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Notwithstanding the
researches of Woodrow, and the more recent enlargement and excellent
annotations of Dr Burns, we are quite conscious that a volume somewhat
interesting might still be collected, of additional and traditional
atrocities, of which no written record remains, nor other save the
recollections of recollections—in other words, the
remembrance which we and a few others possess of the narratives of our
grandmothers whilst we were yet children. Our ow’n maternal grandmother
died at ninety six—we ourselves are now in our sixtieth year, so that,
deducting eight or nine years for our age previous to our taking an
interest in such concerns, we have our grandmother existing before (say)
1695, which, deducting eight years of infancy, brings us to 1703, which is
only twenty-five years posterior to the conclusion, and fifty-three to the
commencement of the atrocious twenty-eight years’ persecution. It is then
manifest, from this arithmetical computation, that our own grandmother, on
whose truthful intentions we can rely with confidence, came into contact
and conversation with those who were contemporaneous with the events and
persons she referred to. This surely is no very violent or unsafe stretch
of tradition; but, even though it were much more so, we would be disposed
to yield to it somewhat more consideration than is generally done.
Now-a-days, the pen and the press are almost the only recorders of passing
and past events and circumstances, but, in the age to which we refer, this
was not the case. The children of Israel were bound by a holy and
inviolate law to record verbally to their children, and those again
to theirs, what the Lord had done for their forefathers. And on the same
principle, and under the same comparative absence of written records, did
our grandmothers receive from their immediate predecessors the revolting
disclosures which they have handed down to us. There are here but two
links in the chain—those, namely, which connect our grandmothers with
their parents, and with us, but, had there been twenty—nay, fifty or a
hundred links—we should not, on account of the high antiquity of such a
tradition, have been disposed to dismiss it as altogether
groundless, and not implying even the slightest authority. In illustration
of this, we may adduce the facts, sufficiently well known and
authenticated, which were disclosed about thirty years ago at Burgh head,
the ultimate extent of Roman conquest in Scotland. In that promontory, now
inhabited by a scattered population, there remained, from age to age, a
tradition that a Roman well had existed on the particular spot. There
being a lack of water in the place, the inhabitants combined to have the
locality opened, with the view of disclosing so useful and essential an
element. They dug twenty, and even thirty feet downwards, but made no
disclosures, and were on the point of giving up the search, when the
father of the late Duke of Gordon happening to pass, and to ascertain
their object and their want of success, very generously supplied them with
the means of making a further excavation At last, to their no small
surprise and delight, they came to a nicely built and rounded well mouth,
with a stair downwards to the bottom, and the bronze statues of Mercury
and other heathen gods stuck into niches. This well remains to this
hour, and may be visited by the traveller along the Moray Frith, as an
indisputable and indelible evidence of the value of traditions, in ages
when almost no other means of record existed. True, such traditions are
deeply coloured and tinged by the prejudices of the age in which they
originated—allowance as to exaggeration must be made for excited feelings
and outraged opinions; but still the groundwork may in general be depended
on. The old and perhaps vulgar proverb—"There is aye SOME water
where the stirkie drowns!" applies in this case with a conclusive force,
and we may rely upon it, even from the collateral and written
evidence of parties and partisans on all sides, that nothing which mere
tradition has hinted at can exceed, in characters of genuine cruelty and
downright bloodshed and murder, those historical statements which have
reached us.
True, a writer lately
deceased—whose memory is immortal, and whose writings will survive whilst
national feelings and the vitality of high talent remain—has given us a
chivalrous and attractive character of the most in the atrocities of the
fearful time; and it is to be more than lamented—to be deplored that an
early and habitual, and ultimately constitutional, leaning to aristocratic
and chivalrous views, should have induced such a writer as Sir Walter
Scott to draw such an interesting picture of the really infamous
"Clavers"—of him who , for a piece of morning pastime, could, with his own
pistol, blow out a husband’s brains without law or trial—and that in the
presence of his wife and infant family! But the great body of historians
are on the side of truth and tradition; and the recently published, and
still publishing life by Lockhart has unfolded and will yet unfold those
leanings of the great novelist which have occasioned so lamentable a
deviation from real history.
Under the shelter, then, of
these preliminary observations, we proceed with such notices and
statements as we have heard repeated, or seen in manuscripts which have
(as we believe) never been printed. And we shall give these notices and
statements as they were given to us—surrounded by a halo of superstition,
and involving much belief, which is now, happily, or unhappily—we do not
say which—completely exploded.
"O my bairn! these were
fearful times"—(grandmother loquitur)—"ay, and atweel war they.
My own mother has again and again made my hair stand on end, and my
heart-blood run cold at her relations.
"Ye ken Auchincairn, my
bairn, and maybe, whan ye were seeking for hawks’ nests, ye hae searched
the Whitestane Cleughs. Aweel, ye maybe hae seen, or maybe no— for young
hearts and een like yours (O sirs! mine are now dim and sair!) tak little
tent o’ sic like things; but my bonny bairn, though tent it ye didna, true
it is and of verity, that, at the very bottom o’ that steep and fearfu
linn, there is a rock, a stane like a blue whinstane; and ower that stane
the water has run for years and years; and the winds and the rains of
heaven have dashed and plashed against it; but still that stane
remains—(dear me, I’m amaist greeting!)--it remains stained and spotted
wi’ bluid. And that bluid, my dear bairn, is o’ the bluid that rins in
yer ain veins—it is the bluid of William Harkness, my own faither’s
brother. Weel, and ye shall hear—for my mother used to tell me the
lang-syne stories sae aft that I can just repeat them in her ain words—Weel,
it was the month of October, and the nights were beginning to lengthen,
and the puir persecuted saints that had taen to the outside a’
simmer, and were seldom, if ever, to be seen in the inside, were
beginning to pop in again nows an’ thans, when they thought Dalyel, and
Johnston, and Clavers, and Douglas, and the rest o’ the murdering gang,
war elsewhere. Aweel, as I am telling ye, yer granduncle cam hame to his
ain brother’s house—it might be about the dawn o’ the morning, whan a’ the
house, except his brother, were sleeping, and he had got a cog o’ crap
whey on his knee, wi’ a barley scone—for glad, glad was he to get it; and
he had just finished saying the grace, and was conversing quietly like,
and in whisper, wi’ his ain brother, when what should he hear, but a rap
at the kitchen door, and a voice pouring in through the keyhole—
"‘Willie Harkness, Willie
Harkness! the Philistines are upon ye!—they are just now crossing the
Pothouseburn.’
"I trow when he heard that,
he wasna lang in clearing the closs, and takin doun the shank, straight
for the foot of the Whiteside Linn, where the cave was, in which he had
for weeks and months been concealed. It was now, ye see, the gray o’ the
morning, and things could be seen moving at some distance. Just as my
uncle was about to enter the bramble-bushes at the foot o’ the linn, he
was met by a trooper, on horseback.
"‘Stand!’ said a voice, in
accents of Satan—‘Stand, this moment, and surrender; or your life is not
worth three snuffs of a Covenanter’s mull!’
"My uncle kent weel the
consequences of standing, and of being taken captive; and ye see, my bairn,
life is sweet to us a’—sae he e’en dashed into the thicket, and in an
instant o’ time, and ere the dragoon could shoulder his musket, he was
tumbling head-foremost (but holding by the branches) towards the
bottom of Whiteside Linn. There lay my worthy uncle, breathless, and
motionless, and silent, expecting every moment that the dragoon would
dismount and secure him. However, the man o’ sin contented himsel wi’
firing several times (at random) into the linn. The last shot which was
fired, took effect on my uncle’s knee—the blood sprung from it, and my
uncle fainted. As God would have it, at this time no further pursuit was
attempted, and my uncle was lame for life. The blood still remains on the
stain, as witness against the unholy hand that shed it!—But, alas! we are
a’ erring creatures, and who knows but even a dragoon may get repentance
and find mercy? God forbid, my wee man, that we should condemn ony ane,
even a persecutor, to eternal damnation! It’s awfu—it’s fearfu!—But that’s
no a’ ye shall hear. When the trooper came up to the house, and joined his
party, he repeated what had passed, and a search was set about in the linn
for my uncle; but William had by this time crippen into his cauld,
dripping cave; over which the water spouted in a cascade, and thus
concealed him from their search; sae, after marking the blood, and almost
raving like bloodhounds, with disappointment, they tied up a servant
girl—whom they had first abused in the most unseemly and beastly manner—to
a tree, and there they left her, incapable, though she had been able, of
freeing herself. She was relieved in an hour; but never recovered either
the shame or the cruelty: she died, and her grave is in the east corner,
near the large bushy tree in Closeburn churchyard. ‘Blessed are the dead
which die in the Lord; for they rest from their labours, and their works
do follow them.’
"Muckle better, my dear,
was her fate, though seemingly a hard one, than that o’ the ungodly curate
o’ Closeburn—o’ him wha was informer against the puir persecuted remnant,
and wha, through the instrumentality o’ his spies an’ informers, had
occasioned a’ this murder an’ cruelty. Ye shall hear. He—I mean, my bairn,
the curate—had been hurlin the folk, whether they would or no, to the kirk,
for weeks, in carts and hurdles—for, oh, they liked his cauld, moral
harangues ill, and his conduct far waur. He had even got the laird to
refuse burial in the kirkyard to ony who refused to hear his fushionless
preachings. Puir Nanny Walker’s funeral (she who had been sae horribly
murdered) was to tak place on sic a day. The curate had heard o’ this, an’
he was resolved to oppose the interment. But God’s ways, my wean, are not
as our ways, nor his thoughts as ours; in his hands are the issues of life
and of death; he killeth and he maketh alive—blessed be his name, for
ever, amen! Weel, as I was telling ye, out cam the curate, raging,
running, and stamping like a madman; coming down his ain entry like a
roaring lion, an’ swearing, for he stuck at naething, that Nanny Walker’s
vile covenanting heart should never rot in Closeburn kirkyard. Aweel, when
he had just reached the kirk-stile, an’ was in the act o’ lifting up his
hand against them who were bearing the coffin into the kirkyard, what
think ye, my bairn, happened? The ungodly man, with his mouth open in
cursing, an’ his hand uplifted to strike, instantly fell down on the
flagstanes, uttered but one groan, an’ expired! Ye see, my bairn, what a
fearfu thing it is to persecute, an’ then to fall into the hands o’ an
angry an’ avenging God. Oh, may never descendant o’ mine deserve or meet
wi’ sic a fate! But there is mair to tell ye still. Just at the time when
this fearfu visitation o’ Providence took place, the family o’ Auchincairn
war a’ engaged wi’ the buik, whan in should rush wha but daft
Gibbie Galloway, wha had never spoken a sensible word in his life—for he
was a born innocent, he an’ his mither afore him? Weel, an’ to be sure,
just about this time, for they compared it afterwards, in Gibbie
stammered into the kitchen, whar they were a’ convened, an’ interrupted
the guidman’s prayer, wha happened at the time to be prayin to the Lord
for venegeance against the ungodly curate:--
"’Haud at him,’ said Gibby—‘haud
at him! he’s just at the pit-brow!’
"Ay, fearfu, sirs—thae war
awfu times!" |
