"Funerals and weddings
and all such things as make life a delightful pageant when people go
through it in large groups, dancing or mourning, but always holding hard
by each others' hands.'"—Miss LILLY DOUGALL.
IN this restless age when
people travel to and fro over the earth, when excursion tickets bridge
distance even for the poor among us, we forget that in olden times a
funeral, a marriage, or a christening was an occasion for a people long
parted assembling together. The rarity of these meetings helped in a
great measure to the hereditary ceremonies appertaining to these
gatherings being stringently adhered to. The reformation which put an
end to much merry-making as popish could not altogether eradicate
dancing and music from the more jovial of these meetings. Stern,
however, were the decrees of its ministers. In some Scottish
reminiscences lately published, the author speaks of a man very recently
dead, who was master of a violin and describes how attached he was to
its dulcet notes. The minister pointed to him from the pulpit and said:
" Thou art there behind the door, thou miserable man with the grey hair,
playing thine old fiddle with the cold hand without and the devil's fire
within." His family implored him to burn this violin made by a pupil of
Stradivarius. The instrument with the sweet tone was sold for ten
shillings, and the aged, bereft musician told how it grieved him so
sorely to part with it—told how in his youth he had given the best cow
in the byre for the coveted fiddle—how it spoke to him and how he loved
it. He never had heart for aught again after lie thus was forced to sell
his friend. A minister in a neighbouring isle related how, on religious
grounds, lie had broken the only fiddle in his parish.
The people, despite
preachers' admonitions, would not give up melody and dancing—indeed,
they held to the ways of their fathers the more rigidly when
conviviality was part of it, and not all the stern denunciations of the
Reformation made the music mute. Rustic merry-makings could not be
suppressed. There was Candlemas in the spring, Baal's fire in midsummer,
much music and dancing at the kirnings held when the harvest was under
thatch and rope, and on the heels of the rejoicings over garnering
summer's green into sheaves, came the eerie, cheery festival of
Hallowe'en. These feasts brought the people together, and they exchanged
the gossip of their parishes. News travelled surely, if slowly, in the
times before newspapers. However remote or isolated a neighbourhood
might be, information siltered there by means of those who paid
house-to-house visitations in a leisurely age. The beggars portioned
themselves out districts sure of a dole from hut or hall. These
mendicants were not drawn from the unemployable class, who, able-bodied
and idle, are a menace on the by-roads, and to the unprotected cottager
to-day. It was a simpler, kindlier age than this, and the vagrants of
yore were the maimed or those enfeebled by years. They were wellnigh
sure of a "piece" from every door at which they knocked. Like the monks
of Buddha in Burmah, with their wallet in place of the yellow-robed
priests' bowl, they afforded every one a chance to give or share with
the needy and be accordingly blessed for their liberality. There is no
household in Burmah but can spare some rice - no Scottish cottage but
could contribute a hit of oaten cake, for, says Henry Hall Fielding, who
has laid bare The Soul of a People, "think not a great gift is more
acceptable than a little one. You must judge by the giver's heart."
Beside the beggars who circulated news from cottage and castle, there
were also the scalds and bards who brought tidings as well as music with
them. These musical strollers earned their food and a seat by the
inglenook with the song history they told. They had for generations kept
a chronicle of the events that affected our ancestors and our country.
They told of deeds of war, of love, of revenge. " Inconsequent,
fascinating, high-handed, impossible, picturesque, these old ballads
have come to us from the childhood of the world and still speak to the
child heart in us all," writes an American authoress, prefacing some of
these versified annals of this island's story. The minstrel infirm and
old, or the boy harper, doled out anecdotes of romance and reality which
stirred the countryside as well as their repertoire of ballad
chronicles. Towns could not easily as now be reached for shopping, so
also tradesfolk in search of custom travelled. There was a tailor who,
however many wardrobes he had to fashion or mend, had at command a new
story to narrate every day. This limber-lipped man was always in request
from the art he had cultivated of embroidering a plain tale. These
stories told by the itinerant workmen beguiled the hours of toil, and
the country customers flocked to help and hearken. Not only was it the
tailors and weavers who fashioned and made up the homespun woollen
garments who sought work, or bootmakers, but craftsmen, whose skilful
hands could shape brooches and rings and other decorations, went around
seeking occupation. When a wedding was spoken of, or a christening, and
gifts were wanted, they appeared. In Perthshire there was a special
family whose well-designed brooches, inlaid by some peculiar method,
cannot be reproduced by the artificers of to-day with all their-skill
and finished tools. The cunning of the art is lost except by one family
in the North of Russia, which suggests that the Scotsmen who executed
this work had learned it, or inherited the knowledge from some common
foreign ancestry. Scotland had from primordial times been famed for its
knack of inlaying and shaping of metals into ornaments. The bracelets
the Picts left in their brochs are specimens of this to testify to their
skill, and the Romans learned from these savage inhabitants of our
northland some of their methods of work. In the Middle Ages we can
imagine what tales these travelling workmen would carry from one
merry-making to another—tales of the gifts given to bride or babe. Then
again the tailors and weavers would describe the funeral clothes they
fashioned, and perhaps hint that for all the symbols of woe my lady
ordered she would be taking, when a bare year had fled, another mate,
and the jewellers would be sent for to fashion brooches for her delight.
Every vague rumour of coming festivity, every detail of the glad or sad
gathering was conned over in these newspaperless days, so beggars and
bards were sure of a welcome, and in exchange for food and firelight
retailed hearsay.
Funerals and feasts seem
to us a curious combination, especially when we have shorn weddings of
their "breakfast," and in lieu have but "a cake and wine" banquet, but
in the era before railways, when roads were so rough and wheeled
carriages were few, when people gathered together there was much brewing
and baking for the entertainment of friends, whether the occasion of
meeting was for funeral or marriage. "Whaur hae ye been, ye drunken auld
deevil," a Scotsman was asked by his better half, and lie replied: I'm
no sure if it was a wedding or a burial, but it was a right fine
affair." The comings and the goings from this world were alike marked by
feasting and drinking. To ward off the machinations of the fairies, when
a babe was born the mother was never left alone till able to guard her
child herself. It was thought well that the first time the child left
the room it should go upstairs. Where no stairs were available the nurse
ascended a ladder or a chair. On a baby's initial walk there were cakes
carried and given from the infant to the first person encountered.
Augury was drawn as to the infant's future by the manner in which the
bairn's bread offering was received, and it was well for the child when
its "first foot" turned and walked a few steps back with the nursling or
blessed the babe. In the folk tales we read how at christenings fairies
bad and good came to ban or endow the child. In the Borders, where the
coming man had to live by raiding and fighting, his right hand was
exempt from baptism, so, unhampered by Christian forbearance, he might,
with unhallowed ferocity when he wished, revenge his losses. His cradle
lullaby was a song, the accompaniment to which suggested the ring of
foraying hoofs, for the mother in the Borderland, while she rocked her
child with his unbaptised hand, crooned of his future. "If ye live ye'll
steal a naggie," she assured him as she called down blessing on his
downy pate. She pictured to him how he would—
"Ride the country through
and through,
And bring hame mony a Carlisle coo;
Through the Lowdens o'er the border,
Weel, my baby, may ye further,
Harry the loons of the low countree,
Syne to the border hame to me."
Thus the mosstrooper's
boy grew up imbued with the idea that his life's work was to acquire
neighbouring cattle and to fight his way home from bloody forays. When
in course of time he settled down with a wife, hostages to fortune only
made him all the more anxious to add to his store, so when the
Michaelmas moon shone mellow, with his eye upon "liftable kine":-
"He buckled the bridle on
sorrel or grey,
Set foot to the stirrup, and up and away."
He heartened his comrades
with the assurance that "every fat steer on the haughs of the Rule shall
be dower for a daughter you've left on the Tweed."
The unbaptised hand
spared not any antagonistic man, or left a marketable beast in a bvre on
the wrong side of the marches. If by some mischance he died in his bed,
great were the preparations made to prepare the funeral-baked meats,
whether the rover lived in peel, tower, or farm. Mourning used, indeed,
to use a Scotticism, be veritably "the Blacks." The Highlander wore his
insignia of sorrow on his sleeve, as he could not alter his uniform of
tartan. In the lowlands, when there was "dule and woe on the Border,"
not only did the rich and well-to-do families when bereft drape
themselves in the garb of sorrow, but the very hangings of the furniture
were also swathed in jetty darkness. In inventories of a few centuries
ago "ane blake bed" was a certain part of the furnishings of a well-to-
do house, and its coverlet was also of pitchy hue. In some memoirs
recently published, it was mentioned that a young widow—a lass still in
her teens—had been so indecorous as to complain of the sombre coverlet
and hangings of the four-poster in her room, and she shocked her late
husband's relatives when she begged she might at least have a white
counterpane.
If a man died not by the
will of God but by the hand of man, it was firmly believed that the
corpse bled if touched by the person who had done the deed. When murder
was suspected, each neighbour as they came to the burial put his finger
oil dead man, and so strongly was this test believed in that there are
many cases recorded in which people have been summoned to stand their
trial because of the dead thus bearing witness, and the fact was used as
evidence against them.
We all know the Heart of
Midlothian and its heroine, Effie Deans. Her prototype was a west
country lass, Isobel Walker. A flood on time river Cluden three days
before Hallowe'en left on a sandbank the body of a dead child.
Suppositions pointed to the fact that this gruesome piece of jetsom was
the baby of the unfortunate Isobel. It was laid on her knee to see if it
would reveal the tale of its brief life and bleed at her touch. It is a
painfully grim picture this of the young, guilty girl and the unwelcome
child she had strangled and thrown into the river, face to face once
more.
With the Protestant era
the Catholic manner of watching the corpse till burial did not become,
as a rule, obsolete. Neighbours were always ready to sit by the dead
when relatives were weary, and this usage resulted in the fostering of
many superstitions and ghostly stories. All domestic animals were put
out of the house on a death occurring, for it was believed if a dog or
cat leapt over the corpse it might absorb his spirit and become an
uncanny companion to the living, a drawback to the ascension of the soul
of the dead. The mirror in the room was covered, the clock stopped and a
plate of salt laid on the breast, ostensibly to prevent the body
swelling, but oftener as a preventive against the devil disturbing the
unburied. In some districts sin- eaters came and ate the plate of salt
and of bread placed on the corpse, and so relieved the dead of sins
which were hovering round, retarding the spirit from reaching the higher
plane. Omens were drawn as to coming deaths from the manner the funeral
party left the house, whether they straggled or walked all too quickly.
It was long believed the spirit of the last person buried in a
churchyard had to wait there to guard against unchristened babes or
suicides being laid in the "God's acre." Friends, to save their dead
being the one thus ordained to watch the consecrated precincts, when
there were to be two funerals on one day, made an unseemly rush to be
first, leaving no time for the party to add stones to the cairns where
the coffin rested on its last journey. A bride's first duty when she
settled in her new home was to spin her own and her gudeman's
grave-clothes--a fashion which brought vividly before her the fact that
amid diversions and rejoicings it was well to be prepared for the
inevitable end.
Of course there were a
heap of traditionary usages lingering and surrounding a wedding. The
bride studied the weather, anxious for fair skies and sunshine, for they
were held to be tokens of happiness. She feared when cooking her last
meal in her old home lest a clot of soot should fall, for that foretold
ill, and cautiously she dried the dishes on her marriage morning, for if
she broke one it also was a bad augury. In the brave days of old, ladies
married when their parents bade them. It not unfrequently happened that
many a lover knew the lass preferred him to the one chosen by father or
mother, so they copied Jock o' Hazeldean, or Ronald Macdonald who
persuaded Leezie Lindsay to kilt her coats of green satin and fly with
him to the Highlands. A rejected but adventuring swain who had trusty
men and horses at his back could waylay the party and carry off the
bride, like Lochinvar, ere the church was reached. The bride's mother,
waiting at home to receive the newly-married pair on their return, in
these times of bold riders was never sure who her son- in-law was till
the knot was tied. Thus it became a habit for the fleet of foot among
the groomsmen to race from the church and tell the news. This was called
"running the brooze or braise." The rewarding brose became whisky
wherewith the swift runner or rider returned, proud of his prowess, to
toast as "first foot" the arriving procession. According to a custom
which the Romans taught us, the bride was lifted over the threshold of
her new home, and over her head was broken a cake. On fragments of this
cake the bridesmaids dreamed of their coming helpmate. The tongs and
poker used to be handed to the bride as a symbol she was to keep the
hearth aglow. In Berwickshire, especially by the coast where the
fishermen keep in a conservative manner to inherited use and wont, they
"creel" the bridegroom. As he enters his house with his new-made wife a
creel heavily weighted is bound on to his shoulders in such a manner he
cannot rid himself of it. His friends add to his burden by heaping it
with more stones till he is staggering with the weight. Then a knife is
given to his wife and she, amid cheers, relieves him of his cumbersome
load. This is emblematic of the assistance that a true help-mate renders
and a readiness to share one another's burdens in their way through
life.
Scotland was famed for
and fled to by eloping pairs because of the easygoingness of its laws in
regard to marriage. A simple declaration before a witness bound a couple
in the bonds of matrimony as securely as red tape did in England. A
blacksmith was as efficient as a minister. The disregard of the church
as the place to make their vows in may have arisen in Scotland from a
unique usage called handfasting, or hand in the fist marriages. This
vogue arose in early Catholic times when travelling was dangerous and
difficult, and visits from priests in outlying districts rare. A fair
was held annually in the dale where the Black and White Esk met, and
there flocked the unmarried of both sexes who sought a companion. When
they found one to their mind they were handfasted till the following
year. Then if they mutually approved of one another, a priest in course
of time when he came by gave them the Church's blessing. These
peripatetic monks were called book-in-the-bosom " priests, as they
carried a breviary and a rough register in their robes of approved and
church-sanctioned handfasters. This "on trial" marriage system seems to
have been the fashion with ladies of high degree as well as with the
Eskdale lasses and lads. Lindsay says " That James, sixth Earl of
Murray, had a son by Isabel Innes, daughter of the Laird of Innes,
Alexander Dunbar, a man of singular wit and courage. This Isabel was but
handfasted to him and deceased before the marriage." Mr. Guthrie, in Old
Scottish Customs, says, If either of the parties insisted on a
separation and a child was born during the year of trial, it was to be
taken care of by the father only, and to be ranked among his lawful
children next after his heirs. The offspring was not treated as
illegitimate, because the custom was justified being such and instituted
with a view of making way for a happy, peaceful marriage. Such was also
the power of custom, that the apprenticeship for matrimony brought no
reproach on the separated lady, and if her character was good she was
entitled to an equal match as though nothing had happened." It is said
that a desperate feud ensued between the clans Macdonald of Sleat and
Macleod of Dunvegan, owing to the former chief having availed himself of
this licence to send back the sister or daughter of the latter. Macleod
resenting the indignity observed, " That since there was no wedding
bonfire there should be one to solemnise the divorce," and he
accordingly laid waste to the territories of the Macdonalds, and they
kindled "sic a lowe" cottages and strong castles were "smoored in the
dark reek." Gretna Green on the south border, Lamberton Toll three miles
north of Tweed, just without the boundary of the changeable town of
Berwick, and Coldstream, were raced to by eloping couples, and hard by
the toll bar in each case dwelt a blacksmith. His legitimate work of
shoeing horses kept him on the spot, so the mighty man of the hammer and
forge became the recipient of the dopers' declaration. The registers of
the Lamberton Toll runaway marriages were sent to the county town of
Greenlaw, but as "Duns dings a'" and it has now succeeded Greenlaw,
there the registers abide, records of hasty marriages of long ago
suggesting flight and followers, and often doubtless there was
repentance at leisure, in many cases life-long repentance as the days of
handfasting were over.
Fairs of all kinds were
the centre of meetings and merry-makings. In the Borders also there were
the Riding of the Marches to declare the free rights of the town, such
as the Common Riding at Hawick, Selkirk, the boundaries of Berwick, etc.
These ridings, on a specified day, are still extant, shorn of their
former glory but even now maintained to uphold the peculiar tenures and
charters of liberty attached to the ceremony; and we see paragraphs from
time to time in the evening papers telling of them, with bands and flags
and holiday sightseers. The border Scots were fond of sports, with the
results that many an unpremeditated feud followed on the heels of some
peaceful gathering for games. Boasts as to their prowess led to wagers
or jealousies, and the gauntlet was thrown down. The "stout Erle of
Northumberland" vowed he'd "ding the dun deer down " on Scottish soil,
and went forth with his train to what proved to be the "woeful hunting"
of Chevy Chase, where a Percy and a Douglas died, and of twenty hundred
Scottish spears scarce "fifty-five did fly," and of fifteen hundred
English men went home but fifty-three—
"The rest in Chevey Chase
were slaine,
Under the greenwood tree."
Many another hunt with
bows and arrows handy led to fierce frays. Even a football match, with
the victors triumphant, the losers sore at heart, was a pretext for
mischief being brewed and feuds fought to the death, as in the case of
the warden of the Middle Marches in 1600, one Sir John Carmichael, who
was murdered on returning from a football match. Under the guise of a ba'
playing the men mustered in strength, and when the play was played they
indulged in a raid over the border. In the ballad of the Bonnie Earl of
Moray he not only tilted at the glove, but "he played at the ba'" and
whether that ba' belonged to golf, rackets, or football, we know not.
Likely enough he who it was fit to be a king" was good at all three.
Scotland is the cradle of the most popular of ball games—golf—which,
like the thistle that it also reared, has taken root and spread over the
world. Golf was played on Scottish links before Columbus discovered
America, and statutes were made when the centuries were barely in their
teens in regard to the " royal game," to stem its popularity, for men
were more keen in contesting a match with club and ball than learning to
aim swift and sure with weapons of war. The links lured the men from
practising at the bow butts, and the law insisted that whether the Scots
were soldiers of the king or not, they were to be ready, aye ready, to
withstand against their auld enemies the English. There were wapenshaws
regularly held. This show of weapons was to prove that the implements of
death were in order and the men competent to wield them. Edinburgh as
the capital took the lead. It had a blue blanket for a banner, which was
the first to flutter over volunteers. When it was waved shopkeepers,
artificers, and craftsmen had to lay down the yard measure, the hammer
and tools of trade, and swarm forth equipped at a moment's notice to man
the walls and bend the bow. Such good service did these counter-jumpers
and workmen do that James III. gave them a new blue banner; but the old
one is still extant to show how Edinburgh merchantmen were a
well-trained volunteer band, trained in times of peace and ready to
rally around their provost or convener. Tradition says this standard was
originally unfurled in the cause of the Holy Wars by a crusading body of
citizens of Edinburgh, and that their blue banner was the first to be
planted on the walls of Jerusalem when that city was stormed by the
Christian army under the famous Godfrey de Bouillon. James III., having
been held captive by his rebellious nobles for nine months in the Castle
of Edinburgh, was freed by the citizens of High Dunedin," who raised the
Blue Blanket, assaulted, surprised, and captured the castle. Out of
gratitude for their seasonable loyalty the king, besides granting them
certain privileges, presented them with a new ensign of blue silk, with
authority to display the same in defence of their king, country, and
their own rights when these were assailed. To keep these volunteers who
mustered under the Blue Blanket in shooting trim, golf and other games
of "ba'" were only permitted after a stipulated amount of archery had
been practised.
The love of football is
still strong in rural districts. In the village of Coldingham in
Berwickshire there used to be all match played on the moor, bachelors
versus the married men. A hole in the earth was the benedicts' boundary,
and latterly a barn door of a farm erected on the site was aimed at by
them instead. At a neighbouring village of Foulden a football match was
played on Fasten' E'en between the men of the village and their
neighbouring county men. The goals were a mill happer and the pulpit of
the kirk.
Another Scottish game
which has gone overseas to the Great Lone land is curling. It is a
social game. The laird and the mason frozen out of work meet on the rink
on a level. The skip is the best man, be he earl or convicted poacher.
Curling has so much of a language of its own and that broad Scotch, it
is not likely to be so cosmopolitan a game as "gowff."
Old ways rooted on some
fact or olden usage linger on indelible. The children of St. Andrews had
a game peculiar to their grey city by the sea, which they played,
singing to it a rhyme which told its origin—
"Marry, maidens, marry,
maidens, marry, maidens, now,
For stickit is your cardnal and sauted like a sow."
Thus in this jingle is
recalled the murder of Cardinal Beaton - his body was preserved in salt
by the conspirators during the time they held the castle against the
government forces. Children are conservative in their games and in their
unshakable preference for rhymes and plays whose origin is traceable to
some historic event, or lost in the mist of fable. Generations of boys
and girls through the centuries have danced and sung to the old rune,
King and Queen of Cantelon.
"How many miles to
Babylon?" children in pairs ask, and two others as gate-keepers whose
arms bar the way reply, "Three score and ten."
"Will we get there by
candlelight?" ask the would-be travellers.
"Yes and back again,"
assert those who act as toll-keepers.
"Open your gates and let
us through," command the intending voyagers; but this peremptory order
is not obeyed. The young rovers must be polite, for they are forbidden
to proceed until they "beck or bow," and so the expectant pilgrims
curtsey and bow.
"There's a beck—and
there's a boo," they cry, "open your gates and let us through," and they
gaily are off to visit the king and queen, and reach Babylon, for the
small explorers all of an afternoon are many of the thousand things that
children are "to reach the East and be back by candlelight is quite an
easy feat for the quick- witted small people.
One who did not forget
his childhood or the old refrain, speaking of such expeditions says—
"Our phantom voices haunt
the air
As we were still at play,
And I say hear them call and say,
How far is it to Babylon?
On we rode, the others and I,
Over the mountains blue and high!
A thousand miles we galloped fast,
And down the witches' lane we passed,
And from our steeds alighted down
Before the gates of Babylon."
The well-known lilt and
its words come back after we have wandered many a weary foot in life's
journey. With a rush of recollection of the golden days of childhood we
hear the youngsters inquiring the way to the ancient city. Who the King
and Queen of Cantelon were no one stops to ask. Children from age to age
go off to visit them singing the same words and the same melody—they
like them for old sake's sake. That has been one of the rhyming tales
that has come down from the dim pagan past for ever, like Merry-ma-tanzie,
to tinkle in our memories. We know from whence sprang—
"Willie, Willie Wastle,
Stand on my castle;
And a' the dogs o' your town
Will no drive Willie Wastle down."
On sandhill, or hearthrug
doing duty for a mound, a boy awaits the attack of the others on his
castle, and fine sport invaders and defiant custodian have till Willie
Willie Wastle is hurled from his castle. This "game" began in the big
game of war—no child-play-----when in 1651 one John Cockburn was
governor of the Castle of Hume on its high knoll, and refused to yield
to Cromwell. The defiant words children sing when in possession, the
original Willie Willie Wastle wrote in reply to the order of the
king-killer so austerely championing freedom, to surrender, but alack! a
breach by the Ironsides' artillery was made in the wall, and Cockburn
was dinged down. Little do the lads and lasses think with what a sore
heart John Cockburn, the author of Willie Wastle, stepped from his
high-seated castle, which overlooked such a fertile track of country.
Curious remnants of plays
have come down to us in the children's perennial runes. Strange
fragments of folk song the little people have thus preserved like Janet
Jo, which is still sung by children in city alley or village street.
Janet Jo, whose lover comes to "court" her, saw him not. Her parents
turn him away as she was washing. When he returns she is always
bleaching, drying, etc., and then he is told "Janet Jo is dead and
gone." A funeral follows and a wail for Janet Jo. It is a remnant of
some mayhap "owre true tale," which laid hold of the popular
imagination, and which the children treasured as you ofttimes see them
treasure little bits of broken china which their seniors have cast
forth, and which they have set up as the chief ornament of their
play-house. No new gewgaw bought at a fashionable toyshop can oust the
effete fragment from favour, and in course of time the small people's
conservative taste wins the day, for their elders come to admire even
the scrap of what had once been an treasured. |
