INTERIOR OF A CROFTER'S COTTAGE.
We now turn to another scene. About five-and-twenty years ago, on the top of a bare hill in Fyvie, Aberdeenshire, stood a cottage, tenanted by a crofter named Sandieson, with his wife and family. Though at a comparatively high elevation, the land around was all cultivated, but, arid and stony as the soil was, it seemed as if cultivation were one long struggle against Nature, rather than aided by it. Life was hard; still, contentment sweetened the peasant's lot, and they got on pretty well till sickness during three successive winters told hardly on his means. Father, mother, and children all worked; still the wolf was at the door. Bed clothing was scant, and money to buy still scantier. A mother's love and care quickened thought.
The woman, as she tells her story, bethought herself what she could do for bedding for a covering against cold. Scraps she had, bits of old clothes and stockings, and tacked them together, fold upon fold, to attain a certain thickness; then, buying a pennyworth of log-wood, and with it dyeing what had once been a tartan shawl, but which had long lost all its colour, she spread it over her scraps for a cover. But, alas! the holes were but too apparent.
Necessity again quickened invention. She selected some of the better pieces of the old garments, cut them into the shape of leaves and birds, and laid them on the holes, adding one or two more for uniformity, and then, with a darning needle and "fingering" wool, she veined the leaves and made effective marking on the birds.
Such was her first attempt at fancy work. An admiring neighbour asked her to do a similar quilt for her, offering some scraps of new material. Another commission followed, this time with the offer of green wool for leaves. But one cold, hard green did not please the worker, now growing daily more experienced and critical, so a visit was made to the little country town a few miles distant, in search of greater variety in greens and browns, the appreciation of Nature's varied tints becoming daily stronger and clearer.
About this time, a lady to whom the woman had taken some work, on sight gave her a quantity of old floss silks. The possession of these was a new power to her, and from that time she rapidly acquired a skill in shading leaves and flowers with a beauty which it is impossible to describe.
A farmer from a little distance, having heard of her work, went to see her. After looking at what, to him, seemed so marvellous, he turned to her, and said, "Well, well, it's wonderful! But you will have to do no more rough work to keep your hands fit for this; and how will that do with the croft?"
"Indeed, sir," was her reply, "it would never do. But I assure you this is not my only work, for I have just finished building a hundred and thirty-four yards of a stone dyke with my own hands. My husband had work elsewhere, which he could not afford to miss. The cattle were straying where they should not, so I have just built it myself, the children helping me by handing up the smaller stones."