobite Relics.”

Of the genus of Bradwardine, Colonel Stewart gives the following account:—

“The armies of Sweden, Holland, and France gave employment to the younger sons of the Highland gentry, who were educated abroad in the seminaries of Leyden and Douay. Many of these returned with a competent knowledge of modern languages added to their classical education—often speaking Latin with more purity than Scotch, which, in many cases, they only learned after leaving their native homes. The race of Bradwardine is not long extinct. In my own time, several veterans might have sat for the picture of that most honourable, brave, learned, and kind-hearted personage. These gentlemen returned from the continent full of warlike Latin, French phrases, and inveterate broad Scotch. One of the last of these, Colonel Alexander Robertson, of the Scotch Brigade, uncle of the present” (now late) “Strowan, I well remember.

“Another of the Bradwardine character is still remembered by the Highlanders with a degree of admiration bordering on enthusiasm. This was John Stewart, of the family of Kincardine, in Strathspey, known to the country by the name of John Roy Stewart, an accomplished gentleman, an elegant scholar, a good poet, and a brave officer. He composed with equal facility in English, Latin and Gaelic; but it was chiefly by his songs, epigrams, and descriptive pieces, that he attracted the admiration of his countrymen. He was an active leader in the rebellion of 1745, and, during his ‘hiding’ of many months, he had more leisure to indulge his taste for poetry and song. The country traditions are full of his descriptive pieces, eulogies and laments on friends, or in allusion to the events of that unfortunate period. He had been long in the service of France and Portugal, and had risen to the rank of colonel. He was in Scotland in 1745, and commanded a regiment, composed of the tenants of his family and a considerable number of the followers of Sir George Stewart of Grandtully, who had been placed under him. With these, amounting in all to 400 men, he joined the rebel army, and proved one of its ablest partizans.”—Sketches, vol. ii. notes.

Diligent research, however, has enabled us to point out a much nearer original.

The person who held the situation in the rebel army which in the novel has been assigned to the Baron, namely, the command of their few cavalry, was Alexander, fourth Lord Forbes of Pitsligo. This nobleman, who possessed but a moderate fortune, was so much esteemed for his excellent qualities of temper and understanding, that when, after the battle of Prestonpans, he declared his purpose of joining Prince Charles, most of the gentlemen in that part of the country put themselves under his command, thinking they could not follow a better or safer example than the conduct of Lord Pitsligo. He thus commanded a body of 150 well mounted gentlemen in the subsequent scenes of the rebellion, at the fatal close of which he escaped to France, and was attainted, in the following month, by the title of Lord Pitsligo, his estate and honours being of course forfeited to the crown. After this he claimed the estate before the Court of Session, on account of the misnomer, his title being properly Lord Forbes of Pitsligo; and that Court gave judgment in his favour, 16th November, 1749; but on an appeal it was reversed by the House of Lords, 1750.

Like Bradwardine, Lord Pitsligo had been out in 1715 also—though it does not appear that much notice was then taken of his defection. His opposition to the whiggery of modern times had been equally constant, and of long standing; for he was one of those staunch and honourable though mistaken patriots of the last Scottish Parliament, who had opposed the Union.

He could also boast of a smattering of the belles lettres; and probably plumed himself upon his literary attainments as much as the grim old pedant, his counterpart. In 1734, he published “Essays, Moral and Philosophical;” and something of the same sort appeared in 1761, when he seems to have been in the near prospect of a conclusion to his earthly trials. He died at Auchiries, in Aberdeenshire, December 21, 1762, at an advanced age, after having possessed his title, counting from his accession in 1691, during a period of seventy-one years.

It is not unworthy of remark, that the supporters of Lord Pitsligo’s arms were two bears proper; which circumstance, connected with the great favour in which these animals were held by Bradwardine, brings the relation between the real and the fictitious personages very close.

(Davie Gellatley.)

It appears that licensed fools were customary appendages of the Scottish Court at a very early period; and the time is not long gone by when such beings were retained at the table and in the halls of various respectable noblemen. The absence of more refined amusements made them become as necessary a part of a baronial establishment as horses and hounds still continue to be in the mansions of many modern squires. When as yet the pursuits of literature were not, and ere gaming had become vicious enough to be fashionable, the rude humours of the jester could entertain a pick-tooth hour; and, what walnuts now are to wine, and enlightened conversation to the amusements of the drawing-room, the boisterous bacchanalianism of our ancestors once found in coarse buffooneries and the alternate darkness and radiance of a foolish mind.

In later times, when all taste for such diversion had gone out, the madman of the country-side frequently found shelter and patronage under the roofs of neighbouring gentlemen; but though the good things of Daft Jamie and Daft Wattie were regularly listened to by the laird, and preserved in the traditions of the household, the encouragement given to them was rather extended out of a benevolent compassion for their helpless condition than from any desire to make their talents a source of entertainment. Such was the motive of Bradwardine in protecting Davie Gellatley; and such was also that of the late Earl of Wemyss, in the support which he gave to the renowned Willie Howison, a personage of whom many anecdotes are yet told in Haddingtonshire, and whose services at Gosford House were not unlike those of Davie at Tully-Veolan.

Till within the last few years, these unfortunate persons were more frequently to be found in their respective villages throughout the country than now; and it is not long since even Edinburgh could boast of her “Daft Laird,” her “Bailie Duff,” and her “Madam Bouzie.” Numerous charitable institutions now seclude most of them from the world. Yet, in many retired districts, where delicacy is not apt to be shocked by sights so common, the blind, the dumb, and the insane are still permitted to mix indiscriminately with their fellow-creatures. Poverty compels many parents to take the easiest method of supporting their unfortunate offspring—that of bringing them up with the rest of the family; the decent pride of the Scottish peasant also makes an application to charity, even in such a case as this, a matter of very rare occurrence; and while superstition points out that those whom God has sent into the world with less than the full share of mental faculties are always made most peculiarly the objects of this care, thus rendering the possession of such a child rather a medium through which the blessings of heaven are diffused than a burden or a curse, the affectionate desire of administering to them all those tender offices which their unhappy situation so peculiarly requires, of tending them with their own eyes, and nursing them with their own hands, that large and overflowing, but not supererogatory share of tenderness with which the darkened and destitute objects are constantly regarded by parents—altogether make their domestication a matter of strong, and happily not unpleasing necessity.

The rustic idiots of Scotland are also in general blessed with a few peculiarities, which seldom fail to make them objects of popular esteem and affection. Many of them exhibit a degree of sagacity or cunning, bearing the same relation to the rest of their intellectual faculties which, in the ruins of a Grecian temple, the coarse and entire foundations bear to the few and scattered but beautiful fragments of the superstructure. This humble qualification, joined sometimes to the more agreeable one of a shrewd and sly humour, while it enables them to keep their own part, and occasionally to baffle sounder judgments, proves an engaging subject of amusement and wonder to the cottage fireside. A wild and wayward fancy, powers of song singularly great, together with a full share of the above qualifications, formed the chief characteristics of Daft Jock Gray of Gilmanscleugh, whom we are about to introduce to the reader as the counterpart of Davie Gellatley.

John Gray is a native of Gilmanscleugh, a farm in the parish of Ettrick, of which his father was formerly the shepherd, and from which, according to Border custom, he derives his popular designation or title “of Gilmanscleugh.” Jock is now above forty years of age, and still wanders through the neighbouring counties of Roxburgh, Selkirk, and Peebles, in a half minstrel, half mendicant manner, finding, even after the fervour of youth is past, no pleasure in a sedentary or domestic life.

Many months, many weeks, had not elapsed after Jock came into the world, before all the old women of the Faculty in the parish discovered that “he had a want.” As he grew up, it was found that he had no capacity for the learning taught at the parish school, though, in receiving various other sorts of lore, he showed an aptitude far surpassing that of more highly gifted children. Thus, though he had not steadiness of mind to comprehend the alphabet, and Barrie’s smallest primer was to him as a fountain closed and a book sealed, he caught, at a wonderfully early age, and with a rapidity almost incredible, many fragments of Border song, which he could repeat, with the music, in the precise manner of those who instructed him; and indeed he discovered an almost miraculous power of giving utterance to sounds, in all their extensive and intricate varieties.

All endeavours on the part of his parents to communicate to his mind the seeds of written knowledge having failed, Jock was abandoned to the oral lore he loved so much; and of this he soon possessed himself of an immense stock. His boyhood was passed in perfect idleness; yet if it could have been proved upon him that he had the smallest glimmering of sense, his days would not have been so easy. In Jock’s native district there are just two ways for a boy to spend his time; either he must go to school, or he must tend the cows; and it generally happens that he goes to school in summer and tends the cows in winter. But Jock’s idiocy, like Caleb Balderstone’s “fire,” was an excuse for every duty. As to the first employment, his friend the Dominie bore him out with flying colours; for the second, the question was set for ever at rest by a coup de main achieved by the rascal’s own happy fancy. “John,” says the minister of Yarrow to him one day, “you are the idlest boy in the parish; you do nothing all day but go about from house to house; you might at least herd a few cows.” “Me, sir!” says Jock, with the most stolid stare imaginable, “how could I herd the kye? Losh, sir, I disna ken corn by garse!”—This happy bit was enough to keep Jock comfortable all the rest of his life.

Yet though Jock did not like to be tied down to any regular task, and heartily detested both learning and herding, it could never be said of him that he was sunk in what the country people call even-down idleset. He sometimes condescended to be useful in running errands, and would not grudge the tear and wear of his legs upon a seven-mile journey, when he had the prospect of a halfpenny for his pains; for, like all madmen, he was not insensible, however stupid in every other thing, to the value of money, and knew a bawbee from a button with the sharpest boy in the clachan. It is recorded to his credit, that in all his errands he was ever found scrupulously honest. He was sometimes sent to no less a distance than Innerleithen, which must be at least seven miles from Gilmanscleugh, to procure small grocery articles for his neighbours. Here an old woman, named Nelly Bathgate, kept the metropolitan grocery shop of the parish, forming a sort of cynosure to a district extending nearly from Selkirk to Peebles. This was in the days before St. Ronan’s Well had drawn so many fashionables around that retired spot; and as yet Nelly flourished in her little shop, undisturbed by opposition, like the moon just before the creation of the stars. Rivals innumerable have now sprung up around honest Nelly; and her ancient and respectable, but unpretending sign-board, simply importing, “N. Bathgate, Grocer,” quails under the glowing and gilt-lettered rubrics of “—— ——, from Edinburgh,” etc., etc., etc., who specify that they import their own teas and wines, and deal both en gros et en petit.

For a good while Jock continued to do business with Nelly Bathgate, unannoyed, as the honest dame herself, by any other grocery shop; and indeed how there could be such a thing as another grocery shop in the whole world besides Nelly’s, was quite incomprehensible to Jock. But at length the distracting object arose. A larger shop than Nelly’s, with larger windows, and a larger sign-board, was opened; the proprietor had a son in Edinburgh with a great wholesale grocer in Nicolson Street; and was supplied with a great quantity of goods, at cheap prices, of a more flashy nature than any that had ever before been dreamt of, smelt, or eaten in the village. Here a strange grocery article, called pearl ashes, was sold; and being the first time that such a thing was ever heard of, Innerleithen was just in a ferment about it. Jock was strongly tempted to give his custom, or rather the custom of his employers, to this shop; for really Nelly’s customary snap was growing stale upon his appetite, and he longed to taste the comfits of the new establishment. This Nelly saw and appreciated; and, to prevent the defection she feared, Jock’s allowance was forthwith doubled, and, moreover, occasionally varied by a guerdon of a sweeter sort. But still Jock hankered after the sweets of that strange forbidden shop; and, as he passed towards Nelly’s, after a long hungry journey, could almost have wished himself transformed into one of those yellow bees which buzzed about in noisy enjoyment within the window and show-glasses of the new grocer,—creatures which, to his mind, appeared to pass the most delightful and enviable life. It is certainly much to Jock’s credit, that, even under all these temptations, and though he had frequently a whole sixpence to dispose of in eight or ten different small articles, and, no less, though he had no security engaged for intromissions, so that the whole business was nothing but a question of character,—yea, in not so much as a farthing was he ever found wanting.

Nelly continued to be a good friend to Jock, and Jock adhered as stoutly to Nelly; but it was frequently observed by those who were curious in his mad humours, that his happy conquest over the love of comfits was not accomplished and preserved without many struggles between his instinctive honesty and the old Adam of his inner man. For instance, after having made all his purchases at Mrs. Bathgate’s, when he found only a single solitary farthing remain in his hand, which was to be his faithful companion all the way back to Gilmanscleugh, how forcibly it must have struck his foolish mind, that, by means of the new grocer, he had it in his power to improve his society a thousand-fold, by the simple and easy, though almost-as-good-as-alchymical process of converting its base brazen form into a mass of gilt gingerbread. Such a temptation might have staggered St. Anthony himself, and was certainly far too much for poor Jock’s humble powers of self-denial. In this dreadful emergency, his only means of safety lay in flight; and so it was observed by his rustic friends, on such occasions, that, as soon as he was fairly clear of Nelly’s door, he commenced a sort of headlong trot, as if for the purpose of confounding all dishonourable thoughts in his mind, and ran with all his might out of the village, without looking once aside; for if he had trusted his eye with but one glance at that neat whitewashed window of four panes, where two biscuits, four gingerbread cakes, a small blue bottle of white caraways, and a variety of other nondescript articles of village confectionery displayed their modest yet irresistible allurements, he had been gone!

There is one species of employment in which Jock always displays the utmost willingness to be engaged. It must be understood, that, like many sounder men, he is a great admirer of the fair sex. He exhibits an almost chivalrous devotion to their cause, and takes great pleasure in serving them. Any little commission with which they may please to honour him, he executes with alacrity, and his own expression is that he would “jump Tweed, or dive the Wheel (a deep eddy in Tweed), for their sakes.” He requires no reward for his services, but, like a true knight, begs only to kiss the hand of his fair employer, and is satisfied. It may be observed, that he is at all times fond of saluting the hands of ladies that will permit him.

The author of “Waverley” has described Davie Gellatley as dressed in a grey jerkin, with scarlet cuffs, and slashed sleeves, showing a scarlet lining, a livery with which the Baron of Bradwardine indued him, in consideration of his services and character. Daft Jock Grey has at no period of his life exhibited so much personal magnificence. His usual dress is a rather shabby suit of hodden grey, with ridge and furrow[1] stockings; and the utmost extent of his finery is a pair of broad red garters, bound neatly below the knee-strings of his nether garments, of which, however, he is probably more vain than ever belted knight was of the royal garter. But waiving the matter of dress, their discrepance in which is purely accidental, the resemblance is complete in every other respect. The face, mien, and gestures are exactly the same. Jock walks with all that swing of the body and arms, that abstracted air and sauntering pace, which figure in the description of Davie (“Waverley,” vol i. chap. ix.), and which, it may indeed be said, are peculiar to the whole genus and body of Scottish madmen. Jock’s face is equally handsome in its outline with that given to the fool of Tully-Veolan, and is no less distinguished by “that wild, unsettled, and irregular expression, which indicated neither idiocy nor insanity, but something resembling a compound of both, where the simplicity of the fool was mixed with the extravagance of a crazed imagination.” Add to this happy picture the prosaic and somewhat unromantic circumstance of a pair of buck-teeth, and the reader has our friend Jock to a single feature.

The Highland madman is described by his pedantic patron, to be “a poor simpleton, neither fatuus nec naturaliter idiota, as is expressed in the brieves of furiosity, but simply a cracked-brained knave, who could execute any commission that jumped with his own humour, and made his folly a plea for avoiding every other.” This entirely agrees with the character of Jock, who is thought by many to possess much good common sense, and whose talents of music and mimicry point him out as at least ingenious. Yet to us it appears, that all Jock’s qualifications, ingenious as they may be, are nothing but indications of a weak mind. His great musical and mimetic powers, his talent and willingness of errand-going, his cunning and his excessive devotion to the humours and fancies of the fair sex, are mere caricatures of the same dispositions and talents in other men, and point out all such qualifications, when found in the best and wisest characters, as marks of fatuity and weakness. Where, for instance, was the perfection of musical genius ever found accompanied with a good understanding? Are not porters and chairman the smallest-minded among mankind? Is not cunning the lowest of the human faculties, and always found most active in the illiberal mind? And what lady’s man, what cavaliere serviente, what squire of dames, what man of drawing-rooms and boudoirs, ever yet exhibited the least trace of greatness or nobility of intellect? Jock, who has all these qualifications in himself, may be considered as outweighing at least four other men who severally possess them.

Like Davie Gellatley, Jock “is in good earnest the half-crazed simpleton which he appears to be, and incapable of any steady exertion. He has just so much wild wit as saves him from the imputation of insanity, warm affections, a prodigious memory, and an ear for music.” This latter quality is a point of resemblance which puts all question of their identity past the possibility of doubt. Davie it must be well remembered by the readers of “Waverley,” is there represented as constantly singing wild scraps of ancient songs and ballads, which, by a beautiful fiction of the author, he is said to have received in legacy from a poetical brother who died in a decline some years before. His conversation was in general carried on by means of these, to the great annoyance of young Waverley, and such as, like him, did not comprehend the strange metaphorical meaning of his replies and allusions. Now, Jock’s principal talent and means of subsistence are vested in his singular and minstrel-like powers of song, there being few of our national melodies of which he cannot chaunt forth a verse, as the occasion may suggest to his memory. He never fails to be a welcome guest with all the farmers he may chance to visit,[2] on account of his faculties of entertaining them with the tender or warlike ditties of the Border, or the more smart and vulgar songs of the modern world. It is to be remarked, that his style of singing, like the styles of all other great geniuses in the fine arts, is entirely his own. Sometimes his voice soars to the ecstasy of the highest, and sometimes descends to the melancholious grunt of the lowest pitch; while ever and anon he throws certain wild and beautiful variations into both the words and the music, ad libitum, which altogether stamp his performances with a character of the most perfect originality. He generally sings very much through his nose, especially in humorous songs; and, from his making a curious hiss, or twang, on setting off into a melody, one might almost think that he employs his notorious buck-teeth in the capacity of what musicians term a pitchfork.

Jock, by means of his singing powers, was one of the first who circulated the rising fame of his countryman, the Ettrick Shepherd, many of whose early songs he committed to memory, and sung publicly over all the country round. One beginning, “Oh Shepherd, the weather is misty and changing,” and the well known lyric of “Love is like a dizziness,” besides being the first poetical efforts of their ingenious and wonderful author, were the earliest of Jock Gray’s favourite songs, and perhaps became the chief means of setting him up in the trade of a wandering minstrel. We have seen him standing upon a dees stane in the street of Peebles, entertaining upwards of a hundred people with the latter ludicrous ditty; and many a well-told penny has he made it squeeze from the iron purses of the inhabitants of that worthy town, “albeit unused to the opening mood.”

In singing the “Ewe-buchts, Marion,” it is remarkable that he adds a chorus which is not found in any printed edition of the song:

“Come round about the Merry-knowes, my Marion,

Come round about the Merry-knowes wi’ me;

Come round about the Merry-knowes, my Marion,

For Whitsled is lying lea.”

Whitsled is a farm in the parish of Ashkirk, county of Selkirk, lying upon the water of Ale; and Merry-knowes is the name of a particular spot in the farm. This circumstance is certainly important enough to deserve the attention of those who make Scottish song a study and object of collection; as the verse, if authentic, would go far to prove the locality of the “Ewe-buchts.”

In addition to his talent as a musician, Jock can also boast of a supplementary one, by means of which, whenever memory fails in his songs, he can supply, currente voce, all incidental deficiencies. He is not only a wit and a musician, but also a poet! He has composed several songs, which by no means want admirers in the country, though the most of them scarcely deserve the praise of even mediocrity. Indeed his poetical talents are of no higher order than what the author of an excellent article in the “Edinburgh Annual Register” happily terms “wonderfully well considering”; and seem to be admired by his rustic friends only on the benevolent principle of “where little has been given, let little be required.”

He has, however, another most remarkable gift, which the author of “Waverley” has entirely rejected in conceiving the revised and enlarged edition of his character,—a wonderful turn for mimicry. His powers in this art are far, far indeed, from contemptible, though it unfortunately happens that, like almost all rustic Scottish humorists, he makes ministers and sacred things his chief and favourite objects. He attends the preachings of all the ministers that fall within the scope of his peregrinations, and sometimes brings away whole tenthlies of their several sermons, which he lays off to any person that desires him, with a faithfulness of imitation, in tone and gesture, which never fails to convulse his audience with laughter. He has made himself master of all the twangs, soughs, wheezes, coughs, snirtles, and bleatings, peculiar to the various parish ministers twenty miles round; and being himself of no particular sect, he feels not the least delicacy or compunction for any single class of divines—all are indiscriminately familiar to the powers of the universal Jock!

It is remarkable, that though the Scottish peasantry are almost without exception pious, they never express, so far as we have been able to discover, the least demur respecting the profanity and irreverence of this exhibition. The character of the nation may appear anomalous on this account. But we believe the mystery may be solved by supposing them so sincerely and unaffectedly devout, in all that concerns the sentiment of piety, that they do not suspect themselves of any remissness, when they make the outward circumstances, and even the ordinances of religion, the subject of wit. It is on this account, that in no country, even the most lax in religious feeling, have the matters of the church been discussed so freely as in Scotland; and nowhere are there so many jokes and good things about ministers and priests. In this case the very ministers themselves have been known to listen to Daft Jock’s mimicries of their neighbours with unqualmed delight,—never thinking, good souls, that the impartial rascal has just as little mercy on themselves at the next manse he visits. It is also to be remarked, that, in thus quizzing the worthy ministers, he does not forget to practise what the country-people consider a piece of exquisite satire on the habits of such as read their sermons. Whenever he imitates any of these degenerate divines, who, by their unpopularity, form quite a sect by themselves in the country, and are not nearly so much respected as extempore preachers,[3] he must have either a book or a piece of paper open before him, from which he gravely affects to read the subject of discourse; and his audience are always trebly delighted with this species of exhibition. He was once amusing Mrs. C——, the minister’s wife of Selkirk, with some imitations of the neighbouring clergymen, when she at last requested him to give her a few words in the manner of Dr. C——, who being a notorious reader, “Ou, Mem,” says Jock, “ye maun bring me the Doctor’s Bible, then, and I’ll gie ye him in style.” She brought the Bible, little suspecting the purpose for which the wag intended it, when, with the greatest effrontery, he proceeded to burlesque this unhappy peculiarity of the worthy doctor in the presence of his own wife.

Jock was always a privileged character in attending all sorts of kirks, though many ministers, who dreaded a future sufferance under his relentless caricaturing powers, would have been glad to exclude him. He never seems to pay any attention to the sermon, or even deigns to sit down, like other decent Christians, but wanders constantly about from gallery to gallery, upstairs and downstairs. His erratic habit is not altogether without its use. When he observes any person sleeping during the sermon, he reaches over to the place, and taps him gently on the head with his kent till he awake; should he in any of his future rounds (for he parades as regularly about as a policeman in a large city) observe the drowsy person repeating the offence, he gives him a tremendous thwack over the pate; and he increases the punishment so much at every subsequent offence, that, like the military punishment for desertion, the third infliction almost amounts to death itself. A most laughable incident once occurred in —— church, on a drowsy summer afternoon, when the windows were let down, admitting and emitting a thousand flies, whose monotonous buzz, joined to the somniferous snuffle of Dr. ——, would have been fit music for the bedchamber of Morpheus, even though that honest god was lying ill of the toothache, the gout, or any other equally woukrife disorder. A bailie, who had dined, as is usual in most country towns, between sermons, could not resist the propensity of his nature, and, fairly overpowered, at last was under the necessity of affronting the preacher to his very face, by laying down his head upon the book-board; when his capacious, bald round crown might have been mistaken, at first sight, for the face of the clock placed in the front of the gallery immediately below. Jock was soon at him with his stick, and, with great difficulty, succeeded in rousing him. But the indulgence was too great to be long resisted, and down again went the bailie’s head. This was not to be borne. Jock considered his authority sacred, and feared not either the frowns of elders, nor the more threatening scowls of kirk-officers, when his duty was to be done. So his arm went forth, and the kent descended a second time with little reverence upon the offending sconce; upon which the magistrate started up with an astonished stare, in which the sentiment of surprise was as completely concentrated as in the face of the inimitable Mackay, when he cries out, “Hang a magistrate! My conscience!” The contrast between the bailie’s stupid and drowsy face, smarting and writhing from the blow, which Jock had laid on pretty soundly, and the aspect of the natural himself, who still stood at the head of the pew, shaking his stick, and looking at the magistrate with an air in which authority, admonition, and a threat of further punishment, were strangely mingled, altogether formed a scene of striking and irresistible burlesque; and while the Doctor’s customary snuffle was increased to a perfect whimper of distress, the whole congregation showed in their faces evident symptoms of everything but the demureness proper to a place of worship.

Sometimes, when in a sitting mood, Jock takes a modest seat on the pulpit stairs, where there likewise usually roost a number of deaf old women, who cannot hear in any other part of the church. These old ladies, whom the reader will remember as the unfortunate persons that Dominie Sampson sprawled over, in his premature descent from the pulpit, when he stickit his first preaching, our waggish friend would endeavour to torment by every means which his knavish humour could invent. He would tread upon their corns, lean amorously upon their laps, purloin their specks (spectacles), set them on a false scent after the psalm, and, sometimes getting behind them, plant his longest and most serious face over their black cathedral-looking bonnets, like an owl looking over an ivied wall, while few of the audience could contain their gravity at the extreme humour of the scene. The fun was sometimes, as we ourselves have witnessed, not a little enhanced by the old lady upon whom Jock was practising, turning round, in holy dudgeon, and dealing the unlucky wag a vengeful thwack across the face with her heavy octavo Bible. We have also seen a very ludicrous scene take place, when, on the occasion of a baptism, he refused to come down from his citadel, and defied all the efforts which James Kerr, the kirk-officer, made to dislodge him; while the father of the child, waiting below to present it, stood in the most awkward predicament imaginable, not daring to venture upon the stairs while Jock kept possession of them. It is not probable, however, that he would have been so obstinate on that occasion, if he had not had an ill-will at the preserver of the peace, for his interrupting him that day in his laudable endeavours to break the slumbers of certain persons, whose peace (or rest) it was the peculiar interest of that official to preserve.

We will conclude this sketch of Daft Jock Gray with a stupendous anecdote, which we fear, however, is not strictly canonical. Jock once received an affront from his mother, who refused to gratify him with an extra allowance of bannocks, at a time when he meditated a long journey to a New Year’s Day junketing. Whereupon he seems to have felt the yearnings of a hermit and a misanthrope within his breast, and longed to testify to the world how much he both detested and despised it. He withdrew himself from the society of the cottage,—was seen to reject the addresses of his old companion and friend the cat,—and finally, next morning, after tossing an offered cogue of Scotia’s halesome food into the fire, and breaking two of his mother’s best and blackest cutty pipes, articles which she held almost in the esteem of penates or household gods,—off he went, and ascended to the top of the highest Eildon Hill, at that time covered with deep snow. There he wreaked out his vengeance in a tremendous and truly astonishing exploit. He rolled a huge snow-ball, till, in its accumulation, it became too large for his strength, and then taking it to the edge of the declivity,

“From Eildon’s proud vermilioned brow

He dashed upon the plains below”[4]

the ponderous mass; which, increasing rapidly in its descent, became a perfect avalanche before it reached the plain, and, when there, seemed like a younger brother of the three Eildons, so that people thought Michael Scott had resumed his old pranks, and added another hill to that which he formerly “split in three.” This enormous conglomeration of snow was found, when it fully melted away through the course of next summer, to have licked up with its mountain tongue thirty-five clumps of withered whin bushes, nineteen hares, three ruined cottages, and a whole encampment of peat-stacks!

The Naturals, or Idiots, of Scotland, of whom the Davie Gellatley of fictitious, and the Daft Jock Gray of real life, may be considered as good specimens, form a class of our countrymen which it is our anxious desire should be kept in remembrance. Many of the anecdotes told of them are extremely laughable, and we are inclined to prize such things, on account of the just exhibitions they sometimes afford of genuine human nature. The sketch we have given, and the anecdotes which we are about to give, may perhaps be considered valuable on this account, and also from their connection, moreover, with the manners of rustic life in the Lowlands of Scotland.

Daft Willie Law[5] of Kirkaldy was a regular attendant on tent-preachings, and would scour the country thirty miles round in order to be present at “an occasion.”[6] One warm summer day he was attending the preaching at Abbots Hall, when, being very near-sighted, and having a very short neck, he stood quite close to “the tent” gaping in the minister’s face, who, greatly irritated at a number of his hearers being fast asleep, bawled out, “For shame, Christians, to lie sleeping there, while the glad tidings of the gospel are sounding in your ears; and here is Willie Law, a poor idiot, hearing me with great attention!” “Eh go! sir, that’s true,” says Willie; “but if I hadna been a puir idiot, I would have been sleeping too!”

The late John Berry, Esq., of Wester Bogie, was married to a distant relation of Daft Willie, upon which account the poor fellow used a little more freedom with that gentleman than with any other who was in the habit of noticing him. Meeting Mr. Berry one day in Kirkaldy, he cries, “God bless you, Mr. Berry! gie’s a bawbee! gie’s a bawbee!” “There, Willie,” says Mr. Berry, giving him what he thought a halfpenny, but which he immediately saw was a shilling. “That’s no a gude bawbee, Willie,” continues he; “gie me’t back, and I’ll gie ye anither ane for’t.” “Na, na,” quoth Willie, “it sets Daft Willie Law far better to put away an ill bawbee than it wad do you, Mr. Berry.” “Ay, but Willie, if ye dinna gie me’t back, I’ll never gie ye anither ane.” “Deil ma care,” says the wag, “it’ll be lang or I get ither four-and-twenty frae ye!”

Willie was descended from an ancient Scottish family, and nearly related to John Law of Lauriston, the celebrated financier of France. On that account he was often spoken to and noticed by gentlemen of distinction; and he wished always to appear on the most intimate terms with the nobility and gentry of the neighbourhood. Posting one day through Kirkcaldy with more than ordinary speed, he was met by Mr. Oswald of Dunnikier, who asked him where he was going in such a hurry. “I’m gaun to my cousin Lord Elgin’s burial.” “Your cousin Lord Elgin’s burial, you fool! Lord Elgin’s not dead!” “Ah, deil may care,” quoth Willie; “there’s sax doctors out o’ Embro’ at him, and they’ll hae him dead afore I win forat!”

Of Matthew Cathie, an East Lothian idiot, numerous characteristic anecdotes are related. He lives by begging in the town of North Berwick, and is well treated by the people there, on account of his extreme inoffensiveness. Like Daft Jock Gray, he is fond of going into churches, where his appearance does not fail to set the people a-staring. On one occasion the minister, pointing to Matthew, said, “That person must be put out before we can proceed.” Matthew, hearing this, exclaimed, “Put him out wha likes, I’ll hae nae hand in’t!” Another time, the minister said, “Matthew must be put out!” when Matthew got up and replied, “Oh! Geordie, man, ye needna fash—Matthew can gang out himsel’!”

The Earl of Wemyss, walking one day, found his fool, Willie Howison, asleep upon the ground, and, rousing him, asked what he had been dreaming about. “Ou, my lord,” says Willie, “I dreamed that I was in hell!” “Ay, Willie, and pray what did ye observe there?” “Ou, my lord, it’s just there as it’s here—the grit folk’s ta’en farrest ben!”

Selkirkshire boasts of several highly amusing idiots, all of whom John Gray once made the subject of a song, in which each of them received some complimentary mention. Himself, Davie o’ the Inch, Caleb and Robbie Scott, and Jamie Renwick, are the chief heroes. Caleb, a very stupid natural, was once engaged by a troop of wandering showfolks to personate the character of an orang-outang at a Melrose fair; the regular orang-outang of the establishment having recently left his keepers in the lurch, by marrying a widow in Berwick, which enabled him to give up business, and retire to the shades of domestic privity. Caleb performed very well, and, being appropriately tarred and feathered, looked the part to perfection. Amateurship alone would have soon reconciled him to be an orang-outang all the rest of his life, and to have left Selkirkshire behind; for, according to his own account, he had nothing to do but hold his tongue, and sit munching apples all day long. But his stars had not destined him for so enviable a life of enjoyment. A drunken farmer coming in to see “the wild man of the woods,” out of pure mischief gave Caleb a lash across the shoulders with his whip, when the poor fellow, roaring out in his natural voice, a mortifying denouement took place; the showfolks were affronted and hissed out of the town, and Caleb was turned off at a moment’s notice, with all his blushing honours thick upon him!

Jamie Renwick has more sense and better perceptions than Caleb Scott, but he is much more intractable and mischievous. He is a tall, stout, wild-looking fellow, and might perhaps make as good a hyena as Caleb made an orang-outang. Once, being upon an excursion along with Jock Gray, they came to a farmhouse, and, in default of better accommodation, were lodged in the barn. They did not like this treatment at all, and Jock, in particular, was so irritated, that he would not rest, but got up and walked about, amusing himself with some of his wildest and most sonorous melodies. This, of course, annoyed his companion, who, being inclined to sleep, was making the best he could of a blanket and a bundle of straw. “Come to your bed, ye skirlin’ deevil!” cries Jamie; “I canna get a wink o’ sleep for ye: I daursay the folk will think us daft! Od, if ye dinna come and lie down this instant, I’ll rise and bring ye to your senses wi’ my rung!” “Faith,” says Jock, “if ye do that, it will be mair than ony ither body has ever been able to do!” It will be remembered that even the minister of Yarrow himself failed in accomplishing this consummation so devoutly to be wished.

The following anecdote, from Colonel Stewart’s work on the Highlands, displays a strange instance of mingled sagacity and fidelity in a Celtic madman; and has, we have no doubt, been made use of in the author of “Waverley’s” examples of the fidelity of Davie Gellatley, as exerted in behalf of his unfortunate patron on similar occasions.

“In the years 1746 and 1747, some of the gentlemen ‘who had been out’ in the rebellion were occasionally concealed in a deep woody den near my grandfather’s house. A poor half-witted creature, brought up about the house, was, along with many others, intrusted with the secret of their concealment, and employed in supplying them with necessaries. It was supposed that when the troops came round on their usual searches, they would not imagine that he could be intrusted with so important a secret, and, consequently, no questions would be asked. One day two ladies, friends of the gentlemen, wished to visit them in their cave, and asked Jamie Forbes to show them the way. Seeing that they came from the house, and judging from their manner that they were friends, he did not object to their request, and walked away before them. When they had proceeded a short way, one of the ladies offered him five shillings. The instant he saw the money, he put his hands behind his back, and seemed to lose all recollection. ‘He did not know what they wanted: he never saw the gentlemen, and knew nothing of them;’ and, turning away, walked in a quite contrary direction. When questioned afterwards why he ran away from the ladies, he answered, that when they had offered him such a sum (five shillings was of some value seventy years ago, and would have bought two sheep in the Highlands), he suspected they had no good intention, and that their fine clothes and fair words were meant to entrap the gentlemen.”

An allusion is made to this celebrated musician in the description of Flora Mac-Ivor’s performance upon the harp in the Highland glen. “Two paces back stood Cathleen, holding a small Scottish harp, the use of which had been taught her by Rory Dall, one of the last harpers of the Western Islands.” (“Wav.,” vol. i. p. 338.) Roderick Morison, called Dall on account of his blindness, lived in Queen Anne’s time, in the double capacity of harper and bard to the family of Macleod of Macleod. Many of his songs and poems are still repeated by his countrymen.

When the Highlanders prepared for Prestonpans (“Wav.,” vol. ii. p. 289), Mrs. Flockhart, in great distress about the departure of her lodgers, asks Ensign Maccombich if he would “actually face thae tearing, swearing chields, the dragoons?” “Claw for claw,” cries the courageous Highlander, “and the devil take the shortest nails!” This is an old Gaelic proverb. Conan was one of Fingal’s heroes—rash, turbulent, and brave. One of his unearthly exploits is said to have led him to Iurna, or Cold Island (similar to the Den of Hela of Scandinavian mythology), a place only inhabited by infernal beings. On Conan’s departure from the island, one of its demons struck him a blow, which he instantly returned. This outrage upon immortals was fearfully retaliated, by a whole legion setting upon poor Conan. But the warrior was not daunted; and exclaiming, “Claw for claw, and the devil take the shortest nails!” fought out the battle, and, it is said, ultimately came off victorious.

(Traquair House.)

Tully-Veolan finds a striking counterpart in Traquair House, in Peebles-shire, the seat of the noble family whose name it bears. The aspect of the gateway, avenue, and house itself, is precisely that of the semi-Gothic, bear-guarded mansion of Bradwardine. It is true that, in place of the multitudinous representations of the bear, so profusely scattered around Tully-Veolan, we have here only a single pair, which adorn the gate at the head of the avenue: and that the avenue itself cannot pretend to match the broad continuous shade through which Waverley approached the Highland castle; and also that several other important features are wanting to complete the resemblance;—yet, if we be not altogether imposed upon by fancy, there is a likeness sufficiently strong to support the idea that this scene formed the original study of the more finished and bold-featured picture of the novelist. Traquair House was finished in the reign of Charles I. by the first Earl, who was lord high treasurer of Scotland at that period. This date corresponds with that assigned to Tully-Veolan, which, says the author, was built when architects had not yet abandoned the castellated style peculiar to the preceding warlike ages, nor yet acquired the art of constructing a baronial mansion without a view to defence.

It is worthy of remark, that the Earl of Traquair is the only Scottish nobleman, besides the Earl of Newburgh, who still adheres to the Romish faith:[8] and that his antique and interesting house strongly resembles, in its internal economy and appearance, Glenallan Castle, described in the “Antiquary.”

Among the illustrative vignettes prefixed to a late edition of the author of “Waverley’s” works, a view of Craig Crook Castle, near Edinburgh, is given for Tully-Veolan; and, to complete the vraisemblance, several bears have been added to the scene. It is only necessary to assert, in general, that these bears only exist in the imagination of the artist, and that no place has less resemblance to the Tully-Veolan of “Waverley” than Craig Crook, which is a small single house, in a bare situation, more like the mansion of poor Laird Dumbiedykes than the castle of a powerful feudal baron.

The original of the Bodach Glas, whose appearance proved so portentous to the family of the Mac-Ivors, may probably be traced to a legend current in the ancient family of Maclaine of Lochbuy, in the island of Mull, noticed by Sir Walter Scott in a note to his “Lady of the Lake.”[9] The popular tradition is, that whenever any person descended of that family is near death, the spirit of one of them, who was slain in battle, gives notice of the approaching event. There is this difference between the Bodach Glas and him, that the former appeared on these solemn occasions only to the chief of the house of Mac-Ivor, whereas the latter never misses an individual descended of the family of Lochbuy, however obscure, or in whatever part of the world he may be.

The manner of his showing himself is sometimes different, but he uniformly appears on horseback. Both the horse and himself seem to be of a very diminutive size, particularly the head of the rider, from which circumstance he goes under the appellation of “Eoghan a chinn bhig,” or “Hugh of the little head.” Sometimes he is heard riding furiously round the house where the person is about to die, with an extraordinary noise, like the rattling of iron chains. At other times he is discovered with his horse’s head nearly thrust in at a door or window; and, on such occasions, whenever observed, he gallops off in the manner already described, the hooves of his steed striking fire from the flinty rocks. The effects of such a visit on the inmates of the dwelling may be easily conceived when it is considered that it was viewed as an infallible prognostication of approaching death—an event at which the stoutest heart must recoil, when the certainty is placed before him of his hours being numbered. Like his brother spirits, he seems destined to perform his melancholy rounds amidst nocturnal darkness, the horrors of which have a natural tendency to increase the consternation of a scene in itself sufficiently appalling.

The origin of the tradition is involved in the obscurity of antiquity. It is related of him that, on the eve of a battle in which he was to be engaged, a weird woman prophesied to him, that if his wife (who was a daughter of Macdougall of Lorn), on the morning when he was to set out on his expedition, had his breakfast prepared before he was ready for it, good fortune would betide him; if, on the other hand, he had to call for his breakfast, he would lose his life in the conflict. It seems he was not blest with an affectionate spouse; for, on the morning in question, after waiting a considerable time, he had at last to call for his breakfast, not, however, without upbraiding his wife, by informing her of what was to be the consequence of her want of attention. The presentiment that he was to fall may have contributed to the fulfilment of the prophecy, which was accomplished as a matter of course. This part of the story probably refers to one of the Maclaines of Lochbuy, who was married to a daughter of Macdougall of Lorn, and who, with his two eldest sons, was killed in a feud with their neighbours, the Macleans of Duart, which had nearly proved fatal to the family of Lochbuy. This happened in the reign of King James IV.

It has not come to our knowledge for what cause the penance was imposed on Eoghan a chinn bhig of giving warning to all his clan of their latter end—whether for deeds done in this life, or whether (as some people imagine that departed spirits act as guardian angels to the living) he is thus permitted to show his regard for his friends by visiting them in their last moments, to prepare them for another world. The latter would appear to be the most probable, from a circumstance reported of him, which seems rather at variance with the general character of a harbinger of death. It is said that he took a great fancy to a near relation of the family of Lochbuy (called, by way of patronymic, John M‘Charles), to whom he paid frequent visits, and communicated several particulars respecting the future fate of the family. Whenever he wished an interview with his favourite, he would come to his door, from which he would not stir till John M‘Charles came out; when he would pull him up behind him on his Pegasus, and ride all night over hills, rocks, woods, and wilds, at the same time conversing with him familiarly of several events that were to happen in the Lochbuy family, one of which is said to have been accomplished, about forty years ago, according to his prediction.

This tiny personage, though light of limb, has the reputation of being, like all other unearthly beings, endued with supernatural strength, of which his exploits with John M‘Charles afford an instance. Not many years ago, a man in Mull, when returning home about dusk, perceived a person on horseback coming towards him. Supposing it might be some person whom he knew, he went up to speak to him; but the horseman seemed determined to pass on without noticing him. Thinking he observed something remarkable in the appearance of the rider, he approached close to him, when he was unexpectedly seized by the collar, and forcibly dragged about a quarter of a mile by the stranger, who at last abandoned his hold, after several ineffectual attempts to place his terrified victim behind him, which, being a powerful man, he successfully resisted. He was, however, so much bruised in the scuffle, that it was with difficulty he could make his way home, although he had only about half a mile to go. He immediately took to his bed, which he did not leave for some days, his friends wondering all the time what could be the matter with him. It was not until he told the story, as we have related it, that the adventure was known. And as, after the strictest inquiry, it could not be ascertained that any person on horseback had passed that way on the evening on which it took place, it was, by the unanimous voice of all the seers and old wives in the neighbourhood, laid down as an incontrovertible proposition, that the equestrian stranger could be no other than “Eoghan a chinn bhig.”

In whatever way the tradition originated, certain it is that, at one time, it was very generally, if not universally, received over the island of Mull and adjacent parts. Like other superstitions of a similar nature, it has gradually given way to the more enlightened ideas of modern times, and the belief is now confined to the vulgar.

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CHAPTER II. — CURIOUS PARTICULARS OF SIR ROBERT MAXWELL OF ORCHARDSTON. — ANDREW CROSBIE, ESQ. — DRIVER. — SOUTH COUNTRY FARMERS. — A SCOTCH PROBATIONER. — JEAN GORDON.

Guy Mannering.

(Groundwork of the Novel.)

ir Robert Maxwell of Orchardston, in the county of Galloway, was the descendant of an ancient Roman Catholic family of title in the south of Scotland. He was the only child of a religious and bigoted recluse, who sent him, while yet very young, to a college of Jesuits in Flanders, for education—the paternal estate being, in the meantime, wholly managed by the boy’s uncle, the brother of the devotee, to whom he resigned the guardianship of the property, in order that he might employ the remainder of his days exclusively in acts of devotion. In the family of Orchardston, as, indeed, in most great families of that day, the younger branches were but ill provided for, and looked to the inheritor of the family estate alone for the means of supporting their rank in society: the liberal professions and the employments of trade were still considered somewhat dishonourable; and the unfortunate junior, nursed with inflated ideas of consequence and rank, was doomed in after-life to exercise the servility and experience the mortification of an humble dependant. In this case, the culpable negligence of the father had transferred the entire management of a large estate to his younger brother, who was so delighted in the possession, that he resolved to retain it, to the exclusion of the rightful heir. He consequently circulated a report that the boy was dead; and on the death of the old baronet, which took place about this period, he laid claim to the title and estate. In the meantime, our young hero was suffering (very reluctantly) the severe discipline of the Jesuits’ college, his expenses being defrayed by occasional supplies sent him by his uncle, which were represented to him as the bounties of the college—a story which he could not discredit, as he had been placed there at an age too young to know distinctly either who he was or whence he came. He was intelligent and docile; and was deemed of sufficient capacity to become hereafter one of their own learned body, with which view he was educated. When at the age of sixteen, he found the discipline and austerities of a monastic life so ill suited to his inclination, that, on a trivial dispute with the superior of his college, he ran away, and enlisted himself in a French marching regiment. In this situation he sustained all the hardships of hunger, long marches, and incessant alarms; and, as it was in the hottest part of the war between France and England, about the year 1743, it may easily be imagined that his situation was by no means enviable. He fought as a foot-soldier at the battle of Dettingen; he was also at the battle of Fontenoy; and landed, as an ensign in the French troops, at Murray Frith, during the rebellion of 1745. He joined the rebels a little before the battle of Prestonpans, marched with them to Derby, and retreated with them to Scotland. He was wounded at the battle of Culloden, and fled with a few friends to the woods of Lochaber, where he remained the greater part of the summer 1746, living upon the roots of trees, goats’ milk, and the oatmeal and water of such peasants as he durst confide in. Knowing, however, that it would be impossible to continue this course of life during the winter, he began to devise means of effecting his return to France—perfectly unconscious that, in the country where he was suffering all the miseries of an outcast criminal, he was entitled to the possession of an ample estate and title. His scheme was to gain the coast of Galloway, where he hoped to get on board some smuggling vessel to the Isle of Man, and from thence to France. The hardships which he suffered in the prosecution of this plan would require a volume in their description. He crept through by-ways by night, and was forced to lie concealed among rocks and woods during the day. He was reduced almost to a state of nudity, and his food was obtained from the poorest peasants, in whom only he could confide. Of this scanty subsistence he was sometimes for days deprived; and, to complete his misfortunes, he was, after having walked barefooted over rocks, briars, and unfrequented places, at length discovered, seized, and carried before a magistrate near Dumfries. As his name was Maxwell, which he did not attempt to conceal, he would have suffered as a rebel, had not his commission as a French officer been found in the lining of his tattered coat, which entitled him to the treatment of a prisoner of war. This privilege, however, only extended to the preservation of his life. He was confined in a paved stone dungeon so long, that he had amused himself by giving names to each stone which composed the pavement, and which, in after-life, he took great pleasure in relating and pointing out to his friends. An old woman, who had been his nurse in childhood, was at this time living in Dumfries, where he was a prisoner; and having accidentally seen him, and becoming acquainted with his name, apparent age, etc., felt an assurance that he was the rightful Sir Robert Maxwell. The indissoluble attachment of the lower orders in Scotland to their chiefs is well known; and, impelled by this feeling, this old and faithful domestic attended him with almost maternal affection, administering liberally to his distresses. After an interview of some weeks, she made him acquainted with her suspicion, and begged leave to examine a mark which she remembered upon his body. This proof also concurring, she became outrageous with joy, and ran about the streets proclaiming the discovery she had made. This rumour reaching the ears of the magistrates, inquiry was made, the proofs were examined, and it soon became the general opinion that he was the son of the old baronet of Orchardston. The estate lay but a few miles from Dumfries; and the unlawful possessor being a man of considerable power, and of a most vindictive disposition, most people, whatever might be their private opinion, were cautious in espousing the cause of this disinherited and distressed orphan. One gentleman, however, was found, who, to his eternal honour, took him by the hand. A Mr. Gowdy procured his release from prison, took him to his own house, clothed him agreeably to his rank, and enabled him to commence an action against his uncle. The latter was not inactive in the defence of his crime, and took every pains to prove his nephew to be an impostor. Chagrin and a consciousness of guilt, however, put an end to his existence before the cause came to a hearing; and Sir Robert was at length put into possession of an estate worth upwards of ten thousand pounds a year. He now began to display those qualities and abilities which had been but faintly perceptible in his former station. He now discovered an ingenuous mind, an intellect at once vigorous and refined, and manners the most elegant and polished. His society was courted by all the neighbouring gentry; and, in the course of time he married a Miss Maclellan, a near relation of the family of Lord Kirkcudbright; with this lady he lived in the most perfect happiness for many years. He joined in the prevalent practice of farming his own estate, and built a very elegant house on an eminence overlooking the Nith. An imprudent speculation in the bank of Ayr, however, compelled him to abandon the seat of his ancestors. He had reserved a small pittance, on which he and his lady lived the latter part of their days. This calamity he bore as became a man familiar with misfortune; and he continued the same worthy open-hearted character he had ever been. The reduction of his fortune served only to redouble the kindness and cordiality of his friends. He died suddenly in September, 1786, whilst on the road to visit one of them—the Earl of Selkirk. He left behind him no issue; but his name is still remembered with ardent attachment.”—New Monthly Magazine, June, 1819.

(Counsellor Pleydell.)

We feel no little pleasure in presenting the original of a character so important as the facetious Pleydell. He is understood to be the representative of Mr. Andrew Crosbie, who flourished at the head of the Scottish bar about the period referred to in the novel. Many circumstances conspire to identify him with the lawyer of the novel. Their eminence in their profession was equally respectable; their habits of frequenting taverns and High Jinks parties on Saturday nights was the same, and both were remarkable for that antique politeness of manner so characteristic of old Scottish gentlemen. It may be allowed that Pleydell is one of the characters most nearly approaching to generic that we have attempted to identify with real life; but it is nevertheless so strenuously asserted by all who have any recollection of Mr. Crosbie, that Pleydell resembles him in particular, that we feel no hesitation in assigning him as the only true specific original. We therefore lay the following simple facts before the public, and leave the judicious reader to his own discrimination.

Mr. Crosbie was in the prime of life about the middle of the last century, and, from that period till the year 1780, enjoyed the highest reputation in his profession. He came of a respectable family in the county of Galloway—the district, the reader will remember, in which the principal scenes of the novel are laid, and probably the shire of which Paulus Pleydell, Esq., is represented (vol. ii. chap, xvi.) as having been, at an early period of his life, the sheriff-depute.

The residence of Mr. Crosbie, in the early periods of his practice, exactly coincides with that of Pleydell, whom, if we recollect rightly, Colonel Mannering found in a dark close on the north side of the High Street, several storeys up a narrow common stair. Mr. Crosbie lived first in Lady Stair’s Close, a steep alley on the north side of the Lawnmarket; afterwards in the Advocate’s Close, in the Luckenbooths; and finally in a self-contained and well-built house of his own, at the foot of Allan’s Close, still standing, and lately inhabited by Richard Cleghorn, Esq., Solicitor before the Supreme Courts. All these various residences are upon the north side of the High Street, and the two first answer particularly to the description in the novel. The last is otherwise remarkable as being situated exactly behind and in view of the innermost penetralia of Mr. Constable’s great publishing warehouse,[10]—the sanctum sanctorum in which Captain Clutterbuck found the Eidolon of the Author of “Waverley,” so well described in the introduction to “Nigel.”

At the period when Mr. Crosbie flourished, all the advocates and judges of the day dwelt in those obscure wynds or alleys leading down from the High Street, which, since the erection of the New Town, have been chiefly inhabited by the lower classes of society. The greater part, for the sake of convenience, lived in the lanes nearest to the Parliament House—such as the Advocate’s Close, Writer’s Court, Lady Stair’s Close, the West Bow, the Back Stairs, the President’s Stairs in the Parliament Close, and the tenements around the Mealmarket. In these dense and insalubrious obscurities they possessed what were then the best houses in Edinburgh, and which were considered as such till the erection of Brown’s Square and the contiguous suburbs, about the beginning of the last king’s reign, when the lawyers were found the first to remove to better and more extensive accommodations, being then, as now, the leading and most opulent class of Edinburgh population. This change is fully pointed out in “Redgauntlet,” where a writer to the signet is represented as removing from the Luckenbooths to Brown’s Square about the time specified—which personage, disguised under the name of Saunders Fairford, we have no doubt was designed for Sir Walter Scott’s own father, a practitioner of the same rank, who then removed from the Old Town to a house at the head of the College Wynd, in which his distinguished son, the Alan Fairford of the romance, was born and educated.

Living as they did so near the Parliament House, it was the custom of both advocates and senators to have their wigs dressed at home, and to go to court with their gowns indued, their wigs in full puff, and each with his cocked hat under his arm.[11] About nine in the morning, the various avenues to the Parliament Square used to be crowded with such figures. In particular, Mr. Crosbie was remarkable for the elegance of his figure, as, like his brethren, he emerged from the profundity of his alley into the open street. While he walked at a deliberate pace across the way, there could not be seen among all the throng a more elegant figure. He exhibited at once the dignity of the counsellor high at the bar and the gracefulness of the perfect gentleman. He frequently walked without a gown, when the fineness of his personal appearance was the more remarkable. His dress was usually a black suit, silk stockings, clear shoes, with gold or silver buckles. Sometimes the suit was of rich black velvet.

Mr. Crosbie, with all the advantages of a pleasing exterior, possessed the more solid qualifications of a vigorous intellect, a refined taste, and an eloquence that has never since been equalled at the bar. His integrity as a counsel could only be surpassed by his abilities as a pleader. In the first capacity, his acute judgment and great legal knowledge had long placed him in the highest rank. In the second, his thorough and confident acquaintance with the law of his case, his beautiful style of language, all “the pomp and circumstance” of matchless eloquence, commanded the attention of the bench in no ordinary degree; and while his talents did all that could be done in respect of moving the court, the excelling beauty of his oratory attracted immense crowds of admirers, whose sole disinterested object was to hear him.

It is recorded of him that he was one day particularly brilliant—so brilliant as even to surprise his usual audience, the imperturbable Lords themselves. What rendered the circumstance more wonderful was, that the case happened to be extremely dull, common-place and uninteresting. The secret history of the matter was to the following effect:—A facetious contemporary, and intimate friend of Mr. Crosbie, the celebrated Lord Gardenstone, in the course of a walk from Morningside, where he resided, fell into conversation with a farmer, who was going to Edinburgh in order to hear his cause pled that forenoon by Mr. Crosbie. The senator, who was a very homely and rather eccentric personage, on being made acquainted with the man’s business, directed him to procure a dozen or two farthings at a snuff-shop in the Grassmarket—to wrap them separately up in white paper, under the disguise of guineas—and to present them to his counsel as fees, when occasion served. The case was called: Mr. Crosbie rose; but his heart not happening to be particularly engaged, he did not by any means exert the utmost of his powers. The treacherous client, however, kept close behind his back, and ever and anon, as he perceived Mr. C. bringing his voice to a cadence, for the purpose of closing the argument, slipped the other farthing into his hand. The repeated application of this silent encouragement so far stimulated the advocate, that, in the end, he became truly eloquent—strained every nerve of his soul in grateful zeal for the interests of so good a client—and, precisely at the fourteenth farthing, gained the cause. The denouement of the conspiracy took place immediately after, in John’s Coffee-house, over a bottle of wine, with which Mr. Crosbie treated Lord Gardenstone from the profits of his pleading; and the surprise and mortification of the barrister, when, on putting his hand into his pocket in order to pay the reckoning, he discovered the real extent of his fee, can only be imagined.

Within the last forty years, a curious custom prevailed among the gentlemen of the long robe in Edinburgh—a custom which, however little it might be thought of then, would certainly make nine modern advocates out of ten shudder at every curl just to think of it. This was the practice of doing all their business, except what required to be done in the court, in taverns and coffee-houses. Plunged in these subterranean haunts, the great lawyers of the day were to be found, surrounded with their myrmidons, throughout the whole afternoon and evening of the day. It was next to impossible to find a lawyer at his own abode, and, indeed, such a thing was never thought of. The whole matter was to find out his tavern, which the cadies upon the street—those men of universal knowledge—could always tell, and then seek the oracle in his own proper hell, as Æneas sought the sibyl. At that time a Directory was seldom applied to; and even though a stranger could have consulted the celebrated Peter Williamson’s (supposing it then to have been published), he might, perhaps, by dint of research, have found out where Lucky Robertson lived, who, in the simple words of that intelligencer, “sold the best twopenny;” or he might have been accommodated, more to his satisfaction, with the information of who, through all the city, “sett lodgings” and “kept rooms for single men;” but he would have found the Directory of little use to him in pointing out where he might meet a legal friend. The cadies, who, at that time, wont to be completely au fait with every hole and bore in the town, were the only directories to whom a client from the country, such as Colonel Mannering or Dandie Dinmont, could in such a case apply.

The peculiar haunt of Mr. Crosbie was Douglas’s tavern in the Anchor Close, then a respectable and flourishing house, now deserted and shut up. Here many revelries, similar to those described in the novel, took place; and here the game of High Jinks was played by a party of convivial lawyers every Saturday night. The situation of the house resembles that of Clerihugh, described in “Guy Mannering,” being the second floor down a steep close, upon the north side of the High Street. Here a club, called the Crochallan Corps, of which Robert Burns was a member when in Edinburgh, assembled periodically, and held bacchanalian orgies, famous for their fierceness and duration.

There was also a tavern in Writer’s Court, kept by a real person, named Clerihugh, the peculiarities of which do not resemble those ascribed to the tavern of the novel, nearly so much as do those of Douglas’s. Clerihugh’s was, however, a respectable house. There the magistrates of the city always gave their civic dinners, and, what may perhaps endear it more in our recollections, it was once the favourite resort of a Boswell, a Gardenstone, and a Home. We may suppose that such a house as Douglas’s gave the idea of the tavern described by our author, while Clerihugh being a more striking name, and better adapted for his purpose, he adopted it in preference to the real one.

The custom of doing all business in taverns gave that generation of lawyers a very dissipated habit, and to it we are to attribute the ruin of Mr. Crosbie. That gentleman being held in universal esteem and admiration, his company was much sought after; and, while his celibacy gave every opportunity that could be desired, his own disposition to social enjoyments tended to confirm the evil. An anecdote is told of him, which displays in a striking manner the extent to which he was wont to go in his debaucheries. He had been engaged to plead a cause, and had partially studied the pros and cons of the case, after which he set off and plunged headlong into those convivialities with which he usually closed the evening. His debauch was a fierce one, and he did not get home till within an hour of the time when the court was to open. It was then too late for sleep, and all other efforts to cool the effervescence of his spirits, by applying wet cloths to his temples, etc., were vain; so that when the case was called, reason had scarcely reassumed her deserted throne. Nevertheless, he opened up with his usually brilliancy, and soon got warm into the argument; but not far did he get leave to proceed with his speech, when the agent came up behind, with horror and alarm in his face, pulled him by the gown, and whispered into his ear, “What the deevil! Mr. Crosbie! ye’ll ruin a’! ye’re on the wrang side; the very Lords are winking at it; and the client is gi’en’ a’ up for lost.” The crapulous barrister gave a single glance at the exordia of his papers, and instantly comprehended his mistake. However, not at all abashed, he rose again, and “Such my lords,” says he, “are probably the weak and intemperate arguments of the defender, concerning which, as I have endeavoured to state them, you can only entertain one opinion, namely, that they are utterly false, groundless, and absurd.” He then turned to upon the right side of the question, pulled to pieces all that he had said before, and represented the case in an entirely different light; and so much and so earnestly did he exert himself in order to repair his error, that he actually gained the cause.

Some allusion is made to Mr. Crosbie’s propensity to wine, in a birthday ode, written in his honour by his friend, Mr. Maclaurin (afterwards Lord Dreghorn), and set to music by the celebrated Earl of Kelly. We there learn that, at his birth, Venus, Bacchus, and Astrea, came and contended for the possession of his future affections, and that Jove gave a decision to this effect:—

It was indeed his favourite dose, and proved at last a fatal one. But, before we relate the history of his end, it will be necessary to notice a few particulars respecting his life.

Towards the conclusion of the American war, when Edinburgh raised a defensive band, and offered its services to government, Mr. Crosbie interested himself very much in the patriotic scheme, and was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the regiment. About the same period, he also interested himself very deeply in a business of a different description, namely, the institution of the Scottish Antiquarian Society, which was first projected by the Earl of Buchan. Mr. Crosbie was one of the original members, and had the honour to be appointed a censor. Honourable mention is made of him in his friend Boswell’s Tour to the Hebrides, being one of the northern literati who were introduced to Dr. Johnson when he passed through Edinburgh. In the life of Johnson, also, it will be found that the barrister visited the great lexicographer in London, shortly after the Doctor had returned from his northern excursion. The conversations which took place on both these occasions are curious, but not sufficiently interesting to be extracted into this work.

In the course of a long successful practice, the original of Pleydell acquired some wealth; and, at the time when the New Town of Edinburgh began to be built, with an enthusiasm prevalent at the period, he conceived the best way of laying out his money to be in the erection of houses in that noble and prosperous extension of the city. He therefore spent all he had, and ran himself into considerable debt, in raising a structure which was to surpass all the edifices yet erected, for making the design of which he employed that celebrated architect, Mr. James Craig, the nephew of Mr. Thomson, who planned the New Town on its projection in 1767. The house which Mr. Crosbie erected was to the north of the splendid mansion built by Sir Lawrence Dundas, which subsequent times have seen converted into an excise-office; and as the beauty of Mr. C.’s house was in a great measure subservient to the decoration of Sir Lawrence’s, that gentleman, with his accustomed liberality, made his tasteful neighbour a present of five hundred pounds. Yet this bonus proved, after all, but an insufficient compensation for the expense which Mr. Crosbie had incurred in his sumptuous speculation; and the unfortunate barrister, who, by his taste, had attracted the wonder and envy of all ranks, was thought to have made himself a considerable loser in the end. While it was yet unfinished, he removed from Allan’s Close, and, establishing himself in one of its corners, realized Knickerbocker’s fable of the snail in the lobster’s shell. He lived in it for some time, in a style of extravagance appropriate to the splendour of his mansion; till, becoming embarrassed by his numerous debts, and beginning to feel the effects of other imprudencies, he was at last obliged to resort to Allan’s Close, and take up with his old abode and his diminished fortunes. About this period his constitution appeared much injured by his habits of life, and he was of course unable to attend to business with his former alacrity. An incipient passion for dogs, horses, and cocks, was another strong symptom of decay. To crown all, he made a low marriage with a woman who had formerly been his menial, and (some said) his mistress; and as this tended very much to take away the esteem of the world, his practice began to forsake, and his friends to neglect him.

It was particularly unfortunate that, about this time, he lost the habit of frequenting one particular tavern, as he had been accustomed to do in his earlier and better years. The irregularity consequent upon visiting four or five of a night, in which he drank liquors of different sorts and qualities, was sufficient to produce the worst effects. Had he always steadily adhered to Clerihugh’s or Douglas’s, he might have been equally fortunate with many of his companions, who had frequented particular taverns, through several generations of possessors, seldom missing a night’s attendance, during the course of fifty years, from ill health or any other cause.

It is a melancholy task to relate the end of Mr. Crosbie. From one depth he floundered down to another, every step in his conduct tending towards a climax of ruin. Infatuation and despair led him on, disrespect and degradation followed him. When he had reached what might be called the goal of his fate, he found himself deserted by all whom he had ever loved or cherished, and almost destitute of a single attendant to administer to him the necessaries of life. Bound by weakness and disease to an uneasy pallet, in the garret of his former mansion, he lingered out the last weeks of life in pain, want, and sickness. So completely was he forsaken by every friend, that not one was by at the last scene to close his eyes or carry him to the grave. Though almost incredible, it is absolutely true, that he was buried by a few unconcerned strangers, gathered from the street; and this happened in the very spot where he had been known all his life, in the immediate neighbourhood of hundreds who had known, loved, and admired him for many years. He died on the 25th of February, 1785.

Mr. Crosbie’s clerk was a person named Robert H——, whose character and propensities agreed singularly well with those of Mr. Pleydell’s dependant, Driver. He was himself a practitioner before the courts, of the meaner description, and is remembered by many who were acquainted with the public characters of Edinburgh, towards the end of last century. He was frequently to be seen in the forenoon, scouring the closes of the High Street, or parading the Parliament Square; sometimes seizing his legal friends by the button, and dragging them about in the capacity of listeners, with an air and manner of as great importance as if he had been up to the very pen in his ear in business.

He was a pimpled, ill-shaven, smart-speaking, clever-looking fellow, usually dressed in grey under-garments, an old hat nearly brushed to death, and a black coat, of a fashion at least in the seventh year of its age, scrupulously buttoned up to his chin. It was in his latter and more unfortunate years that he had become thus slovenly. A legal gentleman, who gives us information concerning him, recollects when he was nearly the greatest fop in Edinburgh—being powdered in the highest style of fashion, wearing two gold watches, and having the collar of his coat adorned with a beautiful loop of the same metal. After losing the protection of Mr. Crosbie, he had fallen out of all regular means of livelihood; and unfortunately acquiring an uncontrollable propensity for social enjoyments, like the ill-fated Robert Fergusson, with whom he had been intimately acquainted, he became quite unsettled—sometimes did not change his apparel for weeks—sat night and day in particular taverns—and, in short, realized what Pleydell asserted of Driver, that “sheer ale supported him under everything; was meat, drink, and cloth—bed, board, and washing.” In his earlier years he had been very regular in his irregularities, and was a “complete fixture” at John Baxter’s tavern, in Craig’s Close, High Street, where he was the Falstaff of a convivial society, termed the “Eastcheap Club.” But his dignity of conduct becoming gradually dissipated and relaxed, and there being also, perhaps, many a landlady who might have said with Dame Quickly, “I warrant you he’s an infinite thing upon my score,” he had become unfortunately migrative and unsteady in his taproom affections. One night he would get drunk at the sign of the Sautwife, in the Abbeyhill, and next morning be found tipping off a corrective dram at a porter-house in Rose Street. Sometimes, after having made a midnight tumble into “the Finish” in the Covenant Close, he would, by next afternoon, have found his way (the Lord and the policeman only knew how) to a pie-office in the Castlehill. It was absolutely true that he could write his papers as well drunk as sober, asleep as awake; and the anecdote which the facetious Pleydell narrated to Colonel Mannering, in confirmation of this miraculous faculty, is also, we are able to inform the reader, strictly consistent in truth with an incident of real occurrence.

Poor H—— was one of those happy, thoughtless, and imprudent mortals, whose idea of existence lies all in to-day, or to-morrow at farthest,—whose whole life is only a series of random exertions and chance efforts at subsistence—a sort of constant Maroon war with starvation. His life had been altogether passed in Edinburgh. All he knew, besides his professional lore, was of Edinburgh; but then he knew all of that. There did not exist a tavern in the capital of which he could not have winked you the characters of both the waiters and the beefsteaks at a moment’s notice. He was at once the annalist of the history, the mobs, the manners, and the jokes of Edinburgh—a human phial, containing its whole essential spirit, corked with wit and labelled with pimples.

H—— was a man rich in all sorts of humour and fine sayings. His conversation was dangerously delightful. Had he not unhappily fallen into debauched habits, he possessed abilities that might have entitled him to the most enviable situations about the Court; but, from the nature of his peculiar habits, his wit was the only faculty he ever displayed in its full extent—pity it was the only one that could not be exerted for his own benefit! To have seen him set down “for a night of it” in Lucky F——’s, with a few cronies as drowthie as himself, and his Shadow (a person who shall hereafter be brought to light), was in itself a most exquisite treat. By the time that the injunction of “another half-mutchkin, mistress,” had been six times repeated, his lips, his eyes, and his nose, spoke, looked, and burned wit—pure wit! “He could not ope his mouth, but out there flew a trope.” The very sound of his voice was in itself a waggery; the twinkle of his eye might have toppled a whole theatre over into convulsions. He could not even spit but he was suspected of a witticism, and received the congratulation of a roar accordingly. Nay, at the height of such a tide as this, he would sometimes get the credit of Butler himself for an accidental scratch of his head.

His practice as a writer (for so he is styled in Peter Williamson’s Directory) lay chiefly among the very dregs of desperation and poverty, and was withal of such a nature as to afford him the humblest means of subsistence. Being naturally damned, as he himself used to say, with the utmost goodness of heart, he never hesitated at taking any poverty-struck case by the hand that could hold forth the slightest hope of success, and was perfectly incapable of resisting any appeal to his sense of justice, if made in forma pauperis. The greater part of his clients were poor debtors in the Heart of Midlothian, and he was most frequently employed in cases of cessio, for the accomplishment of which he was, from long practice, peculiarly qualified. He had himself a sort of instinctive hatred of the name of creditor, and would have been at any time perfectly willing to fight gratis upon the debtor’s side out of pure amateurship. His idle and debauched habits, also, laid him constantly open to the company of the lowest litigants, who purchased his advice or his opinion, and, in some cases, even his services as an agent, for the paltriest considerations in the shape of liquor; and, unfortunately, he did not possess sufficient resolution to withstand such temptations—his propensity for social enjoyments, which latterly became quite ungovernable, disposing him to make the greatest sacrifices for its gratification.

Yet this man, wretched as he eventually was, possessed a perfect knowledge of the law of Scotland, besides a great degree of professional cleverness; and, what with his experience under Mr. Crosbie, and his having been so long a hanger-on of the Court, was considered one of the best agents that could be employed in almost any class of cases. It is thought by many of his survivors that, if his talents had been backed by steadiness of application, he might have attained to very considerable eminence. At least, it has been observed, that many of his contemporaries, who had not half of his abilities, by means of better conduct and greater perseverence, have risen to enviable distinction. Mr. Crosbie always put great reliance in him, and sometimes intrusted him with important business; and H—— has even been seen to destroy a paper of Mr. Crosbie’s writing, and draw up a better himself, without incurring the displeasure which such an act of disrespect seemed to deserve. The highest compliment, however, that could be paid to Mr. H——’s abilities, was the saying of an old man, named Nicol,[12] a native of that litigious kingdom, Fife, who, for a long course of years, pestered the Court, in forma pauperis, with a process about a dunghill, and who at length died in Cupar jail—where he had been disposed, for some small debt, by a friend, just, as was asserted, to keep him out of harm’s way. Old John used to treat H—— in Johnnie Dowie’s, and get, as he said, the law out o’ him for the matter of a dram. He declared that “he would not give H——’s drunken glour at a paper for the serious opinions of the haill bench!”

Sunday was wont to be a very precious day to H——,—far too good to be lost in idle dram-drinking at home. On Saturday nights he generally made a point of insuring stock to the amount of half-a-crown in his landlady’s hands, and proposed a tour of jollity for next morning to a few of his companions. These were, for the most part, poor devils like himself, who, with few lucid intervals of sobriety or affluence—equally destitute of industry, prudence, and care for the opinion of the world—contrive to fight, drink, and roar their way through a desperate existence, in spite of the devil, their washerwoman, and the small-debt-court—perhaps even receiving Christian burial at last like the rest of their species. With one or two such companions as these, H—— would issue of a Sunday morning through the Watergate, on an expedition to Newhaven, Duddingstone, Portobello, or some such guzzling retreat,[13]—the termination of their walk being generally determined by the consideration of where they might have the best drink, the longest credit, or where they had already least debt. Then was it most delightful to observe by what a special act of Providence they would alight upon “the last rizzer’d haddock in the house,” or “the only hundred oysters that was to be got in the town;” and how gloriously they would bouse away their money, their credit, and their senses, till, finally, after uttering, for the thousand and first time, all their standard Parliament-House jokes—after quarrelling with the landlord, and flattering the more susceptible landlady up to the sticking-place of “a last gill,”—they would reel away home, in full enjoyment of that glory which, according to Robert Burns, is superior to the glory of even kings!

Nevertheless, H—— was not utterly given up to Sunday debauches, nor was he destitute of a sense of religion. He made a point of always going to church on rainy Sundays—that is to say, when his neckcloth happened to be in its honey-moon, and the button-moulds of his vestments did not chance to be beyond their first phase. He was not, therefore, very consistent in his devotional sentiments and observances; for the weather shared with his tailor the credit of determining him in all such matters. He was like Berwick smacks of old, which only sailed, “wind and weather permitting.” When, however, the day was favourably bad, he would proceed to the High Church of St. Giles (where, excepting on days of General Assembly, there are usually enow of empty seats for an army), and, on observing that the Lords of Session had not chosen to hold any sederunt that day, he would pop into their pew. In this conspicuous seat, which he perhaps considered a sort of common property of the College of Justice, he would look wonderfully at his ease, with one threadbare arm lolling carelessly over the velvet-cushioned gallery, while in the other hand he held his mother’s old black pocket Bible—a relic which he had contrived to preserve for an incredible number of years, through a thousand miraculous escapades from lodgings where he was insolvent, in memory of a venerable relation, whom he had never forgot, though oblivious of every other earthly regard besides.

Mr. H——’s Shadow, whom we mentioned a few pages back, however unsubstantial he may seem from his sobriquet, was a real person, and more properly entitled Mr. Nimmo. He had long been a dependant of H——’s, whence he derived this strange designation. Little more than the shadow of a recollection of him remains as materiel for description. He bore somewhat of the same relation to his principal which Silence bears to Shallow, in Henry IV.,—that is, he was an exaggerated specimen of the same species, and exhibited the peculiarities of H——’s habits and character in a more advanced stage. He was a prospective indication of what H—— was to become. H——, like Mr. Thomas Campbell’s “coming events,” cast his “shadow before;” and Nimmo was this shadow. When H—— got new clothes, Nimmo got the exuviæ or cast-off garments, which he wore on and on, as long as his principal continued without a new supply. Therefore, when H—— became shabby, Nimmo was threadbare; when H—— became threadbare, Nimmo was almost denuded; and when H—— became almost denuded, Nimmo was quite naked! Thus, also, when H——, after a successful course of practice, got florid and in good case, Nimmo followed and exhibited a little colour upon the wonted pale of his cheeks; when H—— began to fade, Nimmo withered before him; by the time H—— was looking thin, Nimmo was thin indeed; and when H—— was attenuated and sickly, poor Nimmo was as slender and airy as a moonbeam. Nimmo was in all things beyond, before, ahead of H——. If H—— was elevated, Nimmo was tipsy; if H—— was tipsy, Nimmo was fou; if H—— was fou, Nimmo was dead-drunk; and if H—— persevered and got dead-drunk also, Nimmo was sure still to be beyond him, and was perhaps packed up and laid to sleep underneath his principal’s chair. Nimmo, as it were, cleared the way for H——’s progress towards destruction—was his pioneer, his vidette, his harbinger, his avant-courier—the aurora of his rising, the twilight of his decline.

Nimmo naturally, and to speak of him without relation to the person of whom he was part and parcel, was altogether so inarticulate, so empty, so meagre, so inane a being, that he could scarcely be reckoned more than a mere thread of the vesture of humanity—a whisper of Nature’s voice. Nobody knew where he lived at night: he seemed then to disappear from the face of the earth, just as other shadows disappear on the abstraction of the light which casts them. He was quite a casual being—appeared by chance, spoke by chance, seemed even to exist only by chance, as a mere occasional exhalation of chaos, and at last evaporated from the world to sleep with the shadows of death,—all by chance. To have seen him, one would have thought it by no means impossible for him to dissolve himself and go into a phial, like Asmodeus in the laboratory at Madrid. His figure was in fact a libel on the human form divine. It was perfectly unimaginable what he would have been like in puris naturalibus, had the wind suddenly blown him out of his clothes some day—an accident of which he seemed in constant danger. It is related of him, that he was once mistaken, when found dead-drunk in a gutter, on the morning after a king’s birth-day, for the defunct corpse of Johnnie Wilkes,[14] which had been so loyally kicked about the streets by the mob on the preceding evening; but, on a scavenger proceeding to sweep him down the channel, he presently sunk from the exalted character imputed to him, by rousing himself, and calling lustily, “Another bottle—just another bottle, and then we’ll go!” upon which the deceived officer of police left him to the management of the stream.

Besides serving Mr. H—— in the character of clerk or amanuensis, he used to dangle at his elbow on all occasions, swear religiously to all his charges, and show the way in laughing at all his jokes. He was so clever in the use of his pen in transcription, that his hand could travel over a sheet at the rate of eleven knots an hour, and this whether drunk or sober, asleep or awake. Death itself could scarcely have chilled his energies, and it was one of his favourite jokes, in vaunting of the latter miraculous faculty, to declare that he intended to delay writing his will till after his decease, when he would guide himself in the disposal of his legacies by the behaviour of his relations. We do not question his abilities for such a task; but one might have had a pretty good guess, from Nimmo’s appearance, that he would scarcely ever find occasion, either before or after death, to exercise them.

These sketches, from the quaint flippancy of their style, may be suspected of fancifulness and exaggeration; yet certain it is, that out of the ten thousand persons said to be employed in this legal metropolis in the solicitation, distribution, and execution of justice, many individuals may even yet be found, in whom it would be possible to trace the lineaments we have described. Such persons as H—— and Nimmo dangle at the elbows of The Law, and can no more be said to belong to its proper body than so many rats in a castle appertain to the garrison.

H—— continued in the course of life which we have attempted to describe till the year 1808, when his constitution became so shattered, that he was in a great measure unfitted for business or for intercourse with society. Towards the end of his life, his habits had become still more irregular than before, and he seemed to hasten faster and faster as he went on to destruction, like the meteor, whose motion across the sky seems to increase in rapidity the moment before extinction. After the incontestable character of the greatest wit and the utmost cleverness had been awarded to him,—after he had spent so much money and constitution in endeavouring to render his companions happy, that some of them, more grateful or more drunken than the rest, actually confessed him to be “a devilish good-natured foolish sort of fellow,”—after he had, like certain Scottish poets, almost drunk himself into the character of a genius,—it came to pass that—he died. A mere pot-house reveller like him is no more missed in the world of life than a sparrow or a bishop. There was no one to sorrow for his loss—no one to regret his absence—save those whose friendship is worse than indifference. It never was very distinctly known how or where he died. It was alone recorded of him, as of the antediluvian patriarchs, that he died. As his life had become of no importance, so his death produced little remark and less sorrow. On the announcement of the event to a party of his old drinking friends, who, of course, were all decently surprised, etc., one of them in the midst of the Is it possibles? Not-possibles! and Can it be possibles? incidental to the occasion, summed up his elegy, by trivially exclaiming, “Lord! is Rab dead at last! Weel, that’s strange indeed!—not a week since I drank six half-mutchkins wi’ him down at Amos’s! Ah! he was a good bitch! (Then raising his voice) Bring us in a biscuit wi’ the next gill, mistress! Rab was ay fond o’ bakes!” And they ate a biscuit to his memory!

It is somewhat remarkable that the deaths of Crosbie and H—— should have been produced by causes and attended by circumstances nearly the same, though a period of full twenty years had intervened between the events. Both were men of great learning and abilities,—they were drawn down from the height in which their talents entitled them to shine by the same unfortunate propensities,—and while, in their latter days, both experienced the reverse of fortune invariably attendant upon imprudence, they at length left the scene of their notoriety, equally despised, deserted, and miserable.

Both cases are well calculated to illustrate the lesson so strenuously inculcated by Johnson,—that to have friends we must first be virtuous, as there is no friendship among the profligate.

Mr. Crosbie’s death presents the more trite moral of the two—for in it we see little more than the world forsaking an unfortunate man, as crowds fly from the falling temple, to avoid being crushed in the ruins. But the moral of Mr. H——’s death is striking and valuable. In him we see a man of the brightest genius gradually losing that self-respect, so necessary, even when it amounts to pride, for the cultivation and proper enjoyment of superior mental powers,—becoming in time unsettled in his habits, and careless of public estimation,—losing the attachment of friends of his own rank, and compensating the loss by mixing with associates of the lowest order:—next, become incapable of business, we see him dejected and forlorn as poverty itself, by turns assuming every colour and every aspect of which the human countenance and figure is susceptible, till the whole was worn down to a degree of indiscriminate ruin—the ne plus ultra of change:—at length, when every vulgar mode of enjoyment had been exhausted, and when even the fiercest stimulants had grown insipid, we see him lost at once to sensibility and to sensation, encountering the last evils of mortality in wretchedness and obscurity, unpitied by the very persons for whom he had sacrificed so much, and leaving a name for which he expected to acquire the fame of either talent or misfortune,

(Dandie Dinmont.)

Perhaps the Author of “Waverley” has nowhere so completely given the effect of reality to his portraiture as in the case of honest Dandie Dinmont, the renowned yeoman of Charlieshope. This personage seems to be quite familiar to his mind, present to his eye, domesticated in the chambers of his fancy. The minutest motions of the farmer’s body, and the most trivial workings of his mind, are alike bright in his eye; and so faithful a representation has been produced, that one might almost think the author had taken his sketch by some species of mental camera obscura, which brought the figure beneath his pencil in all its native colours and proportions.

It is impossible to point out any individual of real life as the original of this happy production. It appears to be entirely generic—that is to say, the whole class of Liddisdale farmers is here represented, and little more than a single thread is taken from any single person to form the web of the character. Three various persons have been popularly mentioned as furnishing the author with his most distinguished traits, each of whom have their followers and believers among the country people. It will perhaps be possible to prove that Dandie Dinmont is a sort of compound of all three, the ingredients being leavened and wrought up with the general characteristic qualities of the “Lads of Liddisdale.”

Mr. Archibald Park, late of Lewinshope, near Selkirk, brother of the celebrated Mungo Park, was the person always most strongly insisted on as being the original of Dandie. He was a man of prodigious strength, in stature upwards of six feet, and every member of his body was in perfect accordance with his great height. He completely realized the most extravagant ideas that the poets of his country formerly entertained of the stalwart borderers; and his achievements “by flood and field,” in the violent exercises and sports of his profession, came fully up to those of the most distinguished heroes of border song. He had all the careless humour and boisterous hospitality of the Liddisdale farmer. On the appearance of the novel, his neighbours at once put him down as the Dandie Dinmont of real life, and he was generally addressed by the name of his supposed archetype by his familiar associates, so long as he remained in that part of the country, which, however, was not long. His circumstances requiring him to relinquish his farm, he obtained, by the interest of some friends, the situation of collector of customs at Tobermory, to which place he removed in 1815. Soon after he had settled there, he was attacked by a paralytic affection, from which he never thoroughly recovered, and he died in 1821, aged about fifty years.

Mr. John Thorburn, of Juniper Bank, the person whom we consider to have stood in the next degree of relationship to Dinmont, was a humorous good-natured farmer, very fond of hunting and fishing, and a most agreeable companion over a bottle. He was truly an unsophisticated worthy man. Many amusing anecdotes are told of him in the south, and numerous scenes have been witnessed in his hospitable mansion, akin to that described in the novel as taking place upon the return of Dandie from “Stagshawbank fair.” The interior economy of Juniper Bank is said to have more nearly resembled Charlieshope than did that of Lewinshope, the residence of Mr. Park. Indeed the latter bore no similarity whatever to Charlieshope, excepting in the hospitality of the master and the Christian name of the mistress of the house. Mr. Park, like his fictitious counterpart, was one of the most generous and hearty landlords alive; and his wife, who was a woman of highly respectable connections, bore, like Mrs. Dinmont, the familiar abbreviated name of Ailie.

Thorburn, like Dandie, was once before the feifteen. The celebrated Mr. Jeffrey being retained in his cause, Thorburn went into Court to hear his pleading. He was delighted with the talents and oratory of his advocate; and, on coming out, observed to his friends, “Od, he’s an awfu’ body yon; he said things that I never could hae thought o’ mysel’.”

Mr. James Davidson, of Hindlee, another honest south-country farmer, was pointed out as the prototype of Dandie Dinmont. This gentleman used to breed numerous families of terriers, to which he gave the names of Pepper and Mustard, in all their varieties of Auld and Young, Big and Little; and it was this community of designation in the dogs of the two personages, rather than any particular similarity in the manners or characters of themselves, that gave credit to the conjecture of Mr. Davidson’s friends.[16]

It will appear, from these notices, that no individual has sat for the portrait of Dinmont, but that it has been painted from indiscriminate recollections of various border store-farmers. We cannot do better than conclude with the words of the author himself, when introducing this subject to the reader:—“The present store-farmers of the south of Scotland are a much more refined race than their fathers, and the manners I am now to describe have either altogether disappeared or are greatly modified. Without losing their rural simplicity of manners, they now cultivate arts unknown to the former generation, not only in the progressive improvement of their possessions, but in all the comforts of life. Their houses are more commodious, their habits of life better regulated, so as better to keep pace with those of the civilized world; and the best of luxuries, the luxury of knowledge, has gained much ground among the hills during the last thirty years. Deep drinking, formerly their greatest failing, is now fast losing ground; and while the frankness of their extensive hospitality continues the same, it is, generally speaking, refined in its character, and restrained in its excesses.”

(Dominie Sampson.)

There are few of our originals in whom we can exhibit such precise points of coincident resemblance between the real and fictitious character, as in him whom we now assign as the prototype of Dominie Sampson. The person of real existence also possesses the singular recommendation of presenting more dignified and admirable characteristics, in their plain unvarnished detail, than the ridiculous caricature produced in “Guy Mannering,” though it be drawn by an author whose elegant imagination has often exalted, but seldom debased, the materials to which he has condescended to be indebted.

Mr. James Sanson was the son of James Sanson, tacksman of Birkhillside Mill, situate in the parish of Legerwood, in Berwickshire. After getting the rudiments of his education at a country-school, he went to the University of Edinburgh, and, at a subsequent period, completed his probationary studies at that of Glasgow. At these colleges he made great proficiency in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages, and became deeply immersed in the depths of philosophy and theology, of which, as with Dominie Sampson, the more abstruse and neglected branches were his favourite subjects of application. He was a close, incessant student; and, in the families where he afterwards resided as a tutor, all his leisure moments were devoted to the pursuits of literature. Even his hours of relaxation and walking were not exempted, in the exceeding earnestness of his solicitude. Then he was seldom seen without a book, upon which he would be so intent, that a friend might have passed, and even spoken to him, without Sanson’s being conscious of the circumstance. After going through his probationary trials before the presbytery, he became an acceptable, even an admired preacher, and was frequently employed in assisting the clergymen of the neighbourhood.

From the narrow circumstances of his father, he was obliged early in life to become a tutor. Into whose family he first entered is unknown. However, in this humble situation, owing probably to the parsimonious economy to which he had been accustomed in his father’s house, he in a short time saved the sum of twenty-five pounds—a little fortune in those days to a youth of Mr. Sanson’s habits.

With this money he determined upon a pedestrian excursion into England, for which he was excellently qualified, from his uncommon strength and undaunted resolution. After journeying over a great part of the sister kingdom, he came to Harwich, where a sight of the passage-boats to Holland, and the cheapness of the fare, induced him to take a trip to the continent. How he was supported during his peregrinations was never certainly discovered; but he actually travelled over the greater part of the Netherlands, besides a considerable portion of Germany, and spent only about the third part of his twenty-five pounds. He always kept a profound silence upon the subject himself; but it is conjectured, with great probability, that in the Low Countries he had recourse to convents, were the monks were ever ready to do acts of kindness to men of such learning as Sanson would appear to them to be. Perhaps he procured the means of subsistence by the expedients which the celebrated Goldsmith is said to have practised in his continental wanderings, and made the disputation of the morning supply the dinner of the day.

After his return from the continent, about 1784, he entered the family of the Rev. Laurence Johnson of Earlston, where he continued some time, partly employed in the education of his children, and giving occasional assistance in his public ministerial duty. From this situation he removed to the house of Mr. Thomas Scott, uncle of the celebrated Sir Walter, whose family then resided at Ellieston, in the county of Roxburgh. While superintending this gentleman’s children, he was appointed to a higher duty—the charge of Carlenridge Chapel, in the parish of Hawick, which he performed regularly every Sunday, at the same time that he attended the education of the family through the week. We may safely conjecture that it was at this particular period of his life he first was honoured with the title of Dominie Sanson.

He was next employed by the Earl of Hopetoun, as chaplain to that nobleman’s tenants at Leadhills, where, with an admirable but unfortunate tenaciousness of duty, he patiently continued to exercise his honourable calling, to the irreparable destruction of his own health. The atmosphere being tainted with the natural effluvia of the noxious mineral which was the staple production of the place, though incapable of influencing the health of those who had been accustomed to it from their infancy, had soon a fatal effect upon the life of poor Sanson. The first calamitous consequence that befel him was the loss of his teeth; next he became totally blind; and, last of all, to complete the sacrifice, the insalubrious air extinguished the principle of life. Thus did this worthy man, though conscious of the fate that awaited him, choose rather to encounter the last enemy of our nature, than relinquish what he considered a sacred duty. Strange that one, whose conduct through life was every way so worthy of the esteem and gratitude of mankind—whose death would not have disgraced the devotion of a primitive martyr—should by means of a few less dignified peculiarities, have eventually conferred the character of perfection on a work of humour, and, in a caricatured exhibition, supplied attractions, nearly unparalleled, to innumerable theatres!

Mr. James Sanson was of the greatest stature—near six feet high, and otherwise proportionately enormous. His person was coarse, his limbs large, and his manners awkward; so that, while people admired the simplicity and innocence of his character, they could not help smiling at the clumsiness of his motions and the rudeness of his address. His soul was pure and untainted—the seat of many manly and amiable virtues. He was ever faithful in his duty, both as a preacher and a tutor, warmly attached to the interests of the family in which he resided, and gentle in the instruction of his pupils. As a preacher, though his manner in his public exhibitions, no less than in private society, was not in his favour, he was well received by every class of hearers. His discourses were the well-digested productions of a laborious mind; and his sentiments seldom failed to be expressed with the utmost beauty and elegance of diction.

(Meg Merrilies.)

The original of this character has been already pointed out and described in various publications. A desire of presenting, in this work, as much original matter as possible, will induce us to be very brief in our notice of Jean Gordon.

It is impossible to specify the exact date of her nativity, though it probably was about the year 1670. She was born at Kirk-Yetholm, in Roxburghshire, the metropolis of the Scottish Gipsies, and was married to a Gipsy chief, named Patrick Faa, by whom she had ten or twelve children.

In the year 1714, one of Jean’s sons, named Alexander Faa, was murdered by another Gipsy, named Robert Johnston, who escaped the pursuit of justice for nearly ten years, but was then taken and indicted by his Majesty’s Advocate for the crime. He was sentenced to be executed, but escaped from prison. It was easier, however, to escape the grasp of justice than to elude the wide spread talons of Gipsy vengeance. Jean Gordon traced the murderer like a blood-hound, followed him to Holland, and from thence to Ireland, where she had him seized, and brought him back to Jedburgh. Here she obtained the full reward of her toils, by having the satisfaction of seeing him hanged on Gallowhill. Some time afterwards, Jean being at Sourhope, a sheep-farm on Bowmont-water, the goodman said to her, “Weel, Jean, ye hae got Rob Johnston hanged at last, and out o’ the way?” “Ay, gudeman,” replied Jean, lifting up her apron by the two corners, “and a’ that fu’ o’ gowd hasna done’t.” Jean Gordon’s “apron fu’ o’ gowd” may remind some of our readers of Meg Merrilies’ poke of jewels; and indeed the whole transaction forcibly recalls the stern picture of that intrepid heroine.

The circumstance in “Guy Mannering,” of Brown being indebted to Meg Merrilies for lodging and protection, when he lost his way near Derncleugh, finds a remarkably precise counterpart in an anecdote related of Jean Gordon:—A farmer with whom she had formerly been on good terms, though their acquaintance had been interrupted for several years, lost his way, and was benighted among the mountains of Cheviot. A light glimmering through the hole of a desolate barn, that had survived the farmhouse to which it once belonged, guided him to a place of shelter. He knocked at the door, and it was immediately opened by Jean Gordon. To meet with such a character in so solitary a place, and probably at no great distance from her clan, was a terrible surprise to the honest man, whose rent, to lose which would have been ruin to him, was about his person. Jean set up a shout of joyful recognition, forced the farmer to dismount, and, in the zeal of her kindness, hauled him into the barn. Great preparations were making for supper, which the gudeman of Lochside, to increase his anxiety, observed was calculated for at least a dozen of guests. Jean soon left him no doubt upon the subject, but inquired what money he had about him, and made earnest request to be made his purse-keeper for the night, as the “bairns” would soon be home. The poor farmer made a virtue of necessity, told his story, and surrendered his gold to Jean’s custody. She made him put a few shillings in his pocket, observing, it would excite suspicion, were he found travelling altogether penniless. This arrangement being made, the farmer lay down on a sort of shake-down, upon some straw, but, as will easily be believed, slept not. About midnight the gang returned with various articles of plunder, and talked over their exploits in language which made the farmer tremble. They were not long in discovering their guest, and demanded of Jean whom she had there? “E’en the winsome gudeman o’ Lochside, poor body,” replied Jean; “he’s been at Newcastle seeking for siller to pay his rent, honest man, but de’il-be-licket he’s been able to gather in, and sae he’s gaun e’en hame wi’ a toom purse and a sair heart.” “That may be, Jean,” said one of the banditti, “but we maun rip his pouches a bit, and see if it be true or no.” Jean set up her throat in exclamation against this breach of hospitality, but without producing any change in their determination. The farmer soon heard their stifled whispers and light steps by his bed-side, and understood they were rummaging his clothes. When they found the money which the providence of Jean Gordon had made him retain, they held a consultation if they should take it or no; but the smallness of the booty, and the vehemence of Jean’s remonstrances, determined them in the negative. They caroused and went to rest. So soon as day dawned, Jean roused her guest, produced his horse, which she had accommodated behind the hallan, and guided him for some miles till he was on the high-road to Lochside. She then restored his whole property, nor could his earnest entreaties prevail on her to accept so much as a single guinea.

It is related that all Jean’s sons were condemned to die at Jedburgh on the same day. It is said the jury were equally divided; but a friend to justice, who had slept during the discussion, waked suddenly, and gave his word for condemnation, in the emphatic words, “Hang them a’.” Jean was present, and only said, “The Lord help the innocent in a day like this!”

Her own death was accompanied with circumstances of brutal outrage, of which Jean was in many respects wholly undeserving. Jean had, among other merits or demerits, that of being a staunch Jacobite. She chanced to be at Carlisle upon a fair or market-day, soon after the year 1746, where she gave vent to her political partiality, to the great offence of the rabble of that city. Being zealous of their loyalty, when there was no danger, in proportion to the tameness with which they surrendered to the Highlanders in 1745, they inflicted upon poor Jean Gordon no slighter penalty than that of ducking her to death in the Eden. It was an operation of some time; for Jean Gordon was a stout woman, and, struggling hard with her murderers, often got her head above water, and while she had voice left, continued to exclaim, at such intervals, “Charlie yet! Charlie yet!”

Her propensities were exactly the same as those of the fictitious character of Meg Merrilies. She possessed the same virtue of fidelity, spoke the same language, and in appearance there was little difference; yet Madge Gordon, her grand-daughter, was said to have had the same resemblance. She was descended from the Faas by the mother’s side, and was married to a Young. She had a large aquiline nose; penetrating eyes, even in her old age; bushy hair, that hung around her shoulders from beneath a gipsy bonnet of straw; a short cloak, of a peculiar fashion; and a long staff, nearly as tall as herself. When she spoke vehemently (for she had many complaints), she used to strike her staff upon the floor, and throw herself into an attitude which it was impossible to regard with indifference.

From these traits of the manners of Jean and Madge Gordon, it may be perceived that it would be difficult to determine which of the two Meg Merrilies was intended for; it may therefore, without injustice, be divided between both. So that if Jean was the prototype of her character, it is very probable that Madge must have sat to the anonymous author of “Guy Mannering” as the representative of her person.

To the author whose duty leads him so low in the scale of nature, that the manners and the miseries of a vicious and insubordinate race, prominent in hideous circumstances of unvarnished reality, are all he is permitted to record, it must ever be gratifying to find traits of such fine enthusiasm, such devoted fidelity, as the conduct of Jean Gordon exhibits in the foregoing incidents. They stand out with a delightful and luminous effect from the gloomy canvas of guilt, atoning for its errors and brightening its darkness. To trace further, as others have done, the disgusting peculiarities of a people so abandoned to all sense of moral propriety, would only serve to destroy the effect already created by the redeeming characters of Jean Gordon and her nobler sister, and more extensively to disgrace the general respectability of human nature.

CHAPTER III. — ANDREW GEMMELS.

The Antiquary.

(Edie Ochiltree.)

ndrew Gemmels or Gemble, a wandering blue-gown of the south of Scotland, is supposed to have been the original of Edie Ochiltree. The latter, as represented in the novel, bears, it is true, a much more amiable aspect, and exhibits greater elevation of character, than the rude old soldier in whom the public has recognised his prototype. Yet, as we believe there exists a considerable degree of resemblance between them, a sketch of old Andrew, who was a very singular personage, will not prove unsatisfactory.

Andrew Gemmels was well known over all the Border districts as a wandering beggar, or gaberlunzie, for the greater part of half a century. He had been a soldier in his youth; and the entertaining stories which he told of his campaigns, and the adventures he had encountered in foreign countries, united with his shrewdness, drollery, and other agreeable qualities, rendered him a general favourite, and secured him a cordial welcome and free quarters at every shepherd’s cot or farm-steading that lay in the range of his extensive wanderings. He kept a horse in his latter days; and, so doing, set the proverb at naught. On arriving at a place of call, he usually put up his horse in some stable or outhouse, without the ceremony of asking his host’s permission, and then came into the house, where he stamped and swore till room was made for him at the fireside. Andrew was not like those degenerate modern beggars, who implore a coin as for God’s sake, and shelter themselves in the first hole they can find open to receive them,—but ordered and commanded, like the master himself, and only accepted of his alms by way of obliging his friends. He presumed even to choose his own bed, and was not pleased unless the utmost attention was shown to his comfort. He preferred sleeping in an outhouse, and, if possible, in any place where horses and cattle were kept. The reasons he might be supposed to have for such a preference are obvious. In an outhouse he was less exposed in undressing to the curious eyes of the people, who always suspected him of having treasure concealed in his clothes; and the company of the animals beneath his bed was preferable to utter solitude, and, moreover, tended to keep the premises comfortably warm. He used such art in the matters of his toilette that no person ever saw him undressed, or made any discovery prejudicial to his character of poverty.

Andrew was a tall, sturdy, old man, with a face in which the fierceness and austerity of his character strove for mastery with the expression of a shrewd and keen intellect. He was usually dressed in the blue gown or surtout described in “The Antiquary” as the habiliment of Edie Ochiltree, and his features were shaded with a broad slouched hat, which had been exchanged at an earlier period for a lowland bonnet. His feet and ankles were shod with strong iron-soled shoes and gamashins, or stocking-boots. He always carried a stout walking-staff, which was nearly as tall as himself, that is to say, not much less than six feet.

“Though free and unceremonious,[17] Andrew was never burdensome or indiscreet in his visits, returning only once or twice a year, and generally after pretty regular intervals. He evidently seemed to prosper in his calling; for, though hung around with rags of every shape and hue, he commonly possessed a good horse, and used to attend the country fairs and race-courses, where he would bet and dispute with the farmers and gentry with the most independent and resolute pertinacity. He allowed that begging had been a good trade in his time, but used to complain sadly that times were daily growing worse.[18] A person remembers seeing Gemmels travelling about on a blood-mare, with a foal after her, and a gold watch in his pocket. On one occasion, at Rutherford in Tiviotdale, he had dropped a clue of yarn, and Mr. Mather, his host, finding him searching for it, assisted in the search, and, having got hold of it, persisted, notwithstanding Andrew’s opposition, in unrolling the yarn till he came to the kernel, which, much to his surprise and amusement, he found to consist of about twenty guineas in gold.”

“My grandfather,” continues this writer, “was exceedingly fond of Andrew’s company; and, though a devout and strict Cameronian, and occasionally somewhat scandalized at his rough and irreverent style of language, was nevertheless so much attracted by his conversation, that he never failed to spend the evenings of his sojourn in listening to his entertaining narrations and ‘auld-warld stories,’ with the old shepherds, hinds, and children seated around them, beside the blazing turf ingle in ‘the farmer’s ha’.’ These conversations generally took a polemical turn, and not unfrequently ended in violent disputes—my ancestor’s hot and impatient temper blazing forth in collision with the dry and sarcastic humour of his ragged guest. Andrew was never known to yield his point on these occasions; but he usually had the address, when matters grew too serious, to give the conversation a more pleasant turn, by some droll remark or unexpected stroke of humour, which convulsed the rustic group, and the grave gudeman himself, with unfailing and irresistible merriment.”

“Many curious anecdotes of Andrew’s sarcastic wit and eccentric manners are current in the Borders. I shall for the present content myself with one specimen, illustrative of Andrew’s resemblance to his celebrated representative. The following is given as commonly related with much good humour by the late Mr. Dodds of the War Office, the person to whom it chiefly refers:—Andrew happened to be present at a fair or market somewhere in Tiviotdale (St. Boswell’s, if I mistake not), where Dodds, at that time a non-commissioned officer in his Majesty’s service, happened also to be with a military party recruiting. It was some time during the American War, when they were eagerly beating up for fresh men—to teach passive obedience to the obdurate and ill-mannered Columbians; and it was then the practice for recruiting sergeants after parading for a due space, with all the warlike pageantry of drums, trumpets, ‘glancing blades, and gay cockades,’ to declaim in heroic strains of the delights of a soldier’s life—of glory, patriotism, plunder—the prospect of promotion for the bold and the young, and his Majesty’s munificent pension for the old and the wounded, etc., etc. Dodds, who was a man of much natural talent, and whose abilities afterwards raised him to an honourable rank and independent fortune, had made one of his most brilliant speeches on this occasion. A crowd of ardent and active rustics were standing round, gaping with admiration at the imposing mien, and kindling at the heroic eloquence of the manly soldier, whom many of them had known a few years before as a rude tailor boy; the sergeant himself, already leading in idea a score of new recruits, had just concluded, in a strain of more than usual elevation, his oration in praise of the military profession, when Gemmels, who, in tattered guise, was standing close behind him, reared aloft his meal-pocks on the end of his kent or pike-staff, and exclaimed, with a tone and aspect of the most profound derision, ‘Behold the end o’t!’ The contrast was irresistible—the beau idéal of Sergeant Dodds, and the ragged reality of Andrew Gemmels, were sufficiently striking; and the former, with his red-coat followers, beat a retreat in some confusion, amidst the loud and universal laughter of the surrounding multitude.”

Andrew Gemmels was remarkable for being perhaps the best player at draughts in Scotland; and in that amusement, which, we may here observe, is remarkably well adapted for bringing out and employing the cool, calculating, and shrewd genius of the Scottish nation, he frequently spent the long winter nights. Many persons still exist who were taught the mysteries of the dambrod[19] by him, and who were accustomed to hold a serious contention with him every time he passed the night in their houses. He was the preceptor of the gudewife of Newby in Peebles-shire, the grandmother of the present narrator, whose hospitable mansion was one of his chief resorts. In teaching her, as he said, he had only “cut a stick to break his ain head”; for she soon became equally expert with himself, and in the regular set-to’s which took place between them, did not show either the deference to his master-skill, or the fear of his resentment, with which he was usually treated by more timorous competitors. He could never be brought, however, to acknowledge heartily her rival pretensions, nor would he, upon any account, come to such a trial as might have decided the palm of merit either in his favour or hers. Whenever he saw the tide of success running on her side, he got dreadfully exasperated, and ordinarily, before the stigma of defeat could be decidedly inflicted upon him, rose up, seized the brod, and threw the men into the fire,—accompanying the action with some of his most terrific and blasphemous imprecations.

The late Lord Elibank, while living at Darnhall, once ordered one of his cast-off suits to be given to Andrew—the which Andrew thankfully accepted, and then took his departure. Through the course of the same day, his lordship, in taking a ride a few miles from home, came up with Andrew, and was not a little surprised to see him dragging the clothes behind him along the road, “through dub and mire.” On being asked his reason for such strange conduct, he replied that he would have “to trail the duds that way for twa days, to mak them fit for use!”

In one circumstance Andrew coincides with his supposed archetype: Andrew had been at Fontenoy, and made frequent allusions to that disastrous field.

Andrew died in 1793, at Roxburgh-Newton, near Kelso, being, according to his own account, 105 years of age. His wealth was the means of enriching a nephew in Ayrshire, who is now a considerable landholder there, and belongs to a respectable class of society.

CHAPTER IV. — ANECDOTES OF ROBERT MACGREGOR. — PARALLEL PASSAGES.

Rob Roy.

(Rob Roy.)

We derive the following interesting narrative from Colonel Stewart’s admirable work on the Highlands.

“The father of the present Mr. Stewart of Ardvorlich knew Rob Roy intimately, and attended his funeral in 1736—the last at which a piper officiated in the Highlands of Perthshire. The late Mr. Stewart of Bohallie, Mr. M‘Nab of Inchewan, and several gentlemen of my acquaintance, also knew Rob Roy and his family. Alexander Stewart, one of his followers, afterwards enlisted in the Black Watch. He was wounded at Fontenoy, and discharged with a pension in 1748. Some time after this period he was engaged by my grandmother, then a widow, as a grieve, to direct and take charge of the farm-servants. In this situation he proved a faithful, trustworthy servant, and was by my father continued in his situation till his death. He told many anecdotes of Rob Roy and his party, among whom he was distinguished by the name of the Bailie, a title which he ever after retained. It was before him that people were sworn when it was necessary to bind them to secrecy.

“Robert Macgregor Campbell was a younger son of Donald Macgregor of Glengyle, in Perthshire, by a daughter of Campbell of Glenlyon, sister of the individual who commanded at the massacre of Glenco. He was born some time between 1657 and 1660, and married Helen Campbell, of the family of Glenfalloch. As cattle was at that period the principal marketable produce of the hills, the younger sons of gentlemen had few other means of procuring an independent subsistence than by engaging in this sort of traffic. At an early period Rob Roy was one of the most respectable and successful drovers in his district. Before the year 1707 he had purchased of the family of Montrose the lands of Craigrostane, on the banks of Lochlomond, and had relieved some heavy debts on his nephew’s estate of Glengyle. While in this prosperous state, he continued respected for his honourable dealings both in the Lowlands and Highlands. Previous to the Union no cattle had been permitted to pass the English border. As a boon or encouragement, however, to conciliate the people to that measure, a free intercourse was allowed. The Marquis of Montrose, created a Duke the same year, and one of the most zealous partisans of the Union, was the first to take advantage of this privilege, and immediately entered into partnership with Rob Roy, who was to purchase the cattle and drive them to England for sale—the Duke and he advancing an equal sum, 10,000 merks each (a large sum in those days, when the price of the best ox or cow was seldom twenty shillings); all the transactions beyond this amount to be on credit. The purchases having been completed, Macgregor then went to England; but so many people had entered into a similar speculation, that the market was completely overstocked, and the cattle sold for much less than prime cost. Macgregor returned home, and went to the Duke to settle the account of their partnership, and to pay the money advanced, with the deduction of the loss. The Duke, it is said, would consent to no deduction, but insisted on principal and interest. ‘In that case, my Lord,’ said Macgregor, ‘if these be your principles, I shall not make it my principle to pay the interest, nor my interest the principal; so if your Grace do not stand your share of the loss, you shall have no money from me.’ On this they separated. No settlement of accounts followed—the one insisting on retaining the money, unless the other would consent to bear his share of the loss. Nothing decisive was done till the rebellion of 1715, when Rob Roy ‘was out,’—his nephew Glengyle commanding a numerous body of the Macgregors, but under the control of his uncle’s superior judgment and experience. On this occasion the Duke of Montrose’s share of the cattle speculation was expended. The next year his Grace took legal means to recover his money, and got possession of the lands of Craigrostane on account of his debt. This rendered Macgregor desperate. Determined that his Grace should not enjoy his lands with impunity, he collected a band of about twenty followers, declared open war against him, and gave up his old course of regular droving—declaring that the estate of Montrose should in future supply him with cattle, and he would make the Duke rue the day in which he quarrelled with him. He kept his word, and for nearly twenty years, that is, till the day of his death, levied regular contributions on the Duke and his tenants, not by nightly depredations and robberies, but in broad day, and in a systematic manner—at an appointed time making a complete sweep of all the cattle of a district, always passing over those not belonging to the Duke’s estate, as well as the estates of his friends and adherents; and having previously given notice where he was to be by a certain day with his cattle, he was met there by people from all parts of the country, to whom he sold them publicly. These meetings, or trystes, as they were called, were held in different parts of the country; sometimes the cattle were driven south, but oftener to the north-west, where the influence of his friend the Duke of Argyll protected him.

“When the cattle were in this manner driven away, the tenants paid no rent, so that the Duke was the ultimate sufferer. But he was made to suffer in every way. The rents of the lower farms were partly paid in grain and meal, which was generally lodged in a storehouse or granary, called a girnel, near the Loch of Monteith. When Macgregor wanted a supply of meal, he sent notice to a certain number of the Duke’s tenants to meet him at the girnel on a certain day, with their horses, to carry home the meal. They met accordingly, when he ordered the horses to be loaded, and, giving a regular receipt to the Duke’s storekeeper for the quantity taken, he marched away—always entertaining the people very handsomely, and careful never to take the meal till it had been lodged in the Duke’s storehouse in payment of rent. When the money rents were paid, Macgregor frequently attended. On one occasion, when Mr. Graham of Killearn (the factor) had collected the tenants to pay their rents, all Rob Roy’s men happened to be absent except Alexander Stewart, ‘the Bailie,’ whom I have already mentioned. With his single attendant he descended to Chapellairoch, where the factor and the tenants were assembled. He reached the house after it was dark, and, looking in at the window, saw Killearn, surrounded by a number of the tenants, with a bag full of money which he had received, and was in the act of disposing in a press or cupboard, at the same time saying that he would cheerfully give all in the bag for Rob Roy’s head. This notification was not lost on the outside auditor, who instantly gave orders, in a loud voice, to place two men at each window, two at each corner, and four at each of the two doors—thus appearing to have twenty men. Immediately the door opened, and he walked in with his attendant close behind, each armed with a sword in his right hand and a pistol in his left, and with dirks and pistols slung in their belts.

“The company started up, but he requested them to sit down, as his business was only with Killearn, whom he ordered to hand down the bag and put it on the table. When this was done, he desired the money to be counted, and proper receipts to be drawn out, certifying that he had received the money from the Duke of Montrose’s agent, as the Duke’s property, the tenants having paid their rents, so that no after-demand could be made against them on account of this transaction; and finding that some of the people had not obtained receipts, he desired the factor to grant them immediately, ‘to show his Grace,’ said he, ‘that it is from him I take the money, and not from these honest men who have paid him.’ After the whole was concluded, he ordered supper, saying, that as he had got the purse, it was proper he should pay the bill; and after they had drunk heartily together for several hours, he called his Bailie to produce his dirk, and lay it naked on the table. Killearn was then sworn that he would not move, nor direct any one else to move, from that spot for an hour after the departure of Macgregor, who thus cautioned him—‘If you break your oath, you know what you are to expect in the next world—and in this,’ pointing to his dirk. He then walked away, and was beyond pursuit before the hour expired.

“At another collecting of rents by the same gentleman, Macgregor made his appearance, and carried him away, with his servant, to a small island in the west end of Loch Cathrine, and having kept him there for several days, entertaining him in the best manner, as a duke’s representative ought to be, he dismissed him, with the usual receipts and compliments to his Grace. In this manner did this extraordinary man live, in open violation and defiance of the laws, and died peaceably in his bed when nearly eighty years of age. His funeral was attended by all the country round, high and low—the Duke of Montrose and his immediate friends only excepted.

“How such things could happen, at so late a period, must appear incredible; and this, too, within thirty miles of the garrisons of Stirling and Dumbarton, and the populous city of Glasgow, and, indeed, with a small garrison stationed at Inversnaid, in the heart of the country, and on the estate which belonged to Macgregor, for the express purpose of checking his depredations. The truth is, the thing could not have happened had it not been the peculiarity of the man’s character; for, with all his lawless spoliations and unremitted acts of vengeance and robbery against the Montrose family, he had not an enemy in the country beyond the sphere of their influence. He never hurt or meddled with the property of a poor man, and, as I have stated, was always careful that his great enemy should be the principal, if not the only sufferer. Had it been otherwise, it was quite impossible that, notwithstanding all his enterprise, address, intrepidity, and vigilance, he could have long escaped in a populous country, with a warlike people, well qualified to execute any daring exploit, such as the seizure of this man, had they been his enemies, and willing to undertake it. Instead of which, he lived socially among them—that is, as social as an outlaw, always under a certain degree of alarm, could do—giving the education of gentlemen to his sons, frequenting the most populous towns, and, whether in Edinburgh, Perth, or Glasgow, equally safe, at the same time that he displayed great and masterly address in avoiding or calling for public notice.

“The instances of his address struck terror into the minds of the troops, whom he often defeated and out-generalled. One of these instances occurred in Breadalbane, in the case of an officer and forty chosen men sent after him. The party crossed through Glenfalloch to Tyndrum; and Macgregor, who had correct information of all their movements, was with a party in the immediate neighbourhood. He put himself in the disguise of a beggar, with a bag of meal on his back (in those days alms were always bestowed in produce), went to the inn at Tyndrum, where the party was quartered, walked into the kitchen with great indifference, and sat down among the soldiers. They soon found the beggar a lively sarcastic fellow, when they began to attempt some practical jokes upon him.

“He pretended to be very angry, and threatened to inform Rob Roy, who would quickly show them they were not to give with impunity such usage to a poor and harmless person. He was immediately asked if he knew Rob Roy, and if he could tell where he was? On his answering that he knew him well, and where he was, the sergeant informed the officer, who immediately sent for him.

“After some conversation, the beggar consented to accompany them to Creanlarich, a few miles distant, where he said Rob Roy and his men were, and that he believed their arms were lodged in one house, while they were sitting in another. He added that Roy was very friendly, and sometimes joked with him, and put him at the head of the table; and ‘when it is dark,’ said he, ‘I will go forward—you will follow in half an hour—and, when near the house, rush on, place your men at the back of the house, ready to seize on the arms of the Highlanders, while you shall go round with the sergeant and two men, walk in, and call out the whole are your prisoners; and don’t be surprised though you should see me at the head of the company.’ As they marched on they had to pass a rapid stream at Dabrie, a spot celebrated on account of the defeat of Robert Bruce by Macdougal of Lorn, in the year 1306. Here the soldiers asked their merry friend the beggar to carry them through on his back. This he did, sometimes taking two at a time, till he took the whole over, demanding a penny from each for his trouble. When it was dark they pushed on (the beggar having gone before), the officer following the directions of his guide, and darting into the house with the sergeant and three soldiers. They had hardly time to look to the end of the table, where they saw the beggar standing, when the door was shut behind them, and they were instantly pinioned, two men standing on each side holding pistols to their ears, and declaring that they were dead men if they uttered a word. The beggar then went out, and called in two more men, who were instantly secured, and in the same manner with the whole party. Having been disarmed, they were placed under a strong guard till morning, when he gave them a plentiful breakfast and released them on parole (the Bailie attending with his dirk, over which the officer gave his parole) to return immediately to their garrison without attempting anything more at this time. This promise Rob Roy made secure, by keeping their arms and ammunition as lawful prize of war.

“Some time after, the same officer was again sent after this noted character, probably to retrieve his former mishap. In this expedition he was more fortunate, for he took three of the freebooters prisoners in the higher parts of Breadalbane, near the scene of the former exploit—but the conclusion was nearly similar. He lost no time in proceeding in the direction of Perth, for the purpose of putting his prisoners in gaol; but Rob Roy was equally alert in pursuit. His men marched in a parallel line with the soldiers, who kept along the bottom of the valley, on the south side of Loch Tay, while the others kept close up the side of the hill, anxiously looking for an opportunity to dash down and rescue their comrades, if they saw any remissness or want of attention on the part of the soldiers. Nothing of this kind offered, and the party had passed Tay Bridge, near which they halted and slept. Macgregor now saw that something must soon be done or never, as they would speedily gain the low country, and be out of his reach. In the course of the night he procured a number of goat-skins and cords, with which he dressed himself and his party in the wildest manner possible, and, pushing forward, before daylight took post near the roadside, in a thick wood below Grandtully Castle. When the soldiers came in a line with the party in ambush, the Highlanders, with one leap, darted down upon them, uttering such yells and shouts as, along with their frightful appearance, so confounded the soldiers, that they were overpowered and disarmed without a man being hurt on either side. Rob Roy kept the arms and ammunition, released the soldiers, and marched away in triumph with his men.

“The terror of his name was much increased by exploits like these, which, perhaps, lost nothing by the telling, as the soldiers would not probably be inclined to diminish the danger and fatigues of a duty in which they were so often defeated. But it is unnecessary to repeat the stories preserved and related of this man and his actions, which were always daring and well contrived, often successful, but never directed against the poor, nor prompted by revenge, except against the Duke of Montrose, and without any instance of murder or bloodshed committed by any of his party, except in their own defence. In the war against Montrose he was supported and abetted by the Duke of Argyll, from whom he always received shelter when hard pressed; or, to use a hunting term, when he was in danger of being earthed by the troops. These two powerful families were still rivals, although Montrose had left the Tories and joined Argyll and the Whig interest. It is said that Montrose reproached Argyll in the House of Peers with protecting the robber Rob Roy; when the latter, with his usual eloquence and address, parried off the accusation (which he could not deny) by jocularly answering, that if he protected a robber, the other supported him.”

We can only add to this animated history of Rob Roy one circumstance; which, though accredited in the Highlands, has never been noticed in the popular accounts of our hero. In whatever degree his conduct was to be attributed to his own wrongs, or those of his clan, the disposition which prompted and carried him through in his daring enterprises, could be traced to the family temper of his mother, who came of the Campbells of Glenlyon—a peculiarly wild, bold, and wicked race.

The mode of escape adopted by Rob Roy in crossing the Avon-dhu, so finely described in the third volume of the novel, seems to have been suggested by the following traditionary anecdote, which is preserved in the neighbourhood of the spot where the exploit took place:—A Cameronian, in the district of Galloway, flying from two dragoons, who pursued him hotly, came to a precipice which overhung a lake. Seeing no other means of eluding his enemies, he plunged into the water, and attempted to swim to the other side. In the meantime the troopers came up, and fired at him; when he, with an astonishing presence of mind, parted with his plaid, and swam below the water to a safe part of the shore. His enemies fired repeatedly at the plaid, till they supposed him slain or sunk, and then retired.

A resemblance will be discovered between the following passages—one being part of Bailie Jarvie’s conversation with Owen, in “Rob Roy,” and the other an extract from a work entitled, “A Tour through Great Britain, &c., by a Gentleman, 4th ed. 1748”—a curious book, of which the first edition was written by the celebrated De Foe:—

“We found the liquor exceedingly palatable, and it led to a long conversation between Owen and our host, on the opening which the Union had afforded to trade between Glasgow and the British colonies in America and the West Indies, and on the facilities which Glasgow possessed of making up sortable cargoes for that market. Mr. Jarvie answered some objection which Owen made on the difficulty of sorting a cargo for America, without buying from England, with vehemence and volubility.

“‘Na, na, sir; we stand on our ain bottom—we pickle in our ain pock-neuk. We ha’e our Stirling serges, Musselburgh stuffs, Aberdeen hose, Edinburgh shalloons, and the like, for our woollen and worsted goods, and we ha’e linens of a’ kinds, better and cheaper than you ha’e in London itsel’; and we can buy your north o’ England wares,—as Manchester wares, Sheffield wares, and Newcastle earthenware—as cheap as you can, at Liverpool; and we are making a fair spell at cottons and muslins.’”—Rob Roy, vol. ii., p. 267.

“Glasgow is a city of business, and has the face of foreign as well as domestic trade,—nay, I may say it is the only city in Scotland that apparently increases in both. The Union has indeed answered its end to them, more than to any other part of the kingdom, their trade being new-formed by it; for as the Union opened the door to the Scots into our American colonies, the Glasgow merchants presently embraced the opportunity; and though, at its first concerting, the rabble of the city made a formidable attempt to prevent it, yet afterwards they knew better, when they found the great increase of their trade by it, for they now send fifty sail of ships every year to Virginia, New England, and other English colonies in America.

“The share they have in the herring-fishery is very considerable; and they cure their herrings so well and so much better than they are done in any other part of Great Britain, that a Glasgow herring is esteemed as good as a Dutch one.

“I have no room to enlarge upon the home-trade of this city, which is very considerable in many things. I shall, therefore, touch at some few particulars:—

“1. Here there are two very handsome sugar-baking houses, carried on by skilful persons, with large stocks, and to very great perfection. Here is likewise a large distillery for distilling spirits from the molasses drawn from sugars, by which they enjoyed a vast advantage for a time, by a reserved article in the Union, freeing them from English duties.

“2. Here is a manufacture of plaiding, a stuff crossed with yellow, red, and other mixtures, for the plaids or veils worn by the women of Scotland.

“3. Here is a manufacture of muslins, which they make so good and fine that great quantities of them are sent into England, and to the British plantations, where they sell at a good price. They are generally striped, and are very much used for aprons by the ladies, and sometimes in head-clothes by the meaner sort of Englishwomen.

“4. Here is also a linen manufacture; but as that is in common with all parts of Scotland, which improve in it daily, I will not insist upon it as a peculiar here, though they make a very great quantity of it, and send it to the plantations as their principal merchandise. Nor are the Scots without a supply of goods for sorting their cargoes to the English colonies, without sending to England for them; and it is necessary to mention it here, because it has been objected by some that the Scots could not send a sortable cargo to America without buying from England, which, coming through many hands, and by a long carriage, must consequently be so dear, that the English merchants can undersell them.

“It is very probable, indeed, that some things cannot be had here so well as from England, so as to make out such a sortable cargo as the Virginia merchants in London ship off, whose entries at the custom-house consist sometimes of two hundred particulars, as tin, turnery, millinery, upholstery, cutlery, and other Crooked-Lane wares—in short, somewhat of everything, either for wearing or house furniture, building houses or ships.

“But though the Scots cannot do all this, we may reckon up what they can furnish, which they have not only in sufficient quantities, but some in greater perfection than England itself.

“1. They have woollen manufactories of their own,—such as Stirling serges, Musselburgh stuffs, Aberdeen stockens, Edinburgh shalloons, blankets, etc.

“2. Their trade with England being open, they have now all the Manchester, Sheffield, and Birmingham wares, and likewise the cloths, kerseys, half-thicks, duffels, stockens and coarse manufactures of the north of England, brought as cheap or cheaper to them by horse-packs as they are carried to London, it being at a less distance.

“3. They have linens of most kinds, especially diapers and table-linens, damasks, and many other sorts not known in England, and cheaper than there, because made at their own doors.

“4. What linens they want from Holland or Hamburgh, they import from thence as cheap as the English can do; and for muslins, their own are very acceptable, and cheaper than in England.

“5. Gloves they make cheaper and better than in England, for they send great quantities thither.

“6. * * * * * *

“I might mention many other particulars, but this is sufficient to show that the Scots merchants are not at a loss how to make up sortable cargoes to send to the plantations; and that if we can outdo them in some things, they are able to outdo us in others.”—Tour, vol. iv., p. 124.

Though only the latter part of the preceding description of Glasgow trade refers to the passage from “Rob Roy,” we have extracted it all for various reasons. First, because it gives, independent of allusion to the novel, a very distinct and simple account of trade in Scotland forty years after the Union, when the reaction consequent upon that event was beginning to be felt in the country. Secondly, because it details at full length the sketch of the rise and progress of Glasgow, which Mr. Francis Osbaldistone gives in the sixth chapter of the second volume of “Rob Roy,” on his approach to the mercantile capital. Thirdly, for the sake of presenting the reader with a very fair specimen of the use which the Author of “Waverley” makes of old books in his fictitious narratives.

CHAPTER V. — LANG SHEEP AND SHORT SHEEP. — DAVID RITCHIE.

The Black Dwarf.

Our readers will readily remember the curious explanation which takes place between Bauldy, the old-world shepherd, in the Introduction to this tale, and Mr. Peter Pattieson, respecting the difference between lang sheep and short sheep. We can attest, from unexceptionable authority, that a conversation once actually took place between Sir Walter Scott, James Hogg, and Mr. Laidlaw, the factor of the former, in which the same disquisition and nearly the same words occurred. Messrs. H. and L. began the dispute about the various merits of the different sheep; and many references being made to the respective lengths of the animals, Sir Walter became quite tired of their unintelligible technicals, and very simply asked them how sheep came to be distinguished by longitude, having, he observed, never perceived any remarkable difference between one sheep and another in that particular. It was then that an explanation took place, very like that of Bauldy in the Introduction; and we think there can be no doubt that the fictitious incident would never have taken place but for the real circumstance we have related.

The dispute with Christy Wilson, butcher in Gandercleugh, which it was the object of Bauldy’s master to settle, and in consequence of which being amicably adjusted, the convivialities that brought out from the shepherd the materials of the tale were entered into, has, we understand, its origin in a process once before the Court of Session, respecting what is termed a luck-penny on a bargain.

(Elshender the Recluse.)

The particulars of David Ritchie’s life, which are in themselves sufficiently meagre, have been more than once already laid before the public. In Blackwood’s Monthly Magazine for June, and in the Edinburgh Magazine for October, 1817, accounts of the supposed original of the Black Dwarf are given, evidently from no mean authority, if we may judge from the style in which these narratives are written. A separate production, also, of a very interesting nature, embellished with a striking and singularly correct likeness of the dwarf, appeared in 1820, and comprised every anecdote of this singular being previously uncollected. It is therefore conceived totally unnecessary to detail at any length a subject which, independent of its want of elegance and interest, has been already so completely exhausted. To give a few sketches of the character and habits of David Ritchie, and contrast them with those of the more sublime Elshender, will, it is hoped, prove a more grateful entertainment.

David Ritchie was a pauper, who lived the greater part of a long life, and finally died so late as the year 1811, in a solitary cottage situated in the romantic glen of Manor in Peebles-shire. This vale, now rendered classic ground by the abode of the Black Dwarf, was otherwise formerly remarkable as having been the retirement of the illustrious and venerable Professor Ferguson.[20]

His person coincided singularly well with the description of the fictitious recluse. He had been deformed and horrible since his birth in no ordinary degree, which was probably the cause of the analogous peculiarities of his temper. His countenance, of the darkest of dark complexions, was half covered with a long grisly black beard, and bore, as the centre of its system of terrors, two eyes of piercing black, which were sometimes, in his excited moments, lighted up with wild and supernatural lustre. His head was of a singular shape, conical and oblong, and might now form no unworthy subject for the studies of the Phrenological Society. To speak in their language, he must have had few of the moral or intellectual faculties developed in any perfection; for his brow retreated immediately above the eyebrows, and threw nearly the whole of his head, which was large, behind the ear, where, it is said, the meaner organs of the brain are situated—giving immense scope to cruelty, obstinacy, self-esteem, etc. His nose was long and aquiline; his mouth wide and contemptuously curled upward; and his chin protruded from the visage in a long grisly peak. His body, short and muscular, was thicker than that of most ordinary men, and, with his arms, which were long and of great power, might have formed the parts of a giant, had not nature capriciously curtailed his form of other limbs conformable to these proportions. His arms had the same defect with those of the celebrated Betterton, and he could not lift them higher than his breast; yet such was their strength, that he has been known to tear up a tree by the roots, which had baffled the united efforts of two labourers, who had striven by digging to eradicate it. His legs were short, fin-like, and bent outwards, with feet totally inapplicable to the common purposes of walking. These he constantly endeavoured to conceal from sight by wrapping them up in immense masses of rags. This ungainly part of his figure is remarkable as the only one which differs materially from the description of “Cannie Elshie,” whose “body, thick and square, was mounted upon two large feet.”

He was the son of very poor parents, who, at an early period of his life, endeavoured to place him with a tradesman in the metropolis to learn the humble art of brushmaking; which purpose he however soon deserted in disgust, on account of the insupportable notice which his uncouth form attracted in the streets. His spirit, perhaps, also panted for the seclusion of his native hills, where he might have ease to indulge in that solitude so appropriate to the outcast ugliness of his person, and free from the insulting gaze of vulgar curiosity. Here, in the valley of his birth, he formed the romantic project of building a small hut for himself, in which, like the Recluse of the tale, he might live for ever retired from the race for whose converse he was unfitted, and give unrestrained scope to the moods of his misanthropy. He constructed this hermitage in precisely the same manner with the Black Dwarf of Mucklestane Moor. Huge rocks, which he had rolled down from the neighbouring hill, formed the foundation and walls, to which an alternate layer of turf, as is commonly used in cottages, gave almost the consistency and fully the comfort of mortar. He is said to have evinced amazing bodily strength in moving and placing these stones, such as the strongest men, with all the advantages of stature and muscular proportion, could hardly have equalled. This corporeal energy, which lay chiefly in his arms, will remind the reader of the exertions of the Black Dwarf, as witnessed by Hobbie Elliot and young Earnscliff, on the morning after his first appearance, when employed in arranging the foundations of his hermitage out of the Grey Geese of Mucklestane Moor.—See pp. 78, 79.

When the young hermit had finished his hut, and succeeded in furnishing it with a few coarse household utensils, framed chiefly by his own hands, he began to form a garden. In the cultivation and adornment of this spot, he displayed a degree of natural taste and ingenuity that might have fitted him for a higher fate than the seclusion of a hermitage. In a short time he had stocked it with such a profusion of fruit-trees, herbs, vegetables, and flowers, that it seemed a little forest of beauty—a shred of Eden, fit to redeem the wilderness around from its character of desolation—a gem on the swarth brow of the desert. Not only did it exhibit the finest specimens of flowers indigenous to this country, but he had also contrived to procure a number of exotics, whose Linnæan names he would roll forth to the friends whom he indulged with an admission within its precincts, with a pomposity of voice that never failed to enhance their admiration. It soon came to be much resorted to by visitors, being accounted, with the genius of the place, one of the most remarkable curiosities of the county. Dr. Ferguson used sometimes to visit the eccentric solitary, as an amusement in that retired spot; and Sir Walter Scott, who was a frequent guest at the house of that venerable gentleman, is said to have often held long communings with him; likewise several other individuals of literary celebrity.

There is something more peculiarly romantic and poetical in the circumstance of the Misanthrope’s attachment to his garden than can be found in any of the other habits and qualities attributed to him. The care of that beautiful spot was his chief occupation, and may be said to have been the only pleasure his life was ever permitted to experience. On it alone he could employ that faculty of affection with which every heart, even that of the cynic, is endowed. Shut out from the correspondence and sympathy of his own fellow-creatures by the insurmountable pale of his own ugliness, there existed, in the whole circle of nature, no other object that could receive his affections, or reply to the feelings he had to impart. In flowers alone, those lineal and undegenerate descendants of Paradise, the Solitary found an object of attachment that could do equal honour to his feelings and to his taste. His garden was a perfect seraglio of vegetable beauties, and there he could commune with a thousand objects of affection, that never shrunk from the touch which threatened horror and pollution to all the world beside.

By the peculiarities of his person, as well as by the other abject circumstances of his condition, it may be easily supposed that the Hermit of Manor was entirely excluded from that great solace of the miseries of man, the sympathy to be derived from the tenderness and affections of woman. He was irredeemably condemned, as it were, to a dreary bachelorhood of the heart, which knew that there was for it no hope, no possibility of enjoyment. Perhaps the constant sense of loathsomeness in the eyes of the fair part of creation might help to increase the natural wretchedness of his existence. The misanthropy of Elshender is pathetically represented in the tale as springing chiefly from sources of disappointment like this. It happens, also, that his humble prototype once ventured to express the sensibilities of the common delirium of man, and that he was rejected by the object of his affection. This insult, though it sprung from a very natural feeling on the part of the woman, sunk deep into his heart; and thus was he debarred from what would have been the only means of sweetening the bitter lot of solitary poverty and decrepitude,—dashed back with scorn from the general draught at which even his inferiors were liberally indulged. This circumstance forms another trait of resemblance between the Black Dwarf and David Ritchie; and, by a happy consonance never before discovered, confirms their identity.

“His habits were, in many respects, singular, and indicated a mind sufficiently congenial with its uncouth tabernacle. A jealous, misanthropical, and irritable temper was his most prominent characteristic. The sense of his deformity haunted him like a phantom; and the insults and scorn to which this exposed him had poisoned his heart with fierce and bitter feelings, which, from other traits in his character, do not appear to have been more largely infused into his original temperament than that of his fellow-men. He detested children, on account of their propensity to insult and persecute him. To strangers he was generally reserved, crabbed, and surly; and even towards persons who had been his greatest benefactors, and who possessed the greatest share of his good-will, he frequently betrayed much caprice and jealousy. A lady, who knew him from his infancy, says, that, although he showed as much attachment and respect for her father’s family as it was in his nature to show for any, yet they were always obliged to be very cautious in their deportment towards him. One day, having gone to visit him with another lady, he took them through his garden, and was showing them, with much pride and good-humour, all his rich and tastefully assorted borders, here picking up with his long staff some insidious weed, and there turning to digress into the history of some mysterious exotic, when they happened to stop near a plot of cabbages, which had been somewhat injured by the caterpillars. Davie, observing one of the ladies smile, instantly assumed a savage scowling aspect, rushed among the cabbages, and dashed them to pieces with his kent, exclaiming, ‘I hate the worms, for they mock me!’”

When he visited the neighbouring metropolis of the county, which happened very seldom towards the latter part of his life, he was generally followed by crowds of boys, who hooted and insulted him, with all that disregard of feeling and insolence of wickedness so often to be observed in children of the lower ranks in Scottish villages. On these occasions he was wont to give his persecutors the “length of his kent,” as he called it, when he could reach them; but they being generally too nimble for his crippled evolutions, he had often to vent his revenge in the more harmless form of curses. These were frequently of the most terrific and unusual kind. He is even said to have evinced something like genius in the invention of his imprecations, some of which far surpassed Gray’s celebrated

He would swear he would “cleave them to the harn-pans, if he had but his cran fingers on them;” that he “could pour seething lead down their throats;” that “hell would never be full till they were in it;” and frequently exclaimed that there was nothing he would “like so well as to see their souls girnin’ for a thousand eternities on the red-het brander o’ the de’il!”

Among the traits of his character, there is none reminds us so strongly of the Misanthrope of the tale as this propensity to execration. The same style of discourse, and almost the same terms of imprecation, are common to both. The Mighty Unknown has put expressions into the mouth of this character which, as specimens of the grand and sublime, are altogether unequalled in the whole circle of English poetry—not even excepting the magnificent thunders of Byron’s muse. Now, his prototype is well remembered, by those who have conversed with him, to have frequently used language which, sometimes sinking to delicacy and even elegance, and at others rising to a very tempest of execration and diabolical expression, might have been deemed almost miraculous from his mouth, could it not have been attributed partly to the impassioned inspiration that naturally flowed from his consciousness of deformity, from keen resentment of insult, and from the despairing, loveless sterility of his heart.

The history of his death-bed furnishes us with an anecdote of a beautiful and atoning character.

He had always through life expressed the utmost abhorrence of being buried among what he haughtily termed the “common brush” in the parish churchyard, and pointed out a particular spot, in the neighbourhood of his cottage, where he had been frequently known to lie dreaming or reading for long summer days, as a more agreeable place of interment. It is remarked by a former biographer, that he has displayed no small portion of taste in the selection of this spot. It is the summit of a small rising ground, called the Woodhill, situated nearly in the centre of the parish of Manor, covered with green fern, and embowered on the top by a circle of rowan-trees planted by the Dwarf’s own hand, for the double purpose of serving as a mausoleum or monument to his memory, and keeping away, by the charm of consecration supposed to be vested in their nature, the influence of witchcraft and other unhallowed powers from the grave.

All around this romantic spot the waste features of a mountainous country bound the horizon, presenting a striking contrast to the fertile beauty of the intermediate valley, and withal capable of suggesting to the enthusiastic and imaginative mind of the Solitary, the idea of this scene being a more desirable grave, sacred as it was in the grandeur of Nature, than the merely Christian ground of a country churchyard. “What!” the proud unsocial soul of the misanthrope might perhaps think—

Nevertheless, whatever might have been his sentiments regarding the dead among whom, during his days of health, he loathed to be placed, certain it is, that, when brought within view and feeling of the awful close of mortal existence, his heart was softened towards his fellow-men, his antipathies relaxed, and he died with a wish upon his lips to be buried among his fathers.

In 1820, the writer of the present narrative visited the deserted hut of “Bowed Davie,” actuated by a sort of pilgrim-respect for scenes hallowed by genius. The little mansion at present existing is not that built by the Dwarf’s own hands, but one of later date, erected by the charity of a neighbouring gentleman in the year 1802. A small tablet of freestone, bearing this date below the letters D. R. was still to be seen in the western gable. The eastern division of the cottage, separated from the other by a partition of stone and lime, and entering by a different door, was still inhabited by his sister. It is remarkable that even with that near relation he was never on terms of any affection; an almost complete estrangement having subsisted between these two lonely beings for many years. Agnes had been a servant in the earlier part of her life; but having of late years become subject to a degree of mental aberration, she had retired from every sort of employment to her brother’s habitation, where she subsisted on the charity of the poor’s funds.

On entering the cottage with my guide, we found her seated on a low settle before the fire, her hands reclined upon her lap, and her eyes gazing unmeaningly on a small turf fire, which died away in a perfect wilderness of chimney. Her whole figure and situation reminded me strongly of the inimitable description of the lone Highland woman in Hogg’s “Winter Evening Tales,” who sat singing by the light of a moss-lamp in expectation of the apparition of her son. The scene was nearly as wild and picturesque, the wretched inmate of the hut was as lonely and helpless, and there was an air of desolate imbecility about her that rendered her almost as interesting. It seemed surprising, indeed, how a person apparently so abandoned by her own energies and the care of her fellow-creatures, could at all exist in such a solitude. She neither moved nor looked up on our entrance; but a few minutes after we had seated ourselves, which we did with silence and awe, she lifted her eyes, and thereby gave us a fuller view of her countenance. She much resembled her brother in features, but was not deformed. Her face was dark with age and wretchedness, and her aspect, otherwise somewhat appalling, was rendered almost unearthly by two large black eyes, the lustre of which was not the less horrible by the imbecility of their gaze. I have been thus particular in describing her person and circumstances, because I do not judge it impossible that she may have suggested the original idea of Elspeth Cheyne, the superannuated dependant of Glenallan, in the “Antiquary.”

Through the medium of my guide, a sagacious country lad, I contrived to ask her a number of questions concerning her brother; but she was extremely shy in answering them, and expressed her jealousy of my intentions by saying, “she wondered why so many grand people had come from distant parts to inquire after her family—she was sure there was naething ill anent them.” Little did she, poor soul, understand the cause of this curiosity, or the honour conferred upon her family by the attention of the great hermit-author, in whose works the very mention of a name confers immortality.

She showed us her brother’s Bible. It was of Kincaid’s fine quarto edition, and had been bought in 1773 by the Dwarf himself. His name was written with his own hand on a blank leaf, and it was with something like transport that I drew a fac-simile of the autograph into my pocket-book, which I still preserve.

Agnes Ritchie died in December, 1821, ten years after the decease of her brother, and was buried in the same grave, in Manor churchyard, on which occasion the deformed bones of Bowed Davie were found, to the utter disproof of a vulgar report, that they had suffered resurrection at the hands of certain anatomists in the College of Glasgow.

I found the part of the house which had been inhabited by the Dwarf himself deserted as he had left it at his death. Its furniture had been all dispersed among the curious or the friendly; and a host of poultry were now suffered to roost on the rafters where only soot formerly dared to hang. His seat of divination before the door had been suffered to remain. It was covered very rurally with a ruinous door of a cart. There seemed no precise window in the hut, but it contained numerous holes and bores all round, some of which were built up with turf. I drew a pair of rusty nails from a joist near the door, and, wrapping them up in a piece of paper, brought them away.

We stole a look at the garden, by climbing up the high wall. Some care has been taken by the neighbouring peasants to preserve it in good order; but, alas! it is scarcely the ghost of what it was: “Cum Troja fuit,” there was not a weed to be seen over its whole surface, nor durst a single kail-worm intrude its unhallowed nose within the precincts; an hundred mountain-ashes, displaying their red, sour fruit to the temptation of the passing urchin, stood around like a guard, to preserve from the influence of witchcraft the richer treasures that lay within,—

but now weeds and kail-worms were abundant, the rowan-trees had been all cut down, and Bowed Davie’s garden, that once might have rivalled Milton’s imagination of Paradise, now lay stale, flat, and unprofitable—like a buxom cheek deprived of its blushes, or Greece deserted by the liberty that once, according to Byron, inspired its beauty. A few skeps, however, still remained, which the neighbouring Hobbie Elliots had not taken away.

It was a curious trait in the character of David Ritchie, that he was very superstitious. Not only had he planted his house, his garden, and even his intended grave, all round with the mountain-ash, but it is also well authenticated that he never went abroad without a branch of this singular antidote, tied round with a red thread, in his pocket, to prevent the effects of the evil eye. When the sancta sanctorum of his domicile were so sacrilegiously ransacked after his death, there was found an elf-stone, or small round pebble, bored in the centre, hung by a cord of hair passed through the hole to the head of his bed!

After taking the foregoing view of the Wizard’s fairy bower, I was next conducted to his grave, which lies in the immediate vicinity. A slip of his favourite rowan-tree marked the spot. It had been planted several years after his death by some kindly hand, and, in the absence of a less perishable monument, seemed a wonderful act of delicacy and attention. It spoke a pathos to the feelings that the finest inscription could not have excited,—it was so consonant with the former desires of “the poor inhabitant below!”

In allusion to the foregoing circumstances, the following verses were composed, and inserted in a periodical publication:—

CHAPTER VI. — DESERTED BURYING-GROUND. — VALE OF GANDERCLEUGH. — HISTORY OF THE PERIOD. [22] — ADDITIONAL NOTICES RELATIVE TO THE INSURRECTION OF 1679.

Old Mortality.

here exists, in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, a scene nearly resembling that described in the beautiful preliminary to this Tale, as the burying-ground of the Covenanters. It is commonly called St. Catherine’s Kirkyard, and is all that remains of the chapel and cemetery of the once celebrated St. Catherine’s in the Hopes.[21] The situation is particularly pastoral, beautiful, and interesting. It is placed where the narrow ravine, down which Glencorse burn descends, opens up into an expanse considerably wider. Rullion Green, where the Covenanters were defeated by the troops of Charles II. in 1665, was in the immediate vicinity; and tradition still points out in St. Catherine’s the graves of several of the insurgents, who were killed either in the battle or near this spot in the pursuit. If the latter be the most probable fact, no other circumstance would be required to establish the identity of the two scenes.

St. Catherine’s Churchyard, lying among the wildest solitudes of the Pentland Hills, is an object of beautiful and interesting desolation, almost equal to the scene of Peter Pattieson’s meeting with Old Mortality. There does not now remain the least trace of a place of worship within its precincts; and it seems to have been long disused as a place of interment. A slight mark of an inclosure, nearly level with the sward, and one overgrown gravestone, itself almost in the grave, are all that point out the spot.

The ground in which St. Catherine’s is situated agrees in certain general circumstances with the author’s Vale of Gandercleugh. The horrific “dry-stane dike” projected by “his honour the Laird of Gusedub,” does not, it is true, appear to have ever substituted its rectilinear deformity for the graceful winding of the natural boundary, as the too-poetical Peter Pattieson apprehended. But a circumstance has taken place by which the romantic has been sacrificed to the useful as completely as if “his honour” had fulfilled his intention. The ravine, at the head of which St. Catherine’s is situated, has lately been embanked, and laid completely under water, as a compensation-pond for the mills upon the Crawley Burn, of which the more legitimate supplies were cut off, and turned towards a different direction and very different purpose, by being carried to Edinburgh for the use of the inhabitants.

Besides being possibly the original scene of the Deserted Burying-Ground, this spot is not otherwise destitute of the qualification of classic. At no great distance stands Logan House, the supposed mansion of Sir William Worthy of the “Gentle Shepherd”; and at the head of the glen lies what has generally been considered the “Habbie’s How” of that drama.

In the leading article of the Scotsman, September 3, 1823, the writer endeavours to trace a similarity between the Vale of Glencorse and the description of Glendearg in the Monastery.

The Vale of Gandercleugh may perhaps have been suggested by Lesmahagow, a village and parish in the west country, not far from Drumclog. In the churchyard are interred several of the Covenanters,—in particular, David Steel, who was slain by Captain Crichton, the cavalier whose life was written by Swift—in a note to which Sir Walter Scott mentions Old Mortality as having for a long time preserved Steel’s grave-stone from decay.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

“We have observed the early antipathy mutually entertained by the Scottish Presbyterians and the House of Stuart. It seems to have glowed in the breast even of the good-natured Charles II. He might have remembered that, in 1651, the Presbyterians had fought, bled, and ruined themselves in his cause. But he rather recollected their early faults than their late repentance; and even their services were combined with the recollection of the absurd and humiliating circumstances of personal degradation,[23] to which their pride had subjected him, while they professed to espouse his cause. As a man of pleasure, he hated their stern inflexible rigour, which stigmatized follies even more deeply than crimes; and he whispered to his confidants, that, ‘therefore, it was not wonderful that, in the first year of his restoration, he formally re-established prelacy in Scotland.’ But it is surprising that, with his father’s example before his eyes, he should not have been satisfied to leave at freedom the consciences of those who could not reconcile themselves to the new system. The religious opinions of sectaries have a tendency, like the water of some springs, to become soft and mild when freely exposed to open day. Who can recognise, in the decent and industrious Quakers and Anabaptists, the wild and ferocious tenets which distinguished their sects while yet they were honoured with the distinction of the scourge and the pillory? Had the system of coercion against the Presbyterians been continued until our day, Blair and Robertson would have preached in the wilderness, and only discovered their powers of eloquence and composition, by rolling along a deeper torrent of gloomy fanaticism.

“The western counties distinguished themselves by their opposition to the prelatic system. Three hundred and fifty ministers, ejected from their churches and livings, wandered through the mountains, sowing the seeds of covenanted doctrine, while multitudes of fanatical followers pursued them, to reap the forbidden crop. These Conventicles, as they were called, were denounced by the law, and their frequenters dispersed by military force. The genius of the persecuted became stubborn, obstinate, and ferocious; and, although Indulgences were tardily granted to some Presbyterian ministers, few of the true Covenanters, or Whigs, as they were called, would condescend to compound with a prelatic government, or to listen even to their own favourite doctrine under the auspices of the King. From Richard Cameron, their apostle, this rigid sect acquired the name of Cameronians. They preached and prayed against the Indulgence, and against the Presbyterians who availed themselves of it, because their accepting of this royal boon was a tacit acknowledgment of the King’s supremacy in ecclesiastical matters.

“Upon these bigoted and persecuted fanatics, and by no means upon the Presbyterians at large, are to be charged the wild anarchical principles of anti-monarchy and assassination which polluted the period when they flourished.

“The Conventicles were now attended by armed crowds; and a formidable insurrection took place in the west, and rolled on towards the capital. It was terminated by a defeat at the Pentland Hills, where General Dalziel routed the insurgents with great loss, 28th November, 1666.

“The Whigs, now become desperate, adopted the most desperate principles; and retaliating, as far as they could, the intolerating persecution which they endured, they openly disclaimed allegiance to any monarch who should not profess presbytery and subscribe the covenant. These principles were not likely to conciliate the favour of government, and, as we wade onward in the history of the times, the scenes become yet darker. At length, one would imagine the parties had agreed to divide the kingdom of vice between them,—the hunters assuming to themselves open profligacy and legalized oppression, and the hunted the opposite attributes of hypocrisy, fanaticism, disloyalty, and midnight assassination. The troopers and cavaliers became enthusiasts in the pursuit of the Covenanters. If Messrs. Kid, King, Cameron, Peden, etc., boasted of prophetic powers, and were often warned of the approach of the soldiers by supernatural impulse, Captain John Crichton, on the other side, dreamed dreams and saw visions, (chiefly, indeed, after having drunk hard,) in which the lurking-holes of the rebels were discovered to his imagination.[24]

“Our ears are scarcely more shocked with the profane execration of the persecutors[25] than with the strange and insolent familiarity used towards the Deity by the persecuted fanatics. Their indecent modes of prayer, their extravagant expectations of miraculous assistance, and their supposed inspirations, might easily furnish out a tale, at which the good would sigh and the gay would laugh.[26]

“The militia and standing army soon became unequal to the task of enforcing conformity and suppressing Conventicles. In their aid, and to force compliance with a test proposed by government, the Highland clans were raised, and poured down into Ayrshire; and armed hosts of undisciplined mountaineers, speaking a different language, and professing, many of them, another religion, were let loose to ravage and plunder this unfortunate country; and it is truly astonishing to find how few acts of cruelty they perpetrated, and how seldom they added murder to pillage. Additional levies of horse were also raised, under the name of independent troops, and great part of them placed under the command of James Grahame of Claverhouse, a man well known to fame by his subsequent title of Viscount of Dundee, but better remembered in the western shires under the designation of the bloody Clavers.

“In truth, he appears to have combined the virtues and vices of a savage chief. Fierce, unbending, and rigorous, no emotion of compassion prevented his commanding and witnessing every detail of military execution against the Nonconformists. Undoubtedly brave, and steadily faithful to his prince, he sacrificed himself in the cause of James when he was deserted by all the world. The Whigs whom he persecuted, daunted by his ferocity and courage, conceived him to be impassive to their bullets, and that he had sold himself, for temporal greatness, to the seducer of mankind. It is still believed, that a cup of wine, presented to him by his butler, changed into clotted blood; and that, when he plunged his feet into cold water, their touch caused it to boil. The steed which bore him was supposed to be the gift of Satan; and precipices are shown where a fox could hardly keep his feet, down which the infernal charger conveyed him safely in pursuit of the wanderers. It is remembered with terror that Claverhouse was successful in every engagement with the Whigs, except that at Drumclog, or Loudon Hill. The history of Burly will bring us immediately to the causes and circumstances of that event.

“John Balfour of Kinloch, commonly called Burly, was one of the fiercest of the proscribed sect. A gentleman by birth, he was, says his biographer, ‘zealous and honest-hearted, courageous in every enterprise, and a brave soldier—seldom any escaping that came into his hands.’

“Crichton says that he was once chamberlain to Archbishop Sharpe, and, by negligence or dishonesty, had incurred a large arrear, which occasioned his being active in his master’s assassination. But of this I know no other evidence than Crichton’s assertion and a hint in Wodrow. Burly, for that is his common designation, was brother-in-law to Hackston of Rathillet, a wild, enthusiastic character, who joined daring courage and skill in the sword to the fiery zeal of his sect. Burly himself was less eminent for religious fervour than for the active and violent share which he had in the most desperate enterprises of his party. His name does not appear among the Covenanters who were denounced for the affair at Pentland. But, in 1677, Robert Hamilton, afterwards commander of the insurgents at Loudon Hill and Bothwell Bridge, with several other Nonconformists, were assembled at this Burly’s house, in Fife. There they were attacked by a party of soldiers, commanded by Captain Carstairs, whom they beat off, and wounded desperately one of his party. For this resistance to authority they were declared rebels.

“The next exploit in which Burly was engaged was of a bloodier complexion and more dreadful celebrity. It was well known that James Sharpe, Archbishop of St. Andrew’s, was regarded by the rigid Presbyterians not only as a renegade, who had turned back from the spiritual plough, but as the principal author of the rigours exercised against their sect. He employed, as an agent of his oppression, one Carmichael, a decayed gentleman. The industry of this man in procuring information, and in enforcing the severe penalties against Conventiclers, having excited the resentment of the Cameronians, nine of their number, of whom Burly and his brother-in-law, Hackston, were the leaders, assembled, with the purpose of waylaying and murdering Carmichael; but, while they searched for him in vain, they received tidings that the Archbishop himself was at hand. The party resorted to prayer, after which they agreed, unanimously, that the Lord had delivered the wicked Haman into their hands. In the execution of the supposed will of heaven, they agreed to put themselves under the command of a leader, and they requested Hackston of Rathillet to accept the office; which he declined, alleging, that, should he comply with their request, the slaughter might be imputed to a private quarrel which existed betwixt him and the Archbishop. The command was then offered to Burly, who accepted it without scruple; and they galloped off in pursuit of the Archbishop’s carriage, which contained himself and his daughter. Being well mounted, they easily overtook and disarmed the prelate’s attendants. Burly, crying out, ‘Judas, be taken!’ rode up to the carriage, wounded the postilion, and hamstrung one of the horses. He then fired into the coach a piece, charged with several bullets, so near, that the Archbishop’s gown was set on fire. The rest, coming up, dismounted, and dragged him out of the carriage, when, frightened and wounded, he crawled towards Hackston, who still remained on horseback, and begged for mercy. The stern enthusiast contented himself with answering, that he would not himself lay a hand on him. Burly and his men again fired a volley upon the kneeling old man, and were in the act of riding off, when one, who remained to fasten the girth of his horse, unfortunately heard the daughter of their victim call to the servant for help, exclaiming that his master was still alive. Burly then again dismounted, struck off the prelate’s hat with his foot, and cleft his skull with his shable, (broadsword,) although one of the party (probably Rathillet,) exclaimed, ‘Spare these grey hairs!’ The rest pierced him with repeated wounds. They plundered the carriage, and rode off, leaving, beside the mangled corpse, the daughter, who was herself wounded in her pious endeavour to interpose betwixt her father and his murderers. The murder is accurately represented in bas-relief, upon a beautiful monument, erected to the memory of Archbishop Sharpe, in the metropolitan church of St. Andrew’s. This memorable example of fanatic revenge was acted upon Magus Muir, near St. Andrew’s, 3rd May, 1679.

“Burly was of course obliged to leave Fife; and, upon the 25th of the same month, he arrived in Evandale, in Lanarkshire, along with Hackston, and a fellow called Dingwall, or Daniel, one of the same bloody band. Here he joined his old friend Hamilton, already mentioned; and, as they resolved to take up arms, they were soon at the head of such a body of the ‘chased-and-tossed western men’ as they thought equal to keep the field. They resolved to commence their exploits upon 29th May, 1674, being the anniversary of the Restoration, appointed to be kept a holiday by Act of Parliament—an institution which they esteemed a presumptuous and unholy solemnity. Accordingly, at the head of eighty horse, tolerably appointed, Hamilton, Burly, and Hackston entered the royal burgh of Rutherglen, extinguished the bonfires made in honour of the day, burned at the cross the Acts of Parliament in favour of prelacy and suppression of Conventicles, as well as those acts of council which regulated the Indulgence granted to Presbyterians. Against all these acts they entered their solemn protest, or testimony, as they called it; and, having affixed it to the cross, concluded with prayer and psalms. Being now joined by a large body of foot, so that their strength seems to have amounted to five or six hundred men, though very indifferently armed, they encamped upon Loudon Hill. Claverhouse, who was in the garrison of Glasgow, instantly marched against the insurgents, at the head of his own troop of cavalry and others, amounting to about one hundred and fifty men. He arrived at Hamilton, on the 1st of June, so unexpectedly, as to make prisoner John King, a famous preacher among the wanderers, and rapidly continued his march, carrying his captive along with him, till he came to the village of Drumclog, about a mile east of Loudon Hill, and twelve miles south-west of Hamilton. At the same distance from this place, the insurgents were skilfully posted in a boggy strait, almost inaccessible to cavalry, having a broad ditch in their front. Claverhouse’s dragoons discharged their carbines, and made an attempt to charge. Burly, who commanded the handful of horse belonging to the Whigs, instantly led them down on the disordered squadrons of Claverhouse, who were, at the same time, vigorously assaulted by the foot, headed by the gallant Cleland and the enthusiastic Hackston. Claverhouse himself was forced to fly, and was in the utmost danger of being taken, his horse’s belly being cut open by the stroke of a scythe, so that the poor animal trailed his bowels for more than a mile. In this flight he passed King, the minister, lately his prisoner, but now deserted by his guard in the general confusion. The preacher hallooed to the flying commander ‘to halt and take his prisoner with him;’ or, as others say, ‘to stay and take the afternoon’s preaching.’ Claverhouse, at length remounted, continued his retreat to Glasgow. He lost in the skirmish about twenty of his troopers, and his own cornet and kinsman, Robert Grahame. Only four of the other side were killed, among whom was Dingwall, or Daniel, an associate of Burly in Sharpe’s murder. ‘The rebels,’ says Crichton, ‘finding the cornet’s body, and supposing it to be that of Clavers, because the name of Grahame was wrought in the shirt-neck, treated it with the utmost inhumanity—cutting off his nose, picking out his eyes, and stabbing it through in a hundred places.’ The same charge is brought by Guild, in his Bellum Bothwellianum, in which occurs the following account of the skirmish at Drumclog:—

“‘Although Burly was among the most active leaders in the action, he was not the commander-in-chief. That honour belonged to Robert Hamilton, brother of Sir William Hamilton of Preston, a gentleman who, like most of those at Drumclog, had imbibed the very wildest principles of fanaticism. The Cameronian account of the insurrection states, that “Mr. Hamilton discovered a great deal of bravery and valour, both in the conflict with, and pursuit of, the enemy; but when he and some others were pursuing the enemy, others flew too greedily upon the spoil, small as it was, instead of pursuing the victory; and some, without Mr. Hamilton’s knowledge, and against his strict command, gave five of these bloody enemies quarter, and let them go. This greatly grieved Mr. Hamilton, when he saw some of Babel’s brats spared, after the Lord had delivered them into their hands, that they might dash them against the stones (Psalm cxxxvii. 9). In his own account of this, he reckons the sparing of these enemies, and letting them go, to be among their first steppings aside, for which he feared that the Lord would not honour them to do much more for them, and says that he was neither for taking favours from, nor giving favours to, the Lord’s enemies.” Burly was not a likely man to fall into this sort of backsliding. He disarmed one of the Duke of Hamilton’s servants in the action, and desired him to tell his master he would keep, till meeting, the pistols he had taken from him. The man described Burly to the Duke as a little stout man, squint-eyed, and of a most ferocious aspect; from which it appears that Burly’s figure corresponded to his manners, and perhaps gave rise to his nickname, Burly signifying strong. He was with the insurgents till the battle of Bothwell Bridge, and afterwards fled to Holland. He joined the Prince of Orange, but died at sea during the passage. The Cameronians still believe he had obtained liberty from the Prince to be avenged of those who had persecuted the Lord’s people; but, through his death, the laudable design of purging the land with their blood is supposed to have fallen to the ground.’

“It has often been remarked, that the Scottish, notwithstanding their national courage, were always unsuccessful when fighting for their religion. The cause lay not in the principle, but in the mode of its application. A leader, like Mahomet, who is, at the same time, the prophet of his tribe, may avail himself of religious enthusiasm, because it comes to the aid of discipline, and is a powerful means of attaining the despotic command essential to the success of a general. But among the insurgents in the reign of the last Stuarts, were mingled preachers, who taught different shades of the Presbyterian doctrine; and, minute as these shades sometimes were, neither the several shepherds nor their flocks could unite in a common cause. This will appear from the transactions leading to the battle of Bothwell Bridge.

“We have seen that the party which defeated Claverhouse at Loudon Hill were Cameronians, whose principles consisted in disowning all temporal authority which did not flow from and through the Solemn League and Covenant. This doctrine, which is still retained by a scattered remnant of the sect in Scotland, is in theory, and would be in practice, inconsistent with the safety of any well-regulated government, because the Covenanters deny to their governors that toleration which was iniquitously refused to themselves.

“In many respects, therefore, we cannot be surprised at the anxiety and vigour with which the Cameronians were persecuted, although we may be of opinion that milder means would have induced a melioration of their principles. These men, as already noticed, excepted against such Presbyterians as were contented to exercise their worship under the Indulgence granted by government, or, in other words, who would have been satisfied with toleration for themselves, without insisting on a revolution in the state, or even in the Church government.

“When, however, the success at Loudon Hill was spread abroad, a number of preachers, gentlemen, and common people, who had embraced the more moderate doctrine, joined the army of Hamilton, thinking that the difference in their opinions ought not to prevent their acting in the common cause. The insurgents were repulsed in an attack upon the town of Glasgow, which, however, Claverhouse shortly afterwards thought it necessary to evacuate. They were now nearly in full possession of the west of Scotland, and pitched their camp at Hamilton, where, instead of modelling and disciplining their army, the Cameronians and Erastians (for so the violent insurgents chose to call the more moderate Presbyterians) only debated, in council of war, the real cause of their being in arms. Hamilton, their general, was the leader of the first party; Mr. John Welsh, a minister, headed the Erastians. The latter so far prevailed as to get a declaration drawn up, in which they owned the King’s government; but the publication of it gave rise to new quarrels. Each faction had its own set of leaders, all of whom aspired to be officers; and there were actually two councils of war, issuing contrary orders and declarations, at the same time—the one owning the King, and the other designating him a malignant, bloody, and perjured tyrant.

“Meanwhile, their numbers and zeal were magnified at Edinburgh, and great alarm excited lest they should march eastward. Not only was the foot militia instantly called out, but proclamations were issued, directing all the heritors in the eastern, southern, and northern shires, to repair to the King’s host, with their best horses, arms, and retainers. In Fife, and other counties, where the Presbyterian doctrines prevailed, many gentlemen disobeyed this order, and were afterwards severely fined. Most of them alleged, in excuse, the apprehension of disquiet from their wives. A respectable force was soon assembled, and James Duke of Buccleuch and Monmouth, was sent down by Charles to take the command, furnished with instructions not unfavourable to the Presbyterians. The royal army now moved slowly forward towards Hamilton, and reached Bothwell Moor on the 22nd of June, 1679. The insurgents were encamped, chiefly in the Duke of Hamilton’s park, along the Clyde, which separated the two armies. Bothwell Bridge, which is long and narrow, had then a portal in the middle, with gates, which the Covenanters shut, and barricadoed with stones and logs of timber. This important post was defended by three hundred of their best men, under Hackston of Rathillet and Hall of Haughhead. Early in the morning, this party crossed the bridge and skirmished with the royal vanguard, now advanced as far as the village of Bothwell; but Hackston speedily retired to his post at the west end of Bothwell Bridge.

“While the dispositions made by the Duke of Monmouth announced his purpose of assailing the pass, the more moderate of the insurgents resolved to offer terms. Ferguson of Kaitlock, a gentleman of landed fortune, and David Hume, a clergyman, carried to the Duke of Monmouth a supplication, demanding free exercise of their religion, a free Parliament, and a free general assembly of the Church. The Duke heard their demands with his natural mildness, and assured them he would interpose with his Majesty in their behalf, on condition of their immediately dispersing themselves, and yielding up their arms. Had the insurgents been all of the moderate opinion, the proposal would have been accepted, much bloodshed saved, and perhaps some permanent advantage derived to their party; or had they been all Cameronians, their defence would have been fierce and desperate. But, while their motley and misassorted officers were debating upon the Duke’s proposal, his field-pieces were already planted on the eastern side of the river, to cover the attack of the footguards, who were led on by Lord Livingston to force the bridge. Here Hackston maintained his post with zeal and courage; nor was it till his ammunition was expended, and every support denied him by the general, that he reluctantly abandoned the important pass. When his party were drawn back, the Duke’s army slowly, and with their cannon in front, defiled along the bridge, and formed in line of battle as they came over the river. The Duke commanded the foot, and Claverhouse the cavalry. It would seem that these movements could not have been performed without at least some loss, had the enemy been serious in opposing them. But the insurgents were otherwise employed. With the strangest delusion that ever fell upon devoted beings, they chose these precious moments to cashier their officers, and elect others in their room. In this important operation they were at length disturbed by the Duke’s cannon, at the first discharge of which the horse of the Covenanters wheeled and rode off, breaking and trampling down the ranks of their infantry in their flight. The Cameronian account blames Weir of Greenridge, a commander of the horse, who is termed a sad Achan in the camp. The more moderate party lay the whole blame on Hamilton, whose conduct, they say, left the world to debate whether he was most traitor, coward, or fool. The generous Monmouth was anxious to spare the blood of his infatuated countrymen, by which he incurred much blame among the high-flying Royalists. Lucky it was for the insurgents that the battle did not happen a day later, when old General Dalziel, who divided with Claverhouse the terror and hatred of the Whigs, arrived in the camp, with a commission to supersede Monmouth as commander-in-chief. He is said to have upbraided the Duke publicly with his lenity, and heartily to have wished his own commission had come a day sooner, when, as he expressed himself, ‘these rogues should never more have troubled the King or country.’ But, notwithstanding the merciful orders of the Duke of Monmouth, the cavalry made great slaughter among the fugitives, of whom four hundred were slain.

“There were two Gordons of Earlston, father and son. They were descended of an ancient family in the west of Scotland, and their progenitors were believed to have been favourers of the reformed doctrine, and possessed of a translation of the Bible as early as the days of Wickliffe. William Gordon, the father, was in 1663 summoned before the privy council, for keeping Conventicles in his house and woods. By another act of council he was banished out of Scotland; but the sentence was never put into execution. In 1667, Earlston was turned out of his house, which was converted into a garrison for the King’s soldiers. He was not in the battle of Bothwell Bridge, but he was met hastening towards it by some English dragoons engaged in the pursuit, already commenced. As he refused to surrender, he was instantly slain.

“His son, Alexander Gordon of Earlston, was not a Cameronian, but one of the more moderate class of Presbyterians, whose sole object was freedom of conscience and relief from the oppressive laws against Nonconformists. He joined the insurgents shortly after the skirmish at Loudon Hill. He appears to have been active in forwarding the supplication sent to the Duke of Monmouth. After the battle, he escaped discovery, by flying into a house at Hamilton, belonging to one of his tenants, and disguising himself in a female attire. His person was proscribed, and his estate of Earlston was bestowed upon Colonel Theophilus Ogilthorpe by the crown, first in security for £5000, and afterwards in perpetuity.

“The same author mentions a person tried at the circuit-court, July 10th, 1683, solely for holding intercourse with Earlston, an intercommuned rebel. As he had been in Holland after the battle of Bothwell, he was probably accessory to the scheme of invasion which the unfortunate Earl of Argyll was then meditating. He was apprehended upon his return to Scotland, tried, convicted of treason, and condemned to die; but his fate was postponed by a letter from the King, appointing him to be reprieved for a month, that he might, in the interim, be tortured for the discovery of his accomplices. The council had the unusual spirit to remonstrate against this illegal course of severity. On November 3rd, 1683, he received a further respite, in hopes he would make some discovery. When brought to the bar to be tortured, (for the King had reiterated his command,) he, through fear or distraction, roared like a bull, and laid so stoutly about him, that the hangman and his assistant could hardly master him. At last he fell into a swoon, and, on his recovery, charged General Dalziel and Drummond, (violent tories,) together with the Duke of Hamilton, with being the leaders of the fanatics. It was generally thought that he affected this extravagant behaviour to invalidate all that agony might extort from him concerning his real accomplices. He was sent first to Edinburgh Castle, and afterwards to a prison upon the Bass island, although the privy council more than once deliberated upon appointing his immediate death. On the 22nd August, 1684, Earlston was sent for from the Bass, and ordered for execution, 4th November, 1684. He endeavoured to prevent his doom by escape; but was discovered and taken after he had gained the roof of the prison. The council deliberated, whether, in consideration of this attempt, he was not liable to instant execution. Finally, however, they were satisfied to imprison him in Blackness Castle, where he remained till the Revolution, when he was set at liberty, and his doom of forfeiture reversed by Act of Parliament.”

From “A History of the Rencontre at Drumclog,” etc.

By William Aiton, Esq.

“Mr. Douglas having agreed to preach at Hairlaw, or Glaisterlaw, about a mile north-west of Loudon Hill, on Sabbath, June 1, 1679, the Fife men and Mr. Hamilton, dreading the Conventicle might be attacked by the military, collected a number of their friends on the Saturday evening, in a house near Loudon Hill, where they lay under arms all night. They also sent off an express to Lesmahagow, to bring forward their friends from that quarter, and who were up just in time to join in the skirmish. But very few of their friends from Kilmarnock came forward to that Conventicle.

“A considerable number of people assembled at that field-meeting, and, as usual in these times, the greater part of them came armed. Captain Grahame of Claverhouse was, by Lord Ross, who commanded the military in Glasgow, sent out with three troops of dragoons to attack and disperse that Conventicle. He had seized, about two miles from Hamilton, John King, a field-preacher, and, according to Mr. Wilson’s account, seventeen other people, whom he bound in pairs, and drove before him towards Loudon Hill.

“Captain Grahame and his officers eat their breakfast that day at the principal inn, Strathaven, then kept by James Young, writer, innkeeper, and baron-bailie of Avendale, known in that district by the name of Scribbie Young. The house which he then occupied stood opposite the entry into the churchyard, and, from its having an upper room or second storey in the one end, with an outside stair of a curious construction, was denominated ‘the tower.’[27] Having been informed at Strathaven that the Conventicle was not to meet that day, Captain Grahame set out towards Glasgow with his prisoners. But, upon obtaining more correct information about a mile north of Strathaven, he turned round towards Loudon Hill, by the way of Letham. On being told at Braeburn that the Covenanters were in great force, he said that he had eleven score of good guns under his command, and would soon disperse the Whigs.

“Soon after worship had commenced, the Covenanters were informed, by an express from their friends at Hamilton, as well as by the watches they had placed, that the military were approaching them; and they resolved to fight the troops, in order, if possible, to relieve the prisoners, or, to use the words of their historian, Dr. Wodrow, to ‘oppose the hellish fury of their persecutors.’ Their whole force consisted of about 50 horsemen, ill-provided with arms, 50 footmen with muskets, and about 150 more with halberts and forks. Mr. Hamilton took the chief command, and David Hackston, Henry Hall, John Balfour, Robert Fleming, William Cleland, John Loudon, and John Brown, acted as subalterns under Mr. Hamilton. Mr. Wilson says, ‘Hamilton gave out the word that no quarter should be given to the enemy.’ The Covenanters did not wait the arrival of the military, who could not have reached them but by a circuitous route; neither did they take shelter in the mosses that lay near, and into which the cavalry could not have followed them; but they advanced eastward about two miles, singing psalms all the way.

“When Grahame reached the height at Drumclog, and saw the Whigs about half a mile to the north of that place, near to where Stabbyside House now stands, he placed his prisoners under a guard in the farmyard of North Drumclog, and, having drawn up his three troops of cavalry, he advanced to attack the Whigs. Mr. Russel says, Claverhouse gave orders to his troops to give no quarter to the Covenanters; and that ‘there was such a spirit given forth from the Lord, that both men and women who had no arms faced the troops.’ The dragoons had to march down an arable field of a very slight declivity, at the foot of which a small piece of marshy ground (provincially termed misk or boggy land) lay between the hostile parties. As many of the insurgents resided in that immediate neighbourhood, they could not fail to know that this marshy place, on the north side of which they had taken their stand, was in some places too soft to support the feet of horses. But as this swamp was covered with a sward of green herbage, and was but of a few yards in breadth, and lying between two fields of arable land, the declivity of which was on both sides towards the bog, it is evident that Grahame did not perceive it to be a marsh; and to this, above all other circumstances, is his defeat to be attributed.

“This ground, so favourable to the Covenanters, appears to have been taken up more from accident than design. If it had been their wish to have taken their station in or behind a bog, they could have found many of them much nearer to where the congregation first met, and much more impenetrable to cavalry than that where the rencounter happened. In advancing from Hairlaw Hill to the place of action, they passed several deep flow-mosses, some of them of great extent, and into which cavalry could not have entered. Even when the hostile parties came in sight of each other, the Covenanters were nearer to a flow-moss than they were to the marshy ground behind which they placed themselves. Had Captain Grahame known the ground, he could have easily avoided the marsh, and passed the extremity of it by a public road, only about two or three hundred yards to the westward.

“The troops fired first, and, according to tradition, the Covenanters, at the suggestion of Balfour, evaded the fire of the military by prostrating themselves on the ground, with the exception of John Morton in Broomhall, who, believing in the doctrine of predestination, refused to stoop, and was shot. The ball entered his mouth, and he fell backward at the feet of the great-grandfather of the writer of this account. Grahame ordered the troops to charge; but a number of the horses having, in advancing to the Covenanters, been entangled in the marsh, the ranks were broken, and the squadron was thrown into disorder. The Covenanters, who had no doubt foreseen what was to happen, seized the favourable opportunity of pouring their fire on the disordered cavalry, and, following it up with a spirited attack, soon completed the confusion and defeat of the troops. The commander of the Whigs cried, ‘O’er the bog, and to them, lads!’ The order was re-echoed, and obeyed with promptitude; and, from the involved state of the military, the forks and halberts of the Covenanters were extremely apt to the occasion. The rout of the cavalry was instantaneous and complete, and achieved principally by the insurgents who were on foot, though the horsemen soon passed the bog and joined in the pursuit. Mr. Wilson says that Balfour and Cleland were the first persons who stepped into the bog; but the traditionary accounts allege that it was one Woodburn, from the Mains of Loudon, who set that example of bravery.

“Thus far the traditionary accounts and that of Mr. Wilson have been followed. But Mr. Russel says that Claverhouse sent two of his men to reconnoitre, and afterwards did so himself, before he made the attack. If he did so, it is surprising that he did not perceive the marsh, as well as the road by which it might have been evaded. Russel also says that Captain Grahame sent forward twelve dragoons, who fired at the Whigs, and that as many of them turned out and fired at the cavalry. This, he says, was twice repeated, without a person being hurt on either side. On their firing a third time, one dragoon fell from his horse, and seemed to rise with difficulty. Claverhouse, he says, then ordered thirty dragoons to dismount and fire, when William Cleland, with twelve or sixteen armed footmen, supported by twenty or twenty-four with halberts and forks, advanced and fired at the military. But still no one was injured, till Cleland advanced alone, fired his piece, and killed one dragoon; and when the Whigs were wheeling, some of the military fired, and killed one man. Claverhouse next advanced his whole force to the stanck, and fired desperately, ‘and the honest party, having but few guns, was not able to stand, and being very confused at coming off, one of the last party cried out, “For the Lord’s sake, go on”; and immediately they ran violently forward, and Claverhouse was tooming the shot all the time on them; but the honest party’s right hand of the foot being nearest Cleland, went on Clavers’s left flank, and all the body went on together against Clavers’s body, and Cleland stood until the honest party was joined among them both with pikes and swords, and William Dingwell and Thomas Weir being on the right hand of the honest party, all the forenamed who fired thrice before being together, and, louping ower, they got among the enemies. William Dingwell received his wound, his horse being dung back by the strength of the enemy, fell over and dang over James Russel’s horse. James presently rose and mounted and pursued, calling to a woman to take care of his dear friend William Dingwell, (for the women ran as fast as the men,) and she did so. Thomas Weir rode in among them, and took a standard, and he was mortally wounded and knocked on the head, but pursued as long as he was able, and then fell. The honest party pursued as long as their horses could trot, being upwards of two miles. There was of the enemy killed thirty-six dead on the ground, and by the way in the pursuit, and only five or six of the honest party.’

“Lieutenant Robert Grahame, Cornet John Arnold, and thirty-four privates of the King’s forces were killed on the field, and several more wounded. Five of the military were taken prisoners, and afterwards allowed to escape. Of the Covenanters, John Morton, Thomas Weir in Cumberhead, William Dingwell, one of the murderers of the Bishop, James Thomson, Stonehouse, John Gabbie in Fioch, and James Dykes in Loudon, were all mortally wounded, and died either on the field, or soon after the skirmish.

“The Covenanters pursued the troops to Calder Water, about three miles from the field of action. A person of the name of Finlay, from Lesmahagow, armed with a pitchfork, came up with Captain Grahame, at a place called Capernaum, near Coldwakening, and would probably have killed that officer, had not another of the Covenanters called to Finlay to strike at the horse, and thereby secure both it and the rider. The blow intended for the Captain was spent upon his mare, and the Captain escaped by mounting, with great agility, the horse of his trumpeter, who was killed by the Whigs.

“The Covenanters came up with some of the dragoons near Hillhead. The troopers offered to surrender, and asked quarter, which some of the Covenanters were disposed to grant; but, when their leaders came up, they actually killed these men, in spite of every remonstrance. The men so killed were buried like felons, on the marsh between the farms of Hillhead and Hookhead, and their graves remained visible till the year 1750, when they were sunk in a march dyke, drawn in that direction. The late Mr. Dykes of Fieldhead declared to the writer of this narrative, that his grandfather, Thomas Leiper, of Fieldhead, had often told him that he was present when these soldiers were killed, and did what he could to save their lives, but without effect.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

“When the discomfited dragoons returned through Strathaven, they were insulted and pursued by the inhabitants, down a lane called the Hole-close, till one of the soldiers fired upon the crowd, and killed a man, about 50 yards east from where the relief meeting-house at Strathaven now stands.

“Captain Grahame retreated to Glasgow, and he is said to have met at Cathkin some troops sent out to his aid; but he refused to return to the charge, observing to his brother officer, that he had been at a Whig meeting that day, but that he liked the lecture so ill that he would not return to the afternoon’s service. Another account says, that when Captain Grahame rode off the field, Mr. King, the preacher, then a prisoner, called after him, by way of derision, to stop to the afternoon’s preaching.[28]

“The relations of the two officers that were killed went to Drumclog next day after the skirmish, to bury them; but the country people had cut and mangled the bodies of the slain in such a manner that only one of the officers could be recognised. The coffin intended for the other was left at High Drumclog, where it remained many years in a cart-shed, till it was used in burying a vagrant beggar that died at the Mount, in that neighbourhood. This fact has been well attested to the writer of this account from sources of information on which he can rely.”

CHAPTER VII. — THE PORTEOUS MOB. — THE CITY GUARD. — JEANIE DEANS. — PATRICK WALKER. — PARTICULARS REGARDING SCENERY, ETC.

Heart of Mid-Lothian.

e shall mention a few inaccuracies in the account given of the Porteous mob in “The Heart of Midlothian,” assigning, at the same time, precise dates to all the incidents.

On the morning of the 11th of April, 1736, Wilson and Robertson were conducted to the Tolbooth Church, for the purpose of hearing their last sermon, their execution being to happen on Wednesday following. The custom of conducting criminals under sentence of death to a place of public worship, and suffering them again to mix with their fellow-men, from whom they were so shortly to be cut off for ever, was a beautiful trait of the devotional and merciful feelings of the people of Scotland, which has since this incident been unhappily disused. In the Tale, the escape of Robertson is said to have happened after the sermon; but this statement, evidently made by the novelist for the sake of effect, is incorrect. The criminals had scarcely seated themselves in the pew, when Wilson committed the daring deed. Robertson tripped up the fourth soldier himself, and jumped out of the pew with incredible agility. In hurrying out at the door of the church, he tumbled over the collection money, by which he was probably hurt; for, in running across the Parliament Square, he was observed to stagger much, and, in going down the stairs which lead to the Cowgate, actually fell. In this dangerous predicament he was protected by Mr. M‘Queen, minister of the New Kirk, who was coming up the stair on his way to church at the moment. This kind-hearted gentleman is said to have set him again on his feet, and to have covered his retreat as much as possible from the pursuit of the guard. Robertson passed down to the Cowgate, ran up the Horse Wynd, and out at the Potterrow Port, the crowd all the way closing behind him, so that his pursuers could not by any means overtake him. In the wynd he made up to a saddled horse, and would have mounted him, but was prevented by the owner. Passing the Crosscauseway, he got into the King’s Park, and made the way for Duddingstone, under the basaltic rocks which overhang the path to that village. On jumping a dyke near Clearburn, he fainted away, but was revived by a refreshment which he there received.

Upon Robertson’s escape, Wilson was immediately taken back to prison, and put in close custody. He was executed, under the dreadful circumstances so well known, on the 14th of April. The story of a “young fellow, with a sailor’s cap slouched over his face,” having cut him down from the gibbet, on the rising of the mob, is perfectly unfounded. The executioner was at the top of the ladder, performing that part of his office, at the time Porteous fired.

Though the author of the Tale has chosen George Robertson for his hero, and invested him with many attributes worthy of that high character, historical accuracy obliges us to record that he was merely a stabler; and, what must at once destroy all romantic feelings concerning him in the light of a hero, tradition informs us that he was a married man at the time of his imprisonment. He kept an inn in Bristo Street, and was a man of rather dissipated habits, though the exculpatory evidence produced upon his trial represents him as in the habit of being much intrusted by the carriers who lodged at his house. After his escape, he was known to have gone to Holland, and to have resided there many years.

The most flagrant aberration from the truth committed by the novelist, is in the opening of the Tale, where the crowd is represented as awaiting the execution of Captain Porteous, in the Grassmarket, on the 7th of September. The whole scene is described in the most admirable manner; and the interesting objects of the gallows, the filled windows, and the crowd upon the street, form, I have no doubt, the faithful outline of what the scene would have been, had it existed.[29]

But however ably the Author of “Waverley” has delineated this imaginary scene, it is unfortunate that his account does not agree either with truth, or, what was to him ten times more important, vraisemblance. He has no doubt handled the fictitious incident of the abortive preparations for the execution, and the expressions of the disappointed multitude on the occasion, in his usual masterly manner, and heightened the effect of his own story not a little by the use he has made of history; but it must at the same time strike every reader that the whole affair is extremely improbable. It seems scarcely possible that a conspiracy of such a deep and well-planned nature as the Porteous mob could have been laid and brought to issue in a single afternoon. Not even the most romantic reader of novels, supposing him to understand the case to its full extent, would deceive himself with so incredible an absurdity; but would think with us that, according to the natural course of things, it would take all the time it did take, (five days,) before so well-laid and eventually so successful a scheme could be projected, organized, and accomplished.

The plain statement of the facts is to the following effect.

The Queen’s pardon reached Edinburgh so early as Thursday, the 2nd of September. The riot happened on the night of Tuesday, the 7th—the night previous to the day on which the execution was to have taken place, and after a sufficient time had elapsed for the preparation of the scheme. Many of the rioters came from counties so distant, that the news of the reprieve could not have reached them in a less space; and perhaps the intelligence would not have been so speedily communicated in those postless and coachless days, had not the popular interest in the matter been so universal. Taking every thing into consideration, it may indeed astonish us that the conspiracy was so rapidly matured as it was, not to speak of a single afternoon! It may be noticed, that some papers have lately come to light, by which it appears the plot was not of that dark and mysterious character which the accounts of the times and the Author of “Waverley” make it. Information had been given to the council at least thirty-six hours before the tumult burst forth; and at a meeting late on the previous evening, when the information was taken into consideration, the council pronounced the reports in circulation to be merely cadies’ clatters, (gossip of street-porters,) unworthy of regard.

The incidents of the riot, from the mob’s entering the city at the West Port to Butler’s desertion of the scene at midnight, are all given very correctly by the novelist. It is said to be absolutely true that the rioters seized and detained a person of Butler’s profession, for the purpose related in the novel. This happened, however, when they had got half way to the gallows, at the head of the West Bow. Porteous was twice drawn up and let down again before the deed was accomplished—first, to bind his hands, and secondly, in order to put something over his face. In the morning his body was found hanging, by the public functionaries of the city, and was buried the same day in the neighbouring churchyard of Greyfriars. It was on the south side of the Grassmarket that he was hanged.

Arnot observes, after relating the incidents of the Porteous mob, in his History of Edinburgh, that though it was then forty years after that occurrence, no person had ever been found out upon whom an accession to the murder could be charged. Nevertheless, the writer of the present narrative has been informed by a very old man, who was an apprentice in the Fleshmarket of Edinburgh about fifty years ago, that in his younger days it was well known among the butchers, though only whispered secretly among themselves, that the leaders of this singular riot were two brothers of the name of Cumming, who were, for many years after, fleshers in the Low Market, and died unmolested, at advanced ages. They were tall, strong, and exceedingly handsome men, had been dressed in women’s clothes on the occasion, and were said to have been the first to jump through the flames that burnt down the prison-door, in eagerness to seize their unfortunate victim.

A few more scraps of private information have also been communicated to the world by one who was instrumental and active in the riot. We give them from the authority of “The Beauties of Scotland.”

“On the day preceding that of Porteous’ death, a whisper went through the country, upon what information or authority this person knew not, that an attempt was to be made, on the succeeding evening, to put Captain Porteous to death. To avenge the blood of a relation who had been killed at the execution of Wilson, he conceived himself bound in duty to share the risk of the attempt. Wherefore, upon the following day, he proceeded to Edinburgh, and towards the evening stopped in the suburb of Portsburgh, which he found crowded with country people; all of whom, however, kept aloof from each other, so that there was no conversation about the purpose of their assembling. At a later hour, he found the inferior sort of inns in the Grassmarket full of people, and saw many persons, apparently strangers, lurking in the different houses. About eleven at night, the streets became crowded with men, who, having in some measure organized their body, by beating a drum and marching in order, immediately proceeded to secure the gates and make for the prison.”

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

“As the multitude proceeded with Porteous down the West Bow, some of their number knocked at the door of a shop and demanded ropes.[30] A woman, apparently a maid-servant, thrust a coil of ropes out of a window, without opening the door, and a person wearing a white apron, which seemed to be assumed for disguise, gave in return a piece of gold as the price,” etc.

The City Guard, of which so much mention is made in the Tale before us, was originally instituted in 1648. Previous to that period, the City had been watched during the night by the personal duty of the inhabitants, a certain number of whom were obliged to undertake the office by rotation. In order to relieve the inconveniency of this service, a body of sixty men was first appointed, with a captain, two lieutenants, two sergeants, and three corporals; but no regular funds being provided for the support of the establishment, it was speedily dissolved. However, about thirty years thereafter, the necessity of a regular police was again felt; and forty men were raised. These, in the year 1682, were augmented, at the instigation of the Duke of York, to 108 men; and, to defray the expense of the company, a tax was imposed upon the citizens. At the Revolution, the Town Council represented to the Estates of Parliament, that the burden was a grievance to the City; and their request to have it removed was granted. So speedily, however, did they repent this second dismissal of their police, that the very next year they applied to Parliament for authority to raise a body of no fewer than 126 men, and to assess the inhabitants for the expense. Since that period the number of the Town Guard had been very fluctuating, and, before its late final dissolution, amounted only to about 75 men. For many years previous to this event, they had been found quite inadequate to the protection of the City. Riots seemed to be in some measure encouraged by the ridicule in which the venerable corps was held; and from their infirmities and other circumstances, as well as from their scantiness, the more distant parts of the rapidly increasing capital were left defenceless and open to the attacks of nightly depredators. Their language, their manners, and their tempers, so uncongenial with those of the citizens whom they protected, were also found to be almost inapplicable to the purposes for which they served, and, of course, operated as causes of their being disbanded. Besides, a few years before their dismissal, a regular police, similar to that of London, had been established in Edinburgh; which soon completely set aside all necessity of their services. The Town Guard were therefore convoked for the last time, we believe, in February, 1817; and, after receiving some small gratuity from the magistrates, and having a pension settled upon them still more trifling than their trifling pay, proportioned to the rank they held in the corps, were finally disbanded. The police of Edinburgh is now almost unrivalled in Britain for vigilance and activity—how different from the unruly and intemperate times when magisterial authority could be successfully set at defiance, when mobs could unite into such a system of co-operation as even to beard royalty itself, when (in 1812) a scene of violence could be exhibited that would not have disgraced the middle ages, and when, still more to be lamented, the protection of property was so uncertain, that, according to the city-arms, it was but too literally true that—

Another event occurred about the same time in Edinburgh, which was appropriately contemporaneous with the abolition of the City Guard,—namely, the demolishment and final removal of the Tolbooth. This building, which makes so conspicuous a figure in the present Tale, was originally the Town-house of Edinburgh, and afterwards afforded accommodation for the Scottish Parliament and Courts of Justice, and for the confinement of debtors and malefactors. It had been used solely as a jail since 1640. It was not deficient in other interesting recollections, besides being the scene of the Porteous mob. Here Queen Mary delivered, what are termed by John Knox her Painted Orations; and on its dreary summits had been successively displayed the heads of a Morton, a Gowrie, a Huntly, a Montrose, and an Argyll,—besides those of many of inferior note.

A part of this edifice had been devoted to the use of the City Guard, ever since the removal of their former rendezvous in the High Street. Many will still remember of seeing a veteran or two leaning over a half-door in the north side of the Jail. Could their eyes have penetrated farther into the gloomy interior, a few more indistinct figures might have been perceived smoking round a fire, or reading an old newspaper, while the unintelligible language which they spoke might aid the idea of their resemblance to a convocation of infernals in some of the cinder-holes of Tartarus. In fine weather, a few of the venerable corps might be seen crawling about the south front of the prison, with Lochaber axes over their shoulders, or reposing lazily on a form with the white-haired keeper of the Tolbooth door, and basking in the sun, in all the lubber luxury of mental and corporeal abandonment. But now (sic transit gloria mundi!) their ancient Capitol is levelled with the dust, and they themselves are only to be ranked among the “things that were.” All trace of their existence is dispersed over a waste of visioned recollection; and future generations will think of the City Guard, as they think of the forty-five, of the Friends of the People,—or of the last year’s snow!

It is said, in the “Heart of Midlothian,” that “a phantom of former days,” in the shape of “an old worn-out Highlander, dressed in a cocked hat, bound with white tape instead of silver lace, and in coat, waistcoat and breeches, of a muddy-coloured red,” (the costume of the Guard,) “still creeps around the statue of Charles the Second, in the Parliament Square, as if the image of a Stuart were the last refuge for any memorial of our ancient manners.” This venerable spectre is neither more nor less than the goodly flesh and blood figure of John Kennedy, who served in the corps ever since the American war, and who is now employed by Mr. Rae, keeper of the Parliament House, to sweep the arcade, and to prevent little ragged urchins from disturbing by their noisy sports the weightier business of the law. John Kennedy was one of the band; and was well known to the heroes of the High School forty years ago. Like him, the greater part of his surviving brethren have changed into new shapes. One or two may be observed now and then, staggering about the outskirts of the town, or dozing away the last years of life upon the seats in the Meadow Walk and the King’s Park. Their old musty coats, in such instances, are dyed in some colour less military than red, and generally otherwise modernized by abscission of the skirts. A pair of their original spatterdashers still case their legs,—but which still less scarcely fend than formerly

We once stumbled upon a veteran snugly bedded in a stall of about three feet square, crammed into the internal space of an outside stair in the West Bow. In this den he exercised the calling of a cobbler. Like all shoemakers, he was an earnest politician, and read the Scotsman every week in the second month of its age, after it had made the tour of the Bow;—“being determined,” he said, “to stick by the nation!” We have also sometimes found occasion to recognise the nose of an old acquaintance, under the disguise of a circulator of bills, at the doors of certain haberdashers on the South Bridge. We have a peculiar veneration for a puff given forth from the paw of an old Town-Guardsman; and seldom find it in our heart to put such a document to a death of candle-ends.

One of the principal reasons which David Deans assigned to Saddletree, for not employing counsel in the cause of his daughter Effie, was the notorious Jacobitism of the faculty, who, he said, had received into their library the medals which that Moabitish woman, the Duchess of Gordon, had sent to them. This was a true and, moreover, a curious case. In 1711, the great-grandmother of the present Duke of Gordon excited no small attention by presenting to the Faculty of Advocates a silver medal, with a head of the Pretender on one side, and, on the other, the British isles, with the word Reddite.[31] The Dean having presented the medal to the faculty at the next meeting, a debate ensued about the propriety of admitting it into their repositories. It was carried 63 to 12 to admit the medal, and return thanks to the duchess for her present. Two advocates, delegated for that purpose, waited upon her grace, and expressed their hopes that she would soon have an opportunity of complimenting the faculty with a second medal on the Restoration.

This lady was the wife of George, first Duke of Gordon, who held out Edinburgh Castle for King James, in 1689.

The plot of this tale, besides bearing some resemblance to that of The Exiles of Siberia, finds a counterpart in the story of Helen Walker.

When the following account of this person was taken down, in 1786, she was a little stout-looking woman, between 70 and 80 years of age, dressed in a long tartan plaid, and having over her white cap, (Scottice, TOY,) a black silk hood tied under her chin. She lived in the neighbourhood of Dumfries, on the romantic banks of the immortalized Clouden, a little way above the bridge by which the road from Dumfries to Sanquhar crosses that beautiful stream. She lived by the humblest means of subsistence,—working stockings, teaching a few children, and rearing now and then a small brood of chickens. Her countenance was remarkably lively and intelligent, her eyes were dark and expressive, and her conversation was marked by a naïveté and good sense that seemed to fit her for a higher sphere in life. When any question was asked concerning her earlier life, her face became clouded, and she generally contrived to turn the conversation to a different topic.

Her story, so far as it was ever known, bore that she had been early left an orphan, with the charge of a younger sister, named Tibby, (Isabella,) whom she endeavoured to maintain and educate by her own exertions. It will not be easy to conceive her feelings when her sister was apprehended on a charge of child-murder, and herself called on as a principal witness against her. The counsel for the prisoner told Helen, that if she could declare that her sister had made any preparation, however slight, or had communicated any notice of her situation, such a statement would save her sister’s life. But, from the very first, this high-souled woman determined against such a perjury, and avowed her resolution to give evidence according to her conscience. Isabella was of course found guilty and condemned; and, in removing her from the bar, she was heard to say to her sister, “Oh, Nelly! ye’ve been the cause of my death!”

Helen Walker, however, was as remarkable for her dauntless perseverance in a good cause as for her fortitude in resisting the temptations of a bad one. She immediately procured a petition to be drawn up, stating the peculiar circumstances of the case, and that very night of her sister’s condemnation set out from Dumfries for London. She travelled on foot, and was neither possessed of introduction nor recommendation. She presented herself in her tartan plaid and country attire before John Duke of Argyll, after having watched three days at his door, just as he was stepping into his carriage, and delivered her petition. Herself and her story interested him so much, that he immediately procured the pardon she solicited, which was forwarded to Dumfries, and Helen returned on foot, having performed her meritorious journey in the course of a few weeks.

After her liberation, Isabella was married to the father of her child, and retired to some distance in the north of England, where Helen used occasionally to visit her.

Helen Walker, whom every one will be ready to acknowledge as the Original of Jeanie Deans, died in the spring of 1787; and her remains lie in the Churchyard of Irongray, without a stone to mark the place where they are deposited.

The objurgatory exhortation which David Deans delivers to his daughters, on suddenly overhearing the word “dance” pronounced in their conversation, will be remembered by our readers. He there “blesses God, (with that singular worthy, Patrick Walker the packman at Bristo-port,) that ordered his lot in his dancing days, so that fear of his head and throat, cauld and hunger, wetness and weariness, stopped the lightness of his head and the wantonness of his feet.” Almost the whole of David’s speech is to be found at the 59th page of Patrick Walker’s “Life of Cameron,” with much more curious matter.

This “Patrick Walker” was a person who had suffered for the good cause in his youth, along with many others of the “singular worthies” of the times. After the Revolution, it appears that he exercised the profession of a pedlar. He probably dealed much in those pamphlets concerning the sufferings and the doctrines of the “Martyrs,” which were so widely diffused throughout Scotland, in the years subsequent to the Revolution. In the process of time he set up his staff of rest in a small shop at the head of Bristo Street, opposite to the entrance of a court entitled “Society.” Here Patrick flourished about a century ago, and published several works, now very scarce and curious, of “Remarkable Passages in the Lives and Deaths of those famous worthies, signal for piety and zeal, viz. Mr. John Semple, Mr. Wellwood, Mr. Cameron, Mr. Peden, etc.; who were all shining lights in the Land, and gave light to many, in which they rejoiced for a season.” For this sort of biography Patrick seems to have been excellently adapted; for he had not only been witness to many of the incidents which he describes, but, from his intimate personal friendship with the subjects of his narratives, he was also a complete adept in all their intricate polemics and narrow superstitions. These he accordingly gives in such a style of length, strength, and volubility, as leaves us weltering in astonishment at the extensive range of expression of which Cant was susceptible. Take the following, for instance, from the rhapsodies of Peden. “A bloody sword, a bloody sword, a bloody sword for thee, O Scotland! Many miles shall ye travel and shall see nothing but desolation and ruinous wastes in thee, O Scotland! The fertilest places shall be desert as the mountains in thee, O Scotland! Oh the Monzies, the Monzies, see how they run! how long will they run? Lord, cut their houghs and stay their running. The women with child shall be ript up and dashed in pieces. Many a preaching has God waired (spent) on thee, O Scotland! But now He will come forth with the fiery brand of His wrath, and then He will preach to thee by conflagration, since words winna do! O Lord, Thou hast been baith good and kind to auld Sandy, thorow a long tract of time, and given him many years in Thy Service which have been but like as many months. But now he is tired of the warld, and sae let him away with the honesty he has, for he will gather no more!” We will also extract Patrick’s own account of an incident which is related upon his authority in the “Heart of Midlothian,” at the 54th page of the second volume. It is a good specimen of his style:—

“One time, among many, he[32] designed to administrate the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper; and before the time cam, he assured the people that the devil would be envious of the good work they were to go about,—that he was afraid he would be permitted to raise a storm in the air with a speat of rain, to raise the water, designing to drown some of them; but it will not be within the compass of his power to drown any of you, no not so much as a dog. Accordingly it came to pass, on Monday, when they were dismissing, they saw a man all in black, entering the water to wade, a little above them; they were afraid, the water being big; immediately he lost his feet, (as they apprehended,) and came down lying on his back, and waving his hand. The people ran and got ropes, and threw in to him; and tho’ there were ten or twelve men upon the ropes, they were in danger of being drowned into the water: Mr. Semple, looking on, cryed, ‘Quit the ropes and let him go, (he saw who it was,) ’tis the devil, ’tis the devil; he will burn, but not drown; and, by drowning you, would have God dishonoured, because He hath gotten some glory to His free grace, in being kind to mony of your souls at this time. Oh! he is a subtile wylie devil, that lies at the catch, waiting his opportunity, that now, when ye have heard all ye will get at this occasion, his design is to raise a confusion among you, to get all out of your minds that ye have heard, and off your spirits that ye have felt.’ He earnestly exhorted them all to keep in mind what they had heard and seen, and to retain what they had attained, and to go home blessing God for all, and that the devil was disappointed of his hellish design. All search was made in the country, to find out if any man was lost, but none could be heard of; from whence all concluded that it was the devil.”

According to Patrick, this same Mr. Semple was remarkable for much discernment and sagacity, besides that which was necessary for the detection of devils. From the following “passage,” the reader will observe that he was equally acute in the detection of witches. “While a neighbouring minister was distributing tokens before the sacrament, Mr. Semple standing by, and seeing him reaching a token to a woman, said, ‘Hold your hand; that Woman hath got too many tokens already, for she is a witch;’ of which none suspected her then: yet afterwards she confessed herself to be a witch, and was put to death for the same.”

We also find John Semple, of Carsphearn, introduced into that well-known irreverent work, “Scots Presbyterian Eloquence”; where an humorous burlesque of his style of expression is given in the following words: “In the day of judgment the Lord will say, ‘Who’s that there?’ John will answer, ‘It’s e’en poor auld John Semple, Lord.’ ‘Who are these with you, John?’ ‘It’s a few poor honest bonneted men.’ ‘Strange, John! where’s all your folks with their hats and silk hoods?’ ‘I invited them, Lord; but they would not come.’ ‘It’s not your fault, John; come forward, ye are very welcome, and these few with you!’”

In the reekit and mutilated volume of “Lives” before us, we have found a considerable number of passages which are alluded to in the narratives of My Landlord—more indeed than it would be interesting to point out. The use which the Author makes of the information he derives from them is by no means dishonourable, except perhaps in one instance, vol. iv., page 134, where it must be allowed he is rather waggish upon Patrick, besides corrupting the truth of his text. This instance relates to the murder of a trooper named Francis Gordon, said to have been committed by the Cameronians. Patrick denies the charge of murder, and calls it only killing in self-defence. His own account is as follows: “It was then commonly said, that Mr. Francis Gordon was a Volunteer out of Wickedness of Principles, and could not stay with the Troops, but must alwaies be raging and ranging to catch hiding suffering people. Meldrum and Airly’s Troops, lying at Lanark upon the first Day of March, 1682, Mr. Gordon and another Comrade, with their two Servants and four Horses, came to Kilcaigow, two Miles from Lanark, searching for William Caigow and others under Hiding. Mr. Gordon, rambling thorow the Town, offered to abuse the women. At night they came a mile further to the Easterseat, to Robert Muir’s, he being also under hiding. Gordon’s comrade and the two servants went to bed, but he could sleep none, roaring all the night for women. When day came, he took his sword in his hand, and came to Moss-Platt; and some men, (who had been in the fields all night,) seeing him, they fled, and he pursued. James Wilson, Thomas Young, and myself, having been in a meeting all night, were lying down in the morning. We were alarmed, thinking there were many more than one. He pursued hard and overtook us. Thomas Young said, ‘Sir, what do you pursue us for?’ He said, he was come to send us to Hell. James Wilson said, ‘That shall not be, for we will defend ourselves.’ He answered that either he or we should go to it now, and then ran his sword furiously thorow James Wilson’s coat. James fired upon him, but missed him. All the time he cried, ‘damn his soul!’ He got a shot in his head out of a pocket pistol, rather fit for diverting a boy than for killing such a furious, mad, brisk man; which notwithstanding killed him dead.” Patrick does not mention who it was that shot him; and from his obscurity on this point, we are led to suspect that it was no other than himself; for had it been Thomas Young, it is probable that he would have mentioned it. In the ‘Tale,’ David Deans is mentioned as being among them, and half confesses to the merit of having killed Mr. Gordon; but our venerable biographer is also made to prefer a sort of a half claim to the honour, while neither of them dared utterly to avow it; ‘there being some wild cousins of the deceased about Edinburgh who might have been yet addicted to revenge.’”

The “worthy John Livingston, a sailor in Borrowstownness,” who is quoted for a saying at the 37th page of the fourth volume, will be found at 107th page of Patrick’s “Life of Cameron,” with the words ascribed to him at full length. Borrowstownness seems to have been a somewhat holy place in its day; for, besides this worthy, we learn from the same authority that it also produced “Skipper William Horn, that singular, solid, serious, old exercised, self-denied, experienced, confirmed, established, tender Christian,” and another tar of the name of Alexander Stewart, who “suffered at the Cross” for a cause in which few of his profession have ever since thought of suffering,—together with two other worthies named Cuthel, one of whom was beheaded along with Mr. Cargill.

At the 40th page of the same fourth volume, David Deans declares himself to have been the person “of whom there was some sport at the Revolution, when he noited thegither the heads of the twa false prophets, their ungracious Graces the Prelates, as they stood on the High Street, after being expelled from the Convention-parliament.” The source of this story is also to be found in the works of Patrick Walker. This sage historian relates the circumstance in a manner rather too facetious to be altogether consistent with his habitual gravity. “Fourteen Bishops,” says he, “were expelled at once, and stood in a cloud, with pale faces, in the Parliament Close. James Wilson, Robert Neilson, Francis Hislop, and myself, were standing close by them. Francis Hislop, with force, thrust Robert Neilson upon them, and their heads went hard upon each other. Their graceless Graces went quickly off; and in a short time neither Bishop nor Curate were to be seen in the streets. This was a sudden and surprising change, not to be forgotten. But some of us would have rejoiced still more to have seen the whole cabalzie sent legally down the Bow, that they might have found the weight of their tails in a tow, to dry their stocking-soles, and let them know what hanging was.”[33]

Saint Leonard’s Crags, the scene of David Deans’s residence, are an irregular ridge, with a slight vegetation, situated in the south-west boundary of the King’s Park, at Edinburgh. Adjacent to them, and bearing their name, there exists a sort of village, now almost inclosed by the approaching suburbs of the city. The neighbouring extremity of the Pleasance, with this little place, seem to have formed at one period the summer residences or villas of the inhabitants of Edinburgh, some of the houses even yet bearing traces of little garden plots before the door, and other peculiarities of what is still the prevailing taste in the fitting up of boxes. None of these may, however, have existed in the time of David Deans. In former times, St. Leonard’s Crags and the adjoining valley used to be much resorted to by duellists. This part of their history is, however, to be found at full length in the “Heart of Midlothian.” There is a case of duel on record, in which a barber challenged a citizen, and fought him with swords. It happened in the year 1600. The citizen was slain; and his antagonist, being instantly apprehended, was tried, and, by the order of the King, executed, for having presumed to take the revenge of a gentleman.[34]

Muschat’s Cairn, so conspicuously introduced into this Tale, was a heap of stones placed upon the spot where a barbarous murder was committed in the year 1720. The murderer was descended of a respectable family in the county of Angus, and had been educated to the profession of a surgeon. When in Edinburgh, in the course of his education, it appears that he made an imprudent match with a woman in humble life, named Margaret Hall. He shortly repented of what he had done, and endeavoured by every means to shake himself free of his wife. The attempts which he made to divorce, to forsake, and to poison her, proved all unsuccessful; till at length he resolved, in the distraction caused by his frequent disappointments, to rid himself of his incumbrance by the surest method, that of cutting her throat. The day before the perpetration of this deed, he pretended a return of affection to the unfortunate woman, and in the evening took her to walk with him, in the direction of Duddingston. The unhappy creature was averse to the expedition, and intreated her husband to remain in Edinburgh; but he persisted, in spite of her tears, in his desire of taking her with him to that village. When they had got nearly to the extremity of the path which is called the Duke’s Walk, (having been the favourite promenade of the Duke of York, afterwards King James II.,) Muschat threw her upon the ground, and immediately proceeded to cut her throat. During her resistance he wounded her hand and chin, which she held down, endeavouring to intercept the knife; and he declared in his confession, afterwards taken, that, but for her long hair, with which he pinned her to the earth, he could not have succeeded in his purpose, her struggles being so great. Immediately after the murder, he went and informed some of his accomplices, and took no pains to evade apprehension. He was tried and found guilty upon his own confession, and, after being executed in the Grassmarket, was hung in chains upon the Gallowlee.[35] A cairn of stones was erected upon the spot where the murder took place, in token of the people’s abhorrence and reprobation of the deed. It was removed several years since, when the Duke’s Walk was widened and levelled by Lord Adam Gordon.

St. Anthony’s Chapel, among the ruins of which Robertson found means to elude the pursuit of Sharpitlaw, is an interesting relic of antiquity, situated on a level space about half-way up the north-west side of the mountain called Arthur’s Seat. It lies in a westerly direction from Muschat’s Cairn, at about the distance of a furlong; and the Hunter’s Bog, also mentioned in this Tale, occupies a valley which surrounds all that side of the hill. The chapel was originally a place of worship, annexed to a hermitage at the distance of a few yards, and both were subservient to a monastery of the same name, which anciently flourished on the site of St. Anthony’s Street in Leith. In the times of Maitland and Arnot the ruin was almost entire; but now there only remain a broken wall and a few fragments of what has once been building, but which are now scarcely to be distinguished from the surrounding grey rocks;—so entirely has art in this case relapsed into its primitive nature, and lost all the characteristics of human handiwork. The slightest possible traces of a hermitage are also to be observed, plastered against the side of a hollow rock; and, further down the hill, there springs from the foot of a precipice the celebrated St. Anthony’s Well. Queen Mary is said to have visited all these scenes; and, somehow or other, her name is always associated with them by those who are accustomed to visit, on a Sunday afternoon, their hallowed precincts. They are also rendered sacred in song, by their introduction into one of the most beautiful, most plaintive, and most poetical of all Scotland’s ancient melodies:

The situation is remarkably well adapted for a hermitage, though in the immediate neighbourhood of a populous capital. The scene around is as wild as a Highland desert, and gives an air of seclusion and peacefulness as complete. If the distant din of the city at all could reach the eremite’s ears, it would appear as insignificant as the murmur of the waves around the base of the isolated rock, and would be as unheeded.

CHAPTER VIII. — ( The Plot, and Chief Characters of the Tale. ) [36] — LUCY ASHTON AND BUCKLAW. — A COUNTRY INNKEEPER.

Bride of Lammermoor.

ohn Hamilton, second son of Sir Walter Hambledon of Cadzow, ancestor of the Dukes of Hamilton, married the heiress of Innerwick,[37] in East Lothian, in the reign of King Robert Bruce, and was the progenitor of “a race of powerful barons,” who flourished for about three hundred years, and “intermarried with the Douglasses, Homes,” etc. They possessed a great many lands on the coast of East Lothian, betwixt Dunbar and the borders of Berwickshire, and also about Dirleton and North Berwick. They had their residence at the Castle of Innerwick, now in ruins. Wolff’s Crag is supposed to be the Castle of Dunglas; and this supposition is strengthened by the retour[38] of a person of the name of Wolff, in the year 1647, of some parts of the Barony of Innerwick, being on record, and the castle having been blown up by gunpowder in 1640, a circumstance slightly noticed in the Tale, but too obvious to be mistaken.[39] Of this family the Earls of Haddington are descended. They began to decline about the beginning of the 17th century, when they seem to have lost the title of Innerwick[40] and began to take their designation from other parts of the family inheritance, such as Fenton, Lawfield, etc. The last of them was a Colonel Alexander Hamilton, who was in life in 1670, and had been abroad for some time—thus agreeing with the Story in one particular which had a material influence on the fortunes of the family. In him the direct male line became extinct, and, according to the prophecy, his name was “lost for evermore.” The circumstances of this family, and the period of their decline, agree so exactly with the Tale, that, unless the local scene of it be altogether a fiction, it appears, at first view, scarcely possible to doubt that the Lords of Ravenswood and the Hamiltons of Innerwick were the same.

Taking this supposition to be correct, a conjecture might be hazarded, in the absence of any authentic information on the subject, from the present possessors of the domains of the family of Innerwick, who Sir William Ashton was. Sir John Nisbet of Dirleton was Lord Advocate in the reign of King Charles II., and afterwards a Lord of Session, at the very time when Colonel Hamilton above mentioned was abroad. He seems to have been the founder of his family; and in this respect, as well as his having been a great lawyer, bears a remarkable resemblance to Sir William Ashton. He died without male issue, (another coincidence,) and in possession of the very estate which belonged to the Hamiltons of Innerwick, which his posterity still enjoy. From the want, however, of written memoirs of the family at Dirleton, or a knowledge of the manner in which they acquired their estates, any conjecture which can be founded on these circumstances must be entirely hypothetical.

Though silent regarding the house of Ravenswood, the subject of the story has received considerable elucidation from a note[41] annexed to the Review of it in the Edinburgh Monthly Review for August, 1819, wherein it is stated, that Lucy Ashton was one of the daughters of the first Lord Stair. This nobleman was certainly the only lawyer at that period who enjoyed the power and influence said to have been possessed by Sir William Ashton; and the circumstances mentioned in the above note, as related in Mr. Kirkpatrick Sharpe’s edition of “Law’s Memorialls,” particularly the expression made use of by the bride, of “Take up your bonnie bridegroom,” may, if well authenticated, be considered as decisive of the question. It is difficult, however, to trace any connection between Lord Stair and the family of Innerwick, or that he ever was in possession of their property. In this view of the case, the parallel between Ravenswood and Hamilton of Innerwick does not hold so well. But if the identity of Sir William Ashton with Lord Stair be considered as established, there was another family in more immediate contact with him, in the history of which there are several events which seem to indicate that the Author had it in his eye in the representation he has given of the Ravenswoods; unless, as is very probable, he has blended the history of both together in the manner that best suited his purpose. He indeed admits that he has disguised facts and incidents, for the obvious purpose of making the application less pointed to the real personages of the tale. The family here alluded to is that of Gordon, Viscount Kenmure, in Galloway, between which and the Lords of Ravenswood there are several points of resemblance. For instance, the barony of Gordon, in Berwickshire, where the Gordons had their first settlement in Scotland, and which continued for a long time in this branch of the name, is in the immediate vicinity of Lammermoor, and probably suggested the idea of laying the scene in that neighbourhood. The names of the Castle (or Barony) and of the Barons themselves, were the same. Their history was “interwoven with that of the kingdom itself,” a well-known fact. The Viscount of Kenmure[42] was engaged in the civil wars in the reign of King Charles I.,[43] and was forfeited by Cromwell for his steady adherence to that monarch. In him also the direct line of the family suffered an interruption, the title having at his death devolved on Gordon of Penninghame, who appears to have been much involved in debt, and harassed with judicial proceedings against his estate. This latter again espoused the sinking side in the Revolution of 1688, and commanded a regiment at the battle of Killiecrankie. These coincidences are too remarkable to be overlooked. And it may be added, in further illustration, that Lord Stair, on being advanced to an earldom about this period, took one of his titles from the barony of Glenluce, which once belonged to a branch of the house of Kenmure.

It was formerly mentioned, that the Author admits his having disguised dates and events, in order to take off the application to the real personages of the story, which they must otherwise have pointed out. Of this sort are several anachronisms which appear in the work, such as a Marquis of A. (evidently Athol, from the letter to Ravenswood dated at B. or Blair), when the Tory Ministry of Queen Anne got into power, which was only in 1710, when M. Harley succeeded Lord Godolphin as Treasurer; whereas the nobleman here alluded to was a Duke so far back as 1703. The time at which the events really took place must also have been long prior to this period, for Lord Stair died in 1695; and the change in administration by which Sir William Ashton lost his influence probably refers to Lord Stair’s removal from his office in 1682.

It may here be remarked, that the family of Stair was by no means so obscure and insignificant as that of Sir William Ashton is represented to have been. They possessed the barony of Dalrymple[44] in the reign of King Alexander III.; they acquired the barony of Stair by marriage in 1450. They made a considerable figure during the reign of Queen Mary; and took an active part in the Reformation along with the confederate lords who had associated in defence of the Protestant religion. It must be admitted, however, that they made a greater figure at this time, and during a subsequent period, than they ever did before.

“The reader will probably feel the interest of this affecting story considerably increased, by his being informed that it is founded on facts. The particulars, which have been variously reported, are given in a foot-note to Mr. Sharpe’s edition of ‘Law’s Memorialls,’ p. 226; but are understood to have been sometimes told in conversation by the celebrated Poet to whom public opinion assigns these Tales. The ingenious author, whoever he is, has adopted that account of the circumstances which Mr. Sharpe deems less probable. The prototype of Lucy Ashton was one of the daughters of James, first Lord Stair, by his wife Margaret, daughter of Ross of Balneil, County of Wigton, a lady long reputed a witch by the country people in her neighbourhood, and considered as the cause, per fas et nefas, of the prosperous fortunes of the Dalrymple family. However this may have been, there was also ascribed to her supposed league with Satan, or her extreme obduracy, the miserable catastrophe now alluded to. The first version of the story in Mr. Sharpe’s note decidedly and directly implicates the old lady and her potent ally in the murder of her daughter on the night of her marriage, which had been contracted against the mother’s will; and, according to this account, it is the bridegroom who is found in the chimney in a state of idiocy. The other edition, which is that of the Tale, seems to require nothing beyond the agency of human passions wrought up to derangement. According to it, the young lady, as in the case of Lucy, was compelled to marry contrary to her inclination, her heart having been previously engaged elsewhere. After she had retired with her husband into the nuptial chamber, and the door, as was customary, had been locked, she attacked him furiously with a knife, and wounded him severely, before any assistance could be rendered. When the door was broken open, the youth was found half dead upon the floor, and his wife in a state of the wildest madness, exclaiming, ‘Take up your bonnie bridegroom.’ It is added, that she never regained her senses; and that her husband, who recovered of his wound, would bear no questions on the subject of his marriage, taking even a hint of that nature as a mortal affront to his honour. The coincidence of circumstances, and the identity of expression used by the bride, are much too striking to be purely accidental, and altogether deserved to be noticed, though at the hazard of making a long note. Lady Stair, it may not be irrelevant to state, was conspicuous in her time for what Mr. Sharpe denominates, ‘her violent turn towards Conventicles, and the fostering of silenced preachers in her house,’—peculiarities quite of a piece with the attachments and habits of Lady Ashton. Of the prejudices and malignity of her enemies, we may form some opinion from the satiric lines upon her long-wished-for and timely death, which Mr. Sharpe very justly denominates most unchristian. Let the epitaph contrived for her bear testimony:—

“The author of the ‘Tales of my Landlord,’ it must be allowed, has never showed any backwardness to join in the cry against people of her principles, but he has never been so summary in his conclusions as to their fate.”

We derive the following curious notices respecting the Lucy Ashton and Bucklaw of real life, from a rare volume, entitled “Tripatriarchicon; or, the Lives of the Three Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Digested into English Verse, by Mr. Andrew Symson, M.A., late Minister of Kinkinner. Edinburgh: Printed for the Author. 1705.” The following Poem is one of thirteen elegies found appended to some rare copies of the book, which were withdrawn from the greater part of the edition, on account of the offence taken against them by the Whigs. Symson seems to have been a sincere and zealous partizan of High Church, and does not seem to have permitted any great man of his own party to die without an appropriate elegy, accompanied by a cutting tirade upon his enemies.

“On the unexpected death of the vertuous Lady, Mrs. Janet
Dalrymple, Lady Baldone, Younger.
Nupta, Aug. 12; Domum ducta, Aug. 24; Obiit, Sept. 12;
Sepult. Sept. 30, 1669.

Dialogus inter advenam et servum domesticum.

One of these curious pieces is “A Funeral Elegie occasioned by the sad and much lamented Death of that worthily respected and very much accomplished Gentleman, David Dunbar, Younger of Baldone. He departed this life on March 21, 1682, having received a bruise by a fall, as he was ryding the day preceding betwixt Leith and Holyroodhouse; and was honourably interred, in the Abbey Church of Holyroodhouse, on April 4, 1682.” Symson, though a printer in 1705, had been an episcopal clergyman: and it is amusing to observe how much of the panegyric which he bestows upon Dunbar is to be traced to the circumstance of that gentleman having been almost his only hearer, when, in a Whiggish parish, his curacy had like to be a perfect sinecure, so far as regarded that important particular—a congregation. He thus speaks of him:—

(Caleb Balderston.)

The prototype of Caleb Balderstone was perhaps Laird Bour, a servant of the Logans of Restalrig, in 1600. It is evident that the character is just a Scottish edition of “Garrick’s Lying Valet.” We have discovered, however, a solitary trait of Caleb, in a Scotch innkeeper of real existence, who lived long in the south country,[47] and died only a few years ago. We subjoin a very brief notice of this person, whose name was Andrew Davidson.

A literary gentleman, who supplies us with information respecting him, states that he was once possessed of a considerable estate,—that of Green-house, in the county of Roxburgh. But being a man of great wit and humour, his society was courted by young men of idle and dissipated habits, who led him into such expenses as shortly proved prejudicial to his fortunes. He was then obliged to sell off his estate and betake himself to a humbler line of life. Keeping a small grocery and spirit shop always presents itself to men in such circumstances as a means of subsistence requiring the least instruction and most easily set afloat. He accordingly commenced that line of business in Jedburgh; but, being considered as an intruder into the burgh, and opposing certain ancient residenters, who were supposed to be more lawfully, justly, and canonically entitled to trade in the town than any new upstart, he did not meet with that success which he expected. In consequence of this illiberal treatment, he conceived the most rancorous hatred for the inhabitants of Jedburgh, and ever after spoke of them in the most violent terms of hatred and contempt. His common language was, “that not an individual in the town would be judged at the last day,—Jedburgh would be at once damned by the slump!”

He again resolved to commence the profession of agriculture, and took the farm of Habton, in the neighbouring parish of Crailing. This speculation, however, succeeded no better than the shop. By associating himself with the opulent farmers and gentlemen of the vicinity, by whom his company, as a man of wit and jollity, was always much sought after, his ancient habits of extravagance returned; and, though in poorer circumstances, being obliged to spend in equal style with these ruinous friends, the surviving wrecks of his fortune were soon dissipated, and he was obliged to become a bankrupt.

When a man who has freely lavished his fortune and his humour in the entertainment of friends above his own rank becomes incapable of further sacrifice, it is most natural for such friends to forsake and neglect him. He is considered as no more entitled to their gratitude than the superannuated player, after he has ceased to be supported by the immediate exhibition of his powers. There is no Chelsea provided for the cripples in the cause of the gay.

Mr. Davidson was, however, more fortunate in his companions. After his misfortune, they induced him to open a house of entertainment at Ancrum Bridge; laid in for him a stock of wines, spirits, etc.; made parties at his house; and set him fairly a-going. This was a line in which he was calculated both to shine and to realize profit. His company was still as attractive as ever; and it was no longer disgraceful to receive a solid reward for the entertainment which his facetiousness could afford. Having also learned a little wisdom from his former miscarriages, he proceeded with more caution, kept up the respectability of his house, was polite and amusing to his guests, and, above all, paid infinite attention to his business.

The peculiarity of character, for which we have placed his name against that of Caleb Balderstone, here occurs. Whenever there alighted any stranger of a more splendid appearance than ordinary, he was suddenly seized with a fit of magniloquency, and, in the identical manner of Caleb Balderstone, would call Hostler No. 10 down from Hay-loft No. 15, to conduct the gentleman’s “beast” to one of the best stalls in the Stable No. 20! He would then, with a superabundance of ceremony, show the stranger into a chamber which he would declare with the greatest assurance to be No. 40; and on his guest asking perhaps for a glass of rum, would order a waiter, whom he baptized (nolens volens) No. 15 for the occasion, to draw it from the cask in the bar marked 95. Then was the twelfth hen-roost to be ransacked, and a glorious fowl, the best that could be selected from a stock of about one thousand or so, to be consigned to the hands of the Head Cook herself, (God knows his house boasted only one, who was Scullion and Boots besides.) All this rhodomontade was enacted in a style of such serious effrontery, and was accompanied by such a volubility of talk, and flights of humour, and bustling activity, that any one not previously acquainted with his devices, would have given him and his house credit for ten times the size and respectability they could actually boast of.

Mr. Davidson afterwards removed to the inn at Middleton, where he died, in good circumstances, about sixteen years ago. He was a man of very brilliant talents, distinguished much by that faculty entitled by the country people ready wit. He had a strong memory, a lively and fertile imagination, and possessed powers of discourse truly astonishing. The prevailing tone of his mind was disposed to ridicule. He had a singularly felicitous knack of giving anything improper in his own conduct or appearance a bias in his favour, and could at all times, as we have seen, set off his own circumstances in such a light as made them splendid and respectable, though in reality they were vulgar and undignified.

CHAPTER IX. — ( Plot of the Tale. ) — THE GREAT MONTROSE. — PHILIPHAUGH. [64]

Legend of Montrose.

here can be little doubt that the Author of “Waverley” has taken the grounds of this Tale from the following interesting story, related in a critique on the “Culloden Papers,” in the Quarterly Review, which is said to have been written by the Great Novelist’s other self, Sir Walter Scott.

“The family or sept of Macgregor is of genuine Celtic origin, great antiquity, and, in Churchill’s phrase,

“They were once possessed of Glenurchy, of the castle at the head of Lochowe, of Glendochart, Glenlyon, Finlarig, Balloch, now called Taymouth, and of the greater part of Breadalbane. From these territories they were gradually expelled by the increasing strength of the Campbells, who, taking advantage of a bloody feud between the M‘Gregors and M‘Nabs, obtained letters of fire and sword against the former; and, about the reigns of James III. and IV., dispossessed them of much of their property. The celebrated M‘Gregor a Rua Rua, the heir-male of the chief, and a very gallant young man, was surprised and slain by Colin Campbell, the Knight of Lochowe, and with him fell the fortunes of his family. From this time, the few lands which remained not sufficing to support so numerous a clan, the M‘Gregors became desperate, wild, and lawless, supporting themselves either by actual depredation, or by the money which they levied as the price of their forbearance, and retaliating upon the more powerful clans, as well as upon the Lowlands, the severity with which they were frequently pursued and slaughtered. A single trait of their history will show what was the ferocity of feud among the Scottish clans.

“The remaining settlements of the M‘Gregor tribe were chiefly in Balquhidder, around Loch Katrine, as far as the borders of Lochlomond. Even these lands they did not possess in property, but by some transactions with the family of Buchanan, who were the real landholders; but the terrors of the M‘Gregors extended far and wide, for they were at feud with all their neighbours. In the year 1589, a party of the M‘Gregors, belonging to a tribe called Clan-Duil a Cheach, i.e. the children of Dougal of the Mist, (an appropriate name for such a character,) met with John Drummond of Drummondernoch, who had, in his capacity of stewart-depute, or provincial magistrate of Strathearn, tried and executed two or three of these M‘Gregors, for depredations committed on his chief Lord Drummond’s lands. The Children of the Mist seized the opportunity of vengeance, slew the unfortunate huntsman, and cut off his head. They then went to the house of John Stewart of Ardvoirlich, whose wife was a sister of the murdered Drummondernoch. The laird was absent, but the lady received the unbidden and unwelcome guests with hospitality, and, according to the Highland custom and phrase, placed before them bread and cheese, till better food could be made ready. She left the room to superintend the preparations, and when she returned, beheld, displayed upon the table, the ghastly head of her brother, with a morsel of bread and cheese in its mouth. The terrified lady rushed out of the house with a fearful shriek, and could not be found, though her distracted husband caused all the woods and wildernesses around to be diligently searched. To augment the misery of Ardvoirlich, his unfortunate wife was with child when she disappeared. She did not, however, perish. It was harvest season, and in the woods and moors the maniac wanderer probably found berries and other substances capable of sustaining life; though the vulgar, fond of the marvellous, supposed that the wild deer had pity on her misery, and submitted to be milked by her. At length some train of former ideas began to revive in her mind. She had formerly been very attentive to her domestic duties, and used commonly to oversee the milking of the cows; and now the women employed in that office in the remote upland grazings, observed with terror, that they were regularly watched during the milking by an emaciated, miserable-looking, female figure, who appeared from among the bushes, but retired with great swiftness when any one approached her. The story was told to Ardvoirlich, who, conjecturing the truth, took measures for intercepting and recovering the unfortunate fugitive. She regained her senses after the birth of her child; but it was remarkable, that the son whom she bore seemed affected by the consequences of her terror. He was of great strength, but of violent passions, under the influence of which he killed his friend and commander, Lord Kilpont, in a manner which the reader will find detailed in Wishart’s Memoirs of Montrose.

“The tragedy of Drummondernoch did not end with the effects of the murder on the Lady Ardvoirlich. The clan of the M‘Gregors being convoked in the church of Balquhidder, upon the Sunday after the act, the bloody head was produced on the altar, when each clansman avowed the murder to have been perpetrated by his own consent, and, laying successively his hands on the scalp, swore to defend and protect the authors of the deed,—‘in ethnic and barbarous manner,’ says an order of the Lords of the Privy Council, dated 4th February, 1589, ‘in most proud contempt of our Sovereign Lord and his authority, if this shall remain unpunished.’ Then follows a commission to search for and pursue Alaster M‘Gregor of Glenstrae, and all others of his name, with fire and sword. We have seen a letter upon this subject from Patrick, Lord Drummond, who was naturally most anxious to avenge his kinsman’s death, to the Earl of Montrose, appointing a day in which the one shall be ‘at the bottom of the valley of Balquhidder with his forces, and advance upward, and the other, with his powers, shall occupy the higher outlet, and move downwards, for the express purpose of taking sweet revenge for the death of their cousin.’ Ardvoirlich assisted them with a party, and it is said they killed thirty-seven of the clan of Dougal of the Mist upon the single farm of Inverneuty.”—Quarterly Review, vol. xiv., p. 307.

The illustrious personage whose fortunes form the ground-work of this Tale, was the only son of John, fourth Earl of Montrose,[48] by Lady Margaret Ruthven, daughter of William, first Earl of Gowrie.[49] He was born in the year 1612, succeeded his father in 1626, and was married soon after, while yet very young,—a circumstance which is said to have somewhat marred his education. He travelled into foreign parts, where he spent some years in study, and in learning the customary accomplishments of that period, in which he excelled most men; and he returned home in 1634.

Meeting with a cold and forbidding reception at Court, his Lordship joined the supplicants in 1637, and became one of the most zealous supporters of the Covenant in 1638. Next year he had the command of the forces sent to the north against the town of Aberdeen, which he obliged to take the Covenant; and the Marquis of Huntly, who, on his approach, disbanded the men he had raised, was sent prisoner to Edinburgh. Lord Aboyne appearing in arms in the north the same year, Montrose was despatched against him, and totally routed his forces at the Bridge of Dee. When the pacification of Berwick was concluded, Montrose was one of the noblemen who paid their respects to Charles I. at that place in July, 1639.

Next year, an army being raised to march into England, Montrose had two regiments given him, one of horse and one of foot. He led the van of that army through the Tweed on foot, and, totally routing the vanguard of the King’s cavalry, contributed to the victory at Newburn. But, in 1643, moved with resentment against the Covenanters, who preferred to his prompt and ardent character the wily and politic Earl of Argyll, or seeing, perhaps, that the final views of that party were inimical to the interests of monarchy and of the constitution, Montrose espoused the falling cause of loyalty, and raised the Highland clans, whom he united to a small body of Irish, commanded by Alexander Macdonald, still renowned in the north under the title of Colkitto. With a few troops collected in Westmoreland, he first raised the royal standard at Dumfries in April, 1644, but was soon obliged to retire into England; and he was excommunicated by the commission of the General Assembly.[50] To atone, however, for so severe a denunciation, the King, about this time, raised him to the dignity of Marquis; and he soon after had the pleasure of routing the Parliament army at Morpeth. He was next successful in throwing provisions into Newcastle. After the defeat of Prince Rupert at Marston Moor in July, 1644, he left his men with that general, and went to Scotland. At this period of his adventures the Author of “Waverley” takes him up in his “Legend of Montrose.”

Disguised as a groom, with only two attendants, Montrose arrived in Strathearn, where he continued till rumour announced the approach of 1500 Irish, who, after ravaging the northern extremity of Argyllshire, had landed in Skye, and traversed the extensive districts of Lochaber and Badenoch. On descending into Atholl in August, 1644, they were surprised with the unexpected appearance of their general, Montrose, in the garb of a Highlander, with a single attendant; but his name was sufficient to increase his army to 3000, for commanding whom he had the King’s warrant. He attacked an army of Covenanters, amounting to upwards of 6000 foot and horse, at Tippermuir, 1st September, totally routed them, and took their artillery and baggage, without losing a man. Perth immediately surrendered to the victor; but, Argyll approaching, he abandoned that place as untenable, took all the cannon, ammunition, and spoil of the town with him, and went north. He defeated the Covenanters a second time at the Bridge of Dee, on the 12th of September; and, continuing the pursuit to the gates of Aberdeen, entered the town with the vanquished. The pillage of the ill-fated burgh was doomed to expiate the principles which Montrose himself had formerly imposed upon them.

Argyll came from Stirling to Perth on the 10th of September; and his army following him in a desultory manner, is said to have taken about a week in passing through the latter town.[51] He passed the Tay in boats, which Montrose had left undestroyed, and pursued that general to the north. Meanwhile, Montrose had left Aberdeen, and sought the assistance of the Gordons; but finding the Spey well guarded, he retreated over the mountains to Badenoch, burying his artillery in a morass. He descended into Atholl and Angus, pursued by Argyll, but by a sudden march repassed the Grampians, and returned to rouse the Gordons to arms! At Fyvie, he was almost surprised by Argyll, 27th October, 1644, but maintained a situation, advantageously chosen, against the reiterated attacks of a superior army, till night, when he made good his retreat into Badenoch. He immediately proceeded into Argyllshire, which he ravaged, and sentence of forfeiture was passed against him in Parliament.

So extraordinary were the evolutions of Montrose, that on many occasions the appearance of his army was the first notice the enemy had of his approach; and of his retreats, the first intelligence was that he was beyond their reach. Argyll, exasperated with the devastation of his estates, marched against Montrose; but he, not waiting to be attacked, marched thirty miles, by an unfrequented route, across the mountains of Lochaber, during a heavy fall of snow, and came at night in front of the enemy, when they believed him in a different part of the country. This was in February, 1645, during a very inclement season. “The moon shone so clear,” says Bishop Wishart, “that it was almost as light as day. They lay upon their arms the whole night, and, with the assistance of the light, so harassed each other with slight alarms and skirmishes, that neither gave the other time to repose. They all wished earnestly for day: only Argyll, more intent on his own safety, conveyed himself away about the middle of the night: and, having very opportunely got a boat, escaped the hazard of a battle, choosing rather to be a spectator of the prowess of his men than share in the danger himself. Nevertheless, the chiefs of the Campbells, who were indeed a set of very brave men, and worthy of a better chief and a better cause, began the battle with great courage. But the first ranks discharging their muskets only once, Montrose’s men fell in upon them furiously, sword in hand, with a great shout, and advanced with such great impetuosity, that they routed the whole army, and put them to flight, and pursued them for about nine miles, making dreadful slaughter the whole way. There were 1500 of the enemy slain, among whom were several gentlemen of distinction of the name of Campbell, who led on the clan, and fell in the field of battle, too gallantly for their dastardly chief. Montrose, though an enemy, pitied their fate, and used his authority to save and give quarter to as many as he could. In this battle Montrose had several wounded, but he had none killed but three privates, and Sir Thomas Ogilvie, son of the Earl of Airley; whilst Argyll lost the Lairds of Auchinbreck, Glensaddell, and Lochnell, with his son and brother, and Barbreck, Inneraw, Lamont, Silvercraigs, and many other prisoners.” Spalding, in his “History of the Troubles,” states, that “there came direct from the committee of Edinburgh certain men to see Argyll’s forwardness in following Montrose, but they saw his flight, in manner foresaid. It is to be considered that few of this army could have escaped if Montrose had not marched the day before the fight thirty-three miles, (Scots miles) on little food, and crossed sundry waters, wet and weary, and standing in wet and cold the hail night before the fight.”

Montrose, flushed with victory, now proceeded to Moray, where he was joined by the Gordons and Grants. He next marched to the southward, taking Dundee by storm; but being attacked by a superior force under Baillie and Hurry, began to retreat. Baillie and Hurry divided their forces, to prevent his return to the north; but, by a masterly movement, he passed between their divisions, and regained the mountains. He defeated Hurry at Meldrum, near Nairn, on the 14th May, 1645, by a manœuvre similar to that of Epaminondas at Leuctra and Mantinea. In that battle, the left wing of the Royalists was commanded by Montrose’s able auxiliary, Alister Macdonell, or Maccoul, (as he is called in Gaelic) still celebrated in Highland tradition and song for his chivalry and courage. An elevation of ground separated the wings. Montrose received a report that Macdonell’s wing had given way, and was retreating. He instantly ran along the ranks, and called out to his men that Macdonell was driving the enemy before him, and, unless they did the same, the other wing would carry away all the glory of the day. His men instantly rushed forward, and charged the enemy off the field, while he hastened with his reserve to the relief of his friend, and recovered the fortune of the day.[52] At this battle, in which 2000 Covenanters fell, Campbell of Lawers, though upwards of seventy years of age, fought on the Presbyterian side, with a two-handed broadsword, till himself, and four of his six sons, who were with him, fell on the ground on which they stood. Such was the enemy which the genius and courage of Montrose overcame. Pursuing his victory, Montrose encountered and defeated Baillie at Alford, on the 2nd of July; but on this occasion his success was embittered by the loss of Lord Gordon, who fell in the action. His victories attracted reinforcements from all parts of the country: he marched to the southward at the head of 6000 men, and fought a bloody and decisive battle near Kilsyth, on the 15th August, when nearly 5000 Covenanters fell under the Highland claymore.

This last and greatest of his splendid successes opened the whole of Scotland to Montrose. He occupied Glasgow and the capital, and marched forward to the border, not merely to complete the subjection of the southern provinces, but with the flattering hope of pouring his victorious army into England, and bringing to the support of Charles the swords of his paternal tribes.

Montrose was now, however, destined to endure a reverse of his hitherto brilliant fortune. After traversing the border counties, and receiving little assistance or countenance from the chiefs of these districts, he encamped on Philiphaugh, a level plain near Selkirk, extending about a mile and a half along the banks of the rivers Tweed and Ettrick. Here he posted his infantry, amounting to about 1500 men, while he himself and his cavalry, to the amount of about 1000, took up their quarters in the town of Selkirk.

Recalled by the danger[53] of the cause of the Covenant, General David Lesly came down from England at the head of those iron squadrons whose force had been proved in the fatal battle of Long Marston Moor. His army consisted of from 5000 to 6000 men, chiefly cavalry. Lesly’s first plan seems to have been to occupy the midland counties, so as to intercept the return of Montrose’s Highlanders, and to force him to an unequal combat. Accordingly, he marched along the eastern coast from Berwick to Tranent; but there he suddenly altered his direction, and, crossing through Midlothian, turned again to the southward, and, following the course of Gala Water, arrived at Melrose the evening before the engagement. How it is possible that Montrose should have received no notice whatever of the march of so considerable an army seems almost inconceivable, and proves that the country was very disaffected to his cause or person. Still more extraordinary does it appear, that, even with the advantage of a thick mist, Lesly should have, the next morning, advanced towards Montrose’s encampment without being descried by a single scout. Such, however, was the case, and it was attended with all the consequences of a complete surprisal. The first intimation that Montrose received of the march of Lesly was the noise of the conflict, or rather that which attended the unresisted slaughter of his infantry, who never formed a line of battle: the right wing alone, supported by the thickets of Harehead-wood, and by their entrenchments, stood firm for some time. But Lesly had detached 2000 men, who, crossing the Ettrick still higher up than his main body, assaulted the rear of Montrose’s right wing. At this moment the Marquis arrived, and beheld his army dispersed, for the first time, in irretrievable rout. He had thrown himself upon a horse the instant he heard the firing, and, followed by such of his disordered cavalry as had gathered upon the alarm, he galloped from Selkirk, crossed the Ettrick, and made a bold and desperate attempt to retrieve the fortune of the day. But all was in vain; and after cutting his way, almost singly, through a body of Lesly’s troopers, the gallant Montrose graced by his example the retreat of the fugitives. That retreat he continued up Yarrow, and over Minchmoor; nor did he stop till he arrived at Traquair, 16 miles from the field of battle. He lodged the first night at the town of Peebles.[54] Upon Philiphaugh he lost, in one defeat, the fruit of six splendid victories; nor was he again able effectually to make head in Scotland against the covenanted cause. The number slain in the field did not exceed 300 or 400; for the fugitives found refuge in the mountains, which had often been the retreat of vanquished armies, and were impervious to the pursuer’s cavalry. Lesly abused his victory, and disgraced his arms, by slaughtering in cold blood many of the prisoners whom he had taken; and the court-yard of Newark Castle is said to have been the spot upon which they were shot by his command. Many others are said by Wishart to have been precipitated from a high bridge over the Tweed,—a circumstance considered doubtful by Laing, as there was then no bridge over the Tweed between Peebles and Berwick, though the massacre might have taken place at either of the old bridges over the Ettrick and Yarrow, which lay in the very line of flight and pursuit. It is too certain that several of the Royalists were executed by the Covenanters, as traitors to the King and Parliament.[55]

After this reverse of fortune,[56] Montrose retired into the north. In 1646, he formed an association with the Earls of Sutherland and Seaforth, and other Highland chieftains, and they laid siege to Inverness; but General Middleton forced Montrose to retreat, with considerable loss. Charles I. now sending orders to Montrose to disband his forces and leave the kingdom, he capitulated with Middleton, July, 1646, and an indemnity was granted to his followers, and he was permitted to retire to the continent. The capitulation was ratified by Parliament, and Montrose was permitted to remain unmolested in Scotland for a month to settle his affairs.

He now proceeded to France, where he resided two years. He had the offer of the appointments of general of the Scots in France, lieutenant-general of the French army, captain of the gens d’armes,[57] with an annual pension of 12,000 crowns, and a promise of being promoted to the rank of maréchal, and to the captaincy of the King’s guards, all which preferments he declined, as he wished only to be of service to his own King. He retired privately from Paris, in May, 1648, and went to Germany, from thence to Brussels, where he was, at the period of the King’s execution, in 1649. He then repaired to the Hague, where Charles II. resided, and offered to establish him on the throne of Scotland by force. The King gave him a commission accordingly, and invested him with the order of the garter. Montrose, with arms supplied by the court of Sweden, and money by Denmark, embarked at Hamburg, with 600 Germans, and landed in Orkney in spring 1650, where he got some recruits, and crossed over to Caithness with an army of about 1400 men; and he was joined by several Royalists as he traversed the wilds of Sutherland. But, advancing into Ross-shire, he was surprised, and totally defeated, at Invercharron, by Colonel Strachan, an officer of the Scottish Parliament, who afterwards became a decided Cromwellian. Montrose’s horse was shot under him; but he was generously remounted by his friend, Lord Frendraught. After a fruitless resistance, he at length fled from the field, threw away his ribbon and George, changed clothes with a countryman, and thus escaped to the house of M‘Leod of Assint,[58] by whom he was betrayed to General Lesly.

Whatsoever indignities the bitterness of party rage or religious hatred could suggest, were accumulated on a fallen, illustrious enemy, formerly terrible, and still detested. He was slowly and ostentatiously conducted through the north by the ungenerous Lesly, in the same mean habit in which he was taken. His devastations were not forgotten,—his splendid victories never forgiven,—and he was exposed, by excommunication, to the abhorrence and insults of a fanatical people. His sentence was already pronounced in Parliament, on his former attainder, under every aggravation which brutal minds can delight to inflict. He was received by the magistrates of Edinburgh at the Watergate, 18th May, 1650, placed on an elevated seat in a cart, to which he was pinioned with cords, and, preceded by his officers, coupled together, was conducted, bareheaded, by the public executioner, to the common jail. But his magnanimity was superior to every insult. When produced to receive his sentence in Parliament, he was upbraided by the Chancellor with his violation of the Covenant, the introduction of Irish insurgents, his invasion of Scotland during a treaty with the King; and the temperate dignity which he had hitherto sustained, seemed, at first, to yield to indignant contempt. He vindicated his dereliction of the Covenant, by their rebellion,—his appearance in arms, by the commission of his Sovereign,—and declared, that as he had formerly deposited, so he again resumed his arms, by his Majesty’s command, to accelerate the treaty commenced with the States. A barbarous sentence, which he received with an undaunted countenance, was then pronounced by a Parliament who acknowledged Charles to be their King, and whom, on that account only, Montrose acknowledged to be a Parliament,—that he should be hanged for three hours, on a gibbet 30 feet high; that his head should be affixed to the common jail, his limbs to the gates of the principal towns, and his body interred at the place of execution, unless his excommunication were taken off, and then it might be buried in consecrated ground. With dignified magnanimity, he replied, that he was prouder to have his head affixed to the prison walls than his picture placed in the King’s bedchamber; “and, far from being troubled that my limbs are to be sent to your principal towns, I wish I had flesh enough to be dispersed through Christendom, to attest my dying attachment to my King.” It was the calm employment of his mind that night to reduce this extravagant sentiment to verse. He appeared next day on the scaffold, in a rich habit, with the same serene and undaunted countenance, and addressed the people, to vindicate his dying unabsolved by the Church, rather than to justify an invasion of the kingdom during a treaty with the Estates. The insults of his enemies were not yet exhausted. The history of his exploits, which had been written in Latin by Bishop Wishart, and published all over Europe, was attached to his neck by the executioner; but he smiled at their inventive malice, declared that he wore it with more pride than he had done the garter, and when his devotions were finished, demanding if any more indignities were to be practised, submitted calmly to an unmerited fate.[59]

Thus perished, at the age of thirty-eight, the gallant Marquis of Montrose, with the reputation of one of the first commanders that the civil wars had produced. He excelled in the stratagems of war; but his talents were rather those of an active, enterprising partisan, than of a great commander,—better fitted to excite and manage a desultory war, than to direct the complicated operations of a regular campaign. He may be admired for his genius, but he cannot be praised for his wisdom. Though he excelled in the performance of rapid movements, and had the quick eye of a serpent approaching its prey, he had not the firmness, perseverance, and vigilance which form the necessary qualifications of a great general. Most of his victories were gained by the celerity of his approaches and the impetuosity of his attacks, yet he did not prove himself any better qualified to avert the fatal consequences of surprise than those whom his manœuvres had so often defeated. His genius was great and romantic, in the opinion of Cardinal de Retz, no mean judge of human nature, approaching the nearest to the ancient heroes of Greece and Rome. But his heroism was wild and extravagant, and was less conspicuous during his life than from the fortitude with which he sustained an ignominious death.

Montrose’s sentence, in all circumstances, was executed ad literam. His head was stuck upon the tolbooth of Edinburgh, where it remained, blackening in the sun, when his master, Charles II., soon thereafter arrived in the Scottish metropolis. His limbs were dispersed to Perth, Glasgow, Stirling, and Aberdeen, and his body was buried at the place of execution, from whence it was afterwards removed to the common moor,[60] whence it was lifted at the Restoration. On this event, when Charles found opportunity for testifying his respect for Montrose, his scattered remains were collected. There was a scaffold erected at the tolbooth, and some ceremony was used in taking down his head from its ignominious situation. According to Kirkton,[61] some bowed and some knelt while that relic was removed from the spike, which was done by Montrose’s kinsman, the Laird of Gorthie, who, according to the covenanting account, died in consequence, after performing his triumphant but melancholy duty. The Laird of Pitcurre, too, who in his joy had drunk a little too much on the occasion, was, by the same account, found dead in his bed next morning; though we find little hesitation in giving the brandy more of the credit due to that event than what the Presbyterian annalist is pleased to call “the pleasure of Heaven.” Montrose’s remains were deposited in Holyroodhouse, where they remained some time in state; and, on the 14th of May, 1651, they were buried, with great pomp and ceremony, in the cathedral church of St. Giles.

Such is a brief but correct historical detail of the events which the Author of “Waverley” has confounded and misrepresented, for his own purposes, in the “Legend of Montrose.” We have given at best but a meagre outline of the events, but as they run in their proper series, our narrative will serve to correct the irregularity into which the Great Novelist has thrown them. It may here be observed, that the last event in the Tale is the attempted murder of Lord Menteith, which our Author has placed after the battle of Inverlochy. Now this circumstance, which was of real occurrence, took place on the 6th of September, 1644, a few days after the battle of Tippermuir, whereas the battle of Inverlochy happened on the 1st of February, 1645, five months after. We have made some collections respecting the assassination, and give the result.

John, Lord Kinpont, the Lord Menteith of the “Legend of Montrose,” was the eldest son of William, seventh Earl of Menteith, and first Earl of Airth, who rendered himself remarkable in the reign of Charles I. by saying that he had “the reddest blood in Scotland,” alluding to his descent from Euphemia Ross, then supposed the first wife of Robert II.,—in consequence of which expression he was disgraced and imprisoned by his offended Sovereign. Lord Kinpont married, in 1632, Lady Mary Keith, a daughter of Earl Marishal; consequently he could not be the hero and lover which he is represented to have been in the fiction, and the story of Allan Macaulay’s rivalry, which prompted him to the wicked deed, must be entirely groundless. Kinpont joined Montrose in August, 1644, with recruits to the amount of 400 men, and was present at the battle of Tippermuir, immediately following. A few days thereafter, James Stewart, of Ardvoirlich, basely murdered his Lordship at Colace, in Perthshire. A different colour is given to this circumstance by different narrators. A citizen of Perth, who wrote a manuscript giving an account of some remarkable events in his own time, (quoted in “The Muse’s Threnodie,”) says simply that Stewart committed the murder “because Lord Kinpont had joined Montrose.” But, in Guthrie’s Memoirs, we find, that “Stewart having proposed to his Lordship a plan to assassinate Montrose, of which Lord Kinpont signified his abhorrence, as disgraceful and devilish, the other, without more ado, lest he should discover him, stabbed him to the heart, and immediately fled to the Covenanters, by whom he was pardoned and promoted.[62] The Marquis of Montrose, deeply affected with the loss of so noble a friend, gave orders for conveying his body in an honourable manner to Menteith, where he was interred.” In the “Staggering State of Scots Statesmen,”[63] we find the following passage:—“The Lord Kinpont, being with James Graham in the time of the late troubles, was stabbed with a dirk by one Alexander Stewart, and his lady, daughter of the Earl of Marishal, was distracted in her wits four years after.” Here a remarkable discrepancy is observable. The assassin is termed Alexander, whereas every other authority gives James as his Christian name. Yet this discordance in names is not more worthy of remark than another of the same description, which we are about to point out to the amateurs of the Scotch Novels, as occurring in the Tale before us. In the first edition of this Tale (1819) at the 321st page of the third volume, the Great Unknown, for once, forgets the fictitious appellation Macaulay, and terms the visionary brother Allen Stuart, which, we think, completely serves to identify the above story with the dreadful one in the “Tale.”

Wishart says, that such was the friendship and familiarity of Kinpont with his murderer, that they had slept in the same bed the night previous to the horrid deed, which took place, it appears, in the grey of the morning. It is true that he killed also “the centinel who stood at the entry of the camp, it being so dark that those who pursued him could not see the length of their pikes. Montrose was very much afflicted with the untimely fate of this nobleman, who had been his own special friend, and most faithful and loyal to the King his master, and who, besides his knowledge in polite literature, philosophy, divinity, and law, was eminent for his probity and fortitude.”—Memoirs, p. 84.

elkirk lies on the face of a long range of hills stretching from north to south. The Ettrick water, a pretty little river, runs at their base. A bridge of four arches crosses the stream, and carries the road from the low, flat, and swampy plain of Philiphaugh, up the eminence, in a gracefully winding direction, to the town. A mountain streamlet, called the Shawburn, disembogues itself at the bridge. This in summer is quite dry, but in winter, or during wet weather, descends in torrents, and assists the Ettrick in overflowing the field of Philiphaugh. This celebrated field is now partly inclosed, and bears a few patches of turnips; but the chief produce seems to be rushes, a species of crop which may perhaps yield little comfort to the agriculturist, but which will give a more than proportionable pleasure to the amateur, assuring him that the ground has lost little of its original character, and is much the same now as when it was trod by Montrose.

The hill on which Selkirk stands is studded round with neat gentlemen’s seats, and forms a striking contrast with those on the opposite side of Philiphaugh, which are uniformly dark, bleak, and unproductive. Sheltered by one of these, and situated directly south from Selkirk, there stands, in the ravine formed by the Shawburn, a little cottage thatched in the Scottish fashion, with the usual accompaniments of a kail-yard, a midden[65] before the door, and a jaw-hole. The inhabitants of this humble tenement, if, like us, you be driven in by stress of weather, will be very obliging in telling all they know about Philiphaugh, and how Montrose galloped “up the burn and away over Minchmoor,” in his retreat before Lesly’s victorious army. They will likewise tell an indistinct story about a division of Lesly’s troops, which, led by a countryman, came down this way in order to cut off his retreat. This evidently alludes to the circumstance of Lesly despatching a body of his horse across the river to attack Montrose’s right wing in the rear, upon which the unfortunate general, finding himself hemmed in on all sides, cut his way through his foes, and abandoned the field.[66] In corroboration of what we suppose, the inhabitant of the cottage points out several tumuli or mounds[67] on a little peninsula formed by a sweep of the stream, where the conflict had been greatest. He also speaks of having now and then dug up in his potato-field the remains of human bones.

This cicerone of Philiphaugh is a very singular-looking man, and well merits the little attention which you may feel disposed to pay him. He is what is called a country weaver—that is, a person who converts into cloth the thread and yarn spun by the industrious female peasantry of his neighbourhood. It is not perhaps generally known—at least among our southern neighbours—that the common people of Scotland in general manufacture their own clothes, and that from the first carding of the wool to the induing of the garment. The assistance of the weaver and the dyer is indeed required; but every other department of the business they are themselves fit to undertake,[68] and sometimes the aid of the dyer is entirely dispensed with, when the cloth, bearing the natural colour of the wool, is termed hodden-grey, an expression to which Burns has given a more than ordinary interest. The weaver is usually a person of no little importance in a rural district; for his talents are in universal request. The specimen of the craft now before us was unusually poor, and, not being free of the Selkirk incorporation, was, like the Paria of the Indian tale, obliged to fly from the customary haunts of his brethren, and seek an asylum in this solitary place. According to his own account of his affairs, he “daikers on here in a very sma’ way,” but when he can get customer-wark, has no occasion to complain. Customer-wark is the species of employment which we have described, and he says that he can make eighteen-pence a day by it, which seems to him to constitute a superlative degree of prosperity. We visited his loom, which we found half embedded in the damp earth in a low-roofed part of the cottage, and separated from the domestic establishment by two large wooden beds. Here he seemed engaged upon a piece of woollen cloth at least half an inch thick, the surface of which appeared fully as rough and unequal as the map of Selkirkshire in our good friend Mr. John Thomson’s Scottish Atlas. One peculiarity in his method of working is worthy of remark. Instead of impelling the shuttle in the improved modern manner, by means of a simple piece of mechanism, he sent it through the web by his hands, throwing it from the right and receiving it into the left, and vice versa, while the hand immediately unemployed with the shuttle, was employed for the instant in drawing the lay in upon the thread. This old fashion, which formerly prevailed in every species of weaving, is now disused by all the Glasgow manufacturers and others who work upon fine materials, and is only kept up in remote parts by the coarse country weavers. We entered into a discussion of the various merits and demerits of different sorts of work; and found that Glasgow was blessed with no share of the goodwill of our friend the weaver. Jaconets, blunks, ginghams, and cambrics were alternately brought up, and each successively declared stale, flat, and unprofitable, in comparison with the coarse stuff upon which he was now employed. Customer-wark was superior to every other work; and customer-wark was, indeed, the very god of his divinity. Customer-wark seemed to give a sort of character to his conversation, for the phrase was generally introduced three or four times into, and formed the termination of, every sentence. When he paused for breath, he recommenced with “customer-wark;” and this ludicrous technical accented every cadence. The world was to the weaver all a desert, wherein only one resting-place existed—customer-wark!

The poor weaver’s workshop is a miserable-looking place, and so damp that the walls have a yellow tinge, which also affects the three-paned window, through which the light finds its way with difficulty. The family pig is disposed in the same place,—an unusual mark of squalor and poverty. The weaver tells that his loom now occupies the precise spot on which the tent of Montrose formerly stood; but this can scarcely be correct, as, by all accounts, the general resided, with all his horse, in the town of Selkirk.

When we visited Philiphaugh, in September, 1824, we entered fully into the spirit of the weaver, and on that occasion extended our observations to his wife, who is a tall, hollow woman, with dark eyes, and who speaks and smokes with equal assiduity. The result of our investigation was the following versified sketch, in which we have endeavoured to give the reader a complete idea of that hitherto nondescript animal, a country weaver: his feelings, fortunes, family, domestic economy, and—above all—his customer-wark!

CUSTOMER-WARK. — Part First. — Part Second.

A POETICAL SKETCH.

With a Marginal Commentary.

I.
On the celebrated field of Philiphaugh, where Montrose fought his last battle in the cause of Charles the First, there now resides a poor weaver, who tells to strangers that his loom stands upon the very spot which the tent of the great Marquis once occupied. The scene of so many cares and councils has become the home of a contented and humble mechanic, who has only to battle with poverty, and whose whole ambition is to get a regular supply of	ear Selkrit, where Leslie ance met wi’ Montrose, And ga’e the King’s army its last bloody nose, There lives an auld wabster, within an auld shiel, As lang, and as ugly, and black as the de’il. He works e’en and morn for his wife and his weans, Till the very flesh seems to be wrought frae his banes; Yet canty the wabster, and blyth as a lark, Whene’er he gets what he ca’s customer-wark!
II.
Customer-wark—that is, the employment of weaving the homespun linens and woollens of the industrious country wives and maidens, which yields a much better scale of profits than the staple commodities of Glasgow. The superiority of customer-wark over that sent out to the country villages by Glasgow manufacturers,—which is just the preference of straitened poverty over utter starvation,—forms the theme of this poem.	This customer-wark’s the delight o’ his soul, Whether blanket, or sheetin, or sarkin, or towel. Nae trashtrie o’ cottons frae Glasgow he cares for,— Their tippence the ell is a very gude wherefore;— But God bless the wives, wi’ their wheels and their thrift, That help the puir wabster to fend and mak’ shift; Himsel’, and his wife, and his weans might been stark, An it hadna been them and their customer-wark.
III.
Description of the weaver’s house, which, having two apartments, belongs to the aristocracy of country cottages.	The wabster’s auld house—it’s an unco like den, (Though, atweel, like its neebors, it has a ben-en’!) It’s roof’s just a hotter o’ divots and thack, Wi’ a chimley dressed up maist as big’s a wheat-stack. There’s a peat-ruck behind, and a midden before, And a jaw-hole would tak a mile race to jump o’er! Ye may think him negleckfu’ and lazy,—but, hark, He’s better employed on his customer-wark!
The weaver’s neglect of cleanliness and order, not to be attributed to laziness, but to the want of leisure, all his time being engrossed by the important business—customer-wark!
IV.
Furniture of the cottage.	Whate’er ye may think him,—the wabster’s auld hut Has twa looms i’ the ben, and twa beds i’ the butt, A table, twa creepies, three chyres, and a kist, And a settle to rest on, whene’er that ye list; The ben has a winnock, the butt has a bole, Where the bairns’ parritch-luggies are set out to cool, In providin’ o’ whilk he has mony a day’s darque, O’ saxteen lang hours at the customer-wark!
The poor weaver has to work sixteen hours a day, in order to provide food for his children.
V.
The weaver’s wife a noisy scold, and appropriately named Bell.	The wabster’s auld madam—her name it is Bell— Lang, ugly, and black, like the wabster himsel— She does nought the hale day but keeps skelpin the bairns, And hauds three or four o’ them tight at the pirns. Her tongue is as gleg and as sharp as a shuttle, Whilk seldom but gi’es her the best o’ the battle; And sometimes her neive lends the wabster a yerk, That he likes na sae weel as his customer-wark!
The children wind the pirns.
The wife’s tongue rivals the weaver’s shuttle both in sound and swiftness.
Worse than that, she occasionally lays on!
VI.
The weaver given to prosing upon his traditions of the battle.	The wabster whiles jaunders a lang winter night, On his ae single story—Montrose and the fight— And tells how “the Sutors” stood aff up the brae, Preservin’ their hides till the end o’ the play. The wife she breaks in wi’—“Dear Jamie, what ken ye ’Bout feghts? ’Twill be lang or they bring you a penny! Sic auld-warld nonsense is far frae the mark— I wish ye wad mind just the customer-wark!”
How the inhabitants of Selkirk stood off during the fight, not knowing, as they pretended, whether the battle was “in daffin” or in earnest, till they saw Montrose’s army fly, when they enthusiastically joined in the pursuit!!!
The wife, who has heard the story till she is sick of it, bids him mind his work, and not take up his head with things that do not put a penny in his purse.
VII.
The weaver was once told that great encouragement was given at New Lanark to weavers with large families, and for a long time craiked to be there. But the wife, who, with all her tongue, fists, etc., has some good sense, would not hear of removing to any such faraway country, and at last frightened him out of the humour he had taken, by saying that she had heard there was nae customer-wark to be got in Mr. Owen’s Utopia.	The wabster has heard about ane they ca’ Owen, That keeps twa-three toons in the wast-kintry growin’, Where there’s weavers that live just like beass in their sta’s, Without kirks or taxes, debts, hunger, or laws! And he whyles thinks he’d like to be there;—but the wife Knocks him down wi’—“Dear Jamie, man, ne’er fash your life! Do ye think Mr. Owen, or ony sic clerk, Could e’er gie ye ought like the customer-wark?”
I.
Improvident domestic habits, in time of plenty,	The black cutty-pipe, that lies by the fireside, Weel kens it the day when a wab has been paid, For then wi’ tobacco it’s filled to the ee,— And the wabster sits happy as happy can be; For hours at a time it’s ne’er out o’ his cheek, Till maist feck o’ his winnings ha’e vanished in reek: He says that o’ life he could ne’er keep the spark, An it werena the pipe and the customer-wark!
II.
	Then the wife, that’s as fond o’ her pleasure as he, Brings out a black tea-pot and maks a drap tea; And they sit, and they soss, and they haud a cabal, And ye’d think that their slaistrie wad never divaul. By their wee spunk o’ ingle they keep up the bother, Each jeerin’, misca’in’, and scauldin’ the tother; While the bairns sit out by, wi cauld kale, i’ the dark— Nae gude comes to them o’ the customer-wark!
III.
produce proportionate want and misery in the exhaustion of their resources.	When the siller grows scarce and the spleuchan gets toom, The wabster gangs back to his treddles and loom, Where he jows the day lang on some wab o’ his ain, That’ll bring in nae cash for a twalmonth or twain; Then the pipe lies exhaustit o’ a but its stink, And the pourie is washed and set by on the bink; There neglected they’ll lie, like auld yads in a park, Till Heaven shall neist send some customer-wark!
In the absence of customer-wark, the weaver flies to his dernier resort, the loom of reserve, on which he works a web for private sale, but which his funds will scarce allow him to carry on upon his own foundation.
The implements of luxury thrown by neglected.
IV.
Description of a process of starvation, which reduces the weaver from his natural and customary meagreness to a perfect anatomization.	Then the puir starvin’ wabster grows thinner and thinner, On a ’tatoe for breakfast, a ’tatoe for dinner, And vanishes veesibly, day after day, Just like the auld moon whan she eelies away. Clean purged out he looks, like a worm amang fog, And his face is the colour o’ sweens in a cogue. At last, when grown hungry and gaunt as a shark, He revives wi’ a mouthfu’ o’ customer-wark.
A simile picked up in trout fishing.
The weaver saved, in his extremity, by a supply of his darling customer-wark.
V.
Arrival of a customer.	A branksome gudewife, frae the neist farmer toon, Comes in wi’ a bundle, and clanks hersel’ down, “How’s a’ wi’ ye the day, Bell? Ha’ ye ought i’ the pipe? Come rax me a stapper? the cutty I’ll rype! I maun see the gudeman—bring him ben, hinney Jess! Tut!! the pipe’s fu’ o’ naithing but fusionless asse!” The wife ne’er lets on that she hears the remark, But cries, “Jess! do ye hear, deme?—It’s customer-wark!!!”
Familiar condescension of a farmer’s wife in visiting a weaver’s.
Disappointment on finding the hopeless state of the cutty.
Trait of the excitement produced in the household by the arrival of customer-wark.
VI.
Transport of the weaver himself at hearing the news.	Having gotten her lick i’ the lug, Jess gangs ben, And tells her toom father about the God-sen’; Transported, he through the shop-door pops his head, Like a ghaist glowrin’ out frae the gates o’ the dead. Then, wi’ a great fraise he salutes the gudewife,— Says he ne’er saw her lookin’ sae weel i’ his life,— Spiers for the gudeman and the bairns at Glendeark,— While his thoughts a’ the time are on customer-wark!
His behaviour towards the customer.
Politeness and flattery.
Affected solicitude about his customer’s domestic welfare, while his whole soul is in reality entranced in the contemplation of customer-wark.
VII.
Makes himself immediately very busy in the delightful details prefatory to his employment.	Then, wi’ the gudewife, he claps down on the floor, And they turn and they count the hale yarn o’er and o’er: He rooses her spinning, but canyells like daft ’Bout the length o’ her warp and the scrimp o’ her waft. At last it’s a’ settled, and promised bedeen To be ready on Friday or Fursday at e’en; And the bairns they rin out, wi’ a great skirlin’ bark, To tell that their dad’s got some customer-wark!
Praises the wife’s handiwork, for courtesy’s sake, but does not approve of the bounds which her niggardliness has imposed upon the possibility of cabbage.
Rapture of the children, which is much more disinterested, and not less heartfelt, than the weaver’s own.
VIII.
Recovery from starvation.	Then it’s pleasant to see, by the vera neist ouk, How the wabster thowes out to his natural bouk, How he freshens a thought on his diet o’ brose, And a wee tait o’ colour comes back to his nose! The cutty’s new-mountit, and everything’s snug, And Bell’s tongue disna sing half sae loud i’ his lug; Abstracted and happy, and jum as a Turk, He sits thinking on nothing but customer-wark!
Revival of former domestic comfort.
IX.
Concluding benediction upon customer-wark, and recapitulation of its virtues.	Oh, customer-wark! thou sublime movin’ spring! It’s you gars the heart o’ the wabster to sing! An ’twerena for you, how puir were his cheer, Ae meltith a day, and twa blasts i’ the year: It’s you that provides him the bit, brat, and beet, And maks the twa ends o’ the year sweetly meet, That pits meat in his barrel and meal in his ark! My blessings gang wi’ ye, dear customer-wark!

CHAPTER X. — A VILLAGE ANTIQUARY. — SCENERY. — HILLSLOP TOWER, — SMAILHOLM TOWER.

The Monastery.

(Captain Clutterbuck.)

aptain Clutterbuck, the amusing personage who introduces “The Monastery” and “Nigel,” and who employed himself so agreeably during the half-pay part of his life in showing off the ruins of St. Mary’s, finds a happy counterpart in Mr., vulgo Captain O——n, a gentleman well known in Melrose as an amateur cicerone of “the Abbey.” His peculiarities and pursuits very nearly resemble those of the fictitious Clutterbuck. He differs from him in this,—that he never was engaged in foreign service, having merely held some rank in a provincial corps of volunteers; but in every other respect he bears a striking resemblance. He is a staid, elderly person, about fifty, dresses like a gentleman,—that is, a Melrose gentleman,—and parades about his native village with a swagger of military gentility in his air, such as the possession of a walking-cane and the title of Captain seems alone capable of inspiring in the legs of mankind.

He possesses as much property in the neighbourhood of Melrose as would entitle him to the honourable appellation, Laird; but in his case that enviable title is merged in the more romantic and splendid one of Captain, of which he is, perhaps, ambitious. He has his property in his own hands, and by its means contrives to keep himself independent. He thus wavers between the species of the half-pay officer and the cock-laird, and has no particular claims upon a distinct classification with either. He is chiefly genteel and idle, and associates a good deal with that regular hanger-on in all country villages, the exciseman. Having by some chance got the title of Captain affixed to his name, (in truth, he was only sergeant of a local militia corps,) he persists in retaining, by abstinence from personal labour, what otherwise he would have forfeited. The dignity which he contrives to maintain in his native town is scarcely wonderful, when we consider how few are ever independent in such a community, and to what a degree the respect of the illiterate is calculated to be excited by the possession of a very little knowledge,—such as Captain O. would easily acquire in the course of his unoccupied life, and which the opportunities of ease did not fail to confer upon even David Ritchie. Besides, to speak in the deferential words of Captain Clutterbuck’s Kennaquhair Club, “The Captain has something in him after a’—few folk ken sae mickle about the Abbey.” O.’s knowledge upon this point is indeed well calculated to excite the astonishment and veneration of the natives. He has not only driven the grave-digger fairly off the field, who, in the reality of Melrose, as well as in the ideality of Kennaquhair, was the former cicerone of the ruins,—but he is even a formidable rival to the ingenious John Bower himself. Old David Kyle, who kept the head inn at Melrose, and who is the David of the Introduction here illustrated, was in the frequent practice of calling upon Captain O. for the purpose there so humorously described, namely, to press his knowledge into the service of his guests. Upon such occasions of importance, the Captain would, and still does, march away, with great pomposity, at the head of his company, like a peripatetic philosopher declaiming to a troop of disciples, and by the way lays off, as he terms it, all he has ever been able to discover respecting the valuable remains of St. Mary’s,—and sometimes more than all! How, then, will his eloquence expand over crypts and chancels, naves and arches! With what an important sound will the point of his walking cane ring against the tomb of Michael Scott! And, above all, how will the surrounding cockneys stare in admiration, when, in the course of his lecture, he chances to emit some such grandly unintelligible word as architrave or transept.

Captain O.’s intelligence chiefly lies among the vulgar traditionary opinions which are entertained regarding the ruins by the country people; and he knows comparatively little of the lore with which written records and authentic treatises instruct the general antiquary. Mr. Bower is a person of better authority than the Captain, and has even published descriptions of the Abbey; but, notwithstanding, the Captain is not without his party in the town, and it is generally remarked that his anecdotes, if not so true, are at least as entertaining. A sort of jealousy sometimes is observable between these rival Ciceroni, a remarkable anecdote of which is recorded. Upon the opening of some ancient grave within the ruins, a noseless bust of St. Peter happened to be found, which it pleased Captain O. to take under his immediate protection. Bower had found some other remarkable idol in another part of the Abbey, to which he endeavoured to collect as many votaries of curiosity as possible; but the rival statue, which the Captain had already christened by the taking name of Michael Scott, drew off a sweeping sect from the more legitimate shrine. Bower then endeavoured to prove that this was no statue of the wizard at all, but merely one of the common herd of saints, who had formerly figured in the niches of the building. Of this he at last succeeded in convincing all concerned, to the discomfiture of his rival. But, nevertheless, the Captain would not give up his point. He continued pertinacious in maintaining the authenticity of his noseless protégé, in spite of all detractions, in spite of all heresies; till at last finding the whole world against him, he gave up his argument, and turned off the whole as a joke, with the facetious observation, that “It was just as good a Michael Scott as could have been found among the whole ruins, if they would only have held with it!”

Sometimes, in the course of exhibition, there occur distresses nearly resembling that which happened to Captain Clutterbuck, in the company of the Benedictine,—that is to say, he “finds himself a scholar when he came to teach,” by the strangers actually knowing more of his favourite study than himself. This happens most frequently in the case of “gentlemen from Edinburgh,”—elderly persons with black coats and low-crowned hats, which may be called the costume of terror to our antiquary. To these habiliments, if we add the circumstance of hair-powder, O——n would as soon face a hyena as any person so clothed. He is said to fly from a wig as from a pestilence.

Yet, even in these predicaments, the Captain is never entirely at a loss. Repulsed from one stone, he can retreat to another; refuted in any part of his intelligence, he can make an honourable stand at another, of which his visitors had not been aware; and, even when found to be wholly fabulous and absurd in his anecdotes, he can, as a dernier resort, turn them off with some pleasantry or other, which is, of course, irrefragable. Besides, even when he catches a complete, resolute, Antiquarian Tartar, he generally contrives to profit by the encounter, by picking up some new intelligence, which he adds to his own former stock.

In describing this part of the character of a local antiquary, with all his ignorance and all his fables, it is forced upon our observation, how little certain information is commonly to be found, concerning the relics of antiquity, among those who dwell in their immediate neighbourhood. They know that there is an “auld abbey” or a “queer sort o’ stane,” near them; but for any more particular notice of their history, you might as well inquire in a different quarter of the globe. We have known instances of people, whose playground in infancy, and whose daily walks in manhood, had been among the ruins of an ancient Collegiate Church, (not the least interesting in the kingdom,) being yet quite ignorant of every circumstance connected with it, except that it was “just the auld Kirk.”

“It not unfrequently happened,” says Captain Clutterbuck, in his amusing account of himself, “that an acquaintance which commenced in the Abbey concluded in the Inn, which served to relieve the solitude as well as the monotony of my landlady’s shoulder of mutton, whether hot, cold, or hashed.” This happened not more frequently in the case of Captain Clutterbuck than it does in that of Captain O——n. The latter personage, indeed, makes a constant practice of living entirely with his eleves during their stay in Melrose; and, as they have been guests at the hospitable board of his learning and entertainment, so he in turn becomes a guest at the parade of their “bottle of sherry, minced collops, and fowl,” or whatever else the order upon David Kyle may be. He is thus always ready at the elbows of their ignorance, to explain and to exhibit the various petty curiosities of the place, of which it is probable they might otherwise be obliged to remain perfectly unknowing, but for the condescending attention of Captain O. He is not destitute of other means of entertainment, besides showing the Abbey. He can tell a good story, after a few glasses, and is an excellent hand at a song. “The Broom of the Cowdenknows” is his favourite and his best; but we are also tenderly attached to “The Flowers of the Forest,” which he gives in the milkmaid style, with much pathos. When his company is agreeable, he can (about the tenth tumbler,) treat them with “Willie brewed a peck o’ Maut,” or “Auld Lang Syne,” or “For a’ that and a’ that.” These infatuating lyrics he gives in such a style of appropriate enthusiasm, that if his companions have at all a spark of Burns’s fire in their composition, they will rise up and join hands round the table, and, at the conclusion of every stanza, drink down immense cups of kindness, till, in the springtide of their glory, they imagine themselves the most jolly, patriotic, and independent Scotsmen upon the face of the earth. Such is the deceiving effect of a national song upon the spirits of men of sober reason when prepared for the excitement by previous intoxication. This trait is also not without its parallel in Clutterbuck. The reader will remember how, in the Introduction to Nigel, he pathetically laments that since Catalani visited the ruins, his “Poortith Cauld” has been received both poorly and coldly, and his “Banks of Doon” been fairly coughed down, at the Club. May the vocal exertions of Captain O——n, however, never meet with such a scurvy reception among the cognoscenti of Melrose!

Such are the characteristics of the prototype of Captain Clutterbuck, as we have gathered them from persons who have been acquainted with him, natives of the same town. We learn that there is another person of the same description in Melrose, named Captain T——t, who was really a Captain, but of a man-of-war, instead of a regiment. May he not have been the Captain Doolittle of “The Monastery”? The grave-digger of Kennaquhair, who has the honour of speaking a few words in that work, must have been John Martin, who was professor of the same trade in Melrose. He is now dead. Mr. David Kyle, a very respectable and worthy man, who kept the Cross Keys Inn at Melrose, is also dead. He was in the custom of keeping an album in his house, for the amusement of his guests; though we cannot say as to the truth of his having had a copy of the “great Dr. Samuel Johnson’s Tower to the Hebrides, in his parlour window, wi’ the twa boards torn aff.” In the album, to which we had access, is the following very curious document, among much nonsense:—

EPITAPH ON MR. LITTLE,
A JOLLY FELLOW.

The character of Captain Clutterbuck, taken abstractedly from all consideration of its prototype, may be said to represent a certain species of men to be found in almost every Scottish village of any extent. Sergeant M‘Alpine, in the Legend of Montrose, is another picture of them, and perhaps a more complete one than Clutterbuck. They are the scattered wrecks of war, drifted upon the beach of retirement, and left to waste away. They chiefly roost about little towns in remote parts of the country, where society is not expensive, and where half-pay procures the necessaries of life in the best possible style. Here there always exist one or two of these individuals, rendering the place respectable by their presence, and receiving a sort of spontaneous homage from the people, in virtue of their independence, their gentility, and their scars. Like the fading relics of the City Guard, they change the most warlike of their habiliments for others more consonant with the costumes of peace; but yet, though the scarlet be gone from the coat and the sword from the hand, they do not altogether shake off the airs of war. There is still something of the parade to be observed in the small-ruffled shirt, the blue-necked coat, and the shoe-buckles; while the starched and powdered rigidity in the cheek is as military as before, and the walking cane is but a slight defalcation, in either dignity or ferocity, from its predecessor, the sword. The walk, proud, portly, and erect, is another relic of military habit that can never be abandoned: and every other little punctuality of life and manners, such as soldiers are accustomed to, is equally pertinacious in clinging to the person of the disbanded officer. Such persons have long-winded stories about Ticonderago and Mount Abraham, which every one of their acquaintance has known by heart these twenty years; and yet such is the respect paid to the good old gentleman, that amazement as naturally follows the unfolding of the story, and the laugh comes as ready on the catastrophe of the joke, as ever. No one could be uncivil to the Captain. An excellent sketch of this description of persons is to be found in the xxxth number of Blackwood’s Magazine, under the title of “Lament for Captain Paton.” To this poem we refer the reader for further particulars respecting the character represented in Captain Clutterbuck.

The first and most prominent object of attention, in the scenery of this Romance, is the Monastery itself, which every one knows to be the renowned Abbey of Melrose, situated upwards of thirty-five miles from Edinburgh to the south. It is the most beautiful and correct specimen of Gothic architecture in Scotland; and has been universally admired for the elegance and variety of its sculpture, the beauty of its stone, the multiplicity of its statues, and the symmetry of its parts. It was founded, as is well known, in 1136, by the pious David I., who dedicated it to the Virgin Mary. To attempt a minute description of it would be unnecessary, as we presume the great bulk of our readers have seen the venerable pile itself, and those who have not, know the many excellent sources from which this want can be supplied. Any remarks of ours would give no additional lustre to the magnificent ruins, or to the knowledge of the vicissitudes which it underwent in the course of several ages.

Less than a quarter of a mile to the west of the Abbey, there is a green bank which reaches to the height of some hundred feet above the level of the Tweed. It is termed the Weird Hill, from a dim tradition of the fairy tribe having haunted the spot, and held high conclave touching the whimsies to be practised on the wights who came under their ire. Immediately below this bank is the weird or dam-dyke where it is believed the poor Sacristan was ducked by the White Lady,—a lineal descendant of the ancient inhabitants of the hill.

Following the course of the Tweed upwards—that is, towards the west, about a mile and a half—we arrive at the ruins of the Old Bridge, which once formed the regular communication to the Monastery. It appears to have been constructed of timber, in the form of a drawbridge, with three pillars, the middle pillar containing a wooden house for the bridge-keeper. From this bridge there was a plain way to Soutra Hill, along the northern bank of the Tweed, which was named the Girth-gate,[69] from an hospital, having the privileges of Sanctuary, which was founded at Soutra by Malcolm IV., for the relief of pilgrims and of poor and infirm persons who journeyed southwards. This way was so good and easy, that, as a learned divine remarked, it might strongly remind the traveller of the paths to the cities of refuge. There were also two hostelries or inns at that place, which could well afford, from their stores, an elegant dejeune to Sir Piercie Shafton and his “fair Molindinara.”

A few yards from the bridge alluded to, the Elevand or Allan water discharges itself into the Tweed. It is this little mountain brook (rising from Allan-shaws on the boundary of Melrose parish towards the north,) that forms the beautiful valley of Glendearg, described in the romance. Advancing from the strath of the river in the northern direction from Melrose, we discern the stream meandering in crystal beauty through Langlee Wood, the property of Lord Somerville. The serpentine turns of its course oblige the traveller frequently to pass and repass it, in the line of the foot-track; but this is attended with no inconvenience, from the number of rustic bridges which are thrown over it. Emerging from the wood, the glen opens to the view. On one side of it (to the east,) rises a precipitous bank or scaur,[70] of a reddish colour, with here and there small patches of green sward. On the opposite side the eminences do not swell so high, but form a perfect contrast to the other. They have yielded their bosom to the industry of man, and repay his labour with the rich fruits of autumn. This improvement, however, is recent, as thirty years have scarcely elapsed since they displayed an aspect almost as barren as the opposite ridge. The little brook which runs below is not perceptible from either height, so deeply is its channel embosomed in the narrow dell. As we proceed onwards under a shade of alders, the glen gradually widens, and, about 400 yards from whence it opens, a singular amphitheatre meets the eye. It is somewhat in the shape of a crescent, through which the water passes, leaving a pretty large channel. The opposing precipices are thickly belted with copse-wood and several mountain shrubs, which entwine with the branches of the beech and birch trees. This place is called the Fairy or Nameless Dean, from some curiously-shaped stones, which are said to be found after great falls of rain.[71] But perhaps a better reason for the appellation arises from the situation itself, which afforded a hidden rendezvous for the elfin race, with which superstition peopled many parts of this district during the grandeur of the Abbacy. No one, however, will deny that the White Lady of Avenel might here have fixed her residence, and delivered her responses to young Glendinning, or that it might have served as a secluded corner for deadly strife. Though the holly bush cannot be discovered, yet the spring of water may easily be conjectured, by the curious observer, in the swampiness of portions of the ground now covered with sward.

The scenery of the remainder of the glen is extremely picturesque, but unmarked by any striking varieties. The brook, like

often dashes and foams over small interjecting rocks, and forms some beautiful cascades. At other times,

it sends a puny rill into some of the deep recesses or ravines which have found their way between the hills. As the top of the glen is neared, the hills show a greater slope, till we arrive at the green mount, on which stands

On the property of Borthwick of Crookston, from which there is no doubt Glendearg has been depicted. The outward walls are still entire, and, from their thickness and oblong form, with the port-holes with which they abound, show it to have been formerly a place of some strength. This seems also probable from the bleakness and wildness of the surrounding scenery. High mountainous ridges, the castles of nature, tower on every side, whose bosoms sometimes display the naked grey rock encircled with fern and heath, and, at other times, excellent verdure. But no cultivated field greets the eye, and the solemn stillness which reigns around is only broken by the gentle murmuring of the rivulet. The situation of the old tower is well chosen, as, from the direction in which the hills run, a sort of circle is formed, which not only screens it from the north and east winds, but could easily debar all intercourse with the neighbouring country.

The date of the old tower, if a sculpture on the lintel of the entrance can be credited, is 1585; and its inhabitants seem to have been of some consequence from its interior appearance. At the foot of the stair, which projects almost to the door, there is a long, narrow apartment, with an arched roof lighted by a loophole-window, which, in the olden times, formed the pen for the proprietor’s cattle when danger was apprehended. It would suit well for the place of concealment suggested by the miller’s daughter for Sir Piercie, before the unbarring of the door. The decayed stone staircase leads to a common-sized hall, with a large chimney-piece; but from the height of the walls, and other circumstances, there must have been another room of equal dimensions above it. There are also the remains of some small rooms, which complete the accommodations of the mansion.

At a little distance from the foot of the tower, the straggling ruins of small outhouses are discerned, which have been once connected with the principal building. A short way farther, to the north, stand the ruins of Colmsley and Langshaw, the former of which places is alluded to by its name in the Romance.

Leaving Glendearg, it is necessary to follow the progress of the romance towards the Castle of Avenel, alias Smailholm Tower. The distance between the two places is nearly seven miles. There is no regular road, but a track can be discovered, which runs eastward from Hillslop, through the base of the Gattonside, a small chain which runs from E. to W., in the direction of Melrose. The path is a most unenviable one; for, besides the obstacles of ditch and furze, it is intersected by deep morasses, which often render it quite impassable. In threading it, we pass Threepwood and Blainslie Mosses, the favourite resort of the Moss-troopers, who kept the peaceful inhabitants in continual alarm. Their ravages were particularly extensive during the usurpation of Cromwell, who allowed these depredators to scourge Scotland unpunished.

We hope to be able to show, from the description of this ancient fortress, that it agrees in the leading features with Avenel Castle; and if the reader will carry back his imagination for two centuries, he will be better able to minute the resemblance. Smailholm tower, distant about seven miles from Melrose to the east, and eight from Kelso to the west, is the most perfect relic of the feudal keep in the south of Scotland. It stands upon a rock of considerable height, in the centre of an amphitheatre of craggy hills, which rise many hundred feet above the level of the fertile plains of the Merse. Between the hills there appear ravines of some depth, which, being covered with straggling clumps of mountain shrubs, afford an agreeable relief to the rocks which are continually starting upon the eye. Nature indeed seems to have destined this isolated spot for a bulwark against the border marauders; but its strength and security was not confined to the encircling eminences. It chiefly lay in a deep and dangerous loch, which completely environed the castle, and extended on every side to the hills. Of this loch only a small portion remains, it having been drained, many years ago, for the convenience of the farmer on whose estate it was thought a nuisance. But the fact is evident, not only from the swampiness of the ground, which only a few years since created a dangerous morass, but from the appearance of the remaining pool, which has hitherto defied the efforts of the numerous drain-beds which surround it in every direction. Some people in the neighbourhood recollect and can mark out the extent of the large sheet of water which gave so romantic an air to this shred of antiquity.

We cannot omit giving the following animated picture of the local beauties, from the pencil of Sir Walter Scott.

There is much feeling in this description; and so might there be, for the early years of the bard were passed in the farmhouse of Sandy-knowe (about a bow-shot from the tower,) with a maternal aunt, whose mind was stored with border legends, which she related to her youthful charge. With this instructress, and by poring incessantly for many years on the relics of antiquity which are to be found in the neighbourhood, it is probable that he first received the impressions that afterwards came forward to such an illustrious maturity, and stored his imagination with those splendid images of chivalry that have since been embodied in imperishable song.

The external appearance of the tower may be briefly described. The walls are of a quadrangular shape, and about nine feet in thickness. They have none of the decorations of buttress or turret; and if there were any ornamental carving, time has swept it away. A ruined bartizan, which runs across three angles of the building, near the top, is the only outward addition to the naked square donjon. The tower has been entered on the west side, as all the other quarters rise perpendicularly from the lake. Accordingly, there we discern the fragments of a causeway, and the ruins of a broad portal, whence a drawbridge seems to have communicated with an eminence about a hundred yards distant. On this quarter also there may be traced the site of several small booths which contained the retainers or men-at-arms of the feudal lord.

On the west side,[73] at a little distance from the Castle, is the Watch Crag, a massive rock, on the top of which a fire was lit to announce the approach of the English forayers to the neighbourhood. It is thus described in the ballad of the Eve of St. John:

The interior of the castle bespeaks the mansion of the lesser Scottish Baron. The sunk-floor, or keep, seems, from its structure, to have contained the cattle of the Baron during seasons of alarm and invasion. It is vaulted in the roof, and the light is admitted by a small outshot. Some have conjectured that this apartment was occupied as a dungeon, or Massy More, where the captives taken in war were confined; but this idea is improbable, not only from the comfortable appearance it exhibits, but from the circumstance of every border fortress having a place of the description formerly alluded to. Ascending a narrow winding staircase, we arrive at a spacious hall, with the customary distinction of a huge chimney-piece. The roof is gone, but the stone props of it, which were of course the support of another floor, remain. This latter would seem to have been the grand banqueting-room, where the prodigal hospitality of our ancestors was displayed in its usual style of extravagance. There also remain the marks of a higher floor, thus making three storeys in all. The highest opens by a few steps to the bartizan we have already mentioned, whence we ascend to a grass-grown battlement, which commands a magnificent prospect. To the east the spires of Berwick are descried, terminating an extensive plain, beautified by the windings of the Tweed; to the south, the conical summits of the Eildon Hills; to the north, the Lammermoors rear their barren heads above the verdant hills of the Merse; and on the south, the blue Cheviots are seen stretching through a lengthened vista of smaller hills. Besides this grand outline, the eye can take in a smaller range, beyond the rocky barrier of the Castle,—a most cultivated dale, varied with peaceful hamlets, crystal streams, and towering forests.

The history of the ancient possessors of the tower is involved in obscurity. We only know that there were Barons of Smailholm, but no memorable qualities are recorded of them. They were, as we already observed, in the rank of the lesser Barons—that is, those who had not the patent of peerage, but who were dignified only by the extent of their possessions. But we know that the present proprietor, Mr. Scott, of Harden, is not a descendant of that ancient family, as we believe he acquired the estate by purchase. This gentleman cares so little for the antique pile within his domains, that it is not long since he intimated his intention to raze it to the ground, and from its materials to erect a steading to the farm of Sandy-knowe. This would have certainly taken place, had not his poetic kinsman, Sir Walter Scott, interfered, and averted the sacrilegious intent; and to prevent the recurrence of the resolution, he composed the admired ballad of the Eve of St. John, which ranks among the best in the Border Minstrelsy.

Tradition bears that it was inhabited by an aged lady at the beginning of the last century, and several old people still alive remember of the joists and window-frames being entire. A more interesting legend exists, of which the purport is, that there was once a human skull within this tower, possessed of the miraculous faculty of self-motion to such a degree, that, if taken away to any distance, it was always sure to have found its way back to its post by the next morning.[74] This may perhaps remind the reader of the strange journeys performed by the “black volume” in the Monastery, whose rambling disposition was such a source of terror and amazement to the monks of St. Mary’s.

CHAPTER XI. — MATCH OF ARCHERY AT ASHBY. — KENILWORTH CASTLE. — DAVID RAMSAY. — THE REDGAUNTLET FAMILY.

The Romances.

“IVANHOE.”

he match in which the yeoman Locksley overcomes all the antagonists whom Prince John brings up against him, finds a parallel, and indeed we may say foundation, in the ballad of “Adam Bell, Clym o’ the Cleugh, and William of Cloudeslea.” The story of the ballad bears, that these three “perilous outlaws,” having wrought great devastation among the “foresters of the fee” and liege burghers of Carlisle, while in the act of rescuing one of their companions from prison, “fure up to London Town” to crave of their Sovereign a charter of peace. This, by the intercession of the Queen, he grants them; but no sooner is the royal word passed for their pardon, than messengers arrive from the “North Countrye,” with the tidings of the deadly havoc. The King happens to be quietly engaged in eating his dinner at the time, and is completely thunderstruck at the intelligence, so that,—

He straightway assures the three offenders, that if they do not prevail over every one of his own bowmen, their lives shall be forfeited.

The reader will recollect that Locksley upbraids his adversary, after his unsuccessful shot, for not having made an allowance for the pressure of the breeze. Cloudeslea gives a caution to the spectators no less minute:

and, having chosen a “bearing flane,” splits the wand.

“KENILWORTH.”

Kenilworth Castle was in former times one of the most magnificent piles in England. In the days of its prosperity it took a military part, and it still retains traces of a warlike character,—though the foliage which overspreads its remains, has softened down the ruins into the appearance of a peaceful mansion. It was first destroyed by Cromwell, in revenge of its possessor having favoured the royal cause. Since then it has been gradually decaying, and another century will probably bring it to the ground.

History mentions Kenilworth so early as the reign of Henry I. At that time it was private property, but afterwards fell into the hands of the Crown, in which it continued till Elizabeth bestowed it upon her favourite, Leicester. This nobleman, profuse and extravagant to the last degree, is said to have expended upon it no less than £60,000.

One of the most remarkable events in the history of this castle is the entertainment given by the latter proprietor to Elizabeth, which forms the groundwork of the beautiful romance of “Kenilworth.” The traditionary recollection of this grand festivity still lives in the country, such having been the impression made upon the minds of the country people by the grandeur of the occasion, that, in a lapse of 250 years, it has not decayed in their remembrance. The following is an account, given by an eye-witness, of her Majesty’s reception:—

“On the 9th of July, 1575, in the evening, the Queen approached the first gate of the castle. The porter, a man tall in person, and of stern countenance, with a club and keys, accosted her Majesty in a rough speech, full of passion, in metre, aptly made for the purpose, and demanded the cause of all this din, and noise, and reeling about, within the charge of his office. But upon seeing the Queen, as if he had been struck instantaneously, and pierced, at the presence of a personage so evidently expressing heroical sovereignty, he fell down on his knees, humbly prays pardon for his ignorance, yields up his club and keys, and proclaims open gates and free passage to all.

“Immediately the trumpeters, who stood on the wall, being six in number, each eight feet high, with their silvery trumpets of five feet long, sounded up a tune of welcome.

“Those harmonious blasters maintained their delectable music while the Queen rode through the tilt-yard to the grand entrance of the castle, which was washed by the lake.

“As she passed, a movable island approached, on which sat the Lady of the Lake, who offered up her dominion to her Majesty, which she had held since the days of King Arthur.

“This scene ended by a delectable harmony of hautbois, shalms, cornets, with other loud musical instruments, playing while her Majesty passed into the castle gate.

“When she entered the castle, a new scene was presented to her.—Several of the heathen gods brought their gifts before her—Sylvanus, god of the woods, Pomona with fruit, Ceres with corn, Bacchus with grapes, Neptune with his trident, Mars with his arms, Apollo with musical instruments,—all presented themselves to welcome her Majesty in this singular place. An inscription over the gate explained the whole.

“Her Majesty was graciously pleased to accept the gifts of these divinities, when was struck up a concert of flutes and other soft music. When, alighting from her palfrey, she was conveyed into her chamber, when her arrival was announced through the country by a peal of cannon from the ramparts, and fireworks at night.”

Here the Queen was entertained for nineteen days, at an expense of £1000 a day. The Queen’s genius seems to have been greatly consulted in the pomp and solemnity of the whole, to which some have added the entertainment of bear-baiting, etc.

The great clock was stopped during her Majesty’s continuance in the castle, as if time had stood still, waiting on the Queen, and seeing her subjects enjoy themselves.

“NIGEL.”

“In the year 1634, Davy Ramsay, his Majesty’s clockmaker, made an attempt to discover a precious deposit supposed to be concealed in the cloister of Westminster Abbey, but a violent storm of wind put a stop to his operations.”—Lilly’s Life, p. 47. This Ramsay, according to Osborne, in his Traditional Memorials, used to deliver money and watches, to be recompensed, with profit, when King James should sit on the King’s chair at Rome, so near did he apprehend (by astrology, doubtless,) the downfall of the papal power. His son wrote several books on astrological subjects, of which his Astrologia Restaurata is very entertaining. In the preface he says that his father was of an ancient Scottish family, viz. of Eighterhouse, (Auchterhouse,) “which had flourished in great glory for 1500 years, till these latter days,” and derives the clan from Egypt, (it is wonderful that the idea of gipsies did not startle him,) where the word Ramsay signifies joy and delight. But he is extremely indignant that the world should call his father “no better than a watchmaker,” asserting that he was, in fact, page of the bedchamber, groom of the privy chamber, and keeper of all his Majestie’s clocks and watches. “Now, how this,” quoth he to the reader, “should prove him a watchmaker, and no other, more than the late Earles of Pembroke ordinary chamberlains, because they bore this office in the King’s house, do thou judge.”—Mr. Sharp’s Notes to Law’s Memorialls.

“REDGAUNTLET.”

It is supposed that the characters, if not the fortunes, of the Redgauntlet family, are founded upon those of the Griersons of Lagg. This celebrated, or rather notorious family, is of considerable antiquity in Galloway,[75]—a district abounding, to a greater degree than either Wales or the Highlands of Scotland, in families of remote origin and honourable descent. Grierson of Lagg was one of those border barons, whose fame and wealth the politic James V. endeavoured to impair, by lodging himself and his whole retinue upon them during a progress, to the irreparable ruin of their numerous flocks, and the alienation of their broad lands. The Grierson family never recovered the ground then lost; and has continued, down even to the present day, to struggle with many difficulties in supporting its dignity. Sir Robert Grierson, grandfather of the present Laird, made himself conspicuous in the reigns of the latter Stuarts, by the high hand which he carried in persecuting the recusant people of his own districts, and by the oppression which the spirit of those unhappy times empowered him to exercise upon his tenants and immediate dependants. He was but a youth when these unhappy transactions took place, and survived the Restoration nearly fifty years. His death, which took place in 1736, was in the remembrance of people lately alive. Many strange traditionary stories are told about him in Dumfriesshire, and, in particular, the groundwork of “Wandering Willie’s Tale” is quite well known and accredited among the common people thereabouts. The popular account of his last illness, death, and burial, are exceedingly absurd and amusing, and we willingly give them a place in our motley record.

Sir Robert Grierson died in the town of Dumfries. The house where this memorable incident took place is still pointed out. It is now occupied by a decent baker, and is a house of singular construction, having a spiral or turnpike stair, like the old houses of Edinburgh, on which account it is termed the Turnpike House. It is at a distance of about two hundred yards from the river Nith; and it is said that when Sir Robert’s feet were in their torment of heat, and caused the cold water in which they were placed to boil, relays of men were placed between the house and the river, to run with pails of water to supply his bath; and still, as one pail was handed in, the preceding one was at the height of boiling-heat, and quite intolerable to the old Laird’s unfortunate extremities. Sir Robert at length died, and was laid in a hearse to be taken to the churchyard, which was some miles off. But, oh the mysterious interferences of the evil one! though six stout horses essayed their utmost might, they could not draw the wicked persecutor’s body along; and there stood, fixed to the spot, as though they had been yoked to the stedfast Criffel instead of an old family hearse! In this emergency, when the funeral company were beginning to have their own thoughts, Sir Thomas Kirkpatrick of Closeburn, an old friend of the Laird’s, happened to come up, with two beautiful Spanish horses, and, seeing the distress they were in, swore an oath, and declared that he would drive old Legg, though the devil were in him. So saying, he yoked his Spanish barbs to the hearse, mounted the box himself, and drove away at a gallop towards the place of interment. The horses ran with such swiftness that their master could not restrain them, and they stopped at the churchyard gate, not by any management or direction on his part, but by some miraculous and supernatural agency. The company came slowly up in the course of an hour thereafter, and Sir Robert Grierson was, after all, properly interred, though not without the loss of Sir Thomas Kirkpatrick’s beautiful horses, which died in consequence of their exertions.

The story of the Redgauntlet horse-shoe seems to have its foundation in the following:—

“Major Weir’s mother appears to have set the example of witchcraft to her children, as Jean Weir, while in prison, declared that ‘she was persuaded that her mother was a witch; for the secretest thing that either I myself, or any of the family, could do, when once a mark appeared upon her brow, she could tell it them, though done at a great distance.’ Being demanded what sort of a mark it was, she answered, ‘I have some such like mark myself, when I please, upon my forehead.’ Whereupon she offered to uncover her head, for visible satisfaction. The minister refusing to behold it, and forbidding any discovery, was earnestly requested by some spectators to allow the freedom. He yielded: she put back her head-dress, and, seeming to frown, there was an exact horse-shoe, shaped for nails, in her wrinkles, terrific enough, I assure you, to the stoutest beholder.”—Sinclair’s Satan’s Invisible World Discovered.

THE END.

[Transcriber’s Note—the following changes have been made to this text.

Frontispiece: SUBSEQUANTLY to SUBSEQUENTLY—“AND SUBSEQUENTLY BY”.

Page vi: Balderston to Balderstone—“(Caleb Balderstone)”.

Page 6: stiil to still—“still continue to be”.

Page 17: dittograph “during during” corrected—“during the sermon”.

Page 31: boronet to baronet—“baronet of Orchardston”.

Page 56: imimmediately to immediately—“it was immediately opened”.

Page 58: Here to Her—“Her propensities”.

Page 93: Burley to Burly—“history of Burly”.

Page 118: nïaveté to naïveté—“marked by a naïveté”.

Page 120, note: Carpshearn to Carsphearn—“Semple, of Carsphearn.”

Page 136, note: Tripatiarchicon to Tripatriarchicon—“copy of the Tripatriarchicon”.

Page 144: thefirst to the first—“the first intelligence”.

Page 147: Trament to Tranent—“Berwick to Tranent”.

Page 149, note: ca to ça—“ça ira”.

Page 182: decendants to descendants—“his descendants have continued”.]