“——to keep
Frae weet and weary plashes
O’ dirt, thir days.”
We once stumbled upon a veteran snugly bedded in a stall of about three feet square, crammed into the internal space of an outside stair in the West Bow. In this den he exercised the calling of a cobbler. Like all shoemakers, he was an earnest politician, and read the Scotsman every week in the second month of its age, after it had made the tour of the Bow;—“being determined,” he said, “to stick by the nation!” We have also sometimes found occasion to recognise the nose of an old acquaintance, under the disguise of a circulator of bills, at the doors of certain haberdashers on the South Bridge. We have a peculiar veneration for a puff given forth from the paw of an old Town-Guardsman; and seldom find it in our heart to put such a document to a death of candle-ends.
One of the principal reasons which David Deans assigned to Saddletree, for not employing counsel in the cause of his daughter Effie, was the notorious Jacobitism of the faculty, who, he said, had received into their library the medals which that Moabitish woman, the Duchess of Gordon, had sent to them. This was a true and, moreover, a curious case. In 1711, the great-grandmother of the present Duke of Gordon excited no small attention by presenting to the Faculty of Advocates a silver medal, with a head of the Pretender on one side, and, on the other, the British isles, with the word Reddite.[31] The Dean having presented the medal to the faculty at the next meeting, a debate ensued about the propriety of admitting it into their repositories. It was carried 63 to 12 to admit the medal, and return thanks to the duchess for her present. Two advocates, delegated for that purpose, waited upon her grace, and expressed their hopes that she would soon have an opportunity of complimenting the faculty with a second medal on the Restoration.
This lady was the wife of George, first Duke of Gordon, who held out Edinburgh Castle for King James, in 1689.
JEANIE DEANS.
The plot of this tale, besides bearing some resemblance to that of The Exiles of Siberia, finds a counterpart in the story of Helen Walker.
When the following account of this person was taken down, in 1786, she was a little stout-looking woman, between 70 and 80 years of age, dressed in a long tartan plaid, and having over her white cap, (Scottice, TOY,) a black silk hood tied under her chin. She lived in the neighbourhood of Dumfries, on the romantic banks of the immortalized Clouden, a little way above the bridge by which the road from Dumfries to Sanquhar crosses that beautiful stream. She lived by the humblest means of subsistence,—working stockings, teaching a few children, and rearing now and then a small brood of chickens. Her countenance was remarkably lively and intelligent, her eyes were dark and expressive, and her conversation was marked by a naïveté and good sense that seemed to fit her for a higher sphere in life. When any question was asked concerning her earlier life, her face became clouded, and she generally contrived to turn the conversation to a different topic.
Her story, so far as it was ever known, bore that she had been early left an orphan, with the charge of a younger sister, named Tibby, (Isabella,) whom she endeavoured to maintain and educate by her own exertions. It will not be easy to conceive her feelings when her sister was apprehended on a charge of child-murder, and herself called on as a principal witness against her. The counsel for the prisoner told Helen, that if she could declare that her sister had made any preparation, however slight, or had communicated any notice of her situation, such a statement would save her sister’s life. But, from the very first, this high-souled woman determined against such a perjury, and avowed her resolution to give evidence according to her conscience. Isabella was of course found guilty and condemned; and, in removing her from the bar, she was heard to say to her sister, “Oh, Nelly! ye’ve been the cause of my death!”