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WATTIE’S last bosom
cronie was a neighbouring farmer, as full of argument as himself, with
an imagination as vigorous of wing, and a temper as imperturbable. The
two set at nought all previous theories of things mundane and
super-mundane, yet they seldom agreed on a new code of belief. The
farmer, who was an intelligent, well-informed man, often played with his
neighbour’s credulity, and did not really entertain all the notions he
put forth in argument against him. Though of sound religious principles,
he was so full of quaint Scotch humour, and Wattie’s absurdities
afforded such a tempting butt for its practice, that it must be allowed
he could not always restrain it from touching upon matters that ought to
be held more sacred; and yet it was not such matters, but his
neighbour’s absurd speculations regarding them, that he had any
intention of speaking lightly of.
On religious subjects Wattie therefore considered him heretical, and
laboured hard, but in vain, to convince him of his errors. The errors
generally related to the condition of departed souls, and the existence
of an intermediate state.
It was no unusual thing for the two to fall to this subject afresh after
an evening spent upon it, when the farmer went to see Wattie home, and
to spend hours on the discussion, walking slowly backwards and forwards
between their respective houses.
It happened one evening, while they were thus perambulating, that the
debate ran unusually high; and to settle the matter they entered into an
engagement that whoever departed this life first should come back and
inform the survivor of the actual state of things in the other world. In
their after private disquisitions, frequent allusions were made to this
covenant, but no third party knew anything of it till more than a year
after Wattie’s death. The following is the farmer’s account of the
transaction—
“Aweel, ye see, it was about purgatory. We had aigued a long while east
and wast the road, and at last it came to, ‘What will ye wager?’ Wattie
was keen for a wager; but I says to him, ‘Wattie,’ says I, 'by the time
we’ll ken fa’s i’ the richt, fa’ll care for the payment?’
‘“At ony rate,’ says he, ‘let’s make a paction that whoever dies first,
hell come back an’ tell the ither how things are regulated i’ the ither
warl*.’
“ think there may be some eese in that,’ says I; 'let’s agree as
to time an’ place.’
“‘It maun be i’ the nicht time,’ says Wattie; ‘for, ye see, I dinna
believe that it’s given to the spirits o’ the departed to revisit this
warl’ i’ the daytime. Leastwise, I never heard tell o’ sic a thing as a
ghost appearan’ i’ the face o’ the sun.’
“‘Weel, weel,’ says I, 'we’ll tak’ the time we’re surest o’; well say
the mirk hour o’ midnicht.*
‘“Sae be’t,* says he, *sae be’t; twal o’clock that day week after the
first o’s dees.’
“Thinks I, that’s gey an’ sharp. I verily believe it’s his opinion that
I’ll be the first to wear awa’, an’ he’s impatient to hear.
'“Na, na,’ says I, 'as we’re upon so weighty a business as this, we maun
mak’ it firm an’ sure. I’m nae sayan’ that aither o’s is vera blate; but
in a week’s time we would hardly hae seen about us richt, an’ there’ll
be sae muckle to see. Na, na, we’ll say that nicht twalmonth.1
“Says he, ‘We may be baith gane afore that time.’
“Allowan,’ say I; ' we’ll baith ken then; but I’m for nane o’s coman’
back wi* a wrang story to the ither. Na, na, let’s tak time to get
acquant.’
“He would hae yielded onything to me that nicht, he was sae anxious to
get the bargain struck; and says he—
“'We’ll haud it sae; twal o’clock that nicht twalmonth, aifter the first
o’s dees. An’ noo for the trystan’ place; what do ye say to my yard?’
“Thinks I, ‘ ye’re lookan’ out for yer ain convenience, my man; but I’ll
agree to naething o’ the kind,’ and says I—
“'Wattie, we maim mak this bargain fair a’ the ways o’t, or it’s doubtfu’
gin ony o’s be allowed to keep it It maun be naither at your house nor
at mine, but half-gates atween the twa. There’s a bonnie howie ower here
below the rocks, just about even distance. We’re nae likely to be
disturbit there; so that there may be nae mistake, we’ll just step
across an see’t’ Wi’ that I wears awa’, an’ Wattie follows.
“Doon we sat upon a bankie, an’ had our sneeshan; an’ syne we concluded
the bargain, an’ shook han’s on the heads o’t
“From that day forth, I verily believe naething would hae delighted him
sae much as to hae heard that I was dead.
And yet he liket me vera weel for a’ that; but he was sae impatient for
the meeting, that he couldna keep f’ae speakan’ o’t ony time we happened
to be passing the way, an’ aye as gin I were to dee first. But he wasna
to be gratified, peer man; for about two years after we had made the
paction he deet himsel’, an’ left me i’ the land o’ the livan’.
“I had my ain thought about the meeting, but still I resolved to keep
the tryst, an’ tell’t naebody a word about it, for fear o’ bean’ watched
When the time cam’ round, I did go. Oh yes, I did go, oftener than once;
for ye see, I kent Wattie was nae arithmeticionar, though he had a good
memory, an’ he micht maybe hae mista’en the nicht, though he wasna
likely to hae gane far agley. So I gaed three times to the trysting
place, the nicht afore, the vera nicht, an’ the nicht after, an’ waited
ilka time f’ae eleven o’clock till one o’clock; but Wattie didna appear;
oh no, he did not”
“Once,” says a friend, who was very intimate with the farmer, and
esteemed him highly, but whose opinions on those matters were of a more
modem type than those the farmer held, or affected to hold, “ once, as
he concluded his account of the covenant between him and Wattie, I
thought I had him floored on the subject of the reappearance of the
dead, but he got out of it in a most characteristic way.
“Now,’ said I, ‘seeing that Wattie, for all his anxiety to meet you, was
not permitted to come back, does not that prove to you that there is no
such thing as ghosts appearing to living men?’
“It does nothing of the kind,’ he replied; 'but it proves to me what I
was gey an' sure o’ before, that my notion o’ the ither warl’ was richt
an’ Wattie’s was quite wrong. Ye didna ken Wattie sae weel as I did.
When I began to think what could hae keepit the bodie f’ae stan’an’
till’s tryst, an’ h&udan’ me waitan’ sae lang, I had little doubt about
the appearance presented so distinctly to my eyes was a dream, I cannot
for a moment doubt; yet for years I had had no communication with G ,
nor had there been anything to recall him to my recollection; nothing
had taken place during our Swedish travels either connected with G or
with India, or with anything relating to him, or to any member of his
family. I recollected quickly enough our old discussion, and the bargain
we had made. I could not discharge from my mind the impression that G
must have died, and that his appearance to me was to be received by me
as proof of a future state; yet all the while I felt convinced that the
whole was a dream; and so painfully vivid, and so unfading was the
impression, that I could not bring myself to talk of it, or to make the
slightest allusion to it. I finished dressing, and as we had agreed to
make an early start, I was ready by six o’clock, the hour of our early
breakfast
“Brougham, October 16,1862.—I have just been copying out from my journal
the account of this strange dream : Certissima mortis imago! And now to
finish the story, begun about sixty years since. Soon after my return to
Edinburgh, there arrived a letter from India, announcing G ’s death! and
stating that he had died on the 19th of December!! Singular coincidence
! yet when one reflects on the vast number of dreams which night after
night pass through our brains, the number of coincidences between the
vision and the event are perhaps fewer and less remarkable than a fair
calculation of chances would warrant us to expect Nor is it surprising,
considering the variety of our thoughts in sleep, and that they all bear
some analogy to the affairs of life, that a dream should sometimes
coincide with a contemporaneous or even with a future event. This is not
much more wonderful than that a person, whom we had no reason to expect,
should appear to us at the very moment we had been thinking or speaking
of him. So common is this that it has for ages grown into the proverb,
‘Speak of the devil' I believe every such seeming miracle is, like every
ghost story, capable of explanation. ”
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