As was the case with the Roman of old—"Patres ad insignem deformitatem puerum cito necaverunt;" in other words, and in a different tongue, they put their diseased and deformed offspring to death; and more than one-half of those which were permitted to survive were killed in a year or two by harsh usage, cold, and imperfect clothing. Thus their youth which did survive these manifold trials and risks rose up into man and womanhood, proud, hardy, strong, well-seasoned plants, exhibiting much muscular power and symmetry in the male, and occasionally uncommon beauty and figure in the female form.
The "wild gazelle exulting" and bounding on the hills of Judah was not more elastic in its motion, nor penetrating and fascinating in its glance, than were many of the fairer wives and daughters of these hordes of part mendicant, part predatory, and part artist wanderers. Their chief resorts, in ancient times, were to the banks of the Hermitage and Slitterick, near Hawick; to the banks of the Dee, near Kirkcudbright; and, above and beyond all, to the woods of Colliston, and the linns of Balachun, on the Nith, in Dumfries-shire; and it is to this last locality that the following narrative particularly refers.
It was about the middle of the month of October that a packman, or pedlar, with an enormous chest laid transverse on his shoulders, was seen wending his way up the banks of the Nith, from Manchester to Glasgow. He had hoped to have reached Thornhill, then an exceedingly small village, before dusk; but this being his first migration in this direction, he found himself so surrounded and obstructed by the river Nith on the one hand, the linns of Balachun on the other, and an almost impenetrable wood in front, that night came upon him, dark and moonless, whilst still pushing his way through brambles, thorns, and every species of tangling and perplexing underwood. At last, despairing of extricating himself, and terrified, at the same time, by the roaring of waters, howling of wild beasts, and hooting of owls, he extricated his shoulders from the pack-bands, and, selecting as dry and soft an apartment as circumstances permitted, he set himself down on the grassy turf, with a birch branch for his canopy, and the old stump of a tree for his lean. In a little time he was alarmed by the cries of what appeared to be a child in the act of being cruelly murdered. Mungo Clark (for such was the packman's name) rose, and, advancing a few steps in the direction of the now faintly-emitted sounds, found a hare in the act of expiring of strangulation by means of a noose, or girn, formed of strong wire, and placed so as to intercept a little footpath made by the feet of the wild animals of the forest. Mungo was in the act of disengaging the dead creature from its executioner, the noose, when he heard the rustling as if of a lion on the spring, very near him, and all at once he found himself in the iron grip of a customer with whom he had no wish, on this occasion at least, to deal.
"And wha are ye," were the sounds which, in a hollow and harsh tone, first greeted his ears—"and wha are ye, man, wha hae made yer bed this dark night wi' the howlets and the wull-cats—ye wha meddle wi' what naething concerns ye, and burn yer fingers in ither folk's kail-pats? Speak, man, and dinna keep me blethering here, for I hae got ither fish to fry, I trow, than standing here palavering wi' sic as you—come, speak, body, or I'll send ye, pack an' a', sixty yards lower into the bumbling pool o' Balachun Linn."
Mungo Clark was neither soldier nor belted knight, nor was he armed for any deadly conflict; but he was not accustomed to submit without resentment to such rough usage.
"Unhand me, rascal!" was the packman's reply; and making, at the same time, a lateral jerk, he twisted himself fairly out of the assailant's grasp.
A whistle was immediately set up, and in an instant our traveller was surrounded by four strong, ablebodied men, who immediately flashed the light side of a dark lantern full in his face.
"Oh ho!" said one of the newly-assembled assailants; "this is neither the deil, nor the factor, nor the wood-keeper, nor the old boy, Colliston himsel, but just plain Mungo Clark, Widow Clark o' Penpont's son, who has been at Manchester feathering his pack, for the first time, wi' all manner o' varieties; such as Bibles, psalm-books, ribands, shawls, and waistcoat-pieces. Why, by the flesh-pots o' Yetholm—and that's a terrible oath—we'll adopt Brother Clark into our number, and teach him how to snare game, and spear salmon, instead of drivelling away his time and strength under the pressure of a load" (trying to raise the pack) "which would break the back-bone of an elephant."
The matter appeared to Mungo to be settled without any consent of his, asked or obtained; so, knowing somewhat of the character and habits of this wandering and peculiar race, he was compelled to make a virtue of necessity, and, raising his pack again on his shoulders, to descend with them into the very lowest depths of the linns of Balachun. Even at noonday, on the 23d of June, the Pass, as it is called, is dreary, dark, and dreadful; but now, under the cover of night, and with no other guidance than a small lantern, which scarcely made darkness visible, Mungo hesitated ere he would commit himself to the crossing of a fearful gully, and the walking along the face of a rock, or scaur, scarcely eight inches wide, and overhanging a fearful pool, well known by the terrible appellation of "Hell's Caldron." The party at last arrived at a small grassy plot, encircled on the one side by the roaring stream called Clauchry Burn, and on the other by an amphitheatre of steep, high, and overhanging rocks, fringed and darkened in with brushwood and furze, and guarded, at the upper and lower extremities, by the rocks, which, after receding a little to make room for this grassy retreat, closed in again upon the current, and prevented all easy entrance or escape. Soon after Mungo's arrival, he discovered a large kettle, boiling and bubbling, in a crevice of the cliff, suspended from a transverse beam; and beheld around it, now that a parcel of sticks and dry leaves were kindled, a most picturesque and motley group—women, children, men, boys, and lasses, of all hues, aspects, and sizes, were scattered about in profusion; and, as the flame flashed back from the red sandstone of the linn, their faces glared on Mungo with a demoniac expression. It seemed the very picture of Pandemonium; and yet the hearty laugh, the bold oath, and the occasional inquiry, bespoke the inhabitants to be at least one remove from devils. Mungo was desired to rest him and his load on the apron of the rock, and compelled, without a nay-say, to unstrap his pack, and expose his goods, not (seemingly) for sale, but for plunder. This was not the way, assuredly, to turn the penny to advantage, but what can one say, "durum telum necessitas?"—there was no avoiding the spoliation. To be sure, the king, or leader of the gipsy tribe—amounting probably to not less than forty or fifty persons—hinted in his ear that he should not be a loser at last; but, in the meantime, to his no small mortification, he saw his shawls, napkins, stockings, and waistcoat-pieces, making the round of the company without ceremony, and forgetting, like the dove from the ark, to return whence they had fled. The pack having been thus ransacked, and the pot having given audible intimation for some time of its preparatory doings, the king—for such he was—the notorious Donald Faa, with his three sons, Duncan, Cuthbert, and Donnert Davie, together with the king's fair daughter, Helen Yetholm Faa, squatted down on the grass, and without the help of forks, made a hearty meal on hares, chickens, turkeys, geese, and half-a-dozen brace of partridges, which might have rejoiced the heart even of a Dominie Sampson. The other members of the community seemed to acknowledge the deputed authority of a young man of good features, and an athletic and genteel appearance, who went by the name of the Squire. After eating had had its fair share of devoted and unremitted attention, a barrel, of considerable dimensions, began to make its way downward from amidst the recesses of this water-worn and excavated rock; and a tub being hurled sideways into the service, boiling water was procured, and sugar in no ordinary quantity commingled; and, by the help of a ladle and several chopin decanters, the whole mass of Egyptian humanity was stirred up into song, laugh, scream, inebriety, quarrel, battle, stupor, and insensibility. Our friend Mungo had no objections whatever to the feast, or to the means by which it was prolonged. He was afterwards notorious for his drinking habits, insomuch that his observation on this occasion is still repeated in the neighbourhood of the place of his nativity. When questioned by the king respecting the size of his native village, Penpont, his reply was—"It is an exceeding great city." This being questioned, his proof was equally ingenious, and descriptive of his habits—"Why, Nineveh took Jonah three days to travel through it, whereas Penpont generally takes me seven." He referred manifestly to his habit of stopping and drinking at every petty inn and public-house in the village! The jest told exceedingly in his favour. Mungo, however, in spite of his losses and crosses, had a noble night of it, as he afterwards said, with the gipsies, and awakened next morning from his grassy couch to cool his aching temples in the stream, and restore his stomach by a hair of the dog that had bit him. He then observed that the two sons, Duncan and Cuthbert, but not Davie (yclept Donnert, from his peculiarity of mental constitution), were absent, and that their father not only exhibited no surprise respecting his sons' absence, but refused to give any account to his guest of the cause of it. Meanwhile, Mungo had an opportunity of marking the appearances of the various objects around him somewhat more distinctly than he had been able to do on the preceding evening. Blankets, supported by forked poles, old clothes and rags of every description, formed a kind of nightly shelter for the common herd; whilst the royal head reposed in the midst of his male progeny, on the lap of a projecting rock, with a few hare-skins for his pillow, and a corn-sack for his coverlet. His fair daughter's bedchamber was somewhat more removed beyond a projecting corner of the winding linn, and she was protected from observation by the branches of the overhanging trees being drawn closely down over her, and by what had once, in all probability, been a soldier's tent, but which was now miserably rent, and unweather-worthy. It was manifest that this child was the darling and care of a fond father; for she was not only provided in a superior manner, but, by the position of his own sleeping apartment, she was protected from all intercourse with the other members of the tribe. Honest nature! thou art too many, even for a gipsy life; and even here parental affection hallowed and refined what was unseemly and revolting. I say revolting; for, in an obscure corner, and under the shelter of a hazel-bush, lay a figure, emaciated with disease, and probably with dissipation and crime, groaning in agony, and regarded with no more sympathy by the great mass of the tribe than if he had been a strangled hare or a mangled horse. There was something indeed terrible in this sight. True, Helen Faa did all that she was permitted, but that was but little, to alleviate his sufferings; but death was in his eye and in his throat—he made one great effort to rise, grasped a branch convulsively, and ceased to live. Mungo would willingly have retired, even with the losses he had sustained, but he was not permitted—probably because old Donald conjectured that information would be immediately lodged against him, and he would be compelled to relinquish one of his strongest holds in the south of Scotland. Meantime, Mungo had an opportunity of beholding more closely the female portion of this society; and was exceedingly struck—for he was yet a young man and unmarried—with the really handsome faces and well-formed persons which characterised the whole; but far and away above all the rest shone Miss Helen Yetholm Faa—for thus was she designated by the clan—in the pride of health, youth, and black, or rather brown, eyes—those weapons of female onset which are sharper than a two-edged sword, as Mungo used to sing or say afterwards, in a song which he composed on the occasion:—
"They were jet, jet black, and like a hawk,
And wadna let a body be."