A Cottage in Scotland.
“God bless you; and may the field of battle never leave your heart sair!” It is scarcely possible to imagine a more natural and appropriate address from a soldier’s wife to a soldier’s wife. This, was the spontaneous effusion of grateful feeling, excited by some little service which I had been the means of rendering to a soldier of my husband’s regiment, for which his wife came to thank me. It is one of the many instances which I have met of that species of Ossianic expression (if I may be allowed the term) which distinguishes the lower orders of the Scotch and Irish. I remember an occurrence in the life of an unfortunate friend of mine, which not only proves how capable this class of people are of deep and refined sentiment, but also of a strength and pathos of language which loses nothing from the simplicity of its guise. The lady to whom I allude, had, under circumstances of very peculiar misfortune, in which reason, nearly shaken from its seat, had deprived her of all sense save that of misery, been admitted to the shelter of a cottage by the road side, in the neighbourhood of D——, whose honest inhabitants hastened to afford her the only comforts their power admitted; their own bed, the warmth of their peat fire, and a share of their humble meal. They sought with kind solicitude, unmixed with obtrusive curiosity, to learn the causes which led to the sorrow they witnessed, but finding every effort vain, they checked their inquiries. “Puir thing! her heart’s crushed, and her spirit broken,” said the gudewife, whilst she placed the poor wanderer’s head upon her homely pillow, and then seated herself with her old man by their turf fire and unclosed the Bible, which with the Poems of Robert Burns constituted their library.
The activity of friendship soon traced the fugitive, but no arguments could induce those benevolent beings to accept remuneration in any form: nearly twelve months elapsed, when, journeying south, their former inmate sought the spot to which the “memory of the heart” furnished the clue. The gudewife, with looks of surprise, surveyed the handsome equipage from whence the inquiry for herself and husband was addressed, nor could she recognise, even in the still faded form before her, the distracted tenant of her lonely hut: on being joined by the old man, mutual explanations took place, and by dint of many arguments, the little offerings that had been brought for them were accepted by these good Samaritans, as “kip sakes from the leddy, and nae for payment of what it was sae natural to do for a puir suffering fellow creter.”