Scenes and legends of the north of Scotland

by Hugh Miller

THE STORY OF JOHN FEDDES.

In the woods to the east of Cromarty, occupying the summit of a green insulated eminence, is the ancient burying-ground and chapel of St. Regulus. Bounding the south there is a deep narrow ravine, through which there runs a small tinkling streamlet, whose voice, scarcely heard during the droughts of summer, becomes hoarser and louder towards the close of autumn. The sides of the eminence are covered with wood, which, overtopping the summit, forms a wall of foliage that encloses the burying-ground except on the east, where a little opening affords a view of the northern Sutor over the tops of trees which have not climbed high enough to complete the fence. In this burying-ground the dead of a few of the more ancient families of the town and parish are still interred; but by far the greater part of it is occupied by nameless tenants, whose descendants are unknown, and whose bones have mouldered undisturbed for centuries. The surface is covered by a short yellow moss, which is gradually encroaching on the low flat stones of the dead, blotting out the unheeded memorials which tell us that the inhabitants of this solitary spot were once men, and that they are now dust—that they lived, and that they died, and that they shall live again.

Nearly about the middle of the burying-ground there is a low flat stone, over which time is silently drawing the green veil of oblivion. It bears date 1690, and testifies, in a rude inscription, that it covers the remains of Paul Feddes and his son John, with those of their respective wives. Concerning Paul, tradition is silent; of John Feddes, his son, an interesting anecdote is still preserved. Some time early in the eighteenth century, or rather perhaps about the close of the seventeenth, he became enamoured of Jean Gallie, one of the wealthiest and most beautiful young women of her day in this part of the country. The attachment was not mutual; for Jean’s affections were already fixed on a young man, who, both in fortune and elegance of manners, was superior, beyond comparison, to the tall red-haired boatman, whose chief merit lay in a kind brave heart, a clear head, and a strong arm. John, though by no means a dissipated man, had been accustomed to regard money as merely the price of independence, and he had sacrificed but little to the graces. His love-suit succeeded as might have been expected; the advances he made were treated with contempt; and the day was fixed on which his mistress was to be married to his rival. He became profoundly melancholy; and late on the evening which preceded the marriage-day, he was seen traversing the woods which surrounded the old castle; frequently stopping as he went, and, by wild and singular gestures, giving evidence of an unsettled mind. In the morning after he was nowhere to be found. His disappearance, with the frightful conjectures to which it gave rise, threw a gloom over the spirits of the town’s-folk, and affected the gaiety of the marriage party; it was remembered, even amid the festivities of the bridal, that John Feddes had had a kind warm heart; and it was in no enviable frame that the bride, as her maidens conducted her to her chamber, caught a glimpse of several twinkling lights that were moving beneath the brow of the distant Sutor. She could not ask the cause of an appearance so unusual; her fears too surely suggested that her unfortunate lover had destroyed himself, and that his friends and kinsfolk kept that night a painful vigil in searching after the body. But the search was in vain, though every copse and cavern, and the base of every precipice within several miles of the town, were visited; and though, during the succeeding winter, every wreath of sea-weed which the night-storms had rolled upon the beach, was approached with a fearful yet solicitous feeling scarcely ever associated with bunches of sea-weed before. Years passed away, and, except by a few friends, the kind enterprising boatman was forgotten.

In the meantime it was discovered, both by herself and the neighbours, that Jean Gallie was unfortunate in her husband. He had, prior to his marriage, when one of the gayest and most dashing young fellows in the village, formed habits of idleness and intemperance which he could not, or would not shake off; and Jean had to learn that a very gallant lover may prove a very indifferent husband, and that a very fine fellow may care for no one but himself. He was selfish and careless in the last degree; and unfortunately, as his carelessness was of the active kind, he engaged in extensive business, to the details of which he paid no attention, but amused himself with wild vague speculations, which, joined to his habits of intemperance, stripped him in the course of a few years of all the property which had belonged to himself and his wife. In proportion as his means decreased he became more worthless, and more selfishly bent on the gratification of his appetites; and he had squandered almost his last shilling, when, after a violent fit of intemperance, he was seized by a fever, which in a few days terminated in death. And thus, five years after the disappearance of John Feddes, Jean Gallie found herself a poor widow, with scarce any means of subsistence, and without one pleasing thought connected with the memory of her husband.

A few days after the interment, a Cromarty vessel was lying at anchor, before sunrise, near the mouth of the Spey. The master, who had been one of Feddes’s most intimate friends, was seated near the stern, employed in angling for cod and ling. Between his vessel and the shore, a boat appeared in the grey light of morning, stretching along the beach under a tight, well-trimmed sail. She had passed him nearly half a mile, when the helmsman slackened the sheet, which had been close-hauled, and suddenly changing the tack, bore away right before the wind. In a few minutes the boat dashed alongside. All the crew, except the helmsman, had been lying asleep upon the beams, and now started up alarmed by the shock. “How, skipper,” said one of the men, rubbing his eyes, “how, in the name of wonder, have we gone so far out of our course? What brings us here?” “You come from Cromarty,” said the skipper, directing his speech to the master, who, starting at the sound from his seat, flung himself half over the gunwale to catch a glimpse of the speaker. “John Feddes,” he exclaimed, “by all that is miraculous!” “You come from Cromarty, do you not?” reiterated the skipper; “Ah, Willie Mouat! is that you?”

The friends were soon seated in the snug little cabin of the vessel; and John, apparently the less curious of the two, entered, at the others’ request, into a detail of the particulars of his life for the five preceding years. “You know, Mouat,” he said, “how I felt and what I suffered for the last six months I was in Cromarty. Early in that period I had formed the determination of quitting my native country for ever; but I was a weak foolish fellow, and so I continued to linger, like an unhappy ghost, week after week, and month after month, hoping against hope, until the night which preceded the wedding-day of Jean Gallie. Captain Robinson was then on the coast unloading a cargo of Hollands. I had made it my business to see him; and after some little conversation, for we were old acquaintance, I broached to him my intention of leaving Scotland. It is well, said he; for friendship sake I will give you a passage to Flushing, and, if it suits your inclination, a berth in the privateer I am now fitting out for cruising along the coast of Spanish America. I find the free trade doesn’t suit me; it has no scope. I considered his proposals, and liked them hugely. There was, indeed, some risk of being knocked on the head in the cruising affair, but that weighed little with me; I really believe that, at the time, I would as lief have run to a blow as avoided one;—so I closed with him, and the night and hour were fixed when he should land his boat for me in the hope of the Sutors. The evening came, and I felt impatient to be gone. You wonder how I could leave so many excellent friends without so much as bidding them farewell. I have since wondered at it myself; but my mind was filled, at the time, with one engrossing object, and I could think of nothing else. Positively, I was mad. I remember passing Jean’s house on that evening, and catching a glimpse of her through the window. She was so engaged in preparing a piece of dress, which I suppose was to be worn on the ensuing day, that she didn’t observe me. I can’t tell you how I felt—indeed, I do not know; for I have scarcely any recollection of what I did or thought until a few hours after, when I found myself aboard Robinson’s lugger, spanking down the Firth. It is now five years since, and, in that time, I have both given and received some hard blows, and have been both poor and rich. Little more than a month ago, I left Flushing for Banff, where I intend taking up my abode, and where I am now on the eve of purchasing a snug little property.” “Nay,” said Mouat, “you must come to Cromarty.” “To Cromarty! no, that will scarcely do.” “But hear me, Feddes—Jean Gallie is a widow.” There was a long pause. “Well, poor young thing,” said John at length with a sigh, “I should feel sorry for that; I trust she is in easy circumstances?” “You shall hear.”

The reader has already anticipated Mouat’s narrative. During the recital of the first part of it, John, who had thrown himself on the back of his chair, continued rocking backwards and forwards with the best counterfeited indifference in the world. It was evident that Jean Gallie was nothing to him. As the story proceeded, he drew himself up leisurely, and with firmness, until he sat bolt upright, and the motion ceased. Mouat described the selfishness of Jean’s husband, and his disgusting intemperance. He spoke of the confusion of his affairs. He hinted at his cruelty to Jean when he squandered all. John could act no longer—he clenched his fist and sprang from his seat. “Sit down, man,” said Mouat, “and hear me out—the fellow is dead.”—“And the poor widow?” said John. “Is, I believe, nearly destitute;—you have heard of the box of broad-pieces left her by her father?—she has few of them now.” “Well, if she hasn’t, I have; that’s all. When do you sail for Cromarty?” “To-morrow, my dear fellow, and you go along with me; do you not?”

Almost any one could supply the concluding part of my narrative. Soon after John had arrived at his native town, Jean Gallie became the wife of one who, in almost every point of character, was the reverse of her first husband; and she lived long and happily with him. Here the novelist would stop; but I write from the burying-ground of St. Regulus, and the tombstone of my ancestor is at my feet. Yet why should it be told that John Feddes experienced the misery of living too long—that, in his ninetieth year, he found himself almost alone in the world? for, of his children, some had wandered into foreign parts, where they either died or forgot their father, and some he saw carried to the grave. One of his daughters remained with him, and outlived him. She was the widow of a bold enterprising man, who lay buried with his two brothers, one of whom had sailed round the world with Anson, in the depths of the ocean; and her orphan child, who, of a similar character, shared, nearly fifty years after, a similar fate, was the father of the writer.

ANDREW LINDSAY.

A very few paces from the burying-ground of John Feddes, there is a large rude stone reared on two shapeless balusters, and inscribed with a brief record of the four last generations of the Lindsays of Cromarty—an old family now extinct. In its early days this family was one of the most affluent in the burgh, and had its friendships and marriages among the aristocracy of the country; but it gradually sank as it became older, and, in the year 1729, its last scion was a little ragged boy of about ten years of age, who lived with his widow mother in one of the rooms of a huge dilapidated house at the foot of the Chapel hill. Dilapidated as it was, it formed the sole remnant of all the possessions of the Lindsays. Andrew, for so the boy was called, was a high-spirited, unlucky little fellow, too careless of the school and of his book to be much a favourite with the schoolmaster, but exceedingly popular among his playfellows, and the projector of half the pieces of petty mischief with which they annoyed the village. But, about the end of the year 1731, his character became the subject of a change, which, after unfixing almost all its old traits, and producing a temporary chaos, set, at length, much better ones in their places. He broke off from his old companions, grew thoughtful and melancholy, and fond of solitude, read much in his Bible, took long journeys to hear the sermons of the more celebrated ministers of other parishes, and became the constant and attentive auditor of the clergyman of his own. He felt comfortless and unhappy. Like the hero of that most popular of all allegories, the Pilgrim’s Progress, “he stood clothed in rags, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a burden on his back. And opening the book, he read thereon, and, as he read, he wept and trembled, and, not being able to contain himself, he broke out into a lamentable cry, saying, What shall I do?” Indeed, the whole history of Andrew Lindsay, from the time of his conversion to his death, is so exact a counterpart of the journey of Christian, from the day on which he quitted the City of Destruction until he had entered the river, that, in tracing his course, I shall occasionally refer to the allegory; regarding it as the well-known chart of an imperfectly known country. All other allegories are mere mediums of instruction, and owe their chief merit to their transparency as such; but it is not thus with the dream of Bunyan, which, through its intrinsic interest alone, has become more generally known than even the truths which are couched under it.