Scenes and legends of the north of Scotland

by Hugh Miller

—Bonnel Thornton.

THE CURATES.

The Episcopalian minister of Cromarty was a Mr. Bernard Mackenzie, a quiet, timid sort of man, with little force of character, but with what served his turn equally well, a good deal of cunning. He came to the parish in the full expectation of being torn to pieces, and with an aspect so wo-begone and miserable—for his very countenance told how unambitious he was of being a martyr—that the people pitied instead of insulting him; and, in the course of a few weeks, he had not an ill-wisher among them, however disaffected some of them were to his Church. No one could be more conversant than the curate with the policy of submission, or could become all things to all men with happier effect. The people, who, like the great bulk of the people everywhere, were better acquainted with the duties of ministers than with their own, were liberal in giving advices, and no person could be more submissive in listening to these than the curate. Some of them, too, had found out the knack of being religious without being moral, and the curate was by much too polite to hint to them that the knack was a bad one. And thus he went on, suiting himself to every event, and borrowing the tone of his character from those whom it was his duty rather to lead than to follow, until the great event of the Revolution, which he also surmounted by taking the oath of allegiance that recognised William as king both in fact and in law. With all his policy, however, he could not help dying a few years after, when he was succeeded by the old ejected minister, Hugh Anderson.

The curate of the neighbouring parish of Nigg, a Mr. James Mackenzie, was in some respects a different sort of person. He was nearly as quiet and submissive as his namesake of Cromarty, and he was not much more religious; for when, one Sunday morning, he chanced to meet the girls of a fishing village returning home laden with shell-fish, he only told them that they should strive to divide the day so as to avail themselves both of the church and the ebb. He was, however, a simple, benevolent sort of man, who had no harm in him, and never suspected it in others; and so little was he given to notice what was passing around him, as to be ignorant, it was said, of the exact number of his children, though it was known to every one else in the parish that they amounted to twenty. They were all sent out to nurse, as was customary at the period; and when the usual term had expired, and they were returned to the manse, it proved a sad puzzle to the poor curate to recollect their names. On one occasion, when the whole twenty had gathered round his table, there was a little red-cheeked girl among them, who having succeeded in climbing to his knee, delighted him so much with her prattle, that he told her, after half smothering her with kisses, that “gin she were a bairn o’ his, he would gie her a tocher o’ three hunder merk mair nor ony o’ the lave.” “Then haud ye, gudeman,” said his wife; “for as sure as ye’re sitting there, it’s yer ain Jenny.” The descendants of the curate, as might be anticipated from the number of his children, are widely spread over the country, and exhibit almost every variety of fortune and cast of mind. One of them, a poor pauper, died a few years ago in the last extreme of destitution and wretchedness; another, an eminent Scottish lawyer, now sits on the Bench as one of the Lords of Session. One of his elder sons was grandfather to the celebrated Henry Mackenzie of Edinburgh, and the great-great-grandchild of the little prattling Jenny is the writer of these chapters.

DONALD ROY OF NIGG.

The bulk of the people of Nigg had just as little religion as their pastor. Every Sunday forenoon they attended church, but the evening of the day was devoted to the common athletic games of the country. A robust active young fellow, named Donald Roy, was deemed their best club-player; and, as the game was a popular one, his Sabbath evenings were usually spent at the club. He was a farmer, and the owner of a small herd of black cattle. On returning home one Sabbath evening, after vanquishing the most skilful of his competitors, he found the carcase of one of his best cattle lying across the threshold, where she had dropt down a few minutes before. Next Sabbath he headed the club-players as usual, and on returning at the same hour, he found the dead body of a second cow lying in exactly the same place. “Can it be possible,” thought he, “that the Whigs are in the right after all?” A challenge, however, had been given to the club-players of a neighbouring parish, and, as the game was to be played out on the following Sabbath, he could not bring himself to resolve the question. When the day came, Donald played beyond all praise, and, elated by the victory which his exertions had at length secured to his parish, he was striding homeward through a green lane, when a fine cow, which he had purchased only a few days before came pressing through the fence, and flinging herself down before him, expired at his feet with a deep horrible bellow. “This is God’s judgment!” exclaimed Donald, “the Whigamores are in the right;—I have taken His day, and he takes my cattle.” He never after played at the club; and, such was the change effected on his character, that shortly after the Revolution he was ordained an elder of the church, and he became afterwards one of the most notable worthies of the North. There are several stories still extant regarding him, which show that he must have latterly belonged to that extraordinary class of men (now extinct) who, living, as it were, on the extreme verge of the natural world, and seeing far into the world of spirits, had in their times of darkness to do battle with the worst inmates of the latter, and saw in their seasons of light the extreme bounds of the distant and the future. This class comprised at one time some of the stanchest champions of the Covenant, and we find at its head the celebrated Donald Cargill and Alexander Peden.

Some of the stories told of Donald Roy, which serve to identify him with this class, are worthy of being preserved. On one occasion, it is said, that when walking after nightfall on a solitary road, he was distressed by a series of blasphemous thoughts, which came pouring into his mind despite of all his exertions to exclude them. Still, however, he struggled manfully, and was gradually working himself into a better frame, when looking downwards he saw what seemed to be a black dog trotting by his side. “Ah!” he exclaimed, “and so I have got company; I might have guessed so sooner.” The thing growled as he spoke, and bounding a few yards before him, emitted an intensely bright jet of flame, which came streaming along the road until it seemed to hiss and crackle beneath his feet. On he went, however, without turning to the right hand or to the left, and the thing bounding away as before, stood and emitted a second jet. “Na, na, it winna do,” said the imperturbable Donald: “ye first tried to loose my haud o’ my Master, and ye would now fain gie me a fleg; but I ken baith him and you ower weel for that.” The appearance, however, went on bounding and emitting flame by turns, until he had reached the outer limits of his farm, when it vanished.

About seventy years after the Revolution, he was engaged in what is termed proofing the stacks of a corn-yard, on the hilly farm of Castle-Craig. There were other two men with him employed in handing down and threshing the sheaves. The clay was exceedingly boisterous, and towards evening there came on a heavy snow-storm. “Our elder,” said one of the men to his companion, “will hae deep stepping home through the snaw thraves; he would better stay at the Craig—will you no ask him?” “Man, look,” said the other, “what is he about?—look—look!” At a little distance, in a waste corner of the barn, sat the elder, his broad blue bonnet drawn over his brow, his eyes fixed on the wall; and ever and anon would he raise his hands and then clasp them together, as if witnessing some scene of intense and terrible interest. At times, too, he would mutter to himself like a deranged person; and the men, who had dropped their flails and stood looking at him, could hear him exclaiming in a rapid but subdued tone of voice, “Let her drive—let her drive!—Dinna haud her side to the sea.” Then striking his palms together, he shouted out, “She’s o’er—she’s o’er!—O the puir widows o’ Dunskaith!—but God’s will be done.” “Elder,” said one of the men, “are ye no weel?—ye wald better gang in till the house.” “No,” said Donald, “let’s awa to the burn o’ Nigg;—there has been ill enough come o’ this sad night already—let’s awa to the burn, or there’ll be more.” And rising from his seat with the alacrity of his club-playing days, though he was now turned of ninety, he strode out into the storm, followed by the two men. “What’s that?” asked one of the men, pointing, as he reached the burn, to a piece of red tartan which projected from the edge of an immense wreath, “Od! but it’s our Jenny’s brottie sticking out thro’ the snaw:—An’ oh! but here’s Jenny hersel’.” The poor woman, who had been visiting a friend at the other end of the parish, had set out for Castle-Craig at the beginning of the storm, and exhausted with cold and fatigue, had sunk at the side of the stream a few minutes before. She was carried to the nearest cottage, and soon recovered. And the following morning afforded a sad explanation of the darker vision—the wreck of a Dunskaith boat, and the dead bodies of some of the crew being found on the beach below the Craig.

A grand-daughter of the elder who was married to a respectable Cromarty tradesman, was seized in her thirtieth year by a dangerous fever, and her life despaired of. At the very crisis of the disease her husband was called by urgent business to the parish of Tarbat. On passing through Nigg he waited on Donald, and, informing him of her illness, expressed his fears that he would not again see her in life. “Step in on your coming back,” said the elder, “and dinna tine heart—for she’s in gude hands.” The husband’s journey was a hurried one, and in less than three hours after he had returned to the cottage of Donald, who came out to meet him. “Come in, Robert,” he said, “and cool yoursel’; ye hae travelled ower hard;—come in, and dinna be sae distressed, for there’s nae cause. Kettie will get o’er this, and live to see the youngest o’ her bairns settled in the world, and doing for themselves.” And his prediction was accomplished to the very letter. The husband, on his return, found that the fever had abated in a very remarkable manner a few hours before; and in less than a week after, his wife had perfectly recovered. More than forty years from this time, when the writer was a little kilted urchin of five summers, he has stood by her knee listening to her stories of Donald Roy. “And now,” has she said, after narrating the one in which she herself was so specially concerned, “all my bairns are doing for themselves, as the good man prophesied; and I have lived to tell of him to you, my little curious boy, the bairn of my youngest bairn.” I have little of the pride of family in my disposition; and, indeed, cannot plume myself much on the score of descent, for, for the last two hundred years, my ancestors have been merely shrewd honest people, who loved their country too well to do it any discredit; but I am unable to resist the temptation of showing that I can claim kindred with the good old seer of Nigg, and the Addison of Scotland.

There is a still more wonderful story told of Donald Roy than any of these. On one of the days of preparation set apart by the Scottish Church previous to the dispensation of the sacrament, it is still customary in the north of Scotland for the elders to address the people on what may be termed the internal evidences of religion, tested by their own experience. The day dedicated to this purpose is termed the day of the men; and so popular are its duties, that there are none of the other days which the clergyman might not more safely set aside. When there is a lack of necessary talent among the elders of a parish, they are called dumb elders, and their places are supplied on the day of the men by the more gifted worthies of the parishes adjoining. Such a lack occurred about a century ago in the eldership of Urray, a semi-Highland parish, near Dingwall;—and at the request of the minister to the Session of Nigg, that some of the Nigg elders, who at that time were the most famous in the country, should come and officiate in the room of his own, Donald Roy and three other men were despatched to Urray. They reached the confines of the parish towards evening, and when passing the house of a gentleman, one of the heritors, they were greeted by the housekeeper, a woman of Nigg, who insisted on their turning aside and spending the evening with her. Her mistress, she said, was a stanch Roman Catholic, but one of the best creatures that ever lived, and, if the thing was possible, a Christian;—her master was a kind, good-natured man, of no religion at all; she was a great favourite with both, and was very sure that any of her friends would be made heartily welcome to the best their hall afforded. Donald’s companions would have declined the invitation, as beneath the dignity of men of independence and elders of the Church; but he himself, though quite as much a Whig as any of them, joined with the woman in urging them to accept of it. “I am sure,” he said, “we have been sent here for some special end, and let us not suffer a silly pride to turn us back without our errand.”