Such tones once heard were not to be forgotten. A servant-lass, by patience or audacity, had got into the theatre and was much affected by the performance. Next day, as she went about the High Street, intent on domestic business, the deep notes of the inimitable Siddons rang in her ears; she dropped her basket in uncontrollable agitation and burst forth, “Eh, sirs, weel do I ken the sweet voice (“vice,” she would say, in the dulcet dialect of the capital) that garred me greet sae sair yestre’n.”
After all, Mrs. Siddons does not belong to Edinburgh, though I take her on the wing, as it were, and here also I take leave both of her and the subject.
MRS. SIDDONS AS “THE TRAGIC MUSE”
From an Engraving after Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A.
CHAPTER TEN
THE SUPERNATURAL
Perhaps the sharpest contrast between old Scotland and the Scotland of to-day is the decline of belief in the supernatural. Superstitions of lucky and unlucky things and days and seasons still linger in the south, nay, the byways of London are rich in a peculiar kind of folklore which no one thinks it worth while to harvest. A certain dry scepticism prevails in Scotland, even in the remote country districts; perhaps it is the spread of education or the hard practical nature of the folk which is, for the time, uppermost; or is it the result of a violent reaction? In former days it was far other. Before the Reformation the Scot accepted the Catholic faith as did the other nations of Europe. And there was the usual monastic legend, to which, as far as it concerns Edinburgh, I make elsewhere sufficient reference. Between the Reformation and the end of the eighteenth century, or even later, the supernatural had a stronger grip on the Scots than on any other race in Europe. The unseen world beckoned and made its presence known by continual signs; portents and omens were of daily occurrence; men like Peden, the prophet, read the book of the future, every Covenanter lived a spiritual life whose interest far exceeded that of the material life present to his senses. As a natural result of hard conditions of existence, a sombre temperament, and a gloomy creed, the portents were ever of disaster. The unseen was full of hostile forces. The striking mottoes, that still remain on some of the Edinburgh houses, were meant to ward off evil. The law reports are full of the trials and cruel punishment of wizards and witches, malevolent spirits bent on man’s destruction were ever on the alert, ghostly appearances hinted at crime and suffering; more than all, there was the active personality of Satan himself, one, yet omnipresent, fighting a continual and, for the time, successful war against the saints. Burns, whose genius preserves for us in many a graphic touch that old Scotland which even in his time was fast fading away, pictures, half mirthful, yet not altogether sceptical, the enemy of mankind:
“Great is thy pow’r an’ great thy fame;
Far ken’d an’ noted is thy name;
An’ tho’ yon lowin’ heuch’s thy hame,
Thou travels far.