Illustrations of the Author of Waverley

Originally Eng^d. by A. Wilson Edin^r.

“EO MAGIS PRÆFULGIT, QUOD NON VIDETUR”

Tacit

PUBLISHED BY JOHN ANDERSON JUN^R. 55, NORTH BRIDGE STREET &c. EDIN^R.
AND SUBSEQUENTLY BY W. & R. CHAMBERS, 339, HIGH STREET, EDIN^R.

Illustrations
OF THE
AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY
BEING
Notices and Anecdotes
OF
Real Characters, Scenes, and Incidents
Supposed to be described in his Works.

BY
ROBERT CHAMBERS.

Third Edition.

W. & R. CHAMBERS,
LONDON AND EDINBURGH.

1884.

YE LEADENHALLE PRESSE, LONDON, E.C.
T. 3253.

Preface by Author.

This Work first appeared in November, 1822. It was a juvenile production, and, of course, deformed with all the faults and extravagances of nineteen. The Public, however, received it with some degree of encouragement; and, a second edition being now called for, I have gladly seized the opportunity of repairing early errors, by greater correctness of language and more copious information. The present volume will be found to contain thrice the quantity of letterpress, and a much greater variety of interesting details.

R. C.

Edinburgh, India Place, 8th March, 1825.

Addendum

BY AUTHOR’S SON.

In the belief that there are many admirers of Sir Walter Scott who would gladly welcome the reappearance of a work which many years ago was, in connection with his novels, eagerly perused, the “Illustrations of the Author of Waverley” have been again printed.

R. C. (Secundus).

Edinburgh, 339, High Street, 1884.

Contents.

Illustrations
OF
The Author of Waverley.

CHAPTER I.

Waverley.

HIGHLAND FAITH AND HONOUR.

(The Plot of the Novel.)

hen the Highlanders, upon the morning of the battle of Prestonpans, made their memorable attack, a battery of four field-pieces was stormed and carried by the Camerons and Stuarts of Appine. The late Alexander Stuart of Invernahyle was one of the foremost in the charge, and observed an officer of the king’s forces, who, scorning to join the flight of all around, remained with his sword in his hand, as if determined to the very last to defend the post assigned to him. The Highland gentleman commanded him to surrender, and received for reply a thrust, which he caught in his target. The officer was now defenceless, and the battle-axe of a gigantic Highlander (the miller of Invernahyle’s mill), was uplifted to dash his brains out, when Mr. Stuart with difficulty prevailed on him to surrender. He took charge of his enemy’s property, protected his person, and finally obtained him liberty on parole. The officer proved to be Colonel Allan Whiteford, of Ballochmyle, in Ayrshire, a man of high character and influence, and warmly attached to the House of Hanover; yet such was the confidence existing between these two honourable men, though of different political principles, that, while the civil war was raging, and straggling officers from the Highland army were executed without mercy, Invernahyle hesitated not to pay his late captive a visit, as he went back to the Highlands to raise fresh recruits, when he spent a few days among Colonel Whiteford’s whig friends as pleasantly and good humouredly as if all had been at peace around him.

“After the battle of Culloden, it was Colonel Whiteford’s turn to strain every nerve to obtain Mr. Stuart’s pardon. He went to the Lord Justice Clerk, to the Lord Advocate, and to all the officers of State, and each application was answered by the production of a list, in which the name of Invernahyle appeared ‘marked with the sign of the beast!’ At length Colonel Whiteford went to the Duke of Cumberland. From him also he received a positive refusal. He then limited his request, for the present, to a protection for Stuart’s house, wife, children, and property. This was also refused by the Duke; on which Colonel Whiteford, taking his commission from his bosom, laid it on the table before his Royal Highness, and asked permission to retire from the service of a king who did not know how to spare a vanquished enemy. The Duke was struck, and even affected. He bade the Colonel take up his commission, and granted the protection he requested with so much earnestness. It was issued just in time to save the house, corn, and cattle at Invernahyle from the troops who were engaged in laying waste what it was the fashion to call ‘the country of the enemy.’ A small encampment was formed on Invernahyle’s property, which they spared while plundering the country around, and searching in every direction for the leaders of the insurrection, and for Stuart in particular. He was much nearer them than they suspected; for, hidden in a cave, (like the Baron of Bradwardine,) he lay for many days within hearing of the sentinels as they called their watchword. His food was brought him by one of his daughters, a child of eight years old, whom Mrs. Stuart was under the necessity of trusting with this commission, for her own motions and those of all her inmates were closely watched. With ingenuity beyond her years, the child used to stray out among the soldiers, who were rather kind to her, and watch the moment when she was unobserved, to steal into the thicket, when she deposited whatever small store of provisions she had in charge, at some marked spot, where her father might find it. Invernahyle supported life for several weeks by means of these precarious supplies; and, as he had been wounded in the battle of Culloden, the hardships which he endured were aggravated by great bodily pain. After the soldiers had removed their quarters, he had another remarkable escape. As he now ventured to the house at night, and left it in the morning, he was espied during the dawn by a party who pursued and fired at him. The fugitive being fortunate enough to escape their search, they returned to the house, and charged the family with harbouring one of the proscribed traitors. An old woman had presence of mind enough to maintain that the man they had seen was the shepherd. “Why did he not stop when we called to him?” said the soldiers. “He is as deaf, poor man, as a peat-stack,” answered the ready-witted domestic. “Let him be sent for directly.” The real shepherd accordingly was brought from the hill, and, as there was time to tutor him by the way, he was as deaf, when he made his appearance, as was necessary to maintain his character. Stuart of Invernahyle was afterwards pardoned under the act of indemnity.

“He was a noble specimen of the old Highlander, far-descended, gallant, courteous, and brave even to chivalry. He had been out in 1715 and 1745; was an active partaker in all the stirring scenes which passed in the Highlands between these memorable eras; and was remarkable, among other exploits, for having fought with and vanquished Rob Roy, in a trial of skill at the broadsword, a short time previous to the death of that celebrated hero, at the clachan of Balquhidder. He chanced to be in Edinburgh when Paul Jones came into the Firth of Forth, and, though then an old man, appeared in arms, and was heard to exult (to use his own words) in the prospect of ‘drawing his claymore once more before he died.’”

This pleasing anecdote is given in a critique upon the first series of the “Tales of my Landlord,” (supposed to be written by Sir Walter Scott,) in the thirty-second number of the Quarterly Review; and we heartily concur with the learned Baronet in thinking it the groundwork of “Waverley.”

Yet it is somewhat remarkable that the name of a Major Talbot, as well as that of Lieutenant-Colonel Whiteford, occurs in the list of prisoners published by the Highland army, after their victory at Prestonpans.

The late Alexander Campbell, author of the “History of Poetry in Scotland,” and editor of “Albyn’s Anthology,” a gentleman whose knowledge of his native Highlands was at once extensive and accurate, used to assert that it was the younger sister, not the daughter of Mr. Stuart, that brought his food. He had heard an account of the affecting circumstance from her own mouth.

Stuart of Invernahyle marked his attachment to the cause of the exiled Prince by the composition of a beautiful song, which is to be found in Mr. Hogg’s “Jacobite Relics.”

BRADWARDINE.

Of the genus of Bradwardine, Colonel Stewart gives the following account:—

“The armies of Sweden, Holland, and France gave employment to the younger sons of the Highland gentry, who were educated abroad in the seminaries of Leyden and Douay. Many of these returned with a competent knowledge of modern languages added to their classical education—often speaking Latin with more purity than Scotch, which, in many cases, they only learned after leaving their native homes. The race of Bradwardine is not long extinct. In my own time, several veterans might have sat for the picture of that most honourable, brave, learned, and kind-hearted personage. These gentlemen returned from the continent full of warlike Latin, French phrases, and inveterate broad Scotch. One of the last of these, Colonel Alexander Robertson, of the Scotch Brigade, uncle of the present” (now late) “Strowan, I well remember.

“Another of the Bradwardine character is still remembered by the Highlanders with a degree of admiration bordering on enthusiasm. This was John Stewart, of the family of Kincardine, in Strathspey, known to the country by the name of John Roy Stewart, an accomplished gentleman, an elegant scholar, a good poet, and a brave officer. He composed with equal facility in English, Latin and Gaelic; but it was chiefly by his songs, epigrams, and descriptive pieces, that he attracted the admiration of his countrymen. He was an active leader in the rebellion of 1745, and, during his ‘hiding’ of many months, he had more leisure to indulge his taste for poetry and song. The country traditions are full of his descriptive pieces, eulogies and laments on friends, or in allusion to the events of that unfortunate period. He had been long in the service of France and Portugal, and had risen to the rank of colonel. He was in Scotland in 1745, and commanded a regiment, composed of the tenants of his family and a considerable number of the followers of Sir George Stewart of Grandtully, who had been placed under him. With these, amounting in all to 400 men, he joined the rebel army, and proved one of its ablest partizans.”—Sketches, vol. ii. notes.

Diligent research, however, has enabled us to point out a much nearer original.

The person who held the situation in the rebel army which in the novel has been assigned to the Baron, namely, the command of their few cavalry, was Alexander, fourth Lord Forbes of Pitsligo. This nobleman, who possessed but a moderate fortune, was so much esteemed for his excellent qualities of temper and understanding, that when, after the battle of Prestonpans, he declared his purpose of joining Prince Charles, most of the gentlemen in that part of the country put themselves under his command, thinking they could not follow a better or safer example than the conduct of Lord Pitsligo. He thus commanded a body of 150 well mounted gentlemen in the subsequent scenes of the rebellion, at the fatal close of which he escaped to France, and was attainted, in the following month, by the title of Lord Pitsligo, his estate and honours being of course forfeited to the crown. After this he claimed the estate before the Court of Session, on account of the misnomer, his title being properly Lord Forbes of Pitsligo; and that Court gave judgment in his favour, 16th November, 1749; but on an appeal it was reversed by the House of Lords, 1750.

Like Bradwardine, Lord Pitsligo had been out in 1715 also—though it does not appear that much notice was then taken of his defection. His opposition to the whiggery of modern times had been equally constant, and of long standing; for he was one of those staunch and honourable though mistaken patriots of the last Scottish Parliament, who had opposed the Union.

He could also boast of a smattering of the belles lettres; and probably plumed himself upon his literary attainments as much as the grim old pedant, his counterpart. In 1734, he published “Essays, Moral and Philosophical;” and something of the same sort appeared in 1761, when he seems to have been in the near prospect of a conclusion to his earthly trials. He died at Auchiries, in Aberdeenshire, December 21, 1762, at an advanced age, after having possessed his title, counting from his accession in 1691, during a period of seventy-one years.

It is not unworthy of remark, that the supporters of Lord Pitsligo’s arms were two bears proper; which circumstance, connected with the great favour in which these animals were held by Bradwardine, brings the relation between the real and the fictitious personages very close.

SCOTTISH FOOLS.

(Davie Gellatley.)

It appears that licensed fools were customary appendages of the Scottish Court at a very early period; and the time is not long gone by when such beings were retained at the table and in the halls of various respectable noblemen. The absence of more refined amusements made them become as necessary a part of a baronial establishment as horses and hounds still continue to be in the mansions of many modern squires. When as yet the pursuits of literature were not, and ere gaming had become vicious enough to be fashionable, the rude humours of the jester could entertain a pick-tooth hour; and, what walnuts now are to wine, and enlightened conversation to the amusements of the drawing-room, the boisterous bacchanalianism of our ancestors once found in coarse buffooneries and the alternate darkness and radiance of a foolish mind.

In later times, when all taste for such diversion had gone out, the madman of the country-side frequently found shelter and patronage under the roofs of neighbouring gentlemen; but though the good things of Daft Jamie and Daft Wattie were regularly listened to by the laird, and preserved in the traditions of the household, the encouragement given to them was rather extended out of a benevolent compassion for their helpless condition than from any desire to make their talents a source of entertainment. Such was the motive of Bradwardine in protecting Davie Gellatley; and such was also that of the late Earl of Wemyss, in the support which he gave to the renowned Willie Howison, a personage of whom many anecdotes are yet told in Haddingtonshire, and whose services at Gosford House were not unlike those of Davie at Tully-Veolan.

Till within the last few years, these unfortunate persons were more frequently to be found in their respective villages throughout the country than now; and it is not long since even Edinburgh could boast of her “Daft Laird,” her “Bailie Duff,” and her “Madam Bouzie.” Numerous charitable institutions now seclude most of them from the world. Yet, in many retired districts, where delicacy is not apt to be shocked by sights so common, the blind, the dumb, and the insane are still permitted to mix indiscriminately with their fellow-creatures. Poverty compels many parents to take the easiest method of supporting their unfortunate offspring—that of bringing them up with the rest of the family; the decent pride of the Scottish peasant also makes an application to charity, even in such a case as this, a matter of very rare occurrence; and while superstition points out that those whom God has sent into the world with less than the full share of mental faculties are always made most peculiarly the objects of this care, thus rendering the possession of such a child rather a medium through which the blessings of heaven are diffused than a burden or a curse, the affectionate desire of administering to them all those tender offices which their unhappy situation so peculiarly requires, of tending them with their own eyes, and nursing them with their own hands, that large and overflowing, but not supererogatory share of tenderness with which the darkened and destitute objects are constantly regarded by parents—altogether make their domestication a matter of strong, and happily not unpleasing necessity.

The rustic idiots of Scotland are also in general blessed with a few peculiarities, which seldom fail to make them objects of popular esteem and affection. Many of them exhibit a degree of sagacity or cunning, bearing the same relation to the rest of their intellectual faculties which, in the ruins of a Grecian temple, the coarse and entire foundations bear to the few and scattered but beautiful fragments of the superstructure. This humble qualification, joined sometimes to the more agreeable one of a shrewd and sly humour, while it enables them to keep their own part, and occasionally to baffle sounder judgments, proves an engaging subject of amusement and wonder to the cottage fireside. A wild and wayward fancy, powers of song singularly great, together with a full share of the above qualifications, formed the chief characteristics of Daft Jock Gray of Gilmanscleugh, whom we are about to introduce to the reader as the counterpart of Davie Gellatley.

John Gray is a native of Gilmanscleugh, a farm in the parish of Ettrick, of which his father was formerly the shepherd, and from which, according to Border custom, he derives his popular designation or title “of Gilmanscleugh.” Jock is now above forty years of age, and still wanders through the neighbouring counties of Roxburgh, Selkirk, and Peebles, in a half minstrel, half mendicant manner, finding, even after the fervour of youth is past, no pleasure in a sedentary or domestic life.

Many months, many weeks, had not elapsed after Jock came into the world, before all the old women of the Faculty in the parish discovered that “he had a want.” As he grew up, it was found that he had no capacity for the learning taught at the parish school, though, in receiving various other sorts of lore, he showed an aptitude far surpassing that of more highly gifted children. Thus, though he had not steadiness of mind to comprehend the alphabet, and Barrie’s smallest primer was to him as a fountain closed and a book sealed, he caught, at a wonderfully early age, and with a rapidity almost incredible, many fragments of Border song, which he could repeat, with the music, in the precise manner of those who instructed him; and indeed he discovered an almost miraculous power of giving utterance to sounds, in all their extensive and intricate varieties.

All endeavours on the part of his parents to communicate to his mind the seeds of written knowledge having failed, Jock was abandoned to the oral lore he loved so much; and of this he soon possessed himself of an immense stock. His boyhood was passed in perfect idleness; yet if it could have been proved upon him that he had the smallest glimmering of sense, his days would not have been so easy. In Jock’s native district there are just two ways for a boy to spend his time; either he must go to school, or he must tend the cows; and it generally happens that he goes to school in summer and tends the cows in winter. But Jock’s idiocy, like Caleb Balderstone’s “fire,” was an excuse for every duty. As to the first employment, his friend the Dominie bore him out with flying colours; for the second, the question was set for ever at rest by a coup de main achieved by the rascal’s own happy fancy. “John,” says the minister of Yarrow to him one day, “you are the idlest boy in the parish; you do nothing all day but go about from house to house; you might at least herd a few cows.” “Me, sir!” says Jock, with the most stolid stare imaginable, “how could I herd the kye? Losh, sir, I disna ken corn by garse!”—This happy bit was enough to keep Jock comfortable all the rest of his life.

Yet though Jock did not like to be tied down to any regular task, and heartily detested both learning and herding, it could never be said of him that he was sunk in what the country people call even-down idleset. He sometimes condescended to be useful in running errands, and would not grudge the tear and wear of his legs upon a seven-mile journey, when he had the prospect of a halfpenny for his pains; for, like all madmen, he was not insensible, however stupid in every other thing, to the value of money, and knew a bawbee from a button with the sharpest boy in the clachan. It is recorded to his credit, that in all his errands he was ever found scrupulously honest. He was sometimes sent to no less a distance than Innerleithen, which must be at least seven miles from Gilmanscleugh, to procure small grocery articles for his neighbours. Here an old woman, named Nelly Bathgate, kept the metropolitan grocery shop of the parish, forming a sort of cynosure to a district extending nearly from Selkirk to Peebles. This was in the days before St. Ronan’s Well had drawn so many fashionables around that retired spot; and as yet Nelly flourished in her little shop, undisturbed by opposition, like the moon just before the creation of the stars. Rivals innumerable have now sprung up around honest Nelly; and her ancient and respectable, but unpretending sign-board, simply importing, “N. Bathgate, Grocer,” quails under the glowing and gilt-lettered rubrics of “—— ——, from Edinburgh,” etc., etc., etc., who specify that they import their own teas and wines, and deal both en gros et en petit.

For a good while Jock continued to do business with Nelly Bathgate, unannoyed, as the honest dame herself, by any other grocery shop; and indeed how there could be such a thing as another grocery shop in the whole world besides Nelly’s, was quite incomprehensible to Jock. But at length the distracting object arose. A larger shop than Nelly’s, with larger windows, and a larger sign-board, was opened; the proprietor had a son in Edinburgh with a great wholesale grocer in Nicolson Street; and was supplied with a great quantity of goods, at cheap prices, of a more flashy nature than any that had ever before been dreamt of, smelt, or eaten in the village. Here a strange grocery article, called pearl ashes, was sold; and being the first time that such a thing was ever heard of, Innerleithen was just in a ferment about it. Jock was strongly tempted to give his custom, or rather the custom of his employers, to this shop; for really Nelly’s customary snap was growing stale upon his appetite, and he longed to taste the comfits of the new establishment. This Nelly saw and appreciated; and, to prevent the defection she feared, Jock’s allowance was forthwith doubled, and, moreover, occasionally varied by a guerdon of a sweeter sort. But still Jock hankered after the sweets of that strange forbidden shop; and, as he passed towards Nelly’s, after a long hungry journey, could almost have wished himself transformed into one of those yellow bees which buzzed about in noisy enjoyment within the window and show-glasses of the new grocer,—creatures which, to his mind, appeared to pass the most delightful and enviable life. It is certainly much to Jock’s credit, that, even under all these temptations, and though he had frequently a whole sixpence to dispose of in eight or ten different small articles, and, no less, though he had no security engaged for intromissions, so that the whole business was nothing but a question of character,—yea, in not so much as a farthing was he ever found wanting.

Nelly continued to be a good friend to Jock, and Jock adhered as stoutly to Nelly; but it was frequently observed by those who were curious in his mad humours, that his happy conquest over the love of comfits was not accomplished and preserved without many struggles between his instinctive honesty and the old Adam of his inner man. For instance, after having made all his purchases at Mrs. Bathgate’s, when he found only a single solitary farthing remain in his hand, which was to be his faithful companion all the way back to Gilmanscleugh, how forcibly it must have struck his foolish mind, that, by means of the new grocer, he had it in his power to improve his society a thousand-fold, by the simple and easy, though almost-as-good-as-alchymical process of converting its base brazen form into a mass of gilt gingerbread. Such a temptation might have staggered St. Anthony himself, and was certainly far too much for poor Jock’s humble powers of self-denial. In this dreadful emergency, his only means of safety lay in flight; and so it was observed by his rustic friends, on such occasions, that, as soon as he was fairly clear of Nelly’s door, he commenced a sort of headlong trot, as if for the purpose of confounding all dishonourable thoughts in his mind, and ran with all his might out of the village, without looking once aside; for if he had trusted his eye with but one glance at that neat whitewashed window of four panes, where two biscuits, four gingerbread cakes, a small blue bottle of white caraways, and a variety of other nondescript articles of village confectionery displayed their modest yet irresistible allurements, he had been gone!

There is one species of employment in which Jock always displays the utmost willingness to be engaged. It must be understood, that, like many sounder men, he is a great admirer of the fair sex. He exhibits an almost chivalrous devotion to their cause, and takes great pleasure in serving them. Any little commission with which they may please to honour him, he executes with alacrity, and his own expression is that he would “jump Tweed, or dive the Wheel (a deep eddy in Tweed), for their sakes.” He requires no reward for his services, but, like a true knight, begs only to kiss the hand of his fair employer, and is satisfied. It may be observed, that he is at all times fond of saluting the hands of ladies that will permit him.

The author of “Waverley” has described Davie Gellatley as dressed in a grey jerkin, with scarlet cuffs, and slashed sleeves, showing a scarlet lining, a livery with which the Baron of Bradwardine indued him, in consideration of his services and character. Daft Jock Grey has at no period of his life exhibited so much personal magnificence. His usual dress is a rather shabby suit of hodden grey, with ridge and furrow[1] stockings; and the utmost extent of his finery is a pair of broad red garters, bound neatly below the knee-strings of his nether garments, of which, however, he is probably more vain than ever belted knight was of the royal garter. But waiving the matter of dress, their discrepance in which is purely accidental, the resemblance is complete in every other respect. The face, mien, and gestures are exactly the same. Jock walks with all that swing of the body and arms, that abstracted air and sauntering pace, which figure in the description of Davie (“Waverley,” vol i. chap. ix.), and which, it may indeed be said, are peculiar to the whole genus and body of Scottish madmen. Jock’s face is equally handsome in its outline with that given to the fool of Tully-Veolan, and is no less distinguished by “that wild, unsettled, and irregular expression, which indicated neither idiocy nor insanity, but something resembling a compound of both, where the simplicity of the fool was mixed with the extravagance of a crazed imagination.” Add to this happy picture the prosaic and somewhat unromantic circumstance of a pair of buck-teeth, and the reader has our friend Jock to a single feature.

The Highland madman is described by his pedantic patron, to be “a poor simpleton, neither fatuus nec naturaliter idiota, as is expressed in the brieves of furiosity, but simply a cracked-brained knave, who could execute any commission that jumped with his own humour, and made his folly a plea for avoiding every other.” This entirely agrees with the character of Jock, who is thought by many to possess much good common sense, and whose talents of music and mimicry point him out as at least ingenious. Yet to us it appears, that all Jock’s qualifications, ingenious as they may be, are nothing but indications of a weak mind. His great musical and mimetic powers, his talent and willingness of errand-going, his cunning and his excessive devotion to the humours and fancies of the fair sex, are mere caricatures of the same dispositions and talents in other men, and point out all such qualifications, when found in the best and wisest characters, as marks of fatuity and weakness. Where, for instance, was the perfection of musical genius ever found accompanied with a good understanding? Are not porters and chairman the smallest-minded among mankind? Is not cunning the lowest of the human faculties, and always found most active in the illiberal mind? And what lady’s man, what cavaliere serviente, what squire of dames, what man of drawing-rooms and boudoirs, ever yet exhibited the least trace of greatness or nobility of intellect? Jock, who has all these qualifications in himself, may be considered as outweighing at least four other men who severally possess them.

Like Davie Gellatley, Jock “is in good earnest the half-crazed simpleton which he appears to be, and incapable of any steady exertion. He has just so much wild wit as saves him from the imputation of insanity, warm affections, a prodigious memory, and an ear for music.” This latter quality is a point of resemblance which puts all question of their identity past the possibility of doubt. Davie it must be well remembered by the readers of “Waverley,” is there represented as constantly singing wild scraps of ancient songs and ballads, which, by a beautiful fiction of the author, he is said to have received in legacy from a poetical brother who died in a decline some years before. His conversation was in general carried on by means of these, to the great annoyance of young Waverley, and such as, like him, did not comprehend the strange metaphorical meaning of his replies and allusions. Now, Jock’s principal talent and means of subsistence are vested in his singular and minstrel-like powers of song, there being few of our national melodies of which he cannot chaunt forth a verse, as the occasion may suggest to his memory. He never fails to be a welcome guest with all the farmers he may chance to visit,[2] on account of his faculties of entertaining them with the tender or warlike ditties of the Border, or the more smart and vulgar songs of the modern world. It is to be remarked, that his style of singing, like the styles of all other great geniuses in the fine arts, is entirely his own. Sometimes his voice soars to the ecstasy of the highest, and sometimes descends to the melancholious grunt of the lowest pitch; while ever and anon he throws certain wild and beautiful variations into both the words and the music, ad libitum, which altogether stamp his performances with a character of the most perfect originality. He generally sings very much through his nose, especially in humorous songs; and, from his making a curious hiss, or twang, on setting off into a melody, one might almost think that he employs his notorious buck-teeth in the capacity of what musicians term a pitchfork.

Jock, by means of his singing powers, was one of the first who circulated the rising fame of his countryman, the Ettrick Shepherd, many of whose early songs he committed to memory, and sung publicly over all the country round. One beginning, “Oh Shepherd, the weather is misty and changing,” and the well known lyric of “Love is like a dizziness,” besides being the first poetical efforts of their ingenious and wonderful author, were the earliest of Jock Gray’s favourite songs, and perhaps became the chief means of setting him up in the trade of a wandering minstrel. We have seen him standing upon a dees stane in the street of Peebles, entertaining upwards of a hundred people with the latter ludicrous ditty; and many a well-told penny has he made it squeeze from the iron purses of the inhabitants of that worthy town, “albeit unused to the opening mood.”

In singing the “Ewe-buchts, Marion,” it is remarkable that he adds a chorus which is not found in any printed edition of the song:

“Come round about the Merry-knowes, my Marion,

Come round about the Merry-knowes wi’ me;

Come round about the Merry-knowes, my Marion,

For Whitsled is lying lea.”

Whitsled is a farm in the parish of Ashkirk, county of Selkirk, lying upon the water of Ale; and Merry-knowes is the name of a particular spot in the farm. This circumstance is certainly important enough to deserve the attention of those who make Scottish song a study and object of collection; as the verse, if authentic, would go far to prove the locality of the “Ewe-buchts.”

In addition to his talent as a musician, Jock can also boast of a supplementary one, by means of which, whenever memory fails in his songs, he can supply, currente voce, all incidental deficiencies. He is not only a wit and a musician, but also a poet! He has composed several songs, which by no means want admirers in the country, though the most of them scarcely deserve the praise of even mediocrity. Indeed his poetical talents are of no higher order than what the author of an excellent article in the “Edinburgh Annual Register” happily terms “wonderfully well considering”; and seem to be admired by his rustic friends only on the benevolent principle of “where little has been given, let little be required.”

He has, however, another most remarkable gift, which the author of “Waverley” has entirely rejected in conceiving the revised and enlarged edition of his character,—a wonderful turn for mimicry. His powers in this art are far, far indeed, from contemptible, though it unfortunately happens that, like almost all rustic Scottish humorists, he makes ministers and sacred things his chief and favourite objects. He attends the preachings of all the ministers that fall within the scope of his peregrinations, and sometimes brings away whole tenthlies of their several sermons, which he lays off to any person that desires him, with a faithfulness of imitation, in tone and gesture, which never fails to convulse his audience with laughter. He has made himself master of all the twangs, soughs, wheezes, coughs, snirtles, and bleatings, peculiar to the various parish ministers twenty miles round; and being himself of no particular sect, he feels not the least delicacy or compunction for any single class of divines—all are indiscriminately familiar to the powers of the universal Jock!

It is remarkable, that though the Scottish peasantry are almost without exception pious, they never express, so far as we have been able to discover, the least demur respecting the profanity and irreverence of this exhibition. The character of the nation may appear anomalous on this account. But we believe the mystery may be solved by supposing them so sincerely and unaffectedly devout, in all that concerns the sentiment of piety, that they do not suspect themselves of any remissness, when they make the outward circumstances, and even the ordinances of religion, the subject of wit. It is on this account, that in no country, even the most lax in religious feeling, have the matters of the church been discussed so freely as in Scotland; and nowhere are there so many jokes and good things about ministers and priests. In this case the very ministers themselves have been known to listen to Daft Jock’s mimicries of their neighbours with unqualmed delight,—never thinking, good souls, that the impartial rascal has just as little mercy on themselves at the next manse he visits. It is also to be remarked, that, in thus quizzing the worthy ministers, he does not forget to practise what the country-people consider a piece of exquisite satire on the habits of such as read their sermons. Whenever he imitates any of these degenerate divines, who, by their unpopularity, form quite a sect by themselves in the country, and are not nearly so much respected as extempore preachers,[3] he must have either a book or a piece of paper open before him, from which he gravely affects to read the subject of discourse; and his audience are always trebly delighted with this species of exhibition. He was once amusing Mrs. C——, the minister’s wife of Selkirk, with some imitations of the neighbouring clergymen, when she at last requested him to give her a few words in the manner of Dr. C——, who being a notorious reader, “Ou, Mem,” says Jock, “ye maun bring me the Doctor’s Bible, then, and I’ll gie ye him in style.” She brought the Bible, little suspecting the purpose for which the wag intended it, when, with the greatest effrontery, he proceeded to burlesque this unhappy peculiarity of the worthy doctor in the presence of his own wife.

Jock was always a privileged character in attending all sorts of kirks, though many ministers, who dreaded a future sufferance under his relentless caricaturing powers, would have been glad to exclude him. He never seems to pay any attention to the sermon, or even deigns to sit down, like other decent Christians, but wanders constantly about from gallery to gallery, upstairs and downstairs. His erratic habit is not altogether without its use. When he observes any person sleeping during the sermon, he reaches over to the place, and taps him gently on the head with his kent till he awake; should he in any of his future rounds (for he parades as regularly about as a policeman in a large city) observe the drowsy person repeating the offence, he gives him a tremendous thwack over the pate; and he increases the punishment so much at every subsequent offence, that, like the military punishment for desertion, the third infliction almost amounts to death itself. A most laughable incident once occurred in —— church, on a drowsy summer afternoon, when the windows were let down, admitting and emitting a thousand flies, whose monotonous buzz, joined to the somniferous snuffle of Dr. ——, would have been fit music for the bedchamber of Morpheus, even though that honest god was lying ill of the toothache, the gout, or any other equally woukrife disorder. A bailie, who had dined, as is usual in most country towns, between sermons, could not resist the propensity of his nature, and, fairly overpowered, at last was under the necessity of affronting the preacher to his very face, by laying down his head upon the book-board; when his capacious, bald round crown might have been mistaken, at first sight, for the face of the clock placed in the front of the gallery immediately below. Jock was soon at him with his stick, and, with great difficulty, succeeded in rousing him. But the indulgence was too great to be long resisted, and down again went the bailie’s head. This was not to be borne. Jock considered his authority sacred, and feared not either the frowns of elders, nor the more threatening scowls of kirk-officers, when his duty was to be done. So his arm went forth, and the kent descended a second time with little reverence upon the offending sconce; upon which the magistrate started up with an astonished stare, in which the sentiment of surprise was as completely concentrated as in the face of the inimitable Mackay, when he cries out, “Hang a magistrate! My conscience!” The contrast between the bailie’s stupid and drowsy face, smarting and writhing from the blow, which Jock had laid on pretty soundly, and the aspect of the natural himself, who still stood at the head of the pew, shaking his stick, and looking at the magistrate with an air in which authority, admonition, and a threat of further punishment, were strangely mingled, altogether formed a scene of striking and irresistible burlesque; and while the Doctor’s customary snuffle was increased to a perfect whimper of distress, the whole congregation showed in their faces evident symptoms of everything but the demureness proper to a place of worship.

Sometimes, when in a sitting mood, Jock takes a modest seat on the pulpit stairs, where there likewise usually roost a number of deaf old women, who cannot hear in any other part of the church. These old ladies, whom the reader will remember as the unfortunate persons that Dominie Sampson sprawled over, in his premature descent from the pulpit, when he stickit his first preaching, our waggish friend would endeavour to torment by every means which his knavish humour could invent. He would tread upon their corns, lean amorously upon their laps, purloin their specks (spectacles), set them on a false scent after the psalm, and, sometimes getting behind them, plant his longest and most serious face over their black cathedral-looking bonnets, like an owl looking over an ivied wall, while few of the audience could contain their gravity at the extreme humour of the scene. The fun was sometimes, as we ourselves have witnessed, not a little enhanced by the old lady upon whom Jock was practising, turning round, in holy dudgeon, and dealing the unlucky wag a vengeful thwack across the face with her heavy octavo Bible. We have also seen a very ludicrous scene take place, when, on the occasion of a baptism, he refused to come down from his citadel, and defied all the efforts which James Kerr, the kirk-officer, made to dislodge him; while the father of the child, waiting below to present it, stood in the most awkward predicament imaginable, not daring to venture upon the stairs while Jock kept possession of them. It is not probable, however, that he would have been so obstinate on that occasion, if he had not had an ill-will at the preserver of the peace, for his interrupting him that day in his laudable endeavours to break the slumbers of certain persons, whose peace (or rest) it was the peculiar interest of that official to preserve.

We will conclude this sketch of Daft Jock Gray with a stupendous anecdote, which we fear, however, is not strictly canonical. Jock once received an affront from his mother, who refused to gratify him with an extra allowance of bannocks, at a time when he meditated a long journey to a New Year’s Day junketing. Whereupon he seems to have felt the yearnings of a hermit and a misanthrope within his breast, and longed to testify to the world how much he both detested and despised it. He withdrew himself from the society of the cottage,—was seen to reject the addresses of his old companion and friend the cat,—and finally, next morning, after tossing an offered cogue of Scotia’s halesome food into the fire, and breaking two of his mother’s best and blackest cutty pipes, articles which she held almost in the esteem of penates or household gods,—off he went, and ascended to the top of the highest Eildon Hill, at that time covered with deep snow. There he wreaked out his vengeance in a tremendous and truly astonishing exploit. He rolled a huge snow-ball, till, in its accumulation, it became too large for his strength, and then taking it to the edge of the declivity,

“From Eildon’s proud vermilioned brow

He dashed upon the plains below”[4]

the ponderous mass; which, increasing rapidly in its descent, became a perfect avalanche before it reached the plain, and, when there, seemed like a younger brother of the three Eildons, so that people thought Michael Scott had resumed his old pranks, and added another hill to that which he formerly “split in three.” This enormous conglomeration of snow was found, when it fully melted away through the course of next summer, to have licked up with its mountain tongue thirty-five clumps of withered whin bushes, nineteen hares, three ruined cottages, and a whole encampment of peat-stacks!

The Naturals, or Idiots, of Scotland, of whom the Davie Gellatley of fictitious, and the Daft Jock Gray of real life, may be considered as good specimens, form a class of our countrymen which it is our anxious desire should be kept in remembrance. Many of the anecdotes told of them are extremely laughable, and we are inclined to prize such things, on account of the just exhibitions they sometimes afford of genuine human nature. The sketch we have given, and the anecdotes which we are about to give, may perhaps be considered valuable on this account, and also from their connection, moreover, with the manners of rustic life in the Lowlands of Scotland.

Daft Willie Law[5] of Kirkaldy was a regular attendant on tent-preachings, and would scour the country thirty miles round in order to be present at “an occasion.”[6] One warm summer day he was attending the preaching at Abbots Hall, when, being very near-sighted, and having a very short neck, he stood quite close to “the tent” gaping in the minister’s face, who, greatly irritated at a number of his hearers being fast asleep, bawled out, “For shame, Christians, to lie sleeping there, while the glad tidings of the gospel are sounding in your ears; and here is Willie Law, a poor idiot, hearing me with great attention!” “Eh go! sir, that’s true,” says Willie; “but if I hadna been a puir idiot, I would have been sleeping too!”

The late John Berry, Esq., of Wester Bogie, was married to a distant relation of Daft Willie, upon which account the poor fellow used a little more freedom with that gentleman than with any other who was in the habit of noticing him. Meeting Mr. Berry one day in Kirkaldy, he cries, “God bless you, Mr. Berry! gie’s a bawbee! gie’s a bawbee!” “There, Willie,” says Mr. Berry, giving him what he thought a halfpenny, but which he immediately saw was a shilling. “That’s no a gude bawbee, Willie,” continues he; “gie me’t back, and I’ll gie ye anither ane for’t.” “Na, na,” quoth Willie, “it sets Daft Willie Law far better to put away an ill bawbee than it wad do you, Mr. Berry.” “Ay, but Willie, if ye dinna gie me’t back, I’ll never gie ye anither ane.” “Deil ma care,” says the wag, “it’ll be lang or I get ither four-and-twenty frae ye!”

Willie was descended from an ancient Scottish family, and nearly related to John Law of Lauriston, the celebrated financier of France. On that account he was often spoken to and noticed by gentlemen of distinction; and he wished always to appear on the most intimate terms with the nobility and gentry of the neighbourhood. Posting one day through Kirkcaldy with more than ordinary speed, he was met by Mr. Oswald of Dunnikier, who asked him where he was going in such a hurry. “I’m gaun to my cousin Lord Elgin’s burial.” “Your cousin Lord Elgin’s burial, you fool! Lord Elgin’s not dead!” “Ah, deil may care,” quoth Willie; “there’s sax doctors out o’ Embro’ at him, and they’ll hae him dead afore I win forat!”

Of Matthew Cathie, an East Lothian idiot, numerous characteristic anecdotes are related. He lives by begging in the town of North Berwick, and is well treated by the people there, on account of his extreme inoffensiveness. Like Daft Jock Gray, he is fond of going into churches, where his appearance does not fail to set the people a-staring. On one occasion the minister, pointing to Matthew, said, “That person must be put out before we can proceed.” Matthew, hearing this, exclaimed, “Put him out wha likes, I’ll hae nae hand in’t!” Another time, the minister said, “Matthew must be put out!” when Matthew got up and replied, “Oh! Geordie, man, ye needna fash—Matthew can gang out himsel’!”

The Earl of Wemyss, walking one day, found his fool, Willie Howison, asleep upon the ground, and, rousing him, asked what he had been dreaming about. “Ou, my lord,” says Willie, “I dreamed that I was in hell!” “Ay, Willie, and pray what did ye observe there?” “Ou, my lord, it’s just there as it’s here—the grit folk’s ta’en farrest ben!”

Selkirkshire boasts of several highly amusing idiots, all of whom John Gray once made the subject of a song, in which each of them received some complimentary mention. Himself, Davie o’ the Inch, Caleb and Robbie Scott, and Jamie Renwick, are the chief heroes. Caleb, a very stupid natural, was once engaged by a troop of wandering showfolks to personate the character of an orang-outang at a Melrose fair; the regular orang-outang of the establishment having recently left his keepers in the lurch, by marrying a widow in Berwick, which enabled him to give up business, and retire to the shades of domestic privity. Caleb performed very well, and, being appropriately tarred and feathered, looked the part to perfection. Amateurship alone would have soon reconciled him to be an orang-outang all the rest of his life, and to have left Selkirkshire behind; for, according to his own account, he had nothing to do but hold his tongue, and sit munching apples all day long. But his stars had not destined him for so enviable a life of enjoyment. A drunken farmer coming in to see “the wild man of the woods,” out of pure mischief gave Caleb a lash across the shoulders with his whip, when the poor fellow, roaring out in his natural voice, a mortifying denouement took place; the showfolks were affronted and hissed out of the town, and Caleb was turned off at a moment’s notice, with all his blushing honours thick upon him!

Jamie Renwick has more sense and better perceptions than Caleb Scott, but he is much more intractable and mischievous. He is a tall, stout, wild-looking fellow, and might perhaps make as good a hyena as Caleb made an orang-outang. Once, being upon an excursion along with Jock Gray, they came to a farmhouse, and, in default of better accommodation, were lodged in the barn. They did not like this treatment at all, and Jock, in particular, was so irritated, that he would not rest, but got up and walked about, amusing himself with some of his wildest and most sonorous melodies. This, of course, annoyed his companion, who, being inclined to sleep, was making the best he could of a blanket and a bundle of straw. “Come to your bed, ye skirlin’ deevil!” cries Jamie; “I canna get a wink o’ sleep for ye: I daursay the folk will think us daft! Od, if ye dinna come and lie down this instant, I’ll rise and bring ye to your senses wi’ my rung!” “Faith,” says Jock, “if ye do that, it will be mair than ony ither body has ever been able to do!” It will be remembered that even the minister of Yarrow himself failed in accomplishing this consummation so devoutly to be wished.

The following anecdote, from Colonel Stewart’s work on the Highlands, displays a strange instance of mingled sagacity and fidelity in a Celtic madman; and has, we have no doubt, been made use of in the author of “Waverley’s” examples of the fidelity of Davie Gellatley, as exerted in behalf of his unfortunate patron on similar occasions.

“In the years 1746 and 1747, some of the gentlemen ‘who had been out’ in the rebellion were occasionally concealed in a deep woody den near my grandfather’s house. A poor half-witted creature, brought up about the house, was, along with many others, intrusted with the secret of their concealment, and employed in supplying them with necessaries. It was supposed that when the troops came round on their usual searches, they would not imagine that he could be intrusted with so important a secret, and, consequently, no questions would be asked. One day two ladies, friends of the gentlemen, wished to visit them in their cave, and asked Jamie Forbes to show them the way. Seeing that they came from the house, and judging from their manner that they were friends, he did not object to their request, and walked away before them. When they had proceeded a short way, one of the ladies offered him five shillings. The instant he saw the money, he put his hands behind his back, and seemed to lose all recollection. ‘He did not know what they wanted: he never saw the gentlemen, and knew nothing of them;’ and, turning away, walked in a quite contrary direction. When questioned afterwards why he ran away from the ladies, he answered, that when they had offered him such a sum (five shillings was of some value seventy years ago, and would have bought two sheep in the Highlands), he suspected they had no good intention, and that their fine clothes and fair words were meant to entrap the gentlemen.”

RORY DALL, THE HARPER.[7]

An allusion is made to this celebrated musician in the description of Flora Mac-Ivor’s performance upon the harp in the Highland glen. “Two paces back stood Cathleen, holding a small Scottish harp, the use of which had been taught her by Rory Dall, one of the last harpers of the Western Islands.” (“Wav.,” vol. i. p. 338.) Roderick Morison, called Dall on account of his blindness, lived in Queen Anne’s time, in the double capacity of harper and bard to the family of Macleod of Macleod. Many of his songs and poems are still repeated by his countrymen.

“CLAW FOR CLAW, AS CONAN SAID TO SATAN.”

When the Highlanders prepared for Prestonpans (“Wav.,” vol. ii. p. 289), Mrs. Flockhart, in great distress about the departure of her lodgers, asks Ensign Maccombich if he would “actually face thae tearing, swearing chields, the dragoons?” “Claw for claw,” cries the courageous Highlander, “and the devil take the shortest nails!” This is an old Gaelic proverb. Conan was one of Fingal’s heroes—rash, turbulent, and brave. One of his unearthly exploits is said to have led him to Iurna, or Cold Island (similar to the Den of Hela of Scandinavian mythology), a place only inhabited by infernal beings. On Conan’s departure from the island, one of its demons struck him a blow, which he instantly returned. This outrage upon immortals was fearfully retaliated, by a whole legion setting upon poor Conan. But the warrior was not daunted; and exclaiming, “Claw for claw, and the devil take the shortest nails!” fought out the battle, and, it is said, ultimately came off victorious.

TULLY-VEOLAN.

(Traquair House.)

Tully-Veolan finds a striking counterpart in Traquair House, in Peebles-shire, the seat of the noble family whose name it bears. The aspect of the gateway, avenue, and house itself, is precisely that of the semi-Gothic, bear-guarded mansion of Bradwardine. It is true that, in place of the multitudinous representations of the bear, so profusely scattered around Tully-Veolan, we have here only a single pair, which adorn the gate at the head of the avenue: and that the avenue itself cannot pretend to match the broad continuous shade through which Waverley approached the Highland castle; and also that several other important features are wanting to complete the resemblance;—yet, if we be not altogether imposed upon by fancy, there is a likeness sufficiently strong to support the idea that this scene formed the original study of the more finished and bold-featured picture of the novelist. Traquair House was finished in the reign of Charles I. by the first Earl, who was lord high treasurer of Scotland at that period. This date corresponds with that assigned to Tully-Veolan, which, says the author, was built when architects had not yet abandoned the castellated style peculiar to the preceding warlike ages, nor yet acquired the art of constructing a baronial mansion without a view to defence.

It is worthy of remark, that the Earl of Traquair is the only Scottish nobleman, besides the Earl of Newburgh, who still adheres to the Romish faith:[8] and that his antique and interesting house strongly resembles, in its internal economy and appearance, Glenallan Castle, described in the “Antiquary.”

Among the illustrative vignettes prefixed to a late edition of the author of “Waverley’s” works, a view of Craig Crook Castle, near Edinburgh, is given for Tully-Veolan; and, to complete the vraisemblance, several bears have been added to the scene. It is only necessary to assert, in general, that these bears only exist in the imagination of the artist, and that no place has less resemblance to the Tully-Veolan of “Waverley” than Craig Crook, which is a small single house, in a bare situation, more like the mansion of poor Laird Dumbiedykes than the castle of a powerful feudal baron.

THE BODACH GLAS.

The original of the Bodach Glas, whose appearance proved so portentous to the family of the Mac-Ivors, may probably be traced to a legend current in the ancient family of Maclaine of Lochbuy, in the island of Mull, noticed by Sir Walter Scott in a note to his “Lady of the Lake.”[9] The popular tradition is, that whenever any person descended of that family is near death, the spirit of one of them, who was slain in battle, gives notice of the approaching event. There is this difference between the Bodach Glas and him, that the former appeared on these solemn occasions only to the chief of the house of Mac-Ivor, whereas the latter never misses an individual descended of the family of Lochbuy, however obscure, or in whatever part of the world he may be.

The manner of his showing himself is sometimes different, but he uniformly appears on horseback. Both the horse and himself seem to be of a very diminutive size, particularly the head of the rider, from which circumstance he goes under the appellation of “Eoghan a chinn bhig,” or “Hugh of the little head.” Sometimes he is heard riding furiously round the house where the person is about to die, with an extraordinary noise, like the rattling of iron chains. At other times he is discovered with his horse’s head nearly thrust in at a door or window; and, on such occasions, whenever observed, he gallops off in the manner already described, the hooves of his steed striking fire from the flinty rocks. The effects of such a visit on the inmates of the dwelling may be easily conceived when it is considered that it was viewed as an infallible prognostication of approaching death—an event at which the stoutest heart must recoil, when the certainty is placed before him of his hours being numbered. Like his brother spirits, he seems destined to perform his melancholy rounds amidst nocturnal darkness, the horrors of which have a natural tendency to increase the consternation of a scene in itself sufficiently appalling.

The origin of the tradition is involved in the obscurity of antiquity. It is related of him that, on the eve of a battle in which he was to be engaged, a weird woman prophesied to him, that if his wife (who was a daughter of Macdougall of Lorn), on the morning when he was to set out on his expedition, had his breakfast prepared before he was ready for it, good fortune would betide him; if, on the other hand, he had to call for his breakfast, he would lose his life in the conflict. It seems he was not blest with an affectionate spouse; for, on the morning in question, after waiting a considerable time, he had at last to call for his breakfast, not, however, without upbraiding his wife, by informing her of what was to be the consequence of her want of attention. The presentiment that he was to fall may have contributed to the fulfilment of the prophecy, which was accomplished as a matter of course. This part of the story probably refers to one of the Maclaines of Lochbuy, who was married to a daughter of Macdougall of Lorn, and who, with his two eldest sons, was killed in a feud with their neighbours, the Macleans of Duart, which had nearly proved fatal to the family of Lochbuy. This happened in the reign of King James IV.

It has not come to our knowledge for what cause the penance was imposed on Eoghan a chinn bhig of giving warning to all his clan of their latter end—whether for deeds done in this life, or whether (as some people imagine that departed spirits act as guardian angels to the living) he is thus permitted to show his regard for his friends by visiting them in their last moments, to prepare them for another world. The latter would appear to be the most probable, from a circumstance reported of him, which seems rather at variance with the general character of a harbinger of death. It is said that he took a great fancy to a near relation of the family of Lochbuy (called, by way of patronymic, John M‘Charles), to whom he paid frequent visits, and communicated several particulars respecting the future fate of the family. Whenever he wished an interview with his favourite, he would come to his door, from which he would not stir till John M‘Charles came out; when he would pull him up behind him on his Pegasus, and ride all night over hills, rocks, woods, and wilds, at the same time conversing with him familiarly of several events that were to happen in the Lochbuy family, one of which is said to have been accomplished, about forty years ago, according to his prediction.

This tiny personage, though light of limb, has the reputation of being, like all other unearthly beings, endued with supernatural strength, of which his exploits with John M‘Charles afford an instance. Not many years ago, a man in Mull, when returning home about dusk, perceived a person on horseback coming towards him. Supposing it might be some person whom he knew, he went up to speak to him; but the horseman seemed determined to pass on without noticing him. Thinking he observed something remarkable in the appearance of the rider, he approached close to him, when he was unexpectedly seized by the collar, and forcibly dragged about a quarter of a mile by the stranger, who at last abandoned his hold, after several ineffectual attempts to place his terrified victim behind him, which, being a powerful man, he successfully resisted. He was, however, so much bruised in the scuffle, that it was with difficulty he could make his way home, although he had only about half a mile to go. He immediately took to his bed, which he did not leave for some days, his friends wondering all the time what could be the matter with him. It was not until he told the story, as we have related it, that the adventure was known. And as, after the strictest inquiry, it could not be ascertained that any person on horseback had passed that way on the evening on which it took place, it was, by the unanimous voice of all the seers and old wives in the neighbourhood, laid down as an incontrovertible proposition, that the equestrian stranger could be no other than “Eoghan a chinn bhig.”

In whatever way the tradition originated, certain it is that, at one time, it was very generally, if not universally, received over the island of Mull and adjacent parts. Like other superstitions of a similar nature, it has gradually given way to the more enlightened ideas of modern times, and the belief is now confined to the vulgar.

CHAPTER II.

Guy Mannering.

CURIOUS PARTICULARS OF SIR ROBERT MAXWELL OF ORCHARDSTON.

(Groundwork of the Novel.)

ir Robert Maxwell of Orchardston, in the county of Galloway, was the descendant of an ancient Roman Catholic family of title in the south of Scotland. He was the only child of a religious and bigoted recluse, who sent him, while yet very young, to a college of Jesuits in Flanders, for education—the paternal estate being, in the meantime, wholly managed by the boy’s uncle, the brother of the devotee, to whom he resigned the guardianship of the property, in order that he might employ the remainder of his days exclusively in acts of devotion. In the family of Orchardston, as, indeed, in most great families of that day, the younger branches were but ill provided for, and looked to the inheritor of the family estate alone for the means of supporting their rank in society: the liberal professions and the employments of trade were still considered somewhat dishonourable; and the unfortunate junior, nursed with inflated ideas of consequence and rank, was doomed in after-life to exercise the servility and experience the mortification of an humble dependant. In this case, the culpable negligence of the father had transferred the entire management of a large estate to his younger brother, who was so delighted in the possession, that he resolved to retain it, to the exclusion of the rightful heir. He consequently circulated a report that the boy was dead; and on the death of the old baronet, which took place about this period, he laid claim to the title and estate. In the meantime, our young hero was suffering (very reluctantly) the severe discipline of the Jesuits’ college, his expenses being defrayed by occasional supplies sent him by his uncle, which were represented to him as the bounties of the college—a story which he could not discredit, as he had been placed there at an age too young to know distinctly either who he was or whence he came. He was intelligent and docile; and was deemed of sufficient capacity to become hereafter one of their own learned body, with which view he was educated. When at the age of sixteen, he found the discipline and austerities of a monastic life so ill suited to his inclination, that, on a trivial dispute with the superior of his college, he ran away, and enlisted himself in a French marching regiment. In this situation he sustained all the hardships of hunger, long marches, and incessant alarms; and, as it was in the hottest part of the war between France and England, about the year 1743, it may easily be imagined that his situation was by no means enviable. He fought as a foot-soldier at the battle of Dettingen; he was also at the battle of Fontenoy; and landed, as an ensign in the French troops, at Murray Frith, during the rebellion of 1745. He joined the rebels a little before the battle of Prestonpans, marched with them to Derby, and retreated with them to Scotland. He was wounded at the battle of Culloden, and fled with a few friends to the woods of Lochaber, where he remained the greater part of the summer 1746, living upon the roots of trees, goats’ milk, and the oatmeal and water of such peasants as he durst confide in. Knowing, however, that it would be impossible to continue this course of life during the winter, he began to devise means of effecting his return to France—perfectly unconscious that, in the country where he was suffering all the miseries of an outcast criminal, he was entitled to the possession of an ample estate and title. His scheme was to gain the coast of Galloway, where he hoped to get on board some smuggling vessel to the Isle of Man, and from thence to France. The hardships which he suffered in the prosecution of this plan would require a volume in their description. He crept through by-ways by night, and was forced to lie concealed among rocks and woods during the day. He was reduced almost to a state of nudity, and his food was obtained from the poorest peasants, in whom only he could confide. Of this scanty subsistence he was sometimes for days deprived; and, to complete his misfortunes, he was, after having walked barefooted over rocks, briars, and unfrequented places, at length discovered, seized, and carried before a magistrate near Dumfries. As his name was Maxwell, which he did not attempt to conceal, he would have suffered as a rebel, had not his commission as a French officer been found in the lining of his tattered coat, which entitled him to the treatment of a prisoner of war. This privilege, however, only extended to the preservation of his life. He was confined in a paved stone dungeon so long, that he had amused himself by giving names to each stone which composed the pavement, and which, in after-life, he took great pleasure in relating and pointing out to his friends. An old woman, who had been his nurse in childhood, was at this time living in Dumfries, where he was a prisoner; and having accidentally seen him, and becoming acquainted with his name, apparent age, etc., felt an assurance that he was the rightful Sir Robert Maxwell. The indissoluble attachment of the lower orders in Scotland to their chiefs is well known; and, impelled by this feeling, this old and faithful domestic attended him with almost maternal affection, administering liberally to his distresses. After an interview of some weeks, she made him acquainted with her suspicion, and begged leave to examine a mark which she remembered upon his body. This proof also concurring, she became outrageous with joy, and ran about the streets proclaiming the discovery she had made. This rumour reaching the ears of the magistrates, inquiry was made, the proofs were examined, and it soon became the general opinion that he was the son of the old baronet of Orchardston. The estate lay but a few miles from Dumfries; and the unlawful possessor being a man of considerable power, and of a most vindictive disposition, most people, whatever might be their private opinion, were cautious in espousing the cause of this disinherited and distressed orphan. One gentleman, however, was found, who, to his eternal honour, took him by the hand. A Mr. Gowdy procured his release from prison, took him to his own house, clothed him agreeably to his rank, and enabled him to commence an action against his uncle. The latter was not inactive in the defence of his crime, and took every pains to prove his nephew to be an impostor. Chagrin and a consciousness of guilt, however, put an end to his existence before the cause came to a hearing; and Sir Robert was at length put into possession of an estate worth upwards of ten thousand pounds a year. He now began to display those qualities and abilities which had been but faintly perceptible in his former station. He now discovered an ingenuous mind, an intellect at once vigorous and refined, and manners the most elegant and polished. His society was courted by all the neighbouring gentry; and, in the course of time he married a Miss Maclellan, a near relation of the family of Lord Kirkcudbright; with this lady he lived in the most perfect happiness for many years. He joined in the prevalent practice of farming his own estate, and built a very elegant house on an eminence overlooking the Nith. An imprudent speculation in the bank of Ayr, however, compelled him to abandon the seat of his ancestors. He had reserved a small pittance, on which he and his lady lived the latter part of their days. This calamity he bore as became a man familiar with misfortune; and he continued the same worthy open-hearted character he had ever been. The reduction of his fortune served only to redouble the kindness and cordiality of his friends. He died suddenly in September, 1786, whilst on the road to visit one of them—the Earl of Selkirk. He left behind him no issue; but his name is still remembered with ardent attachment.”—New Monthly Magazine, June, 1819.

ANDREW CROSBIE, ESQ.

(Counsellor Pleydell.)

We feel no little pleasure in presenting the original of a character so important as the facetious Pleydell. He is understood to be the representative of Mr. Andrew Crosbie, who flourished at the head of the Scottish bar about the period referred to in the novel. Many circumstances conspire to identify him with the lawyer of the novel. Their eminence in their profession was equally respectable; their habits of frequenting taverns and High Jinks parties on Saturday nights was the same, and both were remarkable for that antique politeness of manner so characteristic of old Scottish gentlemen. It may be allowed that Pleydell is one of the characters most nearly approaching to generic that we have attempted to identify with real life; but it is nevertheless so strenuously asserted by all who have any recollection of Mr. Crosbie, that Pleydell resembles him in particular, that we feel no hesitation in assigning him as the only true specific original. We therefore lay the following simple facts before the public, and leave the judicious reader to his own discrimination.

Mr. Crosbie was in the prime of life about the middle of the last century, and, from that period till the year 1780, enjoyed the highest reputation in his profession. He came of a respectable family in the county of Galloway—the district, the reader will remember, in which the principal scenes of the novel are laid, and probably the shire of which Paulus Pleydell, Esq., is represented (vol. ii. chap, xvi.) as having been, at an early period of his life, the sheriff-depute.

The residence of Mr. Crosbie, in the early periods of his practice, exactly coincides with that of Pleydell, whom, if we recollect rightly, Colonel Mannering found in a dark close on the north side of the High Street, several storeys up a narrow common stair. Mr. Crosbie lived first in Lady Stair’s Close, a steep alley on the north side of the Lawnmarket; afterwards in the Advocate’s Close, in the Luckenbooths; and finally in a self-contained and well-built house of his own, at the foot of Allan’s Close, still standing, and lately inhabited by Richard Cleghorn, Esq., Solicitor before the Supreme Courts. All these various residences are upon the north side of the High Street, and the two first answer particularly to the description in the novel. The last is otherwise remarkable as being situated exactly behind and in view of the innermost penetralia of Mr. Constable’s great publishing warehouse,[10]—the sanctum sanctorum in which Captain Clutterbuck found the Eidolon of the Author of “Waverley,” so well described in the introduction to “Nigel.”

At the period when Mr. Crosbie flourished, all the advocates and judges of the day dwelt in those obscure wynds or alleys leading down from the High Street, which, since the erection of the New Town, have been chiefly inhabited by the lower classes of society. The greater part, for the sake of convenience, lived in the lanes nearest to the Parliament House—such as the Advocate’s Close, Writer’s Court, Lady Stair’s Close, the West Bow, the Back Stairs, the President’s Stairs in the Parliament Close, and the tenements around the Mealmarket. In these dense and insalubrious obscurities they possessed what were then the best houses in Edinburgh, and which were considered as such till the erection of Brown’s Square and the contiguous suburbs, about the beginning of the last king’s reign, when the lawyers were found the first to remove to better and more extensive accommodations, being then, as now, the leading and most opulent class of Edinburgh population. This change is fully pointed out in “Redgauntlet,” where a writer to the signet is represented as removing from the Luckenbooths to Brown’s Square about the time specified—which personage, disguised under the name of Saunders Fairford, we have no doubt was designed for Sir Walter Scott’s own father, a practitioner of the same rank, who then removed from the Old Town to a house at the head of the College Wynd, in which his distinguished son, the Alan Fairford of the romance, was born and educated.

Living as they did so near the Parliament House, it was the custom of both advocates and senators to have their wigs dressed at home, and to go to court with their gowns indued, their wigs in full puff, and each with his cocked hat under his arm.[11] About nine in the morning, the various avenues to the Parliament Square used to be crowded with such figures. In particular, Mr. Crosbie was remarkable for the elegance of his figure, as, like his brethren, he emerged from the profundity of his alley into the open street. While he walked at a deliberate pace across the way, there could not be seen among all the throng a more elegant figure. He exhibited at once the dignity of the counsellor high at the bar and the gracefulness of the perfect gentleman. He frequently walked without a gown, when the fineness of his personal appearance was the more remarkable. His dress was usually a black suit, silk stockings, clear shoes, with gold or silver buckles. Sometimes the suit was of rich black velvet.

Mr. Crosbie, with all the advantages of a pleasing exterior, possessed the more solid qualifications of a vigorous intellect, a refined taste, and an eloquence that has never since been equalled at the bar. His integrity as a counsel could only be surpassed by his abilities as a pleader. In the first capacity, his acute judgment and great legal knowledge had long placed him in the highest rank. In the second, his thorough and confident acquaintance with the law of his case, his beautiful style of language, all “the pomp and circumstance” of matchless eloquence, commanded the attention of the bench in no ordinary degree; and while his talents did all that could be done in respect of moving the court, the excelling beauty of his oratory attracted immense crowds of admirers, whose sole disinterested object was to hear him.

It is recorded of him that he was one day particularly brilliant—so brilliant as even to surprise his usual audience, the imperturbable Lords themselves. What rendered the circumstance more wonderful was, that the case happened to be extremely dull, common-place and uninteresting. The secret history of the matter was to the following effect:—A facetious contemporary, and intimate friend of Mr. Crosbie, the celebrated Lord Gardenstone, in the course of a walk from Morningside, where he resided, fell into conversation with a farmer, who was going to Edinburgh in order to hear his cause pled that forenoon by Mr. Crosbie. The senator, who was a very homely and rather eccentric personage, on being made acquainted with the man’s business, directed him to procure a dozen or two farthings at a snuff-shop in the Grassmarket—to wrap them separately up in white paper, under the disguise of guineas—and to present them to his counsel as fees, when occasion served. The case was called: Mr. Crosbie rose; but his heart not happening to be particularly engaged, he did not by any means exert the utmost of his powers. The treacherous client, however, kept close behind his back, and ever and anon, as he perceived Mr. C. bringing his voice to a cadence, for the purpose of closing the argument, slipped the other farthing into his hand. The repeated application of this silent encouragement so far stimulated the advocate, that, in the end, he became truly eloquent—strained every nerve of his soul in grateful zeal for the interests of so good a client—and, precisely at the fourteenth farthing, gained the cause. The denouement of the conspiracy took place immediately after, in John’s Coffee-house, over a bottle of wine, with which Mr. Crosbie treated Lord Gardenstone from the profits of his pleading; and the surprise and mortification of the barrister, when, on putting his hand into his pocket in order to pay the reckoning, he discovered the real extent of his fee, can only be imagined.

Within the last forty years, a curious custom prevailed among the gentlemen of the long robe in Edinburgh—a custom which, however little it might be thought of then, would certainly make nine modern advocates out of ten shudder at every curl just to think of it. This was the practice of doing all their business, except what required to be done in the court, in taverns and coffee-houses. Plunged in these subterranean haunts, the great lawyers of the day were to be found, surrounded with their myrmidons, throughout the whole afternoon and evening of the day. It was next to impossible to find a lawyer at his own abode, and, indeed, such a thing was never thought of. The whole matter was to find out his tavern, which the cadies upon the street—those men of universal knowledge—could always tell, and then seek the oracle in his own proper hell, as Æneas sought the sibyl. At that time a Directory was seldom applied to; and even though a stranger could have consulted the celebrated Peter Williamson’s (supposing it then to have been published), he might, perhaps, by dint of research, have found out where Lucky Robertson lived, who, in the simple words of that intelligencer, “sold the best twopenny;” or he might have been accommodated, more to his satisfaction, with the information of who, through all the city, “sett lodgings” and “kept rooms for single men;” but he would have found the Directory of little use to him in pointing out where he might meet a legal friend. The cadies, who, at that time, wont to be completely au fait with every hole and bore in the town, were the only directories to whom a client from the country, such as Colonel Mannering or Dandie Dinmont, could in such a case apply.

The peculiar haunt of Mr. Crosbie was Douglas’s tavern in the Anchor Close, then a respectable and flourishing house, now deserted and shut up. Here many revelries, similar to those described in the novel, took place; and here the game of High Jinks was played by a party of convivial lawyers every Saturday night. The situation of the house resembles that of Clerihugh, described in “Guy Mannering,” being the second floor down a steep close, upon the north side of the High Street. Here a club, called the Crochallan Corps, of which Robert Burns was a member when in Edinburgh, assembled periodically, and held bacchanalian orgies, famous for their fierceness and duration.

There was also a tavern in Writer’s Court, kept by a real person, named Clerihugh, the peculiarities of which do not resemble those ascribed to the tavern of the novel, nearly so much as do those of Douglas’s. Clerihugh’s was, however, a respectable house. There the magistrates of the city always gave their civic dinners, and, what may perhaps endear it more in our recollections, it was once the favourite resort of a Boswell, a Gardenstone, and a Home. We may suppose that such a house as Douglas’s gave the idea of the tavern described by our author, while Clerihugh being a more striking name, and better adapted for his purpose, he adopted it in preference to the real one.

The custom of doing all business in taverns gave that generation of lawyers a very dissipated habit, and to it we are to attribute the ruin of Mr. Crosbie. That gentleman being held in universal esteem and admiration, his company was much sought after; and, while his celibacy gave every opportunity that could be desired, his own disposition to social enjoyments tended to confirm the evil. An anecdote is told of him, which displays in a striking manner the extent to which he was wont to go in his debaucheries. He had been engaged to plead a cause, and had partially studied the pros and cons of the case, after which he set off and plunged headlong into those convivialities with which he usually closed the evening. His debauch was a fierce one, and he did not get home till within an hour of the time when the court was to open. It was then too late for sleep, and all other efforts to cool the effervescence of his spirits, by applying wet cloths to his temples, etc., were vain; so that when the case was called, reason had scarcely reassumed her deserted throne. Nevertheless, he opened up with his usually brilliancy, and soon got warm into the argument; but not far did he get leave to proceed with his speech, when the agent came up behind, with horror and alarm in his face, pulled him by the gown, and whispered into his ear, “What the deevil! Mr. Crosbie! ye’ll ruin a’! ye’re on the wrang side; the very Lords are winking at it; and the client is gi’en’ a’ up for lost.” The crapulous barrister gave a single glance at the exordia of his papers, and instantly comprehended his mistake. However, not at all abashed, he rose again, and “Such my lords,” says he, “are probably the weak and intemperate arguments of the defender, concerning which, as I have endeavoured to state them, you can only entertain one opinion, namely, that they are utterly false, groundless, and absurd.” He then turned to upon the right side of the question, pulled to pieces all that he had said before, and represented the case in an entirely different light; and so much and so earnestly did he exert himself in order to repair his error, that he actually gained the cause.

Some allusion is made to Mr. Crosbie’s propensity to wine, in a birthday ode, written in his honour by his friend, Mr. Maclaurin (afterwards Lord Dreghorn), and set to music by the celebrated Earl of Kelly. We there learn that, at his birth, Venus, Bacchus, and Astrea, came and contended for the possession of his future affections, and that Jove gave a decision to this effect:—

“’Tis ordered, boy, Love, Law, and Wine,

Shall thy strange cup of life compose;

But, though the three are all divine,

The last shall be thy favourite dose.”

It was indeed his favourite dose, and proved at last a fatal one. But, before we relate the history of his end, it will be necessary to notice a few particulars respecting his life.

Towards the conclusion of the American war, when Edinburgh raised a defensive band, and offered its services to government, Mr. Crosbie interested himself very much in the patriotic scheme, and was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the regiment. About the same period, he also interested himself very deeply in a business of a different description, namely, the institution of the Scottish Antiquarian Society, which was first projected by the Earl of Buchan. Mr. Crosbie was one of the original members, and had the honour to be appointed a censor. Honourable mention is made of him in his friend Boswell’s Tour to the Hebrides, being one of the northern literati who were introduced to Dr. Johnson when he passed through Edinburgh. In the life of Johnson, also, it will be found that the barrister visited the great lexicographer in London, shortly after the Doctor had returned from his northern excursion. The conversations which took place on both these occasions are curious, but not sufficiently interesting to be extracted into this work.

In the course of a long successful practice, the original of Pleydell acquired some wealth; and, at the time when the New Town of Edinburgh began to be built, with an enthusiasm prevalent at the period, he conceived the best way of laying out his money to be in the erection of houses in that noble and prosperous extension of the city. He therefore spent all he had, and ran himself into considerable debt, in raising a structure which was to surpass all the edifices yet erected, for making the design of which he employed that celebrated architect, Mr. James Craig, the nephew of Mr. Thomson, who planned the New Town on its projection in 1767. The house which Mr. Crosbie erected was to the north of the splendid mansion built by Sir Lawrence Dundas, which subsequent times have seen converted into an excise-office; and as the beauty of Mr. C.’s house was in a great measure subservient to the decoration of Sir Lawrence’s, that gentleman, with his accustomed liberality, made his tasteful neighbour a present of five hundred pounds. Yet this bonus proved, after all, but an insufficient compensation for the expense which Mr. Crosbie had incurred in his sumptuous speculation; and the unfortunate barrister, who, by his taste, had attracted the wonder and envy of all ranks, was thought to have made himself a considerable loser in the end. While it was yet unfinished, he removed from Allan’s Close, and, establishing himself in one of its corners, realized Knickerbocker’s fable of the snail in the lobster’s shell. He lived in it for some time, in a style of extravagance appropriate to the splendour of his mansion; till, becoming embarrassed by his numerous debts, and beginning to feel the effects of other imprudencies, he was at last obliged to resort to Allan’s Close, and take up with his old abode and his diminished fortunes. About this period his constitution appeared much injured by his habits of life, and he was of course unable to attend to business with his former alacrity. An incipient passion for dogs, horses, and cocks, was another strong symptom of decay. To crown all, he made a low marriage with a woman who had formerly been his menial, and (some said) his mistress; and as this tended very much to take away the esteem of the world, his practice began to forsake, and his friends to neglect him.

It was particularly unfortunate that, about this time, he lost the habit of frequenting one particular tavern, as he had been accustomed to do in his earlier and better years. The irregularity consequent upon visiting four or five of a night, in which he drank liquors of different sorts and qualities, was sufficient to produce the worst effects. Had he always steadily adhered to Clerihugh’s or Douglas’s, he might have been equally fortunate with many of his companions, who had frequented particular taverns, through several generations of possessors, seldom missing a night’s attendance, during the course of fifty years, from ill health or any other cause.

It is a melancholy task to relate the end of Mr. Crosbie. From one depth he floundered down to another, every step in his conduct tending towards a climax of ruin. Infatuation and despair led him on, disrespect and degradation followed him. When he had reached what might be called the goal of his fate, he found himself deserted by all whom he had ever loved or cherished, and almost destitute of a single attendant to administer to him the necessaries of life. Bound by weakness and disease to an uneasy pallet, in the garret of his former mansion, he lingered out the last weeks of life in pain, want, and sickness. So completely was he forsaken by every friend, that not one was by at the last scene to close his eyes or carry him to the grave. Though almost incredible, it is absolutely true, that he was buried by a few unconcerned strangers, gathered from the street; and this happened in the very spot where he had been known all his life, in the immediate neighbourhood of hundreds who had known, loved, and admired him for many years. He died on the 25th of February, 1785.

DRIVER.

Mr. Crosbie’s clerk was a person named Robert H——, whose character and propensities agreed singularly well with those of Mr. Pleydell’s dependant, Driver. He was himself a practitioner before the courts, of the meaner description, and is remembered by many who were acquainted with the public characters of Edinburgh, towards the end of last century. He was frequently to be seen in the forenoon, scouring the closes of the High Street, or parading the Parliament Square; sometimes seizing his legal friends by the button, and dragging them about in the capacity of listeners, with an air and manner of as great importance as if he had been up to the very pen in his ear in business.

He was a pimpled, ill-shaven, smart-speaking, clever-looking fellow, usually dressed in grey under-garments, an old hat nearly brushed to death, and a black coat, of a fashion at least in the seventh year of its age, scrupulously buttoned up to his chin. It was in his latter and more unfortunate years that he had become thus slovenly. A legal gentleman, who gives us information concerning him, recollects when he was nearly the greatest fop in Edinburgh—being powdered in the highest style of fashion, wearing two gold watches, and having the collar of his coat adorned with a beautiful loop of the same metal. After losing the protection of Mr. Crosbie, he had fallen out of all regular means of livelihood; and unfortunately acquiring an uncontrollable propensity for social enjoyments, like the ill-fated Robert Fergusson, with whom he had been intimately acquainted, he became quite unsettled—sometimes did not change his apparel for weeks—sat night and day in particular taverns—and, in short, realized what Pleydell asserted of Driver, that “sheer ale supported him under everything; was meat, drink, and cloth—bed, board, and washing.” In his earlier years he had been very regular in his irregularities, and was a “complete fixture” at John Baxter’s tavern, in Craig’s Close, High Street, where he was the Falstaff of a convivial society, termed the “Eastcheap Club.” But his dignity of conduct becoming gradually dissipated and relaxed, and there being also, perhaps, many a landlady who might have said with Dame Quickly, “I warrant you he’s an infinite thing upon my score,” he had become unfortunately migrative and unsteady in his taproom affections. One night he would get drunk at the sign of the Sautwife, in the Abbeyhill, and next morning be found tipping off a corrective dram at a porter-house in Rose Street. Sometimes, after having made a midnight tumble into “the Finish” in the Covenant Close, he would, by next afternoon, have found his way (the Lord and the policeman only knew how) to a pie-office in the Castlehill. It was absolutely true that he could write his papers as well drunk as sober, asleep as awake; and the anecdote which the facetious Pleydell narrated to Colonel Mannering, in confirmation of this miraculous faculty, is also, we are able to inform the reader, strictly consistent in truth with an incident of real occurrence.

Poor H—— was one of those happy, thoughtless, and imprudent mortals, whose idea of existence lies all in to-day, or to-morrow at farthest,—whose whole life is only a series of random exertions and chance efforts at subsistence—a sort of constant Maroon war with starvation. His life had been altogether passed in Edinburgh. All he knew, besides his professional lore, was of Edinburgh; but then he knew all of that. There did not exist a tavern in the capital of which he could not have winked you the characters of both the waiters and the beefsteaks at a moment’s notice. He was at once the annalist of the history, the mobs, the manners, and the jokes of Edinburgh—a human phial, containing its whole essential spirit, corked with wit and labelled with pimples.

H—— was a man rich in all sorts of humour and fine sayings. His conversation was dangerously delightful. Had he not unhappily fallen into debauched habits, he possessed abilities that might have entitled him to the most enviable situations about the Court; but, from the nature of his peculiar habits, his wit was the only faculty he ever displayed in its full extent—pity it was the only one that could not be exerted for his own benefit! To have seen him set down “for a night of it” in Lucky F——’s, with a few cronies as drowthie as himself, and his Shadow (a person who shall hereafter be brought to light), was in itself a most exquisite treat. By the time that the injunction of “another half-mutchkin, mistress,” had been six times repeated, his lips, his eyes, and his nose, spoke, looked, and burned wit—pure wit! “He could not ope his mouth, but out there flew a trope.” The very sound of his voice was in itself a waggery; the twinkle of his eye might have toppled a whole theatre over into convulsions. He could not even spit but he was suspected of a witticism, and received the congratulation of a roar accordingly. Nay, at the height of such a tide as this, he would sometimes get the credit of Butler himself for an accidental scratch of his head.

His practice as a writer (for so he is styled in Peter Williamson’s Directory) lay chiefly among the very dregs of desperation and poverty, and was withal of such a nature as to afford him the humblest means of subsistence. Being naturally damned, as he himself used to say, with the utmost goodness of heart, he never hesitated at taking any poverty-struck case by the hand that could hold forth the slightest hope of success, and was perfectly incapable of resisting any appeal to his sense of justice, if made in forma pauperis. The greater part of his clients were poor debtors in the Heart of Midlothian, and he was most frequently employed in cases of cessio, for the accomplishment of which he was, from long practice, peculiarly qualified. He had himself a sort of instinctive hatred of the name of creditor, and would have been at any time perfectly willing to fight gratis upon the debtor’s side out of pure amateurship. His idle and debauched habits, also, laid him constantly open to the company of the lowest litigants, who purchased his advice or his opinion, and, in some cases, even his services as an agent, for the paltriest considerations in the shape of liquor; and, unfortunately, he did not possess sufficient resolution to withstand such temptations—his propensity for social enjoyments, which latterly became quite ungovernable, disposing him to make the greatest sacrifices for its gratification.

Yet this man, wretched as he eventually was, possessed a perfect knowledge of the law of Scotland, besides a great degree of professional cleverness; and, what with his experience under Mr. Crosbie, and his having been so long a hanger-on of the Court, was considered one of the best agents that could be employed in almost any class of cases. It is thought by many of his survivors that, if his talents had been backed by steadiness of application, he might have attained to very considerable eminence. At least, it has been observed, that many of his contemporaries, who had not half of his abilities, by means of better conduct and greater perseverence, have risen to enviable distinction. Mr. Crosbie always put great reliance in him, and sometimes intrusted him with important business; and H—— has even been seen to destroy a paper of Mr. Crosbie’s writing, and draw up a better himself, without incurring the displeasure which such an act of disrespect seemed to deserve. The highest compliment, however, that could be paid to Mr. H——’s abilities, was the saying of an old man, named Nicol,[12] a native of that litigious kingdom, Fife, who, for a long course of years, pestered the Court, in forma pauperis, with a process about a dunghill, and who at length died in Cupar jail—where he had been disposed, for some small debt, by a friend, just, as was asserted, to keep him out of harm’s way. Old John used to treat H—— in Johnnie Dowie’s, and get, as he said, the law out o’ him for the matter of a dram. He declared that “he would not give H——’s drunken glour at a paper for the serious opinions of the haill bench!”

Sunday was wont to be a very precious day to H——,—far too good to be lost in idle dram-drinking at home. On Saturday nights he generally made a point of insuring stock to the amount of half-a-crown in his landlady’s hands, and proposed a tour of jollity for next morning to a few of his companions. These were, for the most part, poor devils like himself, who, with few lucid intervals of sobriety or affluence—equally destitute of industry, prudence, and care for the opinion of the world—contrive to fight, drink, and roar their way through a desperate existence, in spite of the devil, their washerwoman, and the small-debt-court—perhaps even receiving Christian burial at last like the rest of their species. With one or two such companions as these, H—— would issue of a Sunday morning through the Watergate, on an expedition to Newhaven, Duddingstone, Portobello, or some such guzzling retreat,[13]—the termination of their walk being generally determined by the consideration of where they might have the best drink, the longest credit, or where they had already least debt. Then was it most delightful to observe by what a special act of Providence they would alight upon “the last rizzer’d haddock in the house,” or “the only hundred oysters that was to be got in the town;” and how gloriously they would bouse away their money, their credit, and their senses, till, finally, after uttering, for the thousand and first time, all their standard Parliament-House jokes—after quarrelling with the landlord, and flattering the more susceptible landlady up to the sticking-place of “a last gill,”—they would reel away home, in full enjoyment of that glory which, according to Robert Burns, is superior to the glory of even kings!

Nevertheless, H—— was not utterly given up to Sunday debauches, nor was he destitute of a sense of religion. He made a point of always going to church on rainy Sundays—that is to say, when his neckcloth happened to be in its honey-moon, and the button-moulds of his vestments did not chance to be beyond their first phase. He was not, therefore, very consistent in his devotional sentiments and observances; for the weather shared with his tailor the credit of determining him in all such matters. He was like Berwick smacks of old, which only sailed, “wind and weather permitting.” When, however, the day was favourably bad, he would proceed to the High Church of St. Giles (where, excepting on days of General Assembly, there are usually enow of empty seats for an army), and, on observing that the Lords of Session had not chosen to hold any sederunt that day, he would pop into their pew. In this conspicuous seat, which he perhaps considered a sort of common property of the College of Justice, he would look wonderfully at his ease, with one threadbare arm lolling carelessly over the velvet-cushioned gallery, while in the other hand he held his mother’s old black pocket Bible—a relic which he had contrived to preserve for an incredible number of years, through a thousand miraculous escapades from lodgings where he was insolvent, in memory of a venerable relation, whom he had never forgot, though oblivious of every other earthly regard besides.

Mr. H——’s Shadow, whom we mentioned a few pages back, however unsubstantial he may seem from his sobriquet, was a real person, and more properly entitled Mr. Nimmo. He had long been a dependant of H——’s, whence he derived this strange designation. Little more than the shadow of a recollection of him remains as materiel for description. He bore somewhat of the same relation to his principal which Silence bears to Shallow, in Henry IV.,—that is, he was an exaggerated specimen of the same species, and exhibited the peculiarities of H——’s habits and character in a more advanced stage. He was a prospective indication of what H—— was to become. H——, like Mr. Thomas Campbell’s “coming events,” cast his “shadow before;” and Nimmo was this shadow. When H—— got new clothes, Nimmo got the exuviæ or cast-off garments, which he wore on and on, as long as his principal continued without a new supply. Therefore, when H—— became shabby, Nimmo was threadbare; when H—— became threadbare, Nimmo was almost denuded; and when H—— became almost denuded, Nimmo was quite naked! Thus, also, when H——, after a successful course of practice, got florid and in good case, Nimmo followed and exhibited a little colour upon the wonted pale of his cheeks; when H—— began to fade, Nimmo withered before him; by the time H—— was looking thin, Nimmo was thin indeed; and when H—— was attenuated and sickly, poor Nimmo was as slender and airy as a moonbeam. Nimmo was in all things beyond, before, ahead of H——. If H—— was elevated, Nimmo was tipsy; if H—— was tipsy, Nimmo was fou; if H—— was fou, Nimmo was dead-drunk; and if H—— persevered and got dead-drunk also, Nimmo was sure still to be beyond him, and was perhaps packed up and laid to sleep underneath his principal’s chair. Nimmo, as it were, cleared the way for H——’s progress towards destruction—was his pioneer, his vidette, his harbinger, his avant-courier—the aurora of his rising, the twilight of his decline.

Nimmo naturally, and to speak of him without relation to the person of whom he was part and parcel, was altogether so inarticulate, so empty, so meagre, so inane a being, that he could scarcely be reckoned more than a mere thread of the vesture of humanity—a whisper of Nature’s voice. Nobody knew where he lived at night: he seemed then to disappear from the face of the earth, just as other shadows disappear on the abstraction of the light which casts them. He was quite a casual being—appeared by chance, spoke by chance, seemed even to exist only by chance, as a mere occasional exhalation of chaos, and at last evaporated from the world to sleep with the shadows of death,—all by chance. To have seen him, one would have thought it by no means impossible for him to dissolve himself and go into a phial, like Asmodeus in the laboratory at Madrid. His figure was in fact a libel on the human form divine. It was perfectly unimaginable what he would have been like in puris naturalibus, had the wind suddenly blown him out of his clothes some day—an accident of which he seemed in constant danger. It is related of him, that he was once mistaken, when found dead-drunk in a gutter, on the morning after a king’s birth-day, for the defunct corpse of Johnnie Wilkes,[14] which had been so loyally kicked about the streets by the mob on the preceding evening; but, on a scavenger proceeding to sweep him down the channel, he presently sunk from the exalted character imputed to him, by rousing himself, and calling lustily, “Another bottle—just another bottle, and then we’ll go!” upon which the deceived officer of police left him to the management of the stream.

Besides serving Mr. H—— in the character of clerk or amanuensis, he used to dangle at his elbow on all occasions, swear religiously to all his charges, and show the way in laughing at all his jokes. He was so clever in the use of his pen in transcription, that his hand could travel over a sheet at the rate of eleven knots an hour, and this whether drunk or sober, asleep or awake. Death itself could scarcely have chilled his energies, and it was one of his favourite jokes, in vaunting of the latter miraculous faculty, to declare that he intended to delay writing his will till after his decease, when he would guide himself in the disposal of his legacies by the behaviour of his relations. We do not question his abilities for such a task; but one might have had a pretty good guess, from Nimmo’s appearance, that he would scarcely ever find occasion, either before or after death, to exercise them.

These sketches, from the quaint flippancy of their style, may be suspected of fancifulness and exaggeration; yet certain it is, that out of the ten thousand persons said to be employed in this legal metropolis in the solicitation, distribution, and execution of justice, many individuals may even yet be found, in whom it would be possible to trace the lineaments we have described. Such persons as H—— and Nimmo dangle at the elbows of The Law, and can no more be said to belong to its proper body than so many rats in a castle appertain to the garrison.

H—— continued in the course of life which we have attempted to describe till the year 1808, when his constitution became so shattered, that he was in a great measure unfitted for business or for intercourse with society. Towards the end of his life, his habits had become still more irregular than before, and he seemed to hasten faster and faster as he went on to destruction, like the meteor, whose motion across the sky seems to increase in rapidity the moment before extinction. After the incontestable character of the greatest wit and the utmost cleverness had been awarded to him,—after he had spent so much money and constitution in endeavouring to render his companions happy, that some of them, more grateful or more drunken than the rest, actually confessed him to be “a devilish good-natured foolish sort of fellow,”—after he had, like certain Scottish poets, almost drunk himself into the character of a genius,—it came to pass that—he died. A mere pot-house reveller like him is no more missed in the world of life than a sparrow or a bishop. There was no one to sorrow for his loss—no one to regret his absence—save those whose friendship is worse than indifference. It never was very distinctly known how or where he died. It was alone recorded of him, as of the antediluvian patriarchs, that he died. As his life had become of no importance, so his death produced little remark and less sorrow. On the announcement of the event to a party of his old drinking friends, who, of course, were all decently surprised, etc., one of them in the midst of the Is it possibles? Not-possibles! and Can it be possibles? incidental to the occasion, summed up his elegy, by trivially exclaiming, “Lord! is Rab dead at last! Weel, that’s strange indeed!—not a week since I drank six half-mutchkins wi’ him down at Amos’s! Ah! he was a good bitch! (Then raising his voice) Bring us in a biscuit wi’ the next gill, mistress! Rab was ay fond o’ bakes!” And they ate a biscuit to his memory!

It is somewhat remarkable that the deaths of Crosbie and H—— should have been produced by causes and attended by circumstances nearly the same, though a period of full twenty years had intervened between the events. Both were men of great learning and abilities,—they were drawn down from the height in which their talents entitled them to shine by the same unfortunate propensities,—and while, in their latter days, both experienced the reverse of fortune invariably attendant upon imprudence, they at length left the scene of their notoriety, equally despised, deserted, and miserable.

Both cases are well calculated to illustrate the lesson so strenuously inculcated by Johnson,—that to have friends we must first be virtuous, as there is no friendship among the profligate.

Mr. Crosbie’s death presents the more trite moral of the two—for in it we see little more than the world forsaking an unfortunate man, as crowds fly from the falling temple, to avoid being crushed in the ruins. But the moral of Mr. H——’s death is striking and valuable. In him we see a man of the brightest genius gradually losing that self-respect, so necessary, even when it amounts to pride, for the cultivation and proper enjoyment of superior mental powers,—becoming in time unsettled in his habits, and careless of public estimation,—losing the attachment of friends of his own rank, and compensating the loss by mixing with associates of the lowest order:—next, become incapable of business, we see him dejected and forlorn as poverty itself, by turns assuming every colour and every aspect of which the human countenance and figure is susceptible, till the whole was worn down to a degree of indiscriminate ruin—the ne plus ultra of change:—at length, when every vulgar mode of enjoyment had been exhausted, and when even the fiercest stimulants had grown insipid, we see him lost at once to sensibility and to sensation, encountering the last evils of mortality in wretchedness and obscurity, unpitied by the very persons for whom he had sacrificed so much, and leaving a name for which he expected to acquire the fame of either talent or misfortune,

“To point a moral and adorn a tale!”[15]

SOUTH COUNTRY FARMERS.

(Dandie Dinmont.)

Perhaps the Author of “Waverley” has nowhere so completely given the effect of reality to his portraiture as in the case of honest Dandie Dinmont, the renowned yeoman of Charlieshope. This personage seems to be quite familiar to his mind, present to his eye, domesticated in the chambers of his fancy. The minutest motions of the farmer’s body, and the most trivial workings of his mind, are alike bright in his eye; and so faithful a representation has been produced, that one might almost think the author had taken his sketch by some species of mental camera obscura, which brought the figure beneath his pencil in all its native colours and proportions.

It is impossible to point out any individual of real life as the original of this happy production. It appears to be entirely generic—that is to say, the whole class of Liddisdale farmers is here represented, and little more than a single thread is taken from any single person to form the web of the character. Three various persons have been popularly mentioned as furnishing the author with his most distinguished traits, each of whom have their followers and believers among the country people. It will perhaps be possible to prove that Dandie Dinmont is a sort of compound of all three, the ingredients being leavened and wrought up with the general characteristic qualities of the “Lads of Liddisdale.”

Mr. Archibald Park, late of Lewinshope, near Selkirk, brother of the celebrated Mungo Park, was the person always most strongly insisted on as being the original of Dandie. He was a man of prodigious strength, in stature upwards of six feet, and every member of his body was in perfect accordance with his great height. He completely realized the most extravagant ideas that the poets of his country formerly entertained of the stalwart borderers; and his achievements “by flood and field,” in the violent exercises and sports of his profession, came fully up to those of the most distinguished heroes of border song. He had all the careless humour and boisterous hospitality of the Liddisdale farmer. On the appearance of the novel, his neighbours at once put him down as the Dandie Dinmont of real life, and he was generally addressed by the name of his supposed archetype by his familiar associates, so long as he remained in that part of the country, which, however, was not long. His circumstances requiring him to relinquish his farm, he obtained, by the interest of some friends, the situation of collector of customs at Tobermory, to which place he removed in 1815. Soon after he had settled there, he was attacked by a paralytic affection, from which he never thoroughly recovered, and he died in 1821, aged about fifty years.

Mr. John Thorburn, of Juniper Bank, the person whom we consider to have stood in the next degree of relationship to Dinmont, was a humorous good-natured farmer, very fond of hunting and fishing, and a most agreeable companion over a bottle. He was truly an unsophisticated worthy man. Many amusing anecdotes are told of him in the south, and numerous scenes have been witnessed in his hospitable mansion, akin to that described in the novel as taking place upon the return of Dandie from “Stagshawbank fair.” The interior economy of Juniper Bank is said to have more nearly resembled Charlieshope than did that of Lewinshope, the residence of Mr. Park. Indeed the latter bore no similarity whatever to Charlieshope, excepting in the hospitality of the master and the Christian name of the mistress of the house. Mr. Park, like his fictitious counterpart, was one of the most generous and hearty landlords alive; and his wife, who was a woman of highly respectable connections, bore, like Mrs. Dinmont, the familiar abbreviated name of Ailie.

Thorburn, like Dandie, was once before the feifteen. The celebrated Mr. Jeffrey being retained in his cause, Thorburn went into Court to hear his pleading. He was delighted with the talents and oratory of his advocate; and, on coming out, observed to his friends, “Od, he’s an awfu’ body yon; he said things that I never could hae thought o’ mysel’.”

Mr. James Davidson, of Hindlee, another honest south-country farmer, was pointed out as the prototype of Dandie Dinmont. This gentleman used to breed numerous families of terriers, to which he gave the names of Pepper and Mustard, in all their varieties of Auld and Young, Big and Little; and it was this community of designation in the dogs of the two personages, rather than any particular similarity in the manners or characters of themselves, that gave credit to the conjecture of Mr. Davidson’s friends.[16]

It will appear, from these notices, that no individual has sat for the portrait of Dinmont, but that it has been painted from indiscriminate recollections of various border store-farmers. We cannot do better than conclude with the words of the author himself, when introducing this subject to the reader:—“The present store-farmers of the south of Scotland are a much more refined race than their fathers, and the manners I am now to describe have either altogether disappeared or are greatly modified. Without losing their rural simplicity of manners, they now cultivate arts unknown to the former generation, not only in the progressive improvement of their possessions, but in all the comforts of life. Their houses are more commodious, their habits of life better regulated, so as better to keep pace with those of the civilized world; and the best of luxuries, the luxury of knowledge, has gained much ground among the hills during the last thirty years. Deep drinking, formerly their greatest failing, is now fast losing ground; and while the frankness of their extensive hospitality continues the same, it is, generally speaking, refined in its character, and restrained in its excesses.”

A SCOTCH PROBATIONER.

(Dominie Sampson.)

There are few of our originals in whom we can exhibit such precise points of coincident resemblance between the real and fictitious character, as in him whom we now assign as the prototype of Dominie Sampson. The person of real existence also possesses the singular recommendation of presenting more dignified and admirable characteristics, in their plain unvarnished detail, than the ridiculous caricature produced in “Guy Mannering,” though it be drawn by an author whose elegant imagination has often exalted, but seldom debased, the materials to which he has condescended to be indebted.

Mr. James Sanson was the son of James Sanson, tacksman of Birkhillside Mill, situate in the parish of Legerwood, in Berwickshire. After getting the rudiments of his education at a country-school, he went to the University of Edinburgh, and, at a subsequent period, completed his probationary studies at that of Glasgow. At these colleges he made great proficiency in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages, and became deeply immersed in the depths of philosophy and theology, of which, as with Dominie Sampson, the more abstruse and neglected branches were his favourite subjects of application. He was a close, incessant student; and, in the families where he afterwards resided as a tutor, all his leisure moments were devoted to the pursuits of literature. Even his hours of relaxation and walking were not exempted, in the exceeding earnestness of his solicitude. Then he was seldom seen without a book, upon which he would be so intent, that a friend might have passed, and even spoken to him, without Sanson’s being conscious of the circumstance. After going through his probationary trials before the presbytery, he became an acceptable, even an admired preacher, and was frequently employed in assisting the clergymen of the neighbourhood.

From the narrow circumstances of his father, he was obliged early in life to become a tutor. Into whose family he first entered is unknown. However, in this humble situation, owing probably to the parsimonious economy to which he had been accustomed in his father’s house, he in a short time saved the sum of twenty-five pounds—a little fortune in those days to a youth of Mr. Sanson’s habits.

With this money he determined upon a pedestrian excursion into England, for which he was excellently qualified, from his uncommon strength and undaunted resolution. After journeying over a great part of the sister kingdom, he came to Harwich, where a sight of the passage-boats to Holland, and the cheapness of the fare, induced him to take a trip to the continent. How he was supported during his peregrinations was never certainly discovered; but he actually travelled over the greater part of the Netherlands, besides a considerable portion of Germany, and spent only about the third part of his twenty-five pounds. He always kept a profound silence upon the subject himself; but it is conjectured, with great probability, that in the Low Countries he had recourse to convents, were the monks were ever ready to do acts of kindness to men of such learning as Sanson would appear to them to be. Perhaps he procured the means of subsistence by the expedients which the celebrated Goldsmith is said to have practised in his continental wanderings, and made the disputation of the morning supply the dinner of the day.

After his return from the continent, about 1784, he entered the family of the Rev. Laurence Johnson of Earlston, where he continued some time, partly employed in the education of his children, and giving occasional assistance in his public ministerial duty. From this situation he removed to the house of Mr. Thomas Scott, uncle of the celebrated Sir Walter, whose family then resided at Ellieston, in the county of Roxburgh. While superintending this gentleman’s children, he was appointed to a higher duty—the charge of Carlenridge Chapel, in the parish of Hawick, which he performed regularly every Sunday, at the same time that he attended the education of the family through the week. We may safely conjecture that it was at this particular period of his life he first was honoured with the title of Dominie Sanson.

He was next employed by the Earl of Hopetoun, as chaplain to that nobleman’s tenants at Leadhills, where, with an admirable but unfortunate tenaciousness of duty, he patiently continued to exercise his honourable calling, to the irreparable destruction of his own health. The atmosphere being tainted with the natural effluvia of the noxious mineral which was the staple production of the place, though incapable of influencing the health of those who had been accustomed to it from their infancy, had soon a fatal effect upon the life of poor Sanson. The first calamitous consequence that befel him was the loss of his teeth; next he became totally blind; and, last of all, to complete the sacrifice, the insalubrious air extinguished the principle of life. Thus did this worthy man, though conscious of the fate that awaited him, choose rather to encounter the last enemy of our nature, than relinquish what he considered a sacred duty. Strange that one, whose conduct through life was every way so worthy of the esteem and gratitude of mankind—whose death would not have disgraced the devotion of a primitive martyr—should by means of a few less dignified peculiarities, have eventually conferred the character of perfection on a work of humour, and, in a caricatured exhibition, supplied attractions, nearly unparalleled, to innumerable theatres!

Mr. James Sanson was of the greatest stature—near six feet high, and otherwise proportionately enormous. His person was coarse, his limbs large, and his manners awkward; so that, while people admired the simplicity and innocence of his character, they could not help smiling at the clumsiness of his motions and the rudeness of his address. His soul was pure and untainted—the seat of many manly and amiable virtues. He was ever faithful in his duty, both as a preacher and a tutor, warmly attached to the interests of the family in which he resided, and gentle in the instruction of his pupils. As a preacher, though his manner in his public exhibitions, no less than in private society, was not in his favour, he was well received by every class of hearers. His discourses were the well-digested productions of a laborious mind; and his sentiments seldom failed to be expressed with the utmost beauty and elegance of diction.

JEAN GORDON.

(Meg Merrilies.)

The original of this character has been already pointed out and described in various publications. A desire of presenting, in this work, as much original matter as possible, will induce us to be very brief in our notice of Jean Gordon.

It is impossible to specify the exact date of her nativity, though it probably was about the year 1670. She was born at Kirk-Yetholm, in Roxburghshire, the metropolis of the Scottish Gipsies, and was married to a Gipsy chief, named Patrick Faa, by whom she had ten or twelve children.

In the year 1714, one of Jean’s sons, named Alexander Faa, was murdered by another Gipsy, named Robert Johnston, who escaped the pursuit of justice for nearly ten years, but was then taken and indicted by his Majesty’s Advocate for the crime. He was sentenced to be executed, but escaped from prison. It was easier, however, to escape the grasp of justice than to elude the wide spread talons of Gipsy vengeance. Jean Gordon traced the murderer like a blood-hound, followed him to Holland, and from thence to Ireland, where she had him seized, and brought him back to Jedburgh. Here she obtained the full reward of her toils, by having the satisfaction of seeing him hanged on Gallowhill. Some time afterwards, Jean being at Sourhope, a sheep-farm on Bowmont-water, the goodman said to her, “Weel, Jean, ye hae got Rob Johnston hanged at last, and out o’ the way?” “Ay, gudeman,” replied Jean, lifting up her apron by the two corners, “and a’ that fu’ o’ gowd hasna done’t.” Jean Gordon’s “apron fu’ o’ gowd” may remind some of our readers of Meg Merrilies’ poke of jewels; and indeed the whole transaction forcibly recalls the stern picture of that intrepid heroine.

The circumstance in “Guy Mannering,” of Brown being indebted to Meg Merrilies for lodging and protection, when he lost his way near Derncleugh, finds a remarkably precise counterpart in an anecdote related of Jean Gordon:—A farmer with whom she had formerly been on good terms, though their acquaintance had been interrupted for several years, lost his way, and was benighted among the mountains of Cheviot. A light glimmering through the hole of a desolate barn, that had survived the farmhouse to which it once belonged, guided him to a place of shelter. He knocked at the door, and it was immediately opened by Jean Gordon. To meet with such a character in so solitary a place, and probably at no great distance from her clan, was a terrible surprise to the honest man, whose rent, to lose which would have been ruin to him, was about his person. Jean set up a shout of joyful recognition, forced the farmer to dismount, and, in the zeal of her kindness, hauled him into the barn. Great preparations were making for supper, which the gudeman of Lochside, to increase his anxiety, observed was calculated for at least a dozen of guests. Jean soon left him no doubt upon the subject, but inquired what money he had about him, and made earnest request to be made his purse-keeper for the night, as the “bairns” would soon be home. The poor farmer made a virtue of necessity, told his story, and surrendered his gold to Jean’s custody. She made him put a few shillings in his pocket, observing, it would excite suspicion, were he found travelling altogether penniless. This arrangement being made, the farmer lay down on a sort of shake-down, upon some straw, but, as will easily be believed, slept not. About midnight the gang returned with various articles of plunder, and talked over their exploits in language which made the farmer tremble. They were not long in discovering their guest, and demanded of Jean whom she had there? “E’en the winsome gudeman o’ Lochside, poor body,” replied Jean; “he’s been at Newcastle seeking for siller to pay his rent, honest man, but de’il-be-licket he’s been able to gather in, and sae he’s gaun e’en hame wi’ a toom purse and a sair heart.” “That may be, Jean,” said one of the banditti, “but we maun rip his pouches a bit, and see if it be true or no.” Jean set up her throat in exclamation against this breach of hospitality, but without producing any change in their determination. The farmer soon heard their stifled whispers and light steps by his bed-side, and understood they were rummaging his clothes. When they found the money which the providence of Jean Gordon had made him retain, they held a consultation if they should take it or no; but the smallness of the booty, and the vehemence of Jean’s remonstrances, determined them in the negative. They caroused and went to rest. So soon as day dawned, Jean roused her guest, produced his horse, which she had accommodated behind the hallan, and guided him for some miles till he was on the high-road to Lochside. She then restored his whole property, nor could his earnest entreaties prevail on her to accept so much as a single guinea.

It is related that all Jean’s sons were condemned to die at Jedburgh on the same day. It is said the jury were equally divided; but a friend to justice, who had slept during the discussion, waked suddenly, and gave his word for condemnation, in the emphatic words, “Hang them a’.” Jean was present, and only said, “The Lord help the innocent in a day like this!”

Her own death was accompanied with circumstances of brutal outrage, of which Jean was in many respects wholly undeserving. Jean had, among other merits or demerits, that of being a staunch Jacobite. She chanced to be at Carlisle upon a fair or market-day, soon after the year 1746, where she gave vent to her political partiality, to the great offence of the rabble of that city. Being zealous of their loyalty, when there was no danger, in proportion to the tameness with which they surrendered to the Highlanders in 1745, they inflicted upon poor Jean Gordon no slighter penalty than that of ducking her to death in the Eden. It was an operation of some time; for Jean Gordon was a stout woman, and, struggling hard with her murderers, often got her head above water, and while she had voice left, continued to exclaim, at such intervals, “Charlie yet! Charlie yet!”

Her propensities were exactly the same as those of the fictitious character of Meg Merrilies. She possessed the same virtue of fidelity, spoke the same language, and in appearance there was little difference; yet Madge Gordon, her grand-daughter, was said to have had the same resemblance. She was descended from the Faas by the mother’s side, and was married to a Young. She had a large aquiline nose; penetrating eyes, even in her old age; bushy hair, that hung around her shoulders from beneath a gipsy bonnet of straw; a short cloak, of a peculiar fashion; and a long staff, nearly as tall as herself. When she spoke vehemently (for she had many complaints), she used to strike her staff upon the floor, and throw herself into an attitude which it was impossible to regard with indifference.

From these traits of the manners of Jean and Madge Gordon, it may be perceived that it would be difficult to determine which of the two Meg Merrilies was intended for; it may therefore, without injustice, be divided between both. So that if Jean was the prototype of her character, it is very probable that Madge must have sat to the anonymous author of “Guy Mannering” as the representative of her person.

To the author whose duty leads him so low in the scale of nature, that the manners and the miseries of a vicious and insubordinate race, prominent in hideous circumstances of unvarnished reality, are all he is permitted to record, it must ever be gratifying to find traits of such fine enthusiasm, such devoted fidelity, as the conduct of Jean Gordon exhibits in the foregoing incidents. They stand out with a delightful and luminous effect from the gloomy canvas of guilt, atoning for its errors and brightening its darkness. To trace further, as others have done, the disgusting peculiarities of a people so abandoned to all sense of moral propriety, would only serve to destroy the effect already created by the redeeming characters of Jean Gordon and her nobler sister, and more extensively to disgrace the general respectability of human nature.

CHAPTER III.

The Antiquary.

ANDREW GEMMELS.

(Edie Ochiltree.)

ndrew Gemmels or Gemble, a wandering blue-gown of the south of Scotland, is supposed to have been the original of Edie Ochiltree. The latter, as represented in the novel, bears, it is true, a much more amiable aspect, and exhibits greater elevation of character, than the rude old soldier in whom the public has recognised his prototype. Yet, as we believe there exists a considerable degree of resemblance between them, a sketch of old Andrew, who was a very singular personage, will not prove unsatisfactory.

Andrew Gemmels was well known over all the Border districts as a wandering beggar, or gaberlunzie, for the greater part of half a century. He had been a soldier in his youth; and the entertaining stories which he told of his campaigns, and the adventures he had encountered in foreign countries, united with his shrewdness, drollery, and other agreeable qualities, rendered him a general favourite, and secured him a cordial welcome and free quarters at every shepherd’s cot or farm-steading that lay in the range of his extensive wanderings. He kept a horse in his latter days; and, so doing, set the proverb at naught. On arriving at a place of call, he usually put up his horse in some stable or outhouse, without the ceremony of asking his host’s permission, and then came into the house, where he stamped and swore till room was made for him at the fireside. Andrew was not like those degenerate modern beggars, who implore a coin as for God’s sake, and shelter themselves in the first hole they can find open to receive them,—but ordered and commanded, like the master himself, and only accepted of his alms by way of obliging his friends. He presumed even to choose his own bed, and was not pleased unless the utmost attention was shown to his comfort. He preferred sleeping in an outhouse, and, if possible, in any place where horses and cattle were kept. The reasons he might be supposed to have for such a preference are obvious. In an outhouse he was less exposed in undressing to the curious eyes of the people, who always suspected him of having treasure concealed in his clothes; and the company of the animals beneath his bed was preferable to utter solitude, and, moreover, tended to keep the premises comfortably warm. He used such art in the matters of his toilette that no person ever saw him undressed, or made any discovery prejudicial to his character of poverty.

Andrew was a tall, sturdy, old man, with a face in which the fierceness and austerity of his character strove for mastery with the expression of a shrewd and keen intellect. He was usually dressed in the blue gown or surtout described in “The Antiquary” as the habiliment of Edie Ochiltree, and his features were shaded with a broad slouched hat, which had been exchanged at an earlier period for a lowland bonnet. His feet and ankles were shod with strong iron-soled shoes and gamashins, or stocking-boots. He always carried a stout walking-staff, which was nearly as tall as himself, that is to say, not much less than six feet.

“Though free and unceremonious,[17] Andrew was never burdensome or indiscreet in his visits, returning only once or twice a year, and generally after pretty regular intervals. He evidently seemed to prosper in his calling; for, though hung around with rags of every shape and hue, he commonly possessed a good horse, and used to attend the country fairs and race-courses, where he would bet and dispute with the farmers and gentry with the most independent and resolute pertinacity. He allowed that begging had been a good trade in his time, but used to complain sadly that times were daily growing worse.[18] A person remembers seeing Gemmels travelling about on a blood-mare, with a foal after her, and a gold watch in his pocket. On one occasion, at Rutherford in Tiviotdale, he had dropped a clue of yarn, and Mr. Mather, his host, finding him searching for it, assisted in the search, and, having got hold of it, persisted, notwithstanding Andrew’s opposition, in unrolling the yarn till he came to the kernel, which, much to his surprise and amusement, he found to consist of about twenty guineas in gold.”

“My grandfather,” continues this writer, “was exceedingly fond of Andrew’s company; and, though a devout and strict Cameronian, and occasionally somewhat scandalized at his rough and irreverent style of language, was nevertheless so much attracted by his conversation, that he never failed to spend the evenings of his sojourn in listening to his entertaining narrations and ‘auld-warld stories,’ with the old shepherds, hinds, and children seated around them, beside the blazing turf ingle in ‘the farmer’s ha’.’ These conversations generally took a polemical turn, and not unfrequently ended in violent disputes—my ancestor’s hot and impatient temper blazing forth in collision with the dry and sarcastic humour of his ragged guest. Andrew was never known to yield his point on these occasions; but he usually had the address, when matters grew too serious, to give the conversation a more pleasant turn, by some droll remark or unexpected stroke of humour, which convulsed the rustic group, and the grave gudeman himself, with unfailing and irresistible merriment.”

“Many curious anecdotes of Andrew’s sarcastic wit and eccentric manners are current in the Borders. I shall for the present content myself with one specimen, illustrative of Andrew’s resemblance to his celebrated representative. The following is given as commonly related with much good humour by the late Mr. Dodds of the War Office, the person to whom it chiefly refers:—Andrew happened to be present at a fair or market somewhere in Tiviotdale (St. Boswell’s, if I mistake not), where Dodds, at that time a non-commissioned officer in his Majesty’s service, happened also to be with a military party recruiting. It was some time during the American War, when they were eagerly beating up for fresh men—to teach passive obedience to the obdurate and ill-mannered Columbians; and it was then the practice for recruiting sergeants after parading for a due space, with all the warlike pageantry of drums, trumpets, ‘glancing blades, and gay cockades,’ to declaim in heroic strains of the delights of a soldier’s life—of glory, patriotism, plunder—the prospect of promotion for the bold and the young, and his Majesty’s munificent pension for the old and the wounded, etc., etc. Dodds, who was a man of much natural talent, and whose abilities afterwards raised him to an honourable rank and independent fortune, had made one of his most brilliant speeches on this occasion. A crowd of ardent and active rustics were standing round, gaping with admiration at the imposing mien, and kindling at the heroic eloquence of the manly soldier, whom many of them had known a few years before as a rude tailor boy; the sergeant himself, already leading in idea a score of new recruits, had just concluded, in a strain of more than usual elevation, his oration in praise of the military profession, when Gemmels, who, in tattered guise, was standing close behind him, reared aloft his meal-pocks on the end of his kent or pike-staff, and exclaimed, with a tone and aspect of the most profound derision, ‘Behold the end o’t!’ The contrast was irresistible—the beau idéal of Sergeant Dodds, and the ragged reality of Andrew Gemmels, were sufficiently striking; and the former, with his red-coat followers, beat a retreat in some confusion, amidst the loud and universal laughter of the surrounding multitude.”

Andrew Gemmels was remarkable for being perhaps the best player at draughts in Scotland; and in that amusement, which, we may here observe, is remarkably well adapted for bringing out and employing the cool, calculating, and shrewd genius of the Scottish nation, he frequently spent the long winter nights. Many persons still exist who were taught the mysteries of the dambrod[19] by him, and who were accustomed to hold a serious contention with him every time he passed the night in their houses. He was the preceptor of the gudewife of Newby in Peebles-shire, the grandmother of the present narrator, whose hospitable mansion was one of his chief resorts. In teaching her, as he said, he had only “cut a stick to break his ain head”; for she soon became equally expert with himself, and in the regular set-to’s which took place between them, did not show either the deference to his master-skill, or the fear of his resentment, with which he was usually treated by more timorous competitors. He could never be brought, however, to acknowledge heartily her rival pretensions, nor would he, upon any account, come to such a trial as might have decided the palm of merit either in his favour or hers. Whenever he saw the tide of success running on her side, he got dreadfully exasperated, and ordinarily, before the stigma of defeat could be decidedly inflicted upon him, rose up, seized the brod, and threw the men into the fire,—accompanying the action with some of his most terrific and blasphemous imprecations.

The late Lord Elibank, while living at Darnhall, once ordered one of his cast-off suits to be given to Andrew—the which Andrew thankfully accepted, and then took his departure. Through the course of the same day, his lordship, in taking a ride a few miles from home, came up with Andrew, and was not a little surprised to see him dragging the clothes behind him along the road, “through dub and mire.” On being asked his reason for such strange conduct, he replied that he would have “to trail the duds that way for twa days, to mak them fit for use!”

In one circumstance Andrew coincides with his supposed archetype: Andrew had been at Fontenoy, and made frequent allusions to that disastrous field.

Andrew died in 1793, at Roxburgh-Newton, near Kelso, being, according to his own account, 105 years of age. His wealth was the means of enriching a nephew in Ayrshire, who is now a considerable landholder there, and belongs to a respectable class of society.

CHAPTER IV.

Rob Roy.

ANECDOTES OF ROBERT MACGREGOR.

(Rob Roy.)

We derive the following interesting narrative from Colonel Stewart’s admirable work on the Highlands.

“The father of the present Mr. Stewart of Ardvorlich knew Rob Roy intimately, and attended his funeral in 1736—the last at which a piper officiated in the Highlands of Perthshire. The late Mr. Stewart of Bohallie, Mr. M‘Nab of Inchewan, and several gentlemen of my acquaintance, also knew Rob Roy and his family. Alexander Stewart, one of his followers, afterwards enlisted in the Black Watch. He was wounded at Fontenoy, and discharged with a pension in 1748. Some time after this period he was engaged by my grandmother, then a widow, as a grieve, to direct and take charge of the farm-servants. In this situation he proved a faithful, trustworthy servant, and was by my father continued in his situation till his death. He told many anecdotes of Rob Roy and his party, among whom he was distinguished by the name of the Bailie, a title which he ever after retained. It was before him that people were sworn when it was necessary to bind them to secrecy.

“Robert Macgregor Campbell was a younger son of Donald Macgregor of Glengyle, in Perthshire, by a daughter of Campbell of Glenlyon, sister of the individual who commanded at the massacre of Glenco. He was born some time between 1657 and 1660, and married Helen Campbell, of the family of Glenfalloch. As cattle was at that period the principal marketable produce of the hills, the younger sons of gentlemen had few other means of procuring an independent subsistence than by engaging in this sort of traffic. At an early period Rob Roy was one of the most respectable and successful drovers in his district. Before the year 1707 he had purchased of the family of Montrose the lands of Craigrostane, on the banks of Lochlomond, and had relieved some heavy debts on his nephew’s estate of Glengyle. While in this prosperous state, he continued respected for his honourable dealings both in the Lowlands and Highlands. Previous to the Union no cattle had been permitted to pass the English border. As a boon or encouragement, however, to conciliate the people to that measure, a free intercourse was allowed. The Marquis of Montrose, created a Duke the same year, and one of the most zealous partisans of the Union, was the first to take advantage of this privilege, and immediately entered into partnership with Rob Roy, who was to purchase the cattle and drive them to England for sale—the Duke and he advancing an equal sum, 10,000 merks each (a large sum in those days, when the price of the best ox or cow was seldom twenty shillings); all the transactions beyond this amount to be on credit. The purchases having been completed, Macgregor then went to England; but so many people had entered into a similar speculation, that the market was completely overstocked, and the cattle sold for much less than prime cost. Macgregor returned home, and went to the Duke to settle the account of their partnership, and to pay the money advanced, with the deduction of the loss. The Duke, it is said, would consent to no deduction, but insisted on principal and interest. ‘In that case, my Lord,’ said Macgregor, ‘if these be your principles, I shall not make it my principle to pay the interest, nor my interest the principal; so if your Grace do not stand your share of the loss, you shall have no money from me.’ On this they separated. No settlement of accounts followed—the one insisting on retaining the money, unless the other would consent to bear his share of the loss. Nothing decisive was done till the rebellion of 1715, when Rob Roy ‘was out,’—his nephew Glengyle commanding a numerous body of the Macgregors, but under the control of his uncle’s superior judgment and experience. On this occasion the Duke of Montrose’s share of the cattle speculation was expended. The next year his Grace took legal means to recover his money, and got possession of the lands of Craigrostane on account of his debt. This rendered Macgregor desperate. Determined that his Grace should not enjoy his lands with impunity, he collected a band of about twenty followers, declared open war against him, and gave up his old course of regular droving—declaring that the estate of Montrose should in future supply him with cattle, and he would make the Duke rue the day in which he quarrelled with him. He kept his word, and for nearly twenty years, that is, till the day of his death, levied regular contributions on the Duke and his tenants, not by nightly depredations and robberies, but in broad day, and in a systematic manner—at an appointed time making a complete sweep of all the cattle of a district, always passing over those not belonging to the Duke’s estate, as well as the estates of his friends and adherents; and having previously given notice where he was to be by a certain day with his cattle, he was met there by people from all parts of the country, to whom he sold them publicly. These meetings, or trystes, as they were called, were held in different parts of the country; sometimes the cattle were driven south, but oftener to the north-west, where the influence of his friend the Duke of Argyll protected him.

“When the cattle were in this manner driven away, the tenants paid no rent, so that the Duke was the ultimate sufferer. But he was made to suffer in every way. The rents of the lower farms were partly paid in grain and meal, which was generally lodged in a storehouse or granary, called a girnel, near the Loch of Monteith. When Macgregor wanted a supply of meal, he sent notice to a certain number of the Duke’s tenants to meet him at the girnel on a certain day, with their horses, to carry home the meal. They met accordingly, when he ordered the horses to be loaded, and, giving a regular receipt to the Duke’s storekeeper for the quantity taken, he marched away—always entertaining the people very handsomely, and careful never to take the meal till it had been lodged in the Duke’s storehouse in payment of rent. When the money rents were paid, Macgregor frequently attended. On one occasion, when Mr. Graham of Killearn (the factor) had collected the tenants to pay their rents, all Rob Roy’s men happened to be absent except Alexander Stewart, ‘the Bailie,’ whom I have already mentioned. With his single attendant he descended to Chapellairoch, where the factor and the tenants were assembled. He reached the house after it was dark, and, looking in at the window, saw Killearn, surrounded by a number of the tenants, with a bag full of money which he had received, and was in the act of disposing in a press or cupboard, at the same time saying that he would cheerfully give all in the bag for Rob Roy’s head. This notification was not lost on the outside auditor, who instantly gave orders, in a loud voice, to place two men at each window, two at each corner, and four at each of the two doors—thus appearing to have twenty men. Immediately the door opened, and he walked in with his attendant close behind, each armed with a sword in his right hand and a pistol in his left, and with dirks and pistols slung in their belts.

“The company started up, but he requested them to sit down, as his business was only with Killearn, whom he ordered to hand down the bag and put it on the table. When this was done, he desired the money to be counted, and proper receipts to be drawn out, certifying that he had received the money from the Duke of Montrose’s agent, as the Duke’s property, the tenants having paid their rents, so that no after-demand could be made against them on account of this transaction; and finding that some of the people had not obtained receipts, he desired the factor to grant them immediately, ‘to show his Grace,’ said he, ‘that it is from him I take the money, and not from these honest men who have paid him.’ After the whole was concluded, he ordered supper, saying, that as he had got the purse, it was proper he should pay the bill; and after they had drunk heartily together for several hours, he called his Bailie to produce his dirk, and lay it naked on the table. Killearn was then sworn that he would not move, nor direct any one else to move, from that spot for an hour after the departure of Macgregor, who thus cautioned him—‘If you break your oath, you know what you are to expect in the next world—and in this,’ pointing to his dirk. He then walked away, and was beyond pursuit before the hour expired.

“At another collecting of rents by the same gentleman, Macgregor made his appearance, and carried him away, with his servant, to a small island in the west end of Loch Cathrine, and having kept him there for several days, entertaining him in the best manner, as a duke’s representative ought to be, he dismissed him, with the usual receipts and compliments to his Grace. In this manner did this extraordinary man live, in open violation and defiance of the laws, and died peaceably in his bed when nearly eighty years of age. His funeral was attended by all the country round, high and low—the Duke of Montrose and his immediate friends only excepted.

“How such things could happen, at so late a period, must appear incredible; and this, too, within thirty miles of the garrisons of Stirling and Dumbarton, and the populous city of Glasgow, and, indeed, with a small garrison stationed at Inversnaid, in the heart of the country, and on the estate which belonged to Macgregor, for the express purpose of checking his depredations. The truth is, the thing could not have happened had it not been the peculiarity of the man’s character; for, with all his lawless spoliations and unremitted acts of vengeance and robbery against the Montrose family, he had not an enemy in the country beyond the sphere of their influence. He never hurt or meddled with the property of a poor man, and, as I have stated, was always careful that his great enemy should be the principal, if not the only sufferer. Had it been otherwise, it was quite impossible that, notwithstanding all his enterprise, address, intrepidity, and vigilance, he could have long escaped in a populous country, with a warlike people, well qualified to execute any daring exploit, such as the seizure of this man, had they been his enemies, and willing to undertake it. Instead of which, he lived socially among them—that is, as social as an outlaw, always under a certain degree of alarm, could do—giving the education of gentlemen to his sons, frequenting the most populous towns, and, whether in Edinburgh, Perth, or Glasgow, equally safe, at the same time that he displayed great and masterly address in avoiding or calling for public notice.

“The instances of his address struck terror into the minds of the troops, whom he often defeated and out-generalled. One of these instances occurred in Breadalbane, in the case of an officer and forty chosen men sent after him. The party crossed through Glenfalloch to Tyndrum; and Macgregor, who had correct information of all their movements, was with a party in the immediate neighbourhood. He put himself in the disguise of a beggar, with a bag of meal on his back (in those days alms were always bestowed in produce), went to the inn at Tyndrum, where the party was quartered, walked into the kitchen with great indifference, and sat down among the soldiers. They soon found the beggar a lively sarcastic fellow, when they began to attempt some practical jokes upon him.

“He pretended to be very angry, and threatened to inform Rob Roy, who would quickly show them they were not to give with impunity such usage to a poor and harmless person. He was immediately asked if he knew Rob Roy, and if he could tell where he was? On his answering that he knew him well, and where he was, the sergeant informed the officer, who immediately sent for him.

“After some conversation, the beggar consented to accompany them to Creanlarich, a few miles distant, where he said Rob Roy and his men were, and that he believed their arms were lodged in one house, while they were sitting in another. He added that Roy was very friendly, and sometimes joked with him, and put him at the head of the table; and ‘when it is dark,’ said he, ‘I will go forward—you will follow in half an hour—and, when near the house, rush on, place your men at the back of the house, ready to seize on the arms of the Highlanders, while you shall go round with the sergeant and two men, walk in, and call out the whole are your prisoners; and don’t be surprised though you should see me at the head of the company.’ As they marched on they had to pass a rapid stream at Dabrie, a spot celebrated on account of the defeat of Robert Bruce by Macdougal of Lorn, in the year 1306. Here the soldiers asked their merry friend the beggar to carry them through on his back. This he did, sometimes taking two at a time, till he took the whole over, demanding a penny from each for his trouble. When it was dark they pushed on (the beggar having gone before), the officer following the directions of his guide, and darting into the house with the sergeant and three soldiers. They had hardly time to look to the end of the table, where they saw the beggar standing, when the door was shut behind them, and they were instantly pinioned, two men standing on each side holding pistols to their ears, and declaring that they were dead men if they uttered a word. The beggar then went out, and called in two more men, who were instantly secured, and in the same manner with the whole party. Having been disarmed, they were placed under a strong guard till morning, when he gave them a plentiful breakfast and released them on parole (the Bailie attending with his dirk, over which the officer gave his parole) to return immediately to their garrison without attempting anything more at this time. This promise Rob Roy made secure, by keeping their arms and ammunition as lawful prize of war.

“Some time after, the same officer was again sent after this noted character, probably to retrieve his former mishap. In this expedition he was more fortunate, for he took three of the freebooters prisoners in the higher parts of Breadalbane, near the scene of the former exploit—but the conclusion was nearly similar. He lost no time in proceeding in the direction of Perth, for the purpose of putting his prisoners in gaol; but Rob Roy was equally alert in pursuit. His men marched in a parallel line with the soldiers, who kept along the bottom of the valley, on the south side of Loch Tay, while the others kept close up the side of the hill, anxiously looking for an opportunity to dash down and rescue their comrades, if they saw any remissness or want of attention on the part of the soldiers. Nothing of this kind offered, and the party had passed Tay Bridge, near which they halted and slept. Macgregor now saw that something must soon be done or never, as they would speedily gain the low country, and be out of his reach. In the course of the night he procured a number of goat-skins and cords, with which he dressed himself and his party in the wildest manner possible, and, pushing forward, before daylight took post near the roadside, in a thick wood below Grandtully Castle. When the soldiers came in a line with the party in ambush, the Highlanders, with one leap, darted down upon them, uttering such yells and shouts as, along with their frightful appearance, so confounded the soldiers, that they were overpowered and disarmed without a man being hurt on either side. Rob Roy kept the arms and ammunition, released the soldiers, and marched away in triumph with his men.

“The terror of his name was much increased by exploits like these, which, perhaps, lost nothing by the telling, as the soldiers would not probably be inclined to diminish the danger and fatigues of a duty in which they were so often defeated. But it is unnecessary to repeat the stories preserved and related of this man and his actions, which were always daring and well contrived, often successful, but never directed against the poor, nor prompted by revenge, except against the Duke of Montrose, and without any instance of murder or bloodshed committed by any of his party, except in their own defence. In the war against Montrose he was supported and abetted by the Duke of Argyll, from whom he always received shelter when hard pressed; or, to use a hunting term, when he was in danger of being earthed by the troops. These two powerful families were still rivals, although Montrose had left the Tories and joined Argyll and the Whig interest. It is said that Montrose reproached Argyll in the House of Peers with protecting the robber Rob Roy; when the latter, with his usual eloquence and address, parried off the accusation (which he could not deny) by jocularly answering, that if he protected a robber, the other supported him.”

We can only add to this animated history of Rob Roy one circumstance; which, though accredited in the Highlands, has never been noticed in the popular accounts of our hero. In whatever degree his conduct was to be attributed to his own wrongs, or those of his clan, the disposition which prompted and carried him through in his daring enterprises, could be traced to the family temper of his mother, who came of the Campbells of Glenlyon—a peculiarly wild, bold, and wicked race.

The mode of escape adopted by Rob Roy in crossing the Avon-dhu, so finely described in the third volume of the novel, seems to have been suggested by the following traditionary anecdote, which is preserved in the neighbourhood of the spot where the exploit took place:—A Cameronian, in the district of Galloway, flying from two dragoons, who pursued him hotly, came to a precipice which overhung a lake. Seeing no other means of eluding his enemies, he plunged into the water, and attempted to swim to the other side. In the meantime the troopers came up, and fired at him; when he, with an astonishing presence of mind, parted with his plaid, and swam below the water to a safe part of the shore. His enemies fired repeatedly at the plaid, till they supposed him slain or sunk, and then retired.

PARALLEL PASSAGES.

A resemblance will be discovered between the following passages—one being part of Bailie Jarvie’s conversation with Owen, in “Rob Roy,” and the other an extract from a work entitled, “A Tour through Great Britain, &c., by a Gentleman, 4th ed. 1748”—a curious book, of which the first edition was written by the celebrated De Foe:—

“We found the liquor exceedingly palatable, and it led to a long conversation between Owen and our host, on the opening which the Union had afforded to trade between Glasgow and the British colonies in America and the West Indies, and on the facilities which Glasgow possessed of making up sortable cargoes for that market. Mr. Jarvie answered some objection which Owen made on the difficulty of sorting a cargo for America, without buying from England, with vehemence and volubility.

“‘Na, na, sir; we stand on our ain bottom—we pickle in our ain pock-neuk. We ha’e our Stirling serges, Musselburgh stuffs, Aberdeen hose, Edinburgh shalloons, and the like, for our woollen and worsted goods, and we ha’e linens of a’ kinds, better and cheaper than you ha’e in London itsel’; and we can buy your north o’ England wares,—as Manchester wares, Sheffield wares, and Newcastle earthenware—as cheap as you can, at Liverpool; and we are making a fair spell at cottons and muslins.’”—Rob Roy, vol. ii., p. 267.

“Glasgow is a city of business, and has the face of foreign as well as domestic trade,—nay, I may say it is the only city in Scotland that apparently increases in both. The Union has indeed answered its end to them, more than to any other part of the kingdom, their trade being new-formed by it; for as the Union opened the door to the Scots into our American colonies, the Glasgow merchants presently embraced the opportunity; and though, at its first concerting, the rabble of the city made a formidable attempt to prevent it, yet afterwards they knew better, when they found the great increase of their trade by it, for they now send fifty sail of ships every year to Virginia, New England, and other English colonies in America.

“The share they have in the herring-fishery is very considerable; and they cure their herrings so well and so much better than they are done in any other part of Great Britain, that a Glasgow herring is esteemed as good as a Dutch one.

“I have no room to enlarge upon the home-trade of this city, which is very considerable in many things. I shall, therefore, touch at some few particulars:—

“1. Here there are two very handsome sugar-baking houses, carried on by skilful persons, with large stocks, and to very great perfection. Here is likewise a large distillery for distilling spirits from the molasses drawn from sugars, by which they enjoyed a vast advantage for a time, by a reserved article in the Union, freeing them from English duties.

“2. Here is a manufacture of plaiding, a stuff crossed with yellow, red, and other mixtures, for the plaids or veils worn by the women of Scotland.

“3. Here is a manufacture of muslins, which they make so good and fine that great quantities of them are sent into England, and to the British plantations, where they sell at a good price. They are generally striped, and are very much used for aprons by the ladies, and sometimes in head-clothes by the meaner sort of Englishwomen.

“4. Here is also a linen manufacture; but as that is in common with all parts of Scotland, which improve in it daily, I will not insist upon it as a peculiar here, though they make a very great quantity of it, and send it to the plantations as their principal merchandise. Nor are the Scots without a supply of goods for sorting their cargoes to the English colonies, without sending to England for them; and it is necessary to mention it here, because it has been objected by some that the Scots could not send a sortable cargo to America without buying from England, which, coming through many hands, and by a long carriage, must consequently be so dear, that the English merchants can undersell them.

“It is very probable, indeed, that some things cannot be had here so well as from England, so as to make out such a sortable cargo as the Virginia merchants in London ship off, whose entries at the custom-house consist sometimes of two hundred particulars, as tin, turnery, millinery, upholstery, cutlery, and other Crooked-Lane wares—in short, somewhat of everything, either for wearing or house furniture, building houses or ships.

“But though the Scots cannot do all this, we may reckon up what they can furnish, which they have not only in sufficient quantities, but some in greater perfection than England itself.

“1. They have woollen manufactories of their own,—such as Stirling serges, Musselburgh stuffs, Aberdeen stockens, Edinburgh shalloons, blankets, etc.

“2. Their trade with England being open, they have now all the Manchester, Sheffield, and Birmingham wares, and likewise the cloths, kerseys, half-thicks, duffels, stockens and coarse manufactures of the north of England, brought as cheap or cheaper to them by horse-packs as they are carried to London, it being at a less distance.

“3. They have linens of most kinds, especially diapers and table-linens, damasks, and many other sorts not known in England, and cheaper than there, because made at their own doors.

“4. What linens they want from Holland or Hamburgh, they import from thence as cheap as the English can do; and for muslins, their own are very acceptable, and cheaper than in England.

“5. Gloves they make cheaper and better than in England, for they send great quantities thither.

“6. * * * * * *

“I might mention many other particulars, but this is sufficient to show that the Scots merchants are not at a loss how to make up sortable cargoes to send to the plantations; and that if we can outdo them in some things, they are able to outdo us in others.”—Tour, vol. iv., p. 124.

Though only the latter part of the preceding description of Glasgow trade refers to the passage from “Rob Roy,” we have extracted it all for various reasons. First, because it gives, independent of allusion to the novel, a very distinct and simple account of trade in Scotland forty years after the Union, when the reaction consequent upon that event was beginning to be felt in the country. Secondly, because it details at full length the sketch of the rise and progress of Glasgow, which Mr. Francis Osbaldistone gives in the sixth chapter of the second volume of “Rob Roy,” on his approach to the mercantile capital. Thirdly, for the sake of presenting the reader with a very fair specimen of the use which the Author of “Waverley” makes of old books in his fictitious narratives.

CHAPTER V.

The Black Dwarf.

LANG SHEEP AND SHORT SHEEP.

Our readers will readily remember the curious explanation which takes place between Bauldy, the old-world shepherd, in the Introduction to this tale, and Mr. Peter Pattieson, respecting the difference between lang sheep and short sheep. We can attest, from unexceptionable authority, that a conversation once actually took place between Sir Walter Scott, James Hogg, and Mr. Laidlaw, the factor of the former, in which the same disquisition and nearly the same words occurred. Messrs. H. and L. began the dispute about the various merits of the different sheep; and many references being made to the respective lengths of the animals, Sir Walter became quite tired of their unintelligible technicals, and very simply asked them how sheep came to be distinguished by longitude, having, he observed, never perceived any remarkable difference between one sheep and another in that particular. It was then that an explanation took place, very like that of Bauldy in the Introduction; and we think there can be no doubt that the fictitious incident would never have taken place but for the real circumstance we have related.

The dispute with Christy Wilson, butcher in Gandercleugh, which it was the object of Bauldy’s master to settle, and in consequence of which being amicably adjusted, the convivialities that brought out from the shepherd the materials of the tale were entered into, has, we understand, its origin in a process once before the Court of Session, respecting what is termed a luck-penny on a bargain.

DAVID RITCHIE.

(Elshender the Recluse.)

The particulars of David Ritchie’s life, which are in themselves sufficiently meagre, have been more than once already laid before the public. In Blackwood’s Monthly Magazine for June, and in the Edinburgh Magazine for October, 1817, accounts of the supposed original of the Black Dwarf are given, evidently from no mean authority, if we may judge from the style in which these narratives are written. A separate production, also, of a very interesting nature, embellished with a striking and singularly correct likeness of the dwarf, appeared in 1820, and comprised every anecdote of this singular being previously uncollected. It is therefore conceived totally unnecessary to detail at any length a subject which, independent of its want of elegance and interest, has been already so completely exhausted. To give a few sketches of the character and habits of David Ritchie, and contrast them with those of the more sublime Elshender, will, it is hoped, prove a more grateful entertainment.

David Ritchie was a pauper, who lived the greater part of a long life, and finally died so late as the year 1811, in a solitary cottage situated in the romantic glen of Manor in Peebles-shire. This vale, now rendered classic ground by the abode of the Black Dwarf, was otherwise formerly remarkable as having been the retirement of the illustrious and venerable Professor Ferguson.[20]

His person coincided singularly well with the description of the fictitious recluse. He had been deformed and horrible since his birth in no ordinary degree, which was probably the cause of the analogous peculiarities of his temper. His countenance, of the darkest of dark complexions, was half covered with a long grisly black beard, and bore, as the centre of its system of terrors, two eyes of piercing black, which were sometimes, in his excited moments, lighted up with wild and supernatural lustre. His head was of a singular shape, conical and oblong, and might now form no unworthy subject for the studies of the Phrenological Society. To speak in their language, he must have had few of the moral or intellectual faculties developed in any perfection; for his brow retreated immediately above the eyebrows, and threw nearly the whole of his head, which was large, behind the ear, where, it is said, the meaner organs of the brain are situated—giving immense scope to cruelty, obstinacy, self-esteem, etc. His nose was long and aquiline; his mouth wide and contemptuously curled upward; and his chin protruded from the visage in a long grisly peak. His body, short and muscular, was thicker than that of most ordinary men, and, with his arms, which were long and of great power, might have formed the parts of a giant, had not nature capriciously curtailed his form of other limbs conformable to these proportions. His arms had the same defect with those of the celebrated Betterton, and he could not lift them higher than his breast; yet such was their strength, that he has been known to tear up a tree by the roots, which had baffled the united efforts of two labourers, who had striven by digging to eradicate it. His legs were short, fin-like, and bent outwards, with feet totally inapplicable to the common purposes of walking. These he constantly endeavoured to conceal from sight by wrapping them up in immense masses of rags. This ungainly part of his figure is remarkable as the only one which differs materially from the description of “Cannie Elshie,” whose “body, thick and square, was mounted upon two large feet.”

He was the son of very poor parents, who, at an early period of his life, endeavoured to place him with a tradesman in the metropolis to learn the humble art of brushmaking; which purpose he however soon deserted in disgust, on account of the insupportable notice which his uncouth form attracted in the streets. His spirit, perhaps, also panted for the seclusion of his native hills, where he might have ease to indulge in that solitude so appropriate to the outcast ugliness of his person, and free from the insulting gaze of vulgar curiosity. Here, in the valley of his birth, he formed the romantic project of building a small hut for himself, in which, like the Recluse of the tale, he might live for ever retired from the race for whose converse he was unfitted, and give unrestrained scope to the moods of his misanthropy. He constructed this hermitage in precisely the same manner with the Black Dwarf of Mucklestane Moor. Huge rocks, which he had rolled down from the neighbouring hill, formed the foundation and walls, to which an alternate layer of turf, as is commonly used in cottages, gave almost the consistency and fully the comfort of mortar. He is said to have evinced amazing bodily strength in moving and placing these stones, such as the strongest men, with all the advantages of stature and muscular proportion, could hardly have equalled. This corporeal energy, which lay chiefly in his arms, will remind the reader of the exertions of the Black Dwarf, as witnessed by Hobbie Elliot and young Earnscliff, on the morning after his first appearance, when employed in arranging the foundations of his hermitage out of the Grey Geese of Mucklestane Moor.—See pp. 78, 79.

When the young hermit had finished his hut, and succeeded in furnishing it with a few coarse household utensils, framed chiefly by his own hands, he began to form a garden. In the cultivation and adornment of this spot, he displayed a degree of natural taste and ingenuity that might have fitted him for a higher fate than the seclusion of a hermitage. In a short time he had stocked it with such a profusion of fruit-trees, herbs, vegetables, and flowers, that it seemed a little forest of beauty—a shred of Eden, fit to redeem the wilderness around from its character of desolation—a gem on the swarth brow of the desert. Not only did it exhibit the finest specimens of flowers indigenous to this country, but he had also contrived to procure a number of exotics, whose Linnæan names he would roll forth to the friends whom he indulged with an admission within its precincts, with a pomposity of voice that never failed to enhance their admiration. It soon came to be much resorted to by visitors, being accounted, with the genius of the place, one of the most remarkable curiosities of the county. Dr. Ferguson used sometimes to visit the eccentric solitary, as an amusement in that retired spot; and Sir Walter Scott, who was a frequent guest at the house of that venerable gentleman, is said to have often held long communings with him; likewise several other individuals of literary celebrity.

There is something more peculiarly romantic and poetical in the circumstance of the Misanthrope’s attachment to his garden than can be found in any of the other habits and qualities attributed to him. The care of that beautiful spot was his chief occupation, and may be said to have been the only pleasure his life was ever permitted to experience. On it alone he could employ that faculty of affection with which every heart, even that of the cynic, is endowed. Shut out from the correspondence and sympathy of his own fellow-creatures by the insurmountable pale of his own ugliness, there existed, in the whole circle of nature, no other object that could receive his affections, or reply to the feelings he had to impart. In flowers alone, those lineal and undegenerate descendants of Paradise, the Solitary found an object of attachment that could do equal honour to his feelings and to his taste. His garden was a perfect seraglio of vegetable beauties, and there he could commune with a thousand objects of affection, that never shrunk from the touch which threatened horror and pollution to all the world beside.

By the peculiarities of his person, as well as by the other abject circumstances of his condition, it may be easily supposed that the Hermit of Manor was entirely excluded from that great solace of the miseries of man, the sympathy to be derived from the tenderness and affections of woman. He was irredeemably condemned, as it were, to a dreary bachelorhood of the heart, which knew that there was for it no hope, no possibility of enjoyment. Perhaps the constant sense of loathsomeness in the eyes of the fair part of creation might help to increase the natural wretchedness of his existence. The misanthropy of Elshender is pathetically represented in the tale as springing chiefly from sources of disappointment like this. It happens, also, that his humble prototype once ventured to express the sensibilities of the common delirium of man, and that he was rejected by the object of his affection. This insult, though it sprung from a very natural feeling on the part of the woman, sunk deep into his heart; and thus was he debarred from what would have been the only means of sweetening the bitter lot of solitary poverty and decrepitude,—dashed back with scorn from the general draught at which even his inferiors were liberally indulged. This circumstance forms another trait of resemblance between the Black Dwarf and David Ritchie; and, by a happy consonance never before discovered, confirms their identity.

“His habits were, in many respects, singular, and indicated a mind sufficiently congenial with its uncouth tabernacle. A jealous, misanthropical, and irritable temper was his most prominent characteristic. The sense of his deformity haunted him like a phantom; and the insults and scorn to which this exposed him had poisoned his heart with fierce and bitter feelings, which, from other traits in his character, do not appear to have been more largely infused into his original temperament than that of his fellow-men. He detested children, on account of their propensity to insult and persecute him. To strangers he was generally reserved, crabbed, and surly; and even towards persons who had been his greatest benefactors, and who possessed the greatest share of his good-will, he frequently betrayed much caprice and jealousy. A lady, who knew him from his infancy, says, that, although he showed as much attachment and respect for her father’s family as it was in his nature to show for any, yet they were always obliged to be very cautious in their deportment towards him. One day, having gone to visit him with another lady, he took them through his garden, and was showing them, with much pride and good-humour, all his rich and tastefully assorted borders, here picking up with his long staff some insidious weed, and there turning to digress into the history of some mysterious exotic, when they happened to stop near a plot of cabbages, which had been somewhat injured by the caterpillars. Davie, observing one of the ladies smile, instantly assumed a savage scowling aspect, rushed among the cabbages, and dashed them to pieces with his kent, exclaiming, ‘I hate the worms, for they mock me!’”

When he visited the neighbouring metropolis of the county, which happened very seldom towards the latter part of his life, he was generally followed by crowds of boys, who hooted and insulted him, with all that disregard of feeling and insolence of wickedness so often to be observed in children of the lower ranks in Scottish villages. On these occasions he was wont to give his persecutors the “length of his kent,” as he called it, when he could reach them; but they being generally too nimble for his crippled evolutions, he had often to vent his revenge in the more harmless form of curses. These were frequently of the most terrific and unusual kind. He is even said to have evinced something like genius in the invention of his imprecations, some of which far surpassed Gray’s celebrated

“Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!”

He would swear he would “cleave them to the harn-pans, if he had but his cran fingers on them;” that he “could pour seething lead down their throats;” that “hell would never be full till they were in it;” and frequently exclaimed that there was nothing he would “like so well as to see their souls girnin’ for a thousand eternities on the red-het brander o’ the de’il!”

Among the traits of his character, there is none reminds us so strongly of the Misanthrope of the tale as this propensity to execration. The same style of discourse, and almost the same terms of imprecation, are common to both. The Mighty Unknown has put expressions into the mouth of this character which, as specimens of the grand and sublime, are altogether unequalled in the whole circle of English poetry—not even excepting the magnificent thunders of Byron’s muse. Now, his prototype is well remembered, by those who have conversed with him, to have frequently used language which, sometimes sinking to delicacy and even elegance, and at others rising to a very tempest of execration and diabolical expression, might have been deemed almost miraculous from his mouth, could it not have been attributed partly to the impassioned inspiration that naturally flowed from his consciousness of deformity, from keen resentment of insult, and from the despairing, loveless sterility of his heart.

The history of his death-bed furnishes us with an anecdote of a beautiful and atoning character.

He had always through life expressed the utmost abhorrence of being buried among what he haughtily termed the “common brush” in the parish churchyard, and pointed out a particular spot, in the neighbourhood of his cottage, where he had been frequently known to lie dreaming or reading for long summer days, as a more agreeable place of interment. It is remarked by a former biographer, that he has displayed no small portion of taste in the selection of this spot. It is the summit of a small rising ground, called the Woodhill, situated nearly in the centre of the parish of Manor, covered with green fern, and embowered on the top by a circle of rowan-trees planted by the Dwarf’s own hand, for the double purpose of serving as a mausoleum or monument to his memory, and keeping away, by the charm of consecration supposed to be vested in their nature, the influence of witchcraft and other unhallowed powers from the grave.

All around this romantic spot the waste features of a mountainous country bound the horizon, presenting a striking contrast to the fertile beauty of the intermediate valley, and withal capable of suggesting to the enthusiastic and imaginative mind of the Solitary, the idea of this scene being a more desirable grave, sacred as it was in the grandeur of Nature, than the merely Christian ground of a country churchyard. “What!” the proud unsocial soul of the misanthrope might perhaps think—

“What! to be decently interred

In a churchyard, and mingle my brave dust

With stinking rogues, that rot in winding-sheets,

Surfeit-slain fools, the common dung o’ th’ soil!”

Nevertheless, whatever might have been his sentiments regarding the dead among whom, during his days of health, he loathed to be placed, certain it is, that, when brought within view and feeling of the awful close of mortal existence, his heart was softened towards his fellow-men, his antipathies relaxed, and he died with a wish upon his lips to be buried among his fathers.

In 1820, the writer of the present narrative visited the deserted hut of “Bowed Davie,” actuated by a sort of pilgrim-respect for scenes hallowed by genius. The little mansion at present existing is not that built by the Dwarf’s own hands, but one of later date, erected by the charity of a neighbouring gentleman in the year 1802. A small tablet of freestone, bearing this date below the letters D. R. was still to be seen in the western gable. The eastern division of the cottage, separated from the other by a partition of stone and lime, and entering by a different door, was still inhabited by his sister. It is remarkable that even with that near relation he was never on terms of any affection; an almost complete estrangement having subsisted between these two lonely beings for many years. Agnes had been a servant in the earlier part of her life; but having of late years become subject to a degree of mental aberration, she had retired from every sort of employment to her brother’s habitation, where she subsisted on the charity of the poor’s funds.

On entering the cottage with my guide, we found her seated on a low settle before the fire, her hands reclined upon her lap, and her eyes gazing unmeaningly on a small turf fire, which died away in a perfect wilderness of chimney. Her whole figure and situation reminded me strongly of the inimitable description of the lone Highland woman in Hogg’s “Winter Evening Tales,” who sat singing by the light of a moss-lamp in expectation of the apparition of her son. The scene was nearly as wild and picturesque, the wretched inmate of the hut was as lonely and helpless, and there was an air of desolate imbecility about her that rendered her almost as interesting. It seemed surprising, indeed, how a person apparently so abandoned by her own energies and the care of her fellow-creatures, could at all exist in such a solitude. She neither moved nor looked up on our entrance; but a few minutes after we had seated ourselves, which we did with silence and awe, she lifted her eyes, and thereby gave us a fuller view of her countenance. She much resembled her brother in features, but was not deformed. Her face was dark with age and wretchedness, and her aspect, otherwise somewhat appalling, was rendered almost unearthly by two large black eyes, the lustre of which was not the less horrible by the imbecility of their gaze. I have been thus particular in describing her person and circumstances, because I do not judge it impossible that she may have suggested the original idea of Elspeth Cheyne, the superannuated dependant of Glenallan, in the “Antiquary.”

Through the medium of my guide, a sagacious country lad, I contrived to ask her a number of questions concerning her brother; but she was extremely shy in answering them, and expressed her jealousy of my intentions by saying, “she wondered why so many grand people had come from distant parts to inquire after her family—she was sure there was naething ill anent them.” Little did she, poor soul, understand the cause of this curiosity, or the honour conferred upon her family by the attention of the great hermit-author, in whose works the very mention of a name confers immortality.

She showed us her brother’s Bible. It was of Kincaid’s fine quarto edition, and had been bought in 1773 by the Dwarf himself. His name was written with his own hand on a blank leaf, and it was with something like transport that I drew a fac-simile of the autograph into my pocket-book, which I still preserve.

Agnes Ritchie died in December, 1821, ten years after the decease of her brother, and was buried in the same grave, in Manor churchyard, on which occasion the deformed bones of Bowed Davie were found, to the utter disproof of a vulgar report, that they had suffered resurrection at the hands of certain anatomists in the College of Glasgow.

I found the part of the house which had been inhabited by the Dwarf himself deserted as he had left it at his death. Its furniture had been all dispersed among the curious or the friendly; and a host of poultry were now suffered to roost on the rafters where only soot formerly dared to hang. His seat of divination before the door had been suffered to remain. It was covered very rurally with a ruinous door of a cart. There seemed no precise window in the hut, but it contained numerous holes and bores all round, some of which were built up with turf. I drew a pair of rusty nails from a joist near the door, and, wrapping them up in a piece of paper, brought them away.

We stole a look at the garden, by climbing up the high wall. Some care has been taken by the neighbouring peasants to preserve it in good order; but, alas! it is scarcely the ghost of what it was: “Cum Troja fuit,” there was not a weed to be seen over its whole surface, nor durst a single kail-worm intrude its unhallowed nose within the precincts; an hundred mountain-ashes, displaying their red, sour fruit to the temptation of the passing urchin, stood around like a guard, to preserve from the influence of witchcraft the richer treasures that lay within,—

“Fair as the gardens of Gul in their bloom”;

but now weeds and kail-worms were abundant, the rowan-trees had been all cut down, and Bowed Davie’s garden, that once might have rivalled Milton’s imagination of Paradise, now lay stale, flat, and unprofitable—like a buxom cheek deprived of its blushes, or Greece deserted by the liberty that once, according to Byron, inspired its beauty. A few skeps, however, still remained, which the neighbouring Hobbie Elliots had not taken away.

It was a curious trait in the character of David Ritchie, that he was very superstitious. Not only had he planted his house, his garden, and even his intended grave, all round with the mountain-ash, but it is also well authenticated that he never went abroad without a branch of this singular antidote, tied round with a red thread, in his pocket, to prevent the effects of the evil eye. When the sancta sanctorum of his domicile were so sacrilegiously ransacked after his death, there was found an elf-stone, or small round pebble, bored in the centre, hung by a cord of hair passed through the hole to the head of his bed!

After taking the foregoing view of the Wizard’s fairy bower, I was next conducted to his grave, which lies in the immediate vicinity. A slip of his favourite rowan-tree marked the spot. It had been planted several years after his death by some kindly hand, and, in the absence of a less perishable monument, seemed a wonderful act of delicacy and attention. It spoke a pathos to the feelings that the finest inscription could not have excited,—it was so consonant with the former desires of “the poor inhabitant below!”

In allusion to the foregoing circumstances, the following verses were composed, and inserted in a periodical publication:—

I sat upon the Wizard’s grave,—

’Twas on a smiling summer day,

When all around the desert spot

Bloomed in the young delights of May.

In undistinguished lowliness

I found the little mound of earth,

And bitter weeds o’ergrew the place,

As if his heart had given them birth,

And they from thence their nurture drew,—

In such luxuriancy they grew.

No friendship to his grave had lent

Such rudely-sculptured monument

As marked the peasant’s place of rest;

For he, the latest of his race,

Had left behind no friend to trace

Such frail memorial o’er his breast.

But o’er his head a sapling waved