Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 04

by Unknown

I have oftentimes thought, what, I dare say, has been thought again and again by thousands before I was born, and will be thought by as many millions after I have ceased both to think and speak—I have thought that, if any one were to give an exact transcript of his feelings and experience, in early life in particular—without any connecting link even, beyond that of time and place—such a written record could not fail to be exceedingly interesting. The novelty of the scene; the uncloyed character of the feelings; the harpy-clutching nature of the imagination; the variety of sources within and without, from which pleasure is derived and is derivable—all these form a mine of delightful insight, which has not, perhaps, ever yet been exhausted—a mine conducting to, and losing itself in, that far-away central darkness which precedes perception, recollection, existence. I remember—and it is an awful remembrance—the death of my grandmother when I was only four years old. There she lies in that bed. Alongside of that sheet, there are my mother and the minister kneeling in prayer. The whisper is conveyed to the minister's ear—"Sir, she has win to rest!" Oh, that sweet word rest!—rest negative, rest positive—rest from, rest in, rest amidst a sea of troubles—rest in an ocean of glorious happiness! "Sir, she has win to rest!" I can never forget the words, nor the look, nor the place, nor the all which then constituted me. The minister pauses in the middle of a sentence, he rises from his knees, and, taking my mother's hand in his, as well as mine in the other, he approaches the bed of death; but, O my soul, what an impression is made upon me! My grandmother—the figure with the short cloak over her shoulders, the check apron, the tobacco-box, and the short cutty-pipe—the speaking, conversing, kind-hearted figure—what is it now? Asleep!—but the eyes are open, and frightfully unmeaning. Asleep!—but the mouth is somewhat awry, and there is an expression unknown, intolerable, terrible, all over the countenance.

And this is death! I cannot stand it. I fly to the door—to the brae—to the hill. I dash my face, shoulders and all, into a bracken bush, and weep, weep, weep myself asleep. When I awake, it is a dream; I am amused with the white table-cloth, the bread and cheese, and wine bottle. I am amused with the plate, salt, and earth placed on the breast of the corpse. I am amused with the coffining; but, most of all—oh, delightful!—with the funeral—the well-dressed people—the numbers, the services of bun, shortbread, wine, and spirits; and above all, with various little bits and drops which fall to my share. I firmly believe I got fuddled on the occasion. Such is man; for men are but children of a larger growth. Now, there is only one event, circumstance, incident, firmly and fairly told—and it is interesting exceedingly: how interesting, then, would all the incidents and events of early life be, were they only narrated with equal faithfulness! So one may say; but, in so saying, they will be misled and mislead. There are few things which I remember so vividly as this. Death! I have seen thee since! Thou hast torn from me mother, brother, friend, and, above and beyond all, thou hast been betwixt these arms, murdering her whom my soul loved—the partner of my life—the mother of my babes—the balm of my soul—the glory, ornament, and boast of my existence; and yet, and yet my grandmother's death is more vividly imprinted on brain and heart than any other event of a similar nature. Proof impressions sell dear! and proof feelings—oh, how deep are the lines, how indelible the engravings! They are cut on steel with a graving tool of adamant. The heart and the brain must be reduced to their elemental dust, ere these impressions can wear out—and yet I was only four years and six months old!

I saw it—ay, and I see it still—a poor innocent lamb. I had kissed it, and hung about its neck on the sunny brae. People said it was not thriving: I would not believe it. It was my companion. I often fed it with milk; put my finger into its little toothless mouth, and made it lap the invigorating and nourishing liquid. It had no parent, no friend, in a manner, but me, and I was only five years old, in petticoats; a very semblance of humanity; a thing to be strode over in his path by mankind of ordinary stature. But there came a blight, a curse, a dreadful change, over my dear and endearing pet. It was torn—ay, dreadfully torn, by some nightly dog. When I first found it, it was scarcely alive, lying bleeding; its white, and soft, and smooth skin dragged in the mud, torn and untouchable. There was a knife applied; but not to cure; it was to kill, to put out of pain. I could not stand it; I went into convulsions, screamed, and almost tore myself to pieces. "My lamb! my wee lambie! my dear, dear sweety!"—but it had passed, and I was alone in my existence. But, oh! it was a fearful lesson which I had learned—a dreadful truth which I had ascertained. Youth, as well as age, is subject to death: dreadful!

There she sits in loveliness—there, there, in the midst of that hazel bush, snug in her retreat, her yellow bill projecting over the brow of her nest: smooth, black, and glittering are her feathers, and her eye is the very balmy south of expression. Yet there is a watchfulness and a timidity in her attitude and movement—she is not at ease, for that eye has caught mine, as they protrude upon her betwixt two separated branches; and, after two or three hesitating stirs, she is out—off—away; but perched on a neighbouring bough, to mark and watch my proceedings. And he, too, is there; he, her companion and helpmate; he who was singing, or rather whistling, so loud on that tall and overtopping birch; he who was making the setting sunlight glad with his music—who was, doubtless, chanting of courtship, and love, and union, and progeny. Yes! he has left his branch and his sun; he has dropped down from his elevation, to inquire into the cause of that sudden chuckle, by which his lady bird has alarmed him. There are four eyes upon me now, and all my proceedings are registered in two beating bosoms. But the nest is full—it is full of life—of young life—of the gorling in its hair, and incipient tail—of yellow gaping bills, all thrust upwards, and crying, as loud as attitude and cheep can do, "Give, give, give!" Surely Solomon had never seen a blackbird's nest with young, else he had given it a place amongst his "gives!" This was my first nest. It was discovered when I was only five years old; it was visited every day and every hour; the young ones grew apace; they feathered into blackness; they hopped from their abode; they flew, or were essaying to do so, when—O world! world! why, why, is it so with thee!—destruction came in a night, and the feathers of my young ones were strewed around their once happy and crowded abode. There had been other eyes upon them than mine. Yes! eyes to which the night is as noonday—vile, green, elongated eyes, and sharp, penetrating, and unsparing teeth, and claws, stretched, crooked, and clutching; and, in short, the cat had devoured the whole family!—not one was left to the distracted parents. I shall never, never forget their fluttering movements, their chirpings, their restlessness, their ruffled feathers, and all but human speech. There was revenge in my young bosom—mad and terrible revenge. I snatched up the murderer—all unconscious as she was of her fault. I ran with her, like a fury, to a deep pool in the burn. I dashed her headlong into the waters—from which, of course, she readily escaped, and, eyeing me with a look of extreme surprise from the further bank, immediately vanished into the house. Though we were great friends before this event—and I would gladly have renewed our intercourse afterwards, when my passion had subsided—yet Pussy never forgave me, at least I know that she never trusted me, for I could never catch her again.

That's the pool—the very bumbling pool, where we bathed, and stood beneath the cascade, for a whole summer's day. There were more than one or two either—there were many of us; for we collected as the day advanced, and still those who were retreating, upon encountering those who were advancing, would turn with them again, and renew their immersions. It was summer—and such summer as youth (for I was only six) alone can experience—it was one long blaze of noontide radiance. The sun stationary, as in the valley of Jehosophat; the trees, green, leafy, shady, rejoicing; the very cattle dancing in upon the cooling element; and the grasshopper still dumb. The heat was intense, yet not overpowering; for we were naked—naked as were Adam and Eve prior to sin and shame—naked as is Apollo Belvidere, or the Venus de Medicis. We were Nature's children, and she was kind to us; she gave us air that was balm; sunbeams that wooed us from the pool; and water again that enticed us from the open air! What a day it was of fun and frolic, and splash, and squatter, and confusion! Now jumping from the brow into the deep; now standing beneath the Grey Mare's Tail, the flashing cascade; now laving—like Diana on Actæon—the water from the pool on each other's limbs and faces; now circling along the green bank, in sportive chase and mimic fray, and again couching neck deep in the pool. But the awful dinnle is on the breeze; the black south hath advanced rapidly upon meridian day; the white and swollen clouds have boiled up into spongy foam; and there runs a light blue vapour over the inky cloud beneath. Hist!—whisht!—it's thunner! and, ere many minutes have escaped, we are each quaking every limb at our own firesides.

Many recent winters have made me cry, What has become of winter? I wished Government would fit out an expedition to go in quest of him. He must have been couching somewhere, the funny old rogue, behind the Pole; he must have been coquetting with the beauties of Greenland or Nova Zembla. He has, last season, condescended to give us a glimpse of his icy beard and hoary temples. Oh, I like the old fellow dearly!—but it is the old fellow only. As to him of modern times, I know not what to make of him—a blustering, blubbering, braggadocio; making darkness his pavilion, for no other purpose than to throw pailfuls of water on the heads of women and children; letting out his colds and influenzas from his Baltic bags, and terrifying our citizens with "auld wives," broken slates, and shivered tiles. But my winter of 1794—what a delightful companion he was! He did his work genteelly; his drift was a matter of a few hours; but they were hours of vigorous and terrible exertion. Some ten score of sheep, and some twenty shepherds, perished within a limited range, in one wild and outrageous night. It was, indeed, sublime—even to me, a youth of eight years of age, it was fearfully sublime. Can anything be more beautiful than falling and newly-fallen snow. There you see it above, and to a great height, shaping into varied and convolving forms. It nears, it nears, it nears, and lights in your little hand, a feathery diamond, a crystallized vapour, an evanescent loveliness! But the tempest has sounded an assail, and the broadened flakes are comminuted into blinding drift—the earth beneath blows up to heaven, whilst the heaven thunders its vengeance upon the earth. The restless snow whirls, eddies, rises, disperses, accumulates. Man cannot breathe in the thick and toiling atmosphere. The wreaths swell into rounded and polished forms, and, on a sudden, disappear. The air has cleared, has stilled, and the sharp and consolidating frost has commenced. What a sea of celestial brightness! The earth wrapped in an alabaster mantle, the folds of which are the folds of beauty and enchantment. Days of glory, and nights of splendour. The moon, in her own blue heaven, contracted to a small circumference of clear, gaseous light; the hills, the hollows, the valleys, the muirs, the mosses, the woodlands, the rocky eminences, the houses, the churchyards, the gardens, the whole of external nature beneath her, giving up again into the biting and twinkling air an arrowy radiance of far-spread light. Here and there the course of a mountain torrent, or of a winding river, marked with a jagged and broken line of black. The bay of the house-dog heard far off—the sound of the curlers' sport, composed of a mixture of moanings—the "sweep," the "guard," the "stroke," the homebred and hearty shout and guffaw—the Babel mixture of noises, coming softened and attuned from the distant pond. It is the "how-dum-dead" of winter. Christmas has passed, with its happiness wished and enjoyed—it is the last night of the year; long and fondly-expected Hogmanay! We are abroad, amongst the farm-houses and cottars' huts—we pass nothing that emits smoke. Our disguises are fearful, even to ourselves, as we encounter each other unexpectedly at corners. Cakes, cheese, and all manner of eatables are ours, even to profusion. And who would not endure much of life, to have such exquisite fan renewed!

But my first trout!—killed—fairly landed out of the water—dancing about in all its speckled beauty on the green bank: this was indeed an event—this was an achievement of no ordinary interest. Fishing! to thee I owe more of exquisite enjoyment than to any other amusement whatever. I am a mountain child—born, and nursed, and trotted about from my cradle on the winding banks of a bonny burn, through whose waters there looked up eyes, and there waved fins and tails. I have taken, again and again, in after life, the wings of the morning, and have made my dwelling with the stunted thorn, the corbie nest, the croaking raven, the willie-wagtail, and the plover, and the snipe, and the lapwing. I have seen mist—glorious mist!—in all its fantastic shapes, and openings and closings, from the dense crawling blanket of wet to the bright, sun-penetrated, rent, and dispersing tatterment of haze. I have studied all manner of cloud, from the swollen, puffed up, and rolling castellation, to the smooth, level, and widespread overshadowing. The breezes have been my companions all along. I could scan their merits and demerits with a fisher's eye, from the rough and sudden puff, urging the pool into ridges of ripple, to the steady, soft, and balmy breath that merely brought the surface into a slight commotion. Burns, too, I have studied, and streams, and gullets, and weils, and clay-brows, and bumbling pools. I have fished in the Caple with Willie Herdman. (See Blackwood, volume sixth.) I have fished in the Turrit with Stoddart. (See his admirable book on Angling.) But the true happiness of a fisher is solitude. Oh, for a fine morning in April, fresh, breezy, and dark!—a mountain glen, through which the Dar or the Brawn threads its mazy descent; the bottom clear, and purified by a recent flood; the waters not yet completely subsided—something betwixt clear and muddy—a light blue, and a still lighter brown.

Not a shepherd, nor a sheep, nor a living creature within sight—nothing but the sound of the passing stream, and the plash of the hooked and landing trout. A whole immensity of unexhausted stream unfurled before me; the day yet in its nonage; my pockets stuffed with stomach store; my mind at ease; my tongue ever and anon repeating, audibly—"Now for it, this will do, there he has it, this way, sir, this way; nay, no tricks upon travellers—out, out you must come—so, so, my pretty fellow, take it gently, take it gently!" But I am forgetting my first trout in the thousand and tens of thousands which have succeeded it. I had a knife—I know not how I got it; perhaps I bought it at a Thornhill fair, with a sixpence which the guidman of Auchincairn gave me as my fairing, or perhaps—but no matter; as Wordsworth would say, "I had a knife!" and this knife was my humble servant in all manner of duties; it was, in fact, my slave; it would cut bourtree, and fashion scout guns; it would make saugh whistles; it would fashion bows and arrows; it would pare cheese, and open hazel nuts; it was more generally useful than Hudibras' sword—and I felt its value. In fact, what was I without my knife? A soldier without his gun, a fiddler without his fiddle, a tailor without his shears. And yet this very knife, dear and useful as it was to me, I parted with—I gave it away, I fairly bartered it for a bait-hook with a horse-hair line attached to it. But then I had seen, and seen it for the first time, a trout caught with this very hook and line. Having a hook and line, I cut myself, from an adjoining wood, a rowan-tree fishing-rod, which might serve a double purpose, protecting me from the witches, and aiding me in catching trout. Away I went, "owre muirs and mosses mony o'," to the glorious Caple, of which I had heard much. I baited my hook with some difficulty; for worms, whatever boys may be, are not fond of the sport. I stood alongside of the deep black pool. I saw the deception alight in the water, and heard the plump; it sank, and sank, by a certain law, which philosophers have named gravitation; it became first pale-white, then yellow, then almost red, as it sank away into the dark profundity of mossy water. It lay still and motionless for a few instants. At last it moved; ye powers! it cuts the water like an edged instrument—it pulls—pulls strongly. The top of the rod touches the surface of the pool—something must be done—I am all trepidation. But, by mere strength of pulling and of tackle, a large yellow-wamed, black-backed fellow lies panting on the sand bank at the foot of the pool.

"And its hame, hame, hame,
Fain wad I be;
And it's hame, hame, hame,
To my ain mammie!"

I ran home with all possible rapidity; and displayed, on a very large pewter plate, my first trout, to my kind and affectionate parent. My happiness was completed.