The Stickit Minister's Wooing and Other Galloway Stories

"'I thought you had gone upstairs with my mother,' he said. 'Old John Hearseman is out on the hill with the lambs, and we have no other servants except the children's little nurse.'

"And so – and so," said the Hempie, falteringly, "that is how it began."

I could hear a little scuffle – which, being interpreted, meant that Nance had dropped her workbasket and sewing on the floor in a heap and had clasped her sister in her arms.

"Darling, cry all you want to!" My heart would know that tone through six feet of kirkyard mould – aye, and leap to answer it.

"I am not crying – I don't want to cry." It was the Hempie's voice, but I had never heard it sound like that before. Then it took a stronger tone, with little pauses where the tears were wiped away.

"And I found out that night from the children how good he was – how helpful and strong. He had to be out before break of day on the hills after the sheep. Often, with a game-bag over his shoulder, he would bring in all that there was for next day's dinner. Then when Betsy, the small maid, was busy with his mother, he would bath Algie and Madge, and put them to bed. For Mrs. Fergus, though a kind woman in her way, had been accustomed all her life to be waited on, and accepted everything from her son's hands without so much as 'Thank you.'

"So I did not say a word, but got up early next morning and went downstairs. And what do you think I found that blessed Harry doing —blacking my boots!"

There was again a sound like kissing and quiet crying, though I cannot for the life of me tell why there should have been. Perhaps the women who read this will know. And then the Hempie's voice began again, striving after its kind to be master of itself.

"So, of course, what could I do when his father died? He and I were with him night and day. For Betty Hearseman being blind could not handle him at all, and Harry's mother was of no use. Indeed, we did not say anything to alarm her till the very last morning. No, I cannot tell even you, Nance what it was like. But we came through it together. That is all."

Nance had not gone back to her sewing. So I could not make out what was her next question. It was spoken too near the Hempie's ear. But I heard the answer plainly enough.

"A month next Wednesday was what we thought of. It ought to be soon, for the children's sake, poor little things."

"Oh, yes," echoed Nance, meaningly, "for the children's sake, of course."

The Hempie ignored the tone of this remark.

"Harry is having the house done up. The old part is to be made into a kitchen. Old John and Betty Hearseman are to have a cottage down the glen."

"And you are to be all alone," cried Nance, clapping her hands, "with only the old lady to look after. That will be like playing at house."

"Yes," said the Hempie, ironically, "it would – without the playing. Oh no, I am going to have a pair of decent moorland lasses to train to my ways, and Harry will have a first-rate herd to help him on the hill."

Then she laughed a little, very low, to herself.

"The best of it is that he still thinks I am poor," she said. "I have never told him about mother's money, and I mean to ask father to give me as much as he gave you and Grace."

"Of course," said Nance, promptly. "I'll come up and help you to make him."

There was a cheerful prospect in front of Mr. Peter Chrystie, of Nether Neuk, if he did not put his hand in his breeches' pocket to some purpose.

"Will Alec let you come?" queried the Hempie, doubtfully. "He will miss you."

"Oh, I'll tell him it is for the sake of baby's health," said Nance; "and, besides, husbands are all the better for being left alone occasionally. They are so nice when they get you back again."

"What!" cried the Hempie, "you don't mean to say that Alec has fits of temper? I never would have believed it of him."

"Hush!" said Nance. There was again that irritating whispered converse, from which emerged the Hempie's clear voice:

"Oh, but my Harry will never be like that."

"Wait – only wait," said Nance. "Hempie, they are all alike. And besides, they write you such nice letters when they are away. I suppose you get one every day? Yes, of course. What, he walks six miles over the hill to post it? That is nice of him. Alec once came all the way from Edinburgh, and went back the next day, just because he thought I was cross with him – "

"Oh, but my Harry never, never – "

(Left speaking.)

THE LITTLE FAIR MAN.

I. – SEED SOWN BY THE WAYSIDE

Notable among my father's papers was one bundle quite by itself which he had always looked upon with peculiar veneration. The manuscripts which composed it were written in crabbed handwriting on ancient paper, very much creased at the folds, and bearing the marks of diligent perusal in days past. My father could not read these, but had much reverence for them because of the great names which could be deciphered here and there, such as "Mr. D. Dickson," "Mr. G. Gillespie," and in especial "Mr. Samuel Rutherfurd."

How these came into the possession of my father's forbears, I have no information. They were always known in the family as "Peden's Papers," though so far as I can now make out, that celebrated Covenanter had nothing to do with them – or, at least, is never mentioned in them by name. On the other hand I find from the family Bible, written as a note over against the entry of my great-grandmother's death, "Aprile the seventeene, 1731," the words, "Cozin to Mr. Patrick Walker, chapman, of Bristo Port, Edinburgh."

The letters and narratives are in many hands and vary considerably in date, some being as early as the high days of Presbytery, about 1638, whilst others in a plainer hand have manifestly been copied or rewritten in the first decade of last century.

Now after I came from college and before my marriage, I had sometimes long forenights with little to do. So having got some insight into ancient handwriting from my friend Mr. James Robb, of the College of Saint Mary, an expert in the same – a good golfer also, and a better fellow – I set me to work to decipher these manuscripts both for my own satisfaction and for the further pleasure of reading them to my father on Saturday nights, when I was in the habit of driving over to see my mother at Drumquhat on my way from visiting my patients in the Glen of Kells.

That which follows is from the first of these documents which I read to my father. He was so much taken by it that he begged me to publish it, as he said, "as a corrective to the sinful compliances and shameless defections of the times." And though I am little sanguine of any good it may do from a high ecclesiastic point of view, the facts narrated are interesting enough in themselves. The manuscript is clearly written out in a tall copy-book of stout bluish paper, without ruled lines, and is bound in a kind of grey sheepskin. The name "Harry Wedderburn" is upon the cover here and there, and within is a definitive title in floreated capitals, very ornately inscribed:

"The Story of the Turning of me, Harry Wedderburn, from Darkness to Light, by the means and instrument of Mr. Samuel Rutherfurd of Anwoth, Servant of God."

Then the manuscript proceeds: —

"The Lord hath spared me, Harry Wedderburn, these many years, delaying the setting of my sun till once more the grass grows green where I saw the blood lie red, and I wait in patience to lay my old head beneath the sod of a quiet land.

"This is my story writ at the instance of good Mr. Patrick Walker, and to be ready at his next coming into our parts. The slack between hay and harvest of the Year of Deliverance, 1689, is the time of writing.

"I, Harry Wedderburn, of Black Craig of Dee, in the country of Galloway, acknowledging the mercies of God, and repenting of my sins, set these things down in my own hand of write. Sorrow and shame are in my heart that my sun was so high in the heavens before I turned me from evil to seek after good.

"We were a wild and froward set in those days in the backlands of the Kells. It was not long, indeed, since the coming of a law stronger than that of the Strong Hand. Our fathers had driven the cattle from the English border – yea, even out of the fat fields of Niddisdale, and over the flowe of Solway. And if a man were offended with another, he went his straightest way home and took gun and whinger to lie in wait for his enemy. Or he met him foot to foot with staff on the highway, if he were of ungentle heart and possessed neither pistol nor musketoon.

"I mind well that year 1636, more than fifty years bygone – I being then in the twenty-second year of my age, a runagate castaway loon, without God and without hope in the world. My father had been in his day a douce sober man, yet he could do little to restrain myself or my brother John, who was, they said, 'ten waurs' than I. For there was a wild set in the Glen of Kells in those days, Lidderdale of Slogarie and Roaring Raif Pringle of Kirkchrist being enough to poison a parish. We four used to forgather to drink the dark out and the light in, two or three times in the week at the change house of the Clachan. Elspeth Vogie keeped it, and no good name it got among those well-affected to religion – aye, or Elspeth herself either.

"But these are vain thoughts, and I have had of a long season no pleasure in them. Yet will I not deny that Elspeth Vogie, though in some things sore left to herself, was a heartsome quean and well-favoured of her person.

"So at Elspeth's some half-dozen of us were drinking down the short dark hours of an August night. It was now the lull between the hay-winning and the corn-shearing. For hairst was late that year, and the weather mostly backward and dour. There had come, however, with the advent of the new month, a warm drowsy spell of windless days, the sun shining from morn to even through a kind of unwholesome mist, and the corn standing on the knowes with as little motion as the grey whinstane tourocks and granite cairns on the hilltaps. The farmers and cottiers looked at their scanty roods of ploughland, and prayed for a rousing wind from the Lord to winnow away the still dead easterly mist, and gar the corn reestle ear against ear so that it might fill and ripen for the ingathering.

"But we that were hand-fasted to sin and bonded to iniquity, young plants of wrath, ill-doers and forlorn of grace, cared as little for the backward year as we did for the sad state of Scotland and the strifes that were quickly coming upon that land. So long as our pint-stoup was filled, and plack rattled on plack in the pouch, sorrow the crack of the thumb we cared for harvest or sheep-shearing, king or bishop, Bible or incense-pot.

"To us sitting thus on the Sabbath morning (when it had better set us to have been sleeping in our naked beds) there came in one Rab Aitkin of Auchengask, likeminded with us. Rab was seeking his 'morning' or eye-opening draught of French brandy, and to us bleared and leaden-eyed roisterers, he seemed to come fresh as the dew on the white thorn in the front of May. For he had a clean sark upon him, a lace ruffle about his neck, and his hair was still wet with the good well water in which he had lately washen himself.

"'Whither away, Rab?' we cried; 'is it to visit fair Meg o' the Glen so early i' the mornin'?'

"'He is on his way to holy kirk!' cried another, daffingly.

"'If so – 'tis to stand all day on the stool of repentance!' declared another. Then in the precentors whining voice he added: 'Robert Aitkin, deleted and discerned to compear at both diets of worship for the heinous crime of – and so forth!' This was an excellent imitation of the official method of summoning a culprit to stand his rebuke. It was Patie Robb of Ironmannoch who said this. And this same Patie had had the best opportunities for perfecting himself in the exercise, having stood the session and received the open rebuke on three several occasions – two of them in one twelve-month, which is counted a shame even among shameless men.

"'No, Patie,' said Rab in answer, 'I am indeed heading for the kirk, but on no siccan gowk's errand as takes you there twice in the year, my man. I go to hear the Gospel preached. For there is to be a stranger frae the south shore at the Kirk of Kells this day, and they say he has a mighty power of words; and though ye scoff and make light o' me, I care not. I am neither kirk-goer nor kirk-lover, ye say. True, but there is a whisper in my heart that sends me there this day. I thank ye, bonny mistress!'

"He took the pint-stoup, and with a bow of his head and an inclination of his body, he did his service to Mistress Elspeth. For that lady, looking fresh as himself, had just come forth from her chamber to relieve Jean McCalmont, who, poor thing, had been going to sleep on her feet for many weary hours.

"Then Roaring Raif Pringle cried out, 'Lads, we will a' gang. I had news yestreen of this ploy. The new Bishop, good luck to him, has outed another of the high-flying prating cushion-threshers. This man goes to Edinburgh to be tried before his betters. He is to preach in Kells this very morn on the bygoing, for the minister thereof is likeminded with himself. We will all gang, and if he gets a hearin' for his rebel's cant – why, lads, you are not the men I tak you for!'

"So they cried out, 'Weel said, Roaring Raif!' and got them ready to go as best they could. For some were red of face and some were ringed of eye, and all were touched with a kind of disgust for the roysterous spirit of the night. But a dabble in the chill water of the spring and a rub of the rough-spun towel brought us mostly to some decent presentableness. For youth easily recovers itself while it lasts, though in the latter end it pays for such things twice over.

"We partook of as mickle breakfast as we could manage, and that was no great thing after such a night. But we each drank down a stirrup-cup and with various good-speeds to Elspeth Vogie and Jean her maid, we wan to horseback and so down the strath to the Kirk of Kells. It sits on the summit of a little knowe with the whin golden about it at all times of the year, and the loch like a painted sheet spread below.

"We could see the folk come flocking from far and near, from their mailings and forty-shilling lands, their farm-towns and cot-houses in half-a-dozen parishes.

"'We are in luck's way, lads,' cried Lidderdale, called Ten-tass Lidderdale because he could drink that number of stoups of brandy neat; 'it is a great gathering of the godly. Lads, the shutting of this man's mouth will make such a din as will be heard of through all Galloway!'

"And so to our shame and my sorrow we made it up. We were to go the rounds of the meeting, and gather together all the likely lads who would stand with us. There were sure to be plenty such who had no goodwill to preachings. And with these in one place we could easily shut the mouth of this fanatic railer against law and order. For so in our ignorance and folly we called him. Because all this sort (such as I myself was then) hated the very name of religion, and hoped to find things easier and better for them when the king should have his way, and when the bishops would present none to parishes but what we called 'good fellows' – by which we meant men as careless of principle as ourselves – loose-livers and oath-swearers, such as in truth they mostly were themselves.

"But when we arrived that August morning at the Kirk of Kells, lo! there before us was outspread such a sight as my eyes never beheld. The Kirk Knowe was fairly black with folk. A little way off you could see them pouring inward in bands like the spokes of a wheel. Further off yet, black dots straggled down hill sides, or up through glens, disentangling themselves from clumps of birches and scurry thorns for all the world like the ants of the wise king gathering home from their travels.

"Then we were very well content and made it our business to go among the gay young blades who had come for the excitement, or, as it might be, because all the pretty lasses of the countryside were sure to be there in their best. And with them we arranged that we should keep silence till the fanatic minister was well under way with his treasonable paries. Then we would rush in with our swords drawn, carry him off down the steep and duck him for a traitorous loon in the loch beneath.

"To this we all assented and shook hands upon the pact. For we knew right sickerly what would be our fate, if in the battle which was coming on the land, the Covenant men won the day. Perforce we must subscribe to deeds and religious engagements, attend kirks twice a day, lay aside gay colours, forswear all pleasant daffing with such as Elspeth Vogie and Jean her maid (not that there was anything wrong in my own practice with such – I speak only of others). The merry clatter of dice would be heard no more. The cartes themselves, the knowledge of which then made the gentleman, would be looked upon as the 'deil's picture-books.' A good broad oath would mean a fine as broad. Instead of chanting loose catches we should have to listen to sermons five hours long, and be whipt for all the little pleasing transgressions that made life worth living.

"So 'Hush,' we said – 'we will salt this preacher's kail for him. We will drill him, wand-hand and working-hand, so that he cannot stir. We will make him drink his fill of Kells Loch this day!'

"All this while we knew not so much as the name of the preacher – nor, indeed, cared. He came from the south, so much we knew, and he had a great repute for godliness and what the broad-bonnets called 'faithfulness,' which, being interpreted, signified that he condemned the king and the bishops, and held to the old dull figments about doctrine, free grace, and the authority of Holy Kirk.

"The man had not arrived when we reached the Kirk of Kells. Indeed, it was not long before the hour of service when up the lochside we saw a cavalcade approach. Then we were angry. For, as we said, 'This spoils our sport. These are doubtless soldiers of the king who have been sent to put a stop to the meeting. We shall have no chance this day. Our coin is spun and fallen edgewise between the stones. Let us go home!'

"But I said: 'There may be some spirity work for all that, lads. Better bide and see!'

"So they abode according to my word.

"But when they came near we could see that these were no soldiers of the king, nor, indeed, any soldiers at all, though the men were armed with whingers and pistolets, and rode upon strong slow-footed horses like farmers going to market. There was a gentleman at the head of them, very tall and stout, whom Roaring Raif, in an undertone, pointed out as Gordon of Earlstoun, and in the midst, the centre of the company, rode a little fair man, shilpit and delicate, whom all deferred to, clad in black like a minister. He rode a long-tailed sheltie like one well accustomed to the exercise and bore about with him the die-stamp of a gentleman.

"This was the preacher, and these other riders were mostly his parishioners, come to convoy him through the dangerous and ill-affected districts to the great Popish and Prelatic city of Aberdeen, where for the time being he was to be interned.

"Then Roaring Raif whispered amongst us that we had better have our swords easy in the sheath and our pistols primed, for that these men in the hodden grey would certainly fight briskly for their minister.

"'Gordon of Cardoness is there also,' he said, 'a stout angry carle. Him in the drab is Muckle Ninian Mure of Cassencarry. Beyond is Ugly Peter of Rusco, and that's Bailie Fullerton o' Kirkcudbright, the man wi' the wame swaggin' and the bell-mouthed musket across his saddle-bow. There will be a rare tulzie, lads. This is indeed worth leavin' Elspeth's fireside for. We will let oot some true blue Covenant bluid this holy day!'

"And when the Little Fair Man dismounted there was a rush of the folk and some deray. But we of the other faction kept in the back part and bided our time.

"Then the Little Fair Man went up into the pulpit, which was a box on great broad, creaking, ungreased wheels, which they had brought out from the burial tool-house as soon as they saw that the mighty concourse could in no wise be contained in the kirk – no, not so much as a tenth part of them!

"After that there was a great hush which lasted at least a minute as the minister kneeled down with his head in his hands. Then at last he rose up and gave out the psalm to be sung. It was the one about the Israelites hanging their harps on the trees of Babylon. And I mind that he prefaced it with several pithy sayings which I remembered long afterwards, though I paid little heed to them at the time. 'This tree of Babylon is a strange plant,' he said; 'it grows only in those backsides of deserts where Moses found it, or by Babel streams where men walk in sorrow and exile. It is an ever-burning bush, yet no man hath seen the ashes of it.'

"Then the people sang with a great voice, far-swelling, triumphant, and the Little Fair Man led them in a kind of ecstasy. I do not mind much about his prayer. I was no judge of prayers in those days. All I cared about them was that they should not be too long and so keep me standing in one position. But I can recall of him that he inclined his face all the time he was speaking towards the sky, as if Someone Up There had been looking down upon him. At that I looked also, following the direction of his eyes. And so did several others, but could see nothing. But I think it was not so with the Little Fair Man.

"Now it was not till the sermon was well begun that we were to break in and 'skail' the conventicle with our swords in our hands. I could hear Lidderdale behind me murmuring, 'How much longer are we to listen to this treason-monger?'

"'Let us give him five minutes by the watch lads!' I said, 'the same as a man that is to be hanged hath before the topsman turns him off. And after that I am with you.'

"Then Roaring Raif said in my ear, 'We have them in the hollow of our hand. This will be a great day in the Kells. We will put the broad bonnets to rout, so that no one of them after this shall be able to show face upon the causeway of Dumfries. There are at least fifty staunch lads, good honest swearing blades, in and about the kirkyard of Kells this day!'

"For even so we delighted to call ourselves in our ignorance and headstrong folly – as the Buik sayeth, glorying in our shame.

"And according to my word we waited five minutes on the minister. He had that day a text that I will always mind, 'God is our refuge and our strength,' from the 46th Psalm – one that was ever afterwards a great favourite with me. And when at first he began, I thought not muckle about what he said, but only of the great ploy and bloody fray that was before me. For we rejoiced in suchlike, and called it among ourselves a 'bloodletting of the whey-faced knaves!'

"Then the Little Fair Man began to warm to his work, and just when the five minutes drew on to their end, he was telling of a certain Friend that he had, One that loved him, and had been constantly with him for years – so that his married wife was not so near and dear. This Friend had delivered him, he said, from perils of great waters, and from the edge of the sword. He had also put up with all the evil things he had done to Him. Ofttimes he had cast this Friend off and buffeted Him, but even then He would not go away from him or leave him desolate.

"So, as I had never heard of such strange friendship, I was in a great sweat to find out who this Friend might be, so different from the comrades I knew, who drew their swords at a word and gave buffet for buffet as quick as drawing a breath.

"So I whispered again, 'Give him another five minutes!'

"And I could hear them growl behind me, Tam Morra of the Shields, called Partan-face Tam, Glaikit Gib Morrison, and the others – 'What for are ye waitin'? Let the grey-breeks hae it noo!'

"But since I was by much the strongest there, and in a manner the leader, they did not dare to counter me, fearing that I might give them 'strength-o'-airm' as I did once in the vennel of Dumfries to Mathew Aird when he withstood me in the matter of Bonny Betty Coupland – a rencontre which was little to my credit from any point of view.

"And then the Little Fair Man threw himself into a rapture like a man going out of the body, and his voice sounded somehow uncanny and of the other world. For there was a 'scraich' in it like the snow-wind among the naked trees of the wood at midnight. Yet for all it was not unpleasant, but only eery and very affecting to the heart.