[2] Gaelic for “water of life” (whisky); pronounced “ish-guh-BAY-huh”.
His grandson was quite accustomed to the old man’s heathenish mode of regarding his immediate existence after death as a long confinement in the grave, and generally had a word or two ready wherewith to combat the frightful notion; but, as he spoke, Duncan lifted the pot from the fire, and set it on its three legs on the deal table in the middle of the room, adding:
“Tere, my man—tere’s ta parritch! And was it ta putter, or ta traicle, or ta pottle o’ peer, she would be havin’ for kitchie tis fine mornin’?”
This point settled, the two sat down to eat their breakfast; and no one would have discovered, from the manner in which the old man helped himself, nor yet from the look of his eyes, that he was stone blind. It came neither of old age nor disease—he had been born blind. His eyes, although large and wide, looked like those of a sleep-walker—open with shut sense; the shine in them was all reflected light—glitter, no glow; and their colour was so pale that they suggested some horrible sight as having driven from them hue and vision together.
“Haf you eated enough, my son?” he said, when he heard Malcolm lay down his spoon.
“Ay, plenty, thank ye, daddy, and they were richt weel made,” replied the lad, whose mode of speech was entirely different from his grandfather’s: the latter had learned English as a foreign language, but could not speak Scotch, his mother-tongue being Gaelic.
As they rose from the table, a small girl, with hair wildly suggestive of insurrection and conflagration, entered, and said, in a loud screetch—“Maister MacPhail, my mither wants a pot o’ bleckin’, an’ ye’re to be sure an’ gie her ’t gweed, she says.”
“Fery coot, my chilt, Jeannie; but young Malcolm and old Tuncan hasn’t made teir prayers yet, and you know fery well tat she won’t sell pefore she’s made her prayers. Tell your mother tat she’ll pe bringin’ ta blackin’ when she comes to look to ta lamp.”
The child ran off without response. Malcolm lifted the pot from the table and set it on the hearth; put the plates together and the spoons, and set them on a chair, for there was no dresser; tilted the table, and wiped it hearthward—then from a shelf took down and laid upon it a Bible, before which he seated himself with an air of reverence. The old man sat down on a low chair by the chimney corner, took off his bonnet, closed his eyes and murmured some almost inaudible words; then repeated in Gaelic the first line of the hundred and third psalm—
O m’ anam, beannuich thus’ a nis—