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JOHN DUNCAN remained in
Aberdeen for nearly eight years, six of them in a house of his own. Nothing
of very great public importance had occurred during that period, except the
growing agitations to improve the social and political condition of the
masses. Like the class to which he belonged, John was a keen politician,
keeping himself fully abreast of all these questions, perusing the
newspapers of the time with the greatest zest, as he did to the end of his
life, many of the copies he then possessed still existing as protections to
his botanical specimens.
In 1816, when he arrived,
there took place the immense popular November meetings in the Spa Fields in
London, where some 30,000 persons assembled to vote an address from the
distressed manufacturers; the riots that occurred a few weeks afterwards
causing great injury to property, Watson, the leader, escaping to America,
and one of his friends being subsequently hanged. In 1817, there rose the
scare of sedition, set on fire by the notorious Green Bag and its dangerous
contents laid before Parliament, with the consequent suspension of Habeas
Corpus and prohibition of all popular gatherings, from the fear of
treasonable intentions, which the state of the country had increased. In
1818, Queen Charlotte died, and in 1819, the best of British queens was
born. In 1820, "the first gentleman of Europe " took his seat in the royal
chair, inaugurating his reign by the cruel trial of his ill-used wife; and
in 1822, his visit to Edinburgh turned the heads of the Scotch people, and,
not least, that of the Great Wizard himself. But only the faintest ripples
of such splashings of the social and political sea reached the canny
north-east of Scotland, though there they were watched with the deepest
interest by local politicians like our hero, as significant indications of
coming popular progress. In 1824, the brilliant, volcanic, but powerful
"Manfred " died, an event that caused more than usual sympathy in Aberdeen,
whose interest in poetry was certainly not very strong; for his mother
belonged to the county, and in and round the city her son had passed some of
his early days and gained many of his happiest inspirations.
In the same year, John Duncan
left Aberdeen to wander over the country which stretches in sight of the
mountain that towers so grandly in Byron's poetry, the dark Lochnagar. After
his wife's conduct had so rudely shattered the sweetness of home, he at once
broke up his house and fled from the scene which had witnessed his misery
and her disgrace.
He now commenced a new phase
of his life, by adopting a special variety of his trade, that of country
weaver. Hitherto, since completing his apprenticeship, his work had been
confined to towns, where he had weaved more or less in factories for the
home and foreign markets. Now he was to become a household workman. His
varied experiences from Drumlithie to Aberdeen had given him full insight
into all sorts of work connected with his trade, both linen and woollen; so
that he was now prepared to execute skilfully any kind of cloth he might be
called upon to make.
Understand precisely, good
reader, what kind of weaver John Duncan was now to become; for during the
greater part of his life, he was an example of survival, which gives him
additional interest. In this respect, as in many others, "old times were
breathing there," with him, as with Wordsworth's Roman matron in humble
life. He entered a class, now exceedingly rare in Scotland, though for
generations, before the steam-engine and kindred inventions had extinguished
so much of the past, universal in the country. They wove what was known as
"homemade" or "hame'art-made" cloth, from the materials being prepared in
the homes of the people, as distinguished from the manufactured goods of the
factories; and they were therefore designated "home" and "country" and
"customer" weavers.
In the olden days, when each
parish, hamlet and glen had to be largely self-dependent and self-producing
as to food, clothing and other needs of life, the weaver was as necessary a
personage in the community as the smith and the carpenter, the minister and
the schoolmaster. The father and sons sheared the sheep of the wool; the
daughters prepared and spun it into thread at the birring wheel, and the
thrifty mother, in the intervals of household work, either wove it into
cloth herself (facts that still survive in the fine old words "spinster" and
"wife"), or sent it to the weaver, called then by the nearly obsolete term
of "webster" or " wabster." He received the thread thus spun by the
hearthstone, wound it into warp, wove it into cloth of the kind and pattern
desired, and sent it home again to the "customer," whose person and family
were thus protected both by night and day, from the summer's heat and
winter's cold, by these substantial home-produced stuffs.
It was this ancient order,
with the poetry of Penelope and the sanctity of Scripture round it, that
John Duncan now entered. It was this by-gone period of Scotch thrift, Scotch
independence, and Scotch home life that he represented to the last, long
after it had almost died out through the country. His life thus affords an
interesting glimpse into the past, of a state of society admirable and
beautiful in its time, with features of excellent industrial and moral
quality, which the steam-engine and modern improvements have banished for
ever.
Another very commendable
feature in, this country life was this. During the autumn, when work in
country districts became slack, from the general occupation of the people
with the harvest, it was a common custom for weavers, as well as carpenters,
smiths and others, to enter the harvest field, and take an autumn campaign
in cutting down the standing army of cereals ; and it often formed part of
the engagements of such labourers to be allowed to "gae to the hairst." Many
went to the south and hired themselves on the larger farms there, returning
at the end of the season with the fruits of their labours in heavier
pockets. It was a practice at once healthy, remunerative and informing; for
they saw the different parts of the land and extended their knowledge of the
world. Of course, these were the days of the sickle, when the scythe was
little used, and reaping machines had not been dreamt of in the north. The
strange harvester that had taken shape in the quiet Forfarshire manse of
Carmylie, and was first produced in what is now reckoned a rude embryonic
form, by its clerical inventor, the Rev. Patrick Bell, in 1826, two years
after John Duncan left Aberdeen, was long viewed with suspicion by
conservative agriculturists, and did not become general for many years
afterwards.
Of this health-giving field
of labour John now took yearly advantage, gaining strength, money and
knowledge, gathering medicinal plants, seeing new regions, making new
friends, and gradually dispelling the malign effects of the sorrows through
which he had recently passed.
Besides taking harvest
yearly, and wandering in search of herbs, John varied his sedentary life by
going at intervals to Aberdeen, to buy yarn for his work and books to
satisfy his increasing intellectual thirst.
For many years, also, he went
annually to Aberdeen to be trained as a soldier. About 1824, the time he
broke up his house, he seems to have joined the militia, to relieve his mind
from heavier thoughts, and swell his small purse. That being a time of wars
and rumours of wars, even after the once omnipotent war-scourge had been
caged in the rocky Atlantic isle to die there in 1821, this home force was
then regularly drilled, in full complement, for a considerable period after
peace was restored. During the French wars and long after, the ballot was in
force, as it still can be in any emergency. Every able-bodied male was
eligible to be drawn between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five; with
certain exceptions, such as peers, professors, clergymen, parish
schoolmasters, apprentices, etc., and, in Scotland, every poor man having
more than two lawful children, or property under fifty pounds. This militia
service being irksome to many persons, associations were formed, in each
district throughout the country, for the accumulation of central funds to
pay the requisite bounty to volunteers when any of their members wished to
be relieved from duty, the general sum being five pounds, but, during the
French wars, rising not unfrequently to forty.
John Duncan was once
balloted, and twice offered himself as a volunteer for others, receiving for
this the additional bounty of five pounds—a great sum to a poor weaver;
helping him to meet the expenses of the daughters' upbringing, and buy some
desired volumes from the old book shops in Aberdeen, which he used regularly
to frequent, and where he picked up many a rare volume and pamphlet. From a
letter addressed to him as "Private soldier, Aberdeen Militia," in 1825, he
must have joined before that date. The militia were then drilled twice a
year, once in early spring and again in the end of summer, a month at one
time and six weeks at another, though, in times of peace, the militia
require to be only twenty-eight days in the field. The commander of the
corps was Colonel Gordon of Cluny (the father of the late John Gordon, Esq.,
of Cluny), known as the richest commoner in Scotland, a vigorous but kindly
and popular officer, who, by the over-free use of his tongue when excited,
could be "a gey coorse fellow whiles," as our soldier said. In 1826, John
offered himself as substitute at Pitcaple on the Uric, in the parish of
Chapel of Garioch, and in 1831—the year Thomas Edwards became a militia-man
in Aberdeen, —he was attached to the "Aberdeen Militia regiment or battalion
for the parish of Keithhall." In all, he continued connected with the
service for some twenty years.
John liked the life and
training, and made the most of them, attending to orders, and never having
to get extra drill in the awkward squad, as he used to tell with pride. The
effects of the drill upon the little man appeared in his firm step and erect
bearing, traceable even in old age. Long after he had ceased soldiering, he
used to shoulder a stick and show his paces in martial form before his more
intimate friends. The solitary exhibition, in which he represented in his
own person at once officer, private and battalion, gone through with great
vigour, was, it seems, a sight to see, raising many a kindly laugh.
Drill was carried on in the
courtyard of the barracks, and, when weather was favourable, on the
extensive links that skirt the sea near Aberdeen, the scene where the "mad"
Edwards rushed out of his ranks, in 1831, to chase a butterfly. Many of the
men were very rough, but not a few were, according to their companion, "smug
eneuch," that is, smart enough. He met much kindness from every one, he
said, and the sergeant became a great friend of his, doing him good service
when his wife troubled him about one of her children. Flogging was then not
uncommon in the militia; indeed, it was not till 1814 that an enactment was
made, authorizing courts-martial to inflict imprisonment instead of the
lash! On more than one occasion, John witnessed its infliction, and he saw
three men flogged in one day, for being intoxicated and giving insolence to
their officers during drill. But he affirmed that a well-conditioned man was
well treated in the militia, and had a good opportunity of doing well.
John used to relate some of
his experiences as a soldier. The first time he saw a balloon was at an
inspection, when one was sent up from the barracks, on the Queen's birthday,
carrying a cat in the car, and bearing it south across the Dec. The crowd
drawn by the spectacle was very great, and John was in danger of being
crushed. On another occasion, he suffered more seriously.
Riots were then of frequent
occurrence in the larger towns, chiefly through political excitement, and
Aberdeen was no exception. A serious riot occurred there in 1802, at George
the Third's birthday, when the soldiers were called out to quell the mob;
another took place in December, 1831, when they burnt down Dr. Moir's
Anatomical Theatre, one of the first of its kind in the north, generally
known as the "Burkin' House," from the universal scare against anatomy
excited by the Burke and Hare murders in Edinburgh, in 1828. It was in a
Meal mob which took place before this, that Thom, the poet, was apprehended,
and, while in prison, wrote his first poem, which was thus, as he calls it,
"jail born," beginning,
"They speak o' wyles in
woman's smiles."
At one of these birthday
celebrations about this period, in which the rabble thought themselves
entitled to license, and often indulged it to the danger of their quieter
fellow-citizens, John went like others to see. The fun soon degenerated into
serious disturbance, which raged round the town house and harbour, and the
military had to be marched from the barracks to drive back the mob. John
somehow got entangled in the crowd just as it was charged by the soldiers.
One of them struck him with the butt end of his gun, saying with a fierce
oath as he felled him to the ground, "That's deen for you, at ony rate!" It
was a serious moment, which might have proved fatal and rendered this
history unnecessary; for, apart altogether from the blow, he might have been
trampled to death. John never related the . story without great seriousness
and thankfulness at his escape. "Man," said he, "Whan I was fell't to the
grund, I thocht I was nae mair. But on my hands and knees, like a cat, I
managed to creep oot o' the mob." Happily his head was greatly saved by his
thick militia cap, but even with it, he received a deep and painful wound
which took long to heal. In this riot, several persons suffered severely and
many were lodged in jail. John used to conclude his narrative with the
natural remark, "I hae aye keepit oot o' mobs since syne." By this fierce
blow, which might have been more disastrous, the occiput bones of his head
were damaged, and he bore the deep mark to his dying day.
The district in which Duncan
passed the remainder of his days, the extended period of fifty-seven years,
was that part of middle Aberdeenshire that surrounds and is finely dominated
by the far-seen and famous hill of Benachie. Though under seventeen hundred
feet in height, it has the style of one of our greater mountains, from its
isolation, contour, and volcanic-looking crest, which give it the
picturesque name it bears, signifying in Gaelic, the Ben of the Pap, a not
uncommon designation of mountains in the Highlands. It exhibits on every
side a striking aspect, and from some points looks a splendid object in the
landscape, catching the eye and centralizing the view from a long distance,
all over this part of the country. It is a hill of which Aberdeenshire is
justly proud, and it is celebrated in sweet song. It is the synonym of home
and country to every one born under its shadow, the mention of the name
drawing tears to the eyes of those long banished from it, as in the case of
John Duncan's friend, Charles Black. To these two men it became, as Charles
says, "what Lochnagar was to Byron," the sacred mountain of their lives,
illuminated and consecrated by the halo of a thousand memories.
Benachic forms the centre of
the great granitic outburst which rises through the Silurian rocks of middle
Aberdeen. On the west, it looks into the fertile hollow of the Vale of
Alford, of which the Benachic range is the eastern boundary. This range runs
north and south, from Benachic, which forms its bold northern end, to
Correnie Forest, where it overlooks Strath Dee. It is closely and in many
places wildly wooded, except at its two extremities, which are bare and
commanding. It is cut through from east to west at two points—by the River
Don, which drains the Vale of Alford and seeks its narrow way through a
curving glen that forms a huge rent right across the hills, from Castle
Forbes to Monymusk; and by the more elevated glen of Tillyfourie, close and
steep, through which the Alford Valley Railway has been carried—the river
and the rail dividing the range into three nearly equal portions, and then
meeting at both sides of the chain. The whole forms a fine series of hills,
surrounded by countless scenes of uncommon beauty, commanding wonderful
prospects of the level country below, and richly rewarding the geologist,
mineralogist, and botanist who explore their hidden recesses, and not less
the archeologist and historian who examine their interesting remains and
historic sites. Benachie is to our story what Arthur's Seat is to Edinburgh,
the Acropolis to Athens, or Mont Blanc to Chamouny. |
