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Lessons in the Quarry—Friendship with
William Ross—Loyalty to his Master in Seasons of Adversity . —A Night
Scene—Mad Bell.
It was while working in a quarry on the
nothern shore of the Moray Firth that Hugh Miller became first
acquainted with the organism peculiar to the Old Red Sandstone with
which his name is so splendidly associated. We cannot, however, dwell
upon his geologic discoveries, nor attempt in a sketch like this to
trace the sequence of the steps by which he eventually became one of the
greatest geologists of his country. Suffice it to say, that every field
was carefully surveyed which promised to yield such lessons as would
repay the labour expended upon the survey, and in the first six months
of his apprenticeship as a mason, he had mastered, in great measure, by
his own unaided efforts, the rudiments of geologic science. During the
interval which succeeded his first summer of work, the young mason was
much in the company of a young house-painter, William Ross, a delicate
lad with the mark of early death legibly inscribed upon him, but an
enthusiast in literature and art. He made good verses, drew well in
water colours, played the flute better than any one else in the
district, and was a great reader of books. The lads, although differing
in opinion on many subjects, had the common ground of an intellectual
taste to meet upon, and they were consequently almost inseperable
companions. Ross had been unfortunate in his parents. His mother, the
descendant of "devout family of the old Scottish type," had fallen in
early youth, and she subsequently married an ignorant, half imbecile
man. William Ross was the eldest born of this ill-matched pair.
Fortunately for him, he had been sent at an early age to live with his
maternal grandmother and aunt, women of superior intelligence and devout
character, who kept a "girls" school, and it was under the influence of
the kindly culture of those women that his genius budded forth, and his
character assumed a nobler type than that he inherited from his poor
parents. His protectresses were dead before Hugh Miller became
acquainted with him, and he was then struggling with poverty through the
last year of his apprenticeship. The mason lad was, of course, as poor
as Ross in a pecuniary point of view, but he had a capital stock of
spirits, a commodity which the other wanted sadly, and his intimacy with
the delicate painter boy was in the highest degree beneficial to the
latter. They discussed all manner of subjects together, poetry, the fine
arts, science, and problems in political economy, no doubt, for William
Ross was a keen politician. The difference in their temperaments is
shown in the authors in which they respectively delighted. The somewhat
feminine painter looked upon the mild and gracefully written "Minstrel,"
of Beattie, as the most perfect poem in the English Language; and
although he liked Dryden's "Virgil," he could see no poetry whatever in
"Absalom and Ahithophel." Miller was fond alike of Beattie and Dryden.
Ross delighted in the polish of Addison, but could not endure the
caustic satire of Swift; whereas Miller loved both, and could pass from
the "Vision of Mirzal to the "Tale of a Tub " without any sense of
incongruity. The one was dainty in his intellectual taste; the other, so
that the fare was healthful and substantial, sat down with a relish to
every feast. The one was passionately fond of music, and the other,
though tolerant of the bagpipes, and having no special objection to
drums, was doubtful whether there was in reality any such thing as tune;
but, notwithstanding their difference in taste, they were fast friends,
reading, walking, studying and conversing together, to their mutual
advantage in many important respects.
The first winter vacation was succeeded by a
summer one, which, by one person at least, was not desired. The work
upon which Hugh Miller's master's squad was engaged terminated early in
May, and, as no further contracts could be got at the time, the men were
thrown idle. Hugh rushed to the woods, rocks, and caves, and busied
himself with his geology, botany, and legend hunting, but the master
pined beneath a life of inaction, and at last applied for work as a
journeyman. One of the apprentices quitted his service, but Hugh, loyal
to his old master in the season of adversity, stuck by him, and gave him
his work to enable him, although advanced in years and debilitated in
strength, to rank as a full journeyman, and receive the wages to which a
full journeyman was entitled. There first work was in assisting to build
a jointure house for the lady of a Ross-shire proprietor, and the scene
of their labours was of the wildest and most dreary character, their
lodgings being by no means fitted to reconcile a young man keenly alive
to landscape beauty, to the waste and howling wilderness to which
fortune had led him. No beds had been prepared for them, as they were
unexpected; and accordingly for the first night, at least, they had
either to dispense with the luxury of beds altogether or share a bed
with a Highland carpenter, whom Hugh had good reason to believe would
prove a dangerous customer to sleep with. He gave his master fair
warning of his risk, but the latter determined to brave the danger
rather than lose a bed. Hugh slept on straw in a loft, and his uncle
reaped the reward of his temerity in sleeping with a strange bedfellow
by catching a cutaneous distemper, somewhat common in Highland society.
The locality to which they had been transported was not altogether
destitute of charms to ft young man who delighted in the legendary lore
of his country. The country, in its main or general features, was bare
and uninviting—a scene of bogs and moors, overlooked by a range of tame
heathy hills. There was, however, an oasis even in this desert. "Two
meal mills—the one small and old, the other larger and modern—were
placed beside each other, on ground so unequal that, seen in front, the
smaller seemed perched on the top of the larger; a group of tall
graceful larches rose immediately beside the lower building, and hung
their slim branches over the mill-wheel, while fine aged ash trees that
encircled the mill-pond, which, in sending its waters down the hill,
supplied both wheels in succession, sprang up immediately beside the
upper erection, and shot their branches over its roof. " A beautiful
little picture to meet with, certainly, in the midst of a scene
generally of such unpoetic aspect. Beside the little picture just
described, there stood, at a short distance from the scene of Hugh
Miller's labours, the ruined chapel and solitary burying ground of
Gillichrist, the scene of one of those terrible deeds of vengence which
one reads of in Highland story, and which, for refinement of cruelty,
are scarcely equalled in the annals of human crime. The Mackenzies of
Ord had by some means offended the pride of the Macdonalds of Glengarry,
and the latter suddenly came upon the former on a Sunday, while they
were engaged in the chapel in the celebration of mass. The Macdonalds
shut the worshippers up in the church, which they set fire to, and
watched until their enemies were consumed to ashes; their pipers
discoursing wild music while the auto-de-fe was proceeding. Such a dark
deed of vengence was more than sufficient to give the place a bad name.
The ghost of some fair lady or stern warrior of the murdered family
might surely haunt such a scene, if ever ghost was permitted to haunt
any place; and, accordingly, Hugh Miller, on the first night of his
residence in the locality, very nearly saw a ghost. Not being accustomed
to lie upon straw, his sleep was frequently disturbed, and about
midnight he rose and stood before a small window which commanded a view
of the wide, dark, and solitary moor. Through the midnight darkness he
could distinguish the site of the chapel and the position of its
burying-ground, and, to his astonishment, he saw a light flickering amid
the grave stones and ruins. The phenomenon of the light was accompanied
by an unearthly screaming, as if the ghosts of the whole murdered family
were bewailing their fate in one wild chorus! No wonder that the blood
of the young man ran cold as he gazed upon that mysterious light, and
listened to those discordant sounds. What could they mean? Was it after
all true that the stories of Highland superstition were veritable facts,
and that those dead lights, warnings, kelpies, wraiths, elf-candles, and
so forth entered into the economy of Highland existence, as truly as did
the tartan and the Gaelic. Evidently it was so, if he were to beleive
his senses; for yonder, amidst the tenements and memorials of the dead,,
were phenomena, sensible to hearing as well as to sight. The light might
be an ignis fatuus, but the screams were undoubtedly real, and in no way
pertaining to the " air-drawn dagger'' which startled the conscience of
the regicide Macbeth, while he was only a regicide in intent. But,
although to all appearance supernatural, the light and the sound
belonged to this world; for just as Hugh was thinking of stealing down
to the bedchamber of his uncle and the Highland carpenter, one of the
servant girls of the mansion-house came out half-dressed to the door of
an outer building in which the workmen and a farm-servant lay, and
summoned them to immediate attendance, with the announcement that "Mad
Bell had broken out, and would set them on fire a second time."
"Mad Bell" was a maniac, who habited the
moor, and the tombs occasionally, at midnight, frightening people
sometimes nearly out of their wits. All the male servants rushed down
the moor, with Hugh Miller along with them, found the object of their
search, dragged her home, and were proceeding to chain her to the floor
of the hut, when Miller interposed and prevented that cruelty. She
looked grateful for the interference, and next day Bell visited her
deliverer, the paroxyism having passed away for. the time. Miller
scarcely knew her. She was respectably dressed, her clean white cap
neatly arranged, and she looked like some respectable tradesman's wife
or daughter. Hugh Miller tells us she was one of the most intellectual
women he ever met. Her brother was one of the ablest ministers of the
Scottish Church in the Nothern Highlands, and, from her conversations
with Miller, one learns that she must have possessed much of her
brother's vigourous intellect, poetical temperament, and extensive
knowledge. Many of the legends which, in after years, Hugh Miller put up
in proper shape and gave to the world, were first learned from Mad Bell,
so that, upon the whole, one almost envies him of her acquaintance. |
