THE SNOWBALL BICKER OF PEDMOUNT.
Beautiful as Snow yet is to our eyes, even through our spectacles, how grey it looks beside that which used to come with the long winters that glorified the earth in our youth, till the white lustre was more delightful even than the green—and we prayed that the fine fleecy flakes might never cease falling waveringly from the veil of the sky! No sooner comes the winter now, than it is away again to one of the Poles. Then, it was a year in itself—a whole life. We remember slides a quarter of a mile long, on level meadows; and some not less steep, down the sides of hills that to us were mountains. No boy can slide on one leg now—not a single shoe seems to have sparables. The florid style of skating shows that that fine art is degenerating; and we look in vain for the grand simplicity of the masters that spread-eagled in the age of its perfection. A change has come over the spirit of the curler's dream. They seem to our ears indeed to have "quat their roaring play." The cry of "swoop-swoop" is heard still—but a faint, feeble, and unimpassioned cry, compared with that which used, on the Mearns Brother-Loch, to make the welkin ring, and for a moment to startle the moon and stars—those in the sky, as well as those below the ice—till again the tumult subsided—and all the host of heaven above and beneath became serene as a world of dreams. Is it not even so, Shepherd? What is a rink now on a pond in Duddingston policy, to the rinks that rang and roared of old on the Loch o' the Lowes, when every stone circled in a halo of spray, seemed instinct with spirit to obey, along all its flight, the voice of him that launched it on its unerring aim, and sometimes, in spite of his awkward skillessness, when the fate of the game hung on his own single crank, went cannonading through all obstacles, till it fell asleep, like a beauty as it was, just as it kissed the Tee!
Again we see—again we sit in the Snow-house, built by us boys out of a drift in the minister's glebe, a drift—judging by the steeple, which was sixty—about twenty feet high—and purer than any marble. The roof was all strewed with diamonds, which frost saved from the sun. The porch of the palace was pillared—and the character of the building outside was, without any servile imitation—for we worked in the glow of original genius, and none of us had then ever seen itself or its picture—wonderfully like the Parthenon. Entering, you found yourself in a superb hall, lighted up—not with gas, for up to that era gas had not been used except in Pandemonium—but with a vast multitude of farthing candles, each in a turnip stuck into the wall—while a chandelier of frozen snow-branches pendent from the roof set that presence-chamber in a blaze. On a throne at the upper end sat young Christopher North—then the king of boys, as now of men—and proud were his subjects to do him homage. In niches all around the sidewalls were couches covered with hare, rabbit, foumart, and fox's skins—furnished by these animals slain by us in the woods and among the rocks of that sylvan and moorland parish—the regal Torus alone being spread with the dun-deer's hide from Lochiel Forest in Lochaber. Then old airs were sung—in sweet single voice—or in full chorus that startled the wandering night traveller on his way to the lone Kings-well; and then in the intermediate hush, old tales were told "of goblin, ghost, or fairy," or of Wallace Wight at the Barns of Ayr or the Brig o' Stirling—or, a glorious outlaw, harbouring in caves among the Cartlane Craigs—or of Robert Bruce the Deliverer, on his shelty cleaving in twain the skull of Bohun the English knight, on his thundering war-steed, armed cap-à-pie, while the King of Scotland had nothing on his unconquered head but his plain golden crown. Tales of the Snow-house! Had we but the genius to recall you to life in undying song!
Nor was our frozen hall at times uncheered by the smiles of beauty. With those smiles was heard the harmless love-whisper, and the harmless kiss of love; for the cottages poured forth their little lasses in flower-like bands, nor did their parents fear to trust them in the fairy frozen palace, where Christopher was king. Sometimes the old people themselves came to see the wonders of the lamp, and on a snow-table stood a huge bowl—not of snow—steaming with nectar that made Hyems smile as he hung his beard over the fragrant vapour. Nay, the minister himself—with his mother and sister—was with us in our fantastic festivities, and gave to the architecture of our palace his wondering praise. Then Andrew Lyndsey, the blind Paisley musician, a Latin scholar, who knew where Cremona stood, struck up on his famous fiddle jig or strathspey—and the swept floor, in a moment, was alive with a confused flight of foursome reels, each begun and ended with kisses, and maddened by many a whoop and yell—so like savages were we in our glee, dancing at the marriage of some island king!
Countless years have fled since that Snow-palace melted away—and of all who danced there, how many are now alive! Pshaw! as many probably as then danced anywhere else. It would never do to live for ever—let us then live well and wisely; and when death comes—from that sleep how blessed to awake! in a region where is no frost—no snow—but the sun of eternal life.
Mercy on us! what a hubbub!—Can the harriers be hunting in such a snowfall as this, and is poor pussy in view before the whole murderous pack, opening in full cry on her haunches? Why—Imagination, thou art an ass, and thy long ears at all times greedy of deception! 'Tis but a country Schoolhouse pouring forth its long-imprisoned stream of life as in a sudden sunny thaw, the Mad Master flying in the van of his helter-skelter scholars, and the whole yelling mass precipitated, many of them headlong, among the snow. Well do we know the fire-eyed Poet pedagogue, who, more outrageous than Apollo, has "ravished all the Nine." Ode, elegy, epic, tragedy, or farce—all come alike to him; and of all the bards we have ever known—and the sum total cannot be under a thousand—he alone, judging from the cock and the squint of his eye, labours under the blessing or the curse—we wot not whilk it be—of perpetual inspiration. A rare eye, too, is his at the setting of a springe for woodcocks, or tracking a maukin on the snow. Not a daredevil in the school that durst follow the indentations of his toes and fingers up the wall of the old castle, to the holes just below the battlements, to thrust his arm up to the elbows harrying the starlings' nests. The corbies ken the shape of his shoulders, as craftily he threads the wood; and let them build their domicile as high as the swinging twigs will bear its weight, agile as squirrel, and as foumart ferocious, up speels, by the height undizzied, the dreadless Dominie; and should there be fledged or puddock-haired young ones among the wool, whirling with guttural cawings down a hundred feet descent, on the hard rooty ground floor from which springs pine, oak, or ash, driven out is the life, with a squelsh and a squash, from the worthless carrion. At swimming we should not boggle to back him for the trifle of a cool hundred against the best survivor among those water-serpents, Mr Turner, Dr Bedale, Lieutenant Ekenhead, Lord Byron, Leander, and Ourselves—while, with the steel shiners on his soles, into what a set of ninnies in their ring would he not reduce the Edinburgh Skating Club?
Saw ye ever a Snowball Bicker? Never! Then look there with all the eyes in your head—only beware of a bash on the bridge of your nose, a bash that shall dye the snow with your virgin blood. The Poet-pedagogue, alias the Mad Dominie, with Bob Howie as his Second in Command, has chosen the Six stoutest striplings for his troop, and, at the head of that Sacred Band, offers battle to Us at the head of the whole School. Nor does that formidable force decline the combat. War levels all foolish distinctions of scholarship. Booby is Dux now, and Dux Booby—and the obscure dunce is changed into an illustrious hero.
"The combat deepens—on, ye brave,
Who rush to glory or the grave!
Wave, Nitton, all thy banners wave,
And charge with all thy schoolery!"
Down from the mount on which it had been drawn up in battle array, in solid square comes the School army, with shouts that might waken the dead, and inspire with the breath of life the nostrils of the great Snow-giant built up at the end of yonder avenue, and indurated by last night's frost. But there lies a fresh fall—and a better day for a bicker never rose flakily from the yellow East. Far out of distance, and prodigal of powder lying three feet deep on the flats, and heaped up in drifts to tree and chimney-top, the tirailleurs, flung out in front, commence the conflict by a shower of balls that, from the bosom of the yet untrodden snow between the two battles, makes spin like spray the shining surface. Then falling back on the main body, they find their places in the front rank, and the whole mottled mass, grey, blue, and scarlet, moves onwards o'er the whiteness, a moment ere they close,
"Calm as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm!"
"Let fly," cries a clear voice—and the snowball storm hurtles through the sky. Just then the valley-mouth blew sleety in the faces of the foe—their eyes, as if darkened with snuff or salt, blinked bat-like—and with erring aim flew their feckless return to that shower of frosty fire. Incessant is the silent cannonade of the resistless School—silent but when shouts proclaim the fall or flight of some doughty champion in the adverse legion.
See—see—the Sacred Band are broken! The cravens take ignominiously to flight—and the Mad Dominie and Bob Howie alone are left to bear the brunt of battle. A dreadful brotherhood! But the bashing balls are showered upon them right and left from scores of catapultic arms—and the day is going sore against them, though they fight less like men than devils. Hurra! the Dominie's down, and Bob staggers. "Guards, up and at them!" "A simultaneous charge of cocks, hens, and earocks!" No sooner said than done. Bob Howie is buried—and the whole School is trampling on its Master!
"Oh, for a blast of that dread horn,
On Fontarabian echoes borne,
That to King Charles did come,
When Rowland brave and Olivier,
And every paladin and peer,
On Roncesvalles died!"
The smothered ban of Bob, and the stifled denunciations of the Dominie, have echoed o'er the hill, and,
"Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,"
the runaways, shaking the snows of panic from their pows,
"Like dewdrops from the lion's mane,"
come rushing to the rescue. Two of the Six tremble and turn. The high heroic scorn of their former selves urges four to renew the charge, and the sound of their feet on the snow is like that of an earthquake. What bashes on bloody noses! What bungings-up of eyes! Of lips what slittings! Red is many a spittle! And as the coughing urchin groans, and claps his hand to his mouth, distained is the snowball that drops unlaunched at his feet. The School are broken—their hearts die within them—and—can we trust our blasted eyes?—the white livers show the white feather, and fly! O shame! O sorrow! O sin! they turn their backs and fly! Disgraced are the mothers that bore them—and "happy in my mind," wives and widows, "were ye that died," undoomed to hear the tidings of this wretched overthrow! Heavens and earth! sixty are flying before Six!—and half of sixty—oh! that we should record it!—are pretending to be dead!! Would indeed that the snow were their winding-sheet, so that it might but hide our dishonour!
Look, we beseech you, at the Mad Dominie! like Hector issuing from the gates of Troy, and driving back the Greeks to their ships; or rather—hear, spirit of Homer!—like some great, shaggy, outlandish wolf-dog, that hath swum ashore from some strange wreck, and, after a fortnight's famine on the bare sea-cliffs, been driven by the hunger that gnaws his stomach like a cancer, and the thirst-fever that can only be slaked in blood, to venture prowling for prey up the vale, till, snuffing the scent of a flock of sheep, after some grim tiger-like creeping on his belly, he springs at last, with huge long spangs, on the woolly people, with bull-like growlings quailing their poor harmless hearts, and then fast throttling them, one after another—till, as it might seem rather in wantonness of rage than in empty pangs, he lies down at last in the midst of all the murdered carcasses, licking the blood off his flews and paws—and then, looking and listening round with his red turbid eyes, and sharp-pointed ears savagely erect, conscious of crime and fearful of punishment, soon as he sees and hears that all the coast is clear and still, again gloatingly fastens his tusks behind the ears, and then eats into the kidneys of the fattest of the flock, till, sated with gore and tallow, he sneaks stealthily into the wood, and coiling himself up all his wiry length—now no longer lank, but swollen and knotted like that of a deer-devouring snake—he falls suddenly asleep, and re-banquets in a dream of murder.
That simile was conceived in the spirit of Dan Homer, but delivered in that of Kit North. No matter. Like two such wolf-dogs are now Bob Howie and the Mad Dominie—and the School like such silly sheep. Those other hell-dogs are leaping in the rear—and to the eyes of fear and flight each one of the Six seems more many-headed than Cerberus, while their mouths kindle the frosty air into fire, and thunder-bolts pursue the pell-mell of the panic.
Such and so imaginative is not only mental but corporeal fear. What though it be but a Snowball bicker! The air is darkened—no, brightened by the balls, as in many a curve they describe their airy flight—some hard as stones—some soft as slush—some blae and drippy in the cold-hot hand that launches them on the flying foe, and these are the teazers—some almost transparent in the cerulean sky, and broken ere they reach their aim, abortive "armamentaria cœli"—and some useless from the first, and felt, as they leave the palm, to be fozier than the foziest turnip, and unfit to bash a fly.
Far and wide, over hill, bank, and brae, are spread the flying School! Squads of us, at sore sixes and sevens, are making for the frozen woods. Alas! poor covert now in their naked leaflessness for the stricken deer! Twos and threes in miserable plight floundering in drift-wreaths! And here and there—woefullest sight of all—single boys distractedly ettling at the sanctuaries of distant houses—with their heads all the while insanely twisted back over their shoulders, and the glare of their eyes fixed frightfully on the swift-footed Mad Dominie, till souse over neck and ears, bubble and squeak, precipitated into traitorous pitfall, and in a moment evanished from this upper world!
Disturbed crows fly away a short distance and alight silent,—the magpies chatter pert even in alarm,—the lean kine, collected on the lown sides of braes, wonder at the rippet—their horns moving, but not their tails,—while the tempest-tamed bull—almost dull now as an ox—gives a short sullen growl as he feebly paws the snow.
But who is he—the tall slender boy—slender, but sinewy—a wiry chap—five feet eight on his stocking-soles—and on his stocking-soles he stands—for the snow has sucked his shoes from his feet—that plants himself like an oak sapling, rooted ankle-deep on a knoll, and there, a juvenile Jupiter Stator, with voice and arm arrests the Flight, and fiercely gesticulating vengeance on the insolent foe, recalls and rallies the shattered School, that he may re-lead them to victory? The phantom of a visionary dream! Kit North Himself—
"In life's morning march when his spirit was young."
And once on a day was that figure—ours! Then like a chamois-hunter of the Alps! Now, alas! like—
"But be hush'd, my dark spirit—for wisdom condemns,
When the faint and the feeble deplore;
Be strong as a rock of the ocean that stems
A thousand wild waves on the shore.
Through the perils of chance and the scowl of disdain,
Let thy front be unalter'd, thy courage elate;
Yea! even the name we have worshipp'd in vain
Shall awake not a pang of remembrance again;
To bear, is to conquer our fate!"
Half a century is annihilated as if it had never been: it is as if young Kit had become not old Kit—but were standing now as then front to front, with but a rood of trampled snow between them, before the Mad Dominie and Bob Howie—both the bravest of the brave in Snowball or Stone bicker—in street, lane, or muir fight—hand to hand, single-pitched with Black King Carey of the Gypsies—or in irregular high-road row—two to twelve—with a gang of Irish horse-coupers from the fair of Glasgow returning by Portpatrick to Donaghadee. 'Tis a strange thing so distinctly to see One's Self as he looked of yore—to lose one's present frail personal identity in that of the powerful past. Or rather to admire One's Self as he was, without consciousness of the mean vice of egotism, because of the pity almost bordering on contempt with which One regards One's Self as he is, shrivelled up into a sort of shrimp of a man—or blown out into a flounder.
The Snowball bicker owns an armistice—and Kit North—that is, we of the olden and the golden time—advance into the debatable ground between the two armies, with a frozen branch in our hand as a flag of truce. The Mad Dominie loved us, because then-a-days—bating and barring the cock and the squint of his eye—we were like himself a poet, and while a goose might continue standing on one leg, could have composed one jolly act of a tragedy, or book of an epic, while Bob—God bless him!—to guard us from scathe would have risked his life against a whole craal of tinkers. With open arms they come forward to receive us; but our blood is up—and we are jealous of the honour of the School, which has received a stain which must be wiped out in blood. From what mixed motives act boys and men in the deeds deemed most heroic, and worthy of the meed of everlasting fame! Even so is it now with us—when sternly eyeing the other Six, and then respectfully the Mad Dominie, we challenge—not at long bowls—but toe to toe, at the scratch on the snow, with the naked mawlies, the brawny boy with the red shock-head, the villain with the carrots, who, by moonlight nights,
"Round the stacks with the lasses at bogles to play,"
had dared to stand between us and the ladye of our love. Off fly our jackets and stocks—it is not a day for buff—and at it like bull-dogs. Twice before had we fought him—at our own option—over the bonnet; for 'twas a sturdy villain, and famous for the cross-buttock. But now, after the first close, in which we lose the fall—with straight right-handers we keep him at off-fighting—and that was a gush of blood from his smeller. "How do you like that, Ben?" Giving his head, with a mad rush, he makes a plunge with his heavy left—for he was ker-handed—at our stomach. But a dip of our right elbow caught the blow, to the loud admiration of Bob Howie—and even the Mad Dominie, the umpire, could not choose but smile. Like lightning, our left returns between the ogles—and Ben bites the snow. Three cheers from the School—and, lifted on the knee of his second, James Maxwell Wallace, since signalised at Waterloo, and now a knighted colonel of horse, "he grins horribly a ghastly smile," and is brought up staggering to the scratch. We know that we have him—and ask considerately, "what he means by winking?" And now we play around him,
"Just like unto a trundling mop,
Or a wild-goose at play."
He is brought down now to our own weight—then nine stone jimp—his eyes are getting momently more and more pig-like—water-logged, like those of Queen Bleary, whose stone image lies in the echoing aisle of the old Abbey Church of Paisley—and bat-blind, he hits past our head and body, like an awkward hand at the flail, when drunk, thrashing corn. Another hit on the smeller, and a stinger on the throat-apple—and down he sinks like a poppy—deaf to the call of "time"—and victory smiles upon us from the bright blue skies. "Hurra—hurra—hurra! Christopher for ever!" and perched aloft, astride on the shoulders of Bob Howie—he, the Invincible, gallops with us all over the field, followed by the shouting School, exulting that Ben the Bully has at last met with an overthrow. We exact an oath that he will never again meddle with Meg Whitelaw—shake hands cordially, and
"Off to some other game we all together flew."
And so ended the famous Snowball Bicker of Pedmount, now immortalised in our Prose-Poem.
Some men, it is sarcastically said, are boys all life-long, and carry with them their puerility to the grave. 'Twould be well for the world were there in it more such men. By way of proving their manhood, we have heard grown-up people abuse their own boyhood—forgetting what our great Philosophical Poet—after Milton and Dryden—has told them, that
"The boy is father of the man,"
and thus libelling the author of their existence. A poor boy indeed must he have been, who submitted to misery when the sun was new in heaven. Did he hate or despise the flowers around his feet, congratulating him on being young like themselves? the stars, young always, though Heaven only knows how many million years old, every night sparkling in happiness which they manifestly wished him to share? Did he indeed in his heart believe that the moon, in spite of her shining midnight face, was made of green cheese? Not only are the foundations dug and laid in boyhood, of all the knowledge and the feelings of our prime, but the ground-flat too built, and often the second story of the entire superstructure, from the windows of which, the soul looking out, beholds nature in her state, and leaps down, unafraid of a fall on the green or white bosom of earth, to join with hymns the front of the procession. The soul afterwards perfects her palace—building up tier after tier of all imaginable orders of architecture—till the shadowy roof, gleaming with golden cupolas, like the cloud-region of the setting sun, set the heavens ablaze.
Gaze up on the highest idea—gaze down on the profoundest emotion—and you will know and feel in a moment that it is not a new birth. You become a devout believer in the Pythagorean and Platonic doctrine of metempsychosis and reminiscence, and are awed by the mysterious consciousness of the thought "Before!" Try then to fix its date, and back travels your soul, now groping its way in utter darkness, and now in darkness visible—now launching along lines of steady lustre, such as the moon throws on the broad bosoms of starry lakes—now dazzled by sudden contrast—
"Blind with excess of light!"
But back let it travel, as best or worst it may, through and amidst eras after eras of the wan or radiant past; yet never, except for some sweet instant of delusion, breaking dewdrop-like at a touch or a breath, during all that perilous pilgrimage—and perilous must it be, haunted by so many ghosts—never may it reach the shrine it seeks—the fountain from which first flowed that feeling whose origin seems to have been out of the world of time—dare we say—in eternity!