"Lady Grisel," said the General, rubbing his hands, "ye speak like a prudent dame; and a usefu' helpmate meet Sir Archibald maun hae found ye, for he saw hot work in his time."
"Kittle times mak' cautious folk," said the malecontent Drumdryan slowly; "but wi' a that, General, had I feared snow, my braw bell-wethers——"
"D—n you, and your bell-wethers to boot!" growled the fierce old Royalist. "Here come the guisards," and, save him, all rushed to the windows; the veteran cavalier, whose lumbago chained him to his bolstered chair, fidgetted and stroked his beard with a most vinegar expression of face.
Lilian clapped her hands with delight at the merry scene below.
From time immemorial, it has been the custom in Scotland for young people of the lower class, in the evenings of the last days of the old year, to go about from house to house in their neighbourhood, disguised in fantastic dresses, whence their name, guisards. The usual practice was to present them with refreshment; but that custom has departed with the other hospitalities of the olden time. They dance and sing a doggrel rhyme, adapted to the occasion or the person they visit; but, while the Catholic faith was the established one of Scotland, in their songs, the guisards were wont to proclaim the birth of Christ and the approach of the three kings who were to worship him; and some trace of this ancient religious ditty was discernible in the song sung by the visitors at Bruntisfield.
There were ten or more men, all stout, athletic fellows, each bearing a blazing torch, the united lustre of which lit up the deepest recesses of the old façade, under which they performed a fantastic morrice dance to their own music. They were all furnished with enormous masks, of the most grotesque fashion; from these rose head-dresses like sugar-loaves, covered with belis, beads, and pieces of mirror. Their attire was equally outré.
One was clad in the skin of a cow, having its horns fixed to the crown of his head, and the long tail trailing behind him in the snow. Another was furnished with an enormous nose, from which ever and anon a red carbuncle exploded with a loud report; and a third had nearly his whole body encased in an enormous head, which had a face expressive of the most exquisite drollery. Under this prodigious caput the diminished legs appeared to totter, while the jaunty waggery of its aspect was increased by a little hat and feather which surmounted it.
But the principal figure was a tall, fierce, and brawny, but very graceful man, clad in a fantastic robe of scarlet, with his legs curiously cased in shining metal scales: he had a black face of dreadful aspect, from three hideous red gashes, in which the blood was constantly dropping. He wore a crown of green ivy-leaves and scarlet hollyberries, wreathed among the sable masses of a voluminous beard and shock head of coarse hair. Through the openings of his scarlet robe, close observers might have observed a corslet glint at times. All were accoutred with swords and daggers.
Dancing in front, the red masker brandished his sputtering torch, and chanted in a deep bass voice the following rhyme:
"Trip and goe, heave and hoe,
Up and down, and to and fro;
By firth and fell, by tower and grove,
Merrily, merrily let us rove!"