HIGHLAND RAMBLES.
THE LEGEND OF SERJEANT JOHN SMITH’S ADVENTURES.
To understand my story the better, gentlemen, you must yemaygine to yourselves a snug well-doing Nairnshire farmer’s onstead,[1] situated in the parish of Auldearn, with a comfortable dwelling-house, of two low stories, accurately put down, so as mathematically to face the twelve o’clock line,—with its crow-steppit gables, small windows, little out-shot low addition behind, tall chimneys, and grey-slated roof—just such a house, to wit, as a man of his condition required in the middle of the last century—with two lines of strange-looking thatched or sod-covered stables, byres, barns, and other out-houses, projecting from its sides at right angles to its front, with divers out-riders, and isolated straggling edifices, of similar architecture and materials, dropped down here and there, as the hand of chance might have sown them—the smoke coming furth from some of their lumm-heads, and partly also from their low door-ways, proving to you, almost against your conviction, that they actually are the dwelling-places of human beings.—Fancy the whole grouped (as Mr. Grant, the long painter lad of Grantown, would have said) with sundry goodly rows of peat and turf stacks, a number of corn ricks wonderfully formed, and bulging and hanging out of the centre of gravity, each in a different direction, like a parcel of drunken Dutch dancers;—in the midst of all a large midden—(query whether the word midden may not be a mere corruption of the words middle-in,—the midden being always in the middle of all rural premises in Scotland? so that unlucky visitors not unfrequently walk up to the middle into the middle of it.)—Then picture to yourselves, behind the biggins, sundry kail-yards, with a few very ancient ash trees, sycamores, and rowan trees, rising from among their bourtree fences, or from the sides of their dilapidated dry-stone dikes. At a little distance below, a bog, with its attendant pools of dark moss-water, which shine amidst the black chaotic mass around them, and look blue by their reflection of the sky—with a half-ruined and roofless killogie, or kiln for drying corn and malt, standing on a sloping bank at no great distance from them. Then people all this with the farmer himself, a stout, hale, healthy-looking man, going bustling about from door to door among his folk, his muck-carts, and his horses, with a hodden-grey coat upon his back, a broad blue bonnet on his head, a hazle staff in his hand, and a colley and one or two rough terriers and greyhounds at his heels, shouting every now and then in Gaelic to his man, John Smith, a tall, handsome, strong-built Highlander, whilst the gudeman’s wife, a very good-looking, round-formed, trigly-dressed Englishwoman, is seen appearing and disappearing from under the wooden porch, over which some attempts have been made to trail a plant or two of rose and honeysuckle, but which attempts have been rendered abortive by the epicurean taste of the browsing animals of the farm—her south country tongue sounding quick and sharp in the ears of Morag, or Mary, a clever, well-made, bare-footed, and short-gowned Highland lass, with pleasing countenance, largish cheek bones, black snooded hair, sparkling eyes, arched eyebrows, and rosy cheeks, busied in washing out her milk cogues, with her coats kilted up to her knees. To which add the herd of cows, oxen, queys, stirks, and calves of all sorts and sizes, with a due mixture of sheep and lambs, and pownys, sprinkled all about, feeding among the whinny pasture-hillocks and baulks, dividing the queer-shaped patches of the surrounding arable land.—Above all, I would have you particularly to remark a vurra large sow-beast, with a numerous litter of pigs, grubbing up the ground about the old killogie, amid the ruins of which her progeny first saw the light. In addition thereto, fancy, in the words of our own Scottish pastoral poet, Allan Ramsay, that
“Hens on the midden, ducks in dubbs are seen,”
and you will be in full possession of the first scene of my tale, as well as acquainted with some of its more important dramatis personæ.
Mr. MacArthur, the farmer, though a Highlander, was a stanch Whig, which made him, as you may well suppose, gentlemen, rather a
“Rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno”
among his brother Celts. He had acquired his principles during his residence in England, where he had fallen in with and married his wife, who was a woman of good condition for her rank of life, and of superior yeddication. She was attached to the Hanoverian royal family, both by principle and interest. Her brother was an officer in the Royal Regiment; and as everything connected with England was dear to her, because it was her country, so every thing connected with the English army was especially dear to her on her brother’s account.
During the year 1745, when the recruiting for the army of the Prince of the Stuarts was going on, many of Mr. MacArthur’s servants, and John Smith in particular, manifested a strong disposition to enlist under his banners. But so powerful were the influence and eloquence of this English lady, that she succeeded in dissuading them, one by one, from following out the bent of their inclinations. This her zealous and active opposition to the Prince’s cause, soon began to attract public attention, in a district where it was so generally favoured. She became a marked object of dislike to the Jacobites, and this all the more so, perhaps, that she was an Englishwoman. Oftener than once it happened, that, whilst they spared some of her neighbours, whose politics were dubious, and therefore obnoxious in their eyes, they plundered her goodman’s farm on her especial account. But these depredations were comparatively trifling, and protected as she was by her husband’s fortitude, she bore these little evils with the magnanimity of a martyr; nay, she even ventured to talk of them with contempt, and there were many people who believed that she actually gloried in them. As Mr. MacArthur was a Highlander, and spoke the Gaelic language fluently, he might perhaps have been able, by modest behaviour, kind treatment, and smooth words, in some degree to have mitigated the prejudice which his countrymen had against his wife as a Pensassenach, or English wife, as she was uniformly called by way of reproach. But husbands cannot always restrain the political enthusiasm of their ladies—and so it was with Mr. MacArthur. With or without his approbation she scrupled not, at times, when a good opportunity offered, to set the Jacobites at defiance, to give them all manner of opprobrious epithets, and, with all a woman’s rashness, but with more than feminine intrepidity, she dared them to do their worst.