CHAPTER LVI.
Rain in Lochaber—An Apple Tree in bloom by Candle-light—Mackenzie the Bird-Catcher—A Badenoch “Wise Woman” spitting in a Child’s Face to preserve it from the Fairies!
“It never rains but it pours,” and nowhere is the familiar adage in its utmost literalness truer than in Lochaber. During a long protracted drought of nearly a couple of months’ duration [June 1877], we were constantly calling for rain; and no wonder, for the earth was hard and hide-bound as an Egyptian mummy; sheep and cattle finding little more to gather on the parched uplands than if they were nibbling at the bulge of an ironclad laid up in ordinary. For full five and twenty years—so far back, eheu and alas! do our own individual meteorological records extend—we have had no May month so persistently ungenial and cold; nor, when one comes to think of it, is it much matter of surprise, for we have just been reading that in the North Atlantic, within a few hundred leagues of the British shores, and up to the very margin of the Gulf Stream, a ship recently arrived in port had to fight her way through quite a continent of drift ice, with occasional icebergs “from two to three hundred feet in height.” With such grim, hyperborean neighbours on the one hand, and a keen-edged east wind on the other, it was impossible that it should be otherwise than cold and uncomfortable all round. On the 26th, however, came the long-looked-for change, the wind came slowly round to S.S.W., rain began to fall, and the effect was magical. There was instantly a blanket-like kindliness and a balminess in the air that was delicious. The birds, that a little before could only chirp dolorously, burst out into loud and jubilant song, the cattle lowed in their pastures, wild-flowers seemed to laugh with quiet delight, and the very boom of the big waves as they broke on the beach had a pleasant music in it. It has continued to rain more or less ever since, so that with regard to mere personal comfort one is ready to cry “Hold, enough!” but so far as the interests of agriculture and pasturage are concerned, not a drop too much has fallen. The fact is that, frequent as is the complaint about what people are pleased to speak about as our superabundant rainfall, we require it all. We question if a diminution of our annual rainfall by a third, say, or even by a fifth of its amount, would, from a practical and utilitarian point of view, be any improvement, but the reverse. A shrewd south country shepherd, with whom we had a long crack on Saturday, was right when, speaking of the rain, he remarked that “it would be a puir country for sheep at ony rate, if we had much less o’t frae year’s end to year’s end.” How ill the drought of April and May agreed with us here may be understood from the fact that there was an unusual amount of sickness amongst the people; while the leanness of sheep and kine bore sad and emphatic witness to the scarcity of succulent pasture, and the general backwardness of the season is to this moment noticeable from our window as we write, for neither the lilac nor the hawthorn is yet in bloom, nor are potatoes, even the earliest planted, any more than just becoming discernible in regular drills. We should say that vegetation is generally quite a fortnight later than usual, and only an exceptionally fine summer and early autumn can bring about a fairly seasonable harvest-time. Dum spiro, spero, however, is a good maxim, and we shall hope that, even if harvest is late, the ingathering may be all the more pleasant and abundant. The drought, however, and persistent east wind, it is but fair to confess, were rather favourable than otherwise to the fruit trees of all kinds in garden and orchard. Bud and blossom were, to use a military term, held in check until after the middle of May, thus escaping the night frosts usual in the early part of the month. All sorts of fruit trees and berry bushes are consequently only now in full bloom, and a large fruit crop may very confidently be looked for, though it may be a little later than usual in attaining to perfect ripeness. Did you ever, by the way, good reader, look at an apple tree in full blossom on a calm, dewy night by candle-light? Recently we had occasion to go into our garden towards midnight in search of a bird that had escaped from his cage during the day. Coming under a large apple tree in full bloom, we held up the open lantern in our hand and peered a-tiptoe among the branches in hopes of getting a sight of the foolish runaway. Him we did not find then, but the apple tree, bending under its weight of blossoms “dew besprent,” was the most beautiful thing we ever saw, and we called everybody about the place to come and look at it, and they all agreed that the sight was as beautiful as it was new to them. If you have an opportunity try it for yourself, and you will thank us all your life long for calling your attention to a thing of beauty, which the poet is not wrong in assuring you “is a joy for ever.”
We didn’t get our bird in the apple tree, but we were in great good luck notwithstanding, for who chanced to come the way next morning but Mackenzie the bird-catcher, who soon discovered the runaway’s whereabouts in a neighbouring copse, and whistled him back to hand as easily as a shepherd whistles back his truant collie. It is a goldfinch, a magnificent singer, whom we have long had as a cage-bird; and being unaccustomed to liberty, it was all the easier enticing him back to his cage, although we much doubt if any man in the kingdom could have done it so immediately and with such unfaltering confidence in his own power to do it as Mackenzie, who knows wild-bird music better than any one else we ever met, and can imitate it in its every twist and turn, chirp or cheep or chant, so deftly and unmistakeably as to deceive the birds themselves, each after his kind, the severest test to which such an accomplishment could be put. If there be any truth in the old doctrine of metempsychosis, Mackenzie, having shaken off the “mortal coil” of his present form, is pretty sure to reappear as a rock-linnet, redpole, or goldfinch. Like an honest man, who knows and acknowledges the value and force of an Act of Parliament, he hadn’t on this occasion much to show us, but what he had was in part at least interesting, and captured in early spring. One curiosity was a linnet with one wing pure white, which he would insist upon was a different species from the ordinary linnet, because he had caught so many with a sinister or dexter, one or other, wing white or variegated. We fought a hard battle in trying to convince him that it was a mere accidental bit of colouring, due probably to some hurt received in its downy days, or at all events before its first moult; and made it no more a different species than an accidental hurt, which causes a man to go lame, makes him anything else than a specimen of homo sapiens all the same. Arguing, however, with men of Mackenzie’s stamp is rather uphill work. He listened, to be sure, with a politeness and attention which seems to us to be inseparable from the character of the true practical naturalist, and seemed to give acquiescence in all we asserted, but we shouldn’t wonder a bit if he remained of his own opinion still. A rather rare bird was a specimen, in excellent condition and feather, of the grey crow, at one time quite a common bird along the shores of the West Highlands, but owing to the incessant war waged against them by shepherds, gamekeepers, and vermin-trappers, now become so rare that we stopped our pony to have a good look at a pair that we saw the other day near Strontian, at the head of Loch Sunart. If you want a specimen of any British bird, just commission Mackenzie to get it for you. He will only bring you a specimen that is perfect of its kind, and if you only give him time he will succeed in getting it, even if he walked a thousand miles in the pursuit.
With reference to our explanation of the term study applied to a small plateau, a well-known spot at the top of Glencoe, a correspondent writes as follows:—“You do not seem to be aware that study is the word in common use in Lowland Scotland for an anvil as well as amongst the unlisping Celts. I wonder you forgot Burns’ well-known lines—
‘Nae mercy, then, for airn or steel;
The brawnie, bainie, ploughman chiel,
Brings hard owrehip, wi’ sturdy wheel
The strong forehammer,