Scenes and legends of the north of Scotland

by Hugh Miller

There was a young man of the place, the son of a shopkeeper, who had been marked from his earliest boyhood by a smart precocity of intellect, and the boldness of his opinions; his name (for I must not forget that, to borrow one of Johnson’s figures, I am walking over ashes the fires of which are not yet extinguished) I shall conceal. He was one of those persons who, like the stormy petrel of the tropics, come abroad when the seas begin to rise, and the heavens to darken; and who find their proper element in a wild mixture of all the four elements jumbled into one. He read the newspapers, and, it was said, wrote for them; he corresponded, too, with the Jacobin clubs of the south, and strove to form similar clubs at home; but the people were not yet sufficiently ripe. No one could say that he was disobliging or ill-tempered; on the contrary, he was a favourite with, at least, his humbler town’s-men for being much the reverse of both; but he was poor and clever, and alike impatient of poverty, and of seeing the wealth of the country in the hands of duller men than himself; and so the man who was unfortunate enough to be born to a thousand pounds a year had little chance of finding him either well-tempered or obliging. He had stept into the ferry-boat one morning, and the ferrymen had set themselves to their oars, when a neighbouring proprietor came down to the beach, and called on them to return and take him aboard. “Get on!” shouted the Democrat, “and let the fellow wait;—’tis I who have hired you this time.” “O Sir! it’s a shentleman,” said one of the ferrymen, propelling the boat sternwards, as he spoke, by a back stroke of the oar. “Gentleman!” exclaimed the Democrat, seizing the boat-hook and pushing lustily in a contrary direction—“Gentleman truly!—we are all gentlemen, or shall be so very soon.” The proprietor, meanwhile, made a dash at the rudder, and held fast, but with such good-will did the other ply the boat-hook, that ere he had made good a lodgment he was drenched to the armpits. “Nothing like being accustomed to hardship in time,” muttered the Democrat, as, glancing his eye contemptuously on the dripping vestments of the proprietor, he laid down the pole and quietly resumed his seat.

THE PROCESSION.

There were about a dozen young men in the place who were so excited by the newspaper accounts of the superb processions of their south-country friends, that they resolved on having a procession of their own. They procured a long pole with a Kilmarnock cap fixed to the one end of it, which they termed the cap of liberty, and a large square of cotton, striped blue, white, and red, which they called the tricolor of independence. In the middle stripe there were inscribed in huge Roman capitals, the words Liberty and Equality; and a stuffed cormorant, intended to represent an eagle, was perched on the top of the staff. They got a shipmaster of the place prevailed on to join with them. He was a frank, hearty sailor, who saw nothing unfair in the anticipated division of property, and hated a pressgang as he hated the devil. “But how,” said he, “will we manage, after all hands have been served out, should a few of us take a bouse and melt our portions? just divide again, I suppose?” “Highly probable,” replied the revolutionists; “but we have not yet fully determined on that.” “I see, I see,” rejoined the sailor; “everything can’t be done at once.” On the day of the procession he brought with him his crew attired in their best, and with all the ship flags mounted on poles. The revolutionists demurred. “To be sure,” they said, “nothing could be finer; but then the flags were British flags.” “And —— it,” said the master, “would you have me bring French flags?” It was no time, however, to dispute the point; and the procession moved on, followed by all the children of the place. It reached an eminence directly above the links; and drawing up beside an immense pile of brushwood, and a few empty tar-barrels, its leader planted the tree of liberty amid shouts, and music, and the shooting of muskets, on the very spot on which the town gallows had been planted about two centuries before. No one, however, so much as thought of the circumstance; for people were too thoroughly excited to employ themselves with anything but the future; besides, a very little ingenuity could have made it serve the purpose of either party. After planting the tree, the brushwood was fired, and a cask of whisky produced, out of which the republicans drank healths to liberty and the French. “The French! the French!” exclaimed the shipmaster. “Well, —— them, I don’t care though I do; here’s health to the French; may they and I live long enough to speak to one another through twelve-pounders!” All the boys and all the sailors huzza’d; the republicans said nothing, but thought they had got rather a queer ally. The evening, however, passed off in capital style; and, ere the crowd dispersed, they had burnt two fishing-boats, a salmon coble, and almost all the paling of the neighbouring fields and gardens.

HOSSACK’S PLEDGE.

The day of the procession was also that of a Redcastle market; at that time one of the chief cattle fairs of the north. It was largely attended on this occasion by Highlanders from the neighbouring straths, many of whom had fought for the Prince, and remembered the atrocities of Cumberland; it was attended, too, by parties of drovers from England and the southern counties of Scotland, all of them brimful of the modern doctrines, and scarcely more loyal than the Highlanders themselves; it was attended, besides, by a Cromarty salmon-fisher, George Hossack, a man of immense personal strength and high spirit, now a little past his prime perhaps, but so much a politician of the old school, that he would have willingly fought for his namesake the King with any two men at the fair. But he was no match for everybody, and everybody to-day seemed to hold but one opinion. “Awfu’ expensive government this of ours,” said an East-Lothian drover; “we maun just try whether we canna manage it mair cheaply for ourselves.” “Ay, and what a blockhead of a king have we got!” said an Englishman; “not fit, as Tom Paine says, for a country constable; but, poor wretch, we must turn him about his business, and see whether he can’t work like ourselves.” “Och, but he’s a limmer anyhow, and a creat plack whig!” remarked an old Highlander, “and has nae right till ta crown. Na, na, Charlie my king!” Poor George was almost broken-hearted by the abuse poured out against his sovereign on every side of him; but what could he do? He would look first at one speaker, then at another, and repress his rising wrath by the consideration, that there was little wit in being angry with about three thousand people at once. He had driven a bargain with two Englishmen, and on going in to drink with them, according to custom, was shown into a room which chanced at the time, unlike every other room in the house, to be unoccupied. The Englishmen seated themselves at the table; George cautiously fastened the door, and took his place fronting them. “Now, gentlemen,” said he, filling the glasses, “permit me to propose a toast:—Health and prosperity to George the Third.” He drank off his glass, and set it down before him. One of the Englishmen, a bit of a wag in his way, looked at him with a droll, quizzical expression, and took up his. “Health and prosperity,” he said, “to George the herd.”—“Well, young man,” remarked George, “he is, as you say, a herd, and a very excellent one;—allow me, however, to wish him a less unruly charge.” “Health and prosperity,” shouted out the other, “to George the ——.” This was unbearable: George sprang from his seat, and repaid the insult with a blow on the ear, which drove both man and glass to the floor. Up rose the other Englishman—up rose, too, the fallen one, and fell together upon George; but the cause of the king was never yet better supported. Down they both went, the one over the other, and down they went a second, and a third, and a fourth time; till at length, convinced that nothing could be more imprudent than their attempts to rise, they lay just where they fell. George departed, after discharging the reckoning, leaving them to congratulate one another on their liberalism and their wit; and reached Cromarty as the last gleam of the Jacobin bonfire was dancing on the chimney-tops, to learn that there was scarcely more loyalty among his town’s-men than at the market, and that his favourite salmon-coble had perished among the flames about two hours before. I remember George—a shrewd, clear-headed man of eighty-two, full of anecdote and remark; and I have derived not a few of my best traditions from him. But he is gone, and well-nigh forgotten; and when the sexton of some future age shall shovel up his huge bones, the men who come to gaze on them may descant, as they turn them over, on modern degeneracy and the might of their fathers, but who among them all will know that they belonged to the last of the loyalists!

THE COUNTY MEETING.

The day after the procession came on, pregnant with mystery and conjecture. Rider after rider entered the town, and assembled in front of the council-house;—the town’s officer was sent for, together with the sergeant of a small recruiting party that barracked in one of the neighbouring lanes; they then entered the hall, and made fast the doors. The country gentlemen, it was said, had come in to put down the revolutionists. Shortly after, two of the soldiers and a constable glided into the house of the young democrat, and producing a warrant for his apprehension, and the seizure of all his papers, hurried him away to the hall—the soldiers, with their bayonets fixed, guarding him on either side, and the constable, laden with a hamper of books and papers, bringing up the rear. In they all went, and the door closed as before. The curiosity of the town’s-people was now awakened in right earnest, and an immense crowd gathered in front of the council-house; but they could see or hear nothing. At length the door opened, and the sergeant came out; he looked round about him, and beckoned on George Hossack. “George,” he said, “one of the London smacks has just entered the bay; you must board her and seize on all the parcels addressed to * * * * the Jacobin merchant; there is an information lodged that he is getting a supply of pikes from London for arming the town’s-people. Take the custom-house boatmen with you; and bring whatever you find to the hall. And, hark ye, we must see and get up an effigy of the blackguard Tom Paine;—try and procure some oakum and train-oil, and I’ll furnish powder enough to blow him to Paris.” Away went George, delighted with the commission, and returned in about an hour after, accompanied by some boatmen bearing two boxes large enough to contain pistols and pike-heads for all the men of the place. They were admitted into the hall, where they found the bench occupied by the town and county gentlemen—the soldiers ranged in the area in front, and the Republican, nothing abashed, standing at the bar. He had baffled all his judges, and had given them so much more wit and argument than they wanted, that they had ceased questioning him, and were now employed in turning over his papers. A letter written in cipher had been found on his person, and a gentleman, somewhat skilled in such matters, was examining it with much interest, while his more immediate neighbours were looking over his shoulders. “Bring forward the boxes, George,” said one of the gentlemen. George placed them both on the large table fronting the bench, and proceeded to uncord them. The first he opened was filled with gingerbread, the other with girls’ dolls and boys’ whistles, and an endless variety of trinkets and toys of a similar class. Some of the elderly gentlemen took snuff and looked at one another;—the younger laughed outright. “Have you deciphered that scrawl, Pointzfield?” inquired one of the more serious, with a view of restoring the court to its gravity. “Yes,” said Pointzfield dryly enough, “I rather think I have.”—“Treasonable of course,” remarked the other. “No, not quite that now,” rejoined the other, “whatever it might have been fifty years ago. It is merely a copy in shorthand of the old Jacobitical ballad, the Sow’s Tail to Geordie.” A titter ran along the bench as before, and the court broke up after determining that the Democrat should be sent to the jail of Tain to abide further trial, and that Paine should be burnt in effigy at the expense of the county. Paine was accordingly burnt; and all the children were gratified with a second procession and a second bonfire, quite as showy in their way as those of the preceding evening. The prisoner was escorted to Tain by a party of soldiers; and on his release, which took place shortly after, he quitted the country for London, where he became the editor of a newspaper on the popular side, which he conducted for many years with much spirit and some ability. Meanwhile the revolutionary cause languished for lack of a leader; and, on the declaration of war with France, sunk entirely amid the stormy ebullitions of a feeling still more popular than the Republican one.

THE FRENCH WAR.

There are some passions and employments of the human mind which give it a sceptical bias, and others, apparently of a very similar nature, which incline it to credulity. So long as the revolutionary spirit stalked abroad, it seemed as if every other spirit stayed at home. The spectre slept quietly in its churchyard, and the wraith in its pool; the dead-light was hooded by an extinguisher, and the witch minded her own business without interfering with that of her neighbours. On the breaking out of the war, however, there came on a season of omens and prodigies, and the whole supernatural world seemed starting into as full activity as the fears and hopes of the community. Armies were seen fighting in the air, amid the waving of banners and the frequent flashing of cannon; and the whole northern sky appeared for three nights together as if deluged with blood. In the vicinity of Inverness, shadowy bands of armed men were descried at twilight marching across the fields—at times half enveloped in smoke, at times levelling their arms as if for the charge. There was an ominously warlike spirit, too, among the children, which the elderly people did not at all like;—they went about, just as before the American war, with their mimic drums and fifes, and their muskets and halberts of elder, disturbing the whole country with uncouth music, and their zeal against the French. Then came the tug of war; trade sank; and many of the mechanics of the place flung aside their tools and entered either the army or navy. Party spirit died; the Whigs forgot everything but that they were Britons; and when orders came that such of the males of the place as volunteered their services should be embodied into a kind of domestic militia, old men of seventy and upwards, some of whom had fought at Culloden, and striplings of fifteen, who had not yet left school, came to the house of their future colonel, begging to be enrolled and furnished with arms. In less than two days every man in the town and parish was a soldier. Then came the stories of our great sea victories: the glare of illuminations and bonfires; the general anxiety when the intelligence first arrived that a battle had been fought, and the general sadness when it was ascertained that a town’s-man had fallen. When the news of Duncan’s victory came to the town, a little girl, who had a brother a sailor, ran more than three miles into the country, to a field in which her mother was employed in digging potatoes, and falling down at her feet, had just breath enough left to say, “Mither, mither, the Dutch are beaten, and Sandy’s safe.” The report of a threatened invasion knit the people still more firmly together, and they began to hate the French, not merely as national, but also as personal enemies. And thus they continued to feel, till at length the battle of Waterloo, by terminating the war, reduced them to the necessity of seeking, as before, their enemies at home.

WHIGGISM OF THE PEOPLE.