CHAPTER III.—COMING INTO THE WORLD.
—At first the babe
Was sickly; and a smile was seen to pass
Across the midwife’s cheek, when, holding up
The feeble wretch, she to the father said,
“A fine man-child!” What else could they expect?
The father being, as I said before,
A weaver.Hogg’s Poetic Mirror.
I have no distinct recollection of the thing myself, yet there is every reason to believe that I was born on the 15th of October 1765, in that little house standing by itself, not many yards from the eastmost side of the Flesh-Market Gate, Dalkeith. My eyes opened on the light about two o’clock in a dark and rainy morning. Long was it spoken about that something great and mysterious would happen on that dreary night; as the cat, after washing her face, went mewing about, with her tail sweeing behind her like a ramrod; and a corbie, from the Duke’s woods, tumbled down Jamie Elder’s lum, when he had set the little still a-going—giving them a terrible fright, as they all took it first for the devil, and then for an exciseman—and fell with a great cloud of soot, and a loud skraigh, into the empty kail-pot.
The first thing that I have any clear memory of, was my being carried out on my auntie’s shoulder, with a leather cap tied
under my chin, to see the Fair Race. Oh! but it was a grand sight! I have read since then the story of Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp, but this beat it all to sticks. There was a long row of tables covered with carpets of bonny patterns, heaped from one end to the other with shoes of every kind and size, some with polished soles, and some glittering with sparribles and cuddy-heels; and little red worsted boots for bairns, with blue and white edgings, hanging like strings of flowers up the posts at each end;—and then what a collection of luggies! the whole meal in the market-sacks on a Thursday did not seem able to fill them;—and horn-spoons, green and black freckled, with shanks clear as amber,—and timber caups,—and ivory egg-cups of every pattern. Have a care of us! all the eggs in Smeaton dairy might have found resting-places for their doups in a row. As for the gingerbread, I shall not attempt a description. Sixpenny and shilling cakes, in paper, tied with skinie; and roundabouts, and snaps, brown and white quality, and parliaments, on stands covered with calendered linen, clean from the fold. To pass it was just impossible; it set my teeth a-watering, and I skirled like mad, until I had a gilded lady thrust into my little nieve; the which, after admiring for a minute, I applied my teeth to, and of the head I made no bones; so that in less than no time she had vanished, petticoats and all, no trace of her being to the fore, save and except long treacly daubs, extending east and west from ear to ear, and north and south from cape neb of the nose to the extremity of beardy-land.
But what, of all things, attracted my attention on that memorable day, was the show of cows, sheep, and horses, mooing, baaing, and neighering; and the race—that was best! Od, what a sight!—we were jammed in the crowd of old wives, with their toys and shining ribands; and carter lads, with their blue bonnets; and young wenches, carrying home their fairings in napkins, as muckle as would hold their teeth going for a month;—there scarcely could be much for love, when there was so much for the stomach;—and men, with wooden legs, and brass virls at the end of them, playing on the fiddle,—and a bear that roared, and danced on its hind feet, with a muzzled
mouth,—and Punch and Polly,—and puppie-shows, and more than I can tell,—when up came the horses to the starting-post. I shall never forget the bonny dresses of the riders. One had a napkin tied round his head, with the flaps fleeing at his neck; and his coat-tails were curled up into a big hump behind; it was so tight buttoned ye would not think he could have breathed. His corduroy trowsers (such like as I have often since made to growing callants) were tied round his ankles with a string; and he had a rusty spur on one shoe, which I saw a man take off to lend him. Save us! how he pulled the beast’s head by the bridle, and flapped up and down on the saddle when he tried a canter! The second one had on a black velvet hunting-cap, and his coat stripped. I wonder he was not feared of cold, his shirt being like a riddle, and his nether nankeens but thin for such weather; but he was a brave lad; and sorry were the folks for him, when he fell off in taking over sharp a turn, by which old Pullen, the bell-ringer, who was holding the post, was made to coup the creels, and got a bloody nose.—And but the last was a wearyful one! He was all life, and as gleg as an eel. Up and down he went; and up and down philandered the beast on its hind-legs and its fore-legs, funking like mad; yet though he was not above thirteen, or fourteen at most, he did not cry out for help more than five or six times, but grippit at the mane with one hand, and at the back of the saddle with the other, till daft Robie, the hostler at the stables, claught hold of the beast by the head, and off they set. The young birkie had neither hat nor shoon, but he did not spare the stick; round and round they flew like mad. Ye would have thought their eyes would have loupen out; and loudly all the crowd were hurraing, when young hatless came up foremost, standing in the stirrups, the long stick between his teeth, and his white hair fleeing behind him in the wind like streamers on a frosty night.
CHAPTER IV.—CALF-LOVE.
Bonny lassie, will ye go, will ye go, will ye go,
Bonny lassie, will ye go to the Birks of Aberfeldy?Burns.
For a tailor is a man, a man, a man,
And a tailor is a man.Popular Heroic Song.
The long and the short is, that I was sent to school, where I learned to read and spell, making great progress in the Single and Mother’s Carritch. No, what is more, few could fickle me in the Bible, being mostly able to spell it all over, save the second of Ezra and the seventh of Nehemiah, which the Dominie himself could never read through twice in the same way, or without variations.
My father, to whom I was born, like Isaac to Abraham, in his old age, was an elder in the Relief Kirk, respected by all for his canny and douce behaviour, and, as I have observed before, a weaver to his trade. The cot and the kail-yard were his own, and had been auld granfaither’s; but still he had to ply the shuttle from Monday to Saturday, to keep all right and tight. The thrums were a perquisite of my own, which I niffered with the gundy-wife for Gibraltar-rock, cut-throat, gib, or bull’s-eyes.
Having come into the world before my time, and being of a pale face and delicate make, Nature never could have intended me for the naval or military line, or for any robustious trade or profession whatsoever. No, no, I never liked fighting in my life; peace was aye in my thoughts. When there was any riot in the streets, I fled, and scougged myself at the chimley-lug as quickly as I dowed; and, rather than double a nieve to a schoolfellow, I pocketed many shabby epithets, got my paiks, and took the coucher’s blow from laddies that could hardly reach up to my waistband.
Just after I was put to my prenticeship, having made free
choice of the tailoring trade, I had a terrible stound of calf-love. Never shall I forget it. I was growing up, long and lank as a willow-wand. Brawns to my legs there were none, as my trowsers of other years too visibly effected to show. The long yellow hair hung down, like a flax-wig, the length of my lantern jaws, which looked, notwithstanding my yapness and stiff appetite, as if eating and they had broken up acquaintanceship. My blue jacket seemed in the sleeves to have picked a quarrel with the wrists, and had retreated to a tait below the elbows. The haunch-buttons, on the contrary, appeared to have taken a strong liking to the shoulders, a little below which they showed their tarnished brightness. At the middle of the back the tails terminated, leaving the well-worn rear of my corduroys, like a full moon seen through a dark haze. Oh! but I must have been a bonny lad.
My first flame was the minister’s lassie, Jess, a buxom and forward quean, two or three years older than myself. I used to sit looking at her in the kirk, and felt a droll confusion when our eyes met. It dirled through my heart like a dart, and I looked down at my psalm-book sheepish and blushing. Fain would I have spoken to her, but it would not do; my courage aye failed me at the pinch, though she whiles gave me a smile when she passed me. She used to go to the well every night with her two stoups, to draw water after the manner of the Israelites at gloaming; so I thought of watching to give her the two apples which I had carried in my pocket for more than a week for that purpose. How she started when I stappit them into her hand, and brushed by without speaking! I stood at the bottom of the close listening, and heard her laughing till she was like to split. My heart flap-flappit in my breast like a pair of fanners. It was a moment of heavenly hope; but I saw Jamie Coom, the blacksmith, who I aye jealoused was my rival, coming down to the well. I saw her give him one of the apples; and hearing him say, with a loud gaffaw, “Where is the tailor?” I took to my heels, and never stopped till I found myself on the little stool by the fireside, and the hamely sound of my mother’s wheel bum-bumming in my lug, like a gentle lullaby.
Every noise I heard flustered me, but I calmed in time, though
I went to my bed without my supper. When I was driving out the gaislings to the grass on the next morn, who was it my ill fate to meet but the blacksmith. “Ou, Mansie,” said Jamie Coom, “are ye gaun to take me for your best-man? I hear you are to be cried in the kirk on Sunday?”
“Me!” answered I, shaking and staring.
“Yes!” said he; “Jess the minister’s maid told me last night, that you had been giving up your name at the manse. Ay, it’s ower true—for she showed me the apples ye gied her in a present. This is a bonny story, Mansie, my man, and you only at your prenticeship yet.”
Terror and despair had struck me dumb. I stood as still and as stiff as a web of buckram. My tongue was tied, and I could not contradict him. Jamie folded his arms, and went away whistling, turning every now and then his sooty face over his shoulder, and mostly sticking his tune, as he could not keep his mouth screwed for laughing. What would I not have given to have laughed too!
There was no time to be lost: this was the Saturday. The next rising sun would shine on the Sabbath. Ah, what a case I was in! I could mostly have drowned myself, had I not been frighted. What could I do? My love had vanished like lightning; but oh, I was in a terrible gliff! Instead of gundy, I sold my thrums to Mrs Walnut for a penny, with which I bought at the counter a sheet of paper and a pen; so that in the afternoon I wrote out a letter to the minister, telling him what I had been given to hear, and begging him, for the sake of mercy, not to believe Jess’s word, as I was not able to keep a wife, and as she was a leeing gipsy.
CHAPTER V.—CURSECOWL.
From his red poll a redder cowl hung down;
His jacket, if through grease we guess, was brown;
A vigorous scamp, some forty summers old;
Rough Shetland stockings up his thighs were roll’d;
While at his side horn-handled steels and knives
Gleam’d from his pouch, and thirsted for sheeps’ lives.Odoherty’s Miscellanea Classica.
But, losh me! I have come on too far already, before mentioning a wonderful thing that happened to me when I was only seven years old. Few things in my eventful life have made a deeper impression on me than what I am going to relate.
It was the custom, in those times, for the different schools to have cock-fighting on Fastern’s E’en; and the victor, as he was called, treated the other scholars to a football. Many a dust have I seen rise out of that business—broken shins and broken heads, sore bones and sound duckings—but this was none of these.
Our next neighbour was a flesher; and right before the window was a large stone, on which old wives with their weans would sometimes take a rest; so what does I, when I saw the whole hobble-shaw coming fleeing down the street, with the kick-ba’ at their noses, but up I speels upon the stone, (I was a wee chap with a daidley, a ruffled shirt, and leather cap edged with rabbit fur,) that I might see all the fun. This one fell, and that one fell, and a third was knocked over, and a fourth got a bloody nose: and so on; and there was such a noise and din, as would have deaved the workmen of Babel—when, lo! and behold! the ball played bounce mostly at my feet, and the whole mob after it. I thought I should have been dung to pieces; so I pressed myself back with all my might, and through went my elbow into Cursecowl’s kitchen. It did not stick long there. Before you could say Jack Robison, out flew the flesher in his killing-clothes; his face was as red as fire, and he had his pouch
full of bloody knives buckled to his side. I skreighed out in his face when I looked at him, but he did not stop a moment for that. With a girn that was like to rive his mouth, he twisted his nieve in the back of my hair, and off with me hanging by the cuff of the neck, like a kittling. My eyes were like to loup out of my head, but I had no breath to cry. I heard him thraw the key, for I could not look down, the skin of my face was pulled so tight; and in he flang me like a pair of old boots into his booth, where I landed on my knees upon a raw bloody calf’s skin. I thought I would have gone out of my wits, when I heard the door locked upon me, and looked round me in such an unearthly place. It had only one sparred window, and there was a garden behind; but how was I to get out? I danced round and round about, stamping my heels on the floor, and rubbing my begritten face with my coat sleeve. To make matters worse, it was wearing to the darkening. The floor was all covered with lappered blood, and sheep and calf skins. The calves and the sheep themselves, with their cuttit throats, and glazed een, and ghastly girning faces, were hanging about on pins, heels uppermost. Losh me! I thought on Bluebeard and his wives in the bloody chamber!
And all the time it was growing darker and darker, and more dreary; and all was as quiet as death itself. It looked, by all the world, like a grave, and me buried alive within it; till the rottens came out of their holes to lick the blood, and whisked about like wee evil spirits. I thought on my father and my mother, and how I should never see them more; for I was sure that Cursecowl would come in the dark, tie my hands and feet thegither, and lay me across the killing-stool. I grew more and more frightened; and it grew more and more dark. I thought all the sheep-heads were looking at one another, and then girn-girning at me. At last I grew desperate; and my hair was as stiff as wire, though it was as wet as if I had been douking in the Esk. I began to bite through the wooden spars with my teeth, and rugged at them with my nails, till they were like to come off—but no, it would not do. At length, when I had greeted myself mostly blind, and cried till I was as hoarse as a corbie, I saw auld Janet Hogg taking in her bit washing from the bushes, and I reeled and screamed till she heard me.—It was like being transported
into heaven; for, in less than no time, my mother, with her apron at her eyes, was at the door; and Cursecowl, with a candle in the front of his hat, had scarcely thrawn the key, when out I flew; and she lifted up her foot, (I dare say it was the first and last time in her life, for she was a douce woman,) and gave him such a kick and a push, that he played bleach over, head foremost, without being able to recover himself; and, as we ran down the close, we heard him cursing and swearing in the dark, like a devil incarnate.