On Deeside, where many original stories had their origin, I recollect hearing several of an excellent and worthy, but very simple-minded man, the Laird of Craigmyle. On one occasion, when the beautiful and clever Jane, Duchess of Gordon, was scouring through the country, intent upon some of those electioneering schemes which often occupied her fertile imagination and active energies, she came to call at Craigmyle, and having heard that the laird was making bricks on the property, for the purpose of building a new garden wall, with her usual tact she opened the subject, and kindly asked, "Well, Mr. Gordon, and how do your bricks come on?" Good Craigmyle's thoughts were much occupied with a new leather portion of his dress, which had been lately constructed, so, looking down on his nether garments, he said in pure Aberdeen dialect, "Muckle obleeged to yer Grace, the breeks war sum ticht at first, but they are deeing weel eneuch noo."
The last Laird of Macnab, before the clan finally broke up and emigrated to Canada, was a well-known character in the country, and being poor, used to ride about on a most wretched horse, which gave occasion to many jibes at his expense. The laird was in the constant habit of riding up from the country to attend the Musselburgh races. A young wit, by way of playing him off on the race-course, asked him, in a contemptuous tone, "Is that the same horse you had last year, laird?" "Na," said the laird, brandishing his whip in the interrogator's face in so emphatic a manner as to preclude further questioning, "na; but it's the same whup." In those days, as might be expected, people were not nice in expressions of their dislike of persons and measures. If there be not more charity in society than of old, there is certainly more courtesy. I have, from a friend, an anecdote illustrative of this remark, in regard to feelings exercised towards an unpopular laird. In the neighbourhood of Banff, in Forfarshire, the seat of a very ancient branch of the Ramsays, lived a proprietor who bore the appellation of Corb, from the name of his estate. This family has passed away, and its property merged in Banff. The laird was intensely disliked in the neighbourhood. Sir George Ramsay was, on the other hand, universally popular and respected. On one occasion, Sir George, in passing a morass in his own neighbourhood, had missed the road and fallen into a bog to an alarming depth. To his great relief, he saw a passenger coming along the path, which was at no great distance. He called loudly for his help, but the man took no notice. Poor Sir George felt himself sinking, and redoubled his cries for assistance; all at once the passenger rushed forward, carefully extricated him from his perilous position, and politely apologised for his first neglect of his appeal, adding, as his reason, "Indeed, Sir George, I thought it was Corb!" evidently meaning that had it been Corb, he must have taken his chance for him.
In Lanarkshire there lived a sma' sma' laird named Hamilton, who was noted for his eccentricity. On one occasion, a neighbour waited on him, and requested his name as an accommodation to a "bit bill" for twenty pounds at three months' date, which led to the following characteristic and truly Scottish colloquy:--"Na, na, I canna do that." "What for no, laird? ye hae dune the same thing for ithers." "Ay, ay, Tammas, but there's wheels within wheels ye ken naething about; I canna do't." "It's a sma' affair to refuse me, laird." "Weel, ye see, Tammas, if I was to pit my name till't, ye wad get the siller frae the bank, and when the time came round, ye wadna be ready, and I wad hae to pay't; sae then you and me wad quarrel; sae we may just as weel quarrel the noo, as lang's the siller's in ma pouch." On one occasion, Hamilton having business with the late Duke of Hamilton at Hamilton Palace, the Duke politely asked him to lunch. A liveried servant waited upon them, and was most assiduous in his attentions to the Duke and his guest. At last our eccentric friend lost patience, and looking at the servant, addressed him thus, "What the deil for are ye dance, dancing, about the room that gait? can ye no draw in your chair and sit down? I'm sure there's plenty on the table for three."
As a specimen of the old-fashioned Laird, now become a Reminiscence, who adhered pertinaciously to old Scottish usages, and to the old Scottish dialect, I cannot, I am sure, adduce a better specimen than Mr. Fergusson of Pitfour, to whose servant I have already referred. He was always called Pitfour, from the name of his property in Aberdeenshire. He must have died fifty years ago. He was for many years M.P. for the county of Aberdeen, and I have reason to believe that he made the enlightened parliamentary declaration which has been given to others: He said "he had often heard speeches in the House, which had changed his opinion, but none that had ever changed his vote." I recollect hearing of his dining in London sixty years ago, at the house of a Scottish friend, where there was a swell party, and Pitfour was introduced as a great northern proprietor, and county M.P. A fashionable lady patronised him graciously, and took great charge of him, and asked him about his estates. Pitfour was very dry and sparing in his communications, as for example, "What does your home farm chiefly produce, Mr. Fergusson?" Answer, "Girss." "I beg your pardon, Mr. Fergusson, what does your home farm produce?" All she could extract was, "Girss."
Of another laird, whom I heard often spoken of in old times, an anecdote was told strongly Scottish. Our friend had much difficulty (as many worthy lairds have had) in meeting the claims of those two woeful periods of the year called with us in Scotland the "tarmes." He had been employing for some time as workman a stranger from the south on some house repairs, of the not uncommon name in England of Christmas. His servant early one morning called out at the laird's door in great excitement that "Christmas had run away, and nobody knew where he had gone." He coolly turned in his bed with the ejaculation, "I only wish he had taken Whitsunday and Martinmas along with him." I do not know a better illustration of quiet, shrewd, and acute Scottish humour than the following little story, which an esteemed correspondent mentions having heard from his father when a boy, relating to a former Duke of Athole, who had no family of his own, and whom he mentions as having remembered very well:--He met, one morning, one of his cottars or gardeners, whose wife he knew to be in the hopeful way. Asking him "how Marget was the day," the man replied that she had that morning given him twins. Upon which the Duke said,--"Weel, Donald; ye ken the Almighty never sends bairns without the meat." "That may be, your Grace," said Donald; "but whiles I think that Providence maks a mistak in thae matters, and sends the bairns to ae hoose and the meat to anither!" The Duke took the hint, and sent him a cow with calf the following morning.
I have heard of an amusing scene between a laird, noted for his meanness, and a wandering sort of Edie Ochiltree, a well-known itinerant who lived by his wits and what he could pick up in his rounds amongst the houses through the country. The laird, having seen the beggar sit down near his gate to examine the contents of his pock or wallet, conjectured that he had come from his house, and so drew near to see what he had carried off. As the laird was keenly investigating the mendicant's spoils, his quick eye detected some bones on which there remained more meat than should have been allowed to leave his kitchen. Accordingly he pounced upon the bones, declaring he had been robbed, and insisted on the beggar returning to the house and giving back the spoil. He was, however, prepared for the attack, and sturdily defended his property, boldly asserting, "Na, na, laird, thae are no Tod-brae banes; they are Inch-byre banes, and nane o' your honour's"--meaning that he had received these bones at the house of a neighbour of a more liberal character. The beggar's professional discrimination between the merits of the bones of the two mansions, and his pertinacious defence of his own property, would have been most amusing to a bystander.
I have, however, a reverse story, in which the beggar is quietly silenced by the proprietor. A noble lord, some generations back, well known for his frugal habits, had just picked up a small copper coin in his own avenue, and had been observed by one of the itinerating mendicant race, who, grudging the transfer of the piece into the peer's pocket, exclaimed, "O, gie't to me, my lord;" to which the quiet answer was, "Na, na; fin' a fardin' for yersell, puir body."
There are always pointed anecdotes against houses wanting in a liberal and hospitable expenditure in Scotland. Thus, we have heard of a master leaving such a mansion, and taxing his servant with being drunk, which he had too often been after other country visits. On this occasion, however, he was innocent of the charge, for he had not the opportunity to transgress. So, when his master asserted, "Jemmy, you are drunk!" Jemmy very quietly answered, "Indeed, sir, I wish I wur." At another mansion, notorious for scanty fare, a gentleman was inquiring of the gardener about a dog which some time ago he had given to the laird. The gardener showed him a lank greyhound, on which the gentleman said, "No, no; the dog I gave your master was a mastiff, not a greyhound;" to which the gardener quietly answered, "Indeed, ony dog micht sune become a greyhound by stopping here."
From a friend and relative, a minister of the Established Church of Scotland, I used to hear many characteristic stories. He had a curious vein of this sort of humour in himself, besides what he brought out from others. One of his peculiarities was a mortal antipathy to the whole French nation, whom he frequently abused in no measured terms. At the same time he had great relish of a glass of claret, which he considered the prince of all social beverages. So he usually finished off his antigallican tirades, with the reservation, "But the bodies brew the braw drink." He lived amongst his own people, and knew well the habits and peculiarities of a race gone by. He had many stories connected with the pastoral relation between minister and people, and all such stories are curious, not merely for their amusement, but from the illustration they afford us of that peculiar Scottish humour which we are now describing. He had himself, when a very young boy, before he came up to the Edinburgh High School, been at the parochial school where he resided, and which, like many others, at that period, had a considerable reputation for the skill and scholarship of the master. He used to describe school scenes rather different, I suspect, from school scenes in our day. One boy, on coming late, explained that the cause had been a regular pitched battle between his parents, with the details of which he amused his school-fellows; and he described the battle in vivid and Scottish Homeric terms: "And eh, as they faucht, and they faucht," adding, however, with much complacency, "but my minnie dang, she did tho'."
There was a style of conversation and quaint modes of expression between ministers and their people at that time, which, I suppose, would seem strange to the present generation; as, for example, I recollect a conversation between this relative and one of his parishioners of this description.--It had been a very wet and unpromising autumn. The minister met a certain Janet of his flock, and accosted her very kindly. He remarked, "Bad prospect for the har'st (harvest), Janet, this wet." Janet--"Indeed, sir, I've seen as muckle as that there'll be nae har'st the year." Minister--"Na, Janet, deil as muckle as that't ever you saw."