Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 08

by Unknown

When I entered, I observed no one in the room. The patient's seat by the fire was empty. A strange noise met my ear—"Cluck, cluck, cluck!" which the woman requested me to pause and listen to. It seemed to me a human imitation of the sounds of the feathered mother of a young brood in our barn-yards. I was astonished, and felt my curiosity rise as high as my conductress might desire. She proceeded to a dark corner of the room, where I saw a large tub half-filled with straw, with the poor victim sitting in it, in such a position that her head and shoulders only could be observed. I now ascertained that the strange sounds came from the occupant of the old seat of Diogenes; yet still my understanding was at fault. I stood and gazed at the spectacle before me, while my conductress seemed to enjoy my perplexity, and I heard the repressed laughter of those in the passage who had come near enough to listen to our proceedings.

"That is a strange seat, Margaret," said I. "What means this?"

I was answered by a repetition of the same extraordinary sounds—"Cluck, cluck, cluck!"

I looked gravely at the neighbour for a serious explanation. I could see no humour in the melancholy indications of drivelling madness, and added a stern expression to the gravity with which I intended to subdue a cruel and ill-timed levity. The woman felt awed and abashed, but it was only for a moment; she stooped down, and, putting her hands among the straw upon which the invalid sat, pulled out a couple of eggs. A louder repetition of the sounds, "cluck, cluck," followed, as if the incubator felt an instinctive parental anger at the temerity of the spoiler of her inchoate progeny. To satisfy her humour, the woman replaced the eggs, and the cluck ceased.[24]

"There are two dozen of these beneath her," said the woman. "Lord ——'s gamekeeper brought them in to her four days ago, to serve for food to her. I saw her go out for the straw, and she borrowed the tub from me. She built her nest on the night afterwards, and she commenced sitting there immediately when it was completed, so that she has already sat three days and nights. We heard the 'cluck' through the partition; and, upon coming in, found her as you now see her."

"Has she got any food?" said I, with a still graver aspect, as I saw my informant watching for a smile to repay her for her extraordinary information, and keep her in countenance.

"Nothing but some peas of barley," replied the woman, with something of seriousness assumed with great difficulty. "See here."

And she pointed to a small cup placed by the side of the tub, in which some of the grain mentioned was contained, and alongside of it a small vessel of water.

The truth was now fully apparent. A false conviction of as extraordinary a nature as I had yet witnessed had taken entire possession of the invalid's mind. It was not difficult, on ordinary and vulgar data, to account for the peculiar turn of the malady in the case of this woman, because all her life had been spent among fowls; yet I must bear my professional testimony to the fact, that, among the many instances of false conceptions of identity I had previously witnessed, and have since seen, I never knew a case where the peculiarity of the conviction had any relation whatever to the prior habits of mind or body of the invalid. The deranging power, whatever it is, has often no respect to pre-existing habits or associations; but, on the contrary, seems to delight in a capricious triumph over all the ordinary acts of the mind, and delights to introduce an imagined form and character as widely opposed as the antipodes to the prior conceptions of the unfortunate individual. The case before me was, therefore, in this respect interesting; for, as to the grotesque conditions of the fancied change, though calculated to produce an extraordinary effect on vulgar minds, I looked upon them, philosophically, as only another instance of the endless variety of melancholy changes to which our frail natures are exposed.

I proceeded to ask my informant if any means had been taken to draw the invalid from her position, and got for answer, that several of the neighbours had come in and endeavoured to prevail upon her to renounce her charge; but that, having failed in their efforts, they had on several occasions removed her by force, and in opposition to strenuous struggles, and extraordinary sounds of mixed anger and pitiful sorrow. No sooner, however, were their backs turned, than she flew to her seat, and manifested the greatest satisfaction by peculiar noises, at being again reinstated in her charge of her inchoate brood, which she was terrified would, by growing cold, be deprived of the principle of vitality she was busy in communicating to them. I tested, by my own efforts, her instinctive force of affection, by taking her by the arms and endeavouring to remove her; but she sent up such a pitiful cry, mixed with her imitative cluck and cackle, that I let her go, as much through a sudden impulse of fear as from an inability to lift her by the power of my arms. I then put down my hand to remove some of the eggs, but was in an instant attacked as fiercely as if the invalid had in reality been the creature she fancied herself to be; and the manner of the attack was so true to the habits of the feathered mother, that, even in the midst of my philosophy and concern for the unhappy being, I trembled for my professional gravity. She had fancied that the protuberance on her face was a beak, and used that organ with such effect, that, on missing my hand, she darted the fancied organ of defence on the corner of the tub, and produced a stream of blood, which I required to quench by the vulgar but effectual mode of placing down her back the key of the door. During all the struggle, the "cluck, cluck" was kept up, accompanied with a shaking of her clothes, as if she had been raising the feathers to evidence farther for her instinctive anger.