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IAN ALLANACH (continued)
A variety of feature save
Mont Keen’s bold peak, like a turret on a rampart, the broad wall
stretches till lost in the distance towards the German Ocean. The nearer
outposts of this array of mountains, Craignaban, Craiguise, and the Coil
Hills, are seen to great advantage, while from Craiggowan to
Craigandarroch, with a bird’s-eye view of Abergeldie opposite, the
entire valley of the Dee is spread out as if on canvas, in all its
beautiful variety of field and forest, and the soul of the whole, the
silver river, in many a noble sweep and graceful bend, threading its
mazy way with ceaseless song to its far off home in the deep.
The main features of this scene are unalterable, but the minor details
have undergone much change since the century began. As an instance: this
same picturesquely situated farmstead has taken the place of a
considerable dachan, the twin of another less prominent, but more
populous, that nestled cosily in the “howe-burn” close beside. This
latter, whose sponsor was a huge boulder of granite resting on the
summit of a neighbouring eminence, rejoiced in the name of Greystone.
But notwithstanding the stability and sterling qualities of the patron,
the prot6g£ has vanished entirely from the scene.
These two hamlets formed together a place of considerable note in the
olden time. With the exception of a church and school—the latter not
much in repute in those days—they contained within themselves all that
was deemed necessary for the social and physical comfort of the
inhabitants. Here the weaver, the carpenter, and the miller of the
district had taken up their residence; and as for other trades, such as
that of shoemaker and shopkeeper, they had not yet risen into separate
branches of industry. Every man manufactured his own and dependants’
brogues, and any luxury of foreign importation was not dreamed of.
About the period when Ian Allnnach was fighting the battle of
Fellinghausen for the first time, there was born in this same hamlet of
Greystone a very remarkable man, of whom some account is here proposed
to be given.
George Brown was of humble but respectable parentage. His ancestors,
with small fluctuations of fortune, had been the tenants of an oxgate of
land for an unknown length of time. Indeed, for aught that appears to
the contrary, they might have been the lineal descendants of an
aboriginal family. Most of them had never wandered beyond the bounds of
their native district, knew no wants but such as it could supply, felt
no ambition to live otherwise than their fathers before them had lived,
and saw no reason why their children after them should not be content
with similar ways and means.
Entertaining these highly conservative ideas, and despising all
new-fangled notions about improvement of either mind or manners,
George’s immediate ancestor was not the man to foster any bookish
disposition his boy may have early displayed. It was the fashion of the
time for the father, or rather the mother, to impart the first elements
of education— early education it ought scarcely to be called, because
seldom was a child initiated into the mysteries of the Roman alphabet
before his ninth or tenth birthday; and most mysterious must the thing
have even then appeared to him, it being his first introduction to an
unknown language. It was no unusual thing to find a boy or a girl with a
good ear who could glibly enough run over whole pages of the Shorter
Catechism without comprehending the import of a single sentence, or even
the meaning of a single word.
Often in the winter season some neighbour, out of other employment,
would be found to undertake the elementary instruction of the children
of a small district, and so relieve the mother’s hand, as it was
expressed. In return for this service he received his victuals and the
proceeds of the cock-fight^ with which humane spectacle the labours of
the short session were annually wound up. The instruction, if it
deserved the name, was of the same unintelligent and vicious type as
that practised under the parental care, with the addition, however, of a
larger allowance of birch (leather), which doubtless awakened much
scholarly ardour in the youthful mind.
Subjected to this ordeal for two or three winters, the sons and
daughters of a common man were supposed to be intellectually equipped
for the discharge of the duties of their station in life. If they
required more they could, and they generally did, finish off with a
winter raith (three months) at the parish school, when they were “grown
up,” forisfamiliated. The benches of that seminary were accordingly,
during this season, mostly occupied by men and women, whose mature
intellects were duly sharpened by being made the butt of the coarse
jokes and nicknames of the laird’s ground officer—it would be a solecism
to call him teacher, though he sat at his desk and drew his salary, such
as it was. The schoolmaster in his treatment of his pupils must not be
supposed to have outraged the usages of society, or to have been a
Philistine above all men. He but reflected the manners of his betters,
and in his style of address was only a low imitator of the judges of the
land, as may be seen from Lord Cockbum’s Memorials.
How much of this rough discipline George Brown passed through is not
known, but it may be presumed it was either a minimum quantity, or his
desire of knowledge was unquenchable; for it is certain that while yet a
young lad he had read and fully mastered every printed volume within
miles of his residence, and "yet was unsatisfied in getting, which was
no sin."
This literature was almost wholly religious, consisting mainly of the
Scriptures, with notes practical and critical by various divines, the
Shorter Catechism, without comment, known in its spelling to all who had
ever been at school, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Holy War, Baxter’s
Saints’ Rest, and Boston’s Fourfold State. He thus became a theologian
at an early age; and, though by no means exclusively devoting his
attention to that subject, it was the one which engaged by far the
largest portion of his thoughts through life.
It was not long till his acquirements attracted the attention of others
besides his companions and neighbours. Arrived at the age (about
seventeen) when it was deemed proper that he should become a member of
the Church of his fathers, he presented himself before the minister of
Crathie for examination as to his fitness. The clergyman, the Rev.
Murdoch M'Lennan, author of the popular Scottish ballad of “Sherifftnuir,”
was a man of no mean literary taste and attainments, of a benevolent,
kindly disposition, and a keen discemer of character. Perceiving that
George was no ordinary young man, and having ascertained by what means
he had become possessed of so unusual an amount of Scriptural knowledge,
he took an interest in him, fostered and directed his taste for reading
by lending him such books as he judged would be attractive, and
improving to his mind.
The American war of Independence was then at its height; but in those
days none but the laird and the minister had access to the news. Through
the kindness of the latter, George was allowed to peruse such
intelligence of the great struggle as found its way into the Aberdeen
Journal\ then the only newspaper that circulated in the district. Of
this privilege he was not slow to take advantage. America soon became to
him a land of romance. He was fired with a desire to know all about
it—its discovery, its colonization, the history of the early settlers,
the hardships they had to endure, and the hopes that cheered them, their
conflicts with the Indians, and the inhuman barbarities these, at the
instigation of the French, committed upon them in the first war. On all
these matters, so Car as the manse library contained information, he was
fully read; and being the only oracle open to the peasantry of the
district, his company was eagerly sought, and his father’s house nightly
thronged with listeners.
It was thus he acquired the art of effectively communicating to others
his own stock of knowledge, and of imparting to his narratives the charm
of graphic description. It was one of his characteristics to muse on
whatever he read till he obtained a representation of the scene in his
own mind, drawn to the minutest detail by his own lively imagination
—not perhaps always correct in every particular, but always vivid and
dramatic The picture thus formed he described as he beheld it himself,
and hence the force of his delineations. Deriving the outline or
suggestive idea through the staid medium of the English language, and
being required to employ his own romantic Gaelic as the vehicle of
communi* eating his thoughts to others, he was led, irrespective of the
natural bent of his mind, to add fire to his narratives and colour to
his sketches. Beyond this his tales were strictly true to fact He never
invented one merely to amuse, far less to deceive, though he often dealt
in parables as well as proverbs for the purpose of instruction. It was,
besides, not till he had grown over to years and had established a
reputation for high moral worth as well as mental endowments, that his
gifts of vivid description were much exercised. Though his more solid
qualities procured for him the esteem and admiration of those above him
in station, it was doubtless this art that earned for him the
extraordinary fame with which his name was associated in the minds of
his own class, and is still associated in the recollection of those of
them who survive, and who even yet speak with rapture of the sage old
man whom they knew in their youth.
The writer has heard one of these relate that, being a boy of a delicate
constitution, he was for some time greatly troubled with sleepless
nights, and that the good old man would often come to his bedside, and
with tales that had rivetted his own youthful imagination—tales of the
Red Indian and descriptions of the primeval forests, so vividly told
that the sufferer thought he actually beheld the tall trees and the
naked savages—he beguiled him from the world of sense to the regions of
the imagination, and thence to dreamland and the realms of sleep.
But besides affording him opportunities of becoming acquainted with the
present transactions and past history of his country, Mr. M'Lennan, who
was an Islesman by birth, and had thus been nurtured on the very
Parnassus of Highland lore, opened up to his protege his own rich stores
of Celtic legend and song. These he drank in as if they had been nectar
sent him from the gods, treasured them up in his retentive memory, and
in after life made many a long winter evening fly but too quickly away
with narratives of creach and foray, of love and war, or with
recitations from Ossian and other Highland bards less fortunate than
him, who have found no MacPherson to rescue their names from oblivion.
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