afotttell lmucr0ttg ©btarg 
 
 3tt|aca, NtiB ^orH 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 HENRY W. SAGE 
 
 1891 
 
Cornell University Library 
 DA 763.R65 
 
 Furth in field 
 
 3 1924 028 125 353 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028125353 
 
FURTH IN FIELD 
 
FURTH IN FIELD 
 
 A VOLUME OF ESSAYS ON THE LIFE 
 
 LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 
 
 OF OLD SCOTLAND 
 
 By HUGH HALIBURTON 
 
 AUTHOR OF "HORACE IN HOMESPUN," ETC. 
 
 % 
 
 LONDON 
 T. FISHER UNWIN 
 1894 
 
 ooRNauu 
 
 U N I V K R & I T Y 
 
THIS BOOK 
 OF SCOTTISH ESSAYS 
 
 IS INSCRIBED 
 BV 
 
 HUGH HALIBURTON 
 
 TO HIS FRIEND 
 
 THE REV. DR JOHN MAIR 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 A DAY AT SOUTHDEAN 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PARTI. 
 
 OF FUN AND FEASTING. 
 
 <S PAGE 
 
 THE BEAR BARREL 3 
 
 FOYS 16 
 
 HOGMANAY . . ." 23 
 
 HANSEL MONDAY 3! 
 
 ST valentine's day 36 
 
 ALL fools' day 43 
 
 THE king's birthday . . . . . . 50 
 
 THE SUMMER EXCURSION jy 
 
 PART II. 
 OF OLD WORDS AND FORGOTTEN WAYS. 
 
 poachers and poaching 69 
 
 the north sea scheme g2 
 
 concerning SKINK TOO 
 
 THE LOTMAN IO4 
 
 THE WENE IN THE WAIKE (in Hogg's " Kilmeriy") . iii 
 
 A FORGOTTEN ROAD AND A FAMOUS VIEW . . I16 
 
 ON PENTLAND'S EDGE I25 
 
Vlll 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PART III. 
 
 OF LOCHLEVEN AND THE LANDS 
 ABOUT IT. 
 
 PAGE 
 "gay" KINROSS 133 
 
 140 
 
 148 
 
 . IS4 
 
 LOCHLEVEN AND THE BISHOPSHIRE 
 FISH AND FISHING AT LOCHLEVEN 
 THE BOOKS OF LOCHLEVEN . 
 
 PART IV. 
 
 OF THE POET OF THE SEASONS. 
 
 PORTRAIT OF JAMES THOMSON 167 
 
 THE LAND OF THOMSON 1 75 
 
 EDNAM AND THE THOMSONS l8l 
 
 A FORSAKEN SCOTTISH SHRINE 188 
 
 THOMSON AT SOIJTHDEAN I96 
 
 PART V. 
 OF BURNS IN A NEW ASPECT. 
 
 BURNS THE POET OF THE COUNTRY 
 
 BURNS'S SCHOOL READING-BOOK 
 
 BURNS AND GOLDSMITH 
 
 BURNS AND YOUNG 
 
 BURNS AND SHENSTONE 
 
 BURNS AND BLAIR 
 
 DUNBAR IN BURNS 
 
 217 
 225 
 232 
 
 244 
 
 263 
 272 
 
PART I. 
 
 OF FUN AND FEASTING. 
 
THE BEAR BARREL. 
 
 " O gie me the times when auld ploys were in vogue, 
 An' the cake an' the kebbuck gaed down wi' the cogue ! " 
 
 Hew Ainslie. 
 
 The ancient hamely fare of the Scottish peasant has 
 undergone a change within the last two or three 
 generations. The halesome parritch is still, indeed, 
 the chief of Scotia's food, though to a less extent than 
 it was when Burns proclaimed its praise. Toasted 
 cakes of oatmeal are, however — the more's the pity 
 — perceptibly rarer even in farm kitchens than they 
 were wont to be, while girdle cakes are practically 
 unknown. To many people, whose immediate fore- 
 fathers were possibly reared upon them, the distinc- 
 tion between those varieties of cake is probably only 
 speculative. But while oatmeal has been declining 
 somewhat in popular favour among our rustics, 
 barley-meal may be said to have gone out of use 
 altogether. The souple scone, the wale o' food, is 
 merely a memory. It is almost necessary to say 
 nowadays to an unenlightened public that it was 
 a creation of barley-meal. John Barleycorn is still, 
 no doubt, the king of grain on hundreds of Scottish 
 farms. His tribute to the Scottish kail-pot, not yet 
 entirely transmuted into that soft and fushionless 
 
 3 
 
4 THE BEAR BARREL. 
 
 concession to enfeebled digestions, rice, still tumbles 
 in a rollicking dance with beef and greens in "the 
 boiling flood;" but the barley bannock, at which 
 our brave forbears took many a whang, and on 
 which, as auld sangs asseverate, they upheld the 
 national independence, has been for some time un- 
 generously banished from the bill of rural fare. It 
 has no longer an honoured place on Highland 
 dresser or in Lowland aumrie. What was once 
 good feeding for the old Scots nobility is now 
 scornfully rejected by the Scottish crofter and cot- 
 tar — except, perhaps, in inaccessible regions of 
 Perthshire and Aberdeenshire. The ploughman's 
 palate despises what the aristocratic throat took 
 down with a relish — for how goes the auld Scots 
 sonnet of John, Duke of Argyll ? — 
 
 "At the sight of Dumbarton once again 
 I'll cock up my bonnet and march amain, 
 With a gude claymore hanging down at my heel, 
 To whang at the bannocks o' barley meal." 
 
 Did our swank country lads know how appetisingly 
 sustaining a barley scone can be made — especially 
 did our comely country lasses, our rustic Helens 
 and Hebes, realise the virtues, of beauty to the 
 skin and sweetness to the temper, which reside 
 in bannocks of bear-meal — there would be, I am 
 firmly convinced, such a revival of this well-approved 
 ancient feeding-stuff as would send down the price 
 of wheat, and drive tapioca and similar foreign 
 skinking ware that jaups in luggies clean out of 
 caup and market. It is only now and again, at 
 rare intervals, that some patriotic and patriarchal 
 
THE BEAR BARREL. 5 
 
 bonnet-laird, earthfast on his own acres, takes a 
 greening for the barley piece which consoled his 
 youth, and orders a melder of bear to the mill for 
 his individual consumption, starting off with a baking 
 of half a firlot. But for these intermittent and, alas ! 
 ineffectual plunges into the cookery of a remote 
 past, the memory even of the barley bannock would 
 be lost to the whole countryside. 
 
 It was not, however, for his benefactions to broth- 
 pot and bake-board that John Barleycorn got title 
 to rank as King of Grain. It was for the gift of his 
 strong heart's blood. There truly he still "shines 
 chief," whether in the etherealised spirit that has 
 jinked through wimpling worms to the glass, or in 
 the rich brown browst that reams owre the brink 
 of the jug in glorious foam. It was for this aspect 
 of John Barleycorn that Burns sang in laudation of 
 the juice Scots bear can mak' us — gude auld Scots 
 drink. And justification of the bard's jubilation is 
 not far to seek; for of the four elements necessary, 
 in his own estimation, to his earthly felicity, John 
 Barleycorn furnished two. Rowth of rhyme was, of 
 course, essential; but scarcely one whit less indis- 
 pensable were a scone and whisky gill — both of 
 them, there needs no telling, gifts of the bold son 
 of Ceres. A pair of breeks, thrown in adventitiously 
 — a haill pair for preference — completed the condition 
 of the poet's dream of happiness. It is the capabil- 
 ities of John Barleycorn in this double aspect of him, 
 the scone-and-gill aspect, that gives him his pre- 
 eminence over the kindred grain. But it is easy to 
 multiply the beneficial aspects of John Barleycorn 
 
6 THE BEAR BARREL. 
 
 — it is easy to see double on such a theme. " An' 
 ye wanted fire and meat and claes, and were deeing 
 o' cauld, and had a sair heart — whilk is warst o' a' 
 — wi' just tippence in your pouch, wadna ye be glad 
 to buy a dram wi't, to be eilding and claes and a 
 supper, and heart's ease into the bargain, till the 
 morn's morning?" It is the testimony of Scott, 
 and the argument of Maggie Mucklebackit. But 
 for sober purposes the twin aspect of the subject need 
 only be insisted upon at present. And in the history 
 of John Barleycorn's ministrations to man, the solid 
 and substantial scone, there is hardly a doubt, came 
 first. But the flowing gill also is of a high antiquity, 
 and seems destined to outlast the scone. At all 
 events, it is for liquid rather than for solid uses that 
 a greater breadth of Scottish farmlands than at any 
 time in past Augusts waved with "mixing" barley, 
 is waving "all fading green and yellow" with it 
 to-day. From the Lothians in the south to the 
 scarcely inferior barley soils of Moray in the north, 
 the great mass of the bear harvest is destined for 
 distillation and brewing, and only an insignificant 
 proportion will find its way to the mill. The flower 
 of it goes to the brewer ; the distiller gets the inferior 
 quality; but even when barley-bread was a staple 
 food in the farm towns and burgh towns of Scot- 
 land, it was still the lighter qualities of both bigg 
 and barley that were dressed or ground at the mill 
 for pot and girdle. 
 
 Before the glory of the old harvest-field disappeared, 
 on the advent of the mechanical reaper, a special dis- 
 tinction was given to the barley harvest over that of 
 
THE BEAR BARREL. "J 
 
 other grain. The festival of Harvest Home, otherwise 
 known as the Maiden, or the Kirn, though unhappily 
 dying out, is at least known by repute to every one. 
 But only few can now remember that, before the grand 
 concluding festival of the autumn season came round, 
 a kind of snack or foretaste of its ampler fun was the 
 custom, now grown obsolete, on nearly every farm. 
 It marked the stooking, that is the gathering into 
 stooks, of the barley harvest ; and the celebration of 
 that event was known as "The Bear Barrel." In 
 respect of name it might be regarded as a set-off to 
 the Kirn festival. Each of those autumnal merry- 
 makings was named from the part played at their 
 celebration by the contents proper to these vessels — 
 whisky (not beer, as might be imagined) in the one 
 case, and cream in the other. The ambrosial com- 
 position called " cream-crowdie " was originally, and 
 still is— where the festival is correctly observed — an 
 essential part of the great banquet of the Kirn. In 
 comparison with the Kirn, the celebration of which 
 was preceded by elaborate preparations, and accom- 
 panied by Gargantuan eating and drinking, and quite 
 a programme of pastimes, the ploy of the Bear Barrel 
 was simplicity itself. The barley crop, as even towns' 
 bodies know, ripens soonest, and is generally taken in 
 Scotland in the end of August or the beginning of 
 September. While it was being gathered, in an earlier 
 generation, by the old-fashioned hook into sheaves, 
 and the sheaves fastened by bandsters and " stood " up 
 into stooks to dry and harden, the oats — and wheat, 
 where wheat was grown — were qualifying for the sickle 
 in their turn ; and it usually happened that just when 
 
S THE BEAR BARREL. 
 
 the barley maiden was taken — that is, when the last 
 handful of ripe barley on the farm was shorn — the 
 reapers, without any cessation of field work, could go 
 forward to the wheat and oats. It would sometimes 
 occur that a little of the latter was taken before the 
 barley harvest was quite finished ; on the other hand, 
 there might be an occasional lie day or two, rarely 
 amounting to a week, but according to the character 
 of the particular season and the state of the weather, 
 during which period the harvesters would have to wait 
 till the remaining corn was matured. But whenever 
 it happened that the barley was all cut down on the 
 farm, whether the oats were already touched or still 
 grew in their green virginity, the event was marked in 
 the evening by the little Maiden of the Bear Barrel. 
 When the day's work was done and supper was over, 
 just as it all went on upon ordinary harvest days, signs 
 of something extraordinary began to show themselves 
 both in the roomy barn, where the fee'd harvesters 
 — weavers of both sexes, for the most part, from 
 the nearest vil'iage — were accommodated, and in the 
 scarcely less roomy farm kitchen, where the entertain- 
 ment was to be held. In the barn, or at the barndoor, 
 if the air was tranquil, the members of the bandwin or 
 bandwins (a bandwin included two men and four 
 women shearers) began towards gloaming to pay a little 
 unusual attention to dress, and to personal appearance 
 generally; the men performed ablutions, handled a 
 comb, perhaps a razor ; tied round bare, sun-scorched 
 craigs, with more or less grace and comfort, a woollen 
 scarf of faded tartan or other check ; made gallantry to 
 the girls, and perhaps opened a communication through 
 
THE BEAR BARREL. g 
 
 the herd with the harvesters on the adjacent farm. 
 The women, who always made themselves tidy of an 
 evening, seemed on their part in gayer spirits at the 
 prospect of a ploy, and perhaps added a brighter 
 snood or head riband than usual to the adornment of 
 their hair. Meanwhile, in the farm kitchen the keg of 
 whisky — the caggie, as it was endearingly called — 
 containing a matter of someithree or four gallons, was 
 solemnly introduced, or rather inducted, and the 
 farmer presently appeared, with the gravity of an 
 officiating elder, in the ha' doorway, and briefly 
 demanded in a stoor voice, directed at the barn, 
 "whether they werena coming to taste the Bear 
 Barrel." This was understood to be a pressing 
 invitation, as indeed it was meant to be ; and it was 
 accepted for the most part with such an air of gloomy 
 indifference, or reluctant obedience, as a rustic thinks 
 it necessary to assume when approaching the House 
 of God on a Sunday. They sauntered singly or in 
 silent knots across the yard with a ridiculous air of 
 decorum — unless some frisky young fellow, the wag of 
 the party, probably a tailor by trade, cut [a caper to 
 make the maids giggle, or inquired in a loud whisper 
 of some douce Jeanie Deans among the young women 
 " whether she had mindit to bring her Bible and a 
 peppermint ? " 
 
 As likely as not, more especially on hill farms, the 
 whisky was a home product or smuggled manufacture, 
 and at the time referred to — a few generations ago — 
 did not in any case stand the farmer in more than 
 twopence a gill of three glasses. As much as an 
 English pint, consumed in the course of the evening. 
 
lO THE BEAR BARREL. 
 
 a glass at a time, was the average allowance to each 
 harvester's mouth, male or female, at the fete of the 
 Bear Barrel. It was held to be a sufficiently sober 
 splore at that. Exceptions there were, of course, to 
 the moderation of this, allowance ; some drouthy 
 carle of a bandster, for example, might prefer his 
 share in a caup or luggie, declaring that his mouth 
 held just a gill, and that a less measure only gave his 
 tongue " the smell o't ; " while, on the other hand, a 
 modest bit lassie at her first hairst would be content 
 to cough at a thimbleful. Unstinted bread and cheese 
 ' or butter (not both — those who united butter and 
 cheese were counted menseless) lay to hand on the 
 kitchen table, but the entertainment was distinctly a 
 liquid one ; it was in no sense a supper. The tups' 
 heads and trotters, the links of puddings black and 
 white, the sides of mutton, or chines of beef, and all 
 the rest of it, which supported the long revelty of the 
 Kirn, were out of place at the modest carousal of the 
 Caggie. And here, by the way, the reader of this 
 paper, who may be interested in the antiquities of 
 Scottish social customs, might be referred to an inci- 
 dental account by Sir Walter Scott of the festivities at 
 a harvest home on Tweedside three and a half centur- 
 ies ago. The scene is laid at the Tower of Glendearg, 
 and the account will be found in the thirteenth chapter 
 of The Monastery. But to come back to the Bear 
 Barrel and the youth-time of the nineteenth century. 
 The invited reapers stepped into the glow of the 
 kitchen awkwardly, bashfully, almost apologetically, as 
 if the expected entertainment was hardly to be taken 
 seriously. They caught the eye of the farmer, stand- 
 
THE BEAR BARREL. II 
 
 ing like a Colossus on his own floor-head, as they 
 entered, and fell with him into a discourse on the 
 evening's weather, shaping their remarks to meet the 
 wishes of their employer and entertainer. There was 
 of course some talk on the excellence of the barley, 
 and the farmer was sure to be complimented on the 
 fineness of his crop, both head and stalk o't. He 
 would probably acknowledge the compliment by 
 treating himself incontinently to a huge pinch of 
 snuff, and sending his mull on a coasting voyage round 
 the apartment. It was still the age of rappee, pipe 
 tobacco being as yet left to tinkers and other gan- 
 gerels. The men folk hung about the floor, while the 
 women gathered into knots on long forms at the wall. 
 Presently the tap was turned, and the Master of the 
 Harvest ran off a glass, held it up, making the while 
 critical grimaces with one side of his face at the 
 yellowish liquid, pree'd it deliberately, smacked his 
 lips twice amid the universal hush, and pronounced it 
 gude. The next glass he dedicated at a throw to the 
 health of the company. Then came the harvesters' 
 turn. They toasted their entertainer and each other 
 in an informal way ; the wag, who was also the buck 
 of the party, winked his regards to the girls, and 
 pretended to be suffocated at each sip ; the character 
 of the whisky was favourably commented on, as if it 
 were the newly manufactured juice of the barley they 
 had just been praising. One, perhaps, to uphold his 
 credit as a connoisseur of whisky, reserved his judg- 
 ment, though frequently appealed to, till a late hour 
 in the evening, when curiosity was no longer excited, 
 and had then the hardihood to declare that he had 
 
12 THE BEAR BARREL. 
 
 tasted a better brew. But the farmer was generally a 
 match for such impertinences, and, in a case like the 
 one supposed, would be kittle to retort with the coarse 
 but conclusive proverb — " Ay, ay. Tammy, ma man ! 
 as the soo fills, the draff spills ! " By and by, under 
 the influence of John Barleycorn, the wheels of life, 
 as the poet says, began to scrieve along wi' rattlin' glee. 
 Strangers from the neighbouring toun, aware of the 
 night's frolic, peeped in blately at the open door, were 
 made welcome, and added their news and their 
 nonsense to the bustle that now filled the wide kitchen, 
 Every tongue was going, and the conversation, which 
 had first spread out from the more particular occasion 
 of the gathering into channels of general interest, was 
 now racing along in twenty different courses, here 
 noisily and argumentatively, there jocosely and ban- 
 teringly, and yonder sweetly and smoothly with 
 whispered favours " secret and precious." Some one 
 at last calling out that the night was wearing, the cry 
 for a song or a dance was raised— just one. Where 
 concertinas are now plentiful, the fiddle was not rare 
 in those days ; if the fiddle failed, probably a bag- 
 piping shepherd in his hut on the braes was to be had 
 for the hazard of rousing him. Failing both windbag 
 and catgut, there was the diddler. Anybody could 
 diddle who had good lungs and a sense of rhythm. 
 But the man or woman who had the reputation of 
 being good at diddling was at once called for with a 
 voice there was no denying. It was an accomplish- 
 ment so much in demand at the daft days, and at' 
 other convivial seasons, that we have known a woman- 
 servant who, in enumerating the list of her qualifica- 
 
THE BEAR BARREL. ' 1 3 
 
 tions for farmhouse service, crowned the catalogue by 
 intimating that she was " a grand diddler." She was 
 engaged off-hand. The diddler, then, whether* man or 
 woman, was put into a corner, and the dancers took the 
 floor. A veteran diddler dashed courageously into his 
 duty. Following or falling into a tune, he opened his 
 mouth, and sang or said, to the beat of his foot on the 
 kitchen tiles, " Diddle-diddle, diddle-diddle," and kept 
 on singing or saying, " Diddle-diddle, diddle-diddle," 
 with little variety of tone, but without a pause, and with 
 due attention to time, till he was black in the face, 
 and his tongue was as dry as a parrot's. He required 
 frequent slockening — that is, a drink at the end of 
 every dance ; and if that was not reward enough, he 
 had the appreciation of the dancers, and the proud 
 consciousness of controlling a principal part of the 
 evening's amusement. After the one dance and a 
 circulation of drinks, a song — only one — was probably 
 called for. Burns's ballad of the life and death of John 
 Barleycorn was often given, as appropriate to the 
 occasion of the Bear Barrel ; but each district had 
 its favourite songs, which were certain to be demanded 
 and given, whatever the occasion of the social gathering 
 might be. A great favourite in Strathmore farms at 
 one time was the Forfar Pensioner. I have never 
 seen it in print, and it is too long to give here; but 
 whether from youthful associations or intrinsic merit, it 
 will remain in my memory when many a more pop- 
 ular rhyme has been forgotten. It is a sort of rustic 
 Odyssey, recounting, in the first person, the adven- 
 tures of a Forfar lad who enlisted in the time of the 
 Napoleonic wars, and fought in the Peninsula : — 
 
14 THE BEAR BARREL. 
 
 " We mairched thro' mony a marliet place, 
 An' wandered up an' down, sir ; 
 My coat was covered owre wi' lace, 
 An' powdered was my crown, sir." 
 
 But marching orders of a different kind were issued, 
 and he was " ca'd owre to Spain" — 
 
 "Where fifty regiments in a raw 
 
 Cam' mairchin' owre the plain, sir. ' 
 
 The night before his first encounter with the French 
 was a sleepless one to him — 
 
 "Dreary thochts cam' in my mind 
 O' Farfar an' my daddie." 
 
 It made his heart beat when the French came on pell- 
 mell, but — 
 
 " Farfar bluid was ever true, 
 Sae I did not retreat, sir." 
 
 A ball struck him, but he loaded and fired again. 
 At last 
 
 ' ' The bluid cam' bockin' thro' my hose, 
 
 I could nae langer stand, sir, 
 I flang my gun amang my foes, 
 
 An' sat me doon an' sang, sir 
 ' Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled,' 
 
 Syne ' Up wi' Maggie Dick,' sir ; 
 My wounded leg grew unco sair, 
 
 An' stiff as ony stick, sir," 
 
 He came home with the help of an oxter staff, and 
 lived snugly on his well-earned pension. Scarcely 
 less popular was the amatory song of a ploughman lad 
 from Stirling braes, whose vagaries in drink had rare 
 power of diverting the rustic mind. Even the English 
 song of the Derbyshire clown was a prime favourite 
 among the farms and bothies of Strathearn. Its action 
 
THE BEAR BARREL. 1 5 
 
 chorus of beating a drum was not its least attraction. 
 It began in some such way as this — 
 
 " A sturdy clown from Derbyshire, 
 
 Fed up on mirth and loyaltee, 
 With his sturdy legs and his shoulders broad, 
 
 But as ignorant as a child could be ; 
 He went to a sergeant recruiting there. 
 
 With a broad red sash about his waist, 
 ' Come, tip me your fist, for I mean to list, 
 And I hope you will speak and get me placed !' 
 With a row-dow-dow," etc. 
 
 Dance or song, one led to another — the dance, as 
 giving active employment to most, or even to all, pre- 
 dominating; whisky was shed like water, till the 
 kitchen smelled like a change-house at a Holy Fair 
 celebration ; and when ten o'clock struck through the 
 revelry, it was recognised at once that the Bear Barrel 
 for the year was over. Duty required that the har- 
 vesters should be astir next morning at five ; there was 
 no allowance made for late hours at a Bear Barrel 
 merrymaking; it was a mere episode, which was 
 suffered in no way to retard the operations or dislocate 
 the arrangements of the precious harvest season. The 
 mirth was hearty for the two or three hours it lasted, 
 and strangers from the neighbouring farm were wel- 
 come to a taste of the liquor and a share of the mirth. 
 But there was no attempt to abuse the farmer's hos- 
 pitality or demoralise the farm-town. In a few minutes 
 after ten everybody was either fast asleep or falling 
 over — those in the latter condition perhaps with the 
 half-formed wish that the morning might be wet, so as to 
 secure a long " lie" for limbs doubly tired with the toils 
 of the hairst field and the festivities of the Bear Barrel. 
 
ABOUT FOYS. 
 
 Hundreds of foys are held on hundreds of farms 
 north of the Forth on the night of the 21st of 
 November, the evening preceding the great service 
 term of Martinmas. The society of rustic labourers 
 is then on the eve of a great change. There is to be 
 a rearrangement of its units which the next four-and- 
 twenty hours will effect. And, meanwhile, the 
 occasion is seized of parting company with the old 
 arrangement and bidding it formally farewell. The 
 custom — a time-honoured one — though no longer 
 retaining its ancient vigour, is still far from destitute 
 of vitality. To a town-dweller the name and the 
 nature of the institution will scarcely now be known.* 
 Briefly described, a foy is a farewell entertainment 
 given to former associates by the person or persons 
 leaving. It is of rural growth, and is in an especial 
 sense a ploughman's institution. It originated, doubt- 
 less, in the shifting nature of his employment. Fee'd 
 by the year, the young ploughman at the end of his 
 
 * " If you're my friend, meet me this evening at the Rummer. 
 I'll pay ray foy, drink a health to my king, prosperity to my 
 country, and away for Hungary to-morrow morning." — 
 Farquhar's Constant Couple, Act i. sc. i. The word is 
 French— ^j, faith. Leigh Hunt's edition of Farquhar gives 
 ' way ' — a misinterpretation. 
 16 
 
ABOUT FOYS. 1/ 
 
 term longs for change of scene ; the monotony of life 
 oppresses him ; he is eminently social, and has little 
 outlet for his social instincts; he seeks service on 
 another farm, but not till he has taken kindly leave 
 of his last year's companions on the farm he is 
 quitting. He is besides in a position, pecuniarily, to 
 give the leave-taking entertainment : his year's money 
 is (or rather was — tempora mutantur/) paid down to 
 him at the end of his service in a solid and unbroken 
 sum. 
 
 Though primarily a ploughman's institution, it is 
 not confined to farm servants. It is occasionally 
 observed by gardeners, hedgers, and foresters, on the 
 occasion of their leaving one district for another. 
 There used also to be 'prentice foys in the homes of 
 blacksmiths, wheelwrights, and such-like country 
 craftsmen. Tarn or Wull had " served oot his time ; " 
 he was now " getting up his indenture," preparatory 
 to starting for himself as a free journeyman. In his 
 case the master, to whom he had been bound from 
 boyhood, provided the entertainment; and reason- 
 ably. He had made considerable profit by his 
 apprentice, especially during the last two years or so. 
 The system of apprenticeship by indenture is now 
 pretty rare. It was a legal bond by which the master 
 undertook to instruct his apprentice in the methods 
 and mysteries of his handicraft, the apprentice on his 
 part undertaking to make out and conclude the period 
 of his apprenticeship. The length of apprenticeship 
 varied, according to the nature of the craft, from four 
 to seven years. Each party provided caution to 
 the amount of from ;^io to ;^2o that he would fulfil 
 
1 8 ABOUT FOYS. 
 
 his part of the contract. The cost of the stamped 
 indenture, thirty shillings or so, was borne mutually 
 His indenture saved a wayward apprentice from the 
 grasp of the recruiting officer, but only while it ran 
 If he had imprudently taken the shilling at some 
 market or merry-making, he was liable in military 
 service as soon as his term of apprenticeship was up. 
 The lifted indenture, of course, relieved both master 
 and apprentice ; their mutual agreement was satis- 
 factorily concluded, and they were in a position to 
 appreciate the simple festivity of the foy. 
 
 Partaking of the nature of the foy were certain old 
 drinking customs that used to be known to the various 
 " trades " by whom they were practised, as the 
 "foondin' pint," "the bindin' spree," "the spreadin' 
 drink," etc. They speak to the sociality of the old 
 days no doubt; but they look to us terribly like 
 ingenious excuses for a dram. 
 
 To return to the foy proper — the ploughman's foy. 
 It is, and it was, long looked forward to as an agree- 
 able break in the monotony of social life in the country. 
 It used to rank with waddin's and maidens — that is, 
 penny weddings and harvest homes. It was the 
 epilogue of field service. There was a prologue, too, 
 "the welcome hame," which was usually given "an 
 eight days " or so after the arrival of new ploughmen. 
 As the name indicates, the expense of the welcome 
 hame was borne, or supposed to be borne, by the 
 "remaining" ploughmen— those, namely, who took 
 service on the same farm for another year ; but as a 
 matter of fact, each man at a welcome hame, new 
 comer and old hand, bore his own share of the 
 
ABOUT FOYS. 1 9 
 
 expense of the simple entertainment. It was by 
 means like this that ploughmen got to be acquainted 
 with each other on adjoining farms. Markets were 
 another means of drawing them socially together. 
 They are a social people, ready at all times and 
 places to introduce themselves to each other, and 
 quick to recommend their several acquaintances. 
 Sometimes, but rarely, it would happen that a 
 -welcome hame would be diversified by a quarrel or 
 a fight. Some vain or cantankerous ploughman would 
 only settle into what was called "good neibourhood" 
 after he had endured one or two "good lickings." 
 Good neibourhood was always achieved by Hansel 
 Monday at latest ; but there might intervene between 
 Martinmas and that day the social diversion of a 
 more or less bloody tulzie. 
 
 The great foy time, as we have said, was and is at 
 Martinmas. This is the great " flitting " term in the 
 rural districts north of the Forth. It is not so in the 
 south country, whatever it may have been ; Laidlaw, 
 it is to be remembered, represents Lucy in the ever- 
 popular ballad as flitting at Martinmas — 
 
 '"Twas when the wan leaf frae the birk-tree was fa'in' 
 An' Martinmas dowie had wound up the year, 
 That Lucy row'd up her wee kist wi' her a' in, 
 And left her auld maister an' neibours sae dear." 
 
 And Laidlaw was a south-country man ; but it does 
 not follow that the scene of Lucy's " flittin' " was the 
 south country. We have heard south-country people 
 express their strong disapproval of a custom which 
 made " flitting " imperative at a time of the year when 
 only wet or broken weather, with all its inconveniences, 
 
20 ABOUT. FOYS. 
 
 could be expected. North-country people, again, 
 regard their southern friends as singularly unfortunate 
 in having to remove to new quarters at Whitsunday, 
 What advantage, they ask, can any one have in a 
 kailyard that cannot be delved and planted till the 
 end of May? "Ilka land," says the old proverb, 
 " has its ain laugh and its ain law." 
 
 It depends a good deal on the departing plough- 
 man's character, or rather disposition, whether his foy 
 at Martinmas is big or little. His comrades like a 
 social fellow, who has no meanness or treachery with 
 him. Burns's estimate was the ploughman's estimate 
 of a man : — 
 
 "The social, friendly, honest man, 
 Whae'er he be, 
 'Tis he fulfils great Nature's plan, 
 And none but he." 
 
 As many as eight or nine men, with as many of the 
 maid-servants additional, may take part in a Martin- 
 mas foy. The entertainment could not begin till the 
 horses on the farm were " suppered " ; but beginning 
 at nine p.m., a late hour for a ploughman, it might go 
 on till one or two next morning. Before 1853 the foy 
 was usually held in some neighbouring alehouse ; if 
 held there after the Forbes Mackenzie Act came into 
 operation, adjournment would be made at eleven to 
 some neighbour cottar or ploughman's. Not seldom 
 the farm foreman's house was the scene of the foy. 
 The entertainment was of the simplest — whisky diluted 
 with "sma' ale," and the never-failing fare of the 
 country, "cheese and bread." There was plenty of 
 talk. It would begin with the new place Jocky was 
 
ABOUT FOYS. 21 
 
 going to, include a description of the pair of horses 
 he was to have in charge, and speculate as to the 
 names and nature of his new neighbours. He might 
 be entrusted with messages to this or that person 
 supposed to be residing in the locality to which he 
 was going — verbal letters of introduction recommend- 
 ing himself. Songs would be sung — ploughmen's 
 songs : such as creep along the country-side and 
 escape collection ; sometimes, not often, one of 
 Burns's. Burns's songs were well known, and required 
 good style in the singer to make them acceptable; 
 whereas a new song or ballad might be indifferently 
 rendered — its interest was largely its novelty. They 
 would dance, as the night wore on — mostly to their 
 own rough and ready music. A ploughman with a 
 little whisky in his pulse needed little invitation to the 
 dance. Foursome reels were the favourite dance. 
 Occasionally they would order their steps to the 
 rhythm of the bagpipe, played by some Highland 
 shepherd or ploughman. Towards the close of the 
 foy, tenderness would begin to manifest itself, and a 
 great deal would be said and done in the strictest 
 confidence. A "greetin' match," as Jocky took fare- 
 well of Jenny in the midst of their friends, was not 
 uncommon. Sometimes not love, but friendship, was 
 the motif. And often tears were shed at parting 
 with a favourite horse. It might be, " Man 1 a'm 
 vexed at pairtin' wi' yon Bob horse ! " Bob, it is to 
 be explained, was a willing worker associated with a 
 lazy mate. He would enlarge on what Bob could do 
 at " leading " time — how many thraves of wheat he 
 could lead at one rake, and never turn a hair ! There 
 
23 ABOUT FOYS. 
 
 were few presents interchanged, none costly, at the 
 parting scenes. A comrade might present Jocky with 
 a " snuff-pen ; " or Meg or Jenny might extend the 
 gift of a riband — red, or green, or black — for Jocky's 
 watch. 
 
 Next morning about eight o'clock Jocky got away, 
 if he was on terms of good agreement with his master. 
 If not, he might be kept at his work till noon. He 
 was in high spirits ; his year's fee was in his pocket. 
 The ploughman was counted weirdless who broke on 
 his fee while it was in his master's hands. A " single " 
 ploughman had only two items of luggage — his kist 
 and his meal-stand. The latter was a padlocked 
 barrel for his oatmeal. These he would commission 
 the carrier to call for and convey to his new bothy. 
 Or, if he were removing only a few miles away, he 
 would himself fetch them in the evening with the help 
 of his new horse. His departure was quietly taken at 
 last. Sometimes two or three ploughmen, all leaving 
 together, would go in company for a mile or twain, 
 separating where their common road divided, or at 
 the quiet four-ways, each to his own destination at 
 some distant farm. Years might elapse till chance 
 brought them together again. 
 
HOGMANAY, 
 
 The customary observances at Hallowe'en, remarks 
 Carlyle, passed and re-passed in rude awe and laughter 
 from the times of the Druids without receiving poetical 
 commemoration till the genius of Burns once and for 
 all appropriated the interesting subject. A theme of 
 equal interest and as ancient and mysterious an origin 
 remains unutilised to this day in the usages and cere- 
 monies proper to Hogmanay. This hoary institution, 
 with which the iiation has not yet quite broken, was 
 celebrated, as every Scot even in this revolutionary 
 nineteenth century knows, on the last day of the 
 dying year. This used to be a day, more especially 
 in rural Scotland, of extreme sociality among friends 
 and " auld acquaintance," and of profuse, if somewhat 
 rough and ready, hospitality even to the stranger poor. 
 Every house of any pretension to prosperity and 
 respectability made the chance-comer welcome to 
 food and drink. The feehng of brotherhood seemed 
 to be general. The rich and the well-to-do seemed 
 on that day to make haste to entertain their, less for- 
 tunate brothers of mankind — in many instances they 
 would let them go only after loading them with gifts. 
 The respectable poor, on the other hand, laid aside 
 for the day their honest pride, that would not let them 
 
 23 
 
24 HOGMANA Y. 
 
 beg, and accepted that entertainment and those gifts 
 in the spirit in which they were offered. The cause 
 of this prevalent generosity of feehng, affecting all 
 classes, has long been matter of discussion, in which, 
 as was perhaps inevitable, the name of the institution 
 figured prominently. They find, for example, in 
 "Hogmanay" a corruption of the French words 
 " Homme est ne," and account for the public rejoic- 
 ings by a reference to the nativity of Christ. It is 
 supposed to be no bar to this interpretation of the 
 institution and name of Hogmanay that the traditional 
 anniversary of the birth of our Lord is the 25 th and 
 not the 31st of December. " Many superstitious ideas 
 and rites pertaining to Yule," says old Dr Jamieson, 
 " have been transferred to the last day of the year." 
 While some are satisfied with the theory of a Christian 
 origin for Hogmanay, others claim for both name and 
 institution a much more ancient descent. They trace 
 the word variously to a Celtic, a Scandinavian, a 
 German, even a Greek root, and agree only in this, 
 that the rejoicings associated with the name are of 
 Pagan birth. There seems to be some reason for 
 connecting Hogmanay with the gui or guy — to what- 
 ever speech the word originally belongs — the name 
 of the mystic mistletoe. But the whole subject of 
 derivation and original meaning is wrapt in obscurity. 
 One is on firmer and safer ground in speaking of 
 the manner in which Hogmanay was more recently 
 celebrated. 
 
 It has been said that customs properly belonging to 
 Yule, or Christmas, have been transferred to the last 
 day of the year. But the very term of "Yule" itself 
 
HOGMANAY. 25 
 
 "was synonymous with Hogmanay in many, if not most, 
 of the districts of central Scotland at the commence- 
 ment of the century. Certain it is that it was no 
 ■uncommon practice some sixty years ago to invite a 
 person to his "Yule," as the entertainment was called, 
 on the last day of December, in many parts of south- 
 ern Perthshire. It would be interesting to know 
 whether Yule was held in Ayrshire on the last night 
 of the old year in the time of Burns. If it was, then 
 Burns's only allusion to Hogmanay is under this name. 
 It -was on "blythe Yule nicht" that young Duncan 
 Gray came {sc. soberly) " to woo " Maggie, and it was 
 then that the too social company at the house of his 
 inamorata were undeniably drunk. * It was the 
 general practice — where the custom was known — for 
 the farmer to give his servants their "Yule" or 
 "Hogmanay" on the closing night of the old year. 
 This consisted at least of a dram of whisky, with 
 "cheese and bread." The same entertainment was 
 repeated on the first Monday morning of the new 
 year. A very noticeable feature of Hogmanay used 
 to be the numerous gangs of respectably-dressed 
 grown-up people, who, from early morning till night, 
 perambulated the countryside, " thigging." Churlish 
 and parsimonious farmers, like Nabal of old, spoke of 
 the practice as wholesale begging, and probably the 
 bad name they sought to fasten on the practice had 
 
 * It may have been on the same occasion, but of a much earlier 
 year, that Robin's Jock came to woo " our Jenny," and it is 
 interesting — if not satisfactory — to know that on that "feast 
 even" also the company were "fou." See The wooing of Jock 
 and Jenny, preserved by Eannatyne, printed in Ramsay's 
 Svergreen. 
 
26 HOGMANA Y. 
 
 the effect of checking it a good while before the 
 Legislature made begging a crime. It was mainly- 
 engaged in by the respectable poor, whose industry 
 kept them beyond need of parish support. As they 
 were resident in the district in which they practised 
 thigging, they were, of course, well known, and a good 
 reputation for respectability commonly stood them in 
 good stead. They carried with them bags and napkins 
 for the conveyance of the expected gifts. These 
 consisted in all cases of articles of food. At one farm- 
 stead a single thigger might have the gift of a peck, 
 or even two pecks, of oatmeal, or a cheese, or half a 
 ham, or a string of hog's puddings. As a rule, he did 
 not need to introduce himself; he would be welcomed 
 with the words, " Ye'll be come for your Hogmanay, 
 na?" By nightfall many thiggers who had been 
 supplied at each place of call on some such scale as 
 I have quoted would be laden like little "cuddies," 
 and have some difficulty in conveying their pro- 
 visions home. Liberality like this, freely offered as a 
 rule and frankly accepted, kept the neighbourhood in 
 good agreement for the rest of the year. The Yule 
 or Hogmanay thiggers were grown up; the Hansel 
 collectors, again, were chiefly young people, and the 
 gifts, freely enough bestowed upon them, were on a 
 much smaller scale — though, if numerous enough, the 
 sum total was considerable. 
 
 Another prime feature of a Hogmanay celebration 
 was "the guising." The "guisards" were maskers, 
 who, disguising their features and figure, visited their 
 friends and acquaintance by night, and made mirth 
 by singing, dancing, and acting, and by defying their 
 
HOGMANA Y. 27 
 
 entertainers to find out who they were. The practice 
 was in great favour with the youth of both sexes, who, 
 under cover of darkness, and with the freedom of a 
 perfect or even doubtful disguise, and stimulated 
 besides by the hilarious spirit of the season, occa- 
 sionally ran to licentious lengths in both speech 
 and action. Because of the scandal which seemed 
 inseparable from guising, the Church sternly opposed 
 the practice. If the Scots borrowed the custom of 
 guising at Yuletide, they were probably indebted to 
 France for it. In that country it was extremely 
 popular, and was conducted with such irreverence 
 that the Papal clergy were constrained — but to little 
 purpose — to interfere, and the practice was at last 
 prohibited by the civil law towards the end of the 
 seventeenth century. Guising in Scotland was the most 
 picturesque feature in the celebration of Hogmanay, 
 The maskers, who might be of any age from fifteen to 
 five-and-twenty, usually went in pairs, but gangs of 
 five or six were by no means uncommon. They 
 were, of course, variously disguised, nearly all 
 fantastically, and very many grotesquely. Sometimes, 
 but rarely, they were " got up " to represent brutes — • 
 the swine and ass being the favourites. The simplest 
 and easiest disguises were "cooming" the face with a 
 burnt cork, or anointing it with a mixture of grease 
 and soot, and turning the clothes of everyday wear 
 inside out. But an old military uniform or the cast 
 garments of old people of both sexes were to be seen 
 on figures equally unaccustomed to the upright bear- 
 ing of the soldier and the decrepitude of stooping age. 
 Wherever they came they sang, and their preference 
 
28 HOGMANA Y. 
 
 was usually for "character" songs, though any piece 
 that happened to be popular at the time was readily 
 drawn into their service. All classes; "wauf" and well- 
 to-do alike, were found among the guisards. Many 
 went masking for the fun of it, and were content 
 with the entertainment which was set before them in 
 the kitchens or parlours where they were received. 
 But those who were willing to accept gifts were 
 supplied with them, and money was sometimes added 
 to the ordinary gift of " singing " cakes and cheese. 
 Part of the fun — no inconsiderable part — on the 
 entertainers' side was to identify the guisards. Young 
 people of very tender age were allowed by their parents 
 to go a-guising, but never to houses more than 
 a few yards from their own homes. A little bodies' 
 lilt to intimate they would now be glad to have their 
 " Hogmanay " was 
 
 "Around the midden a' whippit a geese {sic) — 
 A'U sing nae mair till a' get a bit ' piece ! ' " 
 
 Older guisards, who were still new to the 'teens, were 
 more explicit : — 
 
 " Get up, gudewife ! (Lldfdige) and dinna be sweir, 
 An' deal your gear as long's you're here ; 
 The day will come when ye'll be dead, 
 And ye'll need neither meal nor bread." 
 
 But every district has its own repertoire of guisin'- 
 e'en rhymes, which might be worth the collecting 
 even yet. In towns the practice of guising is confined 
 to young children, who make it the merest excuse for 
 begging. They further seek to extend the practice 
 beyond its proper bounds. In the country also the 
 
HOGMANA Y. 29 
 
 younger guisards in their impatience would anticipate 
 the recognised date by a night or two. But the 
 practice received no encouragement from sticlders 
 for the regular game. The youngsters would be 
 dismissed ere they had well shown their smutted faces 
 or opened their mouths, with an " Awa' ; this is no 
 guisin'-e'en ! " 
 
 One or two strange domestic customs connected 
 with Hogmanay, and probably still practised, may be 
 noticed. One deals with fire, the other with water. 
 Great care was taken on the last night of the old 
 year not to let the fire die out in the grate. It was 
 " gathered," for the purpose of preserving it, by means 
 of peat or coal. No harm was supposed to attach to 
 letting the fire out per se ; but there was the well- 
 known difficulty of getting a light from a neighbour's 
 fire next morning. It was not only certain to be 
 grudged by the neighbour, but was likely to be refused. 
 The old " freit " or superstition on the subject declared 
 that whoever gave fire from his house on New Year's 
 Day would have his house burned over his head before 
 the year was out. 
 
 The "water" custom of Hogmany night was to 
 slip from the house when the clock pronounced the 
 doom of the old year, and, pitcher in hand, make for 
 the nearest well in time to secure, before any of your 
 neighbours, what was variously called the " crap," the 
 " floo'er," and the " ream " of the water for the New 
 Year just begun. The custom was restricted to the 
 women of the hamlet or homestead ; in some local- 
 ities only the young unmarried women. The ream 
 of the well brought good fortune for the year. Some 
 
30 HOGMANAY. 
 
 antiquaries connect this, and the " fire " superstition, 
 with classical usages of ancient Italy. Be that as it 
 may, the " water " custom was still active, in my own 
 knowledge, in a Perthshire hamlet not many years 
 ago. The winner of the " well ream " for the year 
 was known as the wife " wha gaed to the water wi' a 
 pitcher an' brocht hame the ream o't in her pooch ! " 
 A wreath of snow lay across the well-mouth, conceal- 
 ing the limit of safety, and like poor Leezie in 
 " Halloween "— 
 
 "In the pool 
 Out owre the lugs she plumpit 
 Wi' a plunge that nicht ! " 
 
HANSEL AND HANSEL-MONDAY. 
 
 " O gie the student his degree, 
 The advocate his hansel fee ! " 
 
 In the time of Allan Ramsay the term hansel in its 
 ordinary use signified, in Ramsay's own words, " the 
 first money that the merchant gets." This meaning 
 of the word, exactly as Ramsay restricted it, still 
 obtains among the old - fashioned shopkeepers 
 (merchants by courtesy) of the High Street of 
 Edinburgh. The first coin received into the retail 
 trader's till of a Monday morning is regarded as the 
 hansel of the week's drawings. "How's business 
 to-day, Mr Luckenbooth ? " asks Mr Traveller in his 
 cheery way on a Monday forenoon. "Just deein' 
 awa'," replies the despondent merchant ; " my till's 
 gapin' for its hansel yet ! " It is interesting to 
 observe that there is a good deal of the original 
 meaning of the word in the shopkeeper's use of it. 
 It is undoubtedly in its origin a commercial term. 
 Clearly, the composition of the word is " hand " and 
 " sell." As thus compounded, it probably applied to 
 a transaction of primitive barter, in which the articles 
 exchanged passed at once into the hands of the 
 contracting parties. It was delivery (i.e. sale) by 
 hand the moment the bargain was made. The next 
 
 31 
 
32 HANSEL AND HANSEL-MONDAY. 
 
 Stage in the development of the word was apparently 
 to apply it to the first instalment of a bargain. A 
 portion or sample "of the goods was handed over t& 
 the purchaser, in earnest or as arles (the two words 
 are identical) that the rest of the goods would follow 
 in due course. As thus described, the ceremony of 
 handselling — minus the sample or first instalment — 
 may be seen any market day, where a couple of 
 farmers are concluding a bargain. As everybody 
 knows, this is done by touching or shaking hands. 
 The bargain-makers do not necessarily part company 
 at such a hand-shaking. It is not the ceremony of 
 leave-taking that is gone through, but the empty form 
 (which, however, is held as binding) of making oifer 
 on the one hand and accepting on the other. The 
 hand-clasping at a marriage ceremony has the same 
 meaning. 
 
 From its original commercial use, the word was 
 soon applied in other relations. Thus, on the 
 authority of Jamieson, a piece of bread eaten before 
 breakfast used to be called a morning hansel by the 
 people of Galloway. The stomach received an arles. 
 that a full meal was in preparation. It will be in the 
 knowledge of every Scotsman that Burns's auld farmer 
 hanselled in the New Year to his auld mare with a 
 ripp of corn — i.e., with a few handfuls of unthreshed 
 oats. The gift was by way of promise or earnest 
 to " Maggie " that her master should not see her come 
 to want in the ensuing year — that her "auld days 
 would not end in starvin'." And, indeed, though the 
 action meant that, the auld farmer confirmed it with 
 words of explicit tenderness — 
 
HANSEL AND HANSEL-MONDAY. 33 
 
 " My last fow— 
 
 A heapit stimpart I'll reserve ane, 
 
 Laid by for you." 
 
 Which means that if misfortune were to reduce him 
 to his last bushel he should take good care to set 
 aside a good half-peck of it for his "auld trusty 
 servan'." 'Hansel is sometimes employed to signify 
 the first act of using anything. Thus, at a railway 
 station near Buckhaven the other day, a buxom iisher 
 lassie was heard lamenting the loss of her umbrella : — 
 " It was its hansel ootin' — its first hoist ! " 
 
 The first Monday of the New Year has long been 
 known in Scotland, more especially the northern half 
 of the Lowlands, as Hansel-Monday, from the cus- 
 tom among people of the working class of asking 
 or ■ receiving gifts or hansel from their well-to-do 
 neighbours, and from each other, on that day. It 
 lingers in those rural districts where Christmas may 
 pass unmentioned, and where New Year's Day is only 
 marked by the luxury of an unaccustomed dram, and 
 the interchange of good wishes at the libation of it. 
 The sticklers for the retention of the Hansel-Monday 
 festivities reckon, of course, by the old style ; but the 
 introduction in some quarters of the new way of 
 reckoning, and the growing popularity of Christmas 
 and New Year's Day, the latter especially, are con- 
 fining the old-fashioned holiday of old Hansel-Monday 
 to a continually diminishing area, and the probability is 
 that the twentietji century, which is already within cry, 
 will make quick and quiet work in dispatching it. 
 
 While the practice of hanselling and being hanselled 
 was not so long ago pretty universal in the country, 
 
 c 
 
34 HANSEL AND HANSEL-MONDAY. 
 
 and dates from times as ancient as Arthur of the 
 Round Table (if I mistake not, there are incidental 
 references to the practice at the court of King Arthur 
 in the old metrical romances), the allocation of the 
 first Monday of the year for the observance of the 
 custom by servants calls for some explanation. It 
 may be that the festivities of the first day of the year, 
 as celebrated by the lords of the land, required the 
 performance of extra duties by their servants, and 
 that the latter had their turn of rejoicing and holiday- 
 making on the first Monday after those festivities. 
 This explanation hardly meets the case at all points, 
 for when New Year's Day happens to fall on a Monday, 
 it is kept in some districts as Hansel-Monday, while 
 in others the holiday is deferred to the Monday fol- 
 lowing. It is thus a dispute whether Hansel-Monday 
 is properly to be held on the first Monday of the New 
 Year or on the first Monday after New Year's Day. 
 The determination of the point must affect my 
 explanation. 
 
 On farms, Hansel-Monday where it is kept is the 
 great winter holiday of the year. Outdoor and indoor 
 servants alike have a complete escape from bondage 
 for the day, and many a farmer will own that the 
 hardest day's work for him and his wife throughout 
 the year occurs on Hansel-Monday. The necessary 
 labours of the farm have to be done on that day by 
 the members of his own household. Use and wont 
 has given the day to his servants. Not only has he 
 himself to help fill their place, but he is expected to 
 hansel them, from foreman to herdboy, and part of 
 the hansel almost invariably includes a gift of a little 
 
HANSEL AND HANSEL- MONDAY. 35 
 
 money. In one view of the matter, it is a whole- 
 some reversal of relations between rustics and their 
 employers. A notable feature of the manner in 
 which country people celebrate Hansel-Monday is 
 their evident desire to enjoy the whole twenty-four 
 hours of the holiday. They are astir at the sma' 
 hours after midnight, and it is near midnight again 
 before they think of lying down. In their impatience 
 to have the holiday commence, young people usually 
 waken the villages by kicking old tin pans at unearthly 
 hours of the morning through the quiet streets. There- 
 after they begin a house-to-house visitation for gifts, 
 while their awakened elders spend the day in feasting 
 and drinking ; taking part in raffles for currant loaves, 
 watches wheelbarrows, or pigs ; and drinking toddy 
 in turn at each others' houses in the evening. 
 
ST VALENTINE'S DAY. 
 
 " Yestreen at the valentines' dealing 
 My heart to my mou' gied a sten, 
 For thrice I drew ane without failing, 
 And thrice it was written — Tarn Glen!" 
 
 The practice to which these well-known lines of 
 Burns refer has clean passed away. It was common 
 enough when they were written — now one hundred 
 years ago — and in rural districts of Scotland was 
 probably universal. In these districts it has lingered 
 longest ; and there must be many old or elderly 
 persons amongst us who remember in their . youth 
 taking part in the practice. The century, when it was 
 still among the "thirties," looked with no disfavour 
 upon the rustic merriment that attended a " valentines' 
 dealing." But its own inventions and scientific 
 discoveries, its projects and its anticipations, have had 
 the effect of breaking its connection with many a 
 traditional and time-honoured institution, of which the 
 great annual lovers' festival of St Valentine's Eve was 
 one. Nobody keeps vigil for the 14th of February 
 now. The festival has gone even more clean and 
 completely than its more antiquated but not more 
 joyous sister institutions of Hallowe'en and Hogmanay. 
 The favourite sports and customs of this inventive 
 36 
 
ST VALENTINE'S DAY. 37 
 
 nineteenth century are almost entirely those of its 
 own creation. It has broken with the mirth and 
 sociahty of the past more effectually than any of its 
 predecessors. 
 
 It was the custom in every rustic community when 
 Scotland was still ancient — that is, less than a century 
 ago — for one or more companies of young unmarried 
 folks of both sexes to meet together on St Valentine's 
 Eve, in the house of one or other of their more socially- 
 inclined neighbours, for the purpose of trying the 
 award of fate in a drawing of valentines. The 
 arrangements for the frolic were of the simplest. Yet 
 they were sufficiently effective to secure a gathering. 
 Then, at least, it was true that in the spring the young 
 folks' fancy " lightly turned to thoughts of love." It 
 was only necessary to provide two bags and a quantity 
 of tickets bearing the names of eligible individuals well 
 known in the community. The bachelors of the rustic 
 gathering drew from the bag containing the female 
 names, while the maids drew from that which held the 
 names of the bachelors. At some assemblies the 
 names were limited to the individuals constituting the 
 company ; but as it seldom happened that the company 
 was equally composed of members of both sexes, and 
 as it was necessary for the proper observance of the 
 festival that each person should be provided with a 
 mate, it was not unusual to add the names of 
 absentees. Some of the absentees were — from 
 advanced age, or evil temper, or bodily deformity or 
 defect — anything but desirable partners : a circum- 
 stance which, of course, heightened the interest of the 
 drawing, and gave greater variety to the blind awards 
 
38 ST valentine's day. 
 
 of the " poke " of destiny. Delight or dissatisfaction 
 rarely failed to show itself in the countenances of the 
 drawers, even when they sought to conceal the name 
 on the ticket. One of two things could be inferred 
 from the concealment of a name that had been drawn 
 — either that fate's award was the object of special 
 dislike or even aversion, or was the object of sincere 
 but secret affection. It was usual to make appeal to 
 the decision of the lot three times (they did the same 
 in the "luggie" ceremonial at Hallowe'en) for 
 better assurance of the will of fate ; and his or her 
 lot was, of course, fixed beyond all alteration who 
 drew — as did Tam Glen's sweetheart — the one name 
 " thrice without failing." As a rule, the result of each 
 person's drawing was known to the rest ; and it 
 occasionally happened that the bashfulness of young 
 people, quite prepared to become mutual lovers, was 
 overcome by the decision of St Valentine, and that in 
 this way real engagements were formed which by and 
 by matured into matrimony. Married people, espe- 
 cially wives, belonging to the neighbourhood, attended 
 those gatherings, and showed, as passive but by no 
 means silent spectators, an interest in the awards of 
 the love-lottery as keen as that of the most active of 
 the young folks for whose behoof the day of St 
 Valentine had been appointed. They encouraged the 
 bashful girl and bantered the conceited bachelor, and 
 generally kept the fun and excitement from flagging 
 often till a late hour of the night. When the lottery 
 was at last over, and some were happy, while some 
 were disappointed, and all were excited, the homely 
 entertainment of a few " girdle " cakes and a 
 
sr valentine's day. 39 
 
 "twalpenny's worth o nappy 
 Wad inak' the bodies unco happy." 
 
 They became hilarious, and sang and danced it off to 
 the late long hour, heedless of the scowl of the Kirk, 
 which was (neither divinely nor humanly) inimical to 
 late hours, and expressly hostile to what it called 
 promiscuous dancing. 
 
 This resort to lot and good St Valentine for a lover 
 was by no means confined to rustic communities in 
 Scotland. It was known and practised in England, 
 and in several countries on the Continent, in mediaeval 
 times, and was very much in vogue among people of 
 rank and riches in the 15th and i6th centuries. It 
 seems to have been usual then for the lovers to 
 exchange presents, and to maintain a kind of chivalrous 
 bearing towards each other, of a nature which has 
 been compared to the relation that existed between a 
 knight of romance and his ladye-love, for at least one 
 year — that is, till St Valentine permitted and provided 
 a change. In the reign of the Merry Monarch it 
 would seem from the Diary of that prince of tattlers, 
 Mr Pepys, that married people could take part in the 
 celebrations of St Valentine's Eve, and that the custom 
 of presenting gifts had sunk, through inability or 
 refusal to accept the award of the Saint, into the pay- 
 ment of forfeits — similar to the mail which spinsters, 
 if they choose, may, in certain circumstances, levy 
 on a 29th of February, only much costlier. 
 
 The practice of sending " valentine" letters by post 
 was a later feature of the celebration of St Valentine's 
 Day. It has not yet entirely disappeared, but every 
 twelvemonth there is all over the country, in regions 
 
40 ST VALENTINES DAY. 
 
 where the custom lingers, a sensible diminution in the 
 number of those fragrant billets. Whilom they were 
 of aggregate bulk enough to break the postman's back ; 
 now he can carry them in the pocket of his vest, if the 
 Government allow him one. Serving maids and men, 
 but especially the former, in our larger towns, and a 
 fraction of the peasantry inhabiting the more forlorn 
 parishes, are the modern representatives — few in num- 
 ber — of those ancient lovers who yearly sought'out and 
 saluted their mates by favour of the post. Their mis- 
 sives, though calling in the art of both painter and 
 poet, had yet a certain monotony of features which, 
 for want of development, helped, we think, in some 
 measure to put an end to the custom. The painter or 
 designer confined himself to the representation of a 
 pair of genteel lovers ; a fat Cupid or two, drawing 
 vigorous bows ; and the never-failing emblem of a 
 brace of bleeding hearts, pitifully pinned together. 
 Roses filled the foreground, and a church-spire rose 
 up as a signal of hope and help in the rear. The 
 poet's part of the work was to condense as much 
 sweet sentiment into two or four lines of verse as — 
 with the aid of the united Nine, no doubt — he could 
 possibly manage. 
 
 " The rose is red, the violet's blue, 
 Honey's sweet, and so are you !" 
 
 This was to the point without being epigrammatic. 
 Or in a less luscious and direct, but more tender and 
 somewhat forgetful strain — 
 
 ' ' Look on those eyes that ever gaze 
 With truth and love on thine, 
 The voice that wearies not in praise 
 Of thee, my valentine." 
 
sr valentine's day. 41 
 
 (" He goes but to see a voice which he heard," says 
 Peter Quince in the play !) We quote from a dainty 
 but frail old print, with a deep border of paper lace- 
 work, and a thin garland of roses and violets, enclosing 
 the portrait of a languishing young Romeo-Adonis, 
 whose eyes may be truthful and loving, but whose 
 voice is scarcely visible. There can be no doubt that 
 many an honest, simple-minded rustic, whose heart 
 was seriously affected, believed in the institution and 
 efficacy of the postal valentine. The male specimen — ; 
 always the more lavish — has been known to expend 
 five shillings, or even more, upon the print which best 
 expressed his fears and hopes, his general unworthiness, 
 and his particular wishes ; painfully to smear in the 
 letters of his own name and those of his charmer ; and 
 with much sheep-stealing-like secrecy to commit the 
 missive to the hands of the waylaid postman. Happy 
 if in return he received a sixpenny leaf from his 
 Dulcinea ! to take odd peeps at it among the February 
 furrows, and at last to consign it to the " locker " of 
 his kist as a valuable treasure scarcely inferior to his 
 whole year's fee. Ridiculous and vulgar valentines 
 came in among all this sweetly sentimental sort, and 
 hastened that decay of the postal valentine which the 
 monotony of the artists' imagery had already com- 
 menced. The Christmas card — a formidable rival, cap- 
 able of expansive development, and of universal use 
 throughout Christendie — crept rapidly into favour, and 
 the valentine was doomed. It may be that, unless the 
 card keep clear of the threatening taint of vulgarity, 
 its doom may follow that of the valentine. 
 
 " AVho was St Valentine ? " is a question often asked 
 
42 ST valentine's day. 
 
 and often unanswered. Why he was selected to be 
 the patron saint of youthful lovers is the more' difficult 
 query to answer. That he was a Christian priest who 
 suffered martyrdom in pagan Rome, in the second or 
 third century of our era, is generally believed ; and we 
 have the further information that he was killed with 
 clubs and then decapitated, and that his death occurred 
 some time in February. It was, I think. Douce 
 in his " Illustrations of Shakespeare " that first con- 
 nected the " valentines' dealing " with a very similar 
 feature of the old Roman festival of the Lupercal, held 
 in the middle of February. It has been suggested 
 that the Church, being unable to abolish the popular 
 old pagan custom of the Lupercalian games, contrived 
 {suo more) to give them a Christian aspect by placing 
 them under the presidency of a saint to whom a day 
 in mid-February was dedicated. The Church had no 
 choice ; Valentine was the only saint in its calendar 
 associated with February. Similarly the Scandinavian 
 celebration of Yule was converted into the religious 
 institution of Christmas. 
 
 It is out of place here to do more than refer to the 
 many allusions to St Valentine's Day and its usages 
 which are to be found in the pages of poet, romancer, 
 and essayist, from Chaucer and Shakespeare continu- 
 ously down to Charles Lamb and Sir Walter Scott. 
 St Valentine had an ephemeral literature in the days 
 of the missives. He has the honour of a standard 
 literature of goodly bulk besides. 
 
ALL FOOLS' DAY. 
 
 It is with a touch of characteristic humour that 
 Lamb, in the delightful essays of Elia, makes inci- 
 dental reference to All Fools' Day as "the general 
 holiday." The expression may be said to imply 
 sarcasm, but there is no sting in it — for it covers the 
 speaker. It is genial and gently insinuated. As 
 genially inclusive but more explicit is the testimony 
 of Sir Walter: "All Fools' Day, the only saint that 
 keeps up some degree of credit in the world; for 
 fools we are with a vengeance." How different is the 
 direct denunciation of Carlyle, that the population of 
 these islands — a representative community — amounts 
 to so many millions, " mostly fools ! " One is certain 
 the grim censor did not include himself. 
 
 There is a time for everything, says Solomon ; and 
 the world, in addition to indiscriminate and mostly un- 
 seasonable indulgence of the frailty, has even set apart 
 a statutory time for the practice of folly. Even the 
 grave and ponderous Roman, dominus orbis terrarum, 
 stooped to hy-jinks, and found it sweet in its place ; 
 he permitted the Saturnalia, when Davus domineered, 
 and he donned the demeanour of Davus, and topsy- 
 turvydom reigned in the social world. Christianity, 
 which put an end to the folly of Pagan worship, found 
 
 43 
 
44 ALL fools' day. 
 
 it a harder task to suppress the folly of Pagan fun, and 
 was fain to compound for the loss of its dignity by a 
 nominal control of the popular instinct. From the 
 compromise are said to have sprung the institutions of 
 Christmas and Hogmanay, and the figures of the 
 Monks of Misrule and the Abbots of Unreason, and 
 other similar medieval phenomena. All Fools' Day, 
 which for some centuries now has been associated 
 with the first day of April, is believed by many to have 
 been one of those phenomena. Nobody needs to be 
 told that the essential feature of the celebration of All 
 Fools' Day is to dispatch the simple or the unwary on 
 some meaningless message or absurd errand. This 
 feature of the festival is supposed .to have been 
 caught, by the old unregenerate heathen appetite for 
 fun, out of the mysteries or miracle plays by means of 
 which the early Church sought to combine religious 
 instruction and amusement for the benefit of the 
 masses. A favourite subject for such entertainment 
 at Easter was the trial of Christ, in the course of 
 which the impersonator of Jesus was sent backwards 
 and forwards from tribunal to tribunal — from Caiaphas 
 to Annas and from Herod to Pilate — in endless 
 journeys, until it was decided in whose jurisdiction 
 the trial was to proceed. The rude mob, it is argued, 
 saw exquisite fun in those endless wanderings, and 
 took to imitating it in the privacy of their own 
 neighbourhood by practising upon some witless or 
 simple-minded acquaintance. By and by the custom, 
 from the very first an Easter one, got to be definitely 
 associated with an easily remembered^'date, the ist of 
 April; and the connection once established, has 
 
ALL fools' day. 45 
 
 existed ever since. This explanation is probably more 
 ingenious than genuine. 
 
 The Romans had their indulgence of foolery, as by 
 law appointed, in December at the Feast of Saturn ; 
 over most, if not all, Europe at the present time, and 
 for the last four or five centuries at least, the time for 
 this indulgence has been fixed at the first day of 
 April. It is impossible to say authoritatively when 
 or why the change was made. Of course, it is 
 possible that European contemporary nations of the 
 Saturnalian age at Rome had their Fools' Festival, 
 north of the Danube or west of the Rhine, at a 
 different time of the year, perhaps even at a time 
 corresponding to our ist of April. It is certainly 
 curious, and to the ethnologist suggestive, that from 
 time immemorial the inhabitants of India, of all ranks, 
 races, and rehgions, have kept a holiday of the same 
 kind and at much the same season as All Fools' Day. 
 This is the festival (in honour of Krishna and his son 
 Kama, the god of love) variously known as the Holi, 
 Huli, or Hulica. It begins about the middle of 
 March, and continues for fifteen days, a special effort 
 to accentuate the festival being reserved for the last 
 day — which, it should be observed, is the day 
 preceding the ist of April. In the larger towns the 
 British have restricted the holiday season, for various 
 obvious reasons, to a couple of days or so. A learned 
 authority on the large and labyrinthine subject of 
 Hindoo Mythology writes as follows : " The Huli 
 among the Hindus reminds one strongly of the Saturn- 
 alia with the Romans ; people of low condition take 
 liberties with their superiors in a manner not admissible 
 
4.6 ALL FOOL^ DAY. 
 
 on other occasions. The chief fun in public is 
 throwing coloured powders on the clothes of persons 
 passing in the streets, and squirting about tinted 
 waters. . . . Sending simpletons on idle errands 
 contributes also to the delights of the Huli, and this is 
 performed exactly similar to our English ceremony of 
 making April Fools on the first of that month, and is 
 common to all ranks of Hindus ; and Mohammedans 
 join in it." Elsewhere he writes : " During the 
 whole period of fifteen days the people go about 
 scattering powder and red liquor over each other, 
 singing, and dancing, and annoying passengers by 
 mischievous tricks, coarse witticisms, and vulgar 
 abuse." 
 
 Each country in Europe would seem to have its 
 own way of designating the simple-minded victim of 
 the ist of April. He is in France an April fish, in 
 England an April fool, and a gowk in Scotland. The 
 time-honoured institution of " fool-making " in England 
 is as active as ever it was. But the practice, as in 
 Scotland, is now chiefly confined to young folks and 
 rustics. The liberties taken by the practitioners of 
 the pastime are ridiculous, but harmless enough. 
 Punch's sketch is a representative one. " Fust of 
 Hapril, sir ! " says boy in buttons, with a grin, as his 
 high and mighty master breaks an empty egg at the 
 breakfast table. To pin a piece of paper to the coat- 
 tail of a grave senior; to leave on his back an 
 impression in chalk of the legend To Let ; to arrest 
 his attention by the untruthful announcement that he 
 has dropped his diary ; at worst, to convey to him, with 
 a serious face, the false message that Mr This or Mrs 
 
ALL FOOLS DAY. 47 
 
 That would like to see him immediately on a matter of 
 importance — is generally the amount of the roguery. 
 Now and again an absent-minded philosopher or 
 simple-minded Nathanael is entrapped — without an 
 occasional victim the game would die out — and great 
 is the delight of the trickster. The victim, if he be 
 wise, or has at least some lingering vestiges in his heart 
 ofa vanished youth-time, takes the innocent deception 
 good-humouredly, as a sensible man in a frequented 
 thoroughfare takes the liberty of the wind with his 
 fugitive hat. 
 
 The age of the institution of fool-making in Eng- 
 land has never been clearly made out. There are 
 few traces of it in literature * or the social history of 
 the country before the seventeenth century. Swift's 
 ineffectual attempt to make April fools of fashionable 
 London, by starting an absurd rumour, is well known. 
 The great Dean was fond to' a fault of practical 
 joking, and if the project failed it was neither his nor 
 his footman's fault; his fellow-conspirators forgot or 
 neglected their part of the plot. 
 
 In Scotland the victim of an idle errand is called a 
 gowk, and is said to "gang the gowk's ^rend." 
 Occasionally the daft-like errand consumes a solid day. 
 As thus : Tammas, a sober and respectable peasant, 
 who takes life somewhat too seriously, departs in his 
 Sunday coat with a letter purporting (believe the 
 apprentice ! ) to come from the local grocer, and 
 
 * Congreve, in The Old Bachelor, defines an April fool as a 
 person who is " always upon some errand that's to no purpose, 
 ever embarking in adventures, yet never coming to harbour." — 
 Heartwell in Act I. scene iv. 
 
48 ALL FOOLS' DAY. 
 
 addressed to a bonnet laird living some six or eight 
 miles in the virgin wilderness. The laird spells his 
 way silently through the enclosure (" Give the gowk 
 his dinner and send him on ! "), and, being equal to 
 the occasion, keeps a composed countenance, scrawls 
 a similar missive to a distant neighbour, and dispatches 
 the gowk with it, perhaps six miles farther into a 
 dreary upland of whaaps and whins. The game goes 
 on while daylight endures, and at last, on the stroke 
 of curfew, the half-suspicious and wholly bewildered 
 wanderer returns to the local grocer, having accom- 
 plished his destined rounds. The local grocer reads 
 the note he brings, and at a glance perceives the 
 posture of affairs. He asks the bearer if he knows 
 what is in the note, and handing it to him, remarks, 
 in a tone meant to be conciliatory — "Ye ken, Tammas, 
 this is the first of Aprile ; but ye've gotten a braw day 
 an' a fine view o' the country ! " Meanwhile the 
 grocer's apprentice, though it is " shutting-up " time, 
 suddenly finds something to do at the farthest end of 
 the village. 
 
 The connection of the gowk with the first of April 
 is commonly, I believe, misunderstood. "Gowk" 
 in Scotland has long been synonymous with " fool." 
 "You may think me rather foolishly employed," 
 wrote young Michael Bruce to a correspondent (in a 
 letter, by the way, of considerable literary significance), 
 "for I am writing a sang about a gowk." The refer- 
 ence is believed to be to the famous "Ode to the 
 Cuckoo," attributed by some to the Kinneswood 
 poet's younger companion, John Logan. In England 
 also, for at least three centuries, a stupid person has 
 
ALL fools' day. 49 
 
 now and again been called "cuckoo." "O' horse- 
 back, ye cuckow ! " says Falstaff, correcting a mis- 
 apprehension of Prince Hal's. But naturalists tell us 
 the gowk is rather rogue than fool. It makes its 
 home in another bird's nest; it practises on the 
 simplicity of its neighbours. Leaving its parental cares 
 to others, it 
 
 " makes on joyful wing, 
 Its annual visit round the globe. 
 Companion of the spring. " 
 
 To go the gowk's errand may mean to go, like it, 
 wandering from land to land without coming to any 
 settlement. More probably to go the gowk's errand 
 is to go for the bird — to find and fetch it. This is 
 no easy matter, for the bird is both shy and rare ; its 
 ubiquity is only apparent. Its note is loud, unique, 
 and ventriloquialj it is "at once far off and near." It 
 was an invisible mystery to Wordsworth, who had 
 keen eyes and long acquaintance with country objects. 
 Its cry made him " look a thousand ways in bush, and 
 tree, and sky." Not many have seen a live cuckoo. 
 Its " curious shout " may attract the attention of every 
 individual in a district, but it is probably the shout of 
 one bird after all. There may have been a transfer- 
 ence of the bird's name to the person sent to find and 
 fetch the bird, i.e., dispatched on a vain and idle 
 errand. 
 
THE KING'S BIRTHDAY IN EDINBURGH 
 A HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 
 
 Of all holidays dear to the civic heart there was, 
 once on a day, none to match in the ancient capital 
 the festival of the King's Birthday. We are, I trust, 
 none the less a loyal people, and we have probably as 
 great a capacity for the enjoyment of holidays, but we 
 are less demonstrative in the expression of our loyalty, 
 and our holiday delight, than were our buoyant fore- 
 fathers of merry memory. Perhaps we know more, 
 and think more ; we certainly take our pleasure less 
 hilariously. A pale cast has crept over the native hue. 
 We are older and doucer. If we go through the 
 ceremonial of joy which tradition has sanctioned, it is 
 with something of the sadness, at least the seriousness, 
 of a religious duty; it is often done perfunctorily; 
 almost, indeed, mechanically. And now and again, 
 as the swift years glide, we perceive with a sigh a part 
 of the time-honoured ceremonial drop away ; but we 
 make no effort to retain it, or it falls without being 
 perceived. The bundle of tradition gets less and less, 
 and its original bulk is only known to him who returns 
 to glean the travelled path. 
 
 The anniversary of the Royal birthday has been 
 associated in the popular mind with summer weather 
 50 
 
THE king's birthday. 51 
 
 for now considerably more than a century. The 
 month of its observance in the long reign of George 
 
 III. was June ; it was August in the times of George 
 
 IV. and the latest William, and the city has now cele- 
 brated its fifty-seventh May holiday under Victoria. 
 It is unnecessary to describe the present method of 
 keeping the holiday in Edinburgh. The professions 
 of law and arms, following Court guidance, did their 
 rejoicing on Wednesday, each in its own characteristic 
 way j the former ceased from wrangling and sank into 
 silence, while the latter thundered and volleyed its 
 ecstasy, over the town. On Thursday, Church and 
 Education took their pastime, in processions through 
 the streets and excursions to the country ; while 
 Trade scarcely half shut its shop, and Labour toiled 
 on, with only a casual and regardless glance at its festive 
 brethren. There was a display of the military, and in 
 the evening of rockets and such other fiery manifesta- 
 tions of juvenile mirth as squibs and bonfires. An 
 uproarious excursionist or two, raucous, and redolent 
 of rural inns, disturbed the street at midnight. Then 
 came peace, emphasised by the patrolling boot. The 
 Queen had entered upon another year of her long 
 reign. 
 
 A hundred years ago the holiday was observed with 
 more unanimity and heartiness. George the Third was 
 King, and had already reigned for thirty-four years. 
 The festival was held on the 4th day of June. It was 
 called, indeed, " The Fourth of June " as often as it was 
 called " The King's Birthday." This was owing partly to 
 the long reign and partly to the holiday being regularly 
 and rigidly kept on the right birthday. The fun, with 
 
52 THE king's birthday. 
 
 its concomitant noise and bustle in the streets of Old 
 Edinburgh, seems to have been extreme. It was a 
 hurly-burly past describing ; one had to see it to know- 
 it. Fergusson, the city laureate, referring to the year 
 1770 or '71, doubted if even in London there was such 
 a display of joyously reckless loyalty as animated the 
 soul and body of Auld Reekie on the King's Birthday. ' 
 He quite approved of it in the main, and spoke of it 
 with pride. He was 
 
 " Fain to think the joy the same 
 In Lunnon toon as here at hame." 
 
 The universally-recognised method of holiday-making 
 in the ancient capital then included, as an essential 
 element thereof, copious and consecutive drams. It 
 was an article of the city creed that drinking and tippling 
 were the "stoops" of enjoyment. How could people 
 rejoice without the countenance of Bacchus ? the native 
 Bacchus — not the wine god ; Bacchus in tartan ! How 
 could they sing without " whiskey to scour their 
 hawses ? " Yoimg and old, rags and rank, blind and 
 cripple, began the festival and kept it up with strong 
 drink. And there was no liquor question ; even the 
 clergy were sound on the subject, or regarded it as 
 secular and beyond the pulpit pale. 
 
 The Auld Kirk shook its bells. St Giles, the 
 tutelary saint of the city — that is, the old town (the 
 new town disowned his guardian care — no wonder he 
 scowls on Princes Street *), piped to the dancing of 
 his "royd" but faithful bairns by "screeding them 
 
 * It was at first proposed to name Princes Street St Giles' 
 Street. 
 
THE ICINCfS BIRTHDAY. 53 
 
 aflf a loyal tune." The old Castle on the rock by and 
 by added its encouragement to the general rejoicing. 
 The national flag was run up ; the regulation salute 
 broke, in smoke and thunder, from the battery ; and, 
 as if managed by clockwork, out came "the sodger 
 blades and cocked their musket." There was 
 universal regret that Mons Meg could not join her' 
 note to the general joy. How she would have 
 astonished the country herds of Fife and the nowte 
 on the distant Ochils ! Alas ! she had cracked her voice 
 a century before, doing honour to a Duke of York. 
 
 Whisky, and the Castle guns, and St Giles and his 
 (new) peal of bells are still with us, and are still — 
 though with diminished effect — acceptable auxiliaries 
 in the celebration of a Royal Birthday in Edinburgh. 
 But one notable feature in the ceremonial of the 
 olden time has vanished for ever. The Commissioner's 
 Walk — with all courtesy, the gathering of the sable 
 Assembly — with all reverence be it spoken ! do not 
 make amends for the want of it ! We have the red 
 coats and the black coats, but where are the Blue 
 Gowns ? Alack ! mendicancy is a crime ; even the 
 aristocracy of the order, as Sir Walter phrased it, the 
 king's bedesmen, the chartered and privileged beggars, 
 the Edie Ochiltrees, have been overreached by that 
 merciless measure of the Statute book, and are not. 
 Their memory and their name are gone. Last 
 century about this time they were not yet past their 
 full glory on the King's Birthday. Let it be under- 
 stood I speak of the year 1794. That year there were 
 neither more nor less than thirty-four Blue Gowns 
 or privileged gaberlunzies in Scotland. , On the 
 
54 THE KINC^S BIRTHDAY. 
 
 morning of the 4th of June they were assembled with 
 one more from different and even distant parts of 
 braid Scotland — a picturesque throng of venerable 
 but tattered forms — and then stood in front of 
 Holyrood waiting for their livery of a new light blue 
 gown, to which was attached a pewter badge, and their 
 pension of fifty-six shillings Scots handed to each of 
 them in a twalpenny leather purse by the King's 
 ofBcer, who figures in the older records of the 
 Scottish Exchequer as the Royal " Eleemosynar." 
 The institution of " the Blue-gown bodies " was a 
 Scottish one, unknown to other countries. There 
 was one for every year the Sovereign had reigned, 
 and the pension (in addition to the yearly gift of a 
 new cloak of " blew claith lined with harden ") was a 
 shilling Scots — that is, a penny sterling, for every 
 year the King had lived. They were in return 
 expected to pray for the King's health, and it was of 
 course their interest to pray for a long reign, hence 
 they were known as the King's Bedesmen. Robert 
 Fergusson draws a graphic picture of their appearance 
 in Edinburgh on the Fourth, just before they assumed 
 the new livery provided for them. They were in the 
 last extremity of ruined raggedness — 
 
 " Like scarecraws new taen down fra woodies." 
 
 However, a transformation was soon made. They 
 flung off their clouted "duds," and got their pay, 
 and then 
 
 " What magistrate mair prood is 
 On King's birthday ? " 
 
 But they had other gear that day to gather. After 
 the Royal bounty was received, they formed in 
 
THE KlN(fS BIRTHDAY. 55 
 
 procession in the Palace yard and marched up 
 Canongate and High Street — not unlike a certain 
 other procession of greater pretensions — to the 
 Tolbooth, and there, at the north wall, were presented 
 by the Town Council with another service of leather 
 purses and twalpennies. Thereafter they proceeded 
 to the High Church, or Cathedral Church of St Giles, 
 and were preached to, or at, by one of His Majesty's 
 chaplains. Scott records that he had heard from one 
 of the preachers that the Blue Gowns made a most 
 inattentive audience. Their inattentiveness was 
 doubtless the result of impatience, of both a particular 
 and a general kind. In a general way they, as 
 " gangrels," were impatient of restraint ; and as they 
 were probably " fasting from all but sin," they had a 
 particular reason to be impatient of a long address 
 on duties which they either knew or never meant to 
 discharge. Immediately after the sermon they were 
 led to a substantial meal, and having discussed it, 
 they were free again to wander and squander over 
 the length and breadth of the land, to scorn the 
 supposed comforts of a settled life, and to "sorn" 
 at the King's command on the industrious portion of 
 the population. 
 
 A review of the City Guard, a kind of military 
 police, which consisted of about a hundred invalided 
 soldiers, mostly Tonalds and Tougals, which had been 
 first instituted in times anterior to the Union, was an 
 important part of the ceremonial of the King's Birth- 
 day in Old Edinburgh. A hundred years ago they 
 were a savage and truculent gang of rascals, or black- 
 guardly bandits, if poor Fergusson's testimony is 
 
56 THE KIN(^S BIRTHDAY. 
 
 trastworthy, who did not scruple to spill the blood 
 of the citizens they had been embodied and were 
 maintained to cherish and protect. They were 
 furnished with firelocks and formidable weapons 
 known as Lochaber axes, with which they were 
 licensed, apparently at their own discretion, to hack 
 and stab. They were extremely unpopular, until 
 latterly they became rather objects of good-humoured 
 derision than downright hatred. There were constant 
 collisions between them and the Edinburgh mobs. 
 On all occasions that offered favourably, they were 
 treated as fair game by the festive city youth. They 
 were stoned, and pelted with mud by hostile rabbles 
 on the King's Birthday — the more especially that on 
 that day they were carefully shaven and powdered 
 in honour of the King. 
 
 Then, as now, part of the citizens kept the Royal 
 holiday by resorting to the fields, where "lambs were 
 sporting on the gowany braes." As night fell, the 
 town became disorderly and riotous. A raid was 
 made upon wandering cats by lawless apprentices ; an 
 outlook was kept by the mobocratic youth for a stray 
 buck or beau at whom they could launch their squibs, 
 and fiery flying serpents, and unsavoury unmention- 
 able missiles ; there were street rows and fights, 
 cracked crowns and broken noses ; deep drinking, 
 loud swearing, and "deeds of crime in darkness 
 done." Next morning the Council Chaumer was 
 crowded with the civic heroes and victims of a 
 too tumultuous loyalty. 
 
A SUMMER EXCURSION FROM 
 EDINBURGH IN THE OLDEN TIME. 
 
 "Fareweel, bonnie Scotland ! I'm awa to Fife." — Old Saying. 
 
 The citizen of Edinburgh in the last quarter of last 
 century was still content to repeat his years in unbroken 
 series within the extremely limited area of the Auld 
 Toun. He never wandered. From year's end to 
 year's end he was to be found at home, burrowing at 
 the feet of St Giles. He lived among his business, 
 strolled into a neighbouring tavern for his meridian at 
 the summons of the dram-bell, and returned with 
 little delay, but yet leisurely, to his shop or office, 
 fortified till dinner-time. Dinner-time came early, 
 and divided with only a moderate interval the hours 
 of the business day. Indeed, the greater part of the 
 professional or trading day was after that. The hour 
 for tea, if the effeminacy was practised, was four 
 o'clock. At eight o'clock the citizen was free — 
 
 "Auld St Giles at aucht o'clock 
 
 Garr'd merchant loons their shoppies lock." 
 
 The next two hours were surrendered to sociality and 
 recreation. If the weather was fine and the season 
 permitted, the burgess daundered to Thamson's 
 Green, it might be, for a quiet game of bowls, or took 
 
 57 
 
S8 THE SUMMER EXCURSION. 
 
 a turn or two in sober pursuit of the gowff ba' on 
 Bruntsfield Common. If it was winter or wet weather, 
 he dived incontinent into some profound hole of 
 the High Street, and maintained in the benmost bore 
 of the close, in some secret howff hallowed to all his 
 senses by long use and wont, his reputation for con- 
 viviality and a sound constitution. If he was in the 
 mood for hy-jinks, time during the dark hours was 
 of no account — neither was liquor ; he was prepared 
 to spill them lavishly. If he was soberly inclined he 
 sat till ten, interchanging song and seriousness over a 
 bottle or two of Younger, a haddie lug, and a gill. 
 At the tuck of the Guard-drum his rotundity toddled 
 home, insensible of evening savours, and rolled into 
 blankets and oblivion. Sleep cleared his drumlie 
 pow on the downy cod, and next morning he began a 
 new day, another yet the same, before his desk or 
 behind his apron. This, the even tenor of his way, 
 he varied on a Saturday or Sabbath afternoon by a 
 short excursion to some place or other that had the 
 attraction of a change-house, within easy run of the 
 High Street — at least within view of the airy crown of 
 St Giles. Perhaps he drank toddy or port — claret 
 was no longer the favourite it had been — at Lawson's, 
 on the shore of Leith, on the secular afternoon ; on 
 the holy day he cooled his stomach with a dish of 
 mussel-brose at Newhaven, or with a prievin' o' fat 
 pandores a little further east the coast. A more 
 distant excursion, beyond the bounds of Mid-Lothian, 
 was the event of the year ; but a summer's jaunt of 
 one solid day's duration to Fife became for the most 
 part only a memory to him after middle age. 
 
THE SUMMER EXCURSION. 59 
 
 In a mock-heroic poem that has been strangely 
 overlooked by the historian of social life in Old 
 Edinburgh (Modern Edinburgh is not older than the 
 century), Robert Fergusson has left us a vivid and 
 particular relation of the manner in which the younger 
 and more enterprising burgesses were wont to consume 
 their summer holiday in an excursion to the " un- 
 hallowed"* shores of Fife. The day selected was 
 almost certainly a Saturday, the month probably June 
 
 or July — 
 
 "When nature's rokelay green 
 
 Is spread ower ilka rig o' com 
 To charm our rovin' een ; " 
 
 and the weather, no doubt, had been on its good 
 behaviour for at least a week. But let us follow in all 
 its essential features the poet's description of his out- 
 ing ; it may serve as a sample. He took this 
 particular holiday on a Saturday near the longest day ; 
 and 177 1 — he was then still a minor in age — may be 
 ventured upon as the very year. The spring of that 
 year wore a wintry aspect. Pentland's " tourin' taps " 
 were " buried aneath great wreaths o' snaw ; " not one 
 bold golfer was to be seen " driving his ba' frae whins 
 or tee," 
 
 " Nor doucer folk wysin' ajee 
 
 The bias bouls on Thamson's green." 
 
 So late as April the Braid Burn and the Water of 
 Leith were " rushing with torrents of dissolving snow." 
 But seasonable weather came in June after all, and 
 
 * Twin chronic animosities of Fergusson were Fife and the 
 City Guard. Of Fife he writes— 
 
 " To Fife we steer — of all beneath the sun, 
 The most unhallowed 'mid the Scotian plains." 
 
60 THE SUMMER EXCURSION. 
 
 with it to the breasts of the younger " burgers " the 
 annual longing for a voyage to the Strand of Fife. The 
 few needful arrangements were made the night before 
 at Danny Douglas's in the Anchor Close, or Johnny 
 Bowie's in Liberton Wynd ; there, probably in the 
 Crown or the Coffin Room, the party of three or four 
 congenial spirits, such as Jamie Rae, and Hamilton, 
 and Woods, was organised, and the plan of the day's 
 campaign drawn up at a sober symposium. Next day 
 at an early hour — 
 
 "While morn, wi' bonny purplin' smiles, 
 Kisses the air-cock o' Saint Giles," — 
 
 the adventurous party, after breaking their fast on beef, 
 sallied forth from the still slumbering city, and made 
 for the port o' I,eith on shanksnaigie, by Provost 
 Drummond's new bridge and the Walk. The bridge, 
 built only two years before, spanned the burn and 
 valley of the Nor' Loch, then haunted by ducks, both 
 wild and tame, and gave a high and dry path to our 
 party from the Tron to Mutrie's Hill — the brae-top 
 from which now rises the dome of the Register House. 
 The Walk, now an enclosed street and roaring channel 
 of traffic, was then an exposed and lonely enough 
 gravel path, some twenty feet broad, which, from being 
 a military mound thrown up about a century and a 
 quarter before, had become a pavement or promenade, 
 beaten into shape and feature by the feet of citizens 
 taking the evening air. Cromwell may be said to have 
 been the ultimate cause of this mound, for it was cast 
 up by the Covenanting commander, Davy Leslie, to 
 keep him out of Edinburgh. It was in its turn the 
 
THE SUMMER EXCURSION. 6l 
 
 raison d'etre of the North Bridge. Previous to the 
 making of the North Bridge, intercourse with Leith 
 had mainly been by Canongate and the Easter Road, 
 the Walk, as the name implies, being strictly devoted 
 to pedestrians. But after 1769 vehicular traffic and 
 the hoofs of horses invaded the Walk, and, in a decade 
 or two, spoiled its amenities to the daundering burgess. 
 The wheels of carts and carriages cut itj and it fell 
 into such disrepair that its usefulness, which was now 
 revealed, could not be maintained without great 
 expense to the community. 
 
 Along the Walk, with green fields on each side of 
 them, and a summer day stretching invitingly before 
 them, our party hastened to the Kirkgate, and at last 
 made the shore of Leith in time for the early boat. 
 But there was no time for a refreshing " synd " of any 
 species of nappy liquor at any of the numerous taverns 
 that lined the water. For as soon as they appeared in 
 view, their ears were assailed by a raucous voice at 
 the gangway that roared peremptorily, "All aboard 
 for Kinghorn ! Straight aboard for Kinghorn ! " The 
 ordinary bustle of embarking passengers ensued ; 
 bodies and bundles tumbled in obediently to the 
 stern call, which sounded more like a demand than an 
 invitation. Equally stern was the note of the skipper, 
 who bawled irately to the boatmen to hoist sail. 
 Presently a dozen of brown hands were unfastening 
 the moorings or hauling the sheets, and, glad to be 
 free, the vessel glided out from the harbour and stood 
 northwards across the lifting Firth for Kinghorn Pier. 
 A strong west wind was blowing from " the Ferry " — 
 i.e. Queensferry — and the rocking boat now and again 
 
62 THE SUMMER EXCURSION. 
 
 dipped her canvas, and fled precipitately over the white 
 caps. Our party had time to cool, and it appears the 
 passage was long and rough enough to favour an epide- 
 mic of sea-sickness. Even in very fine calm weather few 
 cared to cross the Firth unless on business ; and those 
 who could afford it preferred to pass to the North by 
 taking the Forth at Stirling at the well-known bridge 
 Some took the Leith route as a medicine, as people 
 take " the waters." About mid-channel, when the 
 boat was " half-owre, halfowre," the crew commenced 
 the interesting part of their duties — the collection of 
 the fares. They were liable to be imposed upon, and 
 debates would occasionally arise about counterfeit 
 ha'pence. Vagrants, too, were sometimes unearthed 
 from the hold, where they had tried to stow away 
 their rags and wretchedness in the hope of escaping 
 payment of the passage groat. At length Fife was 
 reached, and pale and sharp-set our voyagers briskly 
 hastened to the friendly inn, where they dined, and 
 drank, and snuffed for a couple of hours at least. 
 Snuff was the nostrum for a heavy meal. They were in 
 the village of Kinghorn, which fame has consecrated to 
 the memory of Patie Birnie, bard and gut-scraper ; but, 
 alas ! Crowdero was dead, and his elegy chanted (by 
 Allan Ramsay) half a century before. Fergusson and 
 his friends were the very men to have relished his 
 eccentric humour and pawky by-play. 
 
 " When strangers landed, wow sae thrang, 
 Fuffin' and peghin' he wad gang, 
 And crave their pardon that sae lang 
 
 He'd been a-comin' ; 
 Syne his bread-winner oot he'd bang 
 
 And fa' to bummin'.' 
 
THE SUMMER EXCURSION. 63 
 
 He was the reputed author of the richly humorous 
 song with which Kennedy used to convulse a Scottish 
 audience, "The Auld Man's Mare she's dead," which 
 he sang and played with comical looks and gestures, 
 "laughing and groaning at the same time" — "his 
 beard," says Ramsay, " being no small addition to the 
 diversion." It is right to say that he was in the habit 
 of disavowing the authorship (words or air, or both) — 
 perhaps to have the pleasure of praising the song. 
 For he would conclude his performance with "A 
 bonnie auld thing this, indeed, an't like your honour ! " 
 After their meal- our travellers hung about the village, 
 admiring from the green braes that overhang the 
 beach the glories of the Lothian coast, and exploring 
 a shore cave which used to harbour bandits. Fer- 
 gusson had always little to say about the scenery of 
 Fife itself; it was good enough as a stand from which 
 to view his beloved Edinburgh, with her castled rock, 
 and tufted groves and spires. On this theme his 
 language was always fervent, but seldom so rapturous 
 as the following : — 
 
 " As glower the saints when first is given 
 A favoured keek o' gloire and heaven, 
 On earth nae mair they bend their een, 
 But quick assume th' angelic mien : 
 So I on Fife wad glower no more, 
 But gallop to Edina's shore." 
 
 It was afternoon when our party set out on foot west- 
 -wards, some twelve'or fourteen miles, to Inverkeithing. 
 They passed Burntisland not long after leaving King- 
 horn, and there Fergusson's eye marked " the reverend 
 dome " on the^' gradual rising dale." There also a 
 
64 THE SUMMER EXCURSION. 
 
 tawdry signboard, on which were painted a man and 
 a horse, with refreshments before them ; the man's, 
 represented by an unshapely jug frothed with small 
 beer, offended one taste, but courteously offered to 
 gratify another. They accepted the offer of the legend 
 over the inn doorway, but were content to "regale 
 with sober can." They now set off at a rapid pace, 
 for the day was declining, and covering in succession 
 "hills, vales, and extensive plains" — to quote from 
 the poem — found themselves at last, blown and breath- 
 less, in the ferry-boat at North Queensferry, where they 
 could cool and come to. They crossed to the south 
 side in " ten posting minutes," and marched at once 
 to M'Laren's, where they ate an early supper of roast 
 lamb and lettuce; and as they felt the day's perils 
 were now over, and they were now on the safe side of 
 the water, they proposed to congratulate each other 
 by cracking a bottle or two together. Accordingly 
 the cheering glass went briskly round ; and by-and-by 
 they proceeded to bumpers, having as their lawful 
 excuse the toast of the ladies of their more particular 
 regard. They journeyed leisurely towards Edinburgh 
 in the cool of the long gloaming, and were surrounded 
 on the way with a splendid sunset, which filled the 
 north-western heavens, and was delicately reflected 
 from the airy spires and cliffs of the capital. The 
 glowing equipage had passed, and the steeds of the 
 sun were stabled, and they were still " moving slowly 
 on with festive joints and lingering pace." In short, 
 it was night when they got into Edinburgh. 
 
 [An interesting account of the ferry passage between 
 
THE SUMMER EXCURSION. 65 
 
 Leith and Pettycur in the early years of last century 
 will be found in the Appendix to Major Fraser's 
 Manuscript, recently published by Mr David Douglas, 
 who kindly brought it under my notice. The account 
 is contained in a letter (of date 8th April 17 15), and 
 narrates the experiences of no less a personage than 
 Duncan Forbes of Culloden, the future Lord President 
 of the Court of Session.] 
 
PART II. 
 
 OF OLD WORDS AND 
 FORGOTTEN WAYS. 
 
POACHERS AND POACHING. 
 
 Conventional usage has established a wide interval 
 between poaching and bagging. Your fine gentleman 
 with a turn for sport estimates his success in the field 
 by the size of his bag ; vulgarity, on the other hand, 
 surreptitiously crams his pouch, and is no sports- 
 man, but a poacher. To the etymologist there is no 
 <iifference between poaching and bagging : to him the 
 words name the same identical actions. Neither is 
 there any difference between the actions to the student of 
 human nature : he sees in both the exercise of the same 
 instinct. The difference that obtains is the creation of 
 legal enactments, and is dependent upon the status of 
 parties. It is therefore convenient to recognise it. 
 Law has caught up the simple, homely, harmless word 
 " poach " from the obscurity of rustic cottages and road- 
 side alehouses, has branded it with a bad meaning, 
 and perpetuated the disgrace by definition and a place 
 in the statute-book. Poaching is illegal. It is known 
 to be an offence against law to the most unenlightened 
 pagan in our country: bloodshed and theft are not 
 more certainly breaches of the law. But the im- 
 morality of it is a different question, which the rustic 
 is at any time ready to debate. In his view it is by no 
 mean an immutable and eternal Cudworthian wrong. 
 
 69 
 
70 POACHERS AND POACHING. 
 
 He has probably a glimmering knowledge of the 
 historical origin of its criminality, and he cherishes a 
 sure faith that after a certain day of some month in a 
 year that is coming it will cease to be a crime. With 
 that knowledge, and in this belief, he goes on 
 poaching himself or conniving at its practice by others. 
 Every young rustic you meet is a very possible 
 poacher, if he is not something more. For the state- 
 ment may be hazarded that poaching is as common 
 now in the rural districts as it has been any time 
 during the last fifty years or so. The professional 
 poacher, it must be allowed, could hardly survive the 
 Prevention Act of 1862. That Act gave the constable 
 power to search persons suspected of illegally taking 
 game ; and it required every dealer to account for the 
 game in his possession — to state where, when, and 
 from whom he got it. These were merciless condi- 
 tions of life to the man who made his livelihood by 
 poaching. But the Act did not suppress the occasional 
 poacher : it rather put him upon his mettle. He 
 became warier. Poaching became more than ever a 
 game of skill. It rose almost to the rank of a fine art. 
 The policeman as well as the gamekeeper was now to 
 be evaded ; suspicion as well as capture-in-the-act was 
 to be avoided ; there could be no further dealings with 
 carriers and cadgers, and only hazardous intercourse 
 with licensed purchasers of game; and in 1870 the 
 necessary payment of ten shillings for the use of a gun 
 for a year made the rustic who ventured upon the 
 luxury a marked man. Meanwhile there was one 
 thing in the poacher's favour. At the same time that 
 these arbitrary laws were being proclaimed against 
 
POACHERS AND POACHING. "Jl 
 
 him, a natural law was operating in some measure to 
 his advantage. The rural population was decreasing 
 obediently to the greater attractions of town life ; and, 
 of course, the less peopled a district becomes, the better 
 is the opportunity it offers for poaching. 
 
 The impulse to pursue and take or entrap wild 
 animals is instinctive. So long as there are sportsmen 
 there will be poachers — who are only a kind of un- 
 licensed sportsmen. What makes the pursuit of game 
 attractive to the peer appeals equally to the same 
 instinct in the peasant. To the gratification of this 
 instinct, his poverty is his only barrier. He refuses to 
 recognise the immorality of its exercise. Poaching 
 may be illegal : he does not regard it as sinful. Even 
 the outcry of rustic respectability against it is not on 
 the score of sin, but that it is exposed to bodily danger, 
 induces the formation of irregular habits, leads to 
 quarrels (the respectable poor are eminently peaceable), 
 and is attended by, or productive of, other evils. It is 
 the belief — quite a universal one among the common 
 country folks — that there is no sin in poaching that 
 makes that breach of the law the common practice it 
 is, and still as common as it has been. The peasant 
 argues that what is your property only while it is in 
 your possession — that is, on your grounds or your 
 estate — may be his wheti it comes his way ; and if you 
 deny it to him in his own croft or kail-yard, or on the 
 public road, or in the neutral elements of air or 
 natural water, he will reserve to himself the right of 
 reprisal to take it wherever and whenever he can con- 
 veniently do so. His thesis is that game is no true 
 property. When a cow strays it is pounded ; nobody 
 
72 POACHERS AND POACHING. 
 
 pounds a hare ; — I have heard the illustration again 
 and again in such roadside inns as come in anglers' 
 ways. And still more iniquitous, he will tell you, is 
 the law against poaching salmon. His practice has 
 been so long in accordance with his argument that the 
 substitution of a simple trespass law for the obnoxious 
 game laws would now hardly avail to keep the honest 
 poacher on his own side of the hedge. Within quite 
 recent years the rustic mind has had its ideas on the 
 subject of land-tenure very nearly revolutionised. The 
 poacher has been among the foremost to express 
 his satisfaction with the revolution. A humorous 
 illustration of the new attitude of the poacher towards 
 the land question was given not long ago in one of our 
 county courts. Black Rab, a notorious poacher, was 
 " had up," as he himself would have phrased it, " on the 
 auld chairge." He was seen, it was alleged, breaking 
 the law in the moonlight, was chased and escaped, 
 leaving, however, his furs and feathers behind him. 
 Next morning he was apprehended at his work — 
 " blasting " in a quarry — and denied the charge. In 
 court he not only pleaded " Not guilty," but protested 
 with a vehemence he was never before known to show 
 that "the keepers were mista'en i' their man this 
 time — for he was sackless." He advanced an alibi 
 that was not conclusive, and at last, at his wits' end, 
 declared with genuine candour and a confidence that 
 was clearly expected to convince, " In fac', it couldna 
 hae been me, for it wasna on my laund I " 
 
 Hares, pheasants, and salmon are, as they have long 
 been, the principal objects of the poacher's quest. 
 To these add rabbits, now that they too are in the 
 
POACHERS AND POACHING. 73 
 
 game list, though the old opinion of them still lingers 
 among the older peasantry that they are only a sort 
 of ground vermin. This bad opinion of Bunny 
 doubtless arose from his abundance, and his destruc- 
 tiveness to the young crops. Time was when even 
 salmon was regarded by our farm-labourers as they 
 now regard the cheap but wholesome herring, and 
 when they made it a condition of their engagement to 
 have it as an article of diet not oftener than three 
 times a week. There is no prejudice against salmon 
 now J there will soon be none against rabbit. But 
 partridges, snipe, and wild ducks have also a good 
 share of the poacher's attention. The physical 
 features and capabilities of his district determine the 
 nature of his quarry. One district is rich in hares, 
 another swarms with pheasants ; and of course all 
 streams are not frequented by salmon. Fifty years 
 ago the tenant-farmer offered little, if any, opposition 
 to the poacher ; he may be said to have encouraged 
 him for ke'eping his lands free of destructive creatures 
 that preyed upon his crops, and were sacred. Those 
 were the days of unfenced fields. But now the 
 trespass law is enforced because there are fences the 
 breaking of which by accident or malice is a sore 
 vexation equally to tenant and laird. The foot of the 
 poacher may do small damage to the enclosed field, 
 but the gap he leaves behind him in the fence, where 
 the paling gave way under his weight, offers an easy 
 inroad to untended sheep and more destructive cattle. 
 The mischief they do to half-grown and ripening crops 
 lies partly in what they devour ; but they work greater 
 havoc by trampling and breaking the promised harvest. 
 
74 POACHERS AND POACHING. 
 
 The best poaching grounds for a big bag are, of 
 course, in and around preserves. The poacher's 
 victims here are hares, pheasants, woodcocks, and 
 partridges. Hills and lochs furnish snipe, grouse, 
 and wild-duck. Here the chance of a big bag is not 
 so great as there is much less density of game ; but 
 there is less likelihood of interruption to the poacher, 
 even though his use of the gun is almost imperative. 
 For personal safety he prefers the open, with such 
 means of escape as the hills afford, to the uncertain 
 cover of the wood. Indeed, the poacher seldom finds 
 it to be either to his safety or his profit to visit the wood. 
 He knows it is a poor place for hares comparatively 
 with the fields adjoining, especially if there is an 
 escape to uplands through whin-bushes and broom. 
 Puss herself prefers the open to the woodland, making 
 her form under the sky among bracken or long grass. 
 Pheasants are the only true wood game, but they too 
 can be taken beyond its boundaries. Of an October 
 night they may be found by fifties feeding on the 
 stubble-field. 
 
 The poacher's activity is little restrained by the 
 popularity of the landlord. It is a simple question of 
 personal proclivity and the game supply, into which 
 consideration of the feelings of the most generous of 
 landlords enters only theoretically. If such con- 
 sideration ever affect the poacher's practice at all, it 
 can only reveal itself by sparing the fences and 
 making a cleaner — that is, a less evident — abstraction 
 of the game. And in the ordinary intercourse of 
 daily life the poacher has still an ingenuous "hat" for 
 the landlord ; it is only in rare cases that hatred of 
 
POACHERS AND POACHING. 75 
 
 the landlord gives additional zest to poaching. But 
 the prime instinct which finds delight in circum- 
 venting the creatures of the wild may be reinforced 
 by other means. Various collateral inducements 
 operate to produce the poacher. Among these are 
 poverty or want of work; the love of adventure or 
 "the fun of the thing;" the influence of wild com- 
 panions, or the opinion of the poaching community. 
 In addition to these motives, the craving of palate and 
 pocket must not be overlooked. Successful poaching 
 furnishes the peasant with a very agreeable change in 
 his rather monotonous dietary ; and it may supply him 
 on occasion with a little ready money. The con- 
 version of game by the poacher into the resourceful 
 form of coin is now, however, a very risky transaction. 
 Time was when eighteenpence for a hare or a shilling 
 for a pair of rabbits was " found siller " at the dyke- 
 side of a morning. The journeyman wheelwright or 
 apprentice blacksmith had just to take a short 
 "dander" at the breakfast-hour in the direction of a 
 snare he had set overnight. If he knew his art at all, 
 the money was at his feet, or what would be money at 
 the side of the cadger's cart that forenoon. The 
 cadger was just as eager to make the petty disburse- 
 ment from his " stocking-foot " or leather pouch as the 
 poacher was to take it. There was undisputed division 
 of the value or profit between them — fifty per cent, to 
 each. Seldom or never was there any higgling ; that 
 might end in unseemly debate. Neither was the 
 poacher so much at the mercy of the cadger as one 
 might suppose. His refuge from cadger greed was to 
 the competition of the carrier. He would play the 
 
76 POACHERS AND POACHING. 
 
 one off against the other without coming to the climax 
 of an articulate difference with either. 
 
 While all classes of the working rural population 
 included poachers, the crafts or employments that 
 were pre-eminent some fifty years ago in sending them 
 out were those of the blacksmith, the wright, the 
 saddler, the shoemaker (the tailor belonged to a more 
 timorous class), the roadman — who had special facili- 
 ties for taking a pheasant or lifting a stray hare — the 
 weaver, the small farmer, the field-worker, the plough- 
 man, and the mason. The last-named was a daring 
 and deadly enemy of the game in winter, when frost 
 resisted the chisel and bound the plaster, and his 
 only choice in spending the day was between idleset 
 and poaching. There were also young lads of seven- 
 teen or so, who in winter divided their time between 
 poaching and attending the parish school. There 
 was often little work for such lads about the farms 
 from Martinmas to Candlemas ; and their fee as 
 arranged at Candlemas was as big as if they fee'd 
 from Martinmas. Even girls innocently engaged in 
 tending kine could make shift to watch a con- 
 veniently-set snare. Poaching was by no means 
 confined to the class of ne'er-do-weels. A douce 
 elder of the Kirk would make no scruple to lift a 
 hare from a " gim ; " nor would the minister hesitate 
 to eat it if, as sometimes happened, the carcass of 
 puss found its way — semi-anonymously — to the manse 
 kitchen. There were clever fellows among the 
 poachers — not clever only at poaching, but at the 
 various occupations to which they gave the regular 
 hours of the day. Poaching was their pastime : 
 
POACHERS AND POACHING. JJ 
 
 it came as a relief to the tedium of lawful in- 
 dustry. 
 
 In Humphrey Clinker, Smollett, in his own inimi- 
 table way, gives expression to the peasant's view of 
 poaching in the correspondence of Squire Bramble. 
 That worthy landlord writes from Clifton on the 17 th 
 April to \asfidus Achates " dear Lewis " : — ■ 
 
 " As for Higgins, the fellow is a notorious poacher, 
 to be sure, and an impudent rascal to set his snares 
 in my paddock; but I suppose he thought he had 
 some right, especially in my absence, to partake of 
 what Nature seems to have intended for common use : 
 you may threaten him in my name as much as you 
 please ; and, if he repeats the offence, let me know it 
 before you have recourse to justice." 
 On the 20th he writes : — 
 
 " I had yesterday a visit from Higgins, who came 
 hither under the terror of your threats, and brought 
 me in a present a brace of hares, which he owned he 
 took in my ground; and I could not persuade the 
 fellow that he did wrong, or that I would ever 
 prosecute him for poaching. I must desire you 
 will wink hard at the practices of this rascallion, 
 otherwise I shall be plagued with his presents, which 
 cost me more than they are worth." 
 
 The poacher of fifty years ago might be relegated 
 to one of three classes, according to the means he 
 employed to entrap or take his quarry. He might 
 make use of a dog, trained for the purpose — a collie 
 (commonest of country dogs), or a wicked-eyed 
 terrier, or the deadly lurcher, which to the speed of 
 the greyhound adds the sagacity of terrier or collie. 
 
78 POACHERS AND POACHING. 
 
 and does its work without din. Or the poacher 
 might put his trust in snares and nets. Or lastly, he 
 might make service of a gun, kept in some outhouse, 
 or secret place in the wilderness, or carried in three 
 portions under a capacious coat to the scene of 
 execution. Another division of the fraternity might 
 be made into poachers who had no faith in partner- 
 ship, poachers who hunted in couples, and poaching 
 gangs loosely composed for special occasions. In the 
 case of couples or gangs, one would sometimes be 
 detailed to hold the gamekeeper, whose interference 
 was dreaded, in talk at the crossways or at the 
 alehouse, while his confreres were setting or examining 
 the snares. A decayed poaching ne'er-do-weel was 
 never entrusted with this commission ; the keeper 
 cold-shouldered such a one at once ; but he would 
 talk, not without suspicion, with a respectable lad, 
 of whose intentions he was in some degree of doubt. 
 Dogs and snares were employed to take hares (and 
 rabbits) ; the gun overreached all kinds of four-footed 
 and winged game. There were lines and leisters for 
 the water. An experienced or well-taught poacher 
 went about his work methodically, and in many 
 instances had no mean knowledge of natural history. 
 His first proceeding was to select a field for his opera- 
 tions. He knew that the hare when startled runs up or 
 across the field. When at her ease, and enjoying the 
 sense of security. Puss "hirples doun the fur," as Burns 
 observed one memorable Sunday morning. Gloaming 
 was the usual time for setting snares; they were looked 
 at in the morning ; but sometimes, after the snare was 
 quietly set, the dog was sent to scour the selected 
 
POACHERS AND POACHING. 79 
 
 field, and Puss was caught while the poachers waited. 
 The snare was set about one yard from the " slap " of 
 the hunting-field, and out%\d^& the field. A raid on 
 rabbits was commonly conducted on an idle afternoon 
 that favoured the use of dogs. A well-trained terrier, 
 with the delight of sport glowing like a spot of fire 
 in each — it might be in one — shaggy-browed eye, 
 would invade the burrows in business-like style, while 
 a " gash " collie hung on the skirts of the furzy knowe, 
 and snapped up the scuttling fugitives. It was a game 
 of hide-and-seek to the dogs, played on the definite 
 principle of a division of labour. To poor Bunny it 
 was something of a more tragic nature. It was the 
 acme of sport to such young rustics as herd-boys, 
 more especially if they were countenanced by the 
 presence of the farmer's son, or the laird's. It was 
 the apprenticeship of poaching. The herd pieced 
 together his knowledge of the habits of game by 
 watching the practice of gamekeepers. From 
 recognised rabbit-killers he learnt the art of snare- 
 setting. 
 
 The poacher had a special equipment to avoid de- 
 tection. Its simplest form was the wearing of dark 
 clothes. Desperate fellows wore a bandage of crape, 
 or " coomed " their faces, or otherwise disguised their 
 appearance. The tools of the night poacher were nets, 
 guns, brass wires for the construction of snares, and a 
 dog. He generally dispensed with a bag. Tying the 
 feet of his quarry together, he flung the furry or plumy 
 burden over his shoulder ; or he hid it near his house, 
 probably in a byre, till he satisfied himself that the 
 coast was clear. There were instances of the poacher 
 
8o POACHERS AND POACHING. 
 
 marching with his booty into his own house, and find- 
 ing himself in the presence of "gamie," who had 
 dropped in, troubled with suspicions of the inmates, but 
 ostensibly on a social or even friendly visit. The 
 smell of hair on the poacher fresh from the fields, and, 
 it might be, a trace of hare's wool sticking here and 
 there to his homespun coat, while hardly incriminat- 
 ing evidence, had the natural effect of confirming 
 the gamekeeper's suspicion. Some rough-and-ready 
 badinage would pass between them on the subject, 
 but they would part with the ordinary courtesies at 
 the door, each resolved to watch the other in future 
 with increased circumspection. 
 
 To his acquaintance with natural history the 
 practised poacher added the study of meteorology, 
 topography, and of course human nature, as exhibited 
 in his associates and his enemies. He would train 
 his dog to carry a lamp on its forehead for dark nights, 
 and to run up the furrow for partridges, driving the 
 birds before it to his net on the head-rig. No hares 
 were netted, as a rule, on a bright moonlight night. 
 They scampered and played about over the fields like 
 lambs ; but on a dark fresh night with a wind blowing 
 they kept their roads and ran into the snares. There 
 was plenty of moonlight poaching with the gun^ 
 Watches were always set on moonlight nights. At 
 those times the regular keepers were assisted by the 
 rabbit-killer on the estate. Pheasants, unless well 
 protected, were easily taken. The poacher, stepping 
 warily in the plantation, with a half-muttered curse to 
 some wake-rife cushat, and a long fearful pause when 
 a rotten branch broke at his elbow with the report of 
 
POACHERS AND POACHING. 8 1 
 
 a pistol-shot, would presently come upon a cock, 
 with three or four hens beside him, roosted half-way 
 up an ordinary-sized larch or fir tree. Even on a 
 darkish night, on looking up through the branches, he 
 would make out their forms distinctly outlined against 
 the sky. He had merely to put up his hand and pull 
 them down, tragically stifling all noise with stealthy 
 speed. They were half-tamed, and not soon scared, 
 if their haunt was near the "Big House." The 
 poacher, while he praised their plumpness, had a kind 
 of pitiful contempt for their stupidity. If he was 
 perilously near the Big House, and not many yards 
 even from the bedroom window and lug of the laird, 
 he might try to stupefy them, especially if high roosted, 
 with the fumes of brimstone — " smeek them like 
 bees," as he would say. But this had its own peril : 
 they might only cough, and sneeze, and shift their 
 perch in rather an alarming way. If the laird's win- 
 dow flew up, and a dog came crashing through the 
 brushwood, there followed an exciting time for the 
 baffled poacher. 
 
 The instinct of the true sportsman was sometimes 
 shown by the poacher in his free distribution of his 
 night's plunder. We knew an inveterate poacher, a 
 most companionable rascal in many ways, who as 
 often bestowed the fish, which he had painfully poached 
 at midnight, among his poor neighbours, as bartered 
 them with the cadger for brandy or a bladder of 
 unexcised whisky. He would never take money, and 
 would almost have starved rather than eaten fish. 
 He discouraged poaching among the young, and 
 would have no associate. His ordinary gift to a 
 
 F 
 
82 POACHERS AND POACHING. 
 
 master tradesman at New Year was a small sackful 
 of fish, accompanied with a copy of the Shorter Cate- 
 chism for each of his three apprentices. The gift 
 was supposed to be anonymous, but it was an open 
 secret that " Auld John " was the donor. He never 
 went to Church, except at the summer sacrament 
 time, when he took his seat in a front pew of the 
 gallery, and looked down with pagan interest upon 
 the mystery of the Communion as celebrated in the 
 "laigh kirk." He showed his respect for religion by 
 regularly doffing to the minister; and he was supposed 
 to be the sender of an occasional very large fish, which 
 mysteriously found its way by night to the manse 
 porch, wrapped in the jacket of a cheap sporting news- 
 paper. It was the newspaper — of which he was the 
 only reader in the little community — that was believed 
 to have betrayed him. 
 
 There was not wanting to the life of the poacher a 
 strong dash of poetry. He had necessarily observ- 
 ant eyes, and a sensitiveness of perception which not 
 seldom touched and stirred his feelings. Who of the 
 denizens of the everyday realistic world had his 
 opportunities of spying the wild shy graces of retiring 
 Nature, surprising her in her hours of private abandon, 
 or feeling her close presence in the chamber of mid- 
 night woods or cloud-curtained moors? Her dread 
 beauty solemnised him for the moment. He was 
 half daunted by the temerity of his own intrusion. 
 He felt, as indeed he was, in a new world — lifted 
 from the common world of daylight with its three 
 conventional aspects of morning, noon, and evening, 
 such as the respectable people of his hamlet knew 
 
POACHERS AND POACHING. 83 
 
 and believed to be exhaustive of Nature and the 
 limit of her resources. How little they knew of the 
 lofty majesty of moon-lighted heaven as seen, nay, as 
 Jelt, from the dark depth of woods that swayed over 
 him, and moaned with the oppression of sweet 
 dreams ! How little of the vocal gladness at rising 
 morn of the leafy world of birds, that made him, with 
 the savage leister in his hand, uncover where he stood 
 ■waist-deep in the water, overpowered and overawed 
 into something like pagan devotion by the clamorous 
 praise of the plantation near him ! " The wud was 
 just roarin' wi' birds : I bude (behoved) to lift my 
 bonnet to them," was the confession of a romantic 
 poacher whose acquaintance in youth I dearly 
 prized. And what did the non-poaching villagers 
 know of the passion of wailing winds which was 
 shrieked into the night wanderer's very heart, or of 
 the despondency of rain-drenched hills whose gloom 
 entered his soul, and was nof to be dispelled by a back- 
 ful of game or by many succeeding suns ? They sat 
 by their fireside comforts, and shut their doors and 
 their eyes upon one (and the more impressive) half, 
 the night half, of the world of Nature. In this world 
 of natural poetry, to which he was passive but not 
 insensible, the poacher was a ranger. But it was also 
 to him a world of action, adventure, danger, and not 
 seldom conflict with his fellow-men. It was thu 
 fraught with the elements of both natural and human 
 poetry. The poacher, however, kept his experiences 
 of poetical thought, feeling, and situation to himself, 
 or for favoured Usteners in the evening of his life. 
 His confessions, when made, were brief, almost half- 
 
84 POACHERS AND POACHING. 
 
 articulate. He never thought of elaboration, and 
 was guiltless of the arts of metre and rhyme. 
 
 The gamekeeper's world was not quite the same as 
 the poacher's. He too, doubtless, was familiar with 
 the nocturnal aspects of rural and savage scenery, and 
 maintained what might be called social relations with 
 thought-suggestive solitude, but not under the same 
 conditions, nor with the same degree of intimacy. 
 Black summer storms of thunder, and the white terror 
 of winter tempest, which invited the poacher, kept 
 him for the most part within doors, or only drew him 
 forth with reluctance. And in his case the element of 
 personal danger, which gives vitality to feeling, and 
 quickens the imagination, was comparatively a-wanting. 
 The gamekeeper ran little risk, except in collision with 
 desperate poachers. On his side was the sense of 
 security arising from the discharge of legal duty. He 
 had nothing to win ; his task was to preserve. He 
 acted on the defensive. *It was his duty, rather than 
 love of the work, which sent him out to danger or to 
 storm. And he was himself under the surveillance 
 of the laird, who laid little schemes to test his atten- 
 tiveness and fidelity. The laird would discharge a 
 pistol at a late hour in some nook of his preserves, 
 as if playing at being poacher, and would await the 
 result, or interrogate the keeper next morning as to 
 his whereabouts at the time of the report. 
 
 The humours of poaching have never been related, 
 and would fill a book. These could not flourish in 
 all circumstances. They require for their growth a 
 humanity or softness of heart on the laird's part, and 
 the absence of malice on the poacher's. The mutual 
 
POACHERS AND POACHING. 8$ 
 
 relations were almost friendly. They were tacitly 
 maintained on the principle that he might take who 
 had the skill, and he should keep who could. It 
 was a game, rigorously conducted within certain 
 limits, in which laird and poacher set themselves to 
 outwit each other. Admiration was frankly expressed 
 by the baffled party when the one stole a march on 
 the other. Tam Mackinlay's testimony may be 
 quoted here. Poaching was a passion with Tam. 
 Poesy was not more a passion with Goldsmith. And, 
 like the poet, Tam indulged it for its own sake, 
 reckless of personal or domestic consequences. He 
 made the same regretful confession as Goldsmith, and 
 almost in the same words — 
 
 " It found him poor at first, and kept him so." 
 
 On one occasion the gamekeeper rose from behind 
 a bush as Tam was lifting a hare. " Ye've grippit me 
 this time, Patie ? " " Will ye tak' wi' 't, then ? " asked 
 the keeper. " I maun," said Tam, and walked off 
 home disconsolately. On the way to his cottage he 
 acquainted the blacksmith with his misfortune. " Up 
 to the laird at aince ! " counselled Burn-the-win,' 
 "afore the keeper gets word o' him." "It's a sair 
 punishment, whatever way," said Tam; "but it's 
 maybe the best plan." Tam washed his face, and 
 tying a black silk neckerchief round his bare throat to 
 show his respect for the laird, walked in his rags — 
 he had no choice between them and nudity — up to 
 the house, and gravely informed the laird that he was 
 'grippit." The laird eyed him severely, but was 
 
86 POACHERS AND POACHING. 
 
 secretly touched at the sight of Tarn's rags. He read 
 him a stern lecture, in the course of which he referred 
 to the evil example he was setting his family. " And 
 you have a large family, I hear ? " " Seeven," said 
 Tam. The laird expressed indignation. " Do you 
 know," demanded the laird, to whom the estate had 
 come late, and much burdened with debt ; " Do you 
 know that / must be a bachelor?" "Weel, laird," 
 said Tam demurely, " I'm sure it's no' the women's 
 faut ! " The remark seemed to please the laird. 
 He wound up by asking Tam if he would be a game- 
 keeper. Tam refused, vouchsafing no reason but 
 that " he dootit he couldna." The laird thought him 
 diffident of his own ability for the post. "You know 
 the estate, and you know the game, and you know 
 what your duties would be." "A' true," said Tam 
 thoughtfully ; "an' as for the estate — I ken it, maybe, 
 better than yersel, laird ! But I canna see my way to 
 be a keeper. Na, I canna do 't ! " Whereupon the 
 laird dismissed him " for a blind stirk," but with a 
 pardon, the last he would get, and — a terrible warn- 
 ing. Within a couple of months Tam was again 
 taken red-handed. He tried the same tactics of an 
 interview with the laird previous to the report of the 
 keeper. To his astonishment the laird subjected him 
 to a shorter and less severe scolding than on the 
 previous occasion, and let him go ! Long afterwards, 
 when age and rheumatics combined to curb Tam's 
 poaching impulses, and he had removed to a distant 
 parish, it transpired that his refusal of the laird's offer 
 was like the Provost of Dumfermline's when he was 
 obliged to decline an invitation to banquet with the 
 
POACHERS AND POACHING. 87 
 
 Lord Mayor of London — it was owing to his " want 
 o' claes ! " "I had naething but the rags I wrocht 
 in," said the simple fellow ; " I wudda {should have) 
 been a disgrace to the laird's toun." 
 
 Nick Peetrie was another poaching humorist, not 
 of the broad, genial, almost boyish type to which 
 Tam Mackinlay belonged, but dry, tart, and taciturn. 
 Tarn was really large-hearted, with a giant's strength 
 and a big body to house it ; Nick, on the other hand, 
 was short and shrivelled, close-minded, and, if his 
 heart was sound at the kernel, it was only known to 
 the few who managed to get to it. He walked with 
 stooping shoulders and shambling legs, had a peculiar 
 habit of sniffing at short intervals, and peered rather 
 than looked from under the shadow of bushy grey eye- 
 brows. He was a crofter, or small farmer, with about 
 thirty acres on his hand, and lived in a thatched hut 
 like a' bee-hive on a lonely brae-side. The brae was 
 rough with furze and stunted birch, and, nearer his 
 homestead, a bush of boor-tree, as a defence from 
 witches; while a bickering burn stirred tall green 
 dockens and floury meadow-sweet at the brae-foot. 
 Nick was known to be a smuggler of whisky of his 
 own distilling, and was shrewdly suspected of relieving 
 his more regular employment with a little poaching. 
 As a smuggler he had made acquaintance with the 
 county jail, but he was never convicted -of poaching. 
 He was by his own account nearly caught several 
 times : once in the dusk of a summer evening, when 
 his eldest son, a boy of thirteen, was with him. On 
 that occasion, giving his son hurried instructions to 
 "keep sooth" (south), he boldly cut across country, 
 
88 POACHERS AND POACHING. 
 
 making northward for a distant wood, and was long 
 but ineffectually followed by the gamekeeper. At the 
 fair of the county town, about a week afterwards, Nick 
 met his enemy, and asked " Whether he had gotten 
 his wind again ? " The keeper stared in some 
 bewilderment. " I heard ye had lost it," said Nick, 
 sniffing, and passing on with the air of a man who 
 had been misinformed. 
 
 Watty Tod was another humorist of the class, but 
 his humour, like that of ancient ^sop, played round 
 the beasts of the field. He used to report colloquies 
 with the hare, in which there was revealed an eye for 
 dramatic situation, as well as such a characterisation 
 of the creature as indicated a perfect knowledge of 
 its ways and its nature. But the charm of those 
 colloquies lay in Watty's recital. He anticipated by 
 a quarter of a century Uncle Remus's amusing narra- 
 tives of " Brer" rabbit and his kinsfolk. 
 
 Dave Johnson's humour arose from his relations 
 with the jailer. Dave was one of the most persistent 
 and unlucky of poachers. Scarcely a season passed 
 but he was convicted and imprisoned. His experiences 
 of jail-life were disclosed with the utmost frankness. 
 What he most dreaded in imprisonment was the 
 scanty fare of the jail. One of his disclosed secrets 
 was the dinner menu; every urchin in the village 
 knew it : " Two ounce of beef, or four ounce of a marry- 
 bone ! " Dave regarded poaching as the most natural 
 thing in the world. " I wad advise ye a', lads," he 
 would say to a knot of sympathising weavers, " no' to 
 find faut wi' the jailer about your breakfast. If ye 
 anger him, he stirs the parritch a' owre the pat-bottom 
 
POACHERS AND POACHING. 89 
 
 afore cowpin' them, an' what doesna fa' at ance is 
 carried aff i' the pat. There's no a spunefu' on your 
 plate — an' ye've gotten your allo'ance ! " 
 
 Poaching had its tragic side. Every district had its 
 tale of manslaughter, and there were even instances 
 of downright premeditated murder. These, of course, 
 got into the public prints, and townspeople with little 
 knowledge of the country formed their ideas of 
 poachers from the newspaper record of poaching. 
 They regarded all poachers as professional criminals 
 of the most dangerous type. They were believed to 
 be to the country what burglars and garrotters were to 
 the cities. There can be no doubt that in too many 
 instances poaching, commenced in frolic by careless 
 country lads fond of adventure, ended in a life of 
 crime. It was often but a step from the pheasant- 
 preserves to the hen-roost. The man that was at first 
 content with a hare was occasionally found to covet a 
 sheep. Poaching, especially when accompanied with 
 a sense of lost reputation, and — which was usually the 
 case — influenced by the allurements of the alehouse, 
 placed the moral principle in deadly peril. It ruined 
 many a young ardent life. It began by unsettling the 
 habits of early home-training; it produced unsteadi- 
 ness at regular employment ; it sometimes required 
 flight from the locality to avoid a conviction that 
 would bring, not merely personal, but family disgrace. 
 If the young apprentice or journeyman stayed to face 
 and answer an accusation, it was to brazen out his 
 conduct, to lose his good name with the law-abiding 
 community, to drop into evil company, to vex or ruin 
 the hopes of sister or sweetheart; then, with lost 
 
90 POACHERS AND POACHING. 
 
 character, came recklessness and a red coat. In some 
 instances the army reformed him, and he returned to 
 rural life respectable and respected. The character of 
 Adam Mercer in Norman Macleod's famous story of 
 " The Starling " is drawn with sympathetic knowledge 
 of this class of poacher ; it might have been — it pro- 
 bably was — drawn from the life. Black Ned, as 
 drawn by Scott with the pencil of Crabbe, furnishes 
 the contrast : — 
 
 "Approach, and through the unlatticed window peep — 
 Nay, shrink not back, the inmate is asleep ; 
 Yes, stupefied by toil and drugged by gin. 
 The body sleeps : the restless guest within 
 Now plies in wood and wild his lawless trade, 
 Now in the fangs of justice wakes dismay'd ! 
 Was that wild start of terror and despair. 
 Those bursting eyeballs and that 'wildered air, 
 Signs of compunction for a murdered hare? 
 Do the locks bristle and the eyebrows arch 
 For grouse or partridge massacred in March ? 
 
 " Wild howled the wind the forest glades along. 
 And oft the owl renewed her dismal song. 
 The wading moon with storm-presaging gleam 
 Now gave and now withheld her doubtful beam, 
 The old oak stooped his arms, then flung them high. 
 Bellowing and groaning to the troubled sky : 
 'Twas then that, couched among the brushwood sere. 
 In Malwood-walk young Mansel watched the deer ; 
 The fattest buck received his deadly shot, — 
 The wakeful keeper heard, and sought the spot ; 
 Stout were their hearts, and stubborn was their strife ; 
 O'erpowered, at length the outlaw drew his knife ! 
 Next morn a corpse was found upon the fell — 
 The rest his waking agony may tell." 
 
POACHERS AND POACHING. 9 1 
 
 The chance of such a fate, if tradition be "an 
 honest woman of her word," was at one time young 
 Will Shakespeare's. Thank heaven ! he ran off to 
 London, and became a play-actor. 
 
THE NORTH SEA SCHEME. 
 
 A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF THE HERRING 
 FISHERIES OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 " The Herring loves the merry moonlight, 
 The Mackerel loves the viinA ; 
 But the Oyster loves the dredging sang, 
 For she comes of a gentle kind." — Scod. 
 
 In the very year 1720, when the bubble of the South 
 Sea Scheme was dazzling and delighting England, a 
 joint-stock company in canny Scotland proposed a 
 North Sea Scheme which, while it promised less 
 visionary and immediate wealth to its supporters, gave 
 good assurance of what was called in the language of 
 the time a " prospect of plenty " to its promoters and 
 of prosperity to the nation at large. The aim of the 
 North Sea Scheme was to revive and develop the 
 herring fishery of the Scottish coasts. A principal 
 part of the object was to extend the fishing industry 
 more fully along the western coasts, which were, and 
 long continued to be, credited with a prolific variety 
 of fish, especially herring, of phenomenally fine 
 quality. Shares 01 ;^ioo each were put upon the 
 market, and, although the venture was despised as 
 mean and paltry by the infatuated supporters of the 
 92 
 
THE NORTH SEA SCHEME. 93 
 
 South Sea craze, two thousand names of the wealthier 
 and more enterprising people of the country speedily 
 appeared on the list of shareholders. According to a 
 contemporary authority, as large a sum as two millions 
 sterling seems to have been subscribed — a pretty con- 
 clusive proof that the nation was by no means 
 bankrupt by the failure of the Darian project in the 
 preceding generation. Several ships were at once 
 commissioned for the instant prosecution of the 
 industry : experienced skippers and fishermen were 
 engaged; and a shipment of salt and barrels, and 
 other necessaries for the purpose of preserving the 
 expected spoils of ocean, was already actually on 
 board. 
 
 It was never denied that, as the Scottish rivers and 
 lochs abounded, these in pike and those in trout and 
 salmon, so the Scottish seas swarmed at recurring 
 seasons with herring, cod, the sea cat, tusk, and ling. 
 Salmon, as a food for the peasantry, was so plentiful 
 as to be at a discount, and ploughmen in some parts 
 of the country bargained with their employers agaijist 
 being fed on continual salmon.* From Lochleven 
 alone, and in regard to only one species of its fishy pro- 
 duce, an annual supply of eight casks of salted eels used 
 to be — some three centuries ago — part of the feu mail 
 of the Bishopshire to the Archbishop of St Andrews. 
 There can hardly be a doubt that the taking of fish 
 
 * " Plenty of salmon in Herefordshire " (writes quaint old 
 Thomas Fuller in his Natural Commodities); "though not in 
 such abundance as in Scotland, w here servants, they say, indent 
 with their masters not to be fed therewith above thrice a week." 
 Scotland was known as Scotia Piscinata. 
 
94 THE NORTH SEA SCHEME. 
 
 was greatly promoted by the laws of the Church, 
 which previously to the Reformation required during 
 the prescribed periods of fast-days and fastings an 
 abstinence from flesh foods, but conceded the 
 indulgence in fish. It is curious to notice that 
 neither clerical law nor example could recom- 
 mend the eel to the Scottish lay palate. The stores 
 of maritime fish, especially on the east coast, were 
 equally well known, both from their neighbourhood to 
 the burrows-touns, whichTgladly consumed them as an 
 agreeable variety of diet, and from the fleets of foreign 
 busses or fishing boats which they attracted to our 
 shores. Every Edinburgh burgess was aware of the 
 wealth of the Firth of Forth long before Fergusson set 
 himself to celebrate in euphonious'verse the extent and 
 variety of the fish of that noble and spacious water : — 
 
 " In her the skate and codlin' sail, 
 The eel, fu' souple, wags his tail, 
 Wi' herrin', fluke, and mackerel. 
 
 And whitins dainty ; 
 Their spindle shanks the lobsters trail, 
 
 Wi' partans plenty," 
 
 And generations before the North Sea Scheme was 
 launched — 
 
 "At Musselbrugh, and eke Newhaven, 
 The fisherwives got tip-top livin' 
 When lads gaed oot on Sundays' even 
 
 To treat their joes. 
 And tuke o' fat pandores a prievin'. 
 
 Or mussel brose." 
 
 In the seventeenth century, however earlier, the 
 herrings of the West Coast found their way in barrels 
 
THE NORTH SEA SCHEME. 95 
 
 to the towns in the south and east of the country. 
 Lochs Broom and Fin were aheady famous as fishing 
 waters ; and a keg of Lochfyne herrings was in 1720 
 no unacceptable compUment to an Edinburgh trades- 
 man. Such a comphment was paid to Allan Ramsay, 
 the Poet-Laureate of the Lowlands, by his brother 
 rhymer, l,ieutenant Hamilton of Gilbertfield, and 
 duly, heartily, and appropriately acknowledged — 
 
 "Your herrings, Sir, cam hale an' fier 
 
 In halesome brine a' soomin' ; 
 Fu' fat they are, and gusty gear 
 
 As e'er I laid a thooin on ; 
 Braw sappy fish as ane could wish 
 
 To clap on tadge or scon ; 
 They relish fine gude claret wine, 
 
 That gars oor cares stand yon'." 
 
 But while the nation was content to own those 
 productive seas, and take an occasional taste of their 
 tribute, it seemed also to be content that the fish 
 harvest should go to the patient and plodding industry 
 of the Dutch. The Firth of Forth especially was a 
 favourite resort of Mynheer. He kept on good terms 
 with the numerous villages of the Fife and Lothian 
 coasts by sharing with them the gains of a little 
 judicious smuggling ; but his main advantage, though 
 the Scots were long in realising it, lay in the great takes 
 of fish of which, every season and almost the whole 
 year round, he despoiled the Scottish waters. It was 
 no business of his — it was certainly no loss to him — 
 if the Scots remained comparatively inactive while he 
 had the run of the Scottish fisheries ; he was hardly 
 the man to boast of the profits he secured through 
 their laziness, or to enlighten them at his own expense. 
 
96 THE NORTH SEA SCHEME. 
 
 They could only gauge his success by the number of 
 his boats and the frequency of his visits. It is a 
 wonder they were so long " supine," as Ramsay puts 
 it, in a business which was well calculated to employ 
 their energies, but at last they began to open both 
 their eyes, and to see with them in a way they had 
 never before realised — the immense productivity in 
 fish of their firths and narrow seas, and the gainful 
 rapacity of the enterprising Dutch. The political 
 history of the country at the time of the Revolution 
 casts an incidental light upon Dutch enterprise in the 
 Firth of Forth. In 1689 an officer of Mackay's, a 
 Lieutenant Ramsay, was in Edinburgh with an auxil- 
 iary force, which he was under orders to convey with 
 all possible expedition northwards against Dundee. 
 He was about to cross the Firth at the Ferry when 
 the appearance of a fleet of vessels arrested his atten- 
 tion and his progress. He took them for a French 
 squadron come in aid of the Stuarts, and was rather 
 relieved than delighted when he by-and-by learned 
 that the vessels were Dutch busses engaged in the 
 peaceful peculation of Scottish herring. They were 
 no unfamiliar sight from the shores of Fife or the 
 Lothians, but they had come on this occasion at an 
 unexpected time, and besides, the lieutenant doubtless 
 thought he did right to be wary. It was, however, 
 before the year of the Revolution that the Scots 
 recognised, from Dutch example, the vast unappro- 
 priated wealth that lay in fish at their own doors ; 
 and the herring fisheries had already been made a 
 subject of legislation when, in 1696, the famous 
 .Darien Company — ^which chiefly erred by being too 
 
THE NORTH SEA SCHEME. 97 
 
 ambitious all at once — considered the matter as 
 possibly furnishing a rich source of supplies for their 
 projected emporium of miscellaneous goods. It was 
 even proposed by the Company to establish markets, 
 for the sale of herrings caught in Scottish waters, at 
 places so far remote as Archangel and the Gold 
 Coast; but that proposal, it needs no telling, shared 
 in the collapse of the Darien enterprise, and came to 
 naught, and the Scottish herring and other fisheries 
 remained, more even than they had been before, 
 
 ' ' A toom dominion on the plenteous main, 
 Whence others ran away with all the gain." 
 
 This state of things seemed on the eve of a change 
 for the better on the formation of the North Sea 
 Scheme in 1720. To "ding the Dutch," and secure 
 their own fish for their own maws, was now the great 
 aim and end of Scottish maritime enterprise. There 
 were not wanting objectors to the scheme, men whose 
 independency was not strong enough to do without 
 the countenance of Court favour, and whose suspicions 
 of Southron jealousy read failure in every purely 
 Scottish enterprise. Others were afraid of what the 
 Dutch might do if their monopoly of the Scottish 
 fisheries should be threatened. These willingly con- 
 fessed — how could they deny? — the enormous gains 
 which Holland secured from the monopoly; it was 
 even allowed that that country fished more riches out 
 of the " Pictland seas " than it ever made by trafficking 
 with both the Indies. But the very fact of such vast 
 profits, they argued, would incite the Dutch to thwart 
 the Scottish scheme, and their enormous wealth would 
 
 G 
 
98 THE NORTH SEA SCHEME. 
 
 be used to the last stiver before they surrendered their 
 hopes of a perpetual harvest which they had come by 
 long usage to regard as rightfully their own. The 
 question, besides, had a political aspect, and it would 
 not do to fall out with such powerful political allies, 
 even though the price of their friendship should be a 
 monopoly of the Scottish fisheries. To these objec- 
 tions it was opposed that English rivalry need not be 
 mistaken for English jealousy ; that, as there were no 
 longer separate interests, the ancient kingdoms, joined 
 in 1707 like man and wife, should study each other's 
 peace and prosperity ; and that the surest means of 
 making the Union an actual fact was to institute a 
 community of gain, and 
 
 " Weave and fish to ane anither's hands. 
 And never think wha serves and wha commands." 
 
 As for the Dutch, they would think twice before they 
 broke the political alliance into which they had entered 
 with Britain — a nation so powerful that it could with 
 ease updraw every sluice in the Netherlands, and 
 drown the inhabitants behind the security of their 
 own dykes. There was reason, law, and nature on 
 the side of the scheme. The future of Scotland, in 
 the happy event of the scheme being carried, was 
 painted in glowing prospectuses. In the first place, 
 a much-desiderated impetus would be given to the 
 boat-building trade ; thousands, half the nation even — 
 "with spirits only tint for want of work" — would 
 find a new outlet for their energies in manning the 
 fishing fleets, and in curing for home and foreign 
 markets the food that was lost in the seas. Then 
 
THE NORTH SEA SCHEME. 
 
 99 
 
 wealth would pour into impoverished Scotland; the 
 population would increase with the establishment of 
 comfortable homes; braw towns would rise with 
 steeples and stone houses of ashlar work 
 
 " Alang wild shores where tumbling billows break, 
 Plenish'd wi' nocht but shells and tangle wreck." 
 
 Landlords would participate indirectly in the national 
 gain, and would utilise their wealth by recovering waste 
 lands, and improving what was already productive — 
 nerved to the work by the faith of a tenfold return for 
 their toil and outlay. The scheme, in short, was to 
 set Britain on her feet. Scottish herrings were to 
 maintain the nations — Goths and Vandals, Moors and 
 Frenchmen, 
 
 "The ranting Germans, Russians, and the Poles 
 Shall feast with pleasure on our gusty shoals ; 
 For which, deep in their treasures we shall dive : 
 Thus by fair trading North Sea Stock shall thrive." 
 
 There would be absolutely no need for us to toil or 
 traflSc on foreign shores, with both the Indies lying 
 just beside us : 
 
 ' ' Yet, /or diversion, laden vessels may 
 To far-off nations cut their liquid way, 
 An' fetch fra' ilka port what's nice or braw. 
 While, for these trifles, we maintain them a'. " 
 
 It is sad to think that all those beautiful hopes were 
 blasted, while they were yet fresh, by a frost the origin 
 and nature of which belongs to the social and political 
 history of those times ; and that the North Sea Scheme 
 shortly proved as veritable a bubble as that of the 
 South Sea, both bursting before the national gaze 
 about the same time. 
 
CONCERNING SKINK. 
 
 A HUNDRED years ago " skink " was still a current 
 word in Scottish country speech. It is probably now 
 in every nook and cranny of the ancient kingdom, 
 and even among old people, a word obsolete and 
 all but unintelligible. Pronounce it in the hearing 
 of an old-world rustic, and he will need a minute's 
 reflection to attach to the sound its meaning. To 
 readers of Burns, who know the word with only a 
 vague idea of its true signification, it brings with it 
 a notorious unsavoury association — the result of a 
 misprint, probably a blundering correction, in one 
 of the editions, or rather impressions, of the famous 
 poems published in Edinburgh in 1787. Yet it is 
 an innocent enough word, ill-deserving to suffer from 
 the vile companionship into which it was wickedly or 
 stupidly thrust. There can be no reasonable doubt 
 that Burns wrote "skinking" in the well-known 
 address "To a Haggis." Documentary evidence 
 apart, the context requires a word with the meaning 
 of " skinking." The contrast drawn by the poet is 
 between thin liquid fare, such as is favoured by 
 foreigners, and the solid and substantial home 
 haggis. 
 100 
 
CONCERNING SKINK. lOI 
 
 " Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware, 
 That jaups in luggies ; 
 But, if ye wish her gratefu' pray'r, 
 Gie her a haggis ! " 
 
 In this quotation the second Hne is explanatory of 
 " skinking " — it is the bard's own gloss on the word. 
 
 It is to be noticed that Burns is not here 
 depreciating any national dish in order to assert the 
 superior claim of the chieftain of puddings. " Skinking 
 ware " is not skink ; it is a Scottish rustic's name for 
 some unmentionable French or Italian cat-lap. Skink 
 itself was a good old Scottish dish, still called for, but 
 not by that name. It was a species of soup, or rather 
 broth, of unusual strength, made from the shank or 
 shin of an ox. John Barleycorn may, or may not, 
 have been an ingredient, but it is certain that Burns 
 sings the praises of a very near relation of skink's 
 incidentally in his eulogium of " Scotch Drink : " — 
 
 "On thee aft Scotland chows her coed 
 In souple scones, the wale o' food ; 
 Or tumblin' in the boiling flood 
 
 Wi kail an' beef ; 
 But when thou pours thy strong heart's blood, 
 There thou shines chief." 
 
 Perhaps the most exhaustive enumeration of old 
 Scottish dishes outside a cookery book is to be found 
 in the joyous rant attributed (I think correctly) to 
 the youngest of the three Sempills, and generally 
 known from the first line as " Fy, let us a' to the 
 Bridal." Haggis is, of course, in the list ; and skink 
 holds an honourable place. From the way in which 
 it is mentioned one may infer that it was a favourite 
 
102 CONCERNING SKINK. 
 
 dish, likely to be indulged in to excess. Here is 
 part of the menu card prepared for Jockey's wedding : 
 
 "There will be partans and buckles, 
 Speldens and haddocks eneu, 
 An' singit sheep-heids an' a haggize, 
 An' scadlips to sup till ye're fou." 
 
 Scadlips, a kind of fat soup, was well named, for it 
 retained its pot heat, from its very nature, long after 
 it ceased to send up an appetising steam. But it 
 would need Meg Dods herself to differentiate it from 
 powsowdie and skink. 
 
 " There will be good lapper'd-milk kebbucks, 
 
 An' sowens, an' farles, an' baps, 
 An' swats, an' clean-scrapit paunches, 
 
 An' brandie in stoups and in caps. 
 And there will be meal-kail an' castocks. 
 
 And skink to sup till ye rive, 
 An' roasts, to roast on a brander. 
 
 Of flouks that were taken alive." 
 
 Skink was not confined to Scotland. It is a 
 good old English word, not uncommon in Chaucer, 
 though it was never probably applied as a name to 
 soup in the southern kingdom. " To skink " was to 
 draw and serve ale or wine, and Shakespeare refers to 
 the waiters and pot-boys of Eastcheap as " skinkers." 
 They were probably so called from drawing the liquor 
 through a pipe, which resembles a hollow shank-bone. 
 Dr Skeat favours this derivation. 
 
 It would seem as if " skink," in its southern form 
 of "schenche," was used for liquor; at least it was 
 customary in old London, as set forth in Riley's 
 Memorials, \.o have the " none-schenche," or "noon- 
 
CONCERNING SKINK. lOJ 
 
 skink," as duly as the shopkeepers and lawyers of 
 old Edinburgh had their mid-day dram of strong 
 waters on the stroke of the " gill-bells " of St Giles'. 
 It is curious to note the somewhat disguised survival 
 of " none schenche " in the modern word " nuncheon." 
 Properly speaking, nuncheon is a drink at' mid-day ; 
 but we have confounded the word with luncheon, 
 both in sound and in signification. 
 
 It seems that in at least one edition of Burns's 
 poems the line in the haggis poem, which, correctly 
 given, runs — 
 
 ' ' Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware, " 
 is made to read — ■ 
 
 " Auld Scotland wants nae skinkling ware." 
 
 Here, though "skinkling" is a good old Scotch 
 word, it has no point. It means " sparkling ; " as a 
 noun, "a small portion." In the former sense it is 
 used by Burns in a poem — sometimes, but surely 
 absurdly, denied to him — on " Pastoral Poetry : " — 
 
 " But thee, Theocritus, wha matches? 
 They're no' herds' ballats, Marc's catches ; 
 Squire Pope but busks his skinklin' patches 
 O' heathen tatters." 
 
 The reference is to Pope's artificial pastorals in the 
 classical style of ancient Rome. 
 
THE LOTMAN. 
 
 "See him sweating o'er his bread 
 Before he eats it."—TAe Task. 
 
 The entirely primitive occupation of the lotman only 
 went out of fashion at the opening of the current 
 century, and his name, ceasing to be used, is already 
 all but forgotten. The lotman was the thresher, and 
 he was to be found erewhile on every farm of the Low- 
 lands. It was a small farm that employed but one. 
 A farm that was worked by four pairs of horses 
 required the services of two pairs of threshers. They 
 were named " lotmen " from taking the stuff ly lot — at 
 so much per boll, the custom of the country-side 
 regulating their charge. The phrase is still common : 
 farm produce — 'chiefly potatoes, but even corn also — is 
 still sold " in lots to suit purchasers." Though he thus 
 worked by the piece, the lotman's time was not at his 
 own making : if a farmer wanted a stack threshed — 
 ("taken in," as it was called, i.e. to the barn from the 
 yard) — ^he wanted it done within a given limit ; and 
 the lotman had often to work extra hours. He was 
 occasionally the first astir on the farm, in order to 
 provide the necessary supply of straw for the day. In 
 the case of a small farm or large croft, where the 
 threshing was done by a member of the family, or, it 
 104 
 
THE LOTMAN. 1 05 
 
 might be, a fee'd servant, it was often the practice to 
 make provision for the day's use by threshing a 
 few sheaves — or rather "thraves" — every morning. 
 Mossgiel, as leased by the brothers Burns, was such a 
 farm. It extended to a hundred and twenty acres, 
 was worked by two pairs of horses — the very natures 
 of which are on record: witness "the red-wud 
 Kilburnie blastie " — and was managed by Gilbert and 
 "three mischievous boys" serving under the poet's 
 superintendence. The three farm lads were 
 
 " A gadsman ane, a thresher t'ither, 
 Wee Davoc hauds the nowt in fother." 
 
 The thresher here alluded to was not a lotman but a 
 fee'd servant, whose first and perhaps principal duty 
 on the farm was to keep the " town " supplied with 
 straw and corn. The poet occasionally helped him, 
 especially when farm-work of other kind was " at a 
 stand." We know of at least one hard day's work at 
 threshing in the barn at Mossgiel in the winter of 
 1785-86, when Burns toiled like a brownie, and had 
 his reward in tired body and depressed spirits, followed 
 by a glorious Vision in the evening : — 
 
 ' ' The thresher's weary flirigin'-tree 
 The lee-lang day had tired me ; 
 And when the day had closed his e'e 
 
 Far i' the west, 
 Ben i' the spence, right pensivelie, 
 
 I gaed to rest." 
 
 On a big farm the lotman's work of threshing went 
 on regularly from daylight to dark, and often both 
 before the one and after the other by lantern light, 
 ■during the whole of the winter. " Dichting " by means 
 
I06 THE LOTMAN. 
 
 of fanners went on, of course, at the same time. In 
 his Farmer's Ingle (scene — East of Fife, near St. 
 Andrews) Fergusson very properly conjoins the two 
 occupations. It is " grey gloamin' " of a November 
 day about the year 1770 
 
 "When Thresher John, sair dung, his barn-door steeks, 
 And lusty lasses at the dichtin' tire." 
 
 These lotmen were not farm-servants in the ordinary 
 sense. They had probably been ploughmen, but 
 stiffened with exposure or matrimony, had taken to 
 threshing. When a ploughman married, and was not 
 fortunate enough to secure the dignity of a foremanship, 
 he thought of a more independent way of living, and 
 when the chance occurred caught at the kind of work 
 implied in the occupation of a lotman. It had many 
 advantages, which either escaped the eye of the 
 " single " ploughman, or were ignored by him in a kind 
 of bravado. There was, for example, less exposure to 
 " wind and weet," less of that kind of toil called 
 " trudging," less " drudging " also at a variety of 
 incidental duties ; and if wages were not on a much 
 more liberal scale than a ploughman's, payment was 
 made at shorter and more convenient intervals. The 
 lotman's house was in most cases a cottage by the road- 
 side ; but he might be a denizen of a town, probably 
 near the outskirts, going out to his work at the farm in 
 the morning and returning home in the evening. The 
 Pleasance of Edinburgh used to be, and may still be, 
 the home of many people who earned at least part of 
 their livelihood by " day's work " among the neighbour- 
 ing farms. 
 
THE LOTMAN. 107 
 
 In summer time the lotman changed his name with 
 the necessity of a change in his occupation. He was 
 then known as an " orra man " — one who turned his 
 hand to any work that was "going about." He became 
 a ditcher or a drainer, mended roads, or repaired 
 fences. Sometimes the farmer for whom he had 
 "threshed the barn" in winter found him occupation 
 in working his "faugh land" — as a field lying in 
 summer fallow was called. This he did by cleaning 
 it of weeds and stones, ploughing or " stirring " it, 
 draining its sour hollows, and generally preparing it 
 for next season. Potato-growing has made summer 
 fallow less necessary. Clearing or " redding out " 
 ditches was work done in the heat of summer, between 
 the hay-making and the grain harvest. Draining was 
 winter work chiefly. Burns's famous Cotter filled just 
 such a position, and discharged just such services to 
 the farmers in his neighbourhood as our lotman. 
 Spades, mattocks, and hoes were the emblems of his 
 toil, and he was doubtless no stranger to the use of 
 the flail. 
 
 Flail, though a word of French origin, was the name 
 by which the thresher's tool was most generally known. 
 There was no absolute want of a native name ; but 
 probably " the swinging tree," though well descriptive 
 of the thing it named, was confined to the west 
 country. The instrument consisted of three parts ; 
 the handle or staff", the "souple," and the " couplins.' 
 The last-mentioned were thongs of eel-skin or leather, 
 by which the souple was loosely fastened to the 
 staff". Eel-skin, as being tougher and more lasting 
 than leather, was preferred. It was in its way a 
 
I08 THE LOTMAN. 
 
 special industry in some rural districts to catch and 
 skin those eels that were destined to flourish in a barn. 
 There was a decided prejudice against them as food : 
 Jews could not have held them in greater abomina- 
 tion. The souple, like the handle, was round, made 
 like it of ash or elm, but thicker. It was swung over 
 the head, and delivered in such a manner that the 
 whole length of the souple fell prone at once on the 
 prostrate sheaf. A novice who had courage to venture 
 a full swing as likely as not brought the whole barn 
 about his ears, or — which was the same thing — 
 landed himself a swinging blow on the chops. Yes ; 
 it was one of the fine arts to handle the flail as it 
 deserved, and the art could not be painlessly learned 
 in a day. 
 
 The lotman threshed the whole length of the sheaf, 
 but especially, of course, the " crop " or the " heads," as 
 the ears were commonly called. It was not only that 
 some ears were in the body of the sheaf, but the corn- 
 stalks made better fodder for being bruised and 
 broken. The threshing was done in the barn between 
 the fore and back doors, which were both kept open, 
 at least the upper halves, to admit light. The lower 
 halves were closed in stormy weather. The threshers 
 were stripped to the shirt, but were of course out of 
 the draught and quite within the barn. They worked 
 opposite each other on the same stuff' when they 
 worked in pairs. The flails fell alternately with steady 
 thump on the grain lying in the cross-lights between 
 the two doors. When sufficiently beaten on one side, 
 the sheaf of course was turned. The barn floor was 
 commonly of clay, but in most instances that part of 
 
THE LOTMAN. 1 09 
 
 it on which the corn was threshed was laid with 
 wood. 
 
 Another way of separating seeds from stalk than by 
 threshing was by whipping. By this process handfuls 
 of the sheaves were smartly struck upon a large cross- 
 tree or beam fixed in the barn, and in such a way that 
 only the ears were shaken. The stalks remained 
 unbroken, and were serviceable for thatching. 
 
 Threshing-mills began to come into general use 
 pretty early in the century. There was opposition to 
 them at first, just as a century previously there had 
 been opposition to fanners. (Mause Headrigg's 
 objection to them may be in the reader's memory.) 
 But when their superiority to the flail as a money- 
 saving agency was established their introduction 
 became general and rapid. An old farmer of my 
 acquaintance ventured ;£^24 for a " second-hand " mill, 
 and declared he saved the cost of it the first year. As 
 late as 1832-33 the flail was still thumping with its 
 first vigour on upland farms on the Ochils. Even yet 
 in some crofter's barn the old-world implement fitfully 
 smites the corn. These eyes saw it last wielded — not 
 many years ago — by an old man on his knees. It is 
 now almost entirely confined to the beating of carpets 
 and the care of antiquarian collections. 
 
 In Andrew Meikle's invention the loosened sheaf is 
 operated upon by the beaters of a revolving drum. 
 The difference between the flail and his threshing-mill 
 is the difference between the oar and the steam 
 paddle-wheel. Meikle's machine was invented in 
 1787 j by the year 1830 most farms, even in outlying 
 regions had a Meikle mill at one end of the barn. 
 
no THE LOTMAN. 
 
 The motive power was at first that of horses. They 
 turned the vertical shaft in a round red-tiled shed in 
 the rear of the bam. These conical sheds are still 
 conspicuous on many farm towns. But they have 
 mostly fallen into decay through disuse : the idle and 
 rotting beams which they protected may be dimly seen 
 through the openings in the low walls ; a nearer 
 inspection reveals a tapestry of mould and "mouse- 
 webs" filling the angles, and extending along the 
 beams to which, in old-world days of this century. 
 Bob, and Dick, and Demsel were yoked. The end- 
 less recurrence of their white and brown and black 
 hides in the shed opening, as they pursued their 
 monotonous round to the hushing hum within the 
 barn, is no longer one of the sleepy emblems of rural 
 life. The principle of Meikle's mill is still employed 
 in the travelling mills which, drawn and worked by 
 steam-engines, now perambulate the country from 
 stackyard to stackyard, and supersede in their turn 
 the mill in the barn-end and the sorely-tried energies 
 of Bob and Demsel and Dick. 
 
ON A DISPUTED PASSAGE IN HOGG'S 
 " KILMENY." 
 
 It is greatly to be feared that the poetry of the 
 Ettrick Shepherd is not so much read or sung as it 
 used to be. Hogg, indeed, is in danger of being 
 neglected. His full meed of fame was in the palmy 
 days of John Wilson and Blackwood. Thanks to 
 Christopher North, the whole country was kept ringing 
 with his name. And well did he merit his reputation. 
 Whether we consider its bulk, its variety, or its sweet- 
 ness, the poetry of Hogg approves him still a man of 
 remarkable genius. Neglected he may be — but only 
 for a while. He is of the immortals, and will rise 
 again. Can " Kilmeny " ever be forgotten ? In a 
 recent number of Blackwood a young critic, writing 
 timidly of the robustest spirit in Scottish literature — 
 Burns hardly excepted — is courageous enough to speak 
 of " The Thrissil and the Rois " as a very gem of poesy, 
 unmatched in northern poetry. It is a gem, and perfect 
 of its kind ; and William Dunbar's fame would be 
 appreciably dimmer for want of it. But it is not the 
 hooded laureate's most brilliant achievement ; and it 
 is not quite so unmatched in refinement of feeling and 
 daintiness of workmanship as Mr Oliphant imagines. 
 I shall put "Kilmeny" beside it — though I should 
 not be so unjust as to place Hogg beside Dunbar — and 
 
112 ON A DISPUTED PASSAGE 
 
 without deciding between the two poems, I boldly 
 prophesy that time, which, in the words of Pope, has 
 spared the Thistle and the Rose, will as certainly 
 cherish bonny Kilmeny. 
 
 The poem has its faults — especially to an Englisher.. 
 What — even though he be skilled in his Chaucer — what 
 can he make of the spelling ? What can he make of the 
 quhans and the quhairs, the eiris and the ayries, not 
 to mention the hiches and the cuches, and other per- 
 fectly innocent English words, sheep in wolves' 
 clothing? The Scottish words, needless to say, are 
 yet more ferocious. Hogg has not improved his 
 beautiful poem by so ungracious a setting. It is not 
 the antique form, but a mongrel mixture of that and 
 phonetics. The illusion of an occasional antique word 
 is not to be despised. The effect, indeed, is often 
 marvellous. But a sparing use — a "daimenicker to 
 the thrave " — would have quite sufficed. He is also 
 now and then obscure, with an obscurity arising mostly 
 from his love, of the modern antique, from his pre- 
 sentation of an obsolete word in an "original" dress. 
 Take a few lines, charged with a fine flavour of the 
 supernatural, in illustration : — 
 
 ' ' In y ond greinwudde there is a waike, 
 And in that waike there is a wene. 
 And in that wene there is a maike 
 That nouther has flesh, bluid, nor bene : 
 And dune in yon greinwudd he walkis his lene." 
 
 "Waike" and "wene" and "maike" are not words 
 of everyday occurrence. How many that read and 
 admire the passage know quite what the words mean ? 
 The general reader is probably content with the general 
 
IN HOGC^S " KILMENY." II3 
 
 meaning, which is sufficiently apprehensible, and 
 frankly avows his ignorance beyond that. He may 
 remark that it reminds him of the rhyme about the 
 drap that was in the caup that was in the kist on 
 Tintock-tap ; but while in the latter case the individual 
 words of an obscure rhyme are clearly intelligible, in 
 the former the individual words of a clear enough pas- 
 sage are obscure. These obscure words, specified above, 
 have been the subject of much misapplied comment, and 
 the various interpretations, more numerous than one 
 would suppose, and at times absurdly contradictory, 
 throw a delightful confusion around the precise mean- 
 ing of the words. It would serve no good purpose to 
 quote those interpretations here. It is proposed rather 
 to offer what is, so far as it goes, a correct interpretation. 
 In the first place, there can be no doubt that " wene " 
 is Hogg's form of the good old word " wane " 
 or "wonne." "Wane" is the spelling in Henryson's 
 fine poem, "The Borrowstoun Mous and the Land- 
 wart Mous." The field mouse's house or "chalmer," 
 we are there informed, was " a simple wane, fecklessly 
 made of fog " and other " foggage." " Wonne " is the 
 form affected by the old English poets and their 
 imitators, such as Spenser and Thomson. It will be 
 remembered, too, that Burns uses the verb — " There's 
 auld Rob Morris, that wons in yon glen." Clearly, 
 then, Hogg's "wene" stands for "dwelling." Next, 
 with respect to "maike," while it might mean "creature," 
 " something made," it is more probably Hogg's form 
 of the current Scottish word " mak " or " make," which 
 signifies "match," " mate," or "marrow." The !'maike" 
 in the poem is to be identified with the " spirit," " the 
 H 
 
114 ON A DISPUTED PASSAGE 
 
 meike and reverend fere," who had been "eidently 
 
 •watching for a thousand years and mair " — watching, 
 
 indeed "sen the banquhet of tyme" — for a sinless 
 
 virgin free of stain in mind and body. He found at 
 
 last what he sought in Kilmeny, and brought her to 
 
 the land of spirits — 
 
 "Now shall the land of the spiritis see, 
 Now shall it ken quhat ane womyn may be ! " 
 
 There is, I must confess, a difficulty with the word 
 " waike." It may be connected with the word " wake," 
 signifying a "ward," or "district to watch over;" or, 
 again, it may be Hogg's form for " walk," with much 
 the same meaning. It ought probably to be taken in 
 connection with such passages in the poem as — 
 
 ' ' We half watchit their stepis as the dawnying shone, 
 And deip in the greinwudde walkis alone : " 
 and 
 
 " Oh, wald the fayrest of mortyl kynde 
 Aye keipe thilke holye troths in mynde, 
 That kyndred spiritis ilk motion see, 
 Quha watch their wayis with anxious e'e, 
 And grieve for the guilt of humanitye ! " 
 
 Or even more probably it is a forced form of " wauk," 
 which the reader will find rhyming to " sake " in the 
 old Scottish ballad of " Erlinton" (see Professor Child's 
 English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Part I., p. io8, 
 — " Erlinton " B, stanza 4). There can be no doubt 
 that Hogg was acquainted with the ballad, and that 
 an echo of the ballad sounds in the disputed passage 
 now under consideration : 
 
 "But yonder is a bonnie green wud, 
 
 An' in the greenwud there is a wauk, 
 An' I'll be there an' sune the morn, love, 
 It's a' for my true love's sake." 
 
IN HOGC^S " KILMENY'' 1 1 5 
 
 But the faults of the poem — its absurd speUing (think 
 of " comyshonit " for " commissioned " !), its obsolete 
 and obscure phraseology, its structural defect, its 
 incongruous imitation of Allan Ramsay's prophetic 
 " Vision " — sink and disappear as emerges from it all 
 the lovely figure of Kilmeny, encircled with an 
 imagery of this world and not of it, but all in 
 beautiful harmony with the conception of her char- 
 acter. 
 
A FORGOTTEN ROAD AND A FAMOUS 
 
 VIEW. 
 
 It can hardly be afifirmed that the roads of old 
 Scotland were civilly engineered. If our forefathers 
 knew of any such method or manner of making 
 mutual communication, they certainly did not practise 
 it. A blunt boldness characterised their plan ; savage 
 rudeness their execution of it. Right forward, up hills 
 of the steepest acclivity, down braes of abruptest 
 descent, they projected their lines of intercourse, 
 and with their rough-shod feet beat and battered 
 them into permanent tracks. The shortest cut pos- 
 sible was their motto, when they first entered on a 
 career of road-making. But by-and-by, mistaking 
 means for ends, they seemed actually to prefer the 
 surmounting of difficulties to the avoidance of them, 
 and would go a goodish bit off their way for the 
 dour pleasure of tackling a mountain. Nothing short 
 of forty-five degrees stopped them. It was only 
 a precipice that brought them up. Even then they 
 scorned " to refer the foot," but would skirt the cliff 
 at its very brink — "the view o't gave them little 
 fricht." It would give way before they did ; and they 
 took sharp advantage of the first signs it showed of 
 retreating or sloping off in the way they wanted. 
 ii6 
 
A FORGOTTEN ROAD. WJ 
 
 One of several benefits which the primeval manner 
 of road-making over mountains secured to travellers 
 was freedom of view. They could see round about 
 them. The modern way is rather against this. It 
 prefers the base to the brow, and would rather tunnel 
 or fetch a turn than overtop. For this reason the 
 modern traveller — unless he inherit the ancestral 
 spirit, or has caught the craze of the antiquary to 
 drive him into forgotten paths — must be content to 
 know his native land only to that meagre extent and 
 in those aspects to which his road condemns and con- 
 fines him. The lines — whether of high road or rail- 
 road — which have been laid down for him do not 
 contain the best points of view. He trudges or trots 
 along the hill-foot, with petty microscopical peeps 
 within his narrow horizon ; or he is whirled past 
 " loose revolving fields " which only weary his retina 
 and bewilder his sense of locality. And this is about 
 the best the modern road can do for him in the way 
 of views. But at its worst — and it is often at that — 
 he is caught between what are called " cuttings," and 
 shuttled into malodorous tunnels, or he has the 
 blinkers of confining walls and excluding hedges to 
 keep his gaze on the dusty road that lengthens before 
 him in a dreary perspective of vanishing wires. It is 
 not, of course, argued that our earliest road-makers, 
 as if possessed of a superior sense of scenic beauty, 
 drew their lines of intercommunication with the view 
 of indulging it — the opportunity which their roads 
 offer of such sesthetic advantage was a mere accident ; 
 but the fact remains that if one is desirous of knowing 
 his country to the best scenic or topographic advan- 
 
Il8 A FORGOTTEN ROAD 
 
 tage, without adventuring on forbidden ground, the 
 route for him is the old roadway. 
 
 The great North Road from Edinburgh to Perth, 
 constructed with a view to an improved stage-coach 
 communication, conducts the traveller along a course 
 which, in the matter of scenery, has little to offer that 
 is pleasing, less that is picturesque, and nothing that 
 is romantic, till it enters Glen Farg, near the village 
 of Damhead. The passage through the glen, which 
 was engineered in 1808-1810, descends to Strath 
 Earn by a broad, smooth, sinuous roadway, some four 
 miles in length, revealing at every turn a varied succes- 
 sion of moss-mottled rocks and bosky banks, screened 
 at pleasing intervals with covers of larch and fir. But 
 while these rocks and banks form and enclose short 
 views of romantic charm, such as awoke the descrip- 
 tive powers of young John Ruskin, they also shut out the 
 grand sweep of distant landscape which the older road 
 by the Wicks of Baigley affords from the heights which 
 are the culmination of the western wall of the glen. 
 These are two of the four lines of communication 
 from Kinross-shire into Strath Earn, and both are 
 charged with memories of the old stage-coaching days. 
 The other two are the oldest and the newest respec- 
 tively. The newest, which is also the least attractive, 
 though the most frequented of the four, is the 
 recently opened railroad which has brought Perth by 
 the fast train within seventy minutes of Edinburgh. 
 To the lover of natural scenery domiciled in Edin- 
 burgh, a great recommendation of this road is that it 
 conveys him within about one hour to Glenfarg 
 Station, at which point he can recover the liberty of 
 
AND A FAMOUS VIEW. Up 
 
 his legs, and begin at his own leisure to gratify his 
 taste for the picturesque. If he is fond of what one 
 may call Nature's " interiors," he will stroll down the 
 glen road to the music of the Farg ; if he prefers the 
 open landscape, he will strike up the hill road in the 
 direction of Paris, and speir the way he can hardly 
 miss to the pass of Baigley. The remaining hne of 
 communication here to be noticed is the most ancient 
 of all, and dates from times that are almost pre- 
 historic. Now in part a mere track, fast fading into 
 the grassy and heathery wilderness, and scarcely 
 known, except to country people of the neigh- 
 bourhood, it also leads over the heights, but lies 
 considerably farther to the west than the Baigley road. 
 It steals away westward from the route by Baigley in 
 a grass-grown track which used to be known as 
 Wallace's Road, and descends to the water of Earn 
 by the old homestead of Dron. It is the best of our 
 four roads for magnificence and variety of view ; yet 
 it is the least frequented of all, being, indeed, all but 
 disused. It must have been along this road that 
 Walter Scott, then a boy of fifteen, journeyed on that 
 first famous pony excursion of his, which is for ever 
 memorable as having afforded him his first view of 
 Perth. It is only on this route that a view of the 
 Fair City can be had. Some may even think it is 
 only this view of the town that makes it fair. The 
 impression then made upon Scott's youthful imagina- 
 tion by this view was the raison d^etre of his last great 
 romance — "The Fair Maid of Perth." In referring 
 to this incident in his early life, Scott's language is 
 unusually ecstatic. He forgets the grandeur of the 
 
I20 A FORGOTTEN ROAD 
 
 Trossachs, and even the varied graces of his own 
 Tweedside home, to cry up the view to northward of 
 Perth and the Tay, as commanded from a spot on this 
 unfrequented path over the eastern Ochils. He claims 
 for this one particular spot the glory of being "one of 
 the most beautiful points of view which Britain, or 
 perhaps the world can afford." The prospect from 
 this spot he describes as a thing of the past, when, 
 nearly half a century after he saw it, he recorded his 
 recollection of its magnificence in the first chapter of 
 his novel. The alteration of the road avoided the 
 view. He beheld from the ridgy eminence, after a 
 long stage from Kinross through a country then waste 
 and uninteresting, and still only moderately attractive, 
 except to natives— "the valley of the Tay, traversed 
 by its ample and lordly stream ; the town of Perth, 
 with its two large meadows or Inches, its steeples and 
 its towers ; the hills of Moncrieff and Kinnoul, faintly 
 rising into picturesque rocks, partly clothed with 
 woods; the rich margin of the river studded with 
 elegant mansions ; and the distant view of the huge 
 Grampian mountains, the northern screen of this 
 exquisite landscape." But it was, he confessed, beyond 
 the power of even his pen to communicate "the 
 exquisite charm which surprise gives to pleasure, when 
 so splendid a view arises when least expected or hoped 
 for, and which Chrystal Croftangry experienced when 
 he beheld for the first time the matchless scene." The 
 praise seems so extravagant, he admits that childish 
 wonder may have been an ingredient in his delight- 
 " I was not," he goes on, " above fifteen years old ; 
 and as this had been the first excursion which I was 
 
AND A FAMOUS VIEW. 121 
 
 permitted to make on a pony of my own, I also 
 experienced the glow of independence, mingled with 
 that degree of anxiety which the most conceited boy 
 feels when he is first abandoned to his own undirected 
 counsels. I recollect pulling up the reins without 
 meaning to do so, and gazing on the scene before me 
 as if I had been afraid it would shift, like those in a 
 theatre, before I could distinctly observe its different 
 parts, or convince myself that what I saw was real. 
 Since that hour, and the period is now more than fifty 
 years past, the recollection of that inimitable land- 
 scape has possessed the strongest influence over my 
 mind, and retained its place as a memorable thing 
 when much that was influential on my own fortunes 
 has fled from my recollection. It is therefore natural 
 that I should pitch upon some narrative connected 
 with the splendid scenery which made so much 
 impression on my youthful imagination." His keen 
 sense of the beauty of the landscape found metrical 
 expression still more laudatory, and even defiantly 
 boastful. " Behold the Tiber" — he wrote, making use 
 of a poetical tradition which it is common to refer to 
 a point of vantage on the opposite side of the Earn — 
 
 ' ' Behold the Tiber ! the vain Roman cried, 
 Viewing the ample Tay from Baiglie side ; 
 But Where's the Scot that would the vaunt repay, 
 And hail the puny Tiber for the Tay ? " 
 
 On the publication of this eulogium of a particular 
 view from the Ochils of Perthshire, various letters 
 were sent him from the county he had belauded so 
 lavishly, not, indeed, to find fault with his laudation, 
 but to correct some little mistakes about names. 
 
122 A FORGOTTEN ROAD 
 
 Scott was willing enough to allow that he might so far 
 have erred after such a lapse of years, but he insists 
 on his language being the truthful expression of his 
 feelings. "Sure enough," he writes, August 1831, 
 " the general effect of the valley of the Tay, and the 
 ancient town of Perth, rearing its grey head among 
 the rich pastures, and beside the gleaming waters of 
 that noblest of Scottish streams, must remain so as to 
 justify warmer language than Mr Croftangry had at his 
 command." The chief, if not the only, error in 
 Scott's description is in locating his view-point on the 
 Wicks of Baigley. The name may have been vaguely 
 spread over a larger part of the heights a hundred 
 years ago than it is now, or Scott may have been 
 misinformed by a rustic of the locality speaking in 
 the loose way common among rustic topographers, 
 but the fact is that Perth cannot be seen for Moncrieff' 
 Hill from the precise place on the Ochil ridge which 
 is now called the Wicks o' Baigley. His view-point, 
 as already indicated, was a few hundred yards further 
 west, on the path that descends to the caller homestead 
 of Dron. There is, however, a splendid view, though ' 
 it does not include the small city, from the Wicks of 
 Baigley, and it is more easily reached from Glenfarg 
 Station, and therefore from Edinburgh. Indeed, 
 within two hours after leaving Edinburgh, the traveller, 
 with a meditative pipe, may be reposing, in the hush 
 of a fine summer noon, on an Ochil top of fragrant 
 turf near enough to do duty for the Wicks o' Baigley. 
 This pleasure the writer has enjoyed neither for the 
 first nor, he hopes, the last time. It is Clochrat-law, 
 set down in the survey maps as Clochridgelaw, and- 
 
AND A FAMOUS VIEW. 1 23 
 
 rises a well-known landmark from the narrow interval 
 between the glen road and the hill road. It may be 
 regarded as the last of the Ochil tops at the east end 
 of the range. All round in the immediate neighbour- 
 hood lies a visible dream of pastoral peace, accentuated 
 rather than disturbed by the hurry of the town 
 pulsating through the scene in swiftly passing trains. 
 Here cocks are crowing an eternal Sabbath among the 
 hills. The bleating of sheep is in one's ears. Now 
 and again a dog barks among the echoes of the larch- 
 wood that lifts its green spires in the foreground. A 
 bee revels in the thymy fragrance, till the incense of 
 your tobacco sends him off grumbling in a zig-zag 
 flight. The main body and middle of your picture is 
 that part of Perthshire where Strathearn approaches to 
 unite with the grander strath of Tay. It is a view 
 of rich level lands, here and there dotted with hay- 
 coles, through which wind in shining links the stately 
 waters. It realises, as far as anything in northern 
 latitudes can, the scene which Lot surveyed when 
 " he lifted up his eyes and beheld the plain of Jordan, 
 even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of 
 Egypt." The eyes never tire of dwelling on the view. 
 But no inconsiderable part of the charm of this lovely 
 low-lying landscape is the setting. Eastward, the 
 German Ocean glances a welcome to Tay round a 
 pine-clad hill which hides Pictish Abernethy ; north- 
 ward, over the firs and crags of Moncrieff and 
 Callerfountain which curtain Perth, stands the great 
 Highland rampart of the Grampians, with their clear 
 etherealised outlines and their dim glens, and 
 Schiehallion their advance-guard; westward, over 
 
124 ^ FORGOTTEN ROAD. 
 
 bare Baigley and Balmanno, the sky-line is fretted 
 with the dark peaks of Ben Lomond and Ben Ledi 
 and the rough turbulency of the West Highlands. 
 The scene, of course, is northward, with a semicircle 
 of horizon for boundary. Southward there is little to 
 take the eye but the back of the Lomonds and the 
 sullen brow of Benarty. 
 
ON PENTLAND'S EDGE. 
 
 Despite the boom in golf and the boom of bicycles, 
 the buckstane on the Braids road is still the goal of 
 his evening walk to many a douce citizen of the gude 
 toun of Edinburgh. Here he " stops to blaw " under 
 the pretext of surveying the scenery, and, content 
 with the moderate exercise and a peep at rurality, 
 hence he returns — like Milton's cattle, "bedward 
 ruminating " — with sober thoughts and pulses gently 
 stirred. It is only on such special occasions as a 
 town . holiday that he ventures to extend his walk. 
 The buckstane then becomes his starting-point, from 
 which he has a choice of routes for the day's 
 adventures. He probably feels drawn towards the 
 Pentlands, which stand to him as the embodiment of 
 freedom; but as the enjoyment of freedom on the 
 hiUs implies the exertion of climbing, and as our 
 burgess is, like Hamlet, " fat and scant of breath," he 
 makes compromise between his limbs and his longing 
 by proposing a leisurely walk to Nine-mile-burn. 
 From the buckstane to the bum is as near as may be 
 a matter of nine miles ; it is mostly a level road, 
 agreeably varied with easy ascents and picturesque 
 windings, and it has the great advantage of the close 
 neighbourhood of the Pentlands the whole way. 
 Here and there, indeed, as at Hillend and Wood- 
 125 
 
126 ON pentland's edge. 
 
 houselee, the hill tumbles in furze, or dips in lawny 
 turf, to the very feet of our pedestrian. He inhales 
 the fine fragrance of mountain air ; his ear is charmed 
 by chafiSnch and yellow yeldrin, by the babble of 
 brooks and the bleating of ewes. The peace of 
 pastoral life is around him. It is the home of the 
 Gentle Shepherd. 
 
 If ever " the Lang Linker " * and his merry com- 
 panions should write up the land of Allan Ramsay, 
 it is along this road, which, from the buckstane on the 
 Braids to Nine-mile-burn or Carlops, runs close to the 
 sunny side of the Pentlands, that they must direct 
 their pilgrimage. There are traces and traditions of 
 Allan the whole way. It is not forgotten that Ramsay 
 was a burgess — an eminently sensible and successful 
 burgess — of Edinburgh ; that he was a denizen of 
 that city for nearly sixty successive years. It is not of 
 the sensible and successful burgess we are here 
 speaking ; the type is common and commonplace 
 enough. It is of Allan the poet — not the laureate of 
 Canongate publics and suburban ale-houses, mal- 
 odorous change-houses and their detestable Lucky 
 Spences and Mother Needhams — but the pastoral 
 Allan, Scotland's own Theocritus, the callan that 
 paints auld Nature to the nines. 
 
 " In gowany glens his burnie strays 
 Where bonnie lasses bleach their claes, 
 Or trots by hazelly shaws and braes, 
 
 Wi' hawthorns gray. 
 Where blackbirds join the shepherd's lays 
 At close o' day." 
 
 * Hew Ainslie, author of A Pilgrimage to the Land of Burns. 
 
ON PENTLAND' S EDGE. 1 27 
 
 It is there the stream of his genius runs sweet and 
 pure — among glens and green hills and- village bleach- 
 ing greens, hazel bushes and hawthorns in " flourish," 
 and vocal with the strong loitering note of the black- 
 bird. His body may have been among wigs and 
 books in his shops in High Street for far the greater 
 feck of those threescore years, but his better spirit 
 was abroad, and his more congenial life was lived 
 among what was calmest in nature and cleanest in 
 human nature, on the sunny side of the Pentlands. 
 
 That Ramsay was familiar with the scenery of the 
 whole route from Carlops to the Braids needs no 
 demonstration. If it must be given, it will be found 
 in the established facts of his life, and in the general 
 spirit, as well as in many particular references in what 
 is best of his verse. He first traversed the route, a 
 boy of fifteen, in the opening year of last century. It 
 was along this route, under the conduct of his step- 
 father, Mr Crichton, that he made his first approach 
 to Edinburgh. First Craigmillar Castle and then the 
 bold outline of Arthur Seat caught his eye as he 
 descended the winding path to Hillend, admonishing 
 him of the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, the destina- 
 tion of his long journey, and his future home. He 
 brought with him, of course, a knowledge of pastoral 
 scenery and rustic life, picked up from daily inter- 
 course in his boyhood among the sheep farms of 
 Crawford Moor. This early knowledge doubtless 
 gave his mind, so far as it was poetical, its bent to 
 pastoralism, and formed the basis of his pastoral 
 creations in both lyric and eclogue. But it can 
 hardly be denied that this early bent was developed 
 
128 ON PENTLAND'S EDGE. 
 
 by Pentland pastoralism, and that Pentland scenes 
 mingled in his poetry with his recollections of Craw- 
 ford Moor. Before he was thirty he was the recog- 
 nised laureate of the Pentlands. Cairketton was his 
 Soracte : — 
 
 " Look up to Pentland's tow'ring tap, 
 
 Buried beneath great wreaths o' snaw, 
 O'er ilka cleuch, ilk scaur, an' slap, 
 As high as ony Roman wa'." 
 
 At three points on the hill-foot road, at the Hunter's 
 Tryst, Woodhouselee, and Newhall, tradition is busiest 
 to-day with the memory of Allan Ramsay. Strange 
 that each of these places should claim to be the true 
 and original scene of "The Gentle Shepherd." The 
 Hunter's Tryst, in view from the buckstane, is some 
 three miles nearer Edinburgh than Woodhouselee, 
 while Woodhouselee is some five from Newhall, 
 a little beyond Nine-mile-burn. The weakest tra- 
 dition, and probably the most recent, is concerned 
 with the Hunter's Tryst. Miss Warrender, in her 
 Walks near Edinburgh, repeats this tradition, and 
 connects it — if I remember rightly, for her book is 
 not at the moment at hand — with interesting par- 
 ticulars in the life of Scott and Hogg. Whether we 
 are to look townward on the farm lands of Comiston, 
 or hillward on the braes of Swanston for the fields of 
 Glaud, tradition does not stoop to inform us ; but 
 perhaps Swanston now furnishes as near a representa- 
 tion of "the shepherd's village and fields some few 
 miles from Edinburgh," where Allan located his rustic 
 drama, as the Pentland district at this late date can 
 offer. I must not be misunderstood; I am far 
 
ON pentland's edge. 129 
 
 from identifying Swanston with the poet's original. 
 Newhall, in my opinion, is that original, as far as there 
 was one ; but Swanston is just such a pastoral hamlet 
 of low-walled, thatch-roofed cottages, clustering care- 
 lessly round a brook-divided common on the lower 
 declivities of the Pentlands, as might answer to 
 "The Shepherd's Village" of the drama. At Newhall 
 tradition is loud-voiced, and articulate, and definite. 
 She points the visitor to Patie's Hill and Patie's Mill, 
 to Habbie's How and Patie's Lee. History comes to 
 her support with a record of duly authenticated facts. 
 At Newhall House lived Sir David Forbes, whose 
 frequent guest our poet undoubtedly was. Here often 
 met the Penicuicks and the Clerks, occasionally the 
 Queensberrys and Gay, perhaps young Jemmy 
 Thomson — all friends of Ramsay; here, in the hos- 
 pitable knight himself, Allan may have found the 
 prototype (in character) of Sir William Worthy ; here 
 a Habby's How that, unlike the Glencross fraud, finds 
 a faithful reflection in charming Peggy's charming 
 description : — 
 
 " Out o'er a little linn 
 The water fa's an' mak's a singin' din ; 
 A pool briest-deep beneath, as clear as glass, 
 Kisses wi' easy whirls the bordering grass." 
 
 There remains the tradition of Woodhouselee, a 
 tradition which was full-blown before the eighteenth 
 century closed. It expresses itself in a rustic 
 " Temple " on the green hillside — one of those 
 private shrines which were so much in vogue in 
 England in the earlier half of the eighteenth century 
 — such as Shenstone, for example, loved to set up 
 
 I 
 
I30 ON pzntland's edge. 
 
 under every green tree at the Leasowes. The White- 
 houselee temple is of unbarked fir branches, nicely 
 and compactly fitted into a sort of octagonal kiosk, 
 which opens on three sides to the east with an exten- 
 sive and really charming view of the valley of the Esks 
 — the Scottish Tempe, as some one has dared to dub 
 it. The "temple" is a snug little summer-house perched 
 on a shelf of the descending hills, where one might 
 sit in peace, disturbed only by the sounds of a rookery 
 overhead, and meditate, half-pleased and half-curious, 
 the inscription on the votive table which the " temple " 
 protects : — 
 
 "ALLANO RAMSAY ET GENIO LOCI. 
 "Here midst those scenes that taught thy Doric muse 
 Her sweetest song ; the hills, the woods, and stream, 
 Where beauteous Peggy strayed, listening the while 
 Her Gentle Shepherd's tender tale of love ; 
 Scenes which thy pencil, true to nature, gave 
 To live for ever. Sacred be this shrine. 
 And unprofaned by ruder hands the stone 
 That owes its honours to thy deathless name." 
 
 Above the legend is a collection of pastoral emblems 
 — panpipe, crook, stock-and-horn, and comic mask. 
 One is pleased with the devotion, and curious to 
 know what personal connection Ramsay had with the 
 ancient estate of Fulford (or New Woodhouselee). 
 
PART III. 
 
 OF LOCHLEVEN AND THE 
 LANDS ABOUT IT. 
 
"GAY" KINROSS. 
 
 " Press'd by heavy laws, 
 And gay, alas ! no more. 
 It bears a name of joy, because 
 It has been gay of yore ! " 
 
 The Fountain (adapted). 
 
 LocHLEVEN is the lodestone of Kinross-shire, and the 
 attraction is only for anglers. They make no account 
 of its town. It furnishes them with a hotel, and it is 
 of no further service. The relationship between loch 
 and town has changed. Once Kinross owned the 
 loch ; now it is the other way about. It has become 
 a mere adjunct of the lake ever since the discovery 
 was made, scarcely half a century ago, that Lochleven 
 trout will rise to the lure. 
 
 It is hard to realise that Kinross was ever young, 
 and spruce, and sprightly. To speak of Kinross as 
 gay must sound like irony in the ears of one ac- 
 quainted with the present condition and appearance 
 of this dingy, little, old and antiquated town. It is, 
 indeed, sadly in want of something to enliven its dull 
 gables and lack-lustre windows. It looks gay neither 
 near nor afar. There is nothing in its mean-looking 
 buildings to suggest a romantic past ; nothing in its 
 dowie or deserted street to promise a prosperous 
 
 133 
 
134 (^^y ICINROSS. 
 
 future. Anything over Coyctus drearier than its dull, 
 narrow, winding street in November — or, for that 
 part, a drenching day at Lammastide — it would be 
 difficult to imagine; might be impossible to find 
 if one did not stumble on Dunning or Auchtermuchty, 
 Cities of Dreadful Night, in the neighbourhood. In 
 moist weather it is little better than a " lake-dwelling " 
 of chills and cramps and rheumatics ; in wet weather 
 — which its inhabitants euphonistically describe as 
 " soft " — it is a swamp, a paradise for frogs or cranes, 
 and filled with croaking. Moist or wet weather 
 prevails here for nine — perhaps for eleven — months 
 in twelve. The town squats among waterflags and 
 rushes on a dead flat fast by " the Thrapple Hole," 
 not many feet from the loch side, and only a few 
 inches above the loch level. 
 
 "I see the muddy wave, the dreary shore, 
 Which mortals visit, and return no more." 
 
 The whole small county is damp, an inland Ayr- 
 shire, moister than any shire of Scotland under the 
 same meridians, but in comparison with its one town 
 and the loch area, the rest of the county is almost 
 dry. What chiefly gives the western character of 
 humidity to this eastern county is that green gully of 
 the Ochil range, where the heads of Gleneagles and 
 Glendevon meet on the lowered water-shed. Through 
 this pass, this gap in the central rampart of Scotland, 
 the clouds and storms ascending from the Atlantic 
 roll in unbroken column, till, spreading out over 
 Kinross-shire, they at last come to camp, caught 
 within its basin by the encircling hills of the Ochils, 
 
GAY KINROSS. 1 35 
 
 the Lomonds, Benarty, and the braes of Cleish. 
 Over this area they shed their hquid treasures, or 
 hang in uncondensed imminence for weeks and 
 weeks. It would make some amends for western 
 superabundance of moisture if western mildness of 
 temperature accompanied it ; but the " harrs," or 
 hoar mists, and the cutting winds of springtime 
 indicate that the east has not quite surrendered 
 Kinross-shire to western rule. 
 
 The county, which, it must be acknowledged, flings 
 through parting clouds and flying scud a coquettish 
 glance of rare loveliness now and again in early 
 summer, looks its best when arrayed in the matronly 
 charms of settled and sober September. It then 
 that its friends would wish to present the county. 
 Then Cleish and the Ochil uplands to south and 
 west are green and rough with fragrant pasture ; the 
 majesty of the Lomonds is " invested with purpureal 
 gleams " of blooming heather ; even the gloom of 
 sullen Benarty is lifted, or at least lightened; the 
 lake rocks, or rests, a deep blue below ; the sky soars, 
 inimitably high, a light blue above — blue washed 
 with milk, the turquoise blue of forget-me-nots ; while 
 from the heart of a hundred peaceful farms on the 
 plain the yellow radiance of ripe corn illumines the 
 roadways, and delays the coming on of evening. Even 
 the vagrant, or the huxterer of herring, is transfigured 
 in the autumn glow. 
 
 Little of all this, which seems to transform the 
 county, making of at least one nook of earth "an 
 insubstantial faery place," affects the town of Kinross. 
 It is impossible of metamorphosis. It is one of those 
 
136 CAY KINROSS. 
 
 dull rustic towns that manage, through a perversity 
 of disposition, to exclude rurality, which alone makes 
 rusticity bearable. It would require much lilac and 
 lavender to brighten and sweeten it ; much paint to 
 conceal its grime ; a new pavement, smoother, more 
 regular, less muddy ; a new arrangement of its houses, 
 a new style of houses ; a new situation. 
 
 And yet we must believe that Kinross was at 
 one time gay. Its gaiety was indeed its distinguishing 
 characteristic. Carlisle was scarcely so merry as 
 Kinross was gay. Not more pronouncedly gay was 
 the family of Gordon. The next most marvellous 
 thing to the fact of its former gaiety is the apparent 
 fact that the lost gaiety has only recently disappeared. 
 About the middle of last century the town was still 
 gay. Such is the testimony of Michael Bruce. 
 Suspicion, however, arises that the youthful poet may 
 have been referring to Kinross, in his description of 
 its gaiety, relatively to his own sombre and slumbrous 
 village of Kinnesswood. It may have been gay 
 comparatively with that hillside hamlet of peat-reek 
 and Puritanism. However this may be, it is undeni- 
 ably accredited with gaiety in the local epic — 
 respectably written, in serious imitation of the sedate, 
 not to say pompous, style of Thomson — "Loch 
 Leven : A Poem." Michael, the beloved of his 
 country, studied United Presbyterian divinity in 
 Kinross, in a little room professionally known as 
 " The Hall," situated in a narrow wynd leading off 
 the main street. Here some half-dozen lads or so 
 had a professor all to themselves. To their unsophis- 
 ticated minds the ongoings of a few wild weavers 
 
GAY KINROSS. 1 37 
 
 on a Saturday at e'en may have suggested the idea 
 of gaiety. There is some reason at least for connecting 
 the gaiety of Kinross with the weaving fraternity. 
 The modern weaver — I speak of that dwining 
 and dwindUng genus, the hand-loom artisan — is 
 melancholy itself, embodied in emaciation. But 
 the weaver of a hundred years ago might be a very 
 different creature. There were then two varieties of 
 him — the respectable and the regardless. He made 
 good wages, and a sense of independency gave him 
 spirit. The respectable representative, the weaver of 
 an ancient tradition, like Michael Bruce's father, sang 
 psalms when he was merry, and prepared for duly 
 observing the Sabbath, on the lines laid down by 
 Moses, by shaving himself, and setting his house and 
 household in order on Saturday afternoon. The 
 " regairdless," again, neither feared God nor regarded 
 man, but drove the industrious shuttle all week, and 
 went raking and boozing on Saturday and Sunday. 
 To this lot belonged the " gallant " weaver of the old 
 songs. Kinross had its complement of them. It is 
 surely Tennant who alludes in his " Anster Fair " to 
 Kinross and her "weavers gay." With them he 
 couples the cutlers, a sullen class of mechanics now 
 {in vain) lost to Kinross. Yet Kinross and cutlery 
 were long and honourably associated. The most 
 trustworthy steel blades came from Kinross. They 
 were the crack of Fife. They were sought for at 
 every Scottish fair, were in every packman's box or 
 bundle, in every ploughboy's pouch. The Kinross 
 guild of knife-grinders, proud of their pre-eminence, 
 had even the hardihood to challenge the ancient 
 
138 GAY KINROSS. 
 
 English home of cutlery, Sheffield itself. They 
 
 circulated their challenge with their wares. For 
 
 example : — 
 
 " In Kinross was I made, 
 Horn-haft and blade ; 
 Sheffield ! for thy life, 
 Show me such a knife ! " 
 
 The cutler has cut his last stick, and travelled away 
 from Kinross for ever ; his weaving brother is in a 
 wandering and waefu' minority ; and with their decay 
 and disappearance, its gaiety has gone from the loch- 
 side burgh. Once a year, on the last Monday of July, 
 a perfunctory attempt is made even yet to keep up 
 connection with the reputation for ancient gaiety. 
 The occasion is known as Jooley Fair. But an 
 attempt at the resurrection of mirth is generally 
 dreary ; and in the case of Kinross the attempt is 
 from without. It is the mirth of merry-go-rounds, 
 and mountebanks, and cheap-jacks ; the Kinrossian 
 looks on with his hands in his lank breeches-pockets, 
 and draws melancholy comparisons. The only pos- 
 sible restoration of the ancient mirth and merriment 
 is in the power of Lady Fiction ; and of her creation, 
 consummated by the pen of Scott, we may have a 
 peep at will in a few wonderful pages of The Abbot. 
 It is curious to reflect that the last living prototype of 
 Scott's long array of Scottish characters belonged to 
 Kinross, and that this personage was comparatively 
 recently still moving about in the flesh, ignorant of 
 the niche in fiction in which she had been for ever 
 fixed. All old and many middle-aged people in Kin- 
 ross must remember Mother Nicneven, the parent 
 
GAY KINROSS. 139 
 
 of Satan Pate. The cursing accomplishments of 
 the son had caught Scott's ear when he was on 
 a visit to Blairadam, and drawn his attention to the 
 family. 
 
LOCHLEVEN AND THE BISHOPSHIRE. 
 
 Till the remarkable discovery was made, not quite 
 half a century ago, that Lochleven trout will rise to 
 the lure, the only interest attaching to the now well 
 and widely known Kinross-shire lake was of a historical 
 character. The interest centred in two buildings that 
 stood — the one a monastery, the other a castle — on 
 different islands of the lake. One of those buildings, 
 associated with the sainted name of Serf or Servan, 
 " the dark-attired Culdee " (whose hermit disciples, be 
 it remembered, enjoyed in their lonely Inch the pious 
 benefactions of Macbeth), has indeed quite succumbed 
 to the weight and wear of ten centuries. The other, 
 representing for its predecessor as well as itself a less 
 remote antiquity, is also a mere ruin; but it still 
 maintains above ground a sufficiency of coherent tower 
 and wall to satisfy the gaze of the antiquarian visitor. 
 It has traditions, received from the ancestral castle, of 
 Wallace and the English Edwards ; but its own proper 
 memories of Queen Mary are its richest possession. 
 The veriest urchin that has dipped into the romance 
 of Scottish history is familiar with every turn of the 
 story that connects the name of Mary with this 
 isolated tower. He knows how she was brought 
 thither a prisoner in the summer of 1567, how she 
 140 
 
LOCHLEVEN AND THE BISHOPSHIRE. I41 
 
 was compelled here to sign away her right to the 
 Scottish crown, and how, after a year's detention, she 
 cleverly managed to turn the tables on her enemies by 
 locking them in the castle and escaping with the keys 
 in a boat. Her beauty, her spirit, the variety of her 
 fortunes, and her fate have all combined to make the 
 relation of her life in all its details singularly inter- 
 esting ; and certainly that portion of her short reign 
 which she was forced to spend, discrowned and a 
 captive, in Lochleven Keep, was both long enough 
 and momentous enough to be memorable. It may be 
 doubted, however, if the imaginative scenes of Scott, 
 as portrayed in the twenty-first and subsequent chap- 
 ters of The Abbot, have not given a fresh and an 
 additional interest to the facts of history. The 
 calculation may be ventured that for one that is drawn 
 to the shores of Lochleven by The Tales of a Grand- 
 father, there are three that come on account of The 
 Abbot. 
 
 The revival of its historical fame dates from 1820. 
 A new and more powerful attraction to Lochleven 
 was discovered about thirty years later. Then, for the 
 first time apparently, the public realised the fact that 
 the trout of Lochleven, already famous for their flesh 
 tint and flavour, were willing to furnish sport by rising 
 to the seduction of fly or minnow. For centuries 
 previous to this the capabilities of the loch for the 
 supply of good eating in fish were well known, and 
 were largely and regularly utilised, both by the pro- 
 prietors and the poaching inhabitants of the neigh- 
 bouring farm-towns and villages. The net was the 
 legitimate implement of capture, and besides trout. 
 
142 LOCHLEVEN AND THE BISHOPSHIRE. 
 
 char — which seem to have disappeared from the lake 
 since the reduction of the water level in 1830, perch, 
 pike, and eels were taken in great quantities. The 
 pike were occasionally of monstrous size ; even trout 
 of fabulous weight — 18 lb. for instance — were enclosed 
 in the nets ; and it appears from a document of the 
 sixteenth century, signed by the Primate of Scotland, 
 that eight barrels or casks of salted eels, forming part 
 of the feu-mails of the adjoining lands of the Bishop- 
 shire, were sent annually to the pantry of the Arch- 
 bishop of St Andrews. It is not, however, the market 
 or the table value of the fish that now gives the lake 
 the high place it holds in public estimation, but the 
 splendid opportunities for sport which its waters afford. 
 No inconsiderable part of the pleasure of Lochleven 
 angling is the precariousness of the sport. Excellent 
 baskets may be made — good baskets are the rule — but 
 the individual angler finds a peculiar piquancy in the 
 uncertainty of securing one. It is never safe to bet on 
 a Lochleven basket. A full one is not seldom the 
 good fortune of the novice, at the same time that the 
 accomplished artist on the same bit of water, perhaps 
 from the same boat, despite his experience of innumer- 
 able lakes and streams, expends the skill of a lifetime 
 to little or absolutely no purpose at all. The weather 
 is almost as puzzling a factor in Lochleven angling 
 as the sheer caprice of the trout. What is good 
 fishing weather for other waters may be the very worst 
 possible for Lochleven. Scott speaks in his novel of 
 successful fishing with a breeze from the west. He 
 could hardly have spoken so from experience. On 
 the whole, a cold east wind with a grey sky is a much 
 
LOCHLEVEN AND THE BISHOPSHIRE. I43 
 
 more favourable atmospheric condition for lively sport 
 on Lochleven. But the puzzling things about the 
 Lochleven trout, upon which one inquires in vain for 
 reliable information, are legion. To what variety of 
 trout does it belong ? Whence come its flavour and 
 its bright colour ? Why does it sulk, often for a whole 
 season, amongst ooze or rannoch at the lake bottom ? 
 How is it incapable of racial culture outwith its parent 
 lake ? Two things are certain : it affords rare pastime 
 when it happens to be in a sportive temper ; and it 
 adds a unique charm to the " spread " of the break- 
 fast-table. 
 
 Since solitary anglers and social angling clubs began 
 to frequent Lochleven the scenery of the Kinross-shire 
 lake district has begun to be heard about. The 
 loveliness of its horizon, it must be owned, has been 
 a late and a gradual discovery. Much depends on the 
 state of the weather, more on the season of the year. 
 In November or February, for example, a duller 
 pond than Lochleven, a bleaker environment than its 
 melancholy flats and dour hills, could hardly be 
 imagined. But in almost any month of the year the 
 casual visitor coming unadvisedly may hurry off with 
 such an impression of its " muddy wave and dreary 
 shore " as half-a-dozen views of its better aspect will 
 not easily efface. The normal appearance of the lake 
 is probably a neutral grey, and it is from this circum- 
 stance apparently that it derives its name of Leven — 
 though the vulgar derivation which connects the name 
 with the number eleven is, even in this philological 
 age, as rampant as ever. The local rustic will tell you 
 that the lake is eleven miles in circuit, that it bears on 
 
144 LOCHLEVEN AND THE BISHOPSHIRE. 
 
 its breast eleven islands, has eleven tributary burns, 
 contains eleven kinds of fish, and is, or was, enclosed 
 by the lands of eleven lairds. You will, of course, 
 accept neither his premises nor his conclusion. But 
 in spite of the generally bleak aspect of Lochleven 
 there are occasions when it will recall in no unfavour- 
 able comparison the softer graces that constitute the 
 charm of Ulleswater. Given, however, the broken 
 light of a pure May morning, or the steady radiance 
 of a mellow September afternoon, and the vision of 
 Lochleven and its surrounding scenery is such a 
 picture of life and gaiety in the one case, of serenity 
 and repose in the other, as haunts the memory and 
 enchants the imagination for ever. 
 
 Much of the reposeful charm of Lochleven towards 
 the end of the angling season is furnished by the lofty 
 outline of the Lomonds, more especially that part of 
 the range above the village of Scotlandwell known 
 as the Bishop Hill. The peace as of some " mountain 
 of the Lord " steals from the pastoral slopes and 
 tranquil hamlets of this stately rampart, which, 
 entering the soul of the unsuccessful angler, consoles 
 him for his toom basket, and is the best recompense 
 for his toilsome day. Nor is the charm of the hills 
 around him the spell, of natural beauty only. Legend- 
 ary and poetical associations haunt the landscape. 
 It was among the Cleish Hills to the south-west that 
 Sir David Lyndsay's hero, Squire Meldrum, was 
 reared, and it was at "green Benarty's base," at the 
 south end of the loch, that the Fife representative at 
 Holyrood, when the Queen held her wake, had his 
 dwelling. But Benarty recalls a couplet which comes 
 
LOCHLEVEN AND THE BISHOrSHIRE. 145 
 
 as a sedative to the heat of our present political 
 life— 
 
 " Happy's the man that belangs to nae party, 
 But sits in his ain house, and looks at Benarty. " 
 
 The Lomonds again, to the east, are the Harz 
 of Kinross-shire, for fairies and witches and dark 
 diablerie. The Bishop Hill is a local Brocken. 
 Many a Walpurgis Night of revelry has been cele- 
 brated on its broad top by the wan light of waning 
 moons. It was here wonned the wee wee man under 
 a moss-grey stane, whose face was like the cauliflower, 
 for he neither had blude nor bane. He could play 
 on his reed pipe, however, with a skill that Amphion 
 might have envied : — 
 
 " It rang sae sweet on the green Lomond 
 That the night wind lowner blew, 
 And it soopit alang the Loch Leven 
 And walkened the white sea-mew. 
 
 It rang out sae sweet through the green Lomond, 
 
 So sweet but and so shrill. 
 That the weasels lap out of their mouldy holes 
 
 And danced on the midnight hill. 
 
 The corbie craw cam' gledging near, 
 
 The earne gaed veering by, 
 And the trouts lap out of the loch Leven 
 
 Charmed with the melody." 
 
 The Bishopshire, as in memory of St Moak* the 
 
 * I am informed by a learned correspondent (W. J. N. Liddall, 
 Esq., of Navity) that the whole of Portmoak was at one time 
 Kirklands, owned by the Archbishop of St. Andrews, the prior 
 of St. Serf, and the "minister" of Scotlandwell. The Arch- 
 bishop was the superior of farms and fishings from Powmill and 
 Balgedie, by Kinneston, to Brackly. Mr Liddall also points 
 out a Bishopshire in the parish of Machar, in Aberdeenshire. 
 K 
 
146 LOCHLEVEN AND THE BISHOPSHIRE. 
 
 eastern shore of Lochleven between the Lomonds and 
 the water edge is called, has its special attraction 
 in poetical history, for here it was the brief earthly 
 career of poor Michael Bruce was run, beginning in a 
 weaver's cottage in Kinnesswood — to native throats 
 Kinaskit—z. primitive village, once merry with hand- 
 looms and pirn-wheels, now lying like a bleached 
 buckie from which all life has been long ago exhaled. 
 A couple of miles farther east, in the churchyard of 
 Portmoak, is the young poet's grave and simple 
 memorial. The region is well worthy of a visit, yet 
 not one in a thousand anglers to Lochleven thinks of 
 the pilgrimage. Bruce deserves to be remembered. 
 It was for the villagers of his day that he wrote, still a 
 youth in his teens, such paraphrases as " Few are thy 
 days," " O happy is the man," and " The beam that 
 shines " — hymns which are as familiar to the memory 
 and as dear to the pious heart of his country as are 
 the songs of Burns themselves. Indeed, a parallel 
 might be drawn between the work which Bruce did 
 for sacred song and that which was done by Burns in 
 the profane department of lyrical verse. We mean no 
 offence to "rantin', rovin' Robin." Bruce divorced 
 such doggerel as " O mother, dear Jerusalem," from 
 our fine old church tunes, just as Burns, some thirty 
 years later, cleansed the enchanting old Scottish airs 
 of the unutterably vicious or silly words to which 
 they had been wedded. In his native land at least 
 Bruce lives in his hymns, independently of the beau- 
 tiful ode to the winged " Attendant of the Spring," by 
 which he is known in England. Whether he wrote 
 that ode is a question not now to be decided. One 
 
LOCHLEVEN AND THE BISHOPSHIRE. 1 47 
 
 cannot in this case trust to internal evidence, and the 
 historical evidence seems to the utterly candid mind to 
 be as strong for John Logan as for Michael Bruce. 
 There is something for the Logan authorship, after all, 
 in the fact that Logan claimed it. The controversy, 
 needless to say, was not of Bruce's making. It is a 
 pity that so sweet a lyric as the " Address to the 
 Cuckoo," and so gentle a life as that of Michael 
 Bruce, should be embittered and disturbed by con- 
 troversy. 
 
 Briefly, the case for Logan is this : First, he claimed 
 it, printed it as his, and stuck to his claim to the last. 
 Secondly, it was handed about (as Dr Robertson of 
 Dalmeny affirmed), "and highly extolled among his 
 literary acquaintances in East Lothian long before its 
 publication, probably — though not certainly — in 1767," 
 that is, not later than 1767 at latest : Logan was then 
 nineteen years of age, Bruce twenty-one. Thirdly, 
 Mrs Hutcheson, the wife of an Edinburgh merchant 
 and cousin to Logan, assured Dr Anderson that she 
 saw the Ode in her relative's handwriting before it was 
 published. And, briefly, the case for Bruce is this : 
 First, the Ode was seen before publication in his hand- 
 writing by various persons j and, secondly, his corre- 
 spondence is reported to have borne a reference to a 
 composition he was writing about a " gowk." It is to 
 little purpose to catalogue the influential names that 
 appear on each side in the controversy. They are 
 pretty equally balanced. With a sentimental partiality 
 for Michael Bruce, I must repeat my judgment that 
 whether Bruce or Logan wrote the Ode is not now to 
 be decided. 
 
FISH AND FISHING AT LOCHLEVEN. 
 
 It cannot be denied that the great attraction of 
 Lochleven is for anglers. There are the regular 
 frequenters, and there is the occasional visitor; but 
 between them they must now include thousands of 
 persons scattered far and wide over the country to 
 whom the subject of angling on the Kinross-shire 
 lake, from their personal knowledge of it, can be of 
 little interest. They can answer all the inquiries 
 which in her curiosity on the subject Queen Mary 
 put to Roland Graeme, "inquiries into the place 
 where the fish can be taken, their size, their peculiar- 
 ities, the times when they are in season, and a 
 comparison between the Lochleven trouts and those 
 which are found in other lakes and rivers of Scotland." 
 Yet, though the charm of novelty is already lost, the 
 interest is quite of modern growth. The generation 
 still possesses the country that first began to find fly- 
 casting on Lochleven waters a profitable pastime. It is 
 so recently as 1850 — so we are credibly informed — that 
 the discovery was made that Lochleven trout will rise 
 to the fly. If this be so, then the honour of having 
 predicted the discovery by some score years would 
 seem to belong to Sir Walter Scott. The Abbot 
 appeared in 1831, and in a certain chapter in that 
 delightful novel incidental reference seems to be made 
 148 
 
FISH AND FISHING AT LOCHLEVEN. I49 
 
 to fly-fishing on Lochleven. It is a kind of double 
 anachronism, for the reference — made by the writer 
 nineteen years before the practice was known — apphes 
 to a scene descriptive of the usages of the sixteenth 
 century. The reference, it must be confessed, is a 
 little vague, and is not unexposed to a charge of 
 inconsistency. George Douglas, we read, " sate in 
 the stern of the little skiff trimming his fishing-tackle, 
 and from time to time indicating by signs to Grseme, 
 who pulled the oars, which way he should row. . . . 
 ' Row,' said Douglas, ' towards St Serf's Island ; there 
 is a breeze from the west, and we shall have sport, 
 keeping to windward of the isle where the ripple is 
 strongest. We will speak more of what you have 
 mentioned when we have had an hour's sport.' Their 
 fishing was successful, though never did two anglers 
 pursue even that silent and unsocial pleasure with 
 less of verbal intercourse." In this passage there are 
 several points of interest — such as Scott's general 
 opinion of angling as a pursuit, and his apparently 
 intimate knowledge of a good fishing station to the 
 east of St Serf's; but the chief point to notice at 
 present is his probable reference to fly-fishing. A 
 little further on, however, in the same chapter, an 
 expression is used which strikes the reader as being 
 inconsistent with this interpretation. " ' Go to,' said 
 the seneschal, ' thou art a foolish boy, unfit to deal 
 with any matter more serious than the casting of a 
 net or the flying of a hawk." If only Scott had made 
 the Douglas say " the casting of a line," the description, 
 one feels, would have hung together better, and the 
 interpretation would be complete. 
 
ISO F2SH AND FISHING AT LOCHLEVEN. 
 
 The trout of Lochleven, remarkable as everybody 
 knows for their high flavour and beautiful red colour, 
 gave its distinction to the lake long before they gave 
 pastime to the angler. They were taken in nets, and 
 the captures that were made may well fill the mind 
 of modern fishers with astonishment and envy. 
 Twenty-four dozen at a single haul was a common 
 catch. The most productive places, or setts as they 
 were locally called, included the Prap, and Powmill, 
 and Jummock's Deep. At the last-named station, 
 situated near the old manse of Orwell on the north 
 shore, a haul of thirty dozen stands on record. Pike, 
 of sharklike dimensions, and eels by the barrelful, not 
 to mention the prolific and pachydermatous perch, 
 were also, and still are, to be reckoned among the 
 more or less valuable and various produce of the lake. 
 But the trout have so monopolised the interest of 
 Lochleven that these are seldom taken into account ; 
 and it may be news to many that char, and even the 
 flounder, at one time gave variety to the happy family 
 of Lochleven fishes. Whether the reduction of the 
 lake had to do with the disappearance of char is 
 matter of uncertain debate. It was probably a factor 
 without being the prime cause. The reduction was 
 made in the winter-time of 1830-31, and was on a 
 scale of sufficient magnitude to affect the loch in 
 almost every aspect of it. It altered the shore line 
 so as to give a new contour to the shape of the lake- 
 basin, it increased the area of the old islands and 
 created new ones, it destroyed or restricted the 
 feeding and breeding beds of the fish, probably to a 
 greater extent than is believed. Its gains to the land 
 
FISH AND FISHING AT LOCHLEVEN. 151 
 
 and the millowners on the Leven outlet are obvious 
 enough ; but its losses to the lake included at least a 
 square mile and a quarter of water area, and from 
 four and a half to eight feet of depth. The old 
 Castle island, which Queen Mary knew, comprised 
 only two acres, and the old Inch — strangely neglected, 
 but by far the most classical spot within the bounds 
 of Lochleven — was metamorphosed in shape and 
 altered in area from thirty-five acres to treble its 
 natural size. 
 
 To the epicure the disappearance of char, not 
 only from Lochleven, but from almost all the British 
 lakes, may be a cause of grief, for the fish is dainty 
 eating ; but to the true angler, whose stomach is not 
 for fish but fishing, the matter is hardly worth a 
 moment's concern, for the creature is comparatively 
 non-sportive. It refuses to leap to the fly, and con- 
 temns the blandishments of the playful minnow. It 
 is one of those seriously-minded fish that, when 
 sinners entice them, withhold their consent. Yet it 
 has not found salvation in abstention. The trout, on 
 the other hand, which flies at every bait and coquets 
 with every allurement, seems to thrive through it all. 
 There lurks a moral here, which the intelligent reader 
 may point for himself In Lochleven to whose waters 
 the char has been a stranger for now nearly sixty years, it 
 used to be known as the " gaily-fish," or "gelly-troch," a 
 local name given it by the fishermen, who found that 
 its principal food was the " gelly " — a species of black 
 leech pretty plentiful in the lake. Pennant, without 
 seeing a specimen, was probably the first to identify 
 the gelly-troch with the char, although the Lochleven 
 
152 FISff AND FISHING AT LQCHLEVEN. 
 
 fishermen seem to have rather astonished him by their 
 accounts of its size and weight and abundance. It 
 was, if they were to he. believed, five, or even six 
 times larger, and as many times heavier, than the 
 English and Welsh pigmy char with which he had 
 acquaintance, and it was so rife that Lethangie and 
 Lathro poacher-ploughmen bagged it in half-boll 
 sacks, and split, salted, and dried it for winter 
 provision. It came sailing up the North Quiech to 
 their bothy door, in a feeble effort to find safe spawn, 
 ing-ground. The distance was not more than a mile 
 from the loch. It might have fared better if it had 
 gone farther. Thus it happens, that though the char 
 is a fish so fortified — presumably by precept or 
 intuition (for experience it has none) — as to refuse a 
 look at the hook, it is exposed to other dangers from 
 which the adventurous fin is comparatively free. 
 Over-caution is a sad hindrance to enterprise, and is 
 apt to induce a timid disposition and a phlegmatic 
 habit. It would appear to be so in the case of the 
 gelly-troch. So long as that fish kept to the deep 
 water of " the hems " it found food and safety ; but 
 the spawning season came in its regular round, and 
 the gravid fish, obedient to the "prick of nature," 
 was driven forth to the lake shallows and the feeder 
 streams and burns from the Ochils. The nearest 
 shallows, those of the lake for the most part, contented 
 it ; and there, through the mother fish's timidity, the 
 spawn was left passive to the mercy of innumerable 
 enemies from which it would have been safe in the 
 more distant shallows of the spawning streams — to 
 which the adventurous trout more securely makes 
 
FISff AND FISHING AT LOCHLEVEN. 1 53 
 
 periodic resort. In this way, perhaps largely by this 
 very means, the gelly-troch became a diminishing 
 quantity in the lake, and at length about the year 
 1837, the last of the race had the range of Lochleven. 
 It seems to have, grown weary of its solitude, for it 
 repeatedly suffered itself to be taken in the nets that 
 year. The fishermen — worthy surely of the notice of 
 a Theocritus — saw the pathos of the situation, and 
 piously put it back. But the last capture was tragic : 
 the bribe of a reverend collector (not reverend on this 
 account, but for the ordinary reason) spiced the 
 conscience of an unprincipled fisherman ; and char is 
 now as much a tradition of Lochleven as the shade of 
 St Serf or the ghost of Queen Mary. 
 
THE BOOKS OF LOCHLEVEN. 
 
 The oldest human associations connected with Loch- 
 leven and the lands about it would seem to be of 
 Basque origin. Much interesting mystery is involved 
 in the migrations of that strange people, but ethnology 
 gives assurance that we are on their traces in such 
 localities as reveal in their place-names the significant 
 syllable ur. The statement of a general law like this 
 tempts one to a hundred applications ; it sets the mind 
 skipping at once, and we find ourselves in Meso- 
 potamia, speculating on the relationship of the grand 
 old Patriarch to the Basques, and how Ur came to 
 belong to the Chaldeans. But to return to Lochleven. 
 There is no denying the fact that among ancient place- 
 names in the neighbourhood the word that is said to 
 bewray the Basque now and again appears. There 
 is, for example, the district of Urwell or Orwell ; there 
 is the Ury burn, midway between Milnathort and 
 Kinross ; there is Loch Ore, on the sunny slope of 
 Benarty. And the list could be extended. Whether 
 the lake-dwelling recently discovered in the loch was 
 a Basque homestead, or the haunt of a Pictish 
 community, is an interesting problem. We forget 
 what the learned Society that meditates on the Mound 
 made of this part of their subject. And they might 
 IS4 
 
THE BOOKS OF LOCHLEVEN. 155 
 
 well be excused if they did not even touch it, in the 
 famine of information which everywhere surrounds 
 the adventurer into time's unchronicled wastes. Most 
 people are content to make the period of the Roman 
 occupation the limit of their explorations in " the dark 
 backward and abysm of time ; " and there is no 
 absolute want of suggestive material in the remote 
 historical hunting-grounds of Lochleven ; but even in 
 this department of antiquity, whether as affects Romans 
 or Picts, all speculation here is vague, and much of it 
 vain. It may have been that in the early centuries a 
 royal castle — as royalty went in those days — stood on 
 the island in which young Queen Mary, a thousand 
 years later, pined for a twelvemonth, and that Pictish 
 kings were rowed in rude pomp where the bourgeois 
 angler to-day plies his rod over Lochleven waters. It 
 may have been that the battle against Galgacus was 
 fought on the slopes of the Lomonds. The case in 
 favour of this view was warmly urged some sixty years 
 ago by Colonel Miller of Upper Urquhart, and the 
 testimony of Tacitus called into court not without a 
 show of plausibihty. We are, however, on the surer 
 ground — the terra firma, so to say — of direct record 
 when we get quit of the Romans ; and by the end of 
 the sixth century we seem to stand on parchment. 
 The signs of ancient life on and near Lochleven are 
 no longer, a dumb show, dimly seen through the 
 morning twilight. They become clear to the eye, 
 and fall, as through a phonograph, articulately, if 
 faintly, on the listening ear. With the advent of 
 St Serf its earliest reliable memories come to Loch- 
 leven. 
 
I $6 THE BOOKS OF LOCHLEVEN. 
 
 St Serfs Isle is, indeed, the locus classicus of 
 Lochleven. It is par excellence the inch, or island, of 
 that famous lake. It has long suffered unaccountable 
 neglect, and even its indisputable title to rank as the 
 centre of Lochleven interest has been usurped by the 
 Castle Island. History and romance, the fortunes of 
 Queen Mary, and the fiction of Scott have directed, 
 more especially within the century now running, the 
 popular gaze away from St Serfs to the Castle Island. 
 But whether as regards size, or antiquity of association, 
 or intrinsic historical value, the palm that belongs to 
 superior regard must be restored to the Island 
 of St Serf. Before the partial drainage of the loch in 
 1830, it included somewhere over thirty acres of very 
 fair land, when the area of the Castle Island consisted 
 of but two ; and now the reduction of the loch area 
 has added fifty or sixty acres to its natural and 
 original extent. It is at present in pasture, but the 
 goodness of at least part of the soil of St Serfs may be 
 inferred from the excellent crops of peas and barley 
 which it yielded to tillage, as I have just been 
 informed, not many years ago. The antiquity of its 
 associations is undoubted. They go back, as already 
 stated, to the seventh century. The annalist of 
 the island is Andrew Wyntoun, whose ambitious 
 chronicle of " The History of the World, from the 
 Creation of Man to the Captivity of James I, of 
 Scotland" — a work rivalling, if not in style and 
 philosophical reflection, at least in scope and range, 
 the magnum opus of Raleigh — was written in the 
 solitude of St Serfs, "where that this lord was 
 keeper of the cell." According to Prior Andrew, 
 
THE BOOKS OF LOCHLEVEN. I 57 
 
 a certain Pictish king, about the year 700 a.d., 
 piously made over to St Serf, and the Culdees 
 residing there, the holy Island of Lochleven. Serf, 
 or Servanus, was then seemingly the Prior of Loch- 
 leven, called to that position by Adamnan, the Abbot 
 of lona, of whom he was a contemporary. Wyntoun 
 informs the painful reader of his Skeltonian Chronicle 
 that Adamnan met St Serf at Inchkeith, and, struck 
 with his capabilities and virtues, invited him to Loch- 
 leven Inch, in Fife, there to become a commissioned 
 follower of St Columba, and " drive owre the time of 
 his life there." The original priory or church of 
 Lochleven, like that of lona or the Nor' Loch, was, 
 no doubt, a primitive affair of turf and wattles. The 
 rude stone structure, the basement ruins of which 
 are the one visible feature of the island now, though 
 venerable with age and old associations, is doubtless 
 of later date. But shortly after the original establish- 
 ment, and in recognition of the piety of the pale monks 
 of the isle, royal donations began to flow in, to the 
 comparative enrichment of the Priory. King Edgar, 
 Malcolm Canmore — it will put his character in a new 
 light perhaps when we add the name of Macbeth : 
 these were among the royal donors to the religious 
 house of Lochleven, which now began to be known 
 as another lona, and "the School of Virtues." 
 Malcolm's gift was the town and lands of Balchristie ; 
 Edgar bestowed Pitnemokin — identified as Portmoak ; 
 while Macbeth compounded with the Church for the 
 sins of his usurpation by conveying (in the Pistolic 
 sense?) to the servants of God and St Serf the 
 lands of Kirkness and the village of "Eolgy," or 
 
IS8 THE BOOKS OF LOCHLEVEN. 
 
 Bolgyne" {qu. Balgedie?), and craving an interest 
 in their prayers. But it was David, of beneficent 
 memory, that effected the greatest change in the 
 history of the Culdee connection with Lochleven. 
 Generous above all Scottish kings to the Church 
 though he was, he unhappily broke the Culdee 
 traditions of Lochleven. About the middle of the 
 twelfth century he caused to be made over to the 
 Canons of St Andrews Lochleven Island, and the 
 property of the Culdees therein and therewith 
 connected. A record of this generous but unjust 
 transference of power and property is extant, and 
 will prove of great interest to local landowners 
 and residents in particular, to all students of early 
 Scottish ecclesiastical history and to antiquaries in 
 general. The transference of the establishment of 
 St Serf's from independent government to the 
 authority of St Andrews included the transference of 
 the roots — as one may call them — by which the 
 establishment had drawn from the lands and localities 
 around Lochleven its temporal or material sustenance 
 and growth. Those feeders of the visible Church, 
 regarded in its corporal and carnal aspect, lay almost 
 exclusively round that end of the loch, the east end, 
 where is situated the island of St Serf, and landward 
 away into Fife. They included Findathy (now 
 Findaty), Kirkness, Pitnemok (now Portmoak), 
 Markinch, Balchristie, Bolgyne ; but there is no 
 mention of Orwell, Kinross, Gairney, or other places 
 at the opposite end of Lochleven. While the lands 
 of several, if not all, of those estates and farms went 
 from a Culdee to a Catholic proprietary, certain tolls 
 
THE BOOKS OF LOCHLEVEN. 1 59 
 
 and taxes from all of them were diverted to St 
 Andrews. A copy of the deed of conveyance of the 
 entire Culdee property from Lochleven to St Andrews 
 will be found in Dr Jamieson's History of the 
 Ancient Culdees (Appendix, p. 376). The tolls 
 and taxes included so many measures of peas from 
 this field, so many bushels of barley from that ; a pig 
 from this township, the duties of pontage or the use 
 of a mill in that : " cum Eindahin (clerical error for 
 Findatkin) cum uno molendino in terra Findathin," 
 etc. But most interesting of all is the inventory of 
 that part of the Culdee property in St Serf's Island, 
 in the year 1150, which consisted of books. In the 
 ■deed of conveyance they come after the pigs and 
 mills — as being probably of less worth to the canons 
 of St Andrews. A meagre library, in sooth, it was — 
 in these days of princely book bequests ; yet the most 
 palatial of modern free libraries must give place in 
 point of interest, perhaps in point of influence as well, 
 to the little bookshelf of old Lochleven Priory. 
 Where, and in what circumstances, and by what 
 hands those books were written; whence they were 
 borrowed, or on what friendly errands as loans they 
 were sent ; what pious hearts they cheered, or what 
 ignorant minds they enlightened; what animated 
 ■discussions they gave rise to within the seclusion of 
 the Priory walls, while without autumn rains lashed 
 the loch, or wintry showers whitened the passive 
 Lomonds ; what calm meditations they induced in 
 moon-lighted walks on the open island — these and a 
 hundred other similar questions occur to the 
 thoughtful mind, and must for ever remain unanswered. 
 
l6o THE BOOKS OF LOCHLEVEN. 
 
 The books, mainly on moral and religious subjects, 
 were twenty in number — exactly what Chaucer's 
 clerk of Oxenford wished to have at his bed's head. 
 Here is the authoritative list of the books of Loch- 
 leven : — Liber Pastoralis, L. Gradualis, Missalis, L. 
 Origeni, Liber Sententiarum, Tres Quaterniones de 
 Sacramentis, cum Bibliotice {sc. Patrum), Lectionarius, 
 Acta Apostolorum, Textus Evangelorum, Tres Libri 
 Solomonis (with a Gloss to the Song of Solomon), 
 Collectio Sententiarum, Expositio super Genesim, 
 Exceptiones Ecclesiasticarum Regularum, and what 
 seems to have been an explanatory dictionary — 
 probably of Latin terms. The Pastoral book seems 
 to have been a definition and description of the 
 duties of Priors, etc. ; the Gradualis has been explained 
 as a book of Responses ; the Missal, a kind of Mass- 
 book; the Liber Origeni may have contained the 
 peculiar and debateable doctrines of Origen ; and 
 the Exceptiones, etc., appears to have been a species 
 of Dispensations or Indulgences. It is interesting 
 to know that while only three books of the Old Testa- 
 ment — " Proverbs," " Ecclesiastes," and " Canticles," 
 with a commentary on " Genesis " — formed part of the 
 library of Lochleven, as many as five represented the 
 New Testament, and that these were the books 
 essential to a correct and full knowledge of the rise 
 and early history of Christianity — viz., the four 
 versions of "The Gospel" and "The Acts of the 
 Apostles." 
 
 The purpose of Lochleven Island in the history of 
 Christianity and civilization has long since been 
 
THE BOOKS OF LOCHLEVEN. l6l 
 
 accomplished. The purpose was, indeed, a high and 
 holy one, though it has at no time, perhaps, been 
 sufficiently realised, and is just at present in imminent 
 danger of being lost sight of altogether. Yet no one 
 acquainted with its early history can fail to feel, on 
 visiting it, some portion of that spiritual enthusiasm 
 which Johnson felt when he found himself " treading 
 the illustrious island" of lona. For here, too, in 
 this bleak Kinross-shire lake, as among the stormy 
 Hebrides, lived and laboured, for no temporal gain 
 or mercenary ends, a band of as devoted disciples of 
 Christ as ever cast a net into the Sea of Galilee, or 
 carried the religion of brotherly love from Asia into 
 Europe. St Serfs Island should be to the Scottish 
 Lowlands what lona has long been to the Highlands 
 — a shrine of pious memories, where devout hearts 
 (and why not devout feet ?) can occasionally rest on 
 life's pilgrimage and be refreshed. Oh why did not 
 Scott, who knew it and its traditions so well — why did 
 not he extend a ray of the romance which he flung 
 around the Castle Island to break the sombreness 
 which broods over St Serf's? The monastic pile, 
 even the hermit cell, was as much a picturesque object 
 to his eye as the lordly tower or the Border peel ; the 
 monk and the hermit were as attractive figures to his 
 portraying pen as the knight or mail-clad man-at-arms. 
 Why did not he look with the eyes of his own Fitz- 
 James, and see, as he rode from Blairadam to the 
 eastern terminus of Benarty — 
 
 " On yonder island far away, 
 The turrets of a cloister grey " ? 
 L 
 
l62 THE BOOKS OF LOCHLEVEN. 
 
 His was the ear to have heard the sound of vanished 
 bells and long-hushed voices, with which that lonely 
 island was once familiar. 
 
 "And when the midnight moon did lave 
 Its silver splendour in the wave, 
 How solemn on his ear would come 
 The holy matin's distant hum ; 
 While the deep peal's commanding tone 
 Should wake in yonder island lone 
 A sainted hermit from his cell. 
 To drop a bead at every knell." 
 
 Scott might have told us how St Serfs looked in the 
 early centuries. How does it look to-day ? To me, 
 at least, it is attractive in its desolate bareness. The 
 sigh of the wind is among its windlestraws where the 
 kine are quietly feeding; the low roar of the loch 
 water keeps it locked in everlasting dream. The 
 clang of the curlew, the complaining cry of the lap- 
 wing, even the dissonant scream of the gull, which 
 float and fly over it, fail to break its reverie. As seen 
 from the nearer shore, it lies low on the water, a drear 
 expanse of withered ling and lake-weed, " tawny, but 
 with an eye of green in it," like Shakespeare's 
 imaginary isle. Round it runs a beach of brown 
 pebbles and small grey sand, from which, as I write, 
 come to my open window, through the calm of noon- 
 tide, the voices of lazy fishermen and the laugh of 
 lunching anglers. One, only one, permanent feature 
 of human interest now appeals to the eye on St Serfs : 
 it is the ruins of the last priory, now abandoned to 
 base uses — a low, square relic of grey stone, with the 
 darkness of a doorway in its southern wall. But what 
 
THE BOOKS OF LOCHLEVBN. 163 
 
 a troop of saintly memories quicken into ghostly life, 
 and throng that silent doorway, when in the imagina- 
 tive moonlight that old ruin rouses for a moment 
 from its long day-reverie ! 
 
PART IV. 
 
 OF THE POET OF "THE 
 SEASONS." 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF THOMSON IN THE 
 SCOTTISH GALLERY: 
 
 WITH SOME NOTICES OF WILLIAM AIKMAN. 
 
 To the lover of Scottish literature the addition recently 
 made of a portrait of James Thomson, the well-known . 
 poet of "The Seasons," to the National Portrait 
 Gallery in Queen Street, is an event interesting to 
 know and extremely gratifying to realise. The por- 
 trait is a bust, apparently life-size, and presents the 
 poet as he appeared in the heyday of his young 
 manhood and the first flush of his fame. Thomson, 
 it is easily remembered, was born in the last year of 
 the seventeenth century. He began to be talked 
 about in the London coffee-houses in 1726, the year 
 of the publication of his "Winter;" and by 1730, the 
 date of the completed "Seasons," he was generally 
 recognised as the new poet, who, though no disciple 
 of Pope's, was most likely to be his successor. As a 
 matter of historical fact, he is now properly regarded 
 as the most considerable British poet between Pope 
 and Gray, perhaps between Pope and Cowper. This 
 portrait represents him between his twenty-sixth and 
 his thirtieth year. It is apparently the original paint- 
 ing from which were engraved those hkenesses of the 
 poet in his youth with which we are familiar in so many 
 
 167 
 
l68 PORTRAIT OF JAMES THOMSON. 
 
 editions of his poems. One finds, however, in the 
 painting something more than colour that is lacking 
 in the engraving. It is a speaking likeness, answering 
 the expectations which his poetry, in general tone or 
 special sentiment, everywhere excite. The face is 
 without fear ; it is fresh, frank, and placid ; it is 
 expressive of the broad benevolence and cheerful 
 religion of his poetry. The temples are full, the 
 forehead finely arched; it is the brow of a poet. 
 The round, well-opened eyes are less lively than the 
 engraving suggests ; they are more thoughtful and 
 tranquil, neither downcast nor upraised, but trustful 
 and restful. It is the lower part of the countenance, 
 however, which chiefly corrects the engraving : here, 
 in the painting, we have an expression of that love of 
 pagan nature, that delight in the fragrance of blossom- 
 ing bean-fields, that relish— almost vulgar if it were 
 not so childlike in its heartiness — of ripe fruits and 
 rich wines, which was so essential ' and so pronounced 
 a part of his personality and his poetry The lips are 
 full and red, as those of a virgin, and harmonise with 
 the eyes in an expression of sensuousness, imaginative 
 power, and tenderness. The chin is short, but not 
 deficient in breadth, and the neck rises round and 
 white from slender, shapely shoulders. The artist 
 was William Aikman, and if this be the portrait which 
 Aikman painted for Lyttelton, and which hung so 
 long at Hagley Park, it is probably deserving the 
 extremely emphatic and favourable, but far from 
 refined, criticism which Pitt passed upon it when he 
 declared it was " beastly hke " the poet. 
 
 The work of William Aikman as a portrait painter 
 
PORTRAIT OF JAMES THOMSON. 1 69 
 
 and his connection with Scottish literature and the 
 literature of Scotsmen in England, are altogether 
 honourable to his memory. His work as an artist 
 during his residence in London, whither he went on 
 the invitation of John, Duke of Argyll, included, if 
 it did not mostly consist in, the delineation of many 
 members of the English nobility; but he is neces- 
 sarily best known for his portraits of the poets Gay, 
 Somerville, Allan Ramsay, and Thomson. Three of 
 these portraits-^Somerville's is the excepted one — it 
 is the good fortune of the Scottish National Gallery at 
 present to possess, and, with the half-length of Patrick, 
 Lord Marchmont, constitute so far the only specimens 
 of Aikman's art which are on public view in this 
 country. His connection with literature was mainly 
 manifested by his preference for the society of poets, 
 and his encouragement of their efforts by com- 
 mendation and recommendation. He early made 
 acquaintance with "the joyous Ramsay," and Allan 
 was not ungrateful for his generous services : — 
 
 " By your assistance unconstrained 
 To courts I can repair, 
 And by your art my way I've gained 
 To closets of the fair." 
 
 This acknowledgment was made in 1721, and helps 
 to fix the date of the Ramsay portrait, an engraving 
 of which appeared in the quarto edition of Ramsay's 
 collected works. It was this portrait, it may be 
 mentioned, that supplied the necessary basis of Sir 
 John Steell's model for the marble statue of Ramsay 
 in Princes Street Gardens. But years before he 
 painted the poet, Aikman had been praising his 
 
I/O PORTRAIT OF JAMES THOMSON. 
 
 poetry, and securing for it some recognition beyond 
 the circle of the Easy Club ; " with goodwill " he had 
 been " approving his natural lays," and " helping him 
 up the hill." It was therefore only natural that when 
 the painter left Edinburgh to settle in London in 1723, 
 the much-obliged poet should bewail his departure, 
 and recount once more the story of his indebtedness. 
 The lament is in the form of a pastoral dialogue, 
 and contains an interesting reference to the painter's 
 wife : — 
 
 "William and Mary never failed 
 To welcome with a smile, 
 And hearten us, when aught we ailed, 
 Without designing guile." 
 
 Aikman's general amiability and kindliness of soul are 
 touched off with a happy simplicity of language which 
 becomes the eclogue : — 
 
 ' ' A thousand gates ^ he had to win ' ways 
 
 The love of auld and young, 
 Did a' he did with little din, 
 
 And in nae deed was dung." ^ ^beaten 
 
 The penultimate line seems to sound the keynote of 
 Aikman's character. His art is alluded to, as is the 
 manner in the allegorising pastoral, with a homeliness 
 of metaphor that may provoke a smile. "Blyth I 
 have stood," says Betty — 
 
 " Blyth I have stood frae morn to e'en. 
 
 To see how true and weel 
 He could delyt us on the green 
 
 With a piece cawk ' and keel ; ^ chalk 
 
 On a slid stane or smoother slate, 
 
 He could the picture draw 
 Of you or me, or sheep or gait. 
 
 The likest e'er ye saw." 
 
PORTRAIT OF JAMES THOMSON. 17 1 
 
 It is hardly probable that Aikman knew Thomson 
 in Edinburgh, though he may have known Thomson's 
 college companion, David Malloch. Malloch was a 
 likely young fellow to force his acquaintance into 
 quarters where he was sure to pick up a benefit, and 
 he might presume on his contributions to the Edin- 
 burgh Miscellany of the Fair Intellectual Club, even if 
 he had not written the ballad of " William and Mar- 
 garet," to recommend him to the higher hterary circles 
 of which Ramsay and Aikman were members. But 
 Thomson was of a different disposition : he was 
 modest and self-respecting. With scarcely less proved 
 ability and immeasurably greater capacity for poetry 
 than Malloch, he left Scotland in 1725, unnoticed 
 and unmissed by literary Edinburgh ; while Malloch's 
 departure the year before was made the occasion of 
 some half-hundred valedictory and complimentary 
 lines by the undiscriminating Ramsay, who "reesed 
 him without reserve," and who, if he had thought of 
 Thomson at all, probably regarded him as one of 
 those that " ne'er advance their stalk aboon their clod." 
 However it may have been in Edinburgh, it is certain 
 that in London, Aikman, Malloch, and Thomson were 
 all speedily on terms of the utmost intimacy. Aikman 
 only required to look on Thomson to love him ; there 
 was a sympathy of taste and affection between the two 
 certain to make them life-long friends as soon as it 
 was discovered. Aikman was considerably the older 
 — by some eighteen years; but the friendship was 
 firm ; it was a case of like drawing to like, and was 
 independent of the years. Through Aikman, Thom- 
 son became acquainted with many of the leading 
 
172 PORTRAIT OF JAMES THOMSON. 
 
 literary men of his time. An introduction to Arbuth- 
 not would come easily through Aikman; scarcely 
 less easy would be the introduction to Gay ; but it is 
 said that Thomson was also presented to Swift and 
 Pope by Aikman. The connection with Pope was a 
 valuable one — not alone for Thomson, but for Pope 
 as well. Indeed, there is no better proof of Thom- 
 son's constancy and amiability than is furnished by 
 the fact that in twenty years he never once fell out 
 with Pope, and that Pope was " always at home to Mr 
 Thomson." 
 
 In June 1731 William Aikman died suddenly in 
 London, in the middle of a career of unusual success. 
 It is said that grief for the loss of his only son, a youth 
 of seventeen, was the sole and direct cause of his 
 death. The bodies were brought to Edinburgh, and 
 laid in one grave in the Greyfriars Cemetery. The 
 sad, the almost tragic, event was a painful shock to 
 all friends of the beloved painter. Malloch wrote an 
 epitaph which may, or may not, have been sincere ; at 
 least it contains no flattery — no unusual element in 
 the rhetoric of epitaphs : — 
 
 "Dear to the wise and good, dispraised by none, 
 Here sleep in peace the father and the son ; 
 By virtue, as by nature, close allied. 
 The painter's genius, but without the pride. 
 Worth unambitious, wit afraid to shine, 
 Honour's clear light and friendship's warmth divine," etc. 
 
 Thomson's sorrow was genuine, and his tributary 
 elegy in memoriam was from the heart. "All was 
 real," he says of his departed friend, " modest, plain, 
 sincere." But it is the concluding lines of the memo- 
 
PORTRAIT OF JAMES THOMSON. 1 73 
 
 rial poem which are of more than historical value — 
 which are, indeed, among the tenderest Thomson 
 ever wrote — certainly his best work in the couplets 
 which Pope brought to such perfection : — 
 
 ' ' As those we love decay, we die in part ; 
 String after string is severed from the heart. 
 Till loosened life at last, but breathing clay. 
 Without one pang is glad to fall away. 
 Unhappy he who latest feels the blow, 
 Whose eyes have wept o'er every friend laid low, 
 Dragged lingering on from partial death to death, 
 Till, dying, all he can resign is breath. " 
 
 The tribute is nobly affectionate, and an eloquent 
 and lasting recompense for Aikman's. friendship for 
 Thomson. 
 
 It is beside the purpose of this notice to pass 
 judgment on William Aikman's style in painting. 
 It may, however, be mentioned that it was no mere 
 accident, but innate inclination that drew him to 
 the profession of art. The only son of the Sheriff 
 of Forfarshire, he was bred with a view to the Bar ; 
 but early developing an instinct for art, he was 
 suffered by his father to take lessons from John 
 Baptist Medina, a Spanish artist, whom the Earl of 
 Leven had brought to Edinburgh. Some time there- 
 after, having fallen heir to the estate of Cairney, 
 near Arbroath, he sold the paternal acres, and set 
 out for Rome on a professional visit, from which, 
 after an absence of about five years, with a skill 
 refined by close study and a mind matured by travel 
 and observation, he returned to Edinburgh to practise 
 in 17 1 2. In London, some ten or eleven years later, 
 he came under the influence of Godfrey Kneiler, 
 
174 PORTRAIT OF JAMES THOMSON. 
 
 with whom he lived on intimate terms, and whose 
 style he is believed to have imitated, consciously 
 or unconsciously. His portrait of Gay, the author 
 of the "Beggar's Opera," has already been referred 
 to as the best known, if not the best, example of 
 his pencil. 
 
 [One may be permitted to suggest the formation 
 of what might be called a Poets' Corner in the 
 National Portrait Gallery. It might, from the paucity 
 of portraits, be a small — it would undoubtedly prove 
 an attractive — feature of the Gallery; to students of 
 poetry it would save the tedium of searching which is 
 at present necessary.] 
 
TJiE LAND OF THOMSON. 
 
 The personal history and poetical genius of Burns 
 and Scott have so fully appropriated the region 
 generally known as the Scottish Lowlands that there 
 is scarcely room for the advancement of a claim 
 to any share of it in behalf of Thorrison. No one 
 denies his title to rank as a great poet in the history 
 of British literature, and Scotland has maintained 
 for a century and a half an undiminished pride 
 in his attainments : 
 
 " Scotia, with exulting tear. 
 Proclaims that Thomson was her son." 
 
 But, unfortunately, his popularity in his native land 
 has not been quickened by the powerful element of 
 personal affection. He is admired and loved for 
 his poetry, but his estimable qualities as a man 
 are little known to his admirers, and his personal 
 history from the very commencement of his fame 
 is almost entirely dissociated from his native country. 
 He lived forty-eight years in all, and the latter and 
 more important half of his term of life was entirely 
 spent in exile from Scotland. During that period of 
 twenty-four years' absence he continued, with char- 
 acteristic irregularity, only a lazy and lagging corre- 
 
 175 
 
176 THE LAND OF THOMSON. 
 
 spondence with Dr Cranstoun, of Ancram, and his 
 own sisters. To one of the latter he wrote : " I thought 
 you had known me better than to interpret my 
 silence into a decay of affection. . . . Do not imagine, 
 because I am a bad correspondent, that I can ever 
 prove an unkind friend and brother." He even, 
 with an unusual exertion of the will, half-formed an 
 intention of visiting Scotland at almost the last 
 moment of his life. It is for ever to be regretted 
 that he did not complete and carry out his design. 
 The visit would in all probability have prolonged 
 his life; it would at least have gratified his many 
 Scottish friends, to whom he was fast becoming 
 little more than a famous name ; and it might have 
 given occasion to the commencement of that element 
 of personal affection among his countrymen which 
 was the one thing wanting to fulfil his popularity. 
 And yet, notwithstanding his long absence and his 
 long intervals of indolent silence, there is a portion 
 of Tweed basin which both Burns and Scott have 
 left for ever sacred to the memory, and, in some of 
 its aspects, even to the genius of Thomson. There 
 is, as we all know — to use the happy phrase of Hew 
 Ainshe — "the land of Burns," embracing the west 
 country of our Scottish Lowlands from Cart to 
 Solway. There is also the land of Scott, the whole 
 region of the midlands, with Selkirk as centre. To 
 Thomson there remains that tract of the eastern 
 lowlands which, beginning at Ednam, extends over 
 the valley of Kale Water, with its memories of 
 Marlefield, to Jedburgh, and thence up Jed Vale to 
 " Soudan " and the slopes of Cheviot. 
 
THE LAND OF THOMSON. 1 77 
 
 It must be owned that while the lands of Scott and 
 Burns are crowded every summer in about equal 
 proportion with thousands of tributary pilgrims, the 
 paths leading to the home shrines of Thomson are 
 forgotten and forsaken. The peculiarity in Thomson's 
 personal history of his long absence from Scotland, 
 and the peculiarity in his poetry of the almost total 
 absence of direct reference to the Scottish scenes, 
 both rustic and rural, which he so graphically depicted, 
 will entirely account for their desertion. None but a 
 foreigner would regard it as a proof of the decadence 
 of Thomson's fame. The name, at least, of the author 
 of " The Seasons " is as well known in his native land 
 as that of the author of " Tam o' Shanter " himself. 
 I havd found his book, a pious purchase or a pious 
 heirloom, not, indeed, so familiarly and frequently 
 thumbed, but possibly more reverently regarded, in 
 quite as many rural cottages — and sometimes even in 
 houses over which the Scottish Church still "holds 
 the strong hand of her purity," opposing the back o' 
 the loof to unbaptized poetry in general, and the pro- 
 fane rhymes and rants of godless Rab Burns in very 
 special particular. Thomson, too, is still popular — as 
 he has ever been — in our Scottish schools. No 
 school collection of poetry is complete without his 
 redbreast, or his " disastered " shepherd, or his suc- 
 cessful angler landing the linn-lier. One is glad that 
 this is so, for the sake of our young folks. For a love 
 for Thomson in early life implies a lasting delight in 
 the phenomena of rural nature, and a ready response 
 in after-years to her restorative influences. The power 
 of such a response in this fiercely competitive and 
 
 M 
 
178 THE LAND OF THOMSON. 
 
 "hog-shouldering age," this age of town attractions 
 and distractions, is surely a possession of incalculable 
 price ; it belongs to the man whose boyhood has been 
 blest with the spiritual fellowship of Thomson. It is 
 not, therefore, that Thomson is forgotten, or that his 
 popularity is on the wane, which will account for the 
 neglect of visitors to the places in Roxburghshire 
 associated with his personal history. It is that those 
 places are so few in number, and more especially that 
 the traces of his connection with them are compara- 
 tively so fragmentary, or faint, or uncertain. The 
 scent — so to speak — lies hot on the numerous traces 
 of Scott and of Burns. It is relatively cold and faint, 
 and is confined to a smaller area, in the case of 
 Thomson. 
 
 Much, if not all, of the uncertainty in the personal 
 history of Thomson attaches to that part of his life 
 which is most interesting to Scotsmen, and perhaps 
 most significant to the student whose special delight 
 it is to mark the first unfoldings of poetic genius — the 
 period, namely, of his home life and youthful training. 
 The early Lives of the poet are to blame for this. 
 They were written for Englishmen, and dealt mainly 
 with the latter or Enghsh half of his life — the period 
 which is popularly supposed to constitute the whole 
 term of his poetical career. The poet, however, pre- 
 cedes the poem ; and young Thomson rejoiced in the 
 poetical nature before he gave public proof that he 
 possessed the poetical faculty. It is, I fear, impos- 
 sible now, at an interval of nearly two centuries, to 
 identify distinctly any single scene in his native 
 Teviotdale which directly fired his heart or captivated 
 
THE LAND OF THOMSON. 1 79 
 
 his eye. Neither his poems nor his letters will help 
 us much. Everything is vague or general. We have 
 a panorama of " airy mountains," " forests huge," and 
 fertile valleys "winding, deep, and green," with a 
 more specific but still general view of Tweed — 
 
 "Pure parent-stream, 
 Whose pastoral banks first heard my Doric reed, 
 With, sylvan Jed, thy tributary brcok." 
 
 We see him, already a young Druid — the part for 
 which, as Collins happily noted, his genius was cast — 
 in the extensive grounds of Marlefield, roving 
 
 " Through all the walks and alleys of this grove, 
 Where spreading trees a checkered scene display, 
 Partly admitting and excluding day." 
 
 We have a glimpse of his young face at the parlour 
 window of Southdean Manse, turned now to the 
 bursting passage of the big torrent at the side of the 
 garden, and now to the deep fermenting tempest 
 brewing in the red evening sky. And there is, in an 
 early letter to his young friend, the village doctor at 
 Ancram, a special reference to some unidentified 
 haugh with which he seems to have been familiar : 
 " I see you in the well-known cleugh, beneath the 
 solemn arch of tall, thick, embowering trees, listening 
 to the amusing lull of the many steep moss-grown 
 cascades, while deep, divine Contemplation — the 
 genius of the place — prompts each swelling awful 
 thought. . . . There I walk in spirit, and disport 
 in its beloved gloom." References such as these 
 furnish our distinctest glimpses of Thomson in 
 Teviotdale. But if we seldom surprise him alighted 
 
l8o THE LAND OF THOMSON. 
 
 in the valley, we feel his presence overflying the entire 
 scene from the kaims of Ednam to the cleughs of 
 Soudan. This is the land of Thomson. The shrines 
 here — they have the advantage to the tourist of easy 
 accessibility, and the recommendation of pleasing 
 surroundings — are Ednam and Widehope, which share 
 between them the honour of being the poet's birth- 
 place ; Marlefield, where Jemmy Thomson, schoolboy, 
 may have first met Allan Ramsay, who, as the good 
 folks on Kale Water will probably inform you, came 
 thither for the plot and scenery of his " Gentle Shep- 
 herd ; " Jedburgh, where, in a school kept in the aisle 
 of the Abbey, young Thomson learned to construe the 
 Georgics; Minto, where he spent very pleasantly, 
 among garden flowers and fragrance, a part of several 
 school vacations ; Southdean, the place in Scotland 
 most sacred to his memory, where was his home from 
 his third month to his sixteenth year ; and Earlshaugh, 
 in the neighbourhood of Southdean, where he was 
 taught rhyme-craft and tutored for school by a young 
 college-bred farmer— afterwards well known as a 
 minister and a Marrow controversialist. We must 
 not overlook the fact that Edinburgh, too, has her 
 share in the development of the talent of Thomson. 
 Here he resided with his widowed mother for about 
 eight years. The history of those years affords 
 glimpses of the young poet and student in various 
 interesting connections; but there is a sad want of 
 many particulars in Thomson's life at Edinburgh on 
 which one would be glad to have information. 
 
EDNAM AND THE THOMSONS. 
 
 Nearly seven hundred years ago, long Thor of 
 Northumbria was presented by Edgar, King of Scot- 
 land, for some reason or other now unknown, with a 
 grant of lands on the north side of Tweed. He 
 came up to survey the gift, and to make arrangements 
 for taking possession. As he stood on one of the 
 many " combs " of his newly acquired property, and 
 glanced around him, he may have thought that the 
 royal generosity had been exercised at little expense 
 to the royal treasury. The region was a solitude of 
 water, bog, and gravel bank — 
 
 " A waste land, where no one came, 
 Or had come, since the making of the world ! " 
 
 A " waste " it certainly was, and so with Saxon blunt- 
 ness he called it. Is not the ungracious and 
 ungrateful word recorded in the ecclesiastical archives 
 of Durham? Long Thor, however, had the earth- 
 hunger common to his kinsmen, and appropriated the 
 waste. First he peopled it, and then he built a 
 church, and, having thus interested St Cuthbert in the 
 infant settlement, he left the rest to grace and a 
 natural growth. Such was the origin of Ednam or 
 Edenham — the village by the smooth-flowing stream. 
 A village it still remains after the lapse of all those 
 
 i8i 
 
1 82 EDNAM AND THE THOMSONS. 
 
 centuries ; it would neither develop- by coaxing nor 
 disappear by bullying. It got a mill, and ground peas 
 and bere so early as the twelfth century ; and though 
 the grist has changed to finer grain in recent times, 
 the mill has hummed all along in village ears only, 
 and purveyed only for village pots and girdles. It 
 got a brewery too, and was doubtless too heartily 
 "beshrewed" for its good ale — at least there is no 
 brewery now. Once, indeed, when James Dickson 
 brought in weaving, and sought to make it a "haunt" 
 for blankets, it seemed to be meditating the step from 
 hamletcy to townhood. The step, however, was not 
 taken. Meanwhile the village went on quietly digging 
 and draining, tilling and "taking-in," till the waste 
 lands of long Thor became desirable estates, and county 
 families like the Edmonstones gathered or grew up in 
 the neighbourhood. In spite of all this coaxing it 
 refused to grow. It was equally reluctant to succumb 
 to bullying. In vain during the old Border warfare 
 did the English sack it, and break it, and burn it ; the 
 villagers clung to their toom cruives and trampled 
 kailyairds, and the huts and houses sprung up again 
 like furze that has been fired. It is not, therefore, for 
 commercial growth or industrial prosperity that Ednam 
 is of interest ; even the interest attaching to an ancient 
 historical village such as Ednam' is by no means rare 
 in Scotland, or on the Scottish border. The one 
 noteworthy fact of special and more than local 
 interest in its history is of a literary kind, and is 
 associated, however nominally, with the fame of 
 Thomson. Only one other name of national note 
 has ever been mentioned in connection with Ednam, 
 
ED NAM AND THE THOMSONS. 1 83 
 
 and the connection is both loose and slender : it is 
 believed that the parents of Captain Cook, the well- 
 known navigator, were long resident in Ednam ; it is 
 not affirmed that their illustrious son ever saw stick or 
 stone of the village, or sailed paper boats on the Eden. 
 Perhaps there is but one other possible object of 
 extraordinary interest in Ednam, which — but entirely 
 in deference to local prejudice — may be mentioned 
 here ; there is the green stump of a wonderful witch- 
 elm, which lost its upper ^bole and branches, blown 
 down by a storm, a few years ago. " It was the 
 auldest tree in Ednam," said a good woman of the 
 village, with a pathetic " tirl " in her tone, " an' the 
 only thing Ednam ever had worthy a body's coming 
 to see. My man an' me — we couldna force oor fowre 
 haunds to meet round it ! An' if we gaed on oor 
 knees it's no fowre pair that'll gang aboot it yet ! " 
 They speak a beautifully pure doric at Ednam, such 
 as was both a surprise and a pleasure to hear. 
 
 Some years ago a brave attempt was made to prove 
 that Thomson the poet was a remote offshoot of a 
 noble family. It is probably possible, especially in a 
 small country like Scotland, to trace at last the con- 
 nection of the tiniest human twig with some more or 
 less stately genealogical tree ; but the poet, on the 
 paternal side at least, had an immediate origin of 
 obscure though honest ancestry. His grandfather was 
 a gardener in the employment of Mr Edmonstone, 
 who, at the time here referred to — the end of the 
 seventeenth century — was perhaps the most consider- 
 able landlord near Ednam. The gardener's son 
 Thomas became a student and a preacher, and in 
 
184 EDNAM AND THE THOMSONS. 
 
 July 1692, in his twenty-fifth year, was ordained 
 minister of the parish of Ednam. The parish was 
 what was called a " Crown living," both before that date 
 and for many years after, but at the time, and for the 
 next twenty years, the law of Patronage happened to 
 be in abeyance in the Kirk of Scotland, and the right to 
 appoint was vested in the Protestant heritors of the 
 parish and the members of the Kirk-Session. There 
 can hardly be a doubt that Mr Edmonstone's vote 
 and influence were used in favour of Mr Thomas 
 Thomson, and to a large extent determined the 
 appointment. The appointment was a popular one, 
 and the minister-elect soon acquired a name in his 
 Presbytery for personal piety and diligence in the 
 discharge of pastoral duty. He might have sat for 
 Chaucer's portrait of " a good man of religioun." Like 
 that good man, he was 
 
 " A poure persoun of a toun, 
 But ricbe he was of holy thought and work." 
 
 Like him, too, he was "a lerned man," being a 
 Master of Arts, 
 
 " A clerk 
 
 That Cristes gospel trewely wolde preche ; 
 
 His parischens devoutly wolde he teche. 
 
 Benigne he was, and wonder diligent, 
 
 And in adversite full pacient." 
 
 Long afterwards the poet spoke of him as "good 
 and tender-hearted." Yet there was a bone in his 
 
 sleeve — 
 
 " Were eny persone obstinat, 
 What so he were, of high or lowe estat. 
 Him wolde he snybbe scharply for the nones." 
 
ED NAM AND THE THOMSONS. 1 85 
 
 The blended softness and firmness of his character 
 is well illustrated by an incident belonging to the 
 second year of his ministry. He had lent his pony to 
 a parishioner of the name of Muir, and the rascal had 
 so overworked or ill-used it that it died under his 
 charge. Thereupon the minister charged him with 
 cruelty, greed, and ingratitude. Muir retorted, declar- 
 ing that " he would not be hectored by him, for he 
 was but the offscourings of the earth," and proceeded 
 to curse the minister. For his ill-will and evil words 
 Muir was sisted before the Session, and tholed rebuke ; 
 but it does not appear from the Session Records that 
 he made good to the minister the loss of the pony. To 
 the minister a pony would doubtless be of good 
 service in a parish which, though not wide, was badly 
 provided with roads, and had its houses " fer asonder." 
 But without it 
 
 ' ' He ne lafte not, for reyne ne thonder, 
 In siknesse nor in meschief, to visite 
 The ferreste in his parissche, moche and lite, 
 Uppon his feet, and in his hond a staff. 
 This noble ensample to his scheep he gaf, 
 That first he wroughte and afterward he taughte ; 
 Out of the gospel he tho wordes caughte." 
 
 The Rev. Thomas Thomson was altogether a little 
 over eight years incumbent of Ednam, and seems to 
 have enjoyed a singularly peaceful and popular term 
 of office over all. Muir's ebullition of ill-nature seems 
 to have been the only serious affront that Ednam ever 
 offered to him. One whimsical instance of opposition 
 to religious harmony on Auld Kirk lines may, however, 
 be noted. One of the villagers, though his house 
 
1 86 EDNAM AND THE THOMSONS. 
 
 adjoined the church, refused to enter the village fold. 
 A strict Sabbatarian, he never went to church. Either 
 he formed a sect by himself — and he had apparently 
 strength of will enough for such a singularity, or he 
 belonged to a body of believers whose visibility was 
 elsewhere, and of which he was an isolated member. 
 He kept the Sabbath at his own hearth according to a 
 ceremonial of his own. His hours of meditation and 
 holy exercises did not, however, agree with those of 
 the village community. There was the tinkling of the 
 kirk-bell, which drowned his praise. That, however, 
 might be borne. But there were the noises of the 
 people assembling, and worshipping, and departing — 
 and these were both too grievous and too continuous 
 to be borne. He accordingly penned and sent a note 
 of remonstrance to the minister, begging he would 
 take such speedy and effective means with his congre- 
 gation as would stop their rowting and skirling, and 
 especially their skailing, since it interfered with his 
 observance of the Lord's Day ! 
 
 Mr Thomson was " called " in August of the year 
 1700 to the larger and more important parish of 
 Southdean (locally pronounced Soudan), in the same 
 shire of Roxburgh, but at the south end. About the 
 same time he received two other "calls" from the 
 neighbouring parishes of Castleton and Morebattle, 
 which we may well regard as good evidence of his 
 popularity as a pastor and preacher. He accepted 
 Southdean, and was admitted on the 6th November. 
 Thither, therefore, from the banks of Eden to the 
 haughs of the upper Jed, the Thomson household 
 was transferred, some time in the end of the last 
 
EDNAM AND THE THOMSONS. 1 87 
 
 year of the seventeenth century. Besides the minister 
 himself, the household included, certainly, his wife, 
 and probably four children — but the statement 
 supposes that the dark shadow had not entered the 
 manse at Ednam. The minister had married in 
 October 1693, some fifteen months after his ordina- 
 tion, Beatrix Trotter, one of the daughters of the 
 laird of Wideopen (anciently written Wydehoipe), a 
 small estate on Kale Water, in the parish of More- 
 battle. Of this union, during Mr Thomson's 
 occupancy of Ednam Manse, were born four children 
 — Andrew, in 1695 ; Alexander, in 1697 ; Issobell, 
 in 1699 J and James, in September 1700. The last 
 was the poet. His age at the time of his father's 
 translation to Southdean was thus only two months, 
 and hardly a day more. Ednam may claim for its 
 old manse — now said to be the dishonoured outhouse 
 of a farmstead — the glory Of his birth, leaving the 
 tradition of Kale Water to protest in behalf of the 
 old mansion-house of Wideopen. But the tradition 
 of Kale Water protests too much, for it has set up an 
 actual and no visionary Parnassus with two summits, 
 and claims both " The Gentle Shepherd " and Winter, 
 the first of " The Seasons," as the inspiration of its own 
 pastoral muse, the local Thalia ! Ednam may be 
 allowed to claim the honour of Thomson's birth ; if 
 she cannot do this, she must content herself with his 
 baptism — on the 15th September— for he was too 
 short a while in her keeping to derive any poetical 
 benefit from her nursing. Southdean was the nurse 
 of this poetic child. 
 
A FORSAKEN SCOTTISH SHRINE. 
 
 ' ' The hinds and shepherd-girls should dress 
 With simple hands that rural shrine." 
 
 — Collins, adapted. 
 
 The Other morning the present writer found himself, 
 in a thunder-plump of rain, the sole possessor of the 
 country road which leads from Kelso northward to 
 Edenside. Hawthorn hedgerows on each side of 
 him permitted only partial views of the fat haughs of 
 Tweed, but a little beyond these rose, in pleasant 
 relief to the eye, the low wooded heights which in 
 old time had been the river's banks ; and still farther 
 oif were visible the green kaims of Ednam. On one 
 of those kaims, about half a mile away, seen in 
 blurred outline through the falling shower, a slender 
 spire, overtopping an enclosure of bushy trees that 
 surrounded it, caught "the musing Briton's eyes." 
 Presently skelping round a bend of the road came 
 three noisy school-boys, who found amusement in 
 splashing mud upon each other with their bare feet. 
 Being accosted, while still at a safe distance, by 
 Viator, they ceased mud-larking, and the following 
 colloquy ensued : — 
 
 "What kirk is yon on the hill?" 
 
 "Eh?" 
 
A FORSAKEN SHRINE. 1 89 
 
 Question repeated in the same words and tone. 
 
 "It's no' a kirk, it's a moniment; Thamson's 
 moniment — Jims Thamson." 
 
 " Oh ! And what did he do ? " 
 
 "Dinna ken. Think he was a minister. He 
 lived at Ednam." 
 
 "Na!" said a younger voice, "he vrasaLpatt; he 
 made paltry." It was clearly an affected pronuncia- 
 tion, in deference to the stranger. 
 
 " Awa, mun ! " replied the leading urchin with a 
 toss of mud from his toe, which had the sole merit 
 of being neatly delivered; "a pyot's a bird." And 
 having made contradiction he fled from the response- 
 in-kind which the other was preparing. The third 
 looked on, and laughed, and uttering, as if to himself, 
 " A pait's a powny ! " joined in the chase. 
 
 Opposite Kelso race-course, which is just over a 
 mile from the town, a narrow by-road (rich in August, 
 with purple vetches and the scent of boor-tree 
 blossom) strikes up to Ferney Hill, on the top of 
 which, at a distance of scarcely more than a furlong 
 from the main road below, stands the slender four- 
 sided pyramid, or obelisk, sacred to the memory of 
 Thomson. Access to the monument from the by- 
 road is gained on the left hand by a raised path, 
 straight as a rule, which separates the adjoining fields, 
 and is protected on one side by a continuous low 
 buttress of masonry. The path, alas ! is covered with 
 a crop of coarse weeds, rank and tall, impassable 
 except by rough feet. It is obviously the unused 
 approach to a forsaken shrine. The hallowed 
 enclosure, a square marked off by a low stone wall. 
 
190 A FORSAKEN SHRINE. 
 
 lined with privet and hawthorn and an array of 
 rustling aspens, presents, in the midst of a varied 
 landscape of pastoral loveliness, the dreary solitude 
 and seclusion of a tomb. It is a wilderness of weeds 
 — of sword grass and seeded grasses, nettles and hem- 
 lock, amongst which it is a comfort to the heart to 
 spy here and there the woolly white of clover 
 blossom and the enamelled purity of a few mountain 
 daisies. The spot, however, is not all unvisited. 
 Inscriptions of different degrees of rudeness mark the 
 plinth — or rather the pedestal on which the obelisk 
 rests — and indicate by dates, which here and there 
 accompany the names and initials, that even the 
 present decade has furnished a few pilgrims to 
 Thomson's neglected shrine. Can anything excuse 
 those "shapeless sculptures"? Nothing — absolutely 
 nothing, if they deface a work of art. Thomson's 
 monument, however, is substantial rather than elegant, 
 and the penknife attacks upon its substantiality are 
 impotence itself. Let us charitably suppose that they 
 express reverence for the poet, or a desire to be 
 connected with his memory, however faintly and 
 ephemerally. The pedestal of the monument is a 
 cube of solid-built masonry, ten feet on the side, 
 from which rises forty feet into the air what seems to 
 the near spectator to be rather a sky-aspiring pyramid 
 than an obelisk, heavily constructed of white sandstone 
 blocks, channelled horizontally with fine groovings, 
 and grey with the exposure of seventy-four years. 
 The erection dates from the year 1820, and is to be 
 regarded as the outcome and consummation of a 
 pious and patriotic movement in honour of Thomson, 
 
A FORSAKEN SHRINE. I9I 
 
 initiated just one hundred years ago, with a ceremonial 
 more common in France than in this country, by 
 David Stuart, Earl of Buchan. Lord Buchan was a 
 man of refined tastes and enlightened patriotism, and 
 endowed to an unusual degree with the perfervid 
 "ingyne" of the Scot. Perhaps he is best re- 
 membered to-day for his bold characterisation of 
 Johnson as an "overbearing pedant and bully, 
 whose reputation was proof of the decline of British 
 taste and learning." But he deserves well of his 
 country, if for nothing else, for his just appreciation 
 of Thomson. He may be said to have brought 
 Thomson home, crowned with Enghsh laurel, to the 
 full knowledge and regard of his countrymen. The 
 event, a frank act of hero-worship much ridiculed at 
 the time, and smiled at even yet by the frigidity of 
 our own age, took place at Ednam Hill on the 22nd 
 of September 1791. Just ten years previously 
 Johnson had published his Lives of the Poets, and 
 in his sketch of the incidents of Thomson's life 
 had proclaimed the supposed poverty of the young 
 poet — his want of shoes — with what may have been 
 a sympathetic recollection of his own early destitu- 
 tion, but which Lord Buchan imagined to be 
 sheer malevolence. It was partly to vindicate 
 Thomson from the supposed aspersions of Johnson 
 . that the ceremonial at Ednam Hill was projected. 
 Some may think that abuse of Johnson was as much 
 the object of the celebration as praise of Thomson. 
 It may at least be believed that the publication of 
 Johnson's Lives was the more immediate occasion of 
 the solemnity. Numerous invitations were sent out 
 
192 A FORSAKEN SHRINE. 
 
 for the gathering ; amongst others Burns was asked to 
 come " to make one at the coronation of the bust of 
 Thomson," and it was hinted that "his Muse might 
 perhaps inspire a suitable ode for the occasion." At 
 this time Burns was preparing to leave the farm of 
 Ellisland for the town of Dumfries. He had already 
 sold the year's crop on his farm — " and sold it very 
 well ; a guinea an acre, on an average, above value." 
 His reply was couched in the following words : — " My 
 Lord, — Language sinks under the ardour of my feelings 
 when I would thank your Lordship for the honour you 
 have done me in inviting me to make one at the 
 coronation of the bust of Thomson, In my first 
 enthusiasm, on reading the card you did me the 
 honour to write me, I overlooked every obstacle, and 
 determined to go ; but I fear it will not be in my 
 power. A week or two's absence in the very middle 
 of my harvest is what I much doubt I dare not 
 venture on. Your Lordship hints at an ode for the 
 occasion ; but who would write after Collins ? I read 
 over his verses to the memory of Thomson, and 
 despaired. I got indeed to the length of three or 
 four stanzas, in the way of address to the shade of the 
 bard, on crowning his bust. I shall trouble your 
 Lordship with the subjoined copy of them, which, I 
 am afraid, will be but too convincing a proof how un- 
 equal I am to the task. However, it affords me an 
 opportunity of approaching your Lordship, and of 
 declaring how sincerely and gratefully I have the 
 honour to be, etc. — R. B." The address here 
 referred to is well known — "While virgin spring by 
 Eden's flood," etc. But there is another, a less 
 
A FORSAKEN SHRINE. 1 93 
 
 known and more characteristic address, which Burns 
 composed within a twelvemonth after the celebration, 
 by no means complimentary of the occasion, and 
 seeming to reflect upon that feature of the Earl's 
 conduct which procured for his memory the harsh 
 sentence of Motherwell, that Lord Buchan was "the 
 most parsimonious of patrons." 
 
 " Dost thou not rise, indignant Shade, 
 And smile wi' spurning scorn, 
 When they wha wad ha'e starved thy life 
 Thy senseless turf adorn ? 
 
 Helpless, alane, thou clamb the brae 
 
 Wi' meikle honest toil, 
 And claught the unfading garland there, 
 
 Thy sair-won richtfu' spoil. 
 
 And wear it thou, and call aloud 
 
 This axiom undoubted — 
 Would'st thou have nobles' patronage ? 
 
 First learn to live without it ! 
 
 To whom ha'e much, more shall be given, 
 
 Is every great man's faith ; 
 But he, the helpless, neediu' wretch 
 
 Shall lose the mite he hath." 
 
 The great feature of the celebration was Lord 
 Buchan's oration, which began by flattering the 
 audience — certainly by implication — as an assembly 
 of " men of genius, learning, and taste." It contained 
 at least one shrewd remark, to which Thomson's 
 private correspondence gives some countenance, to 
 the effect that the poet's severance from the ministry 
 of the Scottish Kirk was an essential condition to the 
 ■growth of his reputation. Ag a student of divinity his 
 genius was fettered, and he could never have risen 
 
194 ^ FORSAKEN SHRINE. 
 
 above mediocrity if he had become a Presbyterian 
 minister. Thomson's distaste to the trammels of the 
 Presbyterianism of his day deserves to be emphasized. 
 Even before he left Leith to try his fortune under a 
 new guise in London he thought " the thorny paths of 
 systems and school divinity " fatal to natural cheer- 
 fulness and the play of humour ; and after ten years' 
 residence in England he wrote of his views of immor- 
 tality as including " a system not calculated, perhaps, 
 for the meridian " in which his Scottish correspondent, 
 Dr Cranstoun of Ancrum, was living. The speech 
 also contained one happy bit of criticism of Thomson's 
 descriptive power, not — it must be said— very happily 
 expressed : " In his poems, those who are able to 
 taste and relish that divine art which raises the man of 
 clay from the dirty soil on which he vegetates to the 
 heaven of sentiment .... will delight in seeing 
 the beautiful features of Nature presented to the eyes as 
 spectators and not readers, and after these delightful 
 impressions are over, they will find themselves happier 
 and better than they were before." It had been the 
 design of Lord Buchan, as communicated to Burns, 
 to conclude his oration by crowning the bust of 
 Thomson, but the expected bust was not forthcoming. 
 " I have in my hands a copy of ' The Seasons,' which 
 my father received from the author, and on it, since I 
 have not the bust of the poet to invest, I lay this 
 garland of bays." Apparently Burns's stanzas, though 
 duly acknowledged, were not read, the place to which 
 they were entitled — less from their merit than the fame 
 of their author — being surrendered to eleven con- 
 ventional and imperfect lines, which have too much 
 
A FORSAKEN SHRINE. 1 95 
 
 honour done them by being even referred to. The 
 copy of "The Seasons" on which the bays were 
 deposited is now in the Edinburgh University Library. 
 Lord Buchan's gathering at Ednam in the autumn 
 of 1 79 1 proved to be the inauguration of a series of 
 anniversary services in praise of Thomson, held at 
 the same place, more or less regularly, down to the 
 year 1820. In the latter year the monument was 
 erected, and pilgrims could suit the times of 
 their visitation to their own convenience. On a 
 sunken slab of slate on the west side of the pedestal 
 the monument bears the following record : — " In 
 memory of James Thomson, author of The Seasons, 
 born at Ednam nth September a.d. 1700." There 
 is no authority for the nth, or any other day, as the 
 date of his birth ; his baptism took place on the 15th, 
 and it has been inferred that his birth was probably 
 on the 7th. The Session Book of Ednam has no 
 testimony to offer on this interesting point, though it 
 records the baptism. 
 
THOMSON AT SOUTHDEAN. 
 
 An unexpected depression of considerable area in the 
 south of Roxburgh,' a county remarkable for the 
 incessant unevenness of its surface, bears the ap- 
 propriate name of Southdean, anciently and still 
 locally pronounced Soudan. It lies at the foot of the 
 Cheviots, here represented by the broad-shouldered 
 majesty of Carter, and is enlivened, if it was not 
 created, by the upper Jed, which, increased by the 
 tribute of a hundred petty strypes and torrents, now 
 begins to sweep onward with something of the 
 stately movement characteristic of its lower course, 
 past red scaurs overhung with adventurous verdure, 
 to its union with silver Teviot, the noblest affluent of 
 Tweed. From the centre of this " dene," or hollow, 
 the open view all round gives to the mind a sense of 
 freedom which the narrow, winding dales of the 
 country, ncn though they are in the production of 
 other delightful sensations, deny ; at the same time, 
 there is the charming accompaniment of a feeling of 
 restful seclusion, as of a prying and clamorous world 
 shut out behind and below the horizon of distant 
 mountain barriers. Here are neither mines nor 
 manufactures, towns nor trade. The nearest railway 
 — at Hawick on the west, at Jedburgh on the north 
 196 
 
THOMSON AT SOUTHDEAN. 1 97 
 
 — is some eight or ten miles away, and not likely 
 soon to come nearer. It is a happy valley, still 
 retaining at the close of the nineteenth century, 
 uncontaminated by art, undisturbed by avarice, the 
 peace and purity of its primitive pastoralism. Pre- 
 viously to its possession by shepherds, it was part of 
 the great forest of Jedwood, the haunt of boars and 
 wolves and innumerable deer, giving refuge to run- 
 aways and outlaws, and a sylvan home to robbers, 
 and having its soUtudes of glade and greenwood 
 alarmed from time to time by an invasion of hounds 
 and hunting-horns, or the sterner cries of Border 
 battle. Not seldom the hunt was prelude to the 
 battle. Chevy Chase was here ; and here the 
 Douglas was wont to exercise his limbs and replenish 
 his larder, to the envy of his English neighbour and 
 rival, the gallant Percy. From coveting — as every- 
 body knows — Percy took to claiming a share in the 
 pleasures and treasures of the Chase, and bravely 
 vowed, according to the old ballad, that he would 
 hunt in the mountains of Cheviot, within three days, 
 maugre the doughty Douglas and his men. Douglas 
 swore he would "let" that hunting. They still 
 point you the place where, half a millennium ago, 
 the Scottish Earl mustered his men in defence of his 
 exclusive rights to the Chase, and in redemption of 
 his oath; it is identified with the churchyard of 
 Southdean Parish. Peaceful times only came with 
 the Union : the hollow was gradually cleared of its 
 beeches and oaks and more prevailing pines; rural 
 industry settled among farms and bleating folds 
 where erst the foot of the hunter and forayer had 
 
198 THOMSON AT SOUTHDEAN. 
 
 hastily passed ; and the true golden age, thus timidly 
 inaugurated, tarries in Southdean still. 
 
 The year 1 700 was wearing to its close — it was the 
 month of November — when to this happy hollow 
 among the uplands of the south of Scotland came, 
 as minister of peace to its pastoral people, the Rev. 
 Thomas Thomson, then in the full maturity of his 
 manhood. He came from Ednam, where he had just 
 passed the first eight years of his professional life, and 
 where he had acquired such a name for diligence and 
 devoutness that no fewer than three parishes were 
 desirous of securing his services when he decided to 
 accept of the congregational " call " to Southdean. 
 His household at this time consisted of a wife, and a 
 family of small children, the youngest only two months 
 old. This infant was the future author of "The 
 Seasons." He was the fourth of nine children, of 
 whom five were born at Southdean ; and as South- 
 dean was his own home continuously for fully the 
 first fifteen years of his life, excepting only those two 
 months of earliest infancy, one might almost accredit 
 Southdean with the honour usually attaching to 
 places of illustrious nativity, and regard it as the 
 parent-home of Thomson — this the more readily that 
 there is real doubt about the actual spot and even 
 parish of his birth, some biographers of the poet 
 claiming for Ednam, others — fewer in number but 
 probably better informed — declaring for Wideopen. 
 One is on sure ground at Southdean. Here, in the 
 old thatched cosy manse, and in the pastoral fields 
 around it, were spent his childhood and boyhood. 
 Within were those kindly influences only to be 
 
THOMSON AT SOUTHDEAN. 1 99 
 
 found in a true home, and seldom absent from a well- 
 filled Scottish! manse, which are the heart's best 
 education; without, such variety of natural scenery 
 as, under the transforming power of seasonal differ- 
 ences, might well excite the attention and kindle the 
 youthful imagination. There can be as little doubt 
 that the wide sympathy and noble benevolence of 
 heart which distinguished alike the conduct, the 
 correspondence, and the poetry of Thomson were 
 developed in the manse of Southdean, as that his love 
 of Nature, and faith in her supreme goodness, grew 
 up, to become a part of his very being, among the 
 fostering solitudes of that pastoral parish. A more 
 likely region in respect of natural capabilities for the 
 creation of a poet of Nature it would not be easy to 
 find. It has been remarked by a careful observer 
 that the scenery around Mantua bears in summer a 
 striking resemblance to the scenery of Southdean. 
 The remark is an interesting one ; and we can well 
 believe that the spirit which pervades the " Georgics " 
 and the kindred spirit which animates "The Seasons" 
 derived their common bent and bias, their inspiration 
 and aspiration, from early and close acquaintance 
 with scenery similar in beauty, variety, and the charm 
 of pastoral repose. The interest that would fain 
 effect a connection between Mantua and Southdean 
 is increased when one considers that Virgil was 
 probably the first poet to engage the fancy of young 
 Thomson ; that, as a student on holiday in the long 
 vacation, a copy of the Mantuan's poems was his pocket 
 companion in angling excursions on the Jed ; and 
 that, when Thomson was travelling in Italy, "the 
 
200 THOMSON AT SOVTHDEAN. 
 
 fields where Virgil gathered his immortal honey " were 
 a principal object of his quest. With him, all life 
 long indeed, Virgil was a first favourite : he was quite 
 willing to take or mistake him for the god of poetry : 
 
 " Behold who yonder comes in sober state, 
 Fair, mild, and strong as is a vernal sun ! 
 'Tis Phoebus' self, or else the Mantuan swain." 
 
 Most students of Thomson will allow that the 
 qualities which he so much admired in the genius of 
 Virgil were no inconsiderable part of the charm of his 
 own. And what he was as a poet he was as a man. 
 His sober state, his fairness, mildness, and easy 
 strength were sufficiently pronounced to be character- 
 istic of his conduct and disposition. 
 
 The scenery at Southdean is the same to-day in all 
 essential features as it was in the early part of last 
 century. The visitor may see what Thomson saw, 
 and he may be certain that much of what he sees is 
 viewed from the very standpoints which the poet 
 actually in his boyhood, and afterwards in imagination, 
 often occupied. The modern manse, simplex in 
 munditiis, a model of neatness and snugness, occupies 
 the site of the old one, and, it may be added, main- 
 tains its reputation as a home of worth, learning, and 
 hospitality. Hidden, nest-like, among embowering 
 trees, it looks from a natural lawn of smoothest, 
 softest green southwards and upwards to the great 
 Border barrier of Cheviot. Standing in the doorway, 
 you find right above and in front of you Carter Fell, 
 filling a considerable arc of your horizon. There, 
 you say to yourself, and from this very spot, or 
 
THOMSON AT SOUTHDEAN. 20I 
 
 perhaps, more comfortably for November, from the 
 parlour window, young James Thomson 
 
 ' ' Saw the deep-fermenting tempest brew'd 
 In the red evening sky ." 
 
 The Jed is on your left, at no great distance; you 
 can hear its murmur as it sweeps along past the manse 
 garden, under a low green "continent" bank which 
 wards off the wilderness. Within the charmed circle of 
 its sound young Thomson, the nursling of careless 
 solitude, ran and played many a summer day ; but it 
 was the winter note of Jed that woke the deepest 
 chord of his imagination : with a sublime pleasure, 
 among kindred glooms and congenial horrors, he 
 
 "Heard the winds roar, and its big torrent burst.*' 
 
 The garden enclosure has its own peculiar interest; 
 it was on some part of its frozen ground that . the 
 young boy-poet on the last afternoon of the old year 
 regularly sacrificed, with fire and shouts of joy, his 
 verses of the preceding twelvemonth. He could have 
 subjected his art and genius to no better discipline. 
 There was a magnanimity in the act rare among 
 young poets, but characteristic of Thomson. Till 
 lately, too, there stood in the garden, some twenty 
 yards from the manse door, an aged hawthorn, at the 
 root of which, as local tradition reports, the young 
 poet would sit in the fine weather, to read or to muse 
 and "meditate his rural minstrelsy." A single frag- 
 ment of the poet's tree still survives in the form of an 
 inkstand, and is perhaps the only relic of a distinctly 
 personal kind which Southdean now possesses of 
 
202 THOMSON AT SOUTHDEAN. 
 
 James Thomson. Beyond the garden the traces of 
 Thomson, as revealed now by his poetry and now by 
 his personal history, are, if more indefinite, scarcely 
 less interesting. On yonder hillside you may see 
 " the shining day " reflected from " wandering streams 
 high-gleaming from afar " — a phenomenon which 
 Thomson could only have seen at Southdean. Over 
 this brae, making a short cut for the manse, he was 
 seen returning a truant from College, almost as soon 
 as the servant who had carried him to Edinburgh the 
 day before. In that deep pool, to which the grassy 
 wilderness dips gradually, you may see at the season 
 the sheep-washing and shearing going on in all their 
 idyllic details, exactly as they are described in his 
 " Autumn." Here was his path for many a day to 
 school. In that other direction he walked to the 
 farmhouse of Earlshaugh with his last copy of verses 
 in his pocket, to receive thereon the judgment of John 
 Riccaltoun, a college-bred farmer, and his friend. On 
 Swinnie Moor, near by, may have occurred the his- 
 torical incident of his perishing shepherd. And 
 where, but in hill-encircled Southdean, had the young 
 poet his impressive vision of the moon-lighted world, 
 so exquisitely described in these six or seven wonder- 
 ful lines of " Autumn " ? — 
 
 " Now through the passing cloud she seems to stoop, 
 Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime ; 
 Wide the pale deluge floats, and streaming mild 
 O'er the skied mountain to the shadowy vale, 
 While rocks and floods reflect the quivering gleam, 
 The whole air whitens with a boundless tide 
 Of silver radiance, trembling round the world. " 
 
 The world has had many pictured editions, each, 
 
THOMSON AT SOUTHDEAN. 203 
 
 if possible, less truly illustrative than another, of 
 Thomson's " Seasons " : why has no one thought of 
 embellishing the poet with the very scenes which 
 suggested his poetry ? The parish of Southdean either 
 itself furnishes, or is the platform from which one may 
 behold, the fugitive originals of scores of Thomson's 
 well-known scenes. His utter truthfulness to nature 
 is the astonishing thing in those scenes. Sometimes 
 he elaborates, not seldom he idealises, but in numer- 
 ous instances he has simply lifted the scene from 
 Southdean and laid it in his " Seasons," with as much 
 apparent ease and completeness as one transfers a 
 rare flower or fern-leaf to his portfolio. It is a new 
 pleasure to the student of Thomson to identify those 
 originals : sufficient to him the unadorned and simple 
 text ; he has but to raise his eyes from the enchanting 
 page as he walks at leisure through the vale of South- 
 dean to find in those originals the best possible illus- 
 trations of his poet. They provide both illustration 
 and commentary. One may have been familiar with 
 Thomson's poetry for years, and yet have a new light 
 shed upon it by a visit to Southdean. It is true of 
 all poets that a fuller and more lively knowledge of 
 their genius is to be acquired by acquaintance with 
 the scenic and social circumstances of their early life ; 
 it is especially true of a descriptive poet, or poet of 
 Nature — such as Thomson. One of the most impor- 
 tant revelations of a visit to Southdean is the distinctly 
 national character of Thomson's genius ; he was a 
 Scottish poet, not merely by birth and upbringing, 
 but in theme and thought as well. His language 
 was English, because his eye was on the English 
 market. 
 
204 THOMSON AT SOVTHDEAN. 
 
 The education of young Jemmy Thomson was pro- 
 bably continued at his home in the old manse of 
 Southdean till he reached the age of twelve, his 
 parents being his teachers. It is, of course, possible 
 that he attended, for a longer or shorter period, the 
 little local school which may have been kept at 
 Chesters, a small roadside hamlet not half a mile 
 from the manse, and which must have existed to 
 supply the educational wants of the young rustics of 
 the district. Here he was taught to read and write 
 and cipher, and, being a son of the manse, was doubt- 
 less duly instructed in the Scriptures, and got entangled 
 in the intricacies of the Latin grammar. This was 
 probably the extent of his efforts in systematic study 
 during the period of his first schooling ; but much 
 the more valuable part of his training at this early 
 stage was independent of books. His chief, if not his 
 only, playmates were his brothers and sisters ; and 
 intercourse with them in all the intimate relations of 
 domestic life, under the gentle surveillance of a pious 
 father and a sensible and affectionate mother, de- 
 veloped that disposition to sociality and that considera- 
 tion for the happiness of others, which, in spite of an 
 indolent habit which crept upon him in middle age, 
 remained characteristic of his nature to the end. The 
 education of his heart was from the first a strong and 
 steady growth of the best qualities of humanity. His 
 life's record shows a remarkable freedom from vanity 
 and selfishness. He envied no one, and was blind to 
 the jealousy of others. Probably no poet, without 
 exception — not even Goldsmith — had so few enemies. 
 He lived amicably with the self-seeking Malloch ; 
 
THOMSON AT SOUTHDEAN. 205 
 
 greatest feat of all, he preserved due self-respect and 
 maintained an unbroken intimacy with Pope. A 
 genial and steady benevolence was the first feature of 
 his morality. He hated none — unless his dislike for 
 a certain class of lawyer, which crops out, not once or 
 twice only, in his poetry, can be construed as personal 
 and implacable. Without Burns's occasional disposi- 
 tion to satire, he had an equal width, though scarcely 
 his impetuous warmth, of sympathy. And he had 
 precisely the same rule for estimating manhood. 
 
 Next to the education of his affections at Southdean 
 must be placed the education of his senses. Here 
 Nature was his schoolmistress, and her method was 
 that of object-lessons. Never had the wise old lady 
 a readier pupil. Her lessons were his delight ; and it 
 would be difficult to say which of them pleased him 
 best. Winter was a joyous experience ; spring never 
 came a day too soon, nor went away a day too early; 
 summer and autumn were equally welcome with the 
 other seasons. Perhaps, upon the whole, autumn was 
 his favourite season ; it was the season of his birth ; 
 its tranquillity was congenial with his deeper nature ; 
 its fulness responded to the benevolence of his desires. 
 All natural objects, however presented to his notice, 
 were narrowly observed and faithfully remembered. 
 He examined the individual with microscopic minute- 
 ness j but he loved especially to group them, and study 
 the effect of their mingled masses. To the charms 
 and sublimities of form he was keenly sensitive ; but 
 he revelled in colour. His redbreast on the parlour 
 floor, or his bull in the broom, has the fidelity of a 
 photograph; but it has movement and the hues of 
 
206 THOMSON AT SOUTHDEAN. 
 
 life which a photograph wants. From such vignettes 
 and pastoral views he ranges with easy sweep to the 
 dimensions of a hemisphere ; his forest covers a con- 
 tinent, his flood becomes "a shoreless ocean tumbling 
 round the globe." But Nature's education of his 
 senses was not limited to vision. His ear was not 
 less accurately trained. The felicity of his epithets as 
 suggestive of the sounds and noises, the melodies and 
 discords, of Nature, is as noticeable as the picturesque- 
 ness of his draughtsmanship and colouring. Numerous 
 instances of it will occur to every reader of "The 
 Seasons " or " The Castle of Indolence." Not less than 
 his verbal melodies, the more intricate harmonies of 
 his verse recall the concerted notes of Nature. When 
 everything has been said about the pomposity of 
 Thomson's line, it must at last be owned that it is 
 the " pomposity " of Nature. His style, on the whole, 
 is in admirable keeping with his subject. It is part 
 of his interpretation of Nature, and not merely the 
 vehicle of that interpretation. 
 
 Smell, taste, and touch are not generally regarded 
 as so fit for poetical treatment as the more ethereal 
 sensations of sight and hearing. They are, however, 
 scarcely the less capable of ministering delight, and 
 their cultivation and indulgence enter with effects too 
 important to be ignored into the education of the 
 poetical nature. Thomson's whole nature was keenly 
 sensuous ; he had a wholesome and catholic delight 
 in fragrances, from the overpowering perfume of bean- 
 fields in blossom to the fine aroma of the lily of the 
 valley. He could hardly fail to find all the pleasure 
 in flowers which his senses could admit. His fathei 
 
THOMSON AT SOUTHDEAN. ZOJ 
 
 was a gardener's son, and had probably a practical 
 knowledge of gardening. We read of gardeners among 
 the poet's uncles and nephews; we know that his 
 garden at Richmond was a great solace to him, and 
 that it gave one if not two of his kinsmen, who had 
 been bred gardeners, a kind of excuse for "sorning" 
 on him. They were supposed to keep his garden ; 
 he certainly bore the expense of keeping them. What- 
 ever charges he was put to by their maintenance — 
 and he probably never dreamed of calculating — he 
 was amply recompensed by the sight and scent of his 
 dusty millers and damask roses. His lave of fragrance 
 was equalled by his love of fruit. It was a boy's 
 relish, which he never lost. His delight in what was 
 tangibly soft, or smooth, or in any way, actually or 
 suggestivelyj pleasant to the sense of feeling, is no less 
 noticeable to a careful reader of his earliest and latest 
 verse. Nowhere, perhaps, does he bring before one 
 in such small compass the feeling, fragrance, and 
 taste of ripe fruit, with so much suggestiveness of its 
 actual appearance and qualities, as in some lines of 
 his "Autumn." How deliciously chosen for their 
 very sound are the words — 
 
 ' ' The juicy pear 
 Lies in a soft profusion scattered round ; 
 A various sweetness swells the gentle race. " 
 
 While these are described as "melting" from the 
 deep-loaded bough in mellow showers in the sun, 
 "the fragrant stores, the wide-projected heaps of 
 apples " are represented as "falUng frequent through 
 the chiller night." 
 
208 THOMSON AT SOUTHDEAN. 
 
 "A various spirit, fresh, delicious, keen, 
 Dwells in their gelid pores, and active points 
 The piercing cider for the thirsty tongue." 
 
 Never has artist so nicely discriminated the virtues of 
 apple and pear. Like the picture of Zeuxis, the 
 description imposes on the mind ; it almost gratifies 
 the senses through the imagination. 
 
 The education of the senses — so absolutely necessary 
 in youth to a poet of Nature — was in Thomson's case 
 happily begun and well advanced at Southdean ; was, 
 doubtless, continued at Jedburgh, once famous for 
 the flavour of its Abbey pears ; further supplemented 
 at Minto and Chesters-on-Teviot, and at Marlefield- 
 on-Kale; and perfected among the richer garden 
 and orchard landscapes of Southern England, of 
 which Ham and Eastbury may serve as samples. 
 Surely no poet of Christendom, not even Keats, 
 luxuriated so voluptuously in the pagan charms of 
 Nature. The zest with which he apostrophised and 
 ate his pine-apple is emblematical of his life-long 
 attitude to the sensuous delights of the physical 
 world; it has all the frankness of a pagan's or a 
 boy's — which, to be sure, is the same thing. 
 
 " Quick, let me strip thee of thy tufty coat, 
 
 Spread thy ambrosial stores, and feast with Jove ! " 
 
 The youthful imagination of Thomson was first 
 touched and awakened at Southdean by the romance 
 of Nature. The romance of history, which is such 
 a potent factor in the dream-world of boyhood, 
 seems to have scarcely influenced his youth. Even 
 from the romance of superstition, of legend and 
 
THOMSON AT SOUTUDEAN. 209 
 
 fable, he was comparatively free. Yet he was born 
 at a time and in a locality singularly favourable to 
 the full influence of both. It was an age when 
 beUef in fairies and goblins, ghosts and devils, was 
 general; and when it was the universal practice 
 among country folks to spend part of the inter- 
 minable winter fore-nights of enforced idleset in 
 recounting the heroic traditions and tragedies of their 
 national history. Burns came a couple of generations 
 after Thomson, and in his time that belief and that 
 practice were not more prevalent than they had been 
 in Thomson's. Their influence upon his poetical 
 faculty Burns has himself acknowledged : " In my 
 infant and . boyish days I owed much to an old 
 woman who resided in the family, remarkable for 
 her ignorance, credulity, and superstition. She had, 
 I suppose, the largest collection in the country of 
 tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, 
 brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf- 
 candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, 
 giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery. 
 This cultivated the latent seeds of poetry, but had 
 so strong an effect on my imagination that to this 
 hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a 
 sharp look-out in suspicious places." In the same 
 letter from which I quote he further declares that 
 the History of Sir William Wallace was one of 
 two books read in his boyhood that gave him more 
 pleasure than absolutely any others. It " poured a 
 Scottish prejudice into my veins which will boil 
 along there till the floodgates of life shut in eternal 
 rest." With good store of Betty Davidsons in 
 'o 
 
210 THOMSON AT S0U7HDEAN. 
 
 Scotland even yet, there seems to have been no 
 Betty Davidson, or other crone or carline, haunting 
 Southdean Manse in the early part of last century, 
 who might have inveigled young Thornson to the 
 door of the supernatural world, and startled his 
 innocent sedateness with suggestive visions of 
 diablerie and the dim world of fairyland. The 
 minister probably took care to prevent all that. To 
 him the Prince of Darkness and his scarcely less 
 ubiquitous liege devils, not to mention the subsidiary 
 agencies of local ghosts, witches, and water-wraiths, 
 were Bible truths and terrible Scottish realities — not 
 to be alluded to lightly, not to be wantonly provoked 
 or rashly encountered. It was the superstition of 
 his age, the dark feature of our earlier Presbyterian 
 piety and devotion. Parental affection may have 
 shielded the childhood of young Thomson from 
 those grim credos. He seems, at least, to have passed 
 his boyhood, his first fifteen years, free from any care 
 or curiosity about the supernatural. The gloom of 
 the woods and glens of Southdean held no mysterious 
 terror for that happy period of his life ; and he rather 
 rejoiced in the roar and hurry of the flooded Jed, 
 and kept safely beyond the sweep of its waters. No 
 diseased thought of what might inhabit the darkness 
 of tortured air or water paled his plump cheek ; he 
 rambled boldly, drinking in at every sense the pure 
 pleasures of the rural life. His was the unhesitating 
 step, the shining brow, the health-hued cheek, the 
 full, round-eyed fearlessness of thriving boyhood 
 Ignorant or careless of the supernatural, he could 
 give his undivided attention to the wholesome object- 
 
THOMSON AT SOUTHDEAN. 211 
 
 ivities of the physical world. It is no objection to 
 this theory of the fearlessness of his earlier youth-time 
 that in his poems he refers to superstitious horror 
 creeping over rustics gathered by winter hearths to 
 the entertainment of some goblin story; or that he 
 gives a moonlight glimpse or two of soft-embodied 
 fays streaming like a dream through distant woods, 
 
 "Or o'er some flood all silvered with their gleam." 
 
 He speaks, too, of ghosts yelling in graveyards ; and 
 once he seems to make allusion to the groans of the 
 water-wraith as warning the belated wanderer of woe 
 and death. But the dread, at least, if not also the 
 knowledge, of vulgar supernaturalism did not enter his 
 imagination till boyhood was over ; and it soon passed 
 from him- as a terror, and became transmuted by his 
 own common-sense and the purifying influence of a 
 natural religion into a pleasing belief in the harm- 
 lessness or benevolence of the invisible world. Truly 
 may we regard his own words as applicable to South- 
 dean — 
 
 ' ' Pleased did I, in my cheerful morn of life, 
 When nursed by careless solitude I lived 
 And sung of Nature with unceasing joy- 
 Pleased did I wander through your [loved] domain." 
 
 His history, his disposition, his poetry, even his 
 expression of countenance, all bear testimony that the 
 fifteen years of his boyhood, passed almost con- 
 tinuously at Southdean, were in all respects and 
 relations a singularly happy time. And more truly, if 
 that be possible, was Southdean the indisputable 
 place of his poetical nativity. Where but at South- 
 
212 THOMSON AT SOUTHDEAN. 
 
 dean was the "careless solitude" that nursed him, 
 gave him his first taste of the joys of Nature, and 
 made him, while still a mere schoolboy, a poet in 
 heart and mind ? 
 
 The patriotic feeling was strong in Thomson's 
 heart ; none that reads him closely can doubt it ; but 
 it was a love for the land rather in its geographical 
 than its historical aspects. The associations of his 
 own early life doubtless made it dear to him ; doubt- 
 less, too, the heroism exemplified by Wallace in 
 ancient times, and by "the good Argyle " in his own, 
 was viewed with true Scottish reverence and admira- 
 tion ; but, more than the history of its " battle mounds 
 and Border towers," his recollection of its scenes of 
 rural life and rustic sociality, viewed idyllically through 
 his own poetical imagination, was the main and 
 overmastering element of his patriotism. It was by 
 no means aggressive. Intrusiveness — formerly and 
 upon the whole still characteristic of the patriotism of 
 the common Scot — is indeed entirely absent from 
 Thomson's character and poetry as a patriot. It is 
 wrong to seek the explanation in the circumstance of 
 his residence among Englishmen. He was no 
 renegade like Malloch — or Mallet, as he called him- 
 self, to make his name palatable to the Southron. It 
 was simply the natural outcome of his genius and 
 disposition. He loved his country because he found 
 it lovely, and because it was his first love ; and its 
 people because he liked them best, and had been 
 early familiar with them. To him, in the language of 
 Scott, it was the nurse of his poetical childhood — the 
 meet nurse for any poetic child. Long experience of 
 
THOMSON AT SOUTHDEAN. 21 3 
 
 English folks left him, as it had probably found him, 
 a believer in the equality of Scottish to English man- 
 hood, and in the superiority of Scottish womanhood. 
 Here he differs from Goldsmith, who in some points 
 of genius, disposition, and even personal history, 
 rather resembles him. " Summer " offers as generously 
 sincere a tribute to the English character as even 
 " The Traveller " ; but not to the neglect of Scottish 
 worth, which, if the notice is delayed, is at last duly 
 honoured in "Autumn." "Britannia too," he wrote 
 to a fellow-countryman, "includes our native kingdom 
 of Scotland." And it was Britannia, one likes to 
 remember, that received Heaven's commission to rule 
 the waves. There is peculiar satisfaction to every 
 Scottish heart in the fact that when Thomson wrote 
 the grandest of our naval anthems, Scotland, too, was 
 in his thought. 
 
 ' ' When Britain first, at Heaven's command, 
 Arose from out the azure main, 
 This was the charter of the land, 
 
 And guardian angels sung the strain — 
 Rule, Britannia ! rule the waves ; 
 Britons never will be slaves ! " 
 
 Strains like these, and the influence of poets like 
 Thomson, have made us the united nation we are. 
 
PART V. 
 
 OF BURNS IN A NEW ASPECT. 
 
BURNS THE POET OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 More than any other poet, Burns was a son of the 
 soil. He was a phenomenon in the city, and suffered 
 by the change. His health and strength and inspira- 
 tion were drawn from rural sources. One does not 
 need to read far into his poems to perceive this. To 
 know it, a knowledge of the outward history of his life 
 is unnecessary. There is the smell of corn-rigs, and 
 furrowed fields, and fragrant hedgerows diffused like a 
 straying wind through all his poetry. The man who 
 so freshly employed the symbolism of Nature in the 
 utterance of his thoughts was a dweller in open 
 country spaces, with nothing between him and the 
 presence of the mighty mother. Nature was not far 
 off, but near to him ; her imagery was no recollection ; 
 he was in the midst of it. True to the letter is his own 
 simple statement — how unnecessary it is ! — " The 
 Poetic Genius of my country found me .... at 
 the plough, and threw her inspiring mantle o'er me. 
 She bade me sing the loves, the joys, the rural scenes 
 and rural pleasures of my natal soil." 
 
 Burns was a constant dweller in fields and farms for 
 thirty-two )ears. His life in their open spaces is no 
 mere figment, it was veritable fact. He mostly ate 
 and slept under a roof, but he met the majority of the 
 
 217 
 
2l8 BURNS THE POET OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 four-and-twenty hours in the open. The merry lark 
 was his clock — it has been the ploughman's from time 
 immemorial. He found his calendar in the signs of 
 the seasons. By them he dated his epistles. The 
 sons of prose give month and day in dry almanac 
 fashion. But with Burns it was — 
 
 "While briers an' woodbines budding green, 
 An' paitricks scraichin' loud at e'en, 
 An' morning poussie whiddin' seen, 
 Inspire my muse ; " 
 or — 
 
 " While new-ca'd kye rowte at the stake, 
 An' pownies reek in pleugh or braik ; " 
 or — 
 
 " While at the stook the shearers cow'r 
 To shun the bitter blaudin' show'r ; " 
 
 and then the news of the epistle begins. The new 
 style of counting poetical time, introduced in this 
 delightful way by Burns, was a great advance upon the 
 manner of the old makers from Chaucer to Thomson. 
 That manner was to send the eye rolling in a fine 
 frenzy from earth to heaven, and seize upon some 
 sublimity of the zodiac with which to mark the time o' 
 day. Chaucer's pedantry in his uninspired moments 
 is simply insupportable, but he had the genius to 
 anticipate in the opening of his immortal "Prologue" 
 the natural style of Burns. Thomson's sun rolling 
 from Aries, and being received by the bright Bull, has 
 only sonorousness to recommend it. In this, too, as 
 in other respects. Burns brought poetry down from 
 heaven to earth, glorified with it the monotony of 
 unpoetical lives, and made it fit and showed its 
 strength for daily work and wear. 
 
BUHNS THE POET OF THE COUNTRY. 219 
 
 This robust, open-air life, conducive to strong 
 thoughts and true feelings, was relieved now and again 
 by a short session of indoor study, or diversified by a 
 dip into tavern sociality. Poetry he both studied and 
 practised in the field — everybody has heard of that 
 collection of verses which was his vade mecum behind 
 the plough and beside the cart ; but philosophy and 
 divinity demanded undivided energy, and were for the 
 fireside and the elbow-chair. Now it was 
 
 "Smith, wi' his sympathetic feeling, 
 And Reid, to common-sense appealing ; " 
 
 and now it was a trinity of reverend B's that kept him 
 pondering " butt the house " : — 
 
 " My shins, my lane, I there sit roastin', 
 Perusing Bunyan, Brown, and Boston." 
 
 And occasionally, it must be confessed, he stayed 
 indoors to rest a fatigued body, and if possible, 
 compose a mind ill at ease with itself and its activities. 
 There can be little doubt that his fits of mental 
 depression were largely the result of overwork. He 
 was not the man to spare himself — could not if he 
 would. He " threshed the barn " like a brownie, and 
 was content with the brownie's recompense, or little 
 more — the creambowl and a "lean" by the kitchen 
 fire. In his despondent humiliation he would have 
 sunk into the ignoble content of the brownie alto- 
 gether ; he was on the point of forswearing poetry as 
 the cause of all his woe ; he had heaved on high his 
 waukit loof preparatory to taking the oath ; when such 
 a " Vision " as never visits the eyes of brownies 
 
220 BUJiNS THE POET OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 appeared before him in the smoky spence, to re-assure 
 his heart and comfort him with a peep into futurity. 
 
 All Burns's best work as a poet was done in the open 
 air. If this is so, it was an evil day that brought him 
 into town, and restricted him to the distracting 
 monotony of streets. The Bannockburn Ode, " Tam 
 o' Shanter," the address to " Mary in Heaven," the 
 "Death and Dying Words of poor Mailie" are 
 characteristic specimens of his genius. They were, as 
 is well known, composed not only in the country, but 
 in the open air, and in circumstances as varied as their 
 subjects. The imagery of their special circumstances 
 shows in two of them. The lingering star with lessen- 
 ing ray actually shone upon the composition of the 
 hymn ; and the war ode, as Carlyle points out, should 
 be sung with the strength of the storm that manifestly 
 inspired it — with " the throat of the whirlwind ! " 
 The poetical productivity of Burns was another 
 feature of his life in the country. Not only did 
 residence in town reduce the quality of his poetry, 
 it checked its amount as well. The quantity of 
 artistic work that Burns turned off in the country is 
 simply marvellous, when it is viewed in a proper light. 
 It cannot, of course, be forgotten that much of it was 
 produced while his hands were busy with the heavy 
 implements of agricultural toil, or at odd moments of 
 necessary or enforced idleness and leisure. Now it is 
 " lie " time in the harvest field : — 
 
 " I'm bizzie, too, and skelpin' at it, 
 
 But bitter, daudin' showers hae wat it, 
 
 Sae my auld stumpie pen I gat it 
 Wi' muckle wark, 
 
 An' took my jocteleg an' whatt it 
 Like ony dark. " 
 
BURNS THE POET OF THE COUNTRY. 221 
 
 Another time it is the hour " on e'ening's edge " that 
 is taken to answer a correspondent's letter. We 
 certainly owe something to the bad weather which, 
 while it forbade field work, favoured the composition 
 of those poems. With more leisure, or — which is the 
 same thing — with less necessity for such close and 
 continuous manual work as the bondage of the farm 
 required. Burns, there can scarcely be a doubt, would 
 have written more poetry ; and there is no reason to 
 believe that the increase would have been at the 
 expense of the quality. It is indeed a significant 
 thing in the history of the poet that his most pro- 
 ductive were his most poetical years. Perhaps the 
 most productive year of his life was the year 1786; 
 the number of pieces which he threw off in that year 
 was something like sixty, an average of rather more 
 than one piece per week ; yet plentiful though the 
 year's supply was, it included such excellent specimens 
 of his art as " The Twa Dogs," " The Author's 
 Earnest Cry," "The Ordination," the "Epistle to 
 James Smith " (in some respects the best and most 
 delightfully discursive of his rhymed epistles), the 
 " Address to the Unco Guid," " The Vision," " The 
 Holy Fair," " To a Mountain Daisy," " The Brigs of 
 Ayr," "The Gloomy Night," "The Winter Night," 
 and " The Bard's Epitaph." Some of these poems 
 are over two hundred lines in length. Few poets, 
 that were indeed poets and not mere "metre-ballad 
 mongers," have shown such astonishing fecundity. 
 Now it was the year in his country life in which he 
 felt warranted in allowing himself most literary leisure. 
 By the middle of it he had made up his mind to 
 
222 BURNS THE POET OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 break with his whole wretched past. He would give up 
 farming — which seemed indeed to have given him up, 
 escape from the evil repute in which the unco guid of 
 his parish held him, and leave a country which he 
 loved, but which was too poor or too parsimonious to 
 allow him a livelihood. He was arranging matters for 
 a final leave-taking. Gradually his industry on Moss- 
 giel slackened. He hurried a volume of his poems 
 through the Kilmarnock press. With part of the 
 proceeds of the sale of his book he bought a steerage 
 ticket to the West Indies. As the ship from time to 
 time delayed sailing, he found himself in the un- 
 accustomed position of a man with leisure. This 
 leisure time he devoted to poetry, and perhaps in the 
 whole course of his life he was never more favourably 
 placed for the production of poetry than in the 
 months of October and November of this memorable 
 year. He felt the pressure of conflicting feelings with 
 an acuteness he had never felt before, and was never 
 again to feel. His position and feelings he has him- 
 self described in his "Farewell to the Banks of Ayr." 
 It was written one day in October, but is expressive 
 of his outcast condition from the beginning of August 
 till the end of November. The publication of his 
 book did not stop his poetical industry. He was as 
 busy in the autumn of 1786 as when in the spring and 
 the summer he fed the press of the Kilmarnock 
 printer. And this activity continued till, in the end 
 of November, he left the country and repaired to 
 Edinburgh. He stayed in and hovered around 
 Edinburgh for a year and a half, producing now and 
 again, in the course of one or other of his flights from 
 
BURNS THE POET OF THE COUNTRY. 22$ 
 
 the capital for a mouthful of country air, a set of rattling 
 verses like " Willie's Awa'," or a snatch of song like 
 " The Birks of Aberfeldy," in some degree worthy of the 
 poetical work done at Mossgiel ; but composing in the 
 city itself nothing very specially remarkable in point 
 either of quantity or quality, except the " Epistle to 
 the Guidwife of Wauchope House," commencing, " I 
 mind it weel in early date," and perhaps the 
 "Address to the Haggis." His industry as a poet 
 recommenced on his settlement at EUisland. He again 
 met the Muses on hillside and by stream. His hopes 
 were bright, his inspiration and faculty were un- 
 impaired. It was no very fortunate day that brought 
 him his Excise commission, and it was undeniably an 
 evil day when he resolved to break connection with 
 rural life, and carried himself and his household gods 
 to the town. He lived a little over three years in 
 Dumfries ; the best of his poetical work in the period 
 was still done in the course of a walk or a ride in the 
 country ; what he did actually compose in the burgh 
 itself, in his house in the Wee Vennel or the Mill 
 Vennel, was of no remarkable merit for Burns — the 
 Burns that had been ! — excepting always the im- 
 mortal manifesto of the superiority of manhood (we 
 must not call it a poem; both its author and 
 Matthew Arnold have forbidden it!) — "A Man's a 
 Man for a' That." 
 
 The question is inevitable — Could nothing have 
 been done to save Burns and the fountain of poetry 
 that was in him ? Neither town life nor the gauging 
 of ale firkins was for him. Neither of them was fitted 
 for the conservation or development of his rare 
 
224 BURNS THE POET OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 poetical faculty. On the contrary, they dimmed his 
 vision and choked his utterance. Carlyle argues that 
 an office in the Excise was the best thing for him, 
 because upon that his heart was set. It was rather 
 his despair that was set upon it. This is what his 
 heart was set upon : " The appellation of a Scottish 
 bard is by far my highest pride ; to continue to deserve 
 it my most exalted ambition. Scottish scenes and 
 Scottish story are the themes I could wish to sing. I 
 have no dearer aim than to have it in my power, 
 unplagued with the routine of business, for which 
 Heaven knows I am unfit enough, to make leisurely 
 pilgrimages through Caledonia; to sit on the fields of 
 her battles ; to wander on the romantic banks of her 
 rivers ; and to muse by the stately towers or venerable 
 ruins, once the honoured abodes of her heroes." The 
 wish was expressed in these terms in 1787, and was 
 substantially repeated in other forms. It implied an 
 offer, but the nation was too blind to see it, or too 
 callous to heed it. Surely the creation of a Scottish 
 Laureateship would have been an act honourable to 
 the nation. Burns was proud, but the acceptance of 
 such an office would have compromised in no degree 
 either his dignity or his freedom. 
 
BURNS'S SCHOOL READING-BOOK. 
 
 In the August of his twenty-ninth year Burns sat 
 down one day in Mauchline to write an account of his 
 education and early life, in a letter which is at once 
 his longest, and most interesting, and in respect of its 
 composition the best specimen of his prose that we 
 have. The letter was addressed to Dr John Moore, 
 the poet's senior by thirty years, and then famous as 
 the author oi Zeluco, pubhshed in 1786, better known 
 now as the father of the hero of Corunna. In the 
 course of the letter reference was made to an English 
 school-book which the young schoolmaster, John 
 Murdoch, had apparently introduced from Ayr into 
 the little seminary over which he presided at Alloway. 
 The book was popularly known as Mason's Collection. 
 A great interest of no ordinary significance attaches to 
 this book, for it was in its pages that the boy Robert 
 Burns first felt the charm of literary expression. It 
 would be wrong to say that the book made him a 
 poet, for the poet is born and not made, but its 
 influence in developing and directing his early poetical 
 faculty was, by his own avowal, of the utmost import- 
 ance. " The earliest composition that I recollect 
 taking pleasure in was ' The Vision of Mizra,' and a 
 hymn of Addison's beginning ' How are thy servants 
 
 p 225 
 
226 BVRNS'S SCHOOL READING-BOOK. 
 
 blest, O Lord ! ' I particularly remember one half- 
 stanza which was music to my boyish ear — 
 
 ' For though in dreadful whirls we hung 
 High on the broken wave. ' 
 
 I met with these pieces in Mason's English Collec- 
 tion, one of my school-books." This declaration of 
 indebtedness to Addison, and to him through Mason, 
 is familiar to every student of the history of Burns, and 
 many must have felt on reading it at least a passing 
 curiosity to know something more about that long- 
 since forgotten school-book, Mason's Collection. A 
 copy of it has recently come into the possession of 
 the writer of these lines, and now lies before him. 
 It purports to be the tenth edition, " with valuable 
 additions ; " and, as the date on the title-page is given 
 as 1786, it is probable that the "valuable additions" 
 were made subsequently to the period when Burns 
 was a boy at school. There is, at least, no doubt 
 that it is substantially the book that young Robbie 
 Burness hugged, and dog-eared, and cried over till 
 he became, at " ten or eleven years of age," a 
 proficient, nay " a critic, in substantives, verbs, 
 and participles." "Though it cost the schoolmaster 
 some thrashings," he wrote (in rather ambiguous 
 EngUsh, it must be owned), "I made an excellent 
 English scholar." The turn of that expression about 
 thrashing presumably alludes to the combined con- 
 scientiousness and clemency of young Murdoch. It 
 seems to imply that he would by all means do his 
 duty by his pupil, but that it would grieve him to be 
 obliged to have recourse to the ultimate persuasion of 
 
BVRN^S SCHOOL READING-BOOK. 227 
 
 leather. But to return from tawse to text-book, the 
 first thing one notices, on the back of the binding, 
 is a correction of Burns's designation of the collection, 
 for it is Masson's and not Mason's. The full title 
 on the first page is as follows : — " A Collection of 
 English Prose and Verse for the Use of Schools. 
 By Arthur Masson, M.A., late Teacher of Languages 
 in Edinburgh and Aberdeen." The same page gives 
 the information that the book is "printed for, and 
 sold by, all the booksellers in Scotland." A curiosity 
 of the collection is its dedication to "The Most 
 Noble Douglas, Duke of Hamilton," whose titles, to 
 the number of sixteen, followed — as Cowley puts it — 
 by "a long etcetera," occupy a whole page. Then 
 comes an advertisement warning the public against 
 spurious editions, and other collections sold as 
 Masson's, from which one may infer the widespread 
 reputation of the book. The book itself is a sub- 
 stantial octavo of 340 pages, got up very much in 
 the style of a volume of the old Spectator. It is 
 supremely didactic, and invariably "proper" from 
 beginning to end; there is not a single sparkle of 
 wit or gleam of humour from its first to its 340th page 
 — unless one excepts the elephantine fun of "The 
 Horn-Book, by a gentleman in his old age." It is 
 heavy with solid instruction and moral advice, and 
 dim with the gloom of a sombrous religion. Its prose 
 passages include such fables as Virtue and Vice, such 
 stories as Unnion and Valentine, such tales as 
 Anningait and Ajut, and Inkle and Yarico; such 
 histories as the Twelve Caesars, the Marian Persecu- 
 tions, and an Abridgement of the Bible j such essays 
 
228 B URNS' S SCHOOL READING-BOOK. 
 
 as Hints on Education, a Rhapsody on Art, and 
 Meditations on Happiness. There are, besides, 
 extracts from Robertson and Hume, translations from 
 Demosthenes, the Bedlam scene from "The Man of 
 Feeling," and a series of six "moral and entertaining" 
 letters from the pen of the once famous Mrs Rowe. 
 The poetical pieces fill rather more than loo pages, 
 and are crammed together in the first half of the 
 book, the process of cramming having seized the 
 compiler at page 62. They commence with a set of 
 hymns, of which one hears little or nothing nowa- 
 days, drifting into Scriptural paraphrases, and passing, 
 by the bridge of Pope's Messiah, into Parnell's Hermit, 
 with its strange exposition of the divine government 
 of human affairs. Addison, Mallet, Dryden, Thomson, 
 Akenside, Shenstone, and Home are then laid under 
 contribution. Even Somerville is drawn upon — ■ 
 Goldsmith, by some inscrutable "influence malign," 
 is unrepresented ; and with a few scenes from Paradise 
 Lost, a touch of Shakespeare's tragic quality as 
 revealed in Hamlet, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet, 
 and the inevitable elegy written in the Buckingham- 
 shire churchyard, the collection may be said to be 
 before the reader. The Vision of Mirza, upon which 
 the fancy of young Burns fixed at once, is undoubtedly 
 the best bit of prose literature in the volume ; and if 
 there are better specimens of poetry in the collection 
 than the hymn beginning " How are thy servants 
 blessed," it is at least the best specimen of Addison's 
 poetical talent, and so far approves the critical taste 
 of the young scholar. Upon the whole, the book is 
 a compilation which is fairly illustrative of the style 
 
BUJiA'^S SCHOOL READING-BOOK. 229 
 
 and influence of last century's literature; it has the 
 pompous conventionalisms, the ponderosity and 
 prosiness, the buckram morality and copy-line maxims 
 of worldly prudence, which mark so much of the 
 literary produce of the eighteenth century. 
 
 It goes without saying that a popular common 
 school-book, such as Arthur Masson's collection, has 
 necessarily a great and extensive influence upon the 
 minds of youth. Their feelings being fresh, are 
 susceptible, and their taste is easily moulded. No 
 after-reading or discriminative study can quite divorce 
 their minds from the favourite authors of their boy- 
 hood. The poetry or the prose narrative which they 
 liked to read when young remains up to manhood 
 and on to old age the cherished guest of their 
 memory. And to very many of the labouring classes, 
 more especially of our rural population, the EngUsh 
 reading-book of their boyhood, the book they thumbed 
 at the parish school, is the only standard of literary 
 taste, and, it may be, the only source of literary know- 
 ledge. How many of the present adult generation 
 derived the groundwork of their literary knowledge, 
 and perhaps their sole acquaintance with literature, 
 from the once popular M''CullocKs Course of Reading 
 or Series of Lessons ? You will hear them lament the 
 banishment of those old favourites from the modern 
 public school. Nothing that has superseded them, 
 they declare, is at all their equal. Whatever Burns's 
 opinion, when he had attained to manhood, may have 
 been of Mason's Collection, this much at least is 
 certain, that the book awoke his poetical instincts, 
 and continued to influence his literary taste probably 
 
230 BURNS'S SCHOOL READING-BOOK. 
 
 to the end of his career. How otherwise are we to 
 account for his life-long infirmity of affection for 
 Shenstone ? And where else did he borrow the stiff- 
 ness of his prose epistolary style? Here, probably, 
 he found the inspiration, if not the material, for his 
 " Lament of Mary Stuart." Here he found part of that 
 wealth of historical simile which runs riot in his 
 Letter to Arnot of Dalquatswood, written in April 
 1786 : it was in the History of the Twelve Ccesars he 
 read about " Pornpey at Pharsalia." Here, as already 
 shown, he first read "The Vision of Mirza," and drew 
 from the perusal an impression which remained to 
 influence his habits throughout his life. Writing to 
 Mrs Dunlop, from EUisland, on New Year's Day 
 morning 1789, he says: — "This day; the first Sun- 
 day of May; a breezy blue-sky'd noon, some time 
 about the beginning, and a hoary morning, and calm, 
 sunny day, about the end of autumn — these, time out 
 of mind, have been with me a kind of holiday. I 
 believe I owe this to that glorious paper in the 
 Spectator, ' The Vision of Mirza ' — a piece that struck 
 my young fancy before I was capable of fixing an idea 
 to a word of three syllables." It was here he found, 
 in a passage from Thomson's too-much-neglected 
 "Summer," that idea of a virtuous populace standing 
 as "a wall of fire around their much-loved isle," 
 which occurs in the penultimate stanza of "The 
 Cottar's Saturday Night." Thomson's prayer is — 
 
 ' ' Send forth the saving virtues round the land 
 In bright patrol ! " 
 
 Here he may have first made acquaintance with the 
 
BURN^S SCHOOL READING-BOOK. 231 
 
 name " Hornbook ; " it is unlikely that he ever saw 
 the article so designated. And here, in the hymns, 
 will be found an occasional line or half-stanza, the 
 echo of which can be started in that group of lugubri- 
 ous poems with which Burns may be said to have 
 commenced his career as poet, and of which " Winter 
 — A Dirge " is a characteristic specimen. 
 
BURNS AND GOLDSMITH. 
 
 The generosity of his criticism is a feature of the 
 correspondence of Burns scarcely less marked than 
 it is amiable. He has many references to his brethren 
 of the pen, and there is hardly a harsh word said of 
 any one of them. On some point or other he has a 
 high regard for them all. To contemporary versifiers 
 he was particularly indulgent. A poem by Helen 
 Maria Williams on the Slave Trade was " excellent " ; 
 he read it "with the highest pleasure." " Fully equal 
 to ' The Seasons,' " was his verdict on James Cririe's 
 "Address to Loch Lomond." Even John Armstrong's 
 very juvenile poetry was to his liking ; while that 
 obscure author's prose was " quite astonishing " in no 
 ironical sense. Now, it cannot be denied that the work 
 of those writers was at best literary commonplace, if it 
 was not downright trash. Yet there is no reason to 
 doubt the sincerity of Burns' estimate. He probably 
 imported into pages, originally dead or dull, the fire 
 which so warmed his admiration. The fine glow of 
 imagination which seemed to light up those lifeless 
 pages was the reflection of his own eyes as he 
 read. 
 
 Scarcely less generous was Burns's commendation of 
 232 
 
BURNS AND GOLDSMITH. 233 
 
 authors of approved merit. To a great deal of the 
 incense he offers them they are justly entitled; his 
 generosity shows itself in his invariable avoidance of 
 a classification of them according to their respective 
 values. Comparisons were odious. Each in his kind 
 was good, and Burns shrank from arranging them in 
 degrees of relative worth. His criticisms, in short, 
 proceeded from his heart, which was sympathetic to 
 sensitiveness, rather than from his head, which, though 
 capable of keen discrimination, was habitually sub- 
 ordinated to his affections. 
 
 In his affections Goldsmith had a chief place. But 
 so, it might be said, had Young and Shenstone, 
 Beattie and Barbauld, Pope and Addison, Fergusson 
 and Ramsay. They were all favourites, and each at 
 the moment seemed, from the warmth of his apprecia- 
 tion, to be the favourite. It is indeed impossible to 
 say, if one were to judge merely from the evidence of 
 explicit remark, which of those authors really held 
 the highest place in his estimation. Probably he 
 never allowed his understanding to decide. But if 
 one may be allowed to infer Burns's partiality for one 
 author over another by noting what correspondence 
 of sentiment and expression exists between his own 
 literary work and that of his favourites, a good case 
 can be made out to the credit of Goldsmith. It is 
 unnecessary here to insist that Burns knew and had 
 been a close and appreciative student of the charac- 
 ter and art of the Irish poet. He was, for that part, 
 equally well read in at least a score of authors of 
 repute of the eighteenth century. The time is gone 
 by for regarding Burns as the illiterate and isolated 
 
234 BURNS AND GOLDSMITH. 
 
 prodigy, who, " without models or with models only of 
 the meanest sort," attained by sheer force of native 
 genius to a foremost place in literature — as Carlyle, 
 flattering the vulgar opinion (the reader may remember 
 how picturesquely), represented him to be. Neither 
 do the direct references to Goldsmith in the letters of 
 Burns, nor the quotations from the "Deserted Village," 
 and " The Traveller," whether incorporated with a set 
 of verses, or prefixed as a motto to a popular poem, 
 need to be taken into account for the present purpose. 
 It is to those acknowledged passages in the poetry of 
 Bums, which in respect of thought or feeling or style 
 of expression betray a recollection of Goldsmith, that 
 attention is now invited. The subject is one that 
 hitherto has received little notice. And perhaps the 
 last remaining task of the critic of Burns, who has 
 been so exclusively busy with the morals of his 
 subject, is to trace the nature and extent of Burns's 
 relations as a poet with the poets and thinkers of his 
 country, of whose works he was a confessed student 
 and admirer. Such an examination cannot fail to 
 prove fruitful of important results. It will show that 
 Burns directly shared in the literary inheritance of his 
 country to an extent far greater than is commonly 
 believed. It will furnish the means of indicating his 
 indebtedness to his predecessors. It will reveal the 
 methods by which he assimilated to his own legitimate 
 uses what they had grown and garnered for the 
 common good. It will tend to prove that, great as 
 was Burns's gift of original thought, his gift of original 
 expression was greater ; that, while his common sense 
 was quick to see the naked truth when truth was 
 
BURNS AND GOLDSMITH. 235 
 
 presented in whatever guise or disguise, it was his 
 feelings that grasped and appropriated the idea like a 
 discovery, and that found for its utterance to the world 
 again that force and graphic felicity of language in 
 virtue of which it became his own. It will, in short, 
 demonstrate that Bums was no vulgar prodigy or 
 phenomenon, but a natural historical development, 
 drawing nourishment and inspiration from both 
 English and Scottish literary sources, and more 
 copiously from the former than from the latter. 
 
 To come back to Goldsmith, to whose iniiuence on 
 Bums this article is confined, the men had many 
 feelings in common. Both were endowed by nature 
 with unusual tenderness and sensitiveness of heart, 
 and both had intimate sympathetic knowledge from 
 their boyhood of humble peasant life. Before the 
 sunshine of Burns, Goldsmith flung a radiance as of 
 moonlight on the huts of poor men. He, too, though 
 in a plaintive strain, very different from the robust 
 and even uproarious passion of Burns, sang the 
 simple pleasures of the lowly train. He had no liking 
 for "the long pomp " and "the midnight masquerade ; " 
 his heart "distrasting asked if that was joy." "To 
 me " he says — 
 
 " To me more dear, congenial to my heart 
 One native charm than all the gloss of art." 
 
 Burns was of the same express opinion — 
 
 ' ' There's sic parade, sic pomp and art, 
 The joy can scarcely reach the hsaxi."— The Tiua Dogs. 
 
 Sympathy with the peasant to both Bums and Gold- 
 smith implied, of course, hatred of the local tyrant of 
 
236 BVJiNS AND GOLDSMITH. 
 
 the fields. Goldsmith recurs to the tyranny again 
 and again — 
 
 " The man of wealth and pride 
 Takes up a space that many poor supplied, 
 Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds . . . 
 
 His seat 
 
 Indignant spurns the cottage from the green." 
 
 He had a vision of the village made desert. He saw 
 
 "Opulence, her grandeur to maintain, 
 Lead stern depopulation in her train, 
 And over fields where scattered hamlets rose 
 In barren solitary pomp repose." 
 
 With genuine regret he viewed 
 
 ' ' Trade's unfeeling train 
 Usurp the land and dispossess the swain ; 
 Along the lawn, where scattered hamlets rose. 
 Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose." 
 
 Burns looked upon those scattered hamlets with the 
 
 same loving eye as Goldsmith ; he, too, had the same 
 
 mournful tale to tell— 
 
 " How pampered luxury 
 Looks o'er proud property extended wide. 
 And eyes the simple rustic hind 
 A creature of another kind." — A Winter 5 Night. 
 
 They had the same passion for liberty, symbolised in 
 both as a transitory flower — " fair freedom's blossoms " 
 in the one, " fair freedom's blooms " in the other. 
 The instinct for personal freedom in Goldsmith carried 
 him from all domestic restraints into actual vagabond- 
 age. He wandered for a solid year over the face of 
 Southern Europe with the careless gaiety of a born 
 vagrant. One wonders if the Contarini blood in his 
 veins determined in any degree the direction and 
 
BURNS AND GOLDSMITH. 237 
 
 limit of his wanderings. It was his fortune, he said, 
 " to traverse realms alone, and find no spot of all the 
 world my own." And yet he presently exclaims, 
 kindling at Creation's charms of lake and field and 
 forest combining round him — 
 
 " For me those tributary stores combine, 
 Creation's heir, the world, the world is mine ! " 
 
 Burns, too, after his disruption from Mauchline, 
 became an unsettled rover, though not quite a 
 vagrant; and the idea that want and an early old 
 age (the lot of his class) would one day reduce him 
 to the lowest rung of life's ladder, the condition of 
 mendicancy, was long familiar to his imagination ; 
 and even in the heyday of health and strength he 
 had schooled his pride to the acceptance of it. The 
 last o't, and warst o't, was only — just to beg. He 
 was so accustomed to the prospect, the view of it 
 gave him little concern, 'ile. consoled himself by a 
 humorous anticipation of the fine daunderings by 
 bum banks and hillsides, such as Edie Ochiltree so 
 greatly extolled. And, as Sir Walter Scott says, 
 alluding to this very subject, " he with a true poetical 
 spirit found something to counterbalance the hardships 
 and uncertainty of a mendicant's life in the free enjoy- 
 ment of the beauties of Nature." Burns therefore 
 sang, like Goldsmith : — 
 
 " What tho', like commoners of air, 
 We wander out we know not where, 
 
 But either house or hall ? 
 Yet Nature's charms, the hills and woods, 
 The sweeping vales, and foaming floods. 
 
 Are free alike to all. "—Epistle. 
 
238 BURNS AND GOLDSMITH. 
 
 Again, both were convinced by poverty and a natural 
 habit of philosophical reflection that the source of 
 happiness is not in education, or rank, or riches, 
 which are at best but the favouring conditions of its 
 growth. It is entirely dependent upon no form of 
 political government, and by no means peculiar to 
 any advantage of social position. Says Goldsmith : — 
 
 " Still to ourselves in every place consign'd, 
 Our own felicity we make or find." 
 
 The search for this felicity outside ourselves is vain ; 
 it is "a bliss which centres only in the mind." Burns 
 is not more convinced in his mind than Goldsmith of 
 the truth of this doctrine, but he is more pronounced 
 in his opinion. "The heart's aye the part aye," he 
 sings, " that makes us richt or wrang ; " and 
 
 ' ' If happiness have not her seat 
 And centre in the breast, 
 We may be wise, or rich, or great. 
 But never can be blest." — Epistle. 
 
 As a result of this conviction, both poets necessarily 
 set small store by rank and riches. The highest 
 worth in their estimation is manliness, the highest 
 rank manhood. Their motto is formulated by Burns 
 in the well-known lines : — 
 
 ' ' The honest, friendly, social man. 
 Whoe'er he be, 
 'Tis he fulfils great Nature's plan, 
 And none but he." — Epistle. 
 
 And so Goldsmith is indifferent to the loss and gain 
 of titles : — 
 
 " Princes and lords may flourish or may fade ; 
 A breath can make them as a breath has made." 
 
BURNS AND GOLDSMITH. 239 
 
 While Burns repeats the same cry : — 
 
 "Princes and lords are but the breath of Kings." 
 
 — Cattails Saturday Night. 
 
 " A King can mak a belted knight, 
 A marquis, duke, an' a' that ; 
 But an honest man's aboon his might, 
 
 Gude faith, he manna fa' that ! " — Honest Povertie. 
 
 A part of this creed of worth is a chivalrous, gentle, 
 fraternal regard for woman ; more especially for those 
 who, from their humility of birth, were deemed 
 undeserving of the honourable notice of the knight- 
 errant and his modern representative. Perhaps the 
 most pathetic passage in the " Deserted Village " is 
 that which describes the poor, houseless, shivering 
 female, whose modest looks had once adorned her 
 father's cottage. Burns is no less tender in his con- 
 sideration of " Sweet Jenny's unsuspecting youth " 
 ("Cottar's Saturday Night"); and again returns to 
 the subject, in words that at once recall Goldsmith's, 
 in "A Winter Night." 
 
 Again, their devotion to poetry as an art is 
 announced by both poets with the same fervour 
 and in very similar language. Both debate the 
 worldly wisdom of this devotion, with the same 
 ultimate open-eyed choice of poetry and poverty, 
 preferably to plenty and prose. It was in the follow- 
 ing frank, devoted style that Goldsmith wooed the 
 muse : — 
 
 " Sweet Poesy ! thou loveliest maid ! 
 Dear charming nymph ! . . . 
 My shame in crowds, my solitary pride, 
 Thou source of all my bUss and all my woe. 
 That found'st me poor at first and keep'st me so," etc. 
 
240 BURNS AND GOLDSMITH. 
 
 Burns admits us to a dramatic view of the manner 
 of his decision. The scene is the smoky spence 
 of his own humble farmhouse, and the time is a 
 winter fore-night. He is alone, sad in mind and 
 fatigued in body. He had been swinging the flail 
 in the barn all day long, while his less necessitous 
 farmer-neibors had been curling : — 
 
 "All in this mottie, misty clime, 
 I backward mused on wasted time, 
 How I had spent my youthfu' prime 
 
 An' done nae thing, 
 But stringing blethers up in rhyme 
 
 For fools to sing. 
 
 Had I to good advice but harkit 
 I might by this hae led a market, 
 Or strutted in a bank and clarkit 
 
 My cash account ; 
 While here, half-mad, half-clad, half-sarkit, 
 
 Is a' th' amount. 
 
 I started, mutt'ring ' Blockhead ! coof ! ' 
 An' heav'd on high my waukit loof 
 To swear by a' yon starry roof. 
 
 Or some rash aith. 
 That I henceforth would be rhyme-proof 
 
 Till my last breath :] 
 
 When click ! the string the sneck did draw. 
 An' jee the door gaed to the wa' ; " 
 
 and Poesy herself, crowned with holly and looking 
 supremely lovely, entered just in time to stop these 
 reckless vows, which, the poet naively adds, would in 
 any case have soon been broken. She consecrated 
 
BURNS AND GOLDSMITH. 24 1 
 
 him for ever to her service, and crowned him with 
 holly from her own brows : — 
 
 " ' Wear thou this ! ' she solemn said, 
 And bound the holly round my head ; 
 The polished leaves and berries red 
 
 Did rustling play, 
 And, like a passing thought, she fled 
 
 In light away." 
 
 Notice may now be taken of a few instances in 
 which Burns has recollected not so much the senti- 
 ment as the language of Goldsmith. " In all my 
 wanderings," begins Goldsmith, 
 
 "Round this world of care, 
 In all my griefs, and God has given my share," etc. 
 
 Burns follows in a variation of stanza in the famous 
 " Epistle to Davy " : — 
 
 "In a' my share of care and grief. 
 Which Fate has largely given, 
 My hope, my comfort, and relief 
 Are thoughts of her and Heaven." 
 
 Goldsmith has the line — 
 
 " Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore ; " 
 
 Bums has — 
 
 " Here Wealth still swells the golden tide, 
 And busy Trade his labour plies." — Address to Edina. 
 
 Goldsmith has — 
 
 ' ' Who quits a world where strong temptations try. 
 And since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly." 
 
 In '• Sappho Rediviva " Burns has — 
 
 " In vain Religion meets my shrinking eye : 
 I dare not combat, but I turn and fly." 
 Q 
 
242 BURNS AND GOLDSMITH. 
 
 The expression, " These degenerate times of shame," 
 occurs in both— see "The Deserted Village" and 
 " The Elegy on the Death of Dundas of Arniston." 
 
 "All the bloomy flush of life is fled," 
 
 says Goldsmith; while Burns, in "The Lament for 
 the Earl of Glencairn," writes — 
 
 ' ' In weary being now I pine, 
 For all the life of life is dead." 
 
 Goldsmith, describing a scene on the Apennine slope, 
 places " woods over woods in gay theatric pride ; " 
 Burns at Kenmore, in the Scottish Highlands, 
 describes " the sweeping theatre of hanging woods." 
 Perhaps it was from the Irish poet that Burns got the 
 trick of interpolating " sure " — 
 
 ' ' Sure those ills that wring my soul 
 Obey thy high behest." 
 
 He was certainly imitating, in the bard's song in "The 
 Jolly Beggars," that peculiarity of Goldsmith's style 
 which is brought in with such delightfully surprising 
 effect in the two immortal elegies on " The Mad Dog," 
 and on "The Glory of her Sex — Miss Blaize." These 
 elegies are too well known to need quotation. Burns 
 writes — 
 
 "He had no wish but — to be glad, 
 Nor want but — when he thirsted, 
 He hated nought but — to be sad," etc. 
 
 And there is probably an echo of Goldsmith's 
 
 "The king himself hath followed her — 
 When she has walked before, " 
 
BURNS AND GOLDSMITH. 243 
 
 in the lines to Gavin Hamilton : — 
 
 "And gar him follow to the kirk — 
 Aye when ye gang yoursel'." 
 
 There is unmistakable similarity of style to "The 
 Retaliation" of Goldsmith in Burns's little-known 
 sketch inscribed to Charles James Fox : — 
 
 " Thou first of our orators, first of our wits, 
 Yet whose parts and acquirements seem just lucky hits. 
 With knowledge so vast, and with judgment so strong, 
 No man with the half of them e'er could go wrong ; 
 With passions so potent, and fancy so bright, 
 No man with the half of them e'er could go right," etc. 
 
 And it may be noticed here, in conclusion, that 
 Burns seems to have had in his eye Garrick's clever 
 additional portrait to "The Retaliation" when he 
 wrote the Epistle to his later patron, Graham of 
 Fintry : — 
 
 "When Nature her great masterpiece design'd. 
 And fram'd her last best work, the human mind. 
 Her eye intent on all the mazy plan, 
 She form'd of various parts the various man," etc. 
 
 With this, and what follows in the same poem, the 
 reader may at his leisure compare Garrick's lines on 
 the " Making of Goldsmith," which commence — 
 
 " Here, Hermes, said Jove, who with nectar was mellow. 
 Go get me some clay, I will make an odd fellow. " 
 
BURNS AND YOUNG. 
 
 Of English writers of lugubrious verse, probably the 
 most long-winded was Edward Young. He seemed 
 to luxuriate in woe. His " Complaint " runs to nine 
 long " Nights," and the last is at least as long as any 
 other two. Never was the mournful muse so severely 
 exercised. There are over ten thousand verses in 
 " Night Thoughts " ; it would be too much to expect 
 even from a goddess that she should have breath to 
 inspire them all. It may be going too far to deny that 
 Young was a poet in the ordinary sense of the word, 
 but certainly his long " Complaint " does wear the 
 look of a ponderously elaborate rhetorical composition. 
 This question of poetry apart, it is the fact that 
 " Night Thoughts " deals with themes of deepest 
 interest, presents them in a way that arrests attention, 
 and often at least suggests the poetical mood which it 
 fails quite to express. The work was a perfect store- 
 hoiise of phrases and reflections for the minor poets 
 and preachers of last century. Even authors of 
 superior intellect, and of a stronger and purer poetical 
 faculty than his warmest admirer can allow to Young, 
 were more or less indebted to "Night Thoughts." 
 Traces of this indebtedness are to be found not only 
 in "Beattie's wark" and the graceful art of Gold- 
 244 
 
BURN'S AND YOUNG. 245 
 
 smith, but in some of the best passages of Cowper 
 and Burns. 
 
 Young was an author of whom popularity was to be 
 predicated in religious Scotland. His " sairiousness " 
 and his sombreness were congenial to the national 
 religious feeling. And nowhere was he more likely to 
 be welcomed than among the descendants of the hill- 
 men of the west country. Burns, even as a lad, was a 
 thoughtful reader, and though it is not known precisely 
 where or when, made early acquaintance with the 
 thought of Young, and was profoundly and perman- 
 ently affected by the acquaintanceship. Once, it is 
 true, in a Bacchanalian mood, he makes a rebellious 
 and rather disrespectful reference to the night- 
 thinker : — 
 
 ' ' Life's cares they are comforts — a maxim laid down 
 By the bard What-d'ye-call-him that wore the black gown : 
 And faith ! I agree with th' old prig to a hair, 
 For a big-bellied bottle's the whole of my care, " 
 
 No Churchman am I. 
 
 The maxim here quoted occurs in "Night the 
 Second " of Young's " Complaint " :— 
 
 " Life's cares are comforts; such by Heaven design'd; 
 He that has none must make them, or be wretched." 
 
 But the sally was exceptional, and the current of 
 Burns's deeper thought ran in harmony with that of 
 Young. Many of Young's expressions as well as ideas 
 remained in the memory of Burns, and some of them 
 he quoted repeatedly. He writes to Clarinda: "I 
 have been this morning taking a peep through — as 
 Young finely says — 'the dark postern of time long 
 
246 BURNS AND YOUNG. 
 
 elapsed.'" The "fine saying" is from "Night the 
 First." Clarinda, by the way, seems to have liked 
 quotations, and Sylvander did not spare her. They 
 served the lover in a double purpose ; he was frank 
 enough to inform her that he liked to have quotations 
 for every occasion — "they save one the trouble of 
 finding expression adequate to one's feelings ! " It 
 must be remembered, however, that she was an 
 exacting correspondent, and required from him three 
 letters per week for three consecutive months. Burns's 
 favourite expression from Young occurs near the be- 
 ginning of " Night Thoughts " : — 
 
 " On reason build resolve, 
 That column of true majesty in man." 
 
 Want of resolution was Burns's principal want ; 
 hence probably his helpless admiration of the virtue. 
 " Firmness," he wrote to Peggy Chalmers, " is a char- 
 acter I would wish to be thought to possess. I have 
 always despised the feeble resolve." That he did 
 feebly resolve, and that he despised himself for so 
 doing, are the tragic facts of his life-drama ; his worst 
 loss at last was loss of self-respect. It was inevitable 
 that Burns should put Young's lines into a poem of 
 his own, admiring their sentiment as he did so inor- 
 dinately. We find them accordingly in a rhymed 
 epistle to Dr Blacklock, but slightly paraphrased : — 
 
 " Come, firm Resolve, take thou the van, 
 Thou stalk of carl-hemp in man." 
 
 None of the productions of Burns is more expressive 
 of his poUtical creed that " A Man's a Man for a' 
 That." It is commonly regarded as a sympathetic 
 echo of one of the cries of the French Revolution. 
 
BURNS AND YOUNG. 2\J 
 
 The date of its composition is ist January 1795. But 
 it contains sentiments which, long before that date,, 
 were already familiar to the poet's mind in the langu- 
 age of Young. It not only reproduces those sentiments, 
 but significant traces of that language as well. In the 
 " Sixth Night " of his " Complaint " Young writes :— 
 
 " External homage and a supple knee 
 To beings pompously set up ! 
 . . . All more is Merit's due, 
 Her sacred and inviolable right, 
 Nor ever paid the monarch but the man, 
 Our hearts ne'er bovf but to superior worth. 
 
 Each man makes his own stature. . . . 
 
 High worth is elevated place : 
 
 Makes more than monarchs, makes an honest man ; 
 
 Tho' no exchequer it commands, 'tis wealth ; 
 
 And, though it wears no ribband, 'tis renown." 
 
 Compare with these quotations, which occur within 
 the compass of some forty lines, the following bits 
 from Burns, and it must be owned there is a parallel, 
 and that Burns drew it with a singularly bold, firm^ 
 and free line : — 
 
 " The rank is but the guinea stamp, 
 
 The man's the gowd for a' that. 
 The honest man, tho' e'er so poor, 
 
 Is king o' men for a' that. 
 Ye see yon birkie ca'd a lord, 
 
 Wha struts an' stares and a' that ? 
 Though hundreds worship at his word, 
 
 He's but a coof for a' that. 
 For a' that, and a' that, 
 
 His riband, star, and a' that ; 
 The pith o' sense an' pride o' worth 
 
 Are higher rank than a' that." 
 
 It is surely needless to say that these two sets of 
 quotations, from Young and Burns respectively, while 
 
248 BURNS AND YOUNG. 
 
 they constitute a parallel, stand in the relation of first 
 draught and finished picture, and that the finished 
 picture is the lyric of Burns. 
 
 In " Man was Made to Mourn," while there are 
 undoubted traces of Shenstone's influence, there is 
 probably also a suggestion of Young. " Man's in- 
 humanity to man " is a notable line in the complaint 
 of Burns. In the " Third Night " of Young's we 
 have — 
 
 " Man hard of heart to man — 
 Man is to man the sorest, surest ill." 
 
 In the "Fifth Night"— 
 
 " Inhumanity is caught from man." 
 
 And in the " Ninth "— 
 
 " Turn the world's history ; what find we there ? 
 Man's revenge .... 
 And inhumanities on man." 
 
 Again, in " Night the Eighth " Young employs the 
 familiar image of ships at sea to illustrate the course 
 of human life : — 
 
 "Some steer aright ; but the black blast blows hard, 
 And puffs them wide of hope ; with hearts of proof 
 Full against wind and tide some win their way, 
 And when strong efifort has deserved the port 
 And tugg'd it into view, 'tis won — 'tis lost ! " 
 
 There is at least a similarity, if an absolute connection 
 cannot be proved, between these and the following 
 lines of Burns : — 
 
 " Wi' wind an' tide fair i'your tail 
 
 Right on ye scud your sea-way," etc. 
 
 Address to the Unco Guid. 
 
BURNS AND YOUNG. 249 
 
 ' ' A' your views may come to nought 
 When every nerve is strain'd." 
 
 Epistle to a Young Friend. 
 
 In the beautiful " Address to the Mountain Daisy " 
 there is a well-known image of Young's : — 
 
 " For thee who mourn'st the daisy's fate, 
 That fate is thine, no distant date ; 
 Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate 
 Full on thy bloom," etc. 
 
 In the Ninth Book of " The Complaint " one reads : — 
 
 ' ' Final Ruin fiercely drives 
 Her ploughshare o'er creation. " 
 
 Again, in " Winter — A Dirge " occurs the passage : — 
 
 " The sweeping blast, the sky o'ercast, 
 The joyless winter day, 
 Let others fear, to me more dear 
 Than all the pride of May. " 
 
 The first line here is an acknowleged quotation from 
 " Dr Young " in all editions of Burns. But it is rather 
 a recollection of a stanza of Young's exhausting and 
 €xhaustless " Ocean — an Ode " : — 
 
 " The northern blast, 
 The shatter'd mast. 
 
 The syrt,* the whirlpool, and the rock, 
 The breaking spout, 
 The stars gone out, 
 
 The boiling strait, the monster's shock, 
 Let others fear, 
 To Britain dear ; 
 
 Whate'er promotes her daring claim," etc. 
 
 The following lines of Burns have been the subject 
 
 * Sandbed. 
 
2SO BURNS AND YOUNG. 
 
 of much comment, especially by clerical critics and 
 censors of the poet in Scotland : — 
 
 " Thou hast formM me 
 With passions wild and strong, 
 And listening to their witching voice 
 Has often led me wrong." — A Prayer. 
 
 " I saw thy pulse's maddening play 
 Wild send thee Pleasure's devious way, 
 Misled by Fancy's meteor ray 
 
 By passion driven ; 
 But yet the light that led astray 
 Was light from Heaven." 
 
 Cot/a in the Vision, Duan II. 
 
 It may interest some of these critics to know that 
 Burns had clerical authority for his daring apology ; 
 in the seventh book of his " Night Thoughts " the 
 Rev. Dr Young holds forth in the following strain : — 
 
 ' ' What though our passions are run mad, and stoop 
 With low, terrestrial appetite to graze 
 On trash, on toys, dethroned from high desire ? 
 Yet still, through their disgrace, no feeble ray 
 Of greatness shines, and tells us whence they fell." 
 
 A few phrases common to both Burns and Young 
 may now be noted. "By passion driven," already 
 quoted in Burns's "Prayer," occurs in Young's " Eighth 
 Night" of "The Complaint;" "inwoven in our 
 frame," in the " Seventh Night," appears in " Man 
 was made to Mourn ; " " pacing the round of life " 
 will be found in the "Third Night" and in "The 
 Cottar's Saturday Night;" the expression "honest 
 poverty," popularised by Burns, occurs in Young's 
 " Eighth Night." Burns has— 
 
 "Stringing blethers up in rhyme 
 For fools to sing ; " 
 
BURNS AND YOUNG. 251 
 
 Young in his " Second Night " has— 
 
 " Thoughts disentangle passing o'er the lip, 
 Clean runs the thread ; if not, 'tis thrown away, 
 Or kept to tie up nonsense for a song." 
 
 Burns has — 
 
 " ' God save the King ' 's a cuckoo sang 
 That's unco easy said aye : " 
 
 Young has — 
 
 ' ' The cuckoo seasons sing 
 The same dull note." — Book Third. 
 
 And in the same "Third Book" Young has the 
 lines : — 
 
 ' ' Death is the crown of life ; 
 Were death denied poor man would live in vain. " 
 
 They suggest " The Lazy Mist " of Burns : — 
 
 • ' Life is not worth having with all it can give ; 
 For something beyond it poor man sure must live." 
 
 We have probably a recollection of Young's line in 
 "Night the Fifth" — " Death loves a shining mark, a 
 signal blow " — in Burns's " Song of Death " : — 
 
 " Thou strik'st the young hero — a glorious mark ! 
 He falls in the blaze of his fame." 
 
 For such single words as " tenebrific " (or " tene- 
 brious"), "terrae-filial," "conglobe," etc., Burns's best 
 excuse is that they were employed, if not coined, by 
 Young. The learned Doctor's coinage was commonly 
 pedantic; a few of them may be presented for 
 curiosity's sake — they are taken at random : " Ichor 
 of Bacchus" (this is wine), "antemundane father," 
 " extramundane head," "irrefragable smile," "con- 
 
252 BURNS AND YOUNG. 
 
 certion of design," "a brow solute," " grand-climac- 
 terical absurdities," etc. Burns picked up a few, but 
 after all he was remarkably modest with such a wealth 
 of novelties before him. It is very probable that 
 Burns got his classical nomenclature — his Cynthias 
 and Castalias — rather from Young's and Shenstone's 
 verse than from the Rector of Ayr Academy. Brief as 
 this paper is, it is sufficient to show that Burns knew 
 his Young. 
 
BURNS AND SHEI^STONE. 
 
 We have it on the authority of Wordsworth that 
 " poets in their youth begin in gladness, but thereof 
 comes in the end despondency or madness." When 
 Wordsworth thus formulated the result of his reflec- 
 tions on the poetic life, Burns was one of the poets 
 of whom he had been particularly thinking. But 
 while it is true that something very like despondency 
 and madness beclouded the life of Burns at its close, 
 it is unhappily not quite so clear that his career 
 as a poet commenced in gladness. No doubt he 
 rejoiced with a keen delight in the exercise of his 
 rare poetical faculty; he has himself sung of "the 
 rapture of the poet" at the moment when "fancy 
 lightens in his e'e;" but the delight was hardly 
 at the first, as an examination of his earlier efforts 
 in the craft of verse-making sufficiently reveals. In 
 these we find a significant proportion of melancholy 
 moods, for which the misery and monotony of his 
 circumstances are usually made to account. Of the 
 first twenty-five of his recorded pieces, the larger 
 half are full of a genuine sadness which sorts ill 
 with one's conceptions of a youth-time of gladness 
 and hope. They are elegies on the inequalities of 
 fortune, the frailty of life, and the sinfulness of 
 human nature. His twenty-third year seems to have 
 
 253 
 
254 BURNS AND SHENSTONE. 
 
 been a period of exceptional gloom. The poetical 
 fruit of that year, some six or eight pieces in all, 
 has a strong tang of Calvinism. Even of the poems 
 of his apprenticeship that are not fairly to be 
 described as gloomy, not a few have the ring of a 
 bravely-assumed but hollow mirth. So that, taking 
 his earlier poems altogether, one is not far wrong 
 in saying that Burns's poetical career, which ended 
 in gloom, began also in a gloom which did not 
 readily give way. To most people an adequate 
 explanation of this gloom is to be found in the 
 poet's circumstances. Burns himself had a some- 
 what different explanation. True, he characterised 
 the condition of his early life, in a well-known 
 retrospective letter, as "the cheerless gloom of the 
 hermit with the unceasing moil of a galley slave;" 
 but he knew that such a life did not determine his 
 brother Gilbert, for example, to the melancholy views 
 which he himself entertained. He believed, and he 
 seems to have cherished the belief, that he was the 
 victim of a constitutional melancholy ; and he appears 
 to have found at last some consolation in knowing 
 that it was common to the poetic temperament, if 
 indeed it was not an essential part of it. 
 
 His natural predisposition to melancholy, which 
 the "angusts res domi" must have at least tended 
 to foster, had an important influence upon the read- 
 ing and thought of young Burns from the very first. 
 Here it is necessary to discriminate between the kind 
 of reading to which he was directed by the advice 
 and example of his father and that to which, when 
 the years of his pupilage was over, he turned of his 
 
BURNS AND SHENSTONE. 255 
 
 own freewill and choice. His father's bent was to 
 divinity, moral philosophy, and the exact sciences, 
 and these were subjects of evening study more or 
 less systematic in the farmhouse of Mount Oliphant, 
 as well as of frequent discussion out of doors at 
 intervals of leisure in the work of the field. The 
 text-books, so to say, for those studies were Stack- 
 house's History of the Bible, Taylor's Scripture 
 Doctrine of Original Sin, and Euclid's Elements. 
 They were read and pondered by the future poet 
 chiefly because they were recommended by his father. 
 But when he was free to follow the bent of his own 
 mind and to choose his own reading — a freedom 
 which he entered upon somewhere about his sixteenth 
 year — he turned instinctively to poetry, and par- 
 ticularly to that kind of it which expresses religious 
 or philosophical reflections in elegiac strains. William 
 Shenstone was an early favourite; Blair, Gray, and 
 Young were also soon discovered ; and they remained, 
 it may almost be said, lifelong friends. It is scarcely 
 inaccurate to describe these authors as writers of 
 elegy; two of them employed the recognised elegiac 
 measure; and though Blair and Young expressed 
 their mournful reflections in blank verse, they may 
 be regarded as essentially elegiac poets. They were, 
 at or near the outset of his poetical career, Burns's 
 favourite authors. There is evidence, both plain and 
 implied, that he studied them deeply and sympatheti- 
 cally. They inspired no inconsiderable amount of 
 his thought; and, while they were not seldom 
 suggestive of new trains of thought and feeling, 
 they were occasionally contributory of poetical phrases 
 
256 BURNS AND SHENSTONE. 
 
 and poetical situations to the verse of Burns. It is 
 the purpose of the present paper to notice Bums' 
 more important references to Shenstone, and to point 
 out the nature and extent of his indebtedness to 
 that once famous and now, perhaps, too neglected 
 English poet. 
 
 It was in the village of Kirkoswald, whither he had 
 been sent in his seventeenth year to learn land 
 surveying, that Burns first made acquaintance with 
 Shenstone's poems. "They were," he announced, 
 "an important addition to his reading." Eight years 
 afterwards Shenstone was still first on the list of his 
 favourite authors. Writing from Lochlee, in January 
 1783, to his schoolmaster, Mr John Murdoch, then 
 settled in London, he declares : " My favourite 
 authors are of the sentimental kind, such as Shen- 
 stone, particularly his Elegies." Three years later 
 his opinion of the merits of "Shenstone was still 
 high — so high that in his interesting preface to the 
 Kilmarnock edition of his poems he makes direct 
 mention of him as " that celebrated poet whose divine 
 Elegies do honour to our language, our nation, and 
 our species." Even after his arrival in Edinburgh, 
 at a time when he was patronised by " The Lounger," 
 and lionised by the first literary society of his country, 
 he wrote with a strange modesty that he was not 
 vain enough to hope for distinguished poetic fame in 
 a language "where Shenstone and Gray had drawn 
 the tear." And later on, in his charming letters 
 to Peggy Chalmers and Mrs Dunlop, we come across 
 now a quotation from Shenstone's prose, and now an 
 admiring reference to his poetical genius. 
 
BURNS AND SHENSTONE. 257 
 
 Burns's opinion of Shenstone was his own, and his 
 admiration, so frequently and so warmly expressed, 
 was undoubtedly genuine. At the same time, he was 
 by no means ignorant of the high place which con- 
 temporary criticism assigned to Shenstone, nor of the 
 particular qualities for which that poet was praised. 
 Beattie was well known to Burns, and Beattie, in his 
 attack upon Churchill in 1765, had represented "all 
 the Loves and gentler Graces " as mourning over 
 Shenstone's " recent urn." It would be easy to show 
 that Burns's individual opinion of Shenstone was 
 strengthened by his knowledge of Beattie's criticism, 
 and that the language of Beattie was lingering in his 
 memory when, as in the fine passage in " The Vision," 
 he described the art of Shenstone in the grace of its 
 pathetic touch as utterly beyond the range of his own 
 
 genius : — 
 
 " Thou canst not learn, nor can I show 
 To paint with Thomson's landscape glow, 
 Or wake the bosom-melting throe 
 
 With Shenstone's art, 
 Or pour with Gray the moving flow 
 Warm on the heart." 
 
 It is worth while comparing with this the following 
 
 lines of Beattie — upon which, it may be noticed in 
 
 passing, a powerful passage* in Coleridge's " Monody 
 
 on the Death of Chatterton " is modelled : — 
 
 "Is this the land where Gray's unlabour'd art 
 Soothes, melts, alarms, and ravishes the heart?" 
 
 ' Is this the land of song-ennobled line ? 
 Is this the land where genius ne'er in vain 
 
 Poured forth his lofty strain ? 
 Ah me ! yet Spenser, gentlest bard divine, 
 Beneath chill Disappointment's shade, ' etc. 
 R 
 
258 BURNS AND SHENSTONE. 
 
 While the lone wanderer's sweet complainings flow 
 In simple majesty of manly woe. 
 
 Is this the land, o'er Shenstone's recent urn 
 
 Where all the Loves and gentler Graces mourn ? " etc. 
 
 The closeness of Burns's study of Shenstone, and the 
 nature and extent of his obligations to him, will be 
 best shown by a citation or comparison of parallel 
 passages taken from both authors. Take first the 
 poetical situation and scenery represented in " Man 
 was Made to Mourn." It is an evening of chill 
 November, and the poet wanders forth along the 
 banks of Ayr. He meets an old man with hoary hair, 
 who thus addresses him : — 
 
 " Young stranger, whither wandrest thou ? 
 Does thirst of wealth thy step constrain?" etc. 
 
 In the background of this scene are "moors extend- 
 ing wide." Turn, now, to the seventh of Shenstone's 
 series of Elegies. It is a stormy evening of autumn, 
 and the poet strays by Orwell's winding banks. He 
 meets a venerable figure with white locks, who thus 
 accosts him :■ — 
 
 " Stranger, amidst this pealing rain, 
 Benighted, lonesome, whither wouldst thou stray ? 
 Does wealth or power thy weary step constrain ? " etc. 
 
 In the background of this scene are "distant heaths." 
 Here, it will be observed, the situation is very similar, 
 while the language quoted is almost identical. 
 
 In another passage of " Man was Made to Mourn " 
 occur the lines — 
 
 " Look not alone on youthful prime 
 Or manhood's active might." 
 
BURNS AND SHENSTONE. 259 
 
 The latter has been obviously adopted, consciously 
 or more probably unconsciously, from Shenstone's 
 Eleventh Elegy — 
 
 "Not all the force of manhood's active might," etc. 
 
 A recollection of this same Eleventh Elegy, mingUng 
 in the poet's memory with echoes of Gray's Ode on 
 Eton, will be found in the last stanza of Burns's Ode 
 on Despondency. " O enviable early days ! " says 
 Burns, recalling the period of childhood : — 
 
 " Ye tiny elves, that guiltless sport 
 Like linnets in the bush, 
 Ye little knowr the ills ye court 
 'V\Tien manhood is your wish." 
 
 The lines were penned in 1786; and there is a 
 peculiar pathos in this young man of twenty-seven 
 warning the young from his own experience of the 
 tears and fears of dim-declining age. Shenstone, how- 
 ever, had already written : — 
 
 ' ' O youth ! enchanting stage, profusely blest ! 
 Then glows the breast, as opening roses fair, 
 
 More free, more vivid than the linnet's wing," etc. 
 
 It is unnecessary to give the full quotation, but the 
 moralising is in the same strain precisely. 
 
 Again, most readers of Burns are familiar with the 
 rather strange expression " dear idea," which occurs 
 not less than thrice in various parts of his poetry — in 
 the Epistle to Davie, " Her dear idea brings relief and 
 solace to my breast " ; in his early lyrical fragment on 
 Jean, " Her dear idea round my heart should tenderly 
 entwine"; and in "Sappho Rediviva," "Your dear 
 idea reigns." The expression occurs in Shenstone, 
 
260 BUHNS AND SHENSTONE. 
 
 but it would be hazardous to say that it was absolutely 
 original and his own creation. In his Ninth Elegy 
 one may read — " Restore thy dear idea to my breast." 
 Again, the opening lines of Burns's "Sonnet on 
 hearing a thrush sing in January" seem to have 
 completely caught the echo of a couplet in the Sixth 
 Elegy of Shenstone. The sonnet begins — 
 
 ' ' Sing on, sweet thrush, upon the leafless bough, 
 Sing on, sweet bird, I listen to thy strain." 
 
 The couplet of the elegy expresses the same sense in 
 similar words — 
 
 " Sing on, my bird, the liquid notes prolong : 
 Sing on, my bird, 'tis Damon hears the song." 
 
 If we turn to "The Cottar's Sunday Night," and 
 read it alongside of " The Schoolmistress," we shall 
 find that in respect of measure, theme, and style of 
 both treatment and language, it was modelled scarcely 
 less after the manner of Shenstone than according to 
 the pattern of Fergusson's " Farmer's Ingle." Unlike 
 the latter, but like " The Schoolmistress," it maintains 
 the perfect form of the Spenserian stanza. It would 
 take up too much space to indulge in quotations here, 
 but the student of Burns may profitably compare the 
 stanza of "The Cottar" which commences "They 
 chant their artless notes in simple guise," and the two 
 succeeding stanzas, with stanzas xii. and xiv. of "The 
 Schoolmistress " — not for sentiment, but for style. 
 He will scarcely fail to perceive a suggestive likeness. 
 On the one hand, there is an enumeration of psalm 
 tunes ; on the other, an enumeration of garden herbs. 
 The enumeration in both cases proceeds on the same 
 
BURNS AND SHENSTON'E. 26 1 
 
 lines. There is, further, in the dame's singing of 
 Shenstone, a very possible suggestion of the cottar's 
 reading of Burns. The passage 
 
 " Sweet melody ! to hear her then repeat 
 
 How Israel's sons beneath a foreign king," etc. 
 
 may have inspired 
 
 " The priest-like father reads the sacred page, 
 How Abram was the firiend of God on high," etc. 
 
 And none will deny that the advice of the dame to 
 her infant charge might have formed part of the 
 "admonition due" of the cottar-father to the 
 " younkers " of his family : — 
 
 ' ' And warned them not the fretful to deride, 
 But love each other dear, whatever them betide. " 
 
 That such advice was given is indeed implied, for 
 
 " With joy unfeigned brothers and sisters meet, 
 And each for other's welfare kindly spiers." 
 
 The mysterious elegy, "the work of some hapless 
 son of the Muses," which Burns presented in his own 
 manuscript to Mrs Dunlop, should perhaps be noticed 
 here, if only for his own estimate of it, as being in 
 point of sentiment " no discredit even to that elegant 
 poet," though clothed in a language admittedly 
 inferior to Shenstone's. If it be Burns's own work, 
 which is on the whole very doubtful, one might be 
 excused for regarding it as descriptive of his sorrow 
 and solitude of soul at the grave of Highland Mary. 
 The scene of the following verses may be imagined 
 to be the West Churchyard at Greenock, where Mary 
 
262 BURNS AND SHENSTONE. 
 
 Campbell is believed to lie buried, and the time a 
 sorrowful hour of unavailing regret immediately 
 preceding his projected emigration to the West 
 Indies : — 
 
 " At the last limits of our isle, 
 
 Washed by the western wave. 
 Touched by thy fate, a thoughtful bard 
 
 Sits lonely by thy grave ; 
 Pensive he eyes before him spread 
 
 The deep, outstretching vast : 
 His mourning notes are borne away 
 
 Upon the rapid blast." 
 
BURNS AND BLAIR; 
 
 WITH A NOTE ON BEATTIE. 
 
 The name of Robert Blair is associated in English 
 literary history with a gloomy and powerful poem 
 "The Grave," which had an immense popularity, 
 especially in Scotland, all through the latter half of 
 last century. It was hardly eclipsed even by Young's 
 "Night Thoughts" — if one may gpeak of gloom 
 eclipsing gloom. Southey referred to it as the most 
 meritorious of all poems written in imitation of the 
 "Night Thoughts"; but Southey does injustice to 
 the genius of Blair, for " The Grave " was composed 
 before the publication of Young's gloomy masterpiece, 
 though it was not printed till 1743. It was written 
 before its author's appointment as minister to the 
 parish of Athelstaneford, in Haddingtonshire, and 
 when Blair was still a young man between twenty 
 and thirty. A well-known line of Campbell's — " Like 
 angels' visits, few and far between" — it may not be 
 generally known, was lifted from Blair, who refers to 
 good impulses returning in an evil life "in visits like 
 those of angels, short and far between." But a greater 
 than Campbell was indebted, and indebted to a 
 greater extent, for both turn of phrase and general 
 tenor of reflection, to the author of " The Grave.'' 
 
 263 
 
264 BURNS AND BLAIR. 
 
 Burns was a close and earnest student of this power- 
 fully suggestive poem. Both his correspondence and 
 his poems bear the clearest evidence, direct and 
 indirect. The passage — 
 
 " Tell us, ye dead ! will none of you in pity, 
 To those you left behind disclose the secret ? 
 Oh, that some courteous ghost would blab it out, 
 What 'tis you are, and we must shortly be ? " 
 
 must have been often on his lips, and was often 
 transcribed by his pen. As well known to him, and 
 as often quoted, was another passage from "The 
 Grave" of some thirty lines commencing — 
 
 ' ' Friendship ! mysterious cement of the soul ! 
 Sweetness of life, and solder of society ! ■ 
 I owe thee nmch ; thou hast deserved of me 
 Far, far beyond what I can ever pay." 
 
 But the greatest honour that can be attributed to 
 the passage lies in the undoubted fact that, along 
 with a scarcely remembered lyric of Thomson's, it 
 suggested much of the imagery and sentiment of 
 Burns's unutterably rich and tender hymns on Highland 
 Mary. Blair represents himself and his "friend" 
 as "wandering heedless on" in the ample security of 
 a thick wood ; the lovers rest on a flowery bank 
 beside a stream that murmurs sweetly through the 
 underwood ; the thrush in their hearing renews and 
 "mends his song of love;" the fragrance of wild 
 rose and eglantine exhales around them — 
 
 " O, then, the longest summer's day 
 Seemed too, too much in haste ; still the full heart 
 Had not imparted half. " 
 
 "To Mary in Heaven," like the companion verses 
 
BURNS AND BLAIR. 265 
 
 on " Highland Mary," contains the same imagery of 
 woodland and water, birds and flowers, the same 
 situation of lovers fain, the same sentiments of affec- . 
 tion, the same sad reflections afterwards to be noted. 
 The lovers meet by the winding Ayr that gurgled and 
 kissed its pebbly shore, half hidden in an underwood 
 of birch and blooming thorn ; 
 
 "The flowers sprang wanton to be press'd, 
 The birds sang love on every spray : 
 Till too, too soon the glowing west 
 Proclaim'd the speed of winged day." 
 
 To both poets their memories are for ever ?ad and 
 for ever sacred by reason of the death of the loved 
 one. Blair's reflections are thus expressed — 
 
 "Dull Grave ! thou spoil'st the dance of youthful blood, 
 Strik'.st out the dimple from the cheek of mirth, 
 And every feature from the face," 
 
 The beloved dead is "dumb as the green covering 
 turf." Far more tenderly uttered is the sorrow of 
 
 Burns — ■ 
 
 "O pale, pale now those rosy lips 
 
 I aft hae kiss'd sae fondly, 
 And closed for aye the sparkling glance 
 
 That dwelt on me sae kindly. . . . 
 Now green's the sod's and cauld the clay 
 
 That wraps my Highland Mary." ■ 
 
 At least one other bit from this fruitful passage in 
 "The Grave" of Blair reappears in the familiar 
 poetry of Burns. In the plaintive flow of "Banks 
 and Braes o' Boonie Doon" the maiden all forlorn 
 sings sadly — 
 
 " Thou minds me o' departed joys, 
 Departed never to return." 
 
266 BVUNS AND BLAIR. 
 
 The expression may of course be a mere coincid- 
 ence, but is more probably a recollection of the words 
 of Blair— 
 
 "Of joys departed 
 Not to return, how painful the remembrance ! " 
 
 Other traces of Burns's study of Blair are in all likeli- 
 hood discoverable in the following parallel passages : — 
 
 ' ' He whistled up Lord Lennox' march 
 To keep his courage cheery. " — Hallowe'en. 
 
 This is said of " fechtin' Jamie Fleck " when he 
 boldly went forth into the darkness to sow his hemp- 
 seed. Blair had already pictured the schoolboy as he 
 passed " the lone churchyard " — 
 
 " Whistling aloud to bear his courage up." 
 
 Again, in "The Petition of Bruar Water," a noble 
 poem framed on the lines of Ramsay's " Salutation of 
 Edinburgh to the Marquis of Carnarvon," Burns 
 describes the harvest moon as making a moving 
 check-work with the trembling twigs and leaves of 
 "lofty firs, and ashes cool," and "fragrant birks in 
 woodbines drest " : he has a visionary glimpse of 
 
 ' ' the reaper's nightly beam 
 Mild-chequering thro' the trees." 
 
 The same peculiar expression occurs in Blair, of — 
 
 " Moonshine chequering thro' the trees." 
 
 Everybody remembers the line, which prepares us for 
 the revelry of Tam o' Shanter and Soutar Johnnie ; 
 it is — 
 
 " When drouthie neibors neibors meet." 
 Blair hints at a similar orgy, if the word may be 
 
BURNS AND BLAIR. 267 
 
 allowed, with a grave-digger for Thaliarch — only his 
 expression is less euphemistic ; it is — 
 
 ' ' When drunkards meet. " 
 
 It was to a different Blair — " damnation " Blair, as he 
 has been irreverently called — that Burns was indebted 
 for a notably felicitous alteration of his text — 
 
 " Moodie speeds the holy door 
 Wi' tidings of salvation. "—Holy Fair. 
 
 In modern editions of the minor poets the verses, 
 of Beattie are usually bound up with those of Blair. 
 Beattie figured so prominently in both prose and 
 rhyme in the heyday of his reputation as rather to 
 astonish us now. " The Minstrel " first appeared in 
 1771, and from that year till about 1775 its singularly 
 fortunate author was one of the lions of his time, 
 patronised on all hands, and encouraged to roar, by 
 Royalty, the Church, and the literary profession. 
 It was impossible that Burns should be ignorant of 
 him, or fail to peruse him. But Beattie seems to 
 have had little influence upon either the thought or 
 the language of Burns. He was no doubt, though in 
 a small degree, indebted to him — as already shown — 
 for the criticism of Shenstone and Gray which occurs 
 in " The Vision " :— 
 
 "Thou canst not learn nor can I show . . . 
 To wake the bosom-melting throe 
 
 With Shenstone's ar t, 
 Or pour with Gray the moving flow 
 Warm on the heart." 
 
 Beattie's opinion of those poets will be found in a 
 
268 BURNS AND BLAIR. 
 
 somewhat bitter and uncharitable poem " on the 
 report of a monument to be erected in Westminster 
 Abbey in memory of a late author," which he had 
 the good taste to reject from later editions of his 
 poems. The author referred to was Churchill, 
 satirised as Bufo. In the course of the satire he 
 makes mention of "Gray's unlaboured art, soothing, 
 melting and ravishing the heart ; " of the Elegy written 
 in a Country Chnrchyard, " flowing in simple majesty 
 of manly woe ; " and of the amiability and grace of 
 Shenstone's character as a poet. If there is no trace 
 of Beattie's influence in the lines quoted from " The 
 Vision," there is no trace of it anywhere else in the 
 work of Burns. There are, however, several references 
 which go to show Burns's admiring acquaintanceship 
 with his writings and his reputation. And, indeed, with- 
 out their evidence, it is past doubt that Burns must 
 have had no mean regard for one who could turn in 
 his own favourite measure so graceful a stanza as — 
 
 "Oh, bonnie are the greensward howes, 
 Where thro' the birks the burnie rows, 
 And the bee bums, and the ox lows, 
 
 And saft winds rustle, 
 And shepherd lads on sunny knowes 
 
 Blaw the blith whistle." 
 
 The stanza is from a rhyming epistle to Ross of 
 Lochee, the author of "The Fortunate Shepherdess" 
 — a pastoral drama which has done for Scotland north 
 of the Tay what Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd" has 
 done for the Lowlands ; and it is part of an effort, in 
 the vernacular (of Aberdeen), which approves the 
 
BURNS AND BLAtR. 269 
 
 capability of Beattie to produce such a poem as that 
 " On Pastoral Poetry " which one diffidently attributes 
 to Burns. 
 
 Probably the most convincing proof of Burns's 
 admiration for Beattie is expressed in his letter, of 
 date January 1787, to "Zeluco" Moore — "In a 
 language where Thomson and Beattie have painted 
 the landscape ... I am not vain enough to hope 
 for distinguished poetic fame." Thomson's ability 
 to paint the landscape will be universally allowed, 
 but Beattie's will be questioned — because it is not so 
 generally known. Which of his descriptions of natural 
 scenery may have been in the mind of Burns when he 
 elevated him to the level of Thomson, it is of course 
 impossible to say definitely, but an examination of 
 " The Minstrel " will reveal several impressive scenes 
 informed with the graceful spirit which pervades the 
 reposeful passages of Campbell's "Wyoming," and 
 which may well have enraptured the responsive heart 
 of Burns. The student who is curious in such 
 matters will find favourable specimens of " Beattie's 
 wark " in stanzas xxxviii. and xxxix. of the First Book, 
 and stanza viii. of the Second Book of " The Minstrel." 
 The last-mentioned stanza is distinctly echoed in the 
 well-known " flamingo " stanza of " Gertrude of 
 Wyoming." A better specimen of Beattie's de- 
 scriptive art occurs in the opening passage of 
 his once widely known, ijow clean forgotten, 
 "Hermit." But perhaps he attains his highest 
 pitch as a descriptive poet in an obscure poem, 
 written in his twenty-fourth year; here we have 
 
270 BURNS AND BLAIR. 
 
 such picturesque touches, such suggestive melodies 
 as — 
 
 " What time the wan moon's yellow horn 
 Gleams on the western deep ; " 
 and — 
 
 " Be mine the hollow cliff, whose pine 
 Waves o'er the gloomy stream — 
 Whence the scared owl on pinions gray 
 
 Breaks from the rustling boughs. 
 And down the lone vale sails away 
 To more profound repose. " 
 
 In January 1787 Burns sent, by way of New Year's 
 gift, a copy of the Poems of Beattie to a certain Miss 
 Logan, residing with her brother and mother at Park 
 Villa, near Ayr. The brother, well known to us as 
 " thairm-inspiring Willie," from his accomplishments 
 as a virtuoso on the violin, was a retired military 
 officer holding the rank of major ; and the sister was 
 " Sentimental Sister Susie " of the poet's " Epistle to 
 Major Logan." The copy of Beattie was accompanied 
 with the lines : — 
 
 " I send you more than India boasts 
 In Edwin's simple tale," 
 
 along with the sentiment — " and may, dear maid, each 
 lover prove an Edwin still to you 1 " 
 
 Perhaps the only other reference to Beattie in the 
 works of Burns are those of the delightfully frank 
 " First Epistle to Lapraik " — 
 
 "Thought I, can this be Pope, or Steele, 
 Or Seattle's wark ? " 
 
 and of "The Ordination " :— 
 
 " Common-sense is gaun, she says, 
 To mak to Jamie Beattie 
 
 Her plaint this day." 
 
BURNS AND BLAIR. 27 1 
 
 The appositeness of the latter allusion is in the fact 
 that Beattie's " Essay on Truth " — a blast impotently 
 intended to sweep David Hume's philosophy behind 
 the horizon — revealed him as one of the " Moderate " 
 party in the clerical dissensions of the time. Sir 
 Joshua had painted Beattie as a champion aiding an 
 angel in strife with Scepticism, Folly, and Prejudice. 
 His " Essay on Truth " brought him the compliment 
 from Reynolds. But nowadays one only remembers 
 the "Essay" because it explains the picture and 
 illustrates the reference in Burns. 
 
DUNBAR IN BURNS. 
 
 Literary Scots, it has been daringly said, is of no 
 higher antiquity than " The Gentle Shepherd " of 
 Allan Ramsay. The statement may safely be tra- 
 versed. It is, indeed, no less absurd than to say that 
 there is no Scottish literature of earlier date than the 
 beginning of last century. For the fact is patent that 
 William Dunbar's best poetry is expressed in a vigorous 
 vernacular, and one of the most obvious features in 
 the history of the Scottish language is the persistency 
 with which for centuries that tongue has maintained 
 its distinctive peculiarities of word and idiom. Quite 
 three centuries lie between Burns and Dunbar, yet 
 the earlier poet is not one whit less vernacular than 
 the later, and the vernacular they severally employ is 
 substantially one and the same. Every one knows 
 that the language of Burns was the current dialect of 
 the peasant Lowlanderofhis day, put to poetical uses, 
 but it is not so generally recognised that it was also 
 the almost perfect tradition of more than three 
 centuries. Scottish words and phrases of remarkable 
 expressiveness, which we now for the most part refer 
 to Burns as if he were their grand first parent, were 
 already current and mature both in the country and 
 at the Court of James the Third, and are to be picked 
 by scores from the pages of Dunbar. Open the book 
 at random, and the sample comes readily — " attour," 
 272 
 
DUNBAR IN BURNS. 273 
 
 " wale," " haggis," " swats," " hurcheon," " hirpling," 
 " branking," " aver " {for cart-horse), " swanky," 
 " oxter," "hallan," "get" (for offspring), "roose" (for 
 extol), "smoor," "widdie," "eldritch," "coft," 
 " wauk," " swith," etc. Yet these words, and others 
 like them, are mostly credited to the account of Burns. 
 Scottish phrases and turns of expression common to 
 both poets, and even more significant of the integrity 
 of the language than single words, are no less plenti- 
 ful. " Air and late," " scaith and scorn," " wae worth," 
 " ill-willie," or " guid-willie," " hale an' fere," " I rede 
 thee," "tak guid tent," "at kirk an' market," "to 
 think lang" {for to weary), " drive ower " {for spend 
 — said of time) ; and such terms as " true as ony 
 steel," " shine like ony saip," etc. — these and other 
 idioms are well known as occurring in the verse of 
 Burns ; but they may also be found in the verse of 
 Dunbar, and probably in no single instance originated 
 with him. 
 
 Such a comparison of language as is here rather 
 suggested than instituted is not without interest, and 
 might be made of value j of more popular interest, 
 however, is the comparison of the genius of Burns 
 with that of Dunbar in regard to their choice of sub- 
 ject. This it is proposed here briefly to point, not in 
 the vague and general way, which would prove that 
 hundreds of poets are very like each other because 
 they all write upon the beauty of nature, and the 
 rapture or wretchedness of love, and similar simple 
 distractions j but by noting in Dunbar certain distinct 
 and definite poems which, directly or indirectly remind 
 the critical reader of achievements by Burns on the 
 same or very kindred themes. The comparison is not 
 
274 DUNBAR IN BURNS. 
 
 meant to be exhaustive, yet it will probably surprise 
 the reader to learn, if he does not already know, that 
 in Dunbar may be found the anticipation — I do not 
 say the suggestion — of such well-known poems or 
 themes by Burns as the following : — " Epistle to a 
 Young Friend," "Death and Dr Hornbook," "The 
 Deil cam' Fiddling thro' the Toun," " Mary Morrison," 
 " Macpherson's Farewell," " Auld Farmer's Salutation 
 to his Auld Mare," "Address to Edinburgh," " Guid 
 Morning to Your Majesty," " Green Grow the Rashes, 
 O," "The Vision"— ("Had I to Guid Advice but 
 Harkit,") "A Winter Night," and certain pieces 
 exemplifying that peculiar poetical somersault and 
 recovery to which Burns has given the designation of 
 per contra. 
 
 The anticipation of Burns's gnomic poem containing 
 his advice to Andrew may be found in Dunbar's verses 
 commencing " To dwell in Court, my friend." Each 
 poet counsels his friend on the subjects of friendship, 
 fortune, religion, etc. Only on the topic of love is the 
 el<Rr poet silent. " Aye free, aff-hand," says Burns — 
 " Aye free, aff-hand, your story tell 
 
 When wi' a bosom crony, 
 But still keep something to yoursel' 
 
 Ye scarcely tell to ony " ; 
 
 and Dunbar offers the same cautious advice : — 
 
 " Beware whom to thy counsel thou disco'er, 
 
 For truth dwells not aye for that truth appears ; 
 Flit not thy honour into aventure, 
 
 A friend may be thy foe as fortune steers." 
 
 Burns's advice on the subject of wealth is to wait 
 assiduously upon Fortune — 
 
 " And gather gear by every wile 
 That's justified by honour." 
 
DUNBAR IN BURNS. 275 
 
 Dunbar's view of fickle fortune being the same, he 
 gives the same advice — 
 
 " With all thy heart treat business and cure." 
 " Yet," says Burns— 
 
 "They wha fa' in fortune's strife 
 
 Their fate we sliouldna censure." 
 
 And Dunbar counsels his friend to " be nowise despite- 
 ful to the puir." Burns reflects that "a man may 
 have an honest heart tho' poortith hourly stare him " ; 
 while Dunbar reminds his young friend to be patient 
 though he possess no lairdship, " for hie virtue may 
 stand in low estate." On religion both poets give the 
 same advice — to avoid profane company and reverence 
 the Creator. Burns' language is well known — 
 " Ne'er with wits profane to range. 
 Be complaisance extended. " 
 And— 
 
 " A correspondence fixed with Heaven 
 Is sure a noble anchor." 
 
 Dunbar's language carries the same counsel — 
 
 " Hold God thy friend, ever stable by Him stand, 
 He'll thee comfort in all misadventure." 
 
 And— 
 
 " In company choose honourable feres. 
 
 But from vile folk withdraw thee far aside ; 
 The Psalmist says cum sancto sanctus eris. 
 
 And he rules weel wha weel himself can guide." 
 
 Burns's Dr Hornbook is notorious. But the keen 
 eye of Dunbar also caught the character, and 
 subjected it to the same style ofjlihandling. It is a 
 satire with touches of grim humour on the arch- 
 quack John Damian alias French John, alias John- 
 the-Leech, etc. Beginning with a murder in Italy, 
 this wholesale homicide qualified in France, and 
 finally set up and secured a general practice in 
 
276 DUNBAR IN BURNS. 
 
 Scotland. He was at once apothecary, physician, 
 and surgeon. But he revelled in blood. His 
 " garde-vyance " was crammed with irons and other 
 "instruments for slaughter." "Where he let blude, 
 it was nae lauchter." " He left neither sick nor sair 
 unslain " in France ; and in Scotland 
 
 " His practiks never were put to preif 
 But sudden death, or great mischief ! " 
 
 Dunbar's Deil, as he passed through the market, 
 was not simply in search of an exciseman ; nor did he 
 just confine his operations to taverners, maltmen, and 
 brewsters, and those in any way connected with "the 
 trade." Mahoun — so Dunbar calls him — took a 
 wider sweep in the good old times. The clergy had 
 the honour of first catching his eye ; but he made 
 little if any distinction of crafts or professions. He 
 called his followers from all classes — merchants, 
 goldsmiths, tailors, and souters, baxters, blacksmiths, 
 fleshers, and fish-wives, the last-mentioned all in a 
 body. 
 
 " A tailor said — ' In a' this toun 
 Be there a better weel-made goun, 
 I give me to the Fiend all free ! ' 
 ' Gramercy, tailor ! ' said Mahoun, 
 
 ' Renounce thy God, an' come to me ! " 
 
 The measure of " Mary Morrison " was known to 
 Dunbar. The prevailing tone and the characteristic 
 sentiment of Burns's poem will be found in Dunbar's 
 Lines to a Lady, beginning " My heart's treasure, and 
 sweet assured foe." Burns entreats for pity at least, 
 and finds comfort in the reflection that 
 
 "A thocht ungentle canna be 
 
 The thocht o' Mary Morrison." 
 
DUNBAR IN BURNS. 277 
 
 Dunbar, too, entreats for ruth, with the "tears falling 
 from his face," and though less hopeful than Burns, 
 is not hopeless — 
 
 " For how should ony gentle heart endure 
 To see this sicht in ony creature ? " 
 
 Dunbar's Donald Owre, that " fell strong traitor," 
 who "mair falset had than other fowre," was the 
 Macpherson of his day. But Dunbar's " Epitaph for 
 Donald," it must be owned, shows no glimpse of that 
 admiration for the daring and dauntless freebooter 
 which is more than suggested in Burns' " Macpherson's 
 Farewell." The fault, however, was not Dunbar's, for 
 the earlier freebooter, though, like the later, he lived a 
 life of "sturt and strife" (the phrase occurs in 
 Dunbar), and "died by treacherie," had not that 
 redeeming touch of grace which Carlyle notes in 
 Macpherson, and which probably recommended his 
 character to the "strange half-barbarous, half-poetic 
 fellow-feeling of Burns." 
 
 " Sae rantingly, sae wantonly, 
 Sae dauntingly gaed he ; 
 He played a spring, and danced it round, 
 Below the gallows-tree." 
 
 The reference is to the air which bears his name, said 
 to have been composed by Macpherson the night 
 before his execution — proof, as Carlyle remarks, of a 
 fibre of poetry in his savage heart. " On the wings of 
 that poor melody his better soul would soar away 
 above oblivion, pain, and all the ignominy and 
 despair which, like an avalanche, was hurling him to 
 the abyss." 
 
 " The Petition of the Gray Horse " of Dunbar may 
 
2/8 DVNBAR IN BURNS. 
 
 well Stand beside Burns's record of the long and 
 faithful service of the auld mare, grown 
 
 "dowie, stiff, and crazy. 
 And thy auld hide as white's a daisy." 
 
 There is much of the same tender humour in both 
 poems, heightened in the case of Dunbar's by self- 
 identification with the Gray Horse. When the auld 
 mare was a filly, we are told — 
 
 " She set weel doun a shapely shank 
 As e'er tread yird, 
 And could hae flown out-owre a stank 
 Like ony bird." 
 
 The Gray Horse, when a colt, was also "i' the 
 foremost rank " — 
 
 "When I was young and into ply, 
 And would cast gambols to the sky, 
 I had been bocht in realms near-by, 
 Had I consentit to be sauld." 
 
 In the end the happier lot was the auld mare's — 
 
 "Thinkna, my auld trusty servan'. 
 That now perhaps thou's less deservin', 
 An' thy auld days may end in stervin' ; 
 
 For my last fow 
 A heapit stimpart — I'll reserve ane 
 
 Laid by for you." 
 
 The Gray Horse, on the other hand, was left 
 lamenting — 
 
 " I have run lang furth in the field, 
 On pastures that are plain and peel'd ; 
 I micht be now ta'en in for eild. 
 
 My mane is turned into white, 
 And thereof ye have a' the wyte : 
 When ither horse had bran to bite 
 I gat but girse," etc. 
 
 Burns's Address to " Edina, Scotia's Darling Seat," 
 
DUNBAR m BURNS. 279 
 
 is well known. Dunbar's Address to London, the 
 "A per se of towns," is pitched in the same lofty 
 strain of compliment and admiration, but his address 
 to Edinburgh is far from complimentary : 
 
 " May nane pass thro' your principal gates 
 
 For stink of haddocks and of skates, 
 
 For cries of carlines and debates, 
 
 For 'fensive flytings of defame : 
 Think ye not shame, 
 
 Before strangers of all estates, 
 
 That sic dishonour hurt your name?" 
 
 In his address to King George — "Guid Morning 
 to your Majesty ! " — Burns, it will be remembered, 
 reminds the King that he is his humble debtor for 
 "neither pension, post, nor place." Dunbar, too, 
 besides sending Royalty his good wishes for a New 
 Year, makes no less bold a declaration — 
 
 " Though that I, amang the lave. 
 Unworthy be a place to have, 
 Or in their number to be told — 
 As lang in mind my work shall hold 
 As ever ony of them a', 
 Supposin' my rewaird be sma' ! " 
 
 Perhaps the most notable passage in " Green Grow 
 the Rashes " is the last stanza — 
 
 " Auld Nature swears the lovely dears. 
 Her noblest wark she classes, O ; 
 Her 'prentice han' she tried on man, 
 And then she made the lasses, O." 
 
 Precisely the same sentiment is in Dunbar's panegyric 
 poem addressed to Queen Margaret : — 
 
 " Of thy fair figure Nature might rejoice 
 
 That so thee carved with all her curious slight ; 
 She has thee made this very warld's choice. 
 Showing on thee her handicraft and might, 
 To see how feir she could depaint a wight." 
 
28o DUNBAR IN BURNS. 
 
 In the first " Duan " of his " Vision," Burns for the 
 moment regrets that he had surrendered his life to 
 poesy ; he backward mused on wasted time, found he 
 had nothing to show for the past but a few foolish 
 rhymes, and contrasted his present condition — " half- 
 mad, half-fed, half-sarkit" — with what might have 
 been had he hstened to gude advice. Dunbar 
 was subject to similar fits of reminiscence and 
 despondency : — 
 
 " In some part on myself I 'plain 
 When other folk flatter and feign ; 
 Alas ! I can but ballads breif — 
 Sic folly held my bridle reign : 
 
 Excess of thocht does me mischief. " 
 
 Some points of resemblance will be found between 
 Burns's "A Winter Night" and Dunbar's noble 
 " Meditation in Winter " : the situation is the same, 
 and similar melancholy thoughts course through the 
 minds of the sleepless poets. Burns's use of the 
 Per Contra is illustrated in " Tam Samson's Elegy." 
 Dunbar has brilliant examples of it in his poems 
 on James Doig, and on the Souters and Tailors of 
 Edinburgh. j 
 
 Burns, it is safe to say, was unacquainted with the 
 poetry of Dunbar, if we except those specimens of 
 it which are included in Ramsay's "Evergreen." 
 The similarity in several important relations between 
 the two poets is the more remarkable, and well 
 illustrates the consistency and continuity of our literary 
 history. 
 
 THE END.