Scenes and legends of the north of Scotland

by Hugh Miller

And strive t’ employ the day of grace,

And wicked ways forsake!

David survived his mistress for more than forty years. For thirty of these he was an elder of the Church—a man conversant with deathbeds, and a visitor of the fatherless and the widow. Few persons die so regretted as David died, or leave behind them so fair a name; nor will the reader fail to recognise something uncommon in his character when I tell him, that he was steady and prudent though a poet, and of a grave deportment, good-natured, and a Christian, though of a ready wit. He left behind him, treasured up in the memories of his many friends, shrewd, pithy remarks on men and things—specimens of mind, if I may so express myself, which exhibit the quality of the mass from off which they were struck. His wit, too, was equally popular. I have heard some of his bon-mots repeated and laughed at more than twenty years after his death; but his writings were so much less fortunate, that there were few of the people with whom I have conversed concerning him, who even knew that he made verses, though none of them were ignorant of his having been a good man.

MACCULLOCH OF DUN-LOTH.

The last of the Cromarty poets who lived and wrote before the beginning of the present century, was Macculloch of Dun-Loth. He was, for nearly sixty years, a Society schoolmaster in that parish of Sutherlandshire whose name, for some cause or other, is always attached to his own. But I shall attempt introducing him to the reader in the manner in which he has been introduced to myself.

“About twenty-eight years ago,” said my informant, “I resided for a few weeks with the late Dr. R—— at the manse of Kiltearn. I was lounging one evening beside the front door, when a singular-looking old man came up to me, and asked for the Doctor. He was such an equivocal-looking sort of person, that it was quite a puzzle to me whether I should show him into the parlour;—he might be little better than a beggar; he might be worth half a million; but whether a rich man or a poor one, no one could look at him and doubt of his being a particular man. He was very little, and very much bent, with just such a grotesque cast of countenance as I have seen carved on the head of a walking-stick. His outer man was cased in an old-fashioned suit of raven grey, and he had immense plated buckles in his shoes and in his breeches. I thought of the legend of the Seven Sleepers, and wondered where this fragment of the old world could have lain for the last hundred years. The Doctor relieved me from my perplexity. He had seen him from a window, and, coming out, he welcomed the little old man with his wonted cordiality, and ushered him into the parlour as the poet of Dun-Loth.

“He stayed with us this evening, and never was there a gayer evening spent in the manse. The Doctor had the art of eliciting all that was eccentric in the little man’s character, and that was not a little. He plied him with compliments and jokes, and rallied him on his love-adventures and his poetry. The old man seemed swelling like a little toad, only it was with conceit, not venom. He chuckled, every now and then, at the more piquant of the Doctor’s good things, with a strange unearthly gaiety that seemed to savour of another world—of another age at least; and then he would jest and compliment in turn. What he said was, to be sure, great nonsense; but then it was the most original nonsense that might be, full of small conceits and quibbles, and so old-fashioned that we all felt it could not be other than the identical nonsense that had flourished in the early days of our great-grandmothers. The young people were all delighted—the little old man seemed delighted too, and laughed as heartily as any of us. Mrs. R——, when a young lady, had been eminently beautiful, and the poet had celebrated her in a song. It was a miserable composition, and some of his neighbours, who wrote nearly as ill as himself, made it the occasion of a furious attack upon him. There were remarks, replies, and rejoinders beyond number; until at length, by mere dint of perseverance, the poet silenced all his opponents, and took to himself the credit of having gained a signal victory. The Doctor brought up the story of the song, and got him to repeat all the replies and rejoinders, which he did with much glee. Next morning he took leave of us, and I never again saw the poet of Dun-Loth.”

Macculloch was, as I have stated, a native of the parish of Cromarty, and passed the greater part of a long life as a Society schoolmaster, on a salary of twelve pounds per annum. Out of this pittance he contrived to furnish himself with a library, which, among other works of value, contained the whole of the Encyclopædia Britannica in its second edition. Though full of compliment and gallantry in his younger days, he was for the last forty years of his life, so thoroughly a woman-hater, that he would not suffer one of the sex to enter his cottage, cook his victuals, or wash his linen. His wardrobe consisted of four suits—one of black, one of brown, one of raven grey, and one of tartan; and he wore them week about, without suffering the separate pieces of any one suit to encroach on the week of another. It has been told me that, in his eightieth year, he attended the dispensation of the sacrament in the Highland parish of Lairg, dressed in his tartans—kilt, hose, and bonnet. I do not well know whether to consider his singularities as those of the rhymer, the most eccentric of all men, or his predilection for rhyming as merely one of his singularities. His compositions were mostly satirical; but his only art of satire was the art of calling names in rhyme; and he seems to have had no positive pleasure in bestowing these, but to have flung them, just as he used to do his taws when in school, at the heads of all who offended him. His death took place about twenty years ago. I subjoin two of the “pasquils” pointed against him in his war with his brother rhymers, and the pieces in which he replied to them. They may show, should they serve no other purpose, what marvellous bad verse could be written in the classical age of Johnson and Goldsmith, and with what justice Dun-Loth piqued himself on having vanquished his opponents.

TO DUN-LOTH.

Dunloth, be wise, take my advice,