"Whe-e-e-ou!" ejaculated the curate, with a long-drawn expiration, when he had read this very pleasant document—"I smell a rat. 'Od, but it was stupid o' me no to think o't afore. I'm sure I micht hae kent him; for I've seen him twa or three times; but then he was in a green frock-coat o' the finest claith; a velvet bonnet, wi' ruby and feathers, was on his head; a chain o' gowd, worth five hundred merks, if it was worth a bodle, round his neck, and a gaucy sword by his side. Still I ought to hae kent him, for a' his clouted shoon and darned hose. But the cat's oot o' the pock; and, my word, a bonny beast it is!"
What does the good curate's hints and allegorical allusions mean? inquires the reader. Why, it means that the worthy man suspected—and we have no doubt his suspicion was perfectly correct—that the person in the darned hose was no other than James V., King of Scotland.
GLEANINGS OF THE COVENANT.
I.—THE GRANDMOTHER'S NARRATIVE.
Notwithstanding the researches of Woodrow, and the more recent enlargement and excellent annotations of Dr Burns, we are quite conscious that a volume somewhat interesting might still be collected of additional and traditional atrocities, of which no written record remains, nor other, save the recollections of recollections—in other words, the remembrance which we and a few others possess of the narratives of our grandmothers whilst we were yet children. Our own maternal grandmother died at ninety-six—we ourselves are now in our sixtieth year; so that, deducting eight or nine years for our age previous to our taking an interest in such concerns, we have our grandmother existing before (say) 1695, which, deducting eight years of infancy, brings us to 1703, which is only twenty-five years posterior to the conclusion, and fifty-three to the commencement, of the atrocious twenty-eight years' persecution. It is then manifest, from this arithmetical computation, that our own grandmother, on whose truthful intentions we can rely with confidence, came into contact and conversation with those who were contemporaneous with the events and persons she referred to. This surely is no very violent or unsafe stretch of tradition; but, even though it were much more so, we would be disposed to yield to it somewhat more consideration than is generally done. Now-a-days, the pen and the press are almost the only recorders of passing and past events and circumstances; but, in the age to which we refer, this was not the case. The children of Israel were bound by a holy and inviolate law to record verbally to their children, and those again to theirs, what the Lord had done for their forefathers. And on the same principle, and under the same comparative absence of written records, did our grandmothers receive from their immediate predecessors the revolting disclosures which they have handed down to us. There are here but two links in the chain—those, namely, which connect our grandmothers with their parents, and with us; but, had there been twenty—nay, fifty or a hundred links—we should not, on account of the high antiquity of such a tradition, have been disposed to dismiss it as altogether groundless, and not implying even the slightest authority. In illustration of this, we may adduce the facts, sufficiently well known and authenticated, which were disclosed about thirty years ago at Burgh-head, the ultimate extent of Roman conquest in Scotland. In that promontory, now inhabited by a scattered population, there remained, from age to age, a tradition that a Roman well had existed on the particular spot. There being a lack of water in the place, the inhabitants combined to have the locality opened, with the view of disclosing so useful and essential an element. They dug twenty and even thirty feet downwards, but made no disclosures; and were on the point of giving up the search, when the father of the late Duke of Gordon happening to pass, and to ascertain their object and their want of success, very generously supplied them with the means of making a further excavation. At last, to their no small surprise and delight, they came to a nicely built and rounded well-mouth, with a stair downwards to the bottom, and the bronze statues of Mercury and other heathen gods stuck into niches. This well remains to this hour, and may be visited by the traveller along the Moray Frith, as an indisputable and indelible evidence of the value of traditions in ages when almost no other means of record existed. True, such traditions are deeply coloured and tinged by the prejudices of the age in which they originated—allowance as to exaggeration must be made for excited feelings and outraged opinions; but still the groundwork may in general be depended on. The old, and perhaps vulgar, proverb, "There is aye some water where the stirkie drowns!" applies in this case with a conclusive force; and we may rely upon it, even from the collateral and written evidence of parties and partisans on all sides, that nothing which mere tradition has hinted at can exceed, in characters of genuine cruelty and downright bloodshed and murder, those historical statements which have reached us.
True, a writer lately deceased, whose memory is immortal, and whose writings will survive whilst national feelings and the vitality of high talent remain, has given us a somewhat chivalrous and attractive character of the most distinguished actor in the atrocities of the fearful time; and it is to be more than lamented—to be deplored—that an early and habitual, and ultimately constitutional, leaning to aristocratic and chivalrous views should have induced such a writer as Sir Walter Scott to draw such an interesting picture of the really infamous "Clavers"—of him who, for a piece of morning pastime, could, with his own pistol, blow out a husband's brains, without law or trial, and that in the presence of his wife and infant family! But the great body of historians are on the side of truth and tradition; and the recently-published, and still publishing, Life by Lockhart has unfolded, and will yet unfold, those leanings of the great novelist which have occasioned so lamentable a deviation from real history.
Under the shelter, then, of these preliminary observations, we proceed with such notices and statements as we have heard repeated, or seen in manuscripts which have (as we believe) never been printed. And we shall give these notices and statements as they were given to us—surrounded by a halo of superstition, and involving much belief which is now, happily or unhappily—we do not say which—completely exploded.
Oh, my bairn! these were fearful times!—(Grandmother loquitur)—ay, and atweel war they. My own mother has again and again made my hair stand on end, and my heart-blood run cold at her relations.