So saying they jumped upon the beach, and, with rather less agility than Sandy had shown, clambered up the stone, while he stood beside the boat. When they were both on the top, they proceeded to shout with such vehemence that they might have been heard on the other side of the bay. Sandy, however, as if intent on hearing the faintest sound, put his hand behind each ear in turn, and bent his head now to one side, now to the other. When the two strangers had had enough of this performance, they came down, and indignantly demanded:
‘Well, Sandy, do you mean to tell us that you did not hear?’
‘Hear ye!’ said he. ‘Wass you roarin’ at all. I was never hearin’ wan bit.’
He had a remarkable power of expressing astonishment by his mere looks, and put on a face of child-like innocence when he protested that no sound at all had been heard by him. Feeling that they had been ‘sold’ by this apparent ‘natural,’ they left him to fetch his potatoes and pull the boat back himself. But he had his brandy that evening.
AYRSHIRE WITCHES
Removed into asylums, the village idiots lose the opportunity of giving expression to the memorable sayings which free contact with their kinsfolk and the irritation caused by their young persecutors used to produce. But even there their oddity of phrase comes occasionally forward. My old companion, John Young, already referred to, used to tell how, when he was one of the assistant physicians in the Morningside Asylum at Edinburgh, he was one morning reading prayers. The weather being raw and chilly, he had a cough, which interrupted him at the end of the petition, ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ During the pause, one of the patients, sitting in front of him, added in an audible voice, ‘and butter.’
The second childhood of old age among people who have been sane all their lives sometimes gives rise to confusion of thought and language such as no half-witted creature can rival. I knew an old Scottish lady who used to make curious lapses of this kind. Her nephew met me one day and said, ‘I must give you auntie’s last. She was in bed, and, calling her maid, said to her: “Jenny, if I’m spared to be taken away soon, I hope my nephew Thomas will get the doctor to open my head, and see if anything canna be done for my hearin’.”’
The belief in witchcraft, though it still maintains its hold in the remote districts of the Highlands and Islands, may be regarded as practically extinct in the non-Celtic parts of the country. Yet it flares out now and then in the lowlands, as if it were still smouldering underneath the surface, ready to be awakened once more when the occasion arises to revive it. Forty years ago, in the valley of the Girvan Water, there were some old colliers whose grandmothers had been reputed witches, and who, though they professed to disbelieve the report, had evidently a deep-grounded respect for it. One of these men described to me some of his own experiences in the matter. When still a lad, he was walking one Sunday evening along the road near Kilgrammie with a companion and a fox-terrier. The dog had jumped over a low wall into a field, and they were attracted by its loud barking. Looking over the wall they saw that it was chasing a hare, which, instead of making its escape, seemed to be enjoying the game, and was racing to and fro across the field. The two lads soon leapt over the wall to join in the sport. At last the hare, tired apparently of the exercise, made for a low part of the far wall and scrambled over it. When they got up to the place they were just in time to see the animal lie down on the doorstep of his grandmother’s cottage, pass both its paws across its nose, and disappear into the house. It then flashed upon him that as his grandmother was believed to be able to take the shape of a hare, he might really have been chasing her all the while. He added that he went home as fast as he could.
A WITCH’S FUNERAL
Another old woman in the neighbouring village of Dailly, who had been long bed-ridden, was at last near her end. On the afternoon of the day she died, the boys of the place were busy with their games in the street, when a hare appeared from the country and tried to pass them. They at once gave chase, and the animal retreated along the road by which it had come. Again, a little later, it returned, and once more attempted to get into the village, but was again chased away. A third time, however, when their game had carried the boys further along the street, puss was successful, and before her enemies could reach her, gained the outside stair that led up to the old woman’s garret, and disappeared inside the doorway. The invalid died that evening, and the hare was believed to be either herself or one of her accomplices who had come to be with her at the last.