Towards the end of the month of February, when the sufferings of the people seemed almost to have reached their acme, a Mr. Gordon, one of the most considerable merchants of the town, set out to the country, armed with a warrant from the Sheriff, and backed by a small party in quest of meal. The old laws of the sheriffdom, though still unrepealed, were well-nigh exploded, but what was lacking in authority was made up by force; and so, when Mr. Gordon entered their houses to ransack the girnals and meal-chests, there were many attempts made at concealment, but none at open resistance. The magistrate found one ingenious gudewife buried in a mountainous heap of bedclothes; the gudeman, it was said, had gone for the howdie; but one of the party mistrusting the story, raised the edge of a blanket, and lo! two sacks were discovered lying quietly by her side. She was known ever after by the name of “the pocks’ mither.” The meal procured by the party was carefully portioned out, a quantity deemed sufficient for the farmer and his household being left with him, and the remainder, which was paid for by Mr. Gordon, was carried to town, and sold out to the people in pounds and half-pounds.
In the midst of the general distress, a small sloop from the village of Gourac entered the Firth, to take in a lading of meal, which, by dint of grievous pinching and hoarding, had been scraped together by some of the farmers of Easter Ross. The vessel was the property of a Mr. Matthew Simpson, who acted as skipper and supercargo; and she lay on the sands of Nigg, the creek or inlet to which, in the foregoing chapter, I have had occasion to refer. Twice every twenty-four hours was she stranded on the bottom of the inlet, and the wicker carts, laden with sacks, could be seen from the shore of Cromarty driving up to her side;—it was evident, too, that she floated heavier every tide; and many were the execrations vented by the half-starved town’s-people against Simpson and the farmers. Plans innumerable were formed among them for seizing on the vessel and disposing of her cargo; but their schemes fell to the ground, for there was none of them bold or skilful enough to take the lead in such an enterprise; and, in all such emergencies, a party without a leader is a body without a soul. Meanwhile the sloop left the creek deeply laden, and threw out her anchors opposite the town, where she lay waiting a fair wind.
Towards the evening of the 9th of April 1741, a shopkeeper of Cromarty was half sitting, half reclining, on his counter, humming a tune, and beating time with his ellwand on the point of his shoe. He was a spruce, dapper, little personage, of great flexibility of countenance, full of trick and intrigue, and much noted among his simple town’s-folk for a lawyer-like ingenuity. He was, withal, a man of considerable courage when contemplating a distant danger, but somewhat of a coward when it came near. His various correspondents addressed him by the name of Mr. Alexander Ross—the town’s-people called him Silken Sawney. On an opposite angle of the counter sat Donald Sandison, a tall, robust, red-haired man, who wrought in wood, but whose shop, from the miserable depression of trade, had been shut up for the last two months. He had resided at Edinburgh about five years before; and when there, with another man at Cromarty named Bain, had the satisfaction of escorting the notorious Porteous from the Tolbooth to the Grassmarket; and had been much edified, for he was in at the death, by the earnest remonstrances and dying ejaculations of that worthy. A few days afterwards, however, he found his services to the commonwealth on this occasion so ill appreciated, that he deemed it prudent to quit the metropolis for the place of his nativity. No one had ever heard him boast of the exploit; but Bain, who was a tailor, was not so prudent, and so the story came out.
SANDISON’S SPULZIE.
“Weel, Sandison, what are we gaun to do wi’ the meal ship?” said the shopkeeper, laying down his ellwand, and sitting up erect.
“Do wi’ the ship?” replied the mechanic, scratching his head with a half-perplexed, half-humorous expression; “man, I dinna weel ken. It’s bad enough to see a’ yon meal going down the Firth, an’ folk at hame dying o’ hunger!”
“But, Sandison,” rejoined the wily shopkeeper, “if it does a’ go down the Firth, I’m just thinking it will be nobodie’s wyte but your ain.”
“How that, man?” rejoined Sandison.
“I’ll tell you how that, an’ in your ain words too. Whig as ye are, ye say that all men are no born alike. Some come intil the world to do just what they’re bid, an’ go just where they’re bid, and say just what they hear their neebours saying; while ithers, again, come into it to think baith for themsels an’ the folk round them.—Is that no your own sentiment?”
“Weel, an’ is it no true?”