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FROM this date Sandy
ceased to be like other men, or to walk in their ways, and however
little sympathy we may have for the course of life he adopted, we cannot
withhold some meed of admiration for the character of one who, though
exposed to the demoralizing influences of a lawless and unsettled
avocation, never lost his native simplicity and generosity, or sank his
respect for the dictates of morality and religion. Sandy now took
professionally to the bag and the gun, and for twenty years led a
roaming kind of life, having his home nowhere but everywhere. From March
to November he seldom sought the shelter of a house to pass the night,
preferring the grassy banks of the Dee or the Spey, or, what was to him
more delightful still, the “bonnie blooming heather” of the mountains.
This was of choice and not necessity. He was well known over the greater
part of the Highlands, both among gentle and simple; and all who knew
him would have been glad to have given him any comfort they had to
bestow. The halls of noblemen and gentlemen were open to him at any
time, and no poor man’s door would be shut if he requested admission.
But he had a contempt for luxury. “No bed for me,” he would say, if he
observed any preparations with that view, where he might make a call,
wet, and probably hungry, after a day’s fishing—“No bed for me, they are
but soft fellows that go to bed in summer.” It may illustrate what poor
shifts he would be content with, as well as the generous impulses that
governed his actions, to relate here an incident that came within the
writer’s knowledge.
Mr. Roy, the factor on the Invercauld Estates, already mentioned, having
been informed that one of his tenants, an old acquaintance, if not also
a distant relation, of Sandy, was in the way of occasionally affording
him shelter, and ministering to his wants, took the farmer severely to
task for his conduct, and threatened him with expulsion from the estate
if he again admitted under his roof the detested poacher. It happened
that soon after this Sandy in the course of his peregrinations had
arranged to pass the night, a very stormy night in winter, at his
friend’s house; but learning on his way thither what had taken place,
and not knowing where else to go for that night, chose rather than bring
trouble on any man to turn into an open shed, and take what shelter it
afforded. Late in the evening, a lad was sent out to the shed for some
fuel, the storm and drift being considered too wild for the female
servants to face. In groping about under the snow-drift for the peats he
was in search of, his hand alighted on Sandy’s beard; and the
exclamation of terror and surprise which he uttered awoke the sleeper.
Recognizing Sandy’s voice, the lad insisted that he should come into the
house. He gave some lame reason for declining to accept the invitation,
saying that he wished to be at such a place by day-break and couldn’t
stay all night; and made him promise not to tell his father that he was
there, and he would rest for half-an-hour and then be off. Guessing the
real reason, the lad argued that nobody could know of his having been in
the house that night, and he need have no scruples about coming in. It
was to no purpose; Sandy’s chivalrous determination that no one should
suffer or run any risk of suffering loss on his account overcame all
entreaty, and the lad was constrained to depart without him. But a few
minutes’ reflection convinced him that his conduct in keeping silence
was neither brave nor generous; and he accordingly told his father, and
both sallied forth to bring in the poor wanderer, but he was gone; and
the drifting snow had filled up the footmarks. They called loudly and
long, but no answer was returned; and where Sandy spent that and many a
similar night, none knew but himself, for he had a repugnance to recount
what hardships he endured. In the morning, however, a hare was found in
the shed, left by Sandy as compensation for the miserable shelter it had
afforded him, or rather as an expression of his goodwill to the family.
He invariably devoted the month of March to fishing. His mode of
prosecuting the sport few would care to imitate. He knew all the pools
and parts of the pools, both on Dee and Spey, where the fish were likely
to be met with at any particular season or condition of the river; and
to get at that part, no matter how bitterly cold the weather might be,
he walked straight in, often till nothing was to be seen of him above
the water but his head and shoulders. There he would remain plying the
gentle art, until he had either hooked his fish, or satisfied himself
that it would not be forthcoming. After a day so spent, it was his usual
custom, when the winds were very piercing, to make his way to the house
of some friend, and after steaming himself over the kitchen fire for
half an hour or so, turn out to the barn, throw himself down, wet
clothes and all, among the straw, and take his chance of what sleep
might fall to his lot till morning, when he would be early astir to go
through the same privations again in some other district
In the matter of clothing he was equally hardy. Those who knew him will
remember the thin tartan coat, the thinner tartan trousers, with no
under clothing save a cotton shirt, and the unsubstantial Forfar pumps,
which formed his winter’s attire. The only change he made in summer was
the substitution of a kilt for the trousers. If any one suggested
something more warm and comfortable, his usual remark was—“No, no,
people kill themselves wearing too many clothes.” He never paid anything
for washing, that is, he never had any article of wearing apparel
washed, and yet he was of very tidy habits, even, it must be owned, fond
of being smartly dressed. When therefore, a shirt appeared to him to be
losing its respectability, he would make it in his way to pass some shop
where a new one could be purchased, dressed and ready. This he would
carry with him to some lonely and rugged corry on the mountains, or
sylvan retreat by the river, where he could make the transfer, and leave
the discarded article to be washed and bleached by a purely natural
process, but never to be worn again by him. Though he had nothing of the
fop in his nature, it must be owned that he had something akin to a
child’s pleasure in seeing himself smartly dressed after his own style.
When he got a new shirt that pleased him particularly well, it was no
unusual thing to find his coat wrists turned up a bit, and his vest laid
open an extra button or two to display its graces, while furtive glances
of satisfaction were occasionally cast by the wearer at both localities.
Alas! he ought to be forgiven for this apparent vanity, for in his
latter days the opportunities of indulging it had become somewhat rare.
Of his peculiarities of mind the most striking were his feeling of
reverence, and keen perception, and unbounded admiration, of whatever
was great and grand. These might be traced in all his sentiments and
opinions. “His deep and sacred regard for the name of God,” says one who
knew him intimately for many years, “was such, that I have never known
him profane the sacred majesty of heaven by an irreverent use of his
Maker’s name. That name he never took in vain, unless he were in the
heat of some violent passion, and even then it was very seldom he did
so, and on cooling down, deeply regretted he had done it. The condition
of his clothing often prevented him from attending church, especially in
his later years; but as Sunday came round, he invariably took a Bible or
a volume of sermons and went to worship in some quiet spot in the great
temple of nature. I have never known another man who had the same amount
of awe and holy dread cast over his mind as Sandy, when brought into
contact with the wild and grand in nature. The terrible loneliness, and
huge massiveness of Ben Muicdhui brought a tremor over his mind, as it
suggested to him that passage in the Revelations, where sinners are
spoken of as calling on the mountains to cover them from the wrath of
the Lamb. ‘We cannot,’ I have heard Sandy say, ‘have any idea of a
sinner’s fear on the day of judgment,'when it is such that he will call
on these terrible rocks to fall on him. In a moment an army would be
destroyed were it even hurled over them. It makes one’s mind recoil with
horror at the idea of falling over them, going down, down, down.’”
“A thunder storm too,” continues the same acquaintance, “had an
overpowering and hallowing influence on his susceptible mind. I remember
once meeting him on his way from Benavon, where he had been during an
extraordinary thunderstorm. He was literally shaking with sensation. It
was not fear, but that sort of holy awe which pious persons sometimes
feel when they are, it may be, on the brink of eternity.
“‘I would not have missed,’ said he, ‘being on Benavon to-day for five
pounds: the thunder was so majestic and awful among the rocks. It
produced in my mind a fear of God’s greatness and might nothing else
could. I tremble yet at His terrible power who could have hurled me to
destruction in a moment with one of the smallest of these flashes of
lightning. But he preserved me safe in the midst of it, giving me time
for repentance; and I am not without hope, however small, that he has
some love for me when he did not crush me in yon terrible place this
day.’ ”*
"On 28th July, 1852, the writer, happening to be on this same mountain,
though for a very different purpose from poor Sand/s, was caught in a
thunderstorm of such sublimity that the wnole scene is even yet fresh in
his memory. The following short note was made soon after the occasion: A
little before noon, after having well filled a botanical case with small
cairngorms, and other treasures of the mountain, I was standing on one
of tnose huge excrescences of rock that extrude like great moles on the
brow of Benavon and distinguish it to the distant beholder from the
surrounding mountains. The day was moderately calm, and the sky, though
not free from some ominous looking clouds, was very transparent,
affording a fine and extensive view to the north and east. Suddenly a
little cloud showed front over the north shoulder of Braeriach. On it
came through the glack between Ben Muicdhui and Cairngorm, increasing in
magnitude and darkening in aspect. It descended into the hollow of Loch
Avon, and I could see the summit of Cairngorm over its upper surface.
There it twisted and boiled in a most wonderful manner, while the
lightnings glared amid its murky folds with a peculiar red colour, and
the thunder reverberated among the rocks incessantly. On it came down
the deep valley of the Avon, till almost under my feet I could see the
lightning playing through the cloud beneath me. I had heard of such
sights before, but though I had wandered among the mountains since ever
I could wander at all, I had never seen one till now; and I recollected
the lines of Byron descriptive of such a scene—
“When I roved a young Highlander o’er the dark heath,
“And climbed thy steep summit, oh Morven of snow!
“To gaze on the torrent that thundered beneath,
“Or the mist of the tempest that gathered below.”
Not a drop of rain fell where I was—some 3,800 feet above sea level— but
in the valley below, I have little doubt, it fell in torrents. The cloud
passed away in the direction of Inchrory, but its culminating grandeur
to me was gone, and I set off for Benabourd, thankful for the
magnificent spectacle I had beheld.
Sandy could not endure to observe people other than serious when the
thunder rolled and the lightning flashed. To their philosophical
arguments as to their safety he would answer with impatience—“Why,
what’s the good of your reasoning? Though only one person may be killed,
what does that matter to you, if you be the man?”
Though one might have thought that his living day and night among the
grand and solitary in nature for so many years would have blunted his
susceptibility of receiving impressions from them, yet it was not so.
His feelings were as keen for realising the grandeur of a waterfall and
the sublimity of a great mountain at the day of his death as when he was
young.
It was this same feeling of veneration for all that was entitled to
respect that made him sometimes appear severe to conceited young people
when more talkative than he deemed respectful in the presence of their
seniors. “Hold your tongue, you brat; you speak like a powder monkey,”
was his usual rebuke on such occasions.
He was at war also with several of the habits of luxury and effeminacy
that he accounted innovations on the good old modes of living. The use
of tobacco as an article of luxury, and of pork as an article of diet
was particularly offensive to him. “Tobacco smokers and pork eaters I
abhor,” he would say in his own proud way; but it was the practices and
not the practisers that he despised. These peculiarities of taste showed
how thoroughly Scotch he was. On this point it will not be irrelevant to
adduce the authority of Sir Walter Scott, who thought it necessary to
explain the absence of pork at the great feast at Glennaquoick by the
following note:
“Pork, or swine’s flesh, in any shape, was dll of late years much
abominated by the Scotch, nor is it yet a favourite food amongst them.
King Jamie carried this prejudice to England, and is known to have
abhorred pork almost as much as he did tobacco. Ben Jonson has recorded
this peculiarity, where the gipsy in a masque, examining the King’s
hand, says,—
‘Yon should by this line Love a horse and a hound, but no part of a
swine.'
The Gipsies Metamorphosed. James’s own proposed banquet for the Devil
was a loin of pork and a poll of ling, with a pipe of tobacco for
digestion.” For any difference in their tastes King Jamie and Sandy
might have dined together every day in the year.
In politics Sandy was a Tory to the heart’s core. The principles on
which the two great parties of the state were divided he probably had
not studied theoretically. It was enough for him to observe the
practices which as individuals in a private capacity they followed. On
that he founded his politics; and as might be supposed, his opinions
were strong, and strongly expressed. He did nothing by halves, least of
all did he hold opinions so. With him it was no case of agreeing with
this man and disagreeing with that; it was simple loving and hating.
Happening to be present on one occasion when politics formed the subject
of discussion among some friends, Sandy listened for a little to the
arguments used by the champion of the Whig cause; and, having caught
their gist, abruptly broke in, “What a fool you are to allow yourself to
be duped in that manner! The Whigs are not the poor man’s friend. They
are made up of high promises to the poor, but it is the Tories who
practise them. The Whigs, on the other side, practise every villainy and
meanness, pouring the woes of sour-milk persecution on those below them.
They have no veneration for anything human, and end too often by
disbelieving everything divine.”
When he had denounced a nobleman as a Whig, he had emptied upon him the
vials of his utmost contempt After that there was nothing more to be
said; there was no lower depth into which he could be flung. It must be
admitted that the treatment he personally received at the hands of
certain gentlemen may have had some influence in swaying his politics;
but no man had a keener perception, or a higher appreciation of noble
and generous features of character; and with whomsoever these were
found, to them, man or party, he ascribed all the virtues, political
among the rest He was besides drawn towards the Tories by the reverence
of his nature for any institution or custom hallowed by age, or
enshrined in the affections of the people.
His love of freedom was his ruling passion. It probably drove him from
earning his living after the manner of other men; for he could not
endure to be bound to work or to follow any course of action whatever if
his inclination did not lead him to it. The very idea of imprisonment
was torture to him. He had often been heard to say—“Before I would be a
month in jail I would give five hundred pounds of the hardest earned
money I ever had for liberty to get my feet on the heather again.” He
had, however, one night’s experience of this hated place, but it was not
on account of poaching, but for a debt alleged to have been due by him
arising out of some transaction regarding the purchase of wood.
Sandy’s mode 6f conducting business was far enough from being in
accordance with the rules now universally adopted, but like many other
traits of his character it faithfully reflected that of his countrymen
before they were corrupted by the introduction among them of a system
that appealed less to personal virtue than to the observance of legal
forms. To ask a man for a receipt or an acknowledgment of payment was in
his opinion to cast a doubt upon his honour. “A man’s word is his honour,”
was a favourite maxim with him, and he had not that respect for the law
and lawyers that would lead him to look for justice in a court of law,
if it were denied him at the hands of a private individual. The loss he
suffered at the time of the Earl of Fife’s bankruptcy, from this style
of conducting business, has already been noticed. That was a case,
however, in which it may be safely affirmed his noble debtor would have
afterwards done him justice had it been in his power; but there were
others in which those who owed him money denied their debt designedly,
knowing well that Sandy would not prosecute. He was himself entirely
governed by his high sense of honour, and he could not understand why
any other safeguard against unjust dealing was required. Only experience
taught him that there were a few mean people who did not value their
word of honour, and whose proper punishment in his estimation was, not
to raise an action against them at law, but “to hound them from
society.” Some dealings with one of this fraternity in the days when he
traded in wood, resulted in Sandy being brought into a Court of Law,
where an adverse decision on some technical point was given against him.
He had relied on the justice of his case to carry him.
General Stewart has recorded the following instance of the regard paid
by the Highlanders to such engagements: “A gentleman of the name of
Stewart agreed to lend a considerable sum of money to a neighbour. When
they met and the money was already counted down upon the table, the
borrower offered a receipt. As soon as the lender (Stewart of
Ballachulish) heard this he immediately collected the money, saying that
a man who could not trust his own word without a bond, should not be
trusted by him and should have none of his money, which he put up in his
purse and returned home.” through, but finding that it was no match for
the craft of his prosecutor in the arena into which he had been dragged,
he resolved to balk him of the money which he was unjustly suing him
for, by going to prison for a time. But one night there entirely altered
his resolution. His own account of his experience is the best that can
be given—“No sooner was the door locked upon me than I felt myself
nearly going mad; and all the night through instead of sleeping I kept
thinking, if I had not the money to take me out, my reason must give
away. In the morning I paid the one hundred pounds without thinking of
the unfair play I had got, and immediately set out for the hills; and
such was the state of my mind that I never was satisfied I was free dll
I got my feet on the heather moors again.”
Reference has already been made to Sandy’s attainments as a dancer, but
a triumph which he achieved in this line requires still to be noticed;
and when it is known that he had never been taught the art but possessed
it as a pure gift from nature, his success will appear all the more
marvellous.
At a meeting of the Caledonian Hunt in Edinburgh, it was resolved to
give a number of prizes for the encouragement of Highland games and
accomplishments, among others one for dancing. The Highland gentlemen,
members of the society, were ambitious of the honour of producing from
their estates the winners of the prizes, and accordingly brought with
them on the day of trial such of their retainers or tenants as they
deemed likely to be successful competitors. There were thus assembled in
Edinburgh, from all parts, the best men the country could produce. Sandy
presented himself among the rest, though under the patronage of no
superior. So great was the number entered for the prize in dancing that
the competition extended over sixteen evenings, each succeeding trial
however diminishing the list; and finally the first prize was awarded to
Sandy. Though very averse to talk about his actions, he was proud of
being considered the first dancer in Scotland, and could be got to give
an account of the “great competition in Edinburgh.”
“Though I had good hope,” he would say, “after the first day’s trial, of
being the successful man, it was not till I got up to dance for the last
time, that the great cheering of the ladies and gentlemen made me
certain that I was the lucky man; but I sprained my thumb ‘cracking,’
and it has never been quite right since.”
“As a dancer,” says one who has had good opportunities of judging, “he
was incomparably the most graceful of his own time; and his style was
more characteristically Highland than any I have ever seen; while his
fine personal appearance, lit up by the sparkle of his bright piercing
eye, never shone to better advantage than when he became excited in a
Highland reel”
His victory in Edinburgh, though it could scarcely have increased his
celebrity on Deeside, spread his fame into other parts, so that,
wherever he went, he was the hero of the ballroom; and it must be
admitted that he had no disposition to hide his talent in the earth. He
was so fond of this pastime that when opportunities were long wanting
for its indulgence, he would sometimes organise on his own account a
ball, paying the whole costs, for this among other reasons, “that he
might get a right hearty dance.”
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