Chronicles of the Canongate

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"I am sure you must have given Lord M-- a high treat."

"I treated him to a hearty laugh, I believe," she replied; "but
it is you, you vile seducer of youth, who lead me into such
follies. But I will be on my guard against my own weakness. I
do not well know if the Wandering Jew is supposed to have a wife,
but I should be sorry a decent middle-aged Scottish gentlewoman
should be suspected of identity with such a supernatural person."

"For all that, I must torture you a little more, MA BELLE
COUSINE, with my interrogatories; for how shall I ever turn
author unless on the strength of the information which you have
so often procured me on the ancient state of manners?"

"Stay, I cannot allow you to give your points of enquiry a name
so very venerable, if I am expected to answer them. Ancient is a
term for antediluvians. You may catechise me about the battle of
Flodden, or ask particulars about Bruce and Wallace, under
pretext of curiosity after ancient manners; and that last subject
would wake my Baliol blood, you know."

"Well, but, Mrs. Baliol, suppose we settle our era: you do not
call the accession of James the Sixth to the kingdom of Britain
very ancient?"

"Umph! no, cousin; I think I could tell you more of that than
folk nowadays remember. For instance, that as James was trooping
towards England, bag and baggage, his journey was stopped near
Cockenzie by meeting the funeral of the Earl of Winton, the old
and faithful servant and follower of his ill-fated mother, poor
Mary! It was an ill omen for the INFARE, and so was seen of it,
cousin." [See Note 5.--Earl of Winton.]

I did not choose to prosecute this subject, well knowing Mrs.
Bethune Baliol did not like to be much pressed on the subject of
the Stewarts, whose misfortunes she pitied, the rather that her
father had espoused their cause. And yet her attachment to the
present dynasty being very sincere, and even ardent, more
especially as her family had served his late Majesty both in
peace and war, she experienced a little embarrassment in
reconciling her opinions respecting the exiled family with those
she entertained for the present. In fact, like many an old
Jacobite, she was contented to be somewhat inconsistent on the
subject, comforting herself that NOW everything stood as it ought
to do, and that there was no use in looking back narrowly on the
right or wrong of the matter half a century ago.

"The Highlands," I suggested, "should furnish you with ample
subjects of recollection. You have witnessed the complete change
of that primeval country, and have seen a race not far removed
from the earliest period of society melted down into the great
mass of civilization; and that could not happen without incidents
striking in themselves, and curious as chapters in the history of
the human race."

"It is very true," said Mrs. Baliol; "one would think it should
have struck the observers greatly, and yet it scarcely did so.
For me, I was no Highlander myself, and the Highland chiefs of
old, of whom I certainly knew several, had little in their
manners to distinguish them from the Lowland gentry, when they
mixed in society in Edinburgh, and assumed the Lowland dress.
Their peculiar character was for the clansmen at home; and you
must not imagine that they swaggered about in plaids and
broadswords at the Cross, or came to the Assembly Rooms in
bonnets and kilts."

"I remember," said I, "that Swift, in his Journal, tells Stella
he had dined in the house of a Scots nobleman, with two Highland
chiefs, whom he had found as well-bred men as he had ever met
with." [Extract of Journal to Stella.--"I dined to-day (12th
March 1712) with Lord Treasurer and two gentlemen of the
Highlands of Scotland, yet very polite men." SWIFT'S WORKS, VOL.
III. p.7. EDIN. 1824.]

"Very likely," said my friend. "The extremes of society approach
much more closely to each other than perhaps the Dean of Saint
Patrick's expected. The savage is always to a certain degree
polite. Besides, going always armed, and having a very
punctilious idea of their own gentility and consequence, they
usually behaved to each other and to the Lowlanders with a good
deal of formal politeness, which sometimes even procured them the
character of insincerity."

"Falsehood belongs to an early period of society, as well as the
deferential forms which we style politeness," I replied. "A
child does not see the least moral beauty in truth until he has
been flogged half a dozen times. It is so easy, and apparently
so natural, to deny what you cannot be easily convicted of, that
a savage as well as a child lies to excuse himself almost as
instinctively as he raises his hand to protect his head. The old
saying, 'Confess and be hanged,' carries much argument in it. I
observed a remark the other day in old Birrel. He mentions that
M'Gregor of Glenstrae and some of his people had surrendered
themselves to one of the Earls of Argyle, upon the express
condition that they should be conveyed safe into England. The
Maccallum Mhor of the day kept the word of promise, but it was
only to the ear. He indeed sent his captives to Berwick, where
they had an airing on the other side of the Tweed; but it was
under the custody of a strong guard, by whom they were brought
back to Edinburgh, and delivered to the executioner. This,
Birrel calls keeping a Highlandman's promise." [See Note 6.--
M'Gregor of Glenstrae.]

"Well," replied Mrs. Baliol, "I might add that many of the
Highland chiefs whom I knew in former days had been brought up in
France, which might improve their politeness, though perhaps it
did not amend their sincerity. But considering that, belonging
to the depressed and defeated faction in the state, they were
compelled sometimes to use dissimulation, you must set their
uniform fidelity to their friends; against their occasional
falsehood to their enemies, and then you will not judge poor John
Highlandman too severely. They were in a state of society where
bright lights are strongly contrasted with deep shadows."

"It is to that point I would bring you, MA BELLE COUSINE; and
therefore they are most proper subjects for composition."

"And you want to turn composer, my good friend, and set my old
tales to some popular tune? But there have been too many
composers, if that be the word, in the field before. The
Highlands WERE indeed a rich mine; but they have, I think, been
fairly wrought out, as a good tune is grinded into vulgarity when
it descends to the hurdy-gurdy and the barrel-organ."

"If it be really tune," I replied, "it will recover its better
qualities when it gets into the hands of better artists."

"Umph!" said Mrs. Baliol, tapping her box, "we are happy in our
own good opinion this evening, Mr. Croftangry. And so you think
you can restore the gloss to the tartan which it has lost by
being dragged through so many fingers?"

"With your assistance to procure materials, my dear lady, much, I
think, may be done."

"Well, I must do my best, I suppose, though all I know about the
Gael is but of little consequence. Indeed, I gathered it chiefly
from Donald MacLeish."

"And who might Donald MacLeish be?"

"Neither bard nor sennachie, I assure you, nor monk nor hermit,
the approved authorities for old traditions. Donald was as good
a postilion as ever drove a chaise and pair between Glencroe and
Inverary. I assure you, when I give you my Highland anecdotes,
you will hear much of Donald MacLeish. He was Alice Lambskin's
beau and mine through a long Highland tour."

"But when am I to possess these anecdotes? you answer me as
Harley did poor Prior--

'Let that be done which Mat doth say--
Yea, quoth the Earl, but not to-day.'"

"Well, MON BEAU COUSIN, if you begin to remind me of my cruelty,
I must remind you it has struck nine on the Abbey clock, and it
is time you were going home to Little Croftangry. For my promise
to assist your antiquarian researches, be assured I will one day
keep it to the utmost extent. It shall not be a Highlandman's
promise, as your old citizen calls it."

I by this time suspected the purpose of my friend's
procrastination; and it saddened my heart to reflect that I was
not to get the information which I desired, excepting in the
shape of a legacy. I found accordingly, in the packet
transmitted to me after the excellent lady's death, several
anecdotes respecting the Highlands, from which I have selected
that which follows, chiefly on account of its possessing great
power over the feelings of my critical housekeeper, Janet M'Evoy,
who wept most bitterly when I read it to her.

It is, however, but a very simple tale, and may have no interest
for persons beyond Janet's rank of life or understanding.

*

THE HIGHLAND WIDOW

CHAPTER I.

It wound as near as near could be,
But what it is she cannot tell;
On the other side it seemed to be
Of the huge broad-breasted old oak-tree. COLERIDGE.

Mrs. Bethune Baliol's memorandum begins thus:--

It is five-and-thirty, or perhaps nearer forty years ago, since,
to relieve the dejection of spirits occasioned by a great family
loss sustained two or three months before, I undertook what was
called the short Highland tour. This had become in some degree
fashionable; but though the military roads were excellent, yet
the accommodation was so indifferent that it was reckoned a
little adventure to accomplish it. Besides, the Highlands,
though now as peaceable as any part of King George's dominions,
was a sound which still carried terror, while so many survived
who had witnessed the insurrection of 1745; and a vague idea of
fear was impressed on many as they looked from the towers of
Stirling northward to the huge chain of mountains, which rises
like a dusky rampart to conceal in its recesses a people whose
dress, manners, and language differed still very much from those
of their Lowland countrymen. For my part, I come of a race not
greatly subject to apprehensions arising from imagination only.
I had some Highland relatives; know several of their families of
distinction; and though only having the company of my bower-
maiden, Mrs. Alice Lambskin, I went on my journey fearless.

But then I had a guide and cicerone, almost equal to Greatheart
in the Pilgrim's Progress, in no less a person than Donald
MacLeish, the postilion whom I hired at Stirling, with a pair of
able-bodied horses, as steady as Donald himself, to drag my
carriage, my duenna, and myself, wheresoever it was my pleasure
to go.

Donald MacLeish was one of a race of post-boys whom, I suppose,
mail-coaches and steamboats have put out of fashion. They were
to be found chiefly at Perth, Stirling, or Glasgow, where they
and their horses were usually hired by travellers, or tourists,
to accomplish such journeys of business or pleasure as they might
have to perform in the land of the Gael. This class of persons
approached to the character of what is called abroad a
CONDUCTEUR; or might be compared to the sailing-master on board a
British ship of war, who follows out after his own manner the
course which the captain commands him to observe. You explained
to your postilion the length of your tour, and the objects you
were desirous it should embrace; and you found him perfectly
competent to fix the places of rest or refreshment, with due
attention that those should be chosen with reference to your
convenience, and to any points of interest which you might desire
to visit.

The qualifications of such a person were necessarily much
superior to those of the "first ready," who gallops thrice-a-day
over the same ten miles. Donald MacLeish, besides being quite
alert at repairing all ordinary accidents to his horses and
carriage, and in making shift to support them, where forage was
scarce, with such substitutes as bannocks and cakes, was likewise
a man of intellectual resources. He had acquired a general
knowledge of the traditional stories of the country which he had
traversed so often; and if encouraged (for Donald was a man of
the most decorous reserve), he would willingly point out to you
the site of the principal clan-battles, and recount the most
remarkable legends by which the road, and the objects which
occurred in travelling it, had been distinguished. There was
some originality in the man's habits of thinking and expressing
himself, his turn for legendary lore strangely contrasting with a
portion of the knowing shrewdness belonging to his actual
occupation, which made his conversation amuse the way well
enough.

Add to this, Donald knew all his peculiar duties in the country
which he traversed so frequently. He could tell, to a day, when
they would "be killing" lamb at Tyndrum or Glenuilt; so that the
stranger would have some chance of being fed like a Christian;
and knew to a mile the last village where it was possible to
procure a wheaten loaf for the guidance of those who were little
familiar with the Land of Cakes. He was acquainted with the road
every mile, and could tell to an inch which side of a Highland
bridge was passable, which decidedly dangerous. [This is, or was
at least, a necessary accomplishment. In one of the most
beautiful districts of the Highlands was, not many years since, a
bridge bearing this startling caution, "Keep to the right side,
the left being dangerous."] In short, Donald MacLeish was not
only our faithful attendant and steady servant, but our humble
and obliging friend; and though I have known the half-classical
cicerone of Italy, the talkative French valet-de-place, and even
the muleteer of Spain, who piques himself on being a maize-eater,
and whose honour is not to be questioned without danger, I do not
think I have ever had so sensible and intelligent a guide.

Our motions were of course under Donald's direction; and it
frequently happened, when the weather was serene, that we
preferred halting to rest his horses even where there was no
established stage, and taking our refreshment under a crag, from
which leaped a waterfall, or beside the verge of a fountain,
enamelled with verdant turf and wild-flowers. Donald had an eye
for such spots, and though he had, I dare say, never read Gil
Blas or Don Quixote, yet he chose such halting-places as Le Sage
or Cervantes would have described. Very often, as he observed
the pleasure I took in conversing with the country people, he
would manage to fix our place of rest near a cottage, where there
was some old Gael whose broadsword had blazed at Falkirk or
Preston, and who seemed the frail yet faithful record of times
which had passed away. Or he would contrive to quarter us, as
far as a cup of tea went, upon the hospitality of some parish
minister of worth and intelligence, or some country family of the
better class, who mingled with the wild simplicity of their
original manners, and their ready and hospitable welcome, a sort
of courtesy belonging to a people, the lowest of whom are
accustomed to consider themselves as being, according to the
Spanish phrase, "as good gentlemen as the king, only not quite so
rich."

To all such persons Donald MacLeish was well known, and his
introduction passed as current as if we had brought letters from
some high chief of the country.

Sometimes it happened that the Highland hospitality, which
welcomed us with all the variety of mountain fare, preparations
of milk and eggs, and girdle-cakes of various kinds, as well as
more substantial dainties, according to the inhabitant's means of
regaling the passenger, descended rather too exuberantly on
Donald MacLeish in the shape of mountain dew. Poor Donald! he
was on such occasions like Gideon's fleece--moist with the noble
element, which, of course, fell not on us. But it was his only
fault, and when pressed to drink DOCH-AN-DORROCH to my ladyship's
good health, it would have been ill taken to have refused the
pledge; nor was he willing to do such discourtesy. It was, I
repeat, his only fault. Nor had we any great right to complain;
for if it rendered him a little more talkative, it augmented his
ordinary share of punctilious civility, and he only drove slower,
and talked longer and more pompously, than when he had not come
by a drop of usquebaugh. It was, we remarked, only on such
occasions that Donald talked with an air of importance of the
family of MacLeish; and we had no title to be scrupulous in
censuring a foible, the consequences of which were confined
within such innocent limits.

We became so much accustomed to Donald's mode of managing us,
that we observed with some interest the art which he used to
produce a little agreeable surprise, by concealing from us the
spot where he proposed our halt to be made, when it was of an
unusual and interesting character. This was so much his wont
that, when he made apologies at setting off for being obliged to
stop in some strange, solitary place till the horses should eat
the corn which he brought on with them for that purpose, our
imagination used to be on the stretch to guess what romantic
retreat he had secretly fixed upon for our noontide baiting-
place.

We had spent the greater part of the morning at the delightful
village of Dalmally, and had gone upon the lake under the
guidance of the excellent clergyman who was then incumbent at
Glenorquhy, [This venerable and hospitable gentleman's name was
MacIntyre.] and had heard a hundred legends of the stern chiefs
of Loch Awe, Duncan with the thrum bonnet, and the other lords of
the now mouldering towers of Kilchurn. [See Note 7.--Loch Awe.]
Thus it was later than usual when we set out on our journey,
after a hint or two from Donald concerning the length of the way
to the next stage, as there was no good halting-place between
Dalmally and Oban.

Having bid adieu to our venerable and kind cicerone, we proceeded
on our tour, winding round the tremendous mountain called
Cruachan Ben, which rushes down in all its majesty of rocks and
wilderness on the lake, leaving only a pass, in which,
notwithstanding its extreme strength, the warlike clan of
MacDougal of Lorn were almost destroyed by the sagacious Robert
Bruce. That King, the Wellington of his day, had accomplished,
by a forced march, the unexpected manoeuvre of forcing a body of
troops round the other side of the mountain, and thus placed them
in the flank and in the rear of the men of Lorn, whom at the same
time, he attacked in front. The great number of cairns yet
visible as you descend the pass on the westward side shows the
extent of the vengeance which Bruce exhausted on his inveterate
and personal enemies. I am, you know, the sister of soldiers,
and it has since struck me forcibly that the manoeuvre which
Donald described, resembled those of Wellington or of Bonaparte.
He was a great man Robert Bruce, even a Baliol must admit that;
although it begins now to be allowed that his title to the crown
was scarce so good as that of the unfortunate family with whom he
contended. But let that pass. The slaughter had been the
greater, as the deep and rapid river Awe is disgorged from the
lake just in the rear of the fugitives, and encircles the base of
the tremendous mountain; so that the retreat of the unfortunate
fleers was intercepted on all sides by the inaccessible character
of the country, which had seemed to promise them defence and
protection. [See Note 8.--Battle betwixt the armies of the Bruce
and MacDougal of Lorn.]

Musing, like the Irish lady in the song, "upon things which are
long enough a-gone," [This is a line from a very pathetic ballad
which I heard sung by one of the young ladies of Edgeworthstown
in 1825. I do not know that it has been printed.] we felt no
impatience at the slow and almost creeping pace with which our
conductor proceeded along General Wade's military road, which
never or rarely condescends to turn aside from the steepest
ascent, but proceeds right up and down hill, with the
indifference to height and hollow, steep or level, indicated by
the old Roman engineers. Still, however, the substantial
excellence of these great works--for such are the military
highways in the Highlands--deserved the compliment of the poet,
who, whether he came from our sister kingdom, and spoke in his
own dialect, or whether he supposed those whom he addressed might
have some national pretension to the second sight, produced the
celebrated couplet,--

"Had you but seen these roads BEFORE they were made,
You would hold up your hands and bless General Wade."

Nothing, indeed, can be more wonderful than to see these
wildernesses penetrated and pervious in every quarter by broad
accesses of the best possible construction, and so superior to
what the country could have demanded for many centuries for any
pacific purpose of commercial intercourse. Thus the traces of
war are sometimes happily accommodated to the purposes of peace.
The victories of Bonaparte have been without results but his road
over the Simplon will long be the communication betwixt peaceful
countries, who will apply to the ends of commerce and friendly
intercourse that gigantic work, which was formed for the
ambitious purpose of warlike invasion.

While we were thus stealing along, we gradually turned round the
shoulder of Ben Cruachan, and descending the course of the
foaming and rapid Awe, left behind us the expanse of the majestic
lake which gives birth to that impetuous river. The rocks and
precipices which stooped down perpendicularly on our path on the
right hand exhibited a few remains of the wood which once clothed
them, but which had in later times been felled to supply, Donald
MacLeish informed us, the iron foundries at the Bunawe. This
made us fix our eyes with interest on one large oak, which grew
on the left hand towards the river. It seemed a tree of
extraordinary magnitude and picturesque beauty, and stood just
where there appeared to be a few roods of open ground lying among
huge stones, which had rolled down from the mountain. To add to
the romance of the situation, the spot of clear ground extended
round the foot of a proud-browed rock, from the summit of which
leaped a mountain stream in a fall of sixty feet, in which it was
dissolved into foam and dew. At the bottom of the fall the
rivulet with difficulty collected, like a routed general, its
dispersed forces, and, as if tamed by its descent, found a
noiseless passage through the heath to join the Awe.

I was much struck with the tree and waterfall, and wished myself
nearer them; not that I thought of sketch-book or portfolio--for
in my younger days misses were not accustomed to black-lead
pencils, unless they could use them to some good purpose--but
merely to indulge myself with a closer view. Donald immediately
opened the chaise door, but observed it was rough walking down
the brae, and that I would see the tree better by keeping the
road for a hundred yards farther, when it passed closer to the
spot, for which he seemed, however, to have no predilection. "He
knew," he said, "a far bigger tree than that nearer Bunawe, and
it was a place where there was flat ground for the carriage to
stand, which it could jimply do on these braes; but just as my
leddyship liked."

My ladyship did choose rather to look at the fine tree before me
than to pass it by in hopes of a finer; so we walked beside the
carriage till we should come to a point, from which, Donald
assured us, we might, without scrambling, go as near the tree as
we chose, "though he wadna advise us to go nearer than the
highroad."

There was something grave and mysterious in Donald's sun-browned
countenance when he gave us this intimation, and his manner was
so different from his usual frankness, that my female curiosity
was set in motion. We walked on the whilst, and I found the
tree, of which we had now lost sight by the intervention of some
rising ground, was really more distant than I had at first
supposed. "I could have sworn now," said I to my cicerone, "that
yon tree and waterfall was the very place where you intended to
make a stop to-day."

"The Lord forbid!" said Donald hastily.

"And for what, Donald? Why should you be willing to pass so
pleasant a spot?"

"It's ower near Dalmally, my leddy, to corn the beasts; it would
bring their dinner ower near their breakfast, poor things. An'
besides, the place is not canny."

"Oh! then the mystery is out. There is a bogle or a brownie, a
witch or a gyre-carlin, a bodach or a fairy, in the case?"

"The ne'er a bit, my leddy--ye are clean aff the road, as I may
say. But if your leddyship will just hae patience, and wait till
we are by the place and out of the glen, I'll tell ye all about
it. There is no much luck in speaking of such things in the
place they chanced in."

I was obliged to suspend my curiosity, observing, that if I
persisted in twisting the discourse one way while Donald was
twining it another, I should make his objection, like a hempen
cord, just so much the tougher. At length the promised turn of
the road brought us within fifty paces of the tree which I
desired to admire, and I now saw to my surprise, that there was a
human habitation among the cliffs which surrounded it. It was a
hut of the least dimensions, and most miserable description that
I ever saw even in the Highlands. The walls of sod, or DIVOT, as
the Scotch call it, were not four feet high; the roof was of
turf, repaired with reeds and sedges; the chimney was composed of
clay, bound round by straw ropes; and the whole walls, roof, and
chimney, were alike covered with the vegetation of house-leek,
rye-grass, and moss common to decayed cottages formed of such
materials. There was not the slightest vestige of a kale-yard,
the usual accompaniment of the very worst huts; and of living
things we saw nothing, save a kid which was browsing on the roof
of the hut, and a goat, its mother, at some distance, feeding
betwixt the oak and the river Awe.

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