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

by Unknown

Could any one anticipate that a story of fondly-cherished, but hapless attachment—of one heart blighted for ever, and another fatally broken—was to follow such an introduction?

The first season of Thomson's speculation had come to a close; winter set in; and, with scarcely a single acquaintance among the people in the neighbourhood, and little to employ him, he had to draw for amusement on his own resources alone. He had formed, when a boy, a taste for reading; and might now be found in the long evenings, hanging over a book, beside the fire; by day, he went sauntering among the fields, calculating on the advantages of every agricultural improvement; or attended the fairs and trysts of the country, to speculate on the profits of the drover and cattle-feeder, and make himself acquainted with all the little mysteries of bargain-making.

There holds, early in November, a famous cattle market in the ancient barony of Ferntosh; and Thomson had set out to attend it. The morning was clear and frosty, and he felt buoyant of heart and limb, as passing westwards along the shore, he saw the huge Ben-Nevis towering darker and more loftily over the Frith as he advanced; or turned aside, from time to time, to explore some ancient burying-ground or Danish encampment. There is not a tract of country of equal extent in the three kingdoms, where antiquities of this class lie thicker than in that northern strip of the parish of Resolis which bounds on the Cromarty Frith. The old castle of Craig House, a venerable, time-shattered building, detained him, amid its broken arches, for hours; and he was only reminded of the ultimate object of his journey, when, on surveying the moor from the upper bartizan, he saw that the groups of men and cattle which, since morning, had been mottling in succession the track leading to the fair, were all gone out of sight; and that, far as the eye could reach not a human figure was to be seen. The whole population of the country seemed to have gone to the fair. He quitted the ruins, and, after walking smartly over the heathy ridge to the west, and through the long birch-wood of Kinbeakie, he reached about mid-day the little straggling village at which the market holds.

Thomson had never before attended a thoroughly Highland market; and the scene now presented was wholly new to him. The area it occupied was an irregular opening in the middle of the village, broken by ruts, and dung-hills, and heaps of stone. In front of the little turf-houses on either side, there was a row of booths, constructed mostly of poles and blankets, in which much whisky, and a few of the simpler articles of foreign merchandise, were sold. In the middle of the open space, there were carts and benches, laden with the rude manufactures of the country—Highland brogues and blankets; bowls and platters of beech; a species of horse and cattle harness, formed of the twisted twigs of birch; bundles of split fir, for lath and torches; and hair tackle and nets, for fishermen. Nearly seven thousand persons, male and female, thronged the area bustling and busy, and in continual motion, like the tides and eddies of two rivers at their confluence. There were countrywomen, with their shaggy little horses, laden with cheese and butter; Highlanders from the far hills, with droves of sheep and cattle; shoemakers and weavers, from the neighbouring villages, with bales of webs and wallets of shoes; farmers and fishermen, engaged as it chanced in buying or selling; bevies of bonny lasses, attired in their gayest; ploughmen and mechanics; drovers, butchers, and herd-boys. Whisky flowed abundantly, whether bargain-makers bought or sold, or friends met or parted; and, as the day wore later, the confusion and bustle of the crowd increased. A Highland tryst, even in the present age, rarely passes without witnessing a fray; and the Highlanders, seventy years ago, were of more combative dispositions than they are now; but Thomson, who had neither friend nor enemy among the thousands around him, neither quarreled himself, nor interfered in the quarrels of others. He merely stood and looked on, as a European would among the frays of one of the great fairs of Bagdad or Astracan.

He was passing through the crowd, towards evening, in front of one of the dingier cottages, when a sudden burst of oaths and exclamations rose from within, and the inmates came pouring out pell-mell at the door, to throttle and pummel one another, in inextricable confusion. A grey headed old man, of great apparent strength, who seemed by far the most formidable of the combatants, was engaged in desperate battle with two young fellows from the remote Highlands, while all the others were matched man to man. Thomson, whose residence in England had taught him very different notions of fair play and the ring, was on the eve of forgetting his caution and interfering; but the interference proved unnecessary. Ere he had stepped up to the combatants, the old man, with a vigour little lessened by age, had shaken off both his opponents; and, though they stood glaring at him like tiger cats, neither of them seemed in the least inclined to renew the attack.

"Twa mean pitiful kerns," exclaimed the old man, "to tak odds against ane auld enough to be their faither! an that, too, after burning my loof wi' the het airn! But I hae noited their twa heads thegither! Sic a trick!—to bid me stir up the fire, after they had heated the wrang end o' the poker! Deil but I hae a guid mind to gie them baith mair o't yet!"

Ere he could make good his threat, however, his daughter, a delicate-looking girl of nineteen, came rushing up to him through the crowd. "Father!" she exclaimed, "dearest father! let us away. For my sake, if not your own, let these wild men alone; they always carry knives; and, besides, you will bring all of their clan upon you that are at the tryst, and you will be murdered."

"No muckle danger frae that, Lillias," said the old man. "I hae little fear frae ony ane o' them; an' if they come by twasome, I hae my friends here to. The ill-deedy wratches, to blister a' my loof wi' the poker! But come awa, lassie; your advice is, I daresay, best after a'."

The old man quitted the place with his daughter; and, for the time, Thomson saw no more of him. As the night approached, the Highlanders became more noisy and turbulent; they drank, and disputed, and drove their very bargains at the dirk's point; and, as the salmon-fisher passed through the village for the last time, he could see the waving of bludgeons, and hear the formidable war-cry of one of the clans, with the equally formidable, "Hilloa! help for Cromarty!" echoing on every side of him. He kept coolly on his way, however, without waiting the result; and while yet several miles from the shores of Udoll, daylight had departed, and the moon at full had risen, red and huge in the frosty atmosphere, over the bleak hill of Nigg.

He had reached the burn of Newhall—a small stream, which, after winding for several miles between its double row of alders, and its thickets of gorse and hazel, falls into the upper part of the bay—and was cautiously picking his way, by the light of the moon, along a narrow pathway which winds among the bushes. There are few places in the country of worse repute among believers in the supernatural than the burn of Newhall; and its character seventy years ago was even worse than it is at present. Witch meetings without number have been held on its banks, and dead lights have been seen hovering over its deeper pools. Sportsmen have charged their fowling-pieces with silver when crossing it in the night-time; and I remember an old man who never approached it after dark without fixing a bayonet on the head of his staff. Thomson, however, was but little influenced by the beliefs of the period; and he was passing under the shadow of the alders, with more of this world than of the other in his thoughts, when the silence was suddenly broken by a burst of threats and exclamations, as if several men had fallen a-fighting, scarcely fifty yards away, without any preliminary quarrel; and, with the gruffer noises, there mingled the shrieks and entreaties of a female. Thomson grasped his stick and sprang forward. He reached an opening among the bushes, and saw in the imperfect light the old robust Lowlander of the previous fray attacked by two men armed with bludgeons, and defending himself manfully with his staff. The old man's daughter, who had clung round the knees of one of the ruffians, was already thrown to the ground and trampled under foot. An exclamation of wrath and horror burst from the high-spirited fisherman, as, rushing upon the fellow like a tiger from its jungle, he caught the stroke aimed at him on his stick, and with a sidelong blow on the temple, felled him to the ground. At the instant he fell, a gigantic Highlander leaped from among the bushes, and raising his huge arm, discharged a tremendous blow at the head of the fisherman, who, though taken unawares and at a disadvantage, succeeded, notwithstanding, in transferring it to his left shoulder, where it fell broken and weak. A desperate but brief combat ensued. The ferocity and ponderous strength of the Celt, found their more than match in the cool, vigilant skill, and leopard-like agility of the Lowland Scot; for the latter, after discharging a storm of blows on the head, face, and shoulders of the giant, until he staggered, at length struck his bludgeon out of his hand, and prostrated his whole huge length by dashing his stick end-long against his breast. At nearly the same moment the burly old farmer, who had grappled with his antagonist, had succeeded in flinging him, stunned and senseless, against the gnarled root of an alder; and the three ruffians—for the first had not yet recovered—lay stretched on the grass. Ere they could secure them, however, a shrill whistle was heard echoing from among the alders, scarcely a hundred yards away. "We had better get home," said Thomson to the old man, "ere these fellows are reinforced by their brother ruffians in the wood." And, supporting the maiden with his one hand, and grasping his stick with the other, he plunged among the bushes in the direction of the path, and, gaining it, passed onward, lightly and hurriedly, with his charge; the old man followed more heavily behind; and, in somewhat less than an hour after, they were all seated beside the hearth of the latter, in the farm-house of Meikle Farness.