Scenes and legends of the north of Scotland

by Hugh Miller

If Jesus had not died.

Quod Johnie o’ the Shore.

MEGGIE O’ THE SHORE.

Johnie’s sister Margaret (after his death she seems to have fallen heir to his title, for she then became Meggie o’ the Shore) survived her brother for many years, and died at an extreme old age, about the year 1785. The mill, on its falling into other hands, was thrown down, and rebuilt a full half mile further to the west, but the cottage was spared for Meggie. She had always been characterized by the extreme neatness of her dress and her personal cleanliness, by her taste in arranging the homely furniture of her cottage, and her hospitality: and now, though the death of her brother had rendered her as poor as it is possible for a contented person to become, she was as much marked by her neatness, and as hospitable as ever. On one occasion, a Christian friend who had come to visit her (the late Mr. Forsyth of Cromarty), was so charmed with her conversation, as to prolong his stay from noon until evening, when he rose to go away. She asked him, somewhat hesitatingly, whether he would not first “break bread with her.” He accordingly sat down again; and a half cake of bread and a jug of water (it was all her larder afforded) were set before him. It was the feast of the promise, she said, “Thy bread shall be given thee, and thy water shall be sure.” Her circumstances, she added, were not quite so easy as they had been during the lifetime of her brother, but the change was perhaps for the better; for it had led her to think much oftener than before, when rising from one meal, that God had kindly pledged Himself for the next.

Meggie lived in a credulous age, and she was one of the credulous herself. Like most of her acquaintance, she heard at times the voices of spirits in the dash of waves and the roar of winds, and saw wraiths and dead-lights; but she was naturally courageous, and had a strong reliance on Providence; and so, with all her credulity, she was not afraid to live alone, with, as she used to say, only God for her neighbour. On a boisterous winter evening, two young girls who were travelling from the country to the town, were forced by the breaking out of a fierce snow-storm to take shelter in her cottage. She received them with her wonted kindness, and entertained them as she had done her friend. They heard the waves thundering on the beach, and the wind howling in the woods, but peace and safety were with them at Meggie’s fireside. About midnight there was a pause in the storm, and they could hear strange sounds, like the cries of people in distress, mingling with the roar of the sea. “Raise the window-curtain,” said Meggie, “and look out.” The terrified girls raised the curtain. “Do you see aught?” she inquired. “There is a bright light,” said the girls, “in the middle of the bay of Udoll. It hangs over the water at about the height of a ship’s mast; and we can see something below it like a boat riding at anchor, with the white sea raging round her.” “Now drop the curtain,” she replied; “I am no stranger, my lassies, to sights and noises like these—sights and noises of another world; but I have been taught that God is nearer to me than any other spirit can be; and so have learned not to be afraid.” A few nights after, as the story goes, a Cromarty yawl foundered in the bay of Udoll, and all on board perished.

Meggie was always a rigid Presbyterian, and jealous of innovations in the Church; and, as she advanced in years, she became more rigid and more jealous. She is said to have regarded with no great reverence the young divines that filled up in the parishes around her the places of her departed contemporaries; and who too often substituted, as she alleged, the learning which they had acquired at college for a knowledge of the human heart and of the Bible. She could ill brook, too, any interference of the State in the concerns of the Kirk:—an Act of Parliament, when read from the pulpit, she deemed little better than blasphemy, and a King’s fast a day desecrated above every other. Her zeal in one unlucky instance brought her in contact with the civil law. Her favourite preacher was Mr. Porteous of Kilmuir, a divine of the old and deeply learned cast—eloquent and pious—not unacquainted with the book of nature, and thoroughly conversant with that of God. After hearing him deliver, in the church of Nigg, a powerful and impressive discourse, what was her horror and indignation when she saw him descending from the pulpit to read from the precentor’s desk some Proclamation or Act of Council! Had he been less a favourite, or anybody else than Mr. Porteous, she could have shut her ears and sat still; as it was, she sprang from her seat, and twitching the paper out of his hand, flung it to the floor and stamped upon it with her feet. She was apprehended and sent to the jail of Tain; but she found the jail a very comfortable sort of place, and, for the three days during which she was confined to it, she had for her visitors some of the very best people in the country; among the rest, Mr. Porteous himself, who had enough of the old Covenanter in him to feel that she had, perhaps, done only her duty, and that he had very possibly failed in his.

The story of her death is curious and affecting. A friend, in passing her cottage on a journey to the country called in, as usual, to see her. She was as neatly dressed as ever, and the little apartment in which she sat was fastidiously clean; but her countenance was of a deadly paleness, and there was an air of languor about her that seemed the effect of indisposition. “You are unwell, Meggie?” said her friend. “Not quite well, perhaps,” she replied, “but I shall be so very soon. You must stay and take breakfast with me.” The visitor knew too well the value of one of Meggie’s breakfasts to refuse, and the simple fare which her cottage afforded was set before him; but he was disappointed of the better part of the repast, for she spoke but little, and seemed unable to eat. “God has been exceedingly good to me,” she remarked, as she rose when he had eaten to replace in her cupboard the viands which still remained before him; “with no one to provide for me but Himself, I have not known what it was to want a meal since the death of my brother. You return this way in the evening?” said she, addressing her friend. He replied in the affirmative. “Then promise that you will not pass without coming in to see me; I am indisposed at present, but I feel—nay, am certain—that you will find me quite well. Do promise.” Her friend promised, and set out on his journey. Twilight had set in before his return. He raised the latch and entered her apartment, where all was silent, and the fire dying on the hearth. In a window which opened to the west, sat Meggie, with her brother’s Bible lying open before her, and her face turned upwards. The faint light of evening shone full on her features, and their expression seemed to be that of a calm yet joyous devotion. “I have returned, Meggie,” said the man after a pause of a few minutes. There was no answer. “I have returned, Meggie,” he reiterated, “and have come to see you, to redeem my promise.” Still there was no answer. He went up to her and found she was dead.

About twenty years after her death, the grave in which she had been buried was opened to admit the corpse of a distant relative. A woman of my acquaintance, who was then a little girl, was at play at the time among the stones of the churchyard; but on seeing an elderly female, a person much of Meggie’s cast of character, go up to the grave, she went up to it too. She saw the woman looking anxiously at the bones and there was one skull in particular which seemed greatly to engage her attention. It still retained a few locks of silvery hair, and over the hair there were the remains of a linen cap fastened on by two pins. She stooped down, and drawing out the pins, put them up carefully in a needle case, which she then thrust into her bosom. “Not death itself shall part us!” she muttered, as if addressing herself to the pins; “you shall do for me what you have done for Meggie o’ the Shore.”

DAVID HENDERSON.

But, in holding this tête-à-tête with Meggie, I have suffered myself to lose sight of the poets, and must now return to them. Next in the list to Johnie o’ the Shore was David Henderson, a native of Cromarty, born some time in the early part of the last century, and who died in the beginning of the present. He was one of that interesting class, concerning whom Nature and Fortune seem at variance; the one marking them out for a high, the other for a low destiny. They are fitted, by the gifts of mind bestowed upon them by the one, to think and act for themselves and others; and then flung by the other into some obscure lumber-corner of the world, where these gifts prove useless to them at best, and not unfrequently serve only to encumber them. From Nature David received talents of a cast considerably superior to those which she commonly bestows; by Fortune he was placed in one of the obscurest walks of life, and prevented from ever quitting it. He acquired his little education when employed in tending a flock of sheep; the herd-boys with whom he associated taught him to read, and he learned to write by imitating the letters of one of the copy-books used in schools upon the smooth flat stones which he found on the sea-shore.