"But even a" that was little or naething," continued William again; "for to pay us for a" the guid we had dune him, he made himsel invisible, and rode aff like a fire-flaught on ane o" the knight"s horses; and frae that eventfu hour to this, we hae ne"er seen his face."
"Art satisfied, my Lord of Ross?" said the King in a whisper, to a lord that sat beside him. "Is our wager won? Have we, as we essayed, succeeded in our undertaking? Have we in the form of a beggar, so wrought upon the hearts of the members of a Maiden feast, as to gain their love to the extent of making them defend the gaberlunzie against the king"s knights, inspiring them to fight, and win the day in a fought battle, and latterly riding home on one of the enemy"s horses? Ha! ha!
we opine we have--what say our judges?"
"The game is up," replied the Lord of Ross. "I acknowledge myself beat.
Your Highness has won the day."
Another laugh sealed the triumph of the king, and William Hume stared in amazement at the extraordinary mummery that was acted around him.
"William Hume," said the King, "this is an artifice on thy part to escape our vengeance. I go to put on the black cap, and to return to p.r.o.nounce thy fate. Thou hast admitted the crime; and to lay it on the devil"s back, is only the common way of the wicked."
Lilly, on hearing the mention of the black cap, screamed, the mother cried for mercy, and the thunderstruck farmer waited to receive his doom. The king went out, and returned in a short time in the cap of Wat Wilson, holding in his hand the stolen mace. A new light broke in upon the mind of the criminal--he perceived at once the ident.i.ty of the king and the beggar; and the fears of all were in a moment dispelled.
"Stand up, Lilly Hume and Will Carr," said the monarch.
The voice of royalty sounded like a death-knell in the ears of the maiden. Her mind ran back to that eventful hour when she told the beggar the secret of her love; and she felt even yet the hug of the king, and the royal kiss burning on her lips. She blushed to the temples, and could scarcely stand without the support of her father, who now, when he saw how the land lay, had recovered all his fort.i.tude, with a portion of well-founded hope that the services he performed to the beggar-king would meet with their reward.
"So your faither, Lilly, will not allow you to marry Will Carr," resumed James, "because he is puir?"
"Guid Lord!" muttered William to himsel--"hoo comes he to ken that too?--a family secret that I could scarcely breathe in my ain lug for its injustice, and now I see to be punished as it deserves."
Lilly hung her head. She could not open her lips. The mention of her humble love by a king and in the presence of n.o.bles, was so far beyond the ordinary experience of her obscure life, and held such a contrast to the secret breathings of her affection in her stolen meetings with her lover among the broom knowes of Cairnkibbie, that she thought the world itself was undergoing some extraordinary convulsion. Turning round, she caught the eye of Will Carr, who, having more courage, infused some portion of his confidence into the blushing girl.
"Is that true, William Hume?" rejoined James, who despaired of getting an answer from Lilly.
"Deed, an" it"s owre true, yer Highness," answered the farmer; "but I thought there wasna a mortal on earth knew the circ.u.mstance but mysel and my wife; for, begging your Highness" pardon, I was ashamed to tell it to the la.s.sie hersel, for fear she might hae communicated it to Will"s freends, wha are decent people, and canna help their poverty."
"Dost thou still stand to thy objection to the match?" again asked James.
"If your Royal Highness, as Wat Wilson," replied the farmer, smiling, "could command me and the hail household o" Cairnkibbie to do your bidding, and turn us round your finger like a piece o" packthread, I micht hae sma chance o" resistin yer authority as king o" Scotland. I hae nae objection noo to the match, seem that a king gies oot the bans."
"William Hume," resumed the laughing monarch, "hear thy doom. For the love thou didst extend and show to our royal person, we give thee a free grant of the lands of Cairnkibbie, upon this one condition--that thou consentest to the union of Lilly Hume with Will Carr, to whom we shall, out of our royal purse, give, as a marriage portion, two hundred marks."
"I canna disobey the command o" Wat Wilson," replied William with a dry smile. "He has already exercised great authority owre us a", and we winna throw aff our allegiance in this eventfu day."
A general laugh wound up the scene. The young couple were married, and a merry wedding they had of it; but there was one great exception to the general joy, and that was, that although there was many a good dancer present, and Tam Lutar was not absent, there was not to be seen or heard the jolly beggar who had, on the former occasion, been the soul of the Maiden. James became afterwards engaged in more serious concerns, and there were few who knew anything of his nocturnal exploit. The Humes were told to keep it a secret; and the lords who were present had too much regard for their king to expose his good-humoured eccentricities.
When Hume became proprietor of Cairnkibbie, the people speculated; but little did they know, so well had the secret been kept, that the grant proceeded from the farmer"s supposed misfortune, or that Wat Wilson the beggar, who danced so jovially at the Maiden, was the individual who had transformed William Hume from a simple farmer to one of the small Border lairds who held their heads so high in those days; and far less was it known that the same individual had brought about the marriage of Lilly Hume and Will Carr.
Thus have we attempted to describe one of those wild frolics in which the young King James V. of Scotland occasionally indulged. If he had lived to an advanced age, his subjects might have had as much reason to admire the king as they had to love the royal gaberlunzie, who, wherever he took up his quarters, whether "in a house in Aberdeen," or in the barn of Cairnkibbie, sent the fire of his spirit of love and fun throughout all with which he came in contact.
THE PROFESSOR"S TALES.
EARLY RECOLLECTIONS OF A SON OF THE HILLS.
I have oftentimes thought, what, I dare say, has been thought again and again by thousands before I was born, and will be thought by as many millions after I have ceased both to think and speak--I have thought that, if any one were to give an exact transcript of his feelings and experience, in early life in particular--without any connecting link even, beyond that of time and place--such a written record could not fail to be exceedingly interesting. The novelty of the scene; the uncloyed character of the feelings; the harpy-clutching nature of the imagination; the variety of sources within and without, from which pleasure is derived and is derivable--all these form a mine of delightful insight, which has not, perhaps, ever yet been exhausted--a mine conducting to, and losing itself in, that far-away central darkness which precedes perception, recollection, existence. I remember--and it is an awful remembrance--the death of my grandmother when I was only four years old. There she lies in that bed. Alongside of that sheet, there are my mother and the minister kneeling in prayer. The whisper is conveyed to the minister"s ear--"Sir, she has win to _rest_!" Oh, that sweet word rest!--rest negative, rest positive--rest from, rest in, rest amidst a sea of troubles--rest in an ocean of glorious happiness! "Sir, she has win to rest!" I can never forget the words, nor the look, nor the place, nor the all which then const.i.tuted _me_. The minister pauses in the middle of a sentence, he rises from his knees, and, taking my mother"s hand in his, as well as mine in the other, he approaches the bed of death; but, O my soul, what an impression is made upon me! My grandmother--the figure with the short cloak over her shoulders, the check ap.r.o.n, the tobacco-box, and the short cutty-pipe--the speaking, conversing, kind-hearted figure--what is _it now_? Asleep!--but the eyes are open, and frightfully unmeaning. Asleep!--but the mouth is somewhat awry, and there is an expression unknown, intolerable, terrible, all over the countenance.
And this is death! I cannot stand it. I fly to the door--to the brae--to the hill. I dash my face, shoulders and all, into a bracken bush, and weep, weep, weep myself asleep. When I awake, it is a dream; I am amused with the white table-cloth, the bread and cheese, and wine bottle. I am amused with the plate, salt, and earth placed on the breast of the corpse. I am amused with the coffining; but, most of all--oh, delightful!--with the funeral--the well-dressed people--the numbers, the services of bun, shortbread, wine, and spirits; and above all, with various little bits and drops which fall to my share. I firmly believe I got fuddled on the occasion. Such is man; for men are but children of a larger growth. Now, there is only _one_ event, circ.u.mstance, incident, firmly and fairly told--and it is interesting exceedingly: how interesting, then, would all the incidents and events of early life be, were they only narrated with equal faithfulness! So one may say; but, in so saying, they will be misled and mislead. There are few things which I remember so vividly as this. Death! I have seen thee since! Thou hast torn from me mother, brother, friend, and, above and beyond all, thou hast been betwixt these arms, murdering her whom my soul loved--the partner of my life--the mother of my babes--the balm of my soul--the glory, ornament, and boast of my existence; and yet, and yet my grandmother"s death is more vividly imprinted on brain and heart than any other event of a similar nature. Proof impressions sell dear! and proof feelings--oh, how deep are the lines, how indelible the engravings! They are cut on steel with a graving tool of adamant. The heart and the brain must be reduced to their elemental dust, ere these impressions can wear out--and yet I was only four years and six months old!
I saw it--ay, and I see it still--a poor innocent lamb. I had kissed it, and hung about its neck on the sunny brae. People said it was not thriving: I would not believe it. It was my companion. I often fed it with milk; put my finger into its little toothless mouth, and made it lap the invigorating and nourishing liquid. It had no parent, no friend, in a manner, but me, and I was only five years old, in petticoats; a very semblance of humanity; a thing to be strode over in his path by mankind of ordinary stature. But there came a blight, a curse, a dreadful change, over my dear and endearing pet. It was torn--ay, dreadfully torn, by some nightly dog. When I first found it, it was scarcely alive, lying bleeding; its white, and soft, and smooth skin dragged in the mud, torn and untouchable. There was a knife applied; but not to cure; it was to kill, to put out of pain. I could not stand it; I went into convulsions, screamed, and almost tore myself to pieces. "My lamb! my wee lambie! my dear, dear sweety!"--but it had pa.s.sed, and I was alone in my existence. But, oh! it was a fearful lesson which I had learned--a dreadful truth which I had ascertained. Youth, as well as age, is subject to death: dreadful!
There she sits in loveliness--there, there, in the midst of that hazel bush, snug in her retreat, her yellow bill projecting over the brow of her nest: smooth, black, and glittering are her feathers, and her eye is the very balmy south of expression. Yet there is a watchfulness and a timidity in her att.i.tude and movement--she is not at ease, for that eye has caught mine, as they protrude upon her betwixt two separated branches; and, after two or three hesitating stirs, she is out--off--away; but perched on a neighbouring bough, to mark and watch my proceedings. And _he_, too, is there; _he_, her companion and helpmate; he who was singing, or rather whistling, so loud on that tall and overtopping birch; he who was making the setting sunlight glad with his music--who was, doubtless, chanting of courtship, and love, and union, and progeny. Yes! _he_ has left his branch and his sun; he has dropped down from his elevation, to inquire into the cause of that sudden chuckle, by which his lady bird has alarmed him. There are four eyes upon me now, and all my proceedings are registered in two beating bosoms. But the nest is full--it is full of life--of young life--of the gorling in its hair, and incipient tail--of yellow gaping bills, all thrust upwards, and crying, as loud as att.i.tude and cheep can do, "Give, give, give!" Surely Solomon had never seen a blackbird"s nest with young, else he had given it a place amongst his "gives!" This was my first nest. It was discovered when I was only five years old; it was visited every day and every hour; the young ones grew apace; they feathered into blackness; they hopped from their abode; they flew, or were essaying to do so, when--O world! world! why, why, is it so with thee!--destruction came in a night, and the feathers of my young ones were strewed around their once happy and crowded abode. There had been other eyes upon them than mine. Yes! eyes to which the night is as noonday--vile, green, elongated eyes, and sharp, penetrating, and unsparing teeth, and claws, stretched, crooked, and clutching; and, in short, the cat had devoured the whole family!--not one was left to the distracted parents. I shall never, never forget their fluttering movements, their chirpings, their restlessness, their ruffled feathers, and all but human speech. There was revenge in my young bosom--mad and terrible revenge. I s.n.a.t.c.hed up the murderer--all unconscious as she was of her fault. I ran with her, like a fury, to a deep pool in the burn. I dashed her headlong into the waters--from which, of course, she readily escaped, and, eyeing me with a look of extreme surprise from the further bank, immediately vanished into the house. Though we were great friends before this event--and I would gladly have renewed our intercourse afterwards, when my pa.s.sion had subsided--yet p.u.s.s.y never forgave me, at least I know that she never trusted me, for I could never catch her again.
That"s the pool--the very b.u.mbling pool, where we bathed, and stood beneath the cascade, for a whole summer"s day. There were more than one or two either--there were many of us; for we collected as the day advanced, and still those who were retreating, upon encountering those who were advancing, would turn with them again, and renew their immersions. It was summer--and such summer as youth (for I was only six) alone can experience--it was one long blaze of noontide radiance. The sun stationary, as in the valley of Jehosophat; the trees, green, leafy, shady, rejoicing; the very cattle dancing in upon the cooling element; and the gra.s.shopper still dumb. The heat was intense, yet not overpowering; for we were naked--naked as were Adam and Eve prior to sin and shame--naked as is Apollo Belvidere, or the Venus de Medicis. We were Nature"s children, and she was kind to us; she gave us air that was balm; sunbeams that wooed us from the pool; and water again that enticed us from the open air! What a day it was of fun and frolic, and splash, and squatter, and confusion! Now jumping from the brow into the deep; now standing beneath the Grey Mare"s Tail, the flashing cascade; now laving--like Diana on Actaeon--the water from the pool on each other"s limbs and faces; now circling along the green bank, in sportive chase and mimic fray, and again couching neck deep in the pool. But the awful dinnle is on the breeze; the black south hath advanced rapidly upon meridian day; the white and swollen clouds have boiled up into spongy foam; and there runs a light blue vapour over the inky cloud beneath.
Hist!--whisht!--it"s _thunner_! and, ere many minutes have escaped, we are each quaking every limb at our own firesides.
Many recent winters have made me cry, What has become of winter? I wished Government would fit out an expedition to go in quest of him. He must have been couching somewhere, the funny old rogue, behind the Pole; he must have been coquetting with the beauties of Greenland or Nova Zembla. He has, last season, condescended to give us a glimpse of his icy beard and h.o.a.ry temples. Oh, I like the old fellow dearly!--but it is the old fellow only. As to him of modern times, I know not what to make of him--a bl.u.s.tering, blubbering, braggadocio; making darkness his pavilion, for no other purpose than to throw pailfuls of water on the heads of women and children; letting out his colds and influenzas from his Baltic bags, and terrifying our citizens with "auld wives," broken slates, and shivered tiles. But my winter of 1794--what a delightful companion he was! He did his work genteelly; his drift was a matter of a few hours; but they were hours of vigorous and terrible exertion. Some ten score of sheep, and some twenty shepherds, perished within a limited range, in one wild and outrageous night. It was, indeed, sublime--even to me, a youth of eight years of age, it was fearfully sublime. Can anything be more beautiful than falling and newly-fallen snow. _There_ you see it above, and to a great height, shaping into varied and convolving forms. It nears, it nears, it nears, and lights in your little hand, a feathery diamond, a crystallized vapour, an evanescent loveliness! But the tempest has sounded an a.s.sail, and the broadened flakes are comminuted into blinding drift--the earth beneath blows up to heaven, whilst the heaven thunders its vengeance upon the earth. The restless snow whirls, eddies, rises, disperses, acc.u.mulates. Man cannot breathe in the thick and toiling atmosphere. The wreaths swell into rounded and polished forms, and, on a sudden, disappear. The air has cleared, has stilled, and the sharp and consolidating frost has commenced. What a sea of celestial brightness! The earth wrapped in an alabaster mantle, the folds of which are the folds of beauty and enchantment. Days of glory, and nights of splendour. The moon, in her own blue heaven, contracted to a small circ.u.mference of clear, gaseous light; the hills, the hollows, the valleys, the muirs, the mosses, the woodlands, the rocky eminences, the houses, the churchyards, the gardens, the whole of external nature beneath her, giving up again into the biting and twinkling air an arrowy radiance of far-spread light.
Here and there the course of a mountain torrent, or of a winding river, marked with a jagged and broken line of black. The bay of the house-dog heard far off--the sound of the curlers" sport, composed of a mixture of moanings--the "sweep," the "guard," the "stroke," the homebred and hearty shout and guffaw--the Babel mixture of noises, coming softened and attuned from the distant pond. It is the "how-dum-dead" of winter.
Christmas has pa.s.sed, with its happiness wished and enjoyed--it is the last night of the year; long and fondly-expected Hogmanay! We are abroad, amongst the farm-houses and cottars" huts--we pa.s.s nothing that emits smoke. Our disguises are fearful, even to ourselves, as we encounter each other unexpectedly at corners. Cakes, cheese, and all manner of eatables are ours, even to profusion. And who would not endure much of life, to have such exquisite fan renewed!
But my first trout!--killed--fairly landed out of the water--dancing about in all its speckled beauty on the green bank: this was indeed an event--this was an achievement of no ordinary interest. Fishing! to thee I owe more of exquisite enjoyment than to any other amus.e.m.e.nt whatever.
I am a mountain child--born, and nursed, and trotted about from my cradle on the winding banks of a bonny burn, through whose waters there looked up eyes, and there waved fins and tails. I have taken, again and again, in after life, the wings of the morning, and have made my dwelling with the stunted thorn, the corbie nest, the croaking raven, the willie-wagtail, and the plover, and the snipe, and the lapwing. I have seen mist--glorious mist!--in all its fantastic shapes, and openings and closings, from the dense crawling blanket of wet to the bright, sun-penetrated, rent, and dispersing tatterment of haze. I have studied all manner of cloud, from the swollen, puffed up, and rolling castellation, to the smooth, level, and widespread overshadowing. The breezes have been my companions all along. I could scan their merits and demerits with a fisher"s eye, from the rough and sudden puff, urging the pool into ridges of ripple, to the steady, soft, and balmy breath that merely brought the surface into a slight commotion. Burns, too, I have studied, and streams, and gullets, and weils, and clay-brows, and b.u.mbling pools. I have fished in the Caple with Willie Herdman. (See Blackwood, volume sixth.) I have fished in the Turrit with Stoddart.
(See his admirable book on Angling.) But the true happiness of a fisher is solitude. Oh, for a fine morning in April, fresh, breezy, and dark!--a mountain glen, through which the Dar or the Brawn threads its mazy descent; the bottom clear, and purified by a recent flood; the waters not yet completely subsided--something betwixt clear and muddy--a light blue, and a still lighter brown.
Not a shepherd, nor a sheep, nor a living creature within sight--nothing but the sound of the pa.s.sing stream, and the plash of the hooked and landing trout. A whole immensity of unexhausted stream unfurled before me; the day yet in its nonage; my pockets stuffed with stomach store; my mind at ease; my tongue ever and anon repeating, audibly--"Now for it, this will do, there he has it, this way, sir, this way; nay, no tricks upon travellers--out, out you _must_ come--so, so, my pretty fellow, take it gently, take it gently!" But I am forgetting my first trout in the thousand and tens of thousands which have succeeded it. I had a knife--I know not how I got it; perhaps I bought it at a Thornhill fair, with a sixpence which the guidman of Auchincairn gave me as my fairing, or perhaps--but no matter; as Wordsworth would say, "I had a knife!" and this knife was my humble servant in all manner of duties; it was, in fact, my slave; it would cut bourtree, and fashion scout guns; it would make saugh whistles; it would fashion bows and arrows; it would pare cheese, and open hazel nuts; it was more generally useful than Hudibras" sword--and I felt its value. In fact, what was I without my knife? A soldier without his gun, a fiddler without his fiddle, a tailor without his shears. And yet this very knife, dear and useful as it was to me, I parted with--I gave it away, I fairly bartered it for a bait-hook with a horse-hair line attached to it. But then I had seen, and seen it for the first time, a trout caught with this very hook and line. Having a hook and line, I cut myself, from an adjoining wood, a rowan-tree fishing-rod, which might serve a double purpose, protecting me from the witches, and aiding me in catching trout. Away I went, "owre muirs and mosses mony o"," to the glorious Caple, of which I had heard much. I baited my hook with some difficulty; for worms, whatever boys may be, are not fond of _the sport_. I stood alongside of the deep black pool. I saw the deception alight in the water, and heard the plump; it sank, and sank, by a certain law, which philosophers have named gravitation; it became first pale-white, then yellow, then almost red, as it sank away into the dark profundity of mossy water. It lay still and motionless for a few instants. At last it moved; ye powers! it cuts the water like an edged instrument--it pulls--pulls strongly. The top of the rod touches the surface of the pool--something must be done--I am all trepidation. But, by mere strength of pulling and of tackle, a large yellow-wamed, black-backed fellow lies panting on the sand bank at the foot of the pool.
"And its hame, hame, hame, Fain wad I be; And it"s hame, hame, hame, To my ain mammie!"
I ran home with all possible rapidity; and displayed, on a very large pewter plate, my first trout, to my kind and affectionate parent. My happiness was completed.
The woods!--I was born in the woods; man lives originally in the primeval forests, with the exception, perhaps, of the Arab, the Babylonian, and Egyptian; wherever there was sufficient soil and suitable climate, there was wood, from Lapland to Capetown, from the Bay of Biscay to the Yellow Sea. The American forests still exist, where even the axe of European civilization has not reached them. There woods are natural to man; he turns to them as to something, he cannot well tell how or why, congenial to his nature. At least so I have felt it, and feel it still in my recollections of early life. Plantations are stiff and artificial, generally consisting of a dense field of regular similarity; but natural wood, the offspring of our own soil, the indigenous plants of Scotland--the birch, for example, with its bending and elegant twigs, its white stem, and grateful fragrance; the eternal oak, with its leafy shade; the tough ash, with its pointed leaf; the lowly hazel, with its straight stems and fragrant nuts; the saugh, the willow, the thorn-sloe, the haw, the elder, the bourtree, the crabtree, the briar, and the bramble--all these consociate lovingly, and actually did consociate around, and almost over, the humble but snug cot where I first drew breath. There, my first herald of day was the song of the linnet, thrush, or blackbird; there, my first efforts were made in gaining the top of some little ash or birch; there, my first riches consisted in a few pints of ripened and browned nuts, kept in the leg of a footless stocking, against the ensuing Halloween. But Halloween has now become a mere name--_et preterea nihil_, still _stat nominis umbra_, sufficient to make me recollect with delight the exquisite pleasure which I enjoyed in antic.i.p.ating as well as in observing this festival.
The crabtree yielded its reddest and ripest fruit for the occasion; a casual apple was hooked over the hedge of the castle orchard for the same purpose; but, above and beyond all, nuts were gathered, dried and stored away into sly corners and out-of-the-way places. What amus.e.m.e.nt so delightful as nut-gathering! There they hang to the afternoon sun, brown and ready to escape from their husks or sh.e.l.ls. There are twosome cl.u.s.ters, and threesome cl.u.s.ters; and if you could reach without shaking that topmost branch (but there is the difficulty and the danger), you may even secure a twelvesome cl.u.s.ter--a glorious knot of lovely a.s.sociates, that would crumble from their abodes into your hands like dried leaves! You pa.s.s on from bush to bush; but you have been antic.i.p.ated. Will or Tam, or Jock or Jamie, or all four, have been there before you, and have left you nothing but a scanty gleaning. Here and there, you are enabled to extract from the centre of a leafy shade, an ill-ripened, because an unsound, single nut, which serves no better purpose than to break your jaws with its emptiness, in cracking it. But you push away into the interior--the _terra incognita_ of the woodland; and, standing out by itself, aired and sunned all over, you find a little branch of scroggs, stinted and ill-leaved, but really covered all over with the most exquisite fruitage. Long, large, are the nuts you have thus acquired; and you chuckle inwardly, as you contemplate a prize which has been reserved for your exclusive use. With what despatch are cl.u.s.ter after cl.u.s.ter acc.u.mulated into handfuls, and then again into pocketfuls, and then, at last, into cap, hat, or bonnetfuls, till you become a kind of sh.e.l.licoat, a walking _nuttery_, a thing of husks and kernels! The voice of your companions is loud and frequent, in the language of inquiry into the state of your success; but you preserve a deep silence, or answer prevaricatingly, by, "you have got a few--not many--very bad place this," &c. &c. At last you come upon them with the astonishment of display, and expose your treasure with ineffable feelings of triumph. You have distanced them all. Your Halloween fortune is made--you are a happy being.
But Halloween comes at last--Scotland"s Halloween--Burns" Halloween--the Halloween of centuries upon centuries--of the Celt amidst his mountains, the Saxon in his valley, the Druid in his woods, King James the First in his palace--and old Janet Smith in her humble cottage. It was at Janet Smith"s that I held the first Halloween of which I have any distinct recollection. There was a kind of couthiness about old Janet, which made her hearth the resort of all the young lads and la.s.ses, boys and girls, around. On Halloween, Janet had on her best head-gear, her check ap.r.o.n, and clean neck napkin.
We had such burning of nuts, such pu"ing of stocks, such singing of songs, such gibing, laughing, cracking, tale-telling, and, to crown all, such a gallant bowl of punch, made from a sonsy greybeard, which the young men had taken care to store previously with the needful, that I went home half crazy, and, my mother affirmed, continued so for several days to come.
Ye G.o.ds! what superst.i.tious notions peopled my brain ever since! I recollect such fears about the invisible world becoming visible--I walked amidst a mult.i.tude of unseen terrors, ever ready to burst the cas.e.m.e.nt of immateriality, and to stand, naked, confessed, in material semblance, before me. There was the fairy, the inhabitant of the green unploughed knowe, the green-coated imp, intent on child-stealing, or rather barter, and jingling her bridle through the high air on Halloween; there was the ghost, awful, solemn, and admonishing, pointing with the finger to buried treasure or murder glen; there was the wraith, little less terrible, and clothed in a well-known presence, prognosticating death or sore affliction; there was the death-watch, distinctly heard tick, ticking, all night long, in the bed-post; there were the blue lights seen in round spots on the bed-head, on the very night when three lads and three la.s.ses perished in the boat; there was the muckle deil himself, driving in a post-chaise, over the "chaise-craig," or panting, like a bull-dog, at the nightly traveller"s feet; and, over and above all these, was "Will o" the Wisp," skipping about from one side of the moss to the other, and always placing itself betwixt you and your home.
"D"ye see that?" said my cousin, Nelly Laurie, a girl of eighteen, to me, when my years could be reckoned by the number of the muses.
"What! what is it!" I exclaimed; and my attention was directed towards a moss, or mora.s.s, through which our footpath lay, on our way home, about ten o"clock of a dark, damp, and cloudy night.
"There! there it"s again!"
There is something in the word "it" most indefinitely terrific. Had she said _he_ or _she_, or even that ghost, or that wraith, or that bogle, it would not have been half so startling; but "it"--do you see it?--see a thing without a name, a definition--a mere object, shorn of its accidents or qualities! This is indeed most awful. With fear and trembling, I lifted up mine eyes, and beheld--O mercy, mercy!--a light in the middle of the moss, where no light should have been; and it was floating and playing about, blue as indigo, and making the darkness around it visible. My joints relaxed, and I fell to the earth, incapable of motion. I was a mere bundle of loose and unconnected bones, sinews, and muscles. My cousin stood over me, incapable of deciding what would be done; at last, it was discovered that to advance homewards was better than to retrograde, as we were already more than half-way on our course.
I was instructed to repeat, and to continue repeating, aloud, the Lord"s prayer; whilst she, on whose shoulders I lay like a dead sheep, continued to give audible note to the tune of the twenty-third psalm. It was, indeed, an odd concert for the devil, or his emissary, Mr. William yclept "of the Wisp," to listen to; for, whilst I was roaring out, in perfect desperation, "Our Father which art in Heaven," she was articulating, in a clear and overpowering tone, "The Lord"s my shepherd;" whilst I slipt into "Hallowed be thy name," she advanced with, "I"ll not want--he makes me down to lie!"--and, sure enough, down _both of us lay_, with a vengeance, in the midst of a moss-hole, into which, from terror and the darkness of the night, we had inadvertently plunged. "What"s the meaning of all this, sirs!" exclaimed a well-known voice. It was my mother"s, G.o.d bless her! I clung to her like grim death, and never quitted my hold till I was snugly lodged above the fire, near to the lamp, and with dog, cat, my cousin, and my mother, betwixt me and the dark doorway pa.s.sage! I did not get a sound sleep for months and years afterwards! Such are thy miseries, unhallowed, unmanly superst.i.tion! Disease may relax the body and enervate the whole frame; but thou art the disease of the soul, the fever of the brain.
Misfortunes may be borne--pain must be endured till it is cured--but superst.i.tion such as _this_, is neither endurable nor curable. I am not yet completely cured of it, now that I have entered my sixtieth year.
Were you to send me into an empty, dark church, at midnight, and through a surrounding churchyard, peopled with the bodies of the dead, I durst not go, though you gave me large sums of money. And is my judgment or reason in fault? Not at all; it is my feelings, my moral nature; my very blood has got such a blue tinge that I verily believe it would look like the blue ink I am writing with, were it caught in a tea-cup! Sir Walter Scott was bit, too, and so are nine-tenths of the _living_, though they won"t allow it. It has now become, like latent heat, an unseen agency; but it still acts, and powerfully, on civilized, and even learned man!
Seeking of birds" nests is a glorious amus.e.m.e.nt, and the knowledge of a large amount of these is a possession to be boasted of. I know of a linnet"s nest, says one--and I of a robin"s, says another--I of shilfa"s, says a third; but a fourth party comes in with his mavis, and all compet.i.tion is at an end. The mavis is indeed a Scottish nightingale; he sings so mellow, and so varied--his brown spreckled breast turned up to the rising or the setting sun, he pours o"er the woodland a whole concert of harmony; and then he awakens into compet.i.tion the blackbird, with his aeolian whistle; the green and grey linnet, with their sharp and sweet tweedle-twee; the goldfinch, with his scarlet hood and song of flame; and the lark on the far-off fell, with his minstrelsy of heaven"s border. But what to a boy, a boy of eight or nine, is all this song and sunshine, in comparison with the fact--"I know of five birds" nests!" Why, this annunciation is enough to settle your doom--you may almost apprehend a.s.sa.s.sination, so much must you be envied. But true it is, and of verity; I once knew five birds"
nests--all containing eggs or young. Oh, I remember them as it were only of yesterday. Time has only engraved, with a tool of adamant, the impression deeper and deeper. There was the snug and pendulous abode of the little kitty-wren. It was beneath the brow of the burn, covered over from winds and rains by the inc.u.mbent bank and brushwood. It was a plum-pudding, with a hole made by your thumb on one side; a stationary football, composed of all things soft and comfortable, covered on the outside with fog or moss, and in the inside lined with the down of feathers; and there were from sixteen to twenty little blue _peas_ in it; and the little hen sat on them daily, and opposed her little bill vigorously to my intrusive finger. She was not afraid--not she! she fought manfully, "_pro aris et focis_;" if not, as the Romans say, "_manibus pedibusque_;" nor, as the savage Saxons say, "tooth and nail,"