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southern England the hawthorn hedges had shed their petals and taken on
their summer greenness; but when I continued northward and crossed the vague
boundary line which separates the two ancient kingdoms of the island, the
hawthorn was in full bloom. This was reassuring, for I had been half afraid
I was too late to see the Scotch spring at its best; and the unexpectedness
of the transition made these northern hedgerows, with their white
flower-clusters and their delicate emerald leafage, seem doubly beautiful.
That I might lose nothing of Nature's charm in
its early unfoldings of buds and greenery, I did not pause in any of the
large towns, but kept on until I reached the secluded hamlet of Drumtochty,
among the hills a few miles beyond Perth. There I made my home for several
weeks in the cottage of the village shoemaker.
A wide-spreading farm and grazing district lay
round about, and the Highlands were not far distant. Indeed, their outlying
bulwarks were always in sight, rising in blue ridges that cut ragged lines
into the sky along the north. Drumtochty, or "the clachan," as it was
familiarly called by the natives, was the central village of the region. It
was situated on a long slope, or "strath," that swept gently downward to
where a sudden declivity marked the verge of a winding, half- wooded ravine,
in the depths of which flowed a small river.
Aside from the clachan on the strath,
habitations were much scattered. They consisted mostly of neighborless
farmhouses, and a few lonely shepherds' cottages on the borders of the
moors. In the midst of an imposing grove a mile or two from the village
stood the big decayed mansion of Logie House, reminiscent of days not very
remote, when the district had its own local lairds; but at present resident
gentry were entirely lacking. There was, however, a shooting-lodge, at the
head of a wild ravine up toward the hills, to which the aristocracy resorted
in the season; and I ought to mention Trinity College, on a high terrace, in
plain sight from the clachan, just over the river, its brown walls and
pinnacles rising above its environing trees, like some ancient castle. The
college clock could be plainly heard when it tolled the hours, and the
college bells made pleasant music chiming for evening service. But it was
only by sight and sound that Trinity College had any connection with the
life of the people who dwelt in its vicinity; for while they were strenuous
Presbyterians, the school was strictly Episcopal, and the pupils all came
from a distance. The
low stone houses of the clachan were built in two parallel lines. One row
fronted on east and west highway. The other was behind the first, up the
hill a few rods. The homes on the foremost row were just enough removed from
the road to give space before each for a narrow plot of earth that the
householders dug over with every return of spring and set out to flowers.
Rose bushes in abundance clambered up about the windows and doorways, and
several of the cottages had a pair of ornamental yew trees so trimmed and
trained as to arch the gate in the stone wall or picket fence which
separated the flower-plots from the street. The people took great pride in
their dooryard plants, and in all such adjuncts of the house-fronts as were
constantly in the eyes of the critical public. The flowers were more
especially the care of the women, but it was not uncommon to find the
children and the men working among them; and there was "Auld Robbie Rober'
soil," now over eighty and living all alone, who kept the flower-beds that
bordered his front walk as tidy as anybody. I stopped to speak with Auld
Robbie one day while he was in his garden, pulling some grass out of a bunch
of columbines—"Auld ladies' mutches" (caps), he called them. He was glad to
tell me about his plants and blossoms, and when I started to go he picked a
rose and presented it to me, first carefully removing all the leaves from
the stem, that its beauty might be the more apparent.
The houses on the back row of the clachan were
but little exposed to public view, and the approaches to them were often
carelessly unkempt. The neat paths and flower-beds characteristic of the
fronts of the more prominent row were here lacking. Grime and disorder had
their own way. Perhaps this was because these houses had no back doors; for
their rear walls bordered a little lane and were wholly blank, save for now
and then a diminutive window. Some place for tubs, old rags, and rubbish was
a necessity, and as the front door was the only entrance, odds and ends
naturally gathered there.
Between the two rows of houses the land was
checkered with little square gardens, and I found these at the time of my
arrival crowded full of green, newly started vegetables. In some convenient
nook of the gardens, next the hedges that enclosed them, was often a hive or
two of bees. It was swarming-time, and almost any warm midday an incipient
migration was liable to be discovered. Immediately arose a great commotion
of noise and shoutings intended to distract the bees; and there was an
excited running hither and thither to borrow a hive and get a certain
ancient of the village, who was a bee expert, to help settle the swarm in
its new home. This bee
expert, who was commonly spoken of as "The Auld Lad," comes hobbling into
the garden where the bees, supposedly by virtue of the racket made, have
delayed their flight and suspended themselves in a brown branch on a
gooseberry bush or some other garden shrub. All the women and children of
the vicinity gather at a safe distance and look on while the Auld Lad with
apparent unconcern sets some stools covered with white cloths near the
swarm. Then he puts the hive on the cloths and brushes the bees into it as
if they were so much chaff. His face is unprotected and his hands bare, and
the crowd regard him as a sort of wizard in his dealings with the hot-handed
insects; but he says it is nothing - bees do not care to sting at such a
time. Drumtochty had
two shops. Each occupied one room in the owner's dwelling. The post-office
was in the larger shop, but about all that was needful for official purposes
was a desk, as the mail was delivered at the houses twice a day. Any
community in Britain that receives an average of fifty letters a week is
entitled to free delivery, and the people of the Drumtochty district were
not so few or seclusive but that they did much more postal business than
this minimum. The chief daily mail arrived at twelve, when a stout,
heavy-shoed man in uniform would come tramping in from the west with a brown
bag strapped over his shoulder and a cane in his hand. He enters the
post-office and the mail is emptied from his bag and sorted on the little
counter. The postmaster and all his family join in this task, and it is soon
finished, and "Posty" with a new load goes trudging in his steady swing down
the road. At the same time the postmaster's daughter shoulders a smaller
bag, dons her straw hat, and starts out to distribute the mail through the
clachan and for a mile and a half west among the farmers.
The sign over the door of the second of the
village shops read thus "R. Wallace, General Grocer, licensed to sell tea,
tobacco, and snuff." The room in which these articles, together with
"sweeties" and other small wares, were sold was tiny and much crowded. Near
the door was a little counter with a pair of scales on it, and behind this
counter presided Mrs. Wallace, the proprietor of the shop. She was a short,
uneasy- looking body with a sharp tongue, and a long story of trials and
wrongs and complaints which she retailed with the goods from her shelves to
every customer. She had a remarkable propensity for keeping in hostilities
with her neighbors, but always felt herself to be the innocent and injured
party; and to any person who would listen she discoursed endlessly on
others' blackness and her own immaculateness. In fact, these wordy
outpourings made it so difficult for a customer to get away that many of the
villagers avoided her shop altogether.
Until within a few years she and her husband had
kept the village inn. They were turned out, according to her story, through
a very wicked series of plottings, deceptions, and broken promises. Her
husband's brothers were the chief villains in the affair, and it was
understood that she lay awake nights hating them. The two dissenting
ministers of the village were also objects of her antipathy. Both in
preaching and in practice they were opposed to the use of spirits as a
beverage, and the things they had said about those who sold intoxicants were
not at all to the liking of the lady of the shop. "They're a'ways meddlin',"
she declared in tones full of venom, "and they'll preclaim frae the poopit
aboot the weekedness o' the public (the grog shop) ; but I say, dinna they
ken that in the Bible the publicans are aye ca'ed much better than the
sinners?" The public
house of the clachan was on the back row. At noon, in the evening, and on
holidays, there were many loiterers in its neighborhood, and the sound of
boisterous laughing or singing was often heard from the taproom.
Occasionally the merriment was increased and encouraged by the drone of a
bagpipe. The inn stood near a narrow byway which connected the front row of
the village with the back, and down this byway, drunken men frequently came
staggering after too freely partaking of the wares of the publican.
Sometimes a man would be so overcome when he reached the main road that he
would throw himself down on the grass that bordered the wheel tracks and lie
there for hours in tipsy stupor, while the rest of us who travelled that way
passed by on the other side like the priest and Levite of old. These inert
figures were most often stretched on the turf near the outskirts of the
clachan, with the "U. P." (United Presbyterian) kirk looking gloomily down
from just over the hedge.
The local "polls" had headquarters a mile down
the road, and a lone policeman was often in the village, but he never
interfered with a drunken man as long as he was moderately peaceable. If a
man fell by the wayside, the polis let him lie there.
The U. P. Church was at the end of the front row
of the village, and immediately behind it was the Free Kirk, at the end of
the back row. Both were plain, small edifices of stone. The U. P. was
entirely without ornament, but the Free had a tiny porch at the entrance,
and up aloft on the peak was perched a little cupola with a bell in it,
while at the rear of the edifice was a vestry. The diminutive size of this
vestry made it seem as if it had been built for a joke. Here is Ian
Maclaren's realistic description of it from "Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush".
"The Free Kirk people were very proud of their
vestry because it was reasonably supposed to be the smallest in Scotland. It
was eight feet by eight, and consisted largely of two doors and a fireplace.
Lockers on either side of the mantelpiece contained the church library,
which abounded in the lives of the Scottish worthies, and was never lightly
disturbed. Where there was neither grate nor door, a narrow board ran along
the wall, on which it was a point of honor to seat the twelve deacons, who
met once a month to raise the sustentation fund. Seating the court was a
work of art, and could only be achieved by the repression of the smaller
men, who looked out from the loopholes of retreat, the projection of bigger
men, on to their neighbors' knees. Netherton was always the twelfth man to
arrive, and nothing could be done till he was safely settled. Only some six
inches were reserved at the end of the bench, and he was a full sitter, but
he had discovered a trick of sitting sideways and screwing his leg against
the opposite wall, that secured the court as well as himself in their
places, on the principle of a compressed spring. When this operation was
completed, Burnbrae used to say to the minister, who sat in the middle on a
cane chair before the tiniest of tables -
"We're fine and comfortable noo, Moderator, and
ye can begin business as sune as ye like.'"
Ian Maclaren, or, to use his real name, the Rev.
John Watson, was the minister of the Free Kirk in early life and lived in
the adjoining manse, a substantial and pleasant house that in its situation
is uncommonly favored ; for it turns its back to the village and looks down
on a sweet little deli through which rambles a clear, pebbly brook. The view
from the manse is extensive, and to the north the hills sweep up finely to
dim ranges of the Grampians dreaming in the distance.
The Drumtochty folk esteemed Dr. Watson a very
clever man, but they did not care much for his writings, aside from the
interest stirred by their purely local favor. His descriptions of character,
and the humor and the pathos, were largely lost on them. When the "Brier
Bush" stories first appeared the U. P. minister in his delight over them
read one of the most laughter- provoking chapters at a meeting of his
elders. But the elders were perfectly imperturbable, and sat unmoved to the
end. The minister did not repeat the experiment.
The inhabitants saw nothing of story interest
about the region or about themselves; and if truth be told, any visitor who
goes there expecting something extraordinary will be disappointed.
Surrounding nature is by no means especially picturesque or beautiful, and
life runs the usual course of labor, gossip, and small happenings. It is the
author's skill that transforms all this in the books and makes ideal and
heroic much that in the reality seems dull and commonplace to the uninspired
observer. One book
character of whom I often heard was Dr. Leitch, who, a good deal modified,
is the lovable Dr. Maclure of the "Brier Bush." He had been dead now a score
of years, and I saw his grave among the others that huddled about the gray
walls of the Established Kirk in the little parish burying-ground. But the
doctor was never any hero to the Drumtochty folk. Their view was quite
disparaging. He was a picturesque figure, awkward and rudely clad, and his
professional methods were as crude as his outward appearance. Still he was a
fairly good doctor when you caught him sober. It was proverbial in
Drumtochty that he was all right if his services were asked when, mounted on
his white horse, he was riding east; but when he was returning west he was
sure to have visited the public and was worse than no doctor at all. Often,
on his way home, he was so exuberant with the "mountain dew" he had imbibed
that he rode along like a mad man, swinging his hat on his stick and
singing, "Scots wha ha'e wi' Wallace bled," at the top of his voice.
Of all the people who figure in Dr. Watson's
narratives perhaps the one who was copied most faithfully from life is the
guard of the Kildrummie train. Kildrummie, six miles distant from Drumtochty,
is the nearest railway town. A short branch line extends to it from the main
route that connects Perth with Crieff, and a single train runs back and
forth between the town and the junction. This is pulled by a superannuated
little engine which is said to sometimes fail on the up grade so that the
passengers have to get out and push. The guard, or conductor, as we would
call him, is the Peter Bruce of the "Brier Bush" stories to perfection, and
every reader of the tales who journeys to Drumtochty recognizes him at once
and always calls him Peter, entirely independent of the fact that his real
name is "Sandy" Walker. It was a pleasure to watch this gray little old man,
he was so bustling and good-natured, and his eyes were so full of twinkle.
He looked after the welfare of the passengers as attentively as if they were
his children, and it seemed to come natural for him to get acquainted with
all strangers and to find out their business the first time they rode on his
train. He always spoke
as if he did not relish the notoriety the books brought him, yet I fancy his
protests were mainly bluff. Probably it will be a long time before he sues
Dr. Watson for "defamation of character," as he hinted was his intention. He
did his best to correct romance by a relation of the actual circumstances.
"Oh, I ken Watson fine! " he said, "but thae
books are two-thirds lees. The Drumtochty men were aye a drunken lot. It's
a' very true aboot their stannin' aroon' on the Junction platform, but it
wasna for the clatter that Watson tells aboot - it was because they was too
drunk to know enough to get on the train. Mony's the time they had to be put
on - pushed into their places like cattle, or lifted like bags o' grain."
No doubt Peter's trials with the stubborn farmers of the uplands made him
take an extreme view of their failings; but it was true that the Drumtochty
folk were addicted to liquor beyond anything I am familiar with in rural
America. Nearly all the farmers drank in moderation, and even a church elder
could stagger after a visit to Perth without losing caste.
Yet whatever their lacks, past or present, one
would have to travel far to find people more kindly and whole-souled. They
make hospitality a fine art, and if you asked a favor, even of some old
farmer in garments that would shame a scarecrow, it was sure to be granted
with a courtesy that won your affection on the spot. Another attraction
which the Drunitochtians possessed in common with all the Scotch was their
peculiar patois. The burr was always present, and they never failed to roll
their r's, while a ch was sounded low in the throat in a way that made you
wonder enviously how the children had ever caught the knack of pronouncing
it. When reference was made to anything diminutive the ending ie or y was
commonly added, and the word thus softened and caressed was very pleasant to
the ear, and a decided improvement, I thought, over plain English. The only
time I had any doubts about this extra syllable was when a woman spoke of
her "Mary's little gravy," not meaning any portion of the family bill of
fare, but the spot in the burial-place where lay a child she had lost.
Perth was the commercial centre of the district,
and business or pleasure, or more likely a combination of the two, took most
of the people of Drumtochty there very frequently. The Kildrummie train was
not the only public conveyance thither. Twice a week a short omnibus, or
"brake" as it was called, made the journey, starting from Drunitochty in the
early morning and returning the same evening. The round trip was twenty-two
miles. It was not as tiresome as one might fancy—at least that was my
experience on the only occasion I took advantage of the vehicle. I recall
the return journey with most interest. The brake stood by the curbing on
Perth's chief street ready to start when I climbed in. A moment later the
driver came out from a near public, mounted to his seat and off we went.
But we had not gone far when a small boy in a
tradesman's apron came shouting along the Street after us with a great
bundle in his arms. Other boys, nearer, took up the cry, and our driver
became cognizant of the hubbub and halted until the lad came panting to the
wagon side and passed up his bundle. Again we started, and again we were
stopped almost immediately by a woman, who hailed us from the sidewalk. She
climbed in, but pretty soon said she was in the wrong brake, and had the
driver let her out. The horses had just begun to trot once more when we
heard a halloo in the far distance behind, and saw two women and a man
hastening in our pursuit, all three laden with a great variety of parcels.
We waited for them and they squeezed in, stowed what parcels they could
under the seats, and handed the surplus to the driver to be packed away in
front. Some of the passengers were in danger of finding their sittings
cramped, but when the driver questioned them they always said they were
fixed "fine," and everybody tried to make everybody else as comfortable as
possible. Thus we
jogged on up and down the hills until we began to near our destination.
Every now and then in this part of our journey one or more of the passengers
would call to the driver, and he would pull in his horses and roll down from
his seat to help them in alighting. This done, and the bundles handed out,
he said, "Good nicht, and thank you kindly," and we were off once more.
Often people on the watch would run out from wayside houses to get parcels
brought by the driver or to meet friends, and sometimes a lone boy would be
in waiting at the entrance to a lane that led away to a farmhouse. In the
village itself there was quite a bustle of unloading, with half the
inhabitants loitering in home doorways, or on the sidewalk, watching
proceedings.
During my stay in Drumtochty hardly a day passed
in which I did not get out for a walk, and I gradually explored all the
region within tramping distance. became familiar with the windings of the
Tochtv, as the river in hollow was called, and knew where it was swift and
Stony, and where it was quiet and deep. I followed up the side ravines
through damp woods and open fields. I climbed ragged, rocky gorges where
were constant waterfalls sliding into dark pools ideal lurking-places for
the wary trout. I acquired the names of all the burns and of several lesser
rivulets that the natives called burnies. It did not take me long to learn
the village with its front row and back row, and its three or four narrow
lanes, nor the main road for a number of miles east and west; but the byways
and field paths, the farms and the outlying pasture lands, were not as
easily conquered. I
often went up in the evening to the edge of a moor, a half-mile back on
strath. There I would linger till after sundown. This upland was perfectly
treeless and stretched away in boggy level to some low hills far off in
west. Occasional sheep picking about gave almost the only hint that the land
was of any human use. Once I saw five brown deer grazing in the distance,
but usually, except for the sheep, I had no company save the peewits and
whaups (curlews) and other muirfowl which screamed and flapped about in the
twilight, making great ado over my presence.
The whaups were strange, large birds with long,
bent bills and a cry that was particuIarly harsh and wild, and the notes of
all the muirfowl were uniformly forlorn and complaining. They were creatures
of the barren wastes, and the sombreness of their surroundings had
apparently driven out all music.
A crooked, faintly marked path crossed the muir
to some farms in a glen on its farther side, and in the wettest places were
steppingstones to make the narrow footway more passable. It was not a path
for a stranger to undertake, and at night it was dangerous even for one
familiar with it ; for the trail was so slight it was easily lost, and one
might anywhere stumble into the old peat holes with their dark, treacherous
pools lying like traps in waiting, thorny tangles of whins (furze) were
frequent, still yellow with rusty remnants of their spring blossoms. Similar
tangles of broom were also common and seemingly were hardly different from
the whins until you observed closely, when you saw that the broom was
thornless, its growth looser and its flowers of a fresher yellow. The
predominant plant on the muir was the heather. Much of the land was matted
out of sight by the wiry little bushes, and it was these gave the landscape
its predominant tone of dusky olive. Mingled with the common heather or
"ling" was the hell heather, already in bloom and making brave attempts to
brighten the sombre pasturage with its splashes of pink and red.
Flowers were abundant everywhere in Drumtochty, and I
always returned from my walks with my hands full. I filled every vase in the
shoemaker's house, much to the perturbation of my landlady, who thought a
fancy for wild flowers very queer taste. If she had followed the promptings
of her own sense of fitness, she would have thrown my untamed nosegays all
out at the back door, and put stiff" bouquets of garden flowers in their
place. Among the rest of my gatherings I picked occasional sweet-odored wild
hyacinths and the shy moor-violets. In favored places by the roadside I
found ladies' delights, and along the stone walls tall, gaudy foxgloves and
the humble "craws'-taes" and the delicate eyebright, or "cats'-een," as the
children called it. Bordering the ditches and marshy hollows the
forget-me-nots grew freely, sometimes making a blue mass that at a little
distance was easily mistaken for a bit of quiet water reflecting the sky.
The neglected ravines were gay with wild roses, some white, some red, and
others of varying tints of pink; and in the same ravines a little later the
straw-colored honeysuckle flowers tiptoed out from their green chambers and
looked at their reflections in the streams they overhung.
One of the diversions of my walks was the glimpses I was
sure to catch of the rabbits, or "moppies," to use the language of the
Scotch children. They fed on
the edges of the woods and fields, and when they heard my
footsteps, up they sat on their haunches, all alert to interrogate the
nature and intents of the intruder, and then they went bobbing away
in great terror to their holes in the banks along the hedges. They were such
gentle, domestic little creatures, with their sensitive ears and stubby
tails, and had such a soft, twinkling way of flying to cover when they took
fright, that I always welcomed encounters with them, no matter how frequent.
Gulls were common at this season in the Drumtochty
neighborhood, for it was their nesting time, and they had come inland to
breed. They made their homes by hundreds in the reeds at the borders of a
shallow pond a few miles up the valley. I saw their white wings flipping
about at all hours of' the day, and noticed them frequently feeding with
"craws" in the newly ploughed fields. I often heard the skylarks singing in
their aerial flights, and there were great numbers of other song-birds, many
of them tame almost to the point of sociability. Their companionableness was
evidenced most clearly by the way they would hop along the roadway and the
hedges in my vicinity, and by their approaching to within arm's-length when
I sat down in a woodland coppice or among the alders that fringed a
streamside.
I perhaps ought to say before leaving this subject
that my walks were not always
an unmixed pleasure. There were times when the midges attacked me, and it
was astonishing that such tiny creatures could be so irritating — "awfu'
wild little things" my landlady called them. They were so persistent and so
hard to catch, and their bites were so discomforting, that I concluded I
would rather take my chances among our American mosquitoes. But the midges
had one virtue the mosquitoes have not — they confined their operations to
out-of-doors. There was the more reason for thankfulness in this because the
houses usually furnished other creatures to battle with.
Among other places to which I was attracted in my rambles
was Trinity College, across the Tochty. It has a noble square of buildings,
and looks as if it might have been transplanted from Cambridge or Oxford. To
it come yearly several hundred sons of the gentry from all over the kingdom
to prepare there for the universities. Their ages vary from eight to fifteen
years, and to such youngsters the immediate surroundings of the college
were, I thought, particularly attractive. The grounds themselves included
wide sweeps of lawn that gave ample opportunities for games, and there was a
shooting-range, and there were swimming holes conveniently near in the
Tochty, while the neighboring hills and dales, with their patches of
woodland, their moors and trout brooks, offered many varied pleasures.
In what I saw of the college interior I was most impressed
by an apartment set full of ancient battered desks that looked as if they
had been suffering at the hands of youthful savages of the schoolroom from
time immemorial. They were in truth so dark and grim as to be more
suggestive of a penal institution than a modern school; yet both students
and faculty are very proud of these desks. They take pains to show them to
all visitors, and call attention to the fact that there are very few schools
in Britain that can boast of anything older or more defaced by accumulated
scratch-ings and carvings. The desks were heavy, rudely made affairs,
standing back to back. On top rose a series of bookshelves which apparently
separated the boy on one side from the lad who sat facing him on the other
side very effectively. But closer observation showed that the boys always
kept a friendly hole cut through the partition. In decided contrast with the
desks were the modern electric lights with which the room was fitted. Pride
in antiquity did not go to the length of studying by candle-light.
The students in their dress were quite unlike the local
inhabitants of the district. On week days they went about hatless in all
sorts of weather, and wore a very light costume that left the knees bare. In
winter, too, hatless heads and bare knees were still the fashion, and frost
and falling snow made no difference.
The boys discarded head-coverings to promote the growth of
their hair, and the scantiness of their other apparel was imagined to assist
them in acquiring an athletic toughness. But on Sundays there was a change.
Then they wore chimney-pot hats and blue suits, with long trousers and Eton
jackets, and they looked like grown men boiled down.
My home while in Drumtochty was, as I have mentioned, at
the shoemaker's. The house was one of several joining walls in the front row
of the village. It had four rooms. Of these I had the parlor and bedroom,
while the shoemaker, with his wife and two children, occupied the kitchen
and scullery. In a corner of the kitchen was a bed, and by the fireplace was
a great, wide chair that could be opened out and made into a sort of crib.
This chair-crib was pushed up beside the bed every night, for the use of the
little girl, Cathie. Jamie, the boy, slept next door, at his grandmother's.
All the humbler village homes were like the shoemaker's,
in having one or more beds in the kitchen. Often the bedsteads were simple
modern frameworks of iron, but in many instances they were old-fashioned
box-beds, more like cupboards or closets than beds. But the main feature of
a kitchen was always a black fireplace, its lower half filled across by a
"grate." This grate consisted of an oven on the right hand,
and a tank for hot water on the left, between
which was an open space for the fire with bars across the front. Most of the
cooking was done on griddles and in pots that were either set on the coals
or hung over the blaze from the crane. To start the fire, dry twigs of
broom, cut on the near braes (hillsides), were first put on, then a few
sticks of kindling-wood added, and on top of all, some of the great lumps of
soft coal that are used nearly everywhere in Britain. The broom, when it was
touched off, made a very brisk and pleasant crackling, and the fire itself,
as long as it burned, lent to the most commonplace apartment a relieving
touch of cheerfulness. I greatly enjoyed my parlor fire, and on days of
driving rain and chilling winds, often sat long before it, watching the
dancing and beckoning of the rosy sprites released from the prisoning coals.
At the approach of mealtime my landlady would come in, put
a white spread over the centre table, and set forth various dishes from the
parlor cupboard. Then she brought from the kitchen the food she had
prepared. I fared simply, yet always had what was good, and plenty of it. I
liked to eat real Scotch foods, and I had bannocks and scones at every meal,
and pancakes and kail-broth not unfrequently. Breakfast invariably began
with a soup-plate full of the coarse oatmeal of the region, but I drew the
line at
eating it without sugar, though my landlady assured me that the only proper
way to eat it was with milk only. Nor could I quite reconcile myself to the
Scotch butter. It has an individuality of its own, and when I first tried it
I had the notion I was eating some new sort of cheese. But the trouble was
that the butter was unsalted. The Scotch prefer it so, and even at
fashionable hotels fresh butter is set before you, unless you request
something different.
My meals at the shoemaker's were served very tidily, but
this was not typical of the family meals in the other part of the house. I
suppose the kitchen and little room behind it, known as the scullery, had to
serve too many purposes to be very neat. They were crowded and disorderly,
and it was a mystery how the housewife managed to get through all her work
without coming to grief. The family had an exceedingly plain bill of fare,
and they were very economical in the use of dishes. They rarely, if ever,
ate together, but each one sat down when he or she found it convenient. The
few eatables that made a meal were always close at hand, and it took only a
moment to put them on the table. Cathie was the last to eat in the morning.
She lay abed till after eight, and when she did get up she breakfasted in
her nightgown. With her knees on a chair and her elbows on the bare boards
of the kitchen table the towsled little girl
would finish her plate of porridge and call
out, "Maw, got my tea ready?"
She had to have tea with every meal, but her mother took
care it should be very weak. After breakfast followed dressing and making
ready for school, and then a mate would come to the door and both little
girls would walk away up the road, hand in hand, each with a dinner bag
strapped over her shoulder. In the home doorway stood Cathie's mother and
watched the bairns till an intervening hedge hid them from sight.
The shoemaker ate with his hat on unless the occasion was
one of those special times when company was present and the kitchen table
had been made imposing with a white spread. But there was nothing peculiar
about his keeping on his head-covering. Every Scot wears his "bonnet" in his
own house. It is a sign that he is at home and not visiting. Some say the
cap is the first thing he puts on when he gets out of bed in the morning and
the last he takes off at night; and there are Scotch workmen in America who,
having eaten supper bareheaded out of deference to the customs of the land
of their adoption, will get their caps and wear them the rest of the
evening, even if they stay indoors until they retire.
The scullery at my boarding-place was a nondescript room
with many shelves along the walls and numbers of tubs, kettles, and odds and
ends about the floor.
The back door was here, and just outside were
pails to receive the refuse and dirty water of the household. These pails
were carried up into the garden and emptied only when necessity compelled.
The kitchen was hardly less generously supplied with
shelves and cupboards than the scullery. Prominent among these was the
dresser, or "wall of crockery," opposite the fireplace. The lines of plates
and cups and other decorated ware on the dresser, and the row of mugs
pendent along a near beam, were kept in shining order if none of the other
household furnishings were. I think the wall of crockery, the stiff best
room, and the little patch of flowers at the front door were the three chief
points of pride in most cottage homes.
The gardens between the two village rows were planted to
tatties (potatoes), kail, cabbages, onions, peas, etc. In a sunny corner
would be a bunch of enormous rhubarb with stems as thick as one's wrist and
leaves a yard broad. Small fruits were represented by gooseberries,
currants, strawberries, and "rasps." Often there was a cherry tree or two,
and, more rarely, an apple tree. The most notable Drumtochty apple tree
stood in the midst of the manse garden next the Free Kirk. This was a
stunted, shrublike tree pruned down to about the height of a man. A record
of its apples was carefully kept, and the minister was willing
to take his oath it had produced as many as
143 in a single season.
The shoemaker and his wife often worked together of an
evening in their home garden. Cathie worked with them too, though her
energies were mostly given to setting out in a neglected corner that she
called her own various weeds and grasses that she had pulled up. Cathie was
aged five. She was plump, red-cheeked, and good-natured, but with strangers
was so. shy she hardly let out a word, and she would drop her head the
moment she caught any one looking at her. Among her companions or alone she
was lively enough, and her tongue was capable of keeping on the trot all day
long. Often she entertained herself by singing, and on a rainy day she would
very likely play circus in the kitchen by the hour. She had seen a show at
some time, and had taken a fancy to the tight-rope lady. So she would
imagine herself in a spangled dress, lay a narrow board across two chairs
and dance on that with an old cane for a balancing stick. She at first
begged for a rope to tie between the bedstead and the table, but her mother
thought it best she should begin more humbly. Occasionally, when another
little girl came in on a dull day, the two would play the dambrod
(checkers); but Cathie was not clever at that, and after she had been beaten
two or three times her opponent would say to her, "I'll hae to tak' aff yer
heid an'
pit on a neep" (turnip), and then Cathie would refuse to
play any more.
Drumtochty and the country for miles round about was owned
by the Earl of Mansfield. He was one of the richest of Scotch landed
proprietors, and his residence was at Scone Palace, near Perth. There was
little liking for him among his tenantry, for he showed slight interest in
their prosperity, and was quite content to see the farms degenerate into
grazing moorland; and such was his partisanship for the Established Kirk, of
which he was a supporting pillar, that he discriminated against dissenting
tenants — at least this was common report. But the clachan on the strath,
although it belonged to the Earl, was not wholly in his power. It was built
on land leased for a term of ninety-nine years, and about a quarter of this
time was still unexpired. Houses and churches, both, were built by the
people, but all would be the Earl of Mansfield's unconditionally in
twenty-six years. Nevertheless, there was no fear of any special severity;
for, whatever might be a landlord's personal pleasure, he would not dare go
against the public sentiment of the nation, and the dissenters will continue
to have their kirks and their ministers.
The district had become the property of the Earl
comparatively recently. For many generations previous it had been the domain
of the Lairds of Logie,
whose ancient home still
stands about a mile east of the village, not far from the Auld Kirk. In the
early part of the last century Logie House had been a fine mansion with
beautiful grounds surrounding. Now the place has gone to decay, and the
great mansion is unoccupied save by an old woman and her daughter, who have
two rooms in the second story. It is in a retired spot well back from the
main road, in its old-time park, and the quiet is such that the wild rabbits
feed fearlessly in the grassy roadway right before the grand front door. If
you go inside you are shown through many lofty rooms, with wall and ceilings
bare and stained, their frescoing and marble fireplaces cracked, and their
high windows staring curtainless out on the trees and shrubbery of the park.
Back of Logie House is a still more ancient residence of
the Lairds of the district, larger and much more ruinous. The roof is gone,
the upper floors have fallen, the walls are crumbling; and grasses, rank
weeds, bushes, and even good-sized trees grow in the old halls. I explored a
secret hiding-place in a tower, where a winding stair crept up behind what
had been a china closet, to a black pocket of a chamber above, and I went
down into the gloomy passages and vaulted rooms of the cellar. Some of these
underground rooms had grated windows, and were so dismally dark and damp
that they were exact counterparts of the traditional dungeon; and the whole ruin was enchanting in
its suggestion of mysteries, ghosts, and the rough fighting days of
centuries ago.
Logie House was perched high on a hill slope that
commanded a long view down the winding valley of the Tochty. In the wooded
depths of the hollow could be caught glints of the stream, and on a quiet
day you heard its far-off murmur. A footpath threaded through the woodland
down the valley, most of the way keeping high up on the edge of a
precipitous bank, with the river a hundred feet or so below. The trees along
this path were very fine. They grew clean and large and tall — firs,
larches, pines, lime trees, and graceful beeches. The evergreen woods were
perhaps the most attractive of all, not so much in themselves, however, as
in the fact that no matter how thick the trees were the ground beneath was
very sure to be delicately carpeted with thin green grasses. This light
undergrowth was very pleasant to the eye, without being heavy enough to
appreciably obstruct one's footsteps. Another thing noticeable in the woods
was the absence of dead leaves on the earth. The climate is so damp they
soon mould and become a part of the soil. The effect of the dampness was
further shown by the heavy moss which grew on tree trunks, shadowed fences,
and decayed branches, and frequently was so pronounced as to be shaggy and
pendent.
In a forest dell, two miles down the path in the valley of
the Tochty, is a rough cairn of stones which marks the spot where dwelt long
ago Bessie Bell and Mary Gray of the old ballad. It was a time of plague,
and these two young women, daughters of the nobility, fled from their homes
and built a woodland hut here.
"O Bessie Bell and Mary Gray,
They war twa bonny
lasses!
They bigget a bower on yon burn-brae,
And theekit it o'er wi'
rashes."
In its seclusion they intended to live till the dangers of
contagion were past. But their lovers presently sought them out, and
unfortunately at the same time brought the plague with them. Both maids took
the disease and died. After their death the attempt was made to take their
bodies to the town. But when the bearers came to the ford in the river some
distance below, the authorities, fearful that the plague would be spread,
refused to allow them to cross. So Bessie Bell and Mary Gray were buried by
the waterside near the ford, and now a weatherworn shaft of stone enclosed
by a rusty, decrepit square of iron fence marks their grave. Close by is a
second cairn of stone, which no doubt was piled up to mark the maidens'
resting place long before the monument within the iron fence was erected.
The great trees
tower
up overhead and make the glade below very shadowy and quiet save for the
unceasing ripple of the near stream; and the day I was there the stillness
and wildness of the spot were accentuated by the appearance of a little
mouse that crept in and out of the crannies of the stone heap.
As I was loitering along the path on my way back to Logie
House I was overtaken by an old shepherd with a crook in his hands and a
collie at his heels.
"It's vera warum thae day," he remarked by way of
greeting.
The Drumtochty folk never said "Good morning," or, "Good
afternoon," but instead made some comment on the weather, declaring it was
warum, cauld, stormy, or whatever it happened to be at the moment. Their
statements did not always seem very literal. For instance, "stormy " simply
meant windy, while "rain" was a term only used to express the superlative.
The drops might be falling thick and fast, and yet a man responding to a
friend who had mentioned that it was "Shoorie like," would be apt to say,
"Ay, Tammas, but there'll no be ony rain."
A rain in Scotland means an all-day downpour. This kindly
view of the weather was further illustrated by their calling any day "fair,"
no matter how gloomily clouded the sky, so long as there was no actual
precipitation. According to the shoemaker's
wife, if
on a threatening day the water drops had descended "to the roof o' the hoose
and werena come doon to the ground yet, we wad say it was fair — fair, but a
bit dull like."
The old shepherd showed an inclination to be sociable, and
I kept on in his company. He said his age was eighty, but that he still kept
at his work and walked many miles daily. Nearly all his long life had been
spent in tramping the Drumtochty moorlands within a narrow radius of his
home. But there had been one journey to the outside world that took him as
far as the royal castle at Balmoral. He recalled this trip with peculiar
pleasure and animation. He advised me that I must not fail to see the
castle, too, and he would recommend that I should view it from a certain
hill. Seen thence he declared it did look beautiful and " stood up juist as
white and fine as a new-starched shirt."
On his visit to Balmoral the shepherd had seen a man who
was making a tour of Scotland exhibiting his prowess as an archer, "and he
was an Ameerican, like yoursel'," the shepherd explained — "a cannibal, aye,
one o' them Injun fellers."
Then he told of one of his relatives who had lived in
America and now had returned to his native Scotland, and who said that
nothing could induce him to marry an American woman. Rather than that he
would "coom awa' hame and marry a tinker (gypsy), because
thae Ameerican weemen's na strang. Their lungs gang awa' frae them."
It was the shepherd's impression that we Americans still
lived in the midst of the primeval forests, through which roamed all sorts
of savage and ravenous beasts. He made particular inquiry about our American
snakes, and said he had been told about a "sarpint" twelve feet long, and he
understood that such "sarpints" crawled into our houses and under our beds!
Conducting her Coo to Pasture
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