A FINE PAIR OF SHOES
THE beginnings of things are to be well considered—we have all a little of that art; but to end well and wisely is the gift of few. Hunters and herds on the corri and the hill—they are at the simple end of life, and ken the need for the task complete. The stag must be gralloched ere ye brag of him, the drove must be at the market ere ye say anything of the honesty of the glens ye pass through.
And what I like best about our own Gaels is their habit of bringing the work of a day or the work of a lifetime to what (in their own notions) is an end round and polished.
When our women die, they do it with something of a daintiness. Their dead-clothes are in the awmrie; I have seen them with the cakes toasted and the board set for their funerals. Travelling wide on unfriendly foreign roads, living by sword or wit, you know that our men, the poorest among them, with an empty sporran, kept the buttons of their duds of good silver, to pay, if need be, for something more than a gangrel's burial. I like to think of him in story who, at his end in bed, made the folk trick him out in gallant style with tartan, targe, brogue, and bonnet, and the sword in his hand.
“A Gaelic gentleman,” said he, “should come to his journey's end somewhat snod and well-put-on.” And his son played “Cha till mi tuilidh” (“I return no more”) on the bag-pipe by his firm command.
It is not even in this unco undertaking of Death that the polish must be put on the task (though poor's the creature who dies clumsily); it should be the same with every task of a day.
And so Baldi Crom, making a fine pair of shoes on a day in Carnus, put the best skill of his fingers to every stitch. He had been working at them since the command came in the morning, and now it was the mouth of night, and on one of them the finest of the fine sewing was still to do. About the place there was nobody but the old man, for he was the last, in a way, of the old stock of Carnus (now a larach of low lintels, and the nettle over all); and he was without woman to put caschrom to his soil or hip to a creel of peats. And so he lived on the brae of Camus—that same far up and lonely in the long glen.
“They'll be the best I ever put brog in,” said he, looking fondly at the fine work, the yellow thread standing out on the toes, patterned like a leaf of the whortleberry, set about with the serpent-work of the old crosses. Bite nor sap, kail nor crowdie, did he taste all day. Working in the light of his open door, he could see, if he had the notion, the whole glen rolled out before him, brimming with sun, crossed in the heat of the day by deer from Dalavich seeking for the woods of Loch Finne; the blue reek of the townships at the far end might have cheered him with the thought that life was in sight though his house was lonely. But crouped over the lap-stone, he made love to his work, heeding nothing else but the sewing of the fine pair of shoes.
It was the night before the town market. Droves of bellowing cattle—heifers, stots, and stirks—were going down the glen from Port Sonachan, cropping hurried mouthfuls by the way as they went and as the dogs would let them. And three Benderloch drovers came off the road and into Baldi Crom's house, after the night was down on the glen and he had the cruisie lighted. They sat them down round the fire in the middle of the floor and ate bannocks and cheese.
“How's thy family, 'Illeasbuig?” said a drover, stirring up the peat as if he were at his own door-end. Down on the roadside the cattle, black and yellow, crushed the sappy grass and mourned in bellows for their lost fields.
“Splendid! splendid!” said the old man, double over his shoes, fondling them with the fingers of a mother on a first baby. The light was low in the cruisie, for the oil was well down, and the fire and the cruisie made a ring of light that could scarcely slip over the backs of the men sitting round the peats. A goat scratched his head but-and-ben against the wattles; in corners the darkness was brown and thick.
“I hear Cailen's in the Low-country, but what has come of Tormaid?” said one, with knee-breeches, and hose of coarse worsted.
The old man gave a quick start, and the lapstone fell from his knees, the shoe he was at with it. He bent over and felt like a blind man for them on the floor before he made answer.
“Tormaid, my gallant son! Ye have not heard of him lately, then?”
“Never a word, 'Illeasbuig. People on the going foot, like drovers, hear all the world's gossip but the sgeuls of their own sgireachd. We have been far North since Martinmas: for us there must be many a story to tell 'twixt here and Inneraora. A stout lad and pretty, Tormaid too, as ever went to the beginning of fortune! Where might he be enow?”
“Here and there, friend, here and there! A restless scamp, a wanderer, but with parts. Had he not the smart style at the game of camanachi? He was namely for it in many places.”
“As neat a player as ever took shinty in hand, master! I have the name of a fair player myself, but that much I'll allow your lad. Is he to the West side, or farther off?”
“Farther off, friend. The pipes now—have you heard him as a player on the chanter?”
“As a piper, 'Illeasbuig! His like was not in three shires. I have heard him at reel and march, but these were not his fancy: for him the piobaireachds that scholarly ones play!”
“My gallant boy!” said Baldi Crom, rubbing soft on the shoe with the palm of a hand.
“Once upon a time,” said the drover, “we were on our way to a Lowland Tryst. Down Glen Falloch a Soccach man and I heard him fill the nightfall with the 'Bhoilich' of Morar, with the brag of a whole clan in his warbling. He knew piping, the fellow with me, and the tear came to his cheek, thinking of the old days and the old ploys among the dirks and sgians.”
“There was never the beat of him,” said the shoemaker.
“Throughither a bit—”
“But good, good at heart, man! With a better chance of fortune he might be holding his head to-day as high as the best of them.” The drovers looked at each other with a meaning that was not for the eyes of the old man; but he had small chance of seeing it, for he was throng at his fine pair of shoes.
“He had a name for many arts,” said the man with coarse hose, “but they were not the arts that give a lad settlement and put money in his purse.”
“The hot young head, man! He would have cured,” said the old man, sewing hard. “Think of it,” said he: “was ever a more humoursome fellow to walk a glen with? His songs, his stories, his fast jump at one's meaning, and his trick of leaving all about him in a good key with themselves and him. Did ever one ask a Saxon shilling from his purse that it was not a cheery gift if the purse held it?”
“True, indeed!” said the drovers, eating bannocks and cheese.
“'Twixt heaven and hell,” said the fellow with the coarse hose, “is but a spang. It's so easy for some folk to deserve the one gate—so many their gifts—that the cock-sureness leaves them careless, and they wander into the wrong place.”
“You were speaking?” said Baldi, a little angry, though he heard but half.
“I said thy son was a fellow of many gifts,” answered the drover, in a confusion.
“He had no unfriends that I ken of,” said the old man, busy at the shoes; “young or old, man or woman.”
“Especially woman,” put in another drover, wrinkling at the eyes.
“I've had five sons: three in the King's service, and one in the Low-country; here's my young wanderer, and he was—he is—the jewel of them all!”
“You hear of him sometimes?”
“I heard of him and from him this very day,” said Baldi, busy at the brogues, white and drawn at the face and shaking at the lips. “I have worked at these shoes since morning, and little time is there to put bye on them, for at Inneraora town must they be before breakfast. Solomon Carrier, passing at three, gives me a cry and takes them.”
“They're a fine pair of shoes.”
“Fine indeed; the finest of the fine! They're for a particular one.”
“Duke John himself, perhaps?”
“No, man; a particular one, and were they not his in time a sorry man was I. They're the best Baldi Crom ever put leather on.”
Till the turn of the night the drovers slept in their plaids, their cattle steaming out-by in the dark, munching the coarse grass selvedge, breathing heavy. And when the men and their beasts went in the darkness of the morning, Baldi Crom was still throng at his fine pair of shoes.
“I'm late, I'm surely late,” said he, toiling hard, but with no sloven-work, at his task.
The rain had come with the morning, and was threshing out-by on peat and thatch. Inside, the fire died, and the cruisie gave warnings that its oil was low, but Baldi Crom was too throng on the end of his task to notice. And at last his house dropped into darkness.
“Tormaid! Tormaid! my little hero—I'm sore feared you'll die without shoes after all,” cried the old man, staggering to the door for daylight. He had the door but opened when he fell, a helpless lump, on the clay floor. The rain slanted on his grey hairs and spat on a fine shoe.
Far down the good long glen the drovers were tramping after their cattle, and the dun morning was just before them when they got to the gate of Inneraora. Here there was a great to-do, for the kind gallows stood stark before the Arches. Round about it were the townspeople waiting for a hanging.
“Who is't, and what is't for?” asked the drover with the knee-breeches and the coarse hose, pushing into the crowd.
“Tormaid, the son of the Carnus cobbler,” said a woman with a plaid over her head. “He killed a man in a brawl at Braleckan and raped his purse. Little enough to put tow to a pretty lad's neck for, sure enough!” “Stand clear there!” cried a sharp voice, and the hangman and his friend came to the scaffold's foot with a lad in front of them, his hands shackled behind his back. He was a strong straight lad, if anything overly dour in the look, and he wore a good coat and tiews, but neither boot nor bonnet. Under the beam he put back his shoulders with a jerk and looked at the folk below, then over at Dunchuach with the mist above the fort like smoke.
“They might have given him a pair of old baucbels, if no better, to die in,” said the drover in the woman's ear.
“Ochanoch! and they might!” she said. “The darling! He lost his shoes in swimming Duglas Water to get clear, and they say he sent yesterday to his father for a pair, but they're not come. Queer, indeed, is that, for 'twas the brag of the folks he came of that they aye died with a good pair of shoon on their feet!”