To offer these men money would have been to insult them—they were Scotch. Nor can a kindness like this be measured by coin. I offered them liquid refreshment, however, but out of all who helped me I do not think that half-a-dozen partook.
All honour to the manly feelings of the good folks of Chryston.
But our day’s enjoyment was marred and we were left lamenting.
August 13th. We are off.
We are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur. And happy we feel, on this bright, bracing morning, to be once more on the road again with our backs to old England, our faces to the north.
Click, click—click, click! Why, there positively does seem music in the very horses’ feet. They seem happy as well as ourselves. Happy and fresh for, says my gentle Jehu, “They are pulling, sir, fit to drag the very arms out of ye.”
“Never mind, John,” I reply, “the Highland hills are ahead of us, and the heather hills, my Jehu. Knowest thou this song, John?”
“‘O! glorious is the sea, wi’ its heaving tide,
And bonnie are the plains in their simmer pride;
But the sea wi’ its tide, and the plains wi’ their rills,
Are no half so dear as my ain heather hills.
I may heedless look on the silvery sea,
I may tentless muse on the flowery lee,
But my heart wi’ a nameless rapture thrills
When I gaze on the cliffs o’ my ain heather hills.
Then hurrah, hurrah, for the heather hills,
Where the bonnie thistle waves to the sweet bluebells,
And the wild mountain floods heave their crests to the clouds,
Then foam down the steeps o’ my ain heather hills.’”
No wonder the rattling chorus brought half-dressed innocent cottage children to their doors to wave naked arms and shout as we passed, or that their mothers smiled to us, and fathers doffed their bonnets, and wished us “good speed.”