The Life of Mansie Wauch Part 14

Oh, wad that my time were ower but, Wi' this wintry sleet and snaw, That I might see our house again I' the bonny birken shaw!-- For this is no my ain life, And I peak and pine away Wi' the thochts o' hame, and the young flow'rs I' the glad green month o' May.

I used to wauk in the morning Wi' the loud sang o' the lark, And the whistling o' the ploughmen lads As they gaed to their wark; I used to weir in the young lambs Frae the tod and the roaring stream; But the warld is changed, and a' thing now To me seems like a dream.

There are busy crowds around me On ilka lang dull street; Yet, though sae mony surround me I kenna ane I meet.

And I think on kind, kent faces, And o' blythe and cheery days, When I wander'd out, wi' our ain folk, Out-owre the simmer braes.

Wae's me, for my heart is breaking!

I think on my brithers sma', And on my sister greeting, When I came fra hame awa And oh! how my mither sobbi, As she shook me by the hand; When I left the door o' our auld house, To come to this stranger land;

There's nae place like our ain hame; Oh, I wish that I was there!-- There's nae hame like our ain hame To be met wi' ony where!-- And oh! that I were back again To our farm and fields so green; And heard the tongues o' my ain folk, And was what I hae been!

That's poor Mungo's poem; which I and James Batter, and the rest, think excellent, and not far short of Robert Burns himself, had he been spared.

Some may judge otherwise, out of bad taste or ill nature; but I would just thank them to write a better at their leisure.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO--THE JUNE JAUNT WITH PETER FARREL

After Tammie Bodkin had been working with me on the board for more than four years in the capacity of foresman, superintending the workshop department, together with the conduct and conversation of Joe Breeky, Walter Cuff, and Jack Thorl, my three bounden apprentices, I thought I might lippen him awee to try his hand in the shaping line, especially with the clothes of such of our customers as I knew were not very nice, provided they got enough of cutting from the Manchester manufacture, and room to shake themselves in. The upshot, however, proved to a moral certainty, that such a length of tether is not chancey for youth, and that a master cannot be too much on the head of his own business.

It was in the pleasant month of June, sometime, maybe six or eight days, after the birth-day of our good old King George the Third--for I recollect the withering branches of lily-oak and flowers still sticking up behind the signs, and over the lamp-posts,--that my respected acquaintance and customer, Peter Farrel the baker, to whom I have made many a good suit of pepper-and-salt clothes--which he preferred from their not dirtying so easily with the bakehouse--called in upon me, requesting me, in a very pressing manner, to take a pleasure ride up with him the length of Roslin, in his good-brother's bit phieton, to eat a wheen strawberries, and see how the forthcoming harvest was getting on.

That the offer was friendly admitted not of doubt, but I did not like to accept for two-three reasons; among which were, in the first place, my awareness of the danger of riding in such vehicles--having read sundry times in the newspapers of folk having been tumbled out of them, drunk or sober, head-foremost, and having got eyes knocked ben, skulls cloured, and collar-bones broken; and, in the second place, the expense of feeding the horse, together with our feeding ourselves in meat and drink during the journey--let alone tolls, strawberries and cream, bawbees to the waiter, the hostler, and what not. But let me speak the knock-him-down truth, and shame the de'il,--above all, I was afraid of being seen by my employers wheeling about, on a work-day, like a gentleman, dressed out in my best, and leaving my business to mind itself as it best could.

Peter Farrel, however, being a man of determination, stuck to his text like a horse-leech; so, after a great to-do, and considerable argle-bargling, he got me, by dint of powerful persuasion, to give him my hand on the subject. Accordingly, at the hour appointed, I popped up the back loan with my stick in my hand--Peter having agreed to be waiting for me on the roadside, a bit beyond the head of the town, near Gallows-hall toll. The cat should be let out of the pock by my declaring, that Nanse, the goodwife, had also a finger in the pie--as, do what ye like, women will make their points good--she having overcome me in her wheedling way, by telling me, that it was curious I had no ambition to speel the ladder of gentility, and hold up my chin in imitation of my betters.

That we had a most beautiful drive I cannot deny; for though I would not allow Peter to touch the horse with the whip, in case it might run away, fling, or trot ower fast--and so we made but slow progress--little more even than walking; yet, as I told him, it gave a man leisure to use his eyes, and make observation to the right and the left; and so we had a prime look of Eskbank, and Newbottle Abbey, and Melville Castle, and Dalhousie, and Polton, and Hawthornden, and Dryden woods--and the powder mills, the paper mills, the bleachfield--and so on. The day was bright and beautiful, and the feeling of summer came over our bosoms: the flowers blossomed and the birds sang; and, as the sun looked from the blue sky, the quiet of nature banished from our thoughts all the poor and paltry cares that embitter life, and all the pitiful considerations which are but too apt to be the only concerns of the busy and bustling, from their awaking in the morning to their lying down on the pillow of evening rest. Peter and myself felt this forcibly; he, as he confessed to me, having entirely forgot the four pan-soled loaves that were, that morning, left by his laddie, Peter Crust, in the oven, and burned to sticks; and for my own part, do what I liked, I could not bring myself to mind what piece of work I was employed on the evening before, till, far on the road, I recollected that it was a pair of mouse-brown spatterdashes for worthy old Mr Mooleypouch the mealmonger.

Oh, it is a pleasant thing, now and then, to get a peep of the country!

To them who live among shops and markets, and stone-walls, and butcher-stalls, and fishwives--and the smell of ready-made tripe, red herring, and Cheshire cheeses--the sights, and sounds, and smells of the country, bring to mind the sinless days of the world before the fall of man, when all was love, peace, and happiness. Peter Farrel and I were transported out of our seven senses, as we feasted our eyes on the beauty of the green fields. The b.u.mbees were bizzing among the gowans and blue-bells; and a thousand wee birds among the green trees were churm-churming away, filling earth and air with music, as it were a universal hymn of grat.i.tude to the Creator for his unbounded goodness to all his creatures. We saw the trig country la.s.ses bleaching their snow-white linen on the gra.s.s by the waterside, and they too were lilting their favourite songs, Logan Water, the Flowers of the Forest, and the Broom of the Cowdenknowes. All the world seemed happy, and I could scarcely believe--what I kent to be true for all that--that we were still walking in the realms of sin and misery. The milk-cows were nipping the clovery parks, and chewing their cuds at their leisure;--the wild partridges whidding about in pairs, or birring their wings with fright over the hedges;--and the blue-bonneted ploughmen on the road cracking their whips in wantonness, and whistling along amid the clean straw in their carts. And then the rows of snug cottages, with their kailyards and their goose-berry bushes, with the fruit hanging from the branches like ear-rings on the neck of a lady of fashion. How happy, thought we both--both Peter Farrel and me--how happy might they be, who, without worldly pride or ambition, pa.s.sed their days in such situations, in the society of their wives and children. Ah! such were a blissful lot!

During our ride, Peter Farrel and I had an immense deal of rational conversation on a variety of matters, Peter having seen great part of the world in his youth, from having made two voyages to Greenland, during one of which he was very nearly frozen up--with his uncle, who was the mate of a whale-vessel. To relate all that Peter told me he had seen and witnessed in his far-away travels, among the white bears, and the frozen seas, would take up a great deal of the reader's time, and of my paper; but as to its being very diverting, there is no doubt of that. However, when Peter came to the years of discretion, Peter had sense enough in his noddle to discover, that "a rowing stane gathers no fog"; and, having got an inkling of the penny-pie manufacture when he was a wee smout, he yoked to the baking trade tooth and nail; and, in the course of years, thumped b.u.t.ter-bakes with his elbows to some purpose; so that, at the time of our colleaguing together, Peter was well to do in the world--had bought his own bounds, and built new ones--could lay down the blunt for his article, and take the measure of the markets, by laying up wheat in his granaries against the day of trouble--to wit--rise of prices.

"Well, Peter," said I to him, "seeing that ye read the newspapers, and have a notion of things, what think ye, just at the present moment, of affairs in general?"

Peter c.o.c.ked up his lugs at this appeal, and, looking as wise as if he had been Solomon's nephew, gave a knowing smirk, and said--

"Is it foreign or domestic affairs that you are after, Maister Wauch? for the question is a six-quarters wide one."

I was determined not to be beat by man of woman born; so I answered with almost as much cleverality as himself, "Oh, Mr Farrel, as to our foreign concerns, I trust I am ower loyal a subject of George the Third to have any doubt at all about them, as the Buonaparte is yet to be born that will ever beat our regulars abroad--to say nothing of our volunteers at home; but what think you of the paper specie--the national debt--borough reform--the poor-rates--and the Catholic question?"

I do not think Peter jealoused I ever had so much in my noddle; but when he saw I had put him to his mettle, he did his best to give me satisfactory answers to my queries, saying, that till gold came in fashion, it would not be for my own interest, or that of my family, to refuse bank-notes, for which he would, any day of the year, give me as many quarter loaves as I could carry, to say nothing of coa.r.s.e flour for the prentices' scones, and bran for the pigs--that the national debt would take care of itself long after both him and I were gathered to our fathers: and that individual debt was a much more hazardous, pressing, and personal concern, far more likely to come home to our more immediate bosoms and businesses--that the best species of reform was every one's commencing to make amendment in their own lives and conversations--that poor-rates were likely to be worse before they were better; and that, as to the Catholic question,--"But, Mansie," said he, "it would give me great pleasure to hear your candid and judicious opinion of Popery and the Papists."

I saw, with half an e'e, that Peter was trying to put me to my mettle, and I devoutly wished that I had had James Batter at my elbow to have given him play for his money--James being the longest-headed man that ever drove a shuttle between warp and woof; but most fortunately, just as I was going to say, that "every honest man, who wished well to the good of his country, could only have one opinion on that subject,"--we came to the by-road, that leads away off on the right-hand side down to Hawthornden, and we observed, from the curious ringle, that one of the naig's fore-shoon was loose; which consequently put an end to the discussion of this important question, before Peter and I had time to get it comfortably settled to the world's satisfaction.

The upshot was, that we were needcessitated to dismount, and lead the animal by the head forward to Kittlerig, where Macturk Sparrible keeps his smith's shop; in order that, with his hammer, he might make fast the loose nails: and that him and his foresman did in a couple of hurries; me and Peter looking over them with our hands in our big-coat pockets, while they pelt-pelted away with the beast's foot between their knees, as if we had been a couple of grand gentlemen incog.; and so we were to him.

After getting ourselves again decently mounted, and giving Sparrible a consideration for his trouble, Peter took occasion, from the horse casting its shoe, to make a few apropos moral observations, in the manner of the Rev. Mr Wiggie, on the uncertainties which it is every man's lot to encounter in the weariful pilgrimage of human life. "There is many a slip 'tween the cup and the lip," said Peter.

"And, indeed, Mr Farrel, ye never spoke a truer word," said I. "We are here to-day--yonder to-morrow; this moment we are shining like the mid-day sun, and on the next, pugh! we go out like the snuff of a candle.

'Man's life,' as Job observes, 'is like a weaver's shuttle.'"

"But, Maister Waugh," quo' Peter, who was a hearer of the Parish Church, "you dissenting bodies aye take the black side of things; never considering that the doubtful shadows of affairs sometimes brighten up into the cloudless daylight. For instance, now, there was an old fellow-apprentice of my father's, who, like myself, was a baker, his name was Charlie Cheeper; and, both his father and mother dying when he was yet hardly in trowsers, he would have been left without a hame in the world, had not an old widow woman, who had long lived next door to them, and whose only breadwinner was her spinning-wheel, taken the wee wretchie in to share her morsel. For several years, as might naturally have been expected, the callant was a perfect dead-weight on the concern, and perhaps, in her hours of greater distress, the widow regretted the heedlessness of her Christian charity; but Charlie had a winning way with him, and she could not find it in her heart to turn him to the door. By the time he was seven--and a ragged coute he was as ever stepped without shoes--he could fend for himself, by running messages--holding horses at shop doors--winning bools and selling them--and so on; so that when he had collected half-a-crown in a penny pig, the widow sent him to the school, where he got on like a hatter, and in a little while, could both read and write. When he was ten, he was bound apprentice to Saunders Snaps in the Back-row, whose grandson has yet, as you know, the sign of the Wheat Sheaf; and for five years he behaved himself like his betters.

"Well, sir, when his time was out, Charlie had an ambition to see the world; and, by working for a month or two as journeyman in the Candlemaker-row at Edinburgh, he raked as much together as took him up to London in the steerage of a Leith smack. For several years nothing was heard of him, except an occasional present of a shawl, or so on, to the widow, who had been so kind to him in his helpless years; and at length a farewell present of some little money came to her, with his blessing for past favours, saying that he was off for good and all to America.

"In the course of time, Widow Amos became frail and sand-blind. She was unable to work for herself, and the charity she had shown to others no one seemed disposed to extend to her. Her only child, Jeanie Amos, was obliged to leave her service, and come home to the house of poverty, to guard her mother's grey hairs from accident, and to divide with her the little she could make at the trade of mangling; for, with the money that Charlie Cheeper had sent, before leaving the country, the old woman had bought a calender, and let it out to the neighbours at so much an hour; honest poverty having many shifts.

"Matters had gone on in this way for two or three fitful years; and Jeanie, who, when she had come home from service, was a buxom and blooming la.s.s, although yet but a wee advanced in her thirties, began to show, like all earthly things, that she was wearing past her best. Some said that she had lost hopes of Charlie's return; and others, that, come hame when he liked, he would never look over his left shoulder after her.

"Well, sir, as fact as death, I mind mysell, when a laddie, of the rumpus the thing made in the town. One Sat.u.r.day night, a whole washing of old Mrs Pernickity's that had been sent to be calendered, vanished like lightning, no one knew where: the old lady was neither to hold nor bind: and nothing would serve her, but having both the old woman and her daughter committed to the Tolbooth. So to the Tolbooth they went, weeping and wailing; followed by a crowd, who cried loudly out at the sin and iniquity of the proceeding; because the honesty of the prisoners, although impeached, was unimpeachable; the mob were furious; and before the Sunday sun arose old Mrs Pernickity awakened with a sore throat, every pane of her windows having been miraculously broken during the dead hours.

[Picture: Country la.s.sies bleaching their snow-white linen]

"The mother and the daughter were kept in custody until the Monday; when, as they were standing making a declaration of their innocence before the justices, who should come in but Francie Deep, the Sheriff-officer, with an Irish vagrant and his wife--two tinklers who were lodging in the Back-row, and in whose possession the bundle was found bodily, basket and all. Such a cheering as the folk set up! it did all honest folk's hearts good to hear it. Mrs Pernickity and her la.s.s, to save their bacon, were obliged to be let out by a back door; and, as the justices were about to discharge the two prisoners, who had been so unjustly and injuriously suspected, a stranger forced his way to the middle of the floor, and took the old woman in his arms!"

"Charlie Cheeper returned, for a gold guinea," said I.

"And no other it was," said Peter, resuming his comical story. "The world had flowed upon him to his heart's desire. Over in Virginia he had given up the baking business, and commenced planter; and, after years of industrious exertion, having made enough and to spare, he had returned to spend the rest of his days in peace and plenty, in his native town."

"Not to interrupt you," added I, "Mr Farrel, I think I could wager something mair."

"You are a witch of a guesser I know, Mansie," said Peter; "and I see what you are at. Well, sir, you are right again. For, on the very day week that Patrick Makillaguddy and his spouce got their heads shaved, and were sent to beat hemp in the New Bridgewell on the Caltonhill, Jeanie Amos became Mrs Cheeper; the calender and the spinning-wheel were both burned by a crowd of wicked weans before old Mrs Pernickity's door, raising such a smoke as almost smeaked her to a rizzar'd haddock; and the old widow under the snug roof of her ever grateful son-in-law, spent the remainder of her Christian life in peace and prosperity."

"That story ends as it ought," said I, "Mr Farrel; neither Jew nor Gentle dare dispute that; and as to the telling of it, I do not think man of woman born, except maybe James Batter, who is a nonsuch, could have handled it more prettily. I like to hear virtue aye getting its ain reward."

As these dividual words were falling from my lips, we approached the end of our journey, the Roslin Inn house heaving in sight, at the door of which me and Peter louped out, an hostler with a yellow striped waistcoat, and white calico sleeves, I meantime holding the naig's head, in case it should spend off, and capsize the concern. After seeing the horse and gig put into the stable, Peter and I pulled up our shirt necks, and after looking at our watches, as if time was precious, oxtered away, arm-in-arm, to see the Chapel, which surpa.s.ses all, and beats c.o.c.k-fighting.

It is an unaccountable thing to me, how the auld folk could afford to build such grand kirks and castles. If once gold was like slate stones, there is a wearyful change now-a-days, I must confess; for, so to speak, gold guineas seem to have taken flight from the land along with the witches and warlocks, and posterity are left as toom in the pockets as rookit gamblers.

But if the mammon of precious metals be now totally altogether out of the world, weel-a-wat we had a curiosity still, and that was a clepy woman with a long stick, and rhaemed away, and better rhaemed away, about the Prentice's Pillar, who got a knock on the pow from his jealous blackguard of a master--and about the dogs and the deer--and Sir Thomas this-thing and my Lord tother-thing, who lay buried beneath the broad flag stones in their rusty coats of armour--and such a heap of havers, that no throat was wide enough to swallow them for gospel, although gey an' entertaining I allow. However, it was a real farce; that is certain.

Oh, but the building was a grand and overpowering sight, making man to dree the sense of his own insignificance, even in the midst of his own handiwork! First, we looked over our shoulders to the grand carved roofs, where the swallows swee-swee'd, as they darted through the open windows, and the yattering sparrows fed their gorbals in the far boles; and syne we looked shuddering down into the dark vaults, where n.o.body in their senses could have ventured, though Peter Farrel, being a rash courageous body, was keen on it, having heard less than I could tell him of such places being haunted by the spirits of those who have died or been murdered within them in the b.l.o.o.d.y days of the old times; or of their being so full of foul air, as to extinguish man's breath in his nostrils like the snuff of a candle. Though no man should throw his life into jeopardy, yet I commend all for taking timeous recreation--the King himself on the throne not being able to live without the comforts of life; and even the fifteen Lords of Session, with as much powder on their wigs as would keep a small family in loaves for a week, requiring air and exercise, after sentencing vagabonds to be first hanged, and then their clothes given to Jock Heich, and their bodies to Doctor Monro.

Before going out to inspect the wonderfuls, we had taken the natural precaution to tell the goodman of the inn, that we would be back to take a smack of something from him, at such and such an hour; and, having had our bellyful of the Chapel,--and the Prentice's Pillar,--and the vaults,--and the cleipy auld wife with the lang stick,--we found that we had still half an hour to spare; so took a stroll into the Kirkyard, to see if we could find out any of the martyrs had been buried there-away-abouts.

We saw a good few head-stones, you may make no doubt, both ancient and modern; but nothing out of the course of nature; so, the day being pleasant, Mr Farrell and me sat down on a throughstane, below an old hawthorn, and commenced chatting on the Pentland Hills--the river Esk--Penicuik--Glencorse--and all the rest of the beautiful country within sight. A mooly auld skull was lying among the gra.s.s, and Peter, as he spoke, was aye stirring it about with his stick.

"I never touched a dead man's bones in my life," said I to Peter, "nor would I for a sixpence. Who might that have belonged to, now, I wonder?

Maybe to a baker or a tailor, in his day and generation, like you and I, Peter; or maybe to ane of the great Sinclairs with their coats-of-mail, that the auld wife was cracking so crousely about?"

"Deil may care," said Peter; "but are you really frighted to touch a skull, Mansie? You would make a bad doctor, I'm doubting, then; to say nothing of a resurrection man."

"Doctor! I would not be a doctor for all the gold and silver on the walls of Solomon's Temple--"

"Yet you would think the young doctors suck in their trade with their mother's milk, and could cut off one another's heads as fast as look at you.--Speaking of skulls," added Peter, "I mind when my father lived in the under-flat of the three-storey house at the top of Dalkeith Street, that the Misses Skinflints occupied the middle story, and Doctor Chickenweed had the one above, with the garrets, in which was the laboratory.