Well, whilst Gibbon More Cumin flourished, the ceremony of Cumin-making was always performed by his own hands. At the door of his castle there stood a huge stone, which I have often myself seen when I was a boy, and which, for ought I know, may be still in existence. It was hollowed out in the middle like an ancient baptismal font, and, indeed, it is by no means unlikely that it had been originally formed as such. Be this as it may, however, Gibbon More had it always filled with water for the refreshment of his fowls. But, besides its uniform devotion to the truly ignoble purposes of his poultry, it was also employed by him in the unseemly rites to which I have referred. When any of the strangers of whom I have spoken had a desire to be metamorphosed into a Cumin, he was brought incontinently to Kincherdie. There the gigantic Lord of Glenchearnich, with the observance of very great and decorous form, lifted him up, and having slowly and solemnly reversed the natural perpendicular position of the poor sinner, he held him up by the heels, as Thetis did her infant boy Achilles, and having dipped his head three times amid the pollutory potation, as I may call the hen’s water that filled the hollow stone, he set him, gasping and gaunting, upright on his legs again, telling him, in a stately tone, henceforward to live and do like a Cumin as he now was. But, notwithstanding this cantrip of Gibbon More’s, there was a marked distinction still preserved between those who were Cumins by blood and those who were thus manufactured by him by virtue of the chuckies’ water, for these children of adoption and their descendants had always the degrading addition given to them of Cuminich clach-nan-cearc, or Cumins of the hen-trough.
It happened, about the time I am speaking of, that young Sir John Grant, son and heir of Sir Patrick Grant of Stratherrock, now the Laird of Freuchie, did one evening thus hold converse with a curious misformed waggish boy, who had no father, and who went by the familiar name of Archy Abhach, or Archy the Dwarf. Kicked and cuffed as the youth had been about the castle, Sir John had taken compassion on him, and had made him his page; and the boy’s gratitude and attachment were consequently great.
“Why look ye so sad, sir?” demanded the boy, gently approaching his master, as he sat one evening on the battlement of the bartizan, looking towards the setting sun, with his head resting on the basket-hilt of his claymore, and his legs swinging about, as if he cared not whether he should swing himself over the wall or not. “Can poor Archy do nothing to rid thee of thy melancholy mood?”
“Nay, boy,” said the knight, kindly taking his hand, “I doubt thy powers can scarcely reach my malady.”
“As yet thou knowest not the extent of my powers,” said the boy gravely, “nor can I show thee my remedy till thou makest me to know thy disease. Yet, methinks, my skill is such that I might dare shrewdly to guess at it. Hast thou not ta’en a heart-wound from a pair of bright eyes?”
“So far I must needs say, that, judging from this first effort of thine, thy skill in divining is not to be questioned,” said the knight.
“I will adventure further then, and say, that the slanting beams of yonder declining sun are now gilding the casement of thy lady-love,” said the boy Archy.
“O Archy, Archy!” cried the knight, giving full way to his feelings, “I have never enjoyed a moment’s peace since I beheld her at Whitsuntide at the church of Inverallan. She is an angel.”
“Granting that she be so,” said the boy, “for such they tell me must, reason or none, be yielded to all lovers—yea though the fair cause of their madness should be little less than a devil—granting, I say, that she be an angel, surely that should be no reason why thou shouldst thus mope and pine, Sir Knight.”
“Thou forgettest, boy, that the hatred naturally born between a Cumin and a Grant forbids all hope on my part,” said Sir John despondingly.