HISTORY OF SERJEANT ARCHY STEWART.
Well, Gentlemen—as I was telling you, I was born in Strathdawn here—as pretty a glen as there is in all Scotland. Oh, what a bonny glen it was in my young days! You see plain enough, without my telling you, that there are no trees now in it to speak of—none, indeed, but a parcel of straggling patches and bushes of aller and birch and hazel about the bit water-runs and burnies, or hanging here and there on the brae sides. But when I was a boy, the hills were all one thick wood of tall trees, that gave shelter to great herds of deer in the winter. Now, alas! the trees have fallen, and the deer, annoyed and persecuted by sheep, shepherds, and sheep-dogs, have longsyne retreated to the upper mountains and vallies of the Cairngorms, save may be, at an anterin[1] time, when severe weather on the heights, may drive an odd few of them down upon us for a short season.
Well, gentlemen—not to detain you with my school-boy days—(for I was at school, gentlemen—and not so bad a scholar neither)—when I grew up to be a stout lad, I left the glen, with six others of my own age, to go and seek for work in the south country. I shall never forget that day that we left it. We went off full of life and joy—for we thought but little of leaving our friends or the scenes of our youth, since we trusted that the same firm legs that were carrying us away could at any time bring us back to them the moment we had the will to return. We panted to see the world, and it was now opening before us. All the fanciful dreams of our boyhood were, as we thought, now about to be realized. Light, I trow, were our hearts, and full were we of hopes, as we made our way across the Grampians, and in a few days these hopes were realized, by our finding ourselves busily employed, and working hard, though at good wages, in a quarry near Cupar in Fife.
There we continued for some time perfectly contented with our labour, as well as with the price of it, till John Grant of Lurg, grandson of the famous Robert of Lurg, well known by the nick-name of Old Stachcan, or the stubborn——
Clifford (breaking in on the Serjeant’s narrative.)—What! the fierce looking fellow whose picture we saw at Castle Grant with a pistol in his hand?
Serjeant.—Just exactly—the very same, sir—he has a pistol in his hand in the picture, and well, I promise you, did he know how to use it when he was in the body. Well, it was his grandson, John of Lurg, who, some how or other, smelt us out in the place where we then were in Fife; and as he was at that time raising men for a company, you may well believe that his joy was not small when he thus came, like a setting dog, to a dead point on such a covey of stout young Hillantmen in a quarry. He soon contrived to get about us altogether, and with a hantel of fair words, and mony a bonny speech about our Hillant hills—Hillant glens—Hillant waters—Hillant lasses—and, what was more to his purpose at the time, about Hillant deeds of arms—all of which, observe ye, gentlemen, were made over a reeking bowl of punch that you might have swum in, he very soon succeeded in stirring up the fire of military ambition within our souls, until he ultimately so inflamed us, that, with all the ease in life, he quickly converted us, who were nothing unwilling, from hard-working quarriers, into gentlemen sodgers, by enlisting us, all in a bunch, into the ninety-seventh regiment, or Inverness Highlanders.
I need not tell you all the outs-and-ins of adventures that befel me while I was in the ninety-seventh, in which corps I remained about two years and a half. But I may mention to you, that I was serving with it when I got my first wound—I mean this bit crack here, gentlemen—(and he pulled up his trews, and shewed his right leg immediately below the knee, which was shrunken up to half the thickness of the other, from having had the greater part of the muscles utterly destroyed.)—Some way or another, they took it into their heads to put us on board of the Orion, one of the ships of Lord Bridport’s squadron, to act as marines—an odd sort of duty truly for Hillantmen, and one, I’ll assure you, that we by no means liked over much, seeing that, on board of a ship, we were obliged to stand to be peppered at like brancher crows on a tree, without the power of having our will out against the villains, by charging them with the baggonet, as we should have done had we been opposed to them on dry land; and, indeed, we soon felt the frost of this, when we came to be engaged in the action fought with the French fleet on the 23d of June 1795.
On that day, the French had twelve line-of-battle ships, besides a number of frigates and other smaller vessels. From all their manœuvres it was very clear that they did not wish to face us—for they stole off in a very dignified manner, never looking over their shoulders all the time, as they were fain to have made us believe that they never saw us at all, or that we were quite beneath their notice. But it was no time for us to stand upon ceremony.—We after them full sail, and we soon made them condescend to attend to us. In spite of all they could do we brought them to action in L’Orient Bay. There we lethered them handsomely, and we very speedily took from them three great ships, the Alexander, the Formidable, and the Tigger; and, if it had not been for the batteries on shore, there was no doubt that we should have had every keel of them. Well, you see, gentlemen, a large splinter of oak—rent away from the ship’s side by a cannon shot—took me just below the knee, and demolished the shape of my leg in the ugly fashion I showed you this moment. But I was young then, and hearty, and no very easily daunted or cast down, so that I was soon out of the doctor’s list, and on duty again.
But what was far worse than all the wounds that my body could have suffered, though it had been shot and drilled through and through like a riddle, was that which befel me at Hilsea barracks after we returned to Britain. You know very well, gentlemen, that the Bible says, “a wounded speerit who can bear?” Now, you may guess what were the wounds of my speerit, and, consequently, what were my sufferings, when I and some of my Hillant comrades were told, that we were to be immediately drafted into the ninth, or East Norfolk—an English regiment!
It was with sore hearts, and no little indignation, that we heard of the odious order for this cruel separation from our beloved native regiment—a corps in which we had all been like bairns of the same family in the bosom of our common mother—where our officers had been more like elder brothers to us than superiors—cracking with us, at times, in Gaelic, over all our old Hillant stories—and enjoying, as much as we did, our Hillant songs and Hillant dances—and many of them, having known sundry individuals among us when at home in boyhood, were as familiar and easy with us, at any ordinary bye-hour, as you, gentlemen, are pleased to be with me at this precious moment—and yet the di’el ae bit was our discipline any the waur o’ that, whatever his Grace the gallant Duke of Wellington may say against such a system—and, for aught I know, he may be right enough as to the English, who have not been brought up as we were in the allowance of such liberties,—but, as for us, when the parade hour came, or the time for duty, all such familiarities ceased, and every one filled his own place, like the wheel of a watch, to be turned at the will of him who was above him.—You may easily conceive, then, that banishment, or even death itself, would have been better to us than the being thus torn from such a regiment for the express purpose of being joined to a corps composed of Englishmen, with whom we could neither crack of our homes, nor of our Hillant hills, nor sing Gaelic songs, nor tell auncient stories, nor speak about Ossian, nor hear the pipes play, nor dance the Hillant-fling.—And then, instead of the kind and brotherly correction of our Hillant officers, the very slightest sound of whose word of reproof brought the blush of shame into our cheeks, and was as effectual a punishment to us as if we had been brought to the halberts—think what it was to us to be snubbed by some cross tempered upsetting Sassenach, who could know nothing of our nation’s temper or disposition, and who might perhaps, of a morning, order our backs to be scored, with as little remorse as he would order a beef-steak to be brandered for his breakfast.—Oh it was a terrible change!—Our very speerits were just altogether broken at the very thought of it, and we actually ceased to be the same men.