The Antiquary — Volume 02

"Indeed, sir?" said M'Intyre; "I never knew that before — that part of our law would suit some of our mess well."

"And if they arena confined for debt," said Ochiltree, "what is't that tempts sae mony puir creatures to bide in the tolbooth o' Fairport yonder? — they a' say they were put there by their creditors — Od! they maun like it better than I do, if they're there o' free will."

"A very natural observation, Edie, and many of your betters would make the same; but it is founded entirely upon ignorance of the feudal system. Hector, be so good as to attend, unless you are looking out for another — Ahem!" (Hector compelled himself to give attention at this hint.) "And you, Edie, it may be useful to you reram cognoscere causas. The nature and origin of warrant for caption is a thing haud alienum a Scaevolae studiis.— You must know then, once more, that nobody can be arrested in Scotland for debt."

"I haena muckle concern wi' that, Monkbarns," said the old man, "for naebody wad trust a bodle to a gaberlunzie."

"I pr'ythee, peace, man — As a compulsitor, therefore, of payment, that being a thing to which no debtor is naturally inclined, as I have too much reason to warrant from the experience I have had with my own, — we had first the letters of four forms, a sort of gentle invitation, by which our sovereign lord the king, interesting himself, as a monarch should, in the regulation of his subjects' private affairs, at first by mild exhortation, and afterwards by letters of more strict enjoinment and more hard compulsion — What do you see extraordinary about that bird, Hector? — it's but a seamaw."

"It's a pictarnie, sir," said Edie.

"Well, what an if it were — what does that signify at present? — But I see you're impatient; so I will waive the letters of four forms, and come to the modern process of diligence. — You suppose, now, a man's committed to prison because he cannot pay his debt? Quite otherwise: the truth is, the king is so good as to interfere at the request of the creditor, and to send the debtor his royal command to do him justice within a certain time — fifteen days, or six, as the case may be. Well, the man resists and disobeys: what follows? Why, that he be lawfully and rightfully declared a rebel to our gracious sovereign, whose command he has disobeyed, and that by three blasts of a horn at the market-place of Edinburgh, the metropolis of Scotland. And he is then legally imprisoned, not on account of any civil debt, but because of his ungrateful contempt of the royal mandate. What say you to that, Hector? — there's something you never knew before."9

"No, uncle; but, I own, if I wanted money to pay my debts, I would rather thank the king to send me some, than to declare me a rebel for not doing what I could not do."

"Your education has not led you to consider these things," replied his uncle; "you are incapable of estimating the elegance of the legal fiction, and the manner in which it reconciles that duress, which, for the protection of commerce, it has been found necessary to extend towards refractory debtors, with the most scrupulous attention to the liberty of the subject."

"I don't know, sir," answered the unenlightened Hector; "but if a man must pay his debt or go to jail, it signifies but little whether he goes as a debtor or a rebel, I should think. But you say this command of the king's gives a license of so many days — Now, egad, were I in the scrape, I would beat a march and leave the king and the creditor to settle it among themselves before they came to extremities."

"So wad I," said Edie; "I wad gie them leg-bail to a certainty."

"True," replied Monkbarns; "but those whom the law suspects of being unwilling to abide her formal visit, she proceeds with by means of a shorter and more unceremonious call, as dealing with persons on whom patience and favour would be utterly thrown away."

"Ay," said Ochiltree, "that will be what they ca' the fugie-warrants — I hae some skeel in them. There's Border-warrants too in the south country, unco rash uncanny things; — I was taen up on ane at Saint James's Fair, and keepit in the auld kirk at Kelso the haill day and night; and a cauld goustie place it was, I'se assure ye. — But whatna wife's this, wi' her creel on her back? It's puir Maggie hersell, I'm thinking."

It was so. The poor woman's sense of her loss, if not diminished, was become at least mitigated by the inevitable necessity of attending to the means of supporting her family; and her salutation to Oldbuck was made in an odd mixture between the usual language of solicitation with which she plied her customers, and the tone of lamentation for her recent calamity.

"How's a' wi' ye the day, Monkbarns? I havena had the grace yet to come down to thank your honour for the credit ye did puir Steenie, wi' laying his head in a rath grave, puir fallow. " — Here she whimpered and wiped her eyes with the corner of her blue apron — "But the fishing comes on no that ill, though the gudeman hasna had the heart to gang to sea himsell — Atweel I would fain tell him it wad do him gude to put hand to wark — but I'm maist fear'd to speak to him — and it's an unco thing to hear ane o' us speak that gate o' a man — However, I hae some dainty caller haddies, and they sall be but three shillings the dozen, for I hae nae pith to drive a bargain ennow, and maun just tak what ony Christian body will gie, wi' few words and nae flyting."

"What shall we do, Hector?" said Oldbuck, pausing: "I got into disgrace with my womankind for making a bad bargain with her before. These maritime animals, Hector, are unlucky to our family."

"Pooh, sir, what would you do? — give poor Maggie what she asks, or allow me to send a dish of fish up to Monkbarns."

And he held out the money to her; but Maggie drew back her hand. "Na, na, Captain; ye're ower young and ower free o' your siller — ye should never tak a fish-wife's first bode; and troth I think maybe a flyte wi' the auld housekeeper at Monkbarns, or Miss Grizel, would do me some gude — And I want to see what that hellicate quean Jenny Ritherout's doing — folk said she wasna weel — She'll be vexing hersell about Steenie, the silly tawpie, as if he wad ever hae lookit ower his shouther at the like o'her! — Weel, Monkbarns, they're braw caller haddies, and they'll bid me unco little indeed at the house if ye want crappit-heads the day."

And so on she paced with her burden, — grief, gratitude for the sympathy of her betters, and the habitual love of traffic and of gain, chasing each other through her thoughts.

"And now that we are before the door of their hut," said Ochiltree, "I wad fain ken, Monkbarns, what has gar'd ye plague yoursell wi' me a' this length? I tell ye sincerely I hae nae pleasure in ganging in there. I downa bide to think how the young hae fa'en on a' sides o' me, and left me an useless auld stump wi' hardly a green leaf on't."

"This old woman," said Oldbuck, "sent you on a message to the Earl of Glenallan, did she not?"

"Ay!" said the surprised mendicant; "how ken ye that sae weel?"

"Lord Glenallan told me himself," answered the Antiquary; "so there is no delation — no breach of trust on your part; and as he wishes me to take her evidence down on some important family matters, I chose to bring you with me, because in her situation, hovering between dotage and consciousness, it is possible that your voice and appearance may awaken trains of recollection which I should otherwise have no means of exciting. The human mind — what are you about, Hector?"

"I was only whistling for the dog, sir," replied the Captain "she always roves too wide — I knew I should be troublesome to you."

"Not at all, not at all," said Oldbuck, resuming the subject of his disquisition — "the human mind is to be treated like a skein of ravelled silk, where you must cautiously secure one free end before you can make any progress in disentangling it."

"I ken naething about that," said the gaberlunzie; "but an my auld acquaintance be hersell, or anything like hersell, she may come to wind us a pirn. It's fearsome baith to see and hear her when she wampishes about her arms, and gets to her English, and speaks as if she were a prent book, let a-be an auld fisher's wife. But, indeed, she had a grand education, and was muckle taen out afore she married an unco bit beneath hersell. She's aulder than me by half a score years — but I mind weel eneugh they made as muckle wark about her making a half-merk marriage wi' Simon Mucklebackit, this Saunders's father, as if she had been ane o' the gentry. But she got into favour again, and then she lost it again, as I hae heard her son say, when he was a muckle chield; and then they got muckle siller, and left the Countess's land, and settled here. But things never throve wi' them. Howsomever, she's a weel-educate woman, and an she win to her English, as I hae heard her do at an orra time, she may come to fickle us a'."

CHAPTER NINETEENTH

           Life ebbs from such old age, unmarked and silent,            As the slow neap-tide leaves yon stranded galley. —               Late she rocked merrily at the least impulse               That wind or wave could give; but now her keel               Is settling on the sand, her mast has ta'en            An angle with the sky, from which it shifts not.               Each wave receding shakes her less and less,               Till, bedded on the strand, she shall remain                                Useless as motionless. Old Play.

As the Antiquary lifted the latch of the hut, he was surprised to hear the shrill tremulous voice of Elspeth chanting forth an old ballad in a wild and doleful recitative.

                "The herring loves the merry moonlight,                      The mackerel loves the wind,                 But the oyster loves the dredging sang,                      For they come of a gentle kind."

A diligent collector of these legendary scraps of ancient poetry, his foot refused to cross the threshold when his ear was thus arrested, and his hand instinctively took pencil and memorandum-book. From time to time the old woman spoke as if to the children — "Oh ay, hinnies, whisht! whisht! and I'll begin a bonnier ane than that —

                 "Now haud your tongue, baith wife and carle,                       And listen, great and sma',                   And I will sing of Glenallan's Earl                      That fought on the red Harlaw.                  "The cronach's cried on Bennachie,                        And doun the Don and a',                   And hieland and lawland may mournfu' be                        For the sair field of Harlaw. —

I dinna mind the neist verse weel — my memory's failed, and theres unco thoughts come ower me — God keep us frae temptation!"

Here her voice sunk in indistinct muttering.

"It's a historical ballad," said Oldbuck, eagerly, "a genuine and undoubted fragment of minstrelsy! Percy would admire its simplicity — Ritson could not impugn its authenticity."

"Ay, but it's a sad thing," said Ochiltree, "to see human nature sae far owertaen as to be skirling at auld sangs on the back of a loss like hers."

"Hush! hush!" said the Antiquary — "she has gotten the thread of the story again. " — And as he spoke, she sung —

              "They saddled a hundred milk-white steeds,                    They hae bridled a hundred black,                With a chafron of steel on each horse's head,                   And a good knight upon his back. " —

"Chafron!" exclaimed the Antiquary, — "equivalent, perhaps, to cheveron;— the word's worth a dollar," — and down it went in his red book.

                  "They hadna ridden a mile, a mile,                         A mile, but barely ten,                    When Donald came branking down the brae                        Wi' twenty thousand men.                  "Their tartans they were waving wide,                        Their glaives were glancing clear,                   Their pibrochs rung frae side to side,                        Would deafen ye to hear.                  "The great Earl in his stirrups stood                       That Highland host to see:                   Now here a knight that's stout and good                          May prove a jeopardie:                  "What wouldst thou do, my squire so gay,                        That rides beside my reyne,                    Were ye Glenallan's Earl the day,                        And I were Roland Cheyne?                  "To turn the rein were sin and shame,                        To fight were wondrous peril,                  What would ye do now, Roland Cheyne,                        Were ye Glenallan's Earl?'

Ye maun ken, hinnies, that this Roland Cheyne, for as poor and auld as I sit in the chimney-neuk, was my forbear, and an awfu' man he was that dayin the fight, but specially after the Earl had fa'en, for he blamed himsell for the counsel he gave, to fight before Mar came up wi' Mearns, and Aberdeen, and Angus."

Her voice rose and became more animated as she recited the warlike counsel of her ancestor —

                  "Were I Glenallan's Earl this tide,                       And ye were Roland Cheyne,                   The spur should be in my horse's side,                      And the bridle upon his mane.                  "If they hae twenty thousand blades,                        And we twice ten times ten,                   Yet they hae but their tartan plaids,                        And we are mail-clad men.                  "My horse shall ride through ranks sae rude,                       As through the moorland fern,                  Then neer let the gentle Norman blude                       Grow cauld for Highland kerne.'"

"Do you hear that, nephew?" said Oldbuck; — "you observe your Gaelic ancestors were not held in high repute formerly by the Lowland warriors."

"I hear," said Hector, "a silly old woman sing a silly old song. I am surprised, sir, that you, who will not listen to Ossian's songs of Selma, can be pleased with such trash. I vow, I have not seen or heard a worse halfpenny ballad; I don't believe you could match it in any pedlar's pack in the country. I should be ashamed to think that the honour of the Highlands could be affected by such doggrel. " — And, tossing up his head, he snuffed the air indignantly.

Apparently the old woman heard the sound of their voices; for, ceasing her song, she called out, "Come in, sirs, come in — good-will never halted at the door-stane."

They entered, and found to their surprise Elspeth alone, sitting "ghastly on the hearth," like the personification of Old Age in the Hunter's song of the Owl,10 "wrinkled, tattered, vile, dim-eyed, discoloured, torpid."

"They're a' out," she said, as they entered; "but an ye will sit a blink, somebody will be in. If ye hae business wi' my gude-daughter, or my son, they'll be in belyve, — I never speak on business mysell. Bairns, gie them seats — the bairns are a' gane out, I trow," — looking around her; — "I was crooning to keep them quiet a wee while since; but they hae cruppen out some gate. Sit down, sirs, they'll be in belyve;" and she dismissed her spindle from her hand to twirl upon the floor, and soon seemed exclusively occupied in regulating its motion, as unconscious of the presence of the strangers as she appeared indifferent to their rank or business there.

"I wish," said Oldbuck, "she would resume that canticle, or legendary fragment. I always suspected there was a skirmish of cavalry before the main battle of the Harlaw."11

"If your honour pleases," said Edie, "had ye not better proceed to the business that brought us a' here? I'se engage to get ye the sang ony time."

"I believe you are right, Edie —Do manus— I submit. But how shall we manage? She sits there the very image of dotage. Speak to her, Edie — try if you can make her recollect having sent you to Glenallan House."

Edie rose accordingly, and, crossing the floor, placed himself in the same position which he had occupied during his former conversation with her. "I'm fain to see ye looking sae weel, cummer; the mair, that the black ox has tramped on ye since I was aneath your roof-tree."

"Ay," said Elspeth; but rather from a general idea of misfortune, than any exact recollection of what had happened, — "there has been distress amang us of late — I wonder how younger folk bide it — I bide it ill. I canna hear the wind whistle, and the sea roar, but I think I see the coble whombled keel up, and some o' them struggling in the waves! — Eh, sirs; sic weary dreams as folk hae between sleeping and waking, before they win to the lang sleep and the sound! I could amaist think whiles my son, or else Steenie, my oe, was dead, and that I had seen the burial. Isna that a queer dream for a daft auld carline? What for should ony o' them dee before me? — it's out o' the course o' nature, ye ken."

"I think you'll make very little of this stupid old woman," said Hector, — who still nourished, perhaps, some feelings of the dislike excited by the disparaging mention of his countrymen in her lay — "I think you'll make but little of her, sir; and it's wasting our time to sit here and listen to her dotage."

"Hector," said the Antiquary, indignantly, "if you do not respect her misfortunes, respect at least her old age and grey hairs: this is the last stage of existence, so finely treated by the Latin poet —

                                — Omni                Membrorum damno major dementia, quae nec                Nomina, servorum, nec vultus agnoscit amici,                Cum queis preterita coenavit nocte, nec illos                             Quos genuit, quos eduxit."

"That's Latin!" said Elspeth, rousing herself as if she attended to the lines, which the Antiquary recited with great pomp of diction — "that's Latin!" and she cast a wild glance around her — "Has there a priest fund me out at last?"

"You see, nephew, her comprehension is almost equal to your own of that fine passage."

"I hope you think, sir, that I knew it to be Latin as well as she did?"

"Why, as to that — But stay, she is about to speak."

"I will have no priest — none," said the beldam, with impotent vehemence; "as I have lived I will die — none shall say that I betrayed my mistress, though it were to save my soul!"

"That bespoke a foul conscience," said the mendicant; — "I wuss she wad mak a clean breast, an it were but for her sake;" and he again assailed her.

"Weel, gudewife, I did your errand to the Yerl."

"To what Earl? I ken nae Earl; — I ken'd a Countess ance — I wish to Heaven I had never ken'd her! for by that acquaintance, neighbour, their cam," — and she counted her withered fingers as she spoke "first Pride, then Malice, then Revenge, then False Witness; and Murder tirl'd at the door-pin, if he camna ben. And werena thae pleasant guests, think ye, to take up their quarters in ae woman's heart? I trow there was routh o' company."

"But, cummer," continued the beggar, "it wasna the Countess of Glenallan I meant, but her son, him that was Lord Geraldin."

"I mind it now," she said; "I saw him no that langsyne, and we had a heavy speech thegither. Eh, sirs! the comely young lord is turned as auld and frail as I am: it's muckle that sorrow and heartbreak, and crossing of true love, will do wi' young blood. But suldna his mither hae lookit to that hersell? — we were but to do her bidding, ye ken. I am sure there's naebody can blame me — he wasna my son, and she was my mistress. Ye ken how the rhyme says — I hae maist forgotten how to sing, or else the tune's left my auld head —

                  "He turn'd him right and round again,                        Said, Scorn na at my mither;                    Light loves I may get mony a ane,                        But minnie neer anither.

Then he was but of the half blude, ye ken, and her's was the right Glenallan after a'. Na, na, I maun never maen doing and suffering for the Countess Joscelin — never will I maen for that."

Then drawing her flax from the distaff, with the dogged air of one who is resolved to confess nothing, she resumed her interrupted occupation.

"I hae heard," said the mendicant, taking his cue from what Oldbuck had told him of the family history — "I hae heard, cummer, that some ill tongue suld hae come between the Earl, that's Lord Geraldin, and his young bride."

"Ill tongue?" she said in hasty alarm; "and what had she to fear frae an ill tongue? — she was gude and fair eneugh — at least a' body said sae. But had she keepit her ain tongue aff ither folk, she might hae been living like a leddy for a' that's come and gane yet."

"But I hae heard say, gudewife," continued Ochiltree, "there was a clatter in the country, that her husband and her were ower sibb when they married."

"Wha durst speak o' that?" said the old woman hastily; "wha durst say they were married? — wha ken'd o' that? — Not the Countess — not I. If they wedded in secret, they were severed in secret — They drank of the fountains of their ain deceit."

"No, wretched beldam!" exclaimed Oldbuck, who could keep silence no longer, "they drank the poison that you and your wicked mistress prepared for them."

"Ha, ha!" she replied, "I aye thought it would come to this. It's but sitting silent when they examine me — there's nae torture in our days; and if there is, let them rend me! — It's ill o' the vassal's mouth that betrays the bread it eats."

"Speak to her, Edie," said the Antiquary; "she knows your voice, and answers to it most readily."

"We shall mak naething mair out o' her," said Ochiltree. "When she has clinkit hersell down that way, and faulded her arms, she winna speak a word, they say, for weeks thegither. And besides, to my thinking, her face is sair changed since we cam in. However, I'se try her ance mair to satisfy your honour. — So ye canna keep in mind, cummer, that your auld mistress, the Countess Joscelin, has been removed?"

"Removed!" she exclaimed; for that name never failed to produce its usual effect upon her; "then we maun a' follow — a' maun ride when she is in the saddle. Tell them to let Lord Geraldin ken we're on before them. Bring my hood and scarf — ye wadna hae me gang in the carriage wi' my leddy, and my hair in this fashion?"

She raised her shrivelled arms, and seemed busied like a woman who puts on her cloak to go abroad, then dropped them slowly and stiffly; and the same idea of a journey still floating apparently through her head, she proceeded, in a hurried and interrupted manner, — "Call Miss Neville — What do you mean by Lady Geraldin? I said Eveline Neville, not Lady Geraldin — there's no Lady Geraldin; tell her that, and bid her change her wet gown, and no' look sae pale. Bairn! what should she do wi' a bairn? — maidens hae nane, I trow. — Teresa — Teresa — my lady calls us! — Bring a candle; — the grand staircase is as mirk as a Yule midnight — We are coming, my lady!" — With these words she sunk back on the settle, and from thence sidelong to the floor. 12

Edie ran to support her, but hardly got her in his arms, before he said,