Chapter 34

cause of their new-born misery, she had. He used, from motives of economy, to keep a pig, which, when converted into bacon, was always useful in the family; and an occasional ham of the animal now and then found its way to her brother's manse, as a sort of friendly acknowledgment of the many good things received from him. One wretched pig, however--a little black thing, only a few weeks old--which her husband had purchased at a fair, was, she soon discovered, possessed by an evil spirit, that had a strange power of quitting the animal to do mischief in her dwelling, and an ability of not only rendering her fearfully unhappy, but even of getting at times into her husband. The husband himself, poor blinded man! could see nothing of all this; nor would he believe _her_, who could and did see it; nor yet could she convince him that it was decidedly his duty to get rid of the pig. She was not satisfied that she herself had a clear right to kill the creature: it was undoubtedly her husband's property, not hers; but could she only succeed in placing it in circumstances in which it might be free either to kill itself or not, and were it, in these circumstances, to destroy itself, she was sure all the better divines would acquit her of aught approaching to moral guilt in the transaction; and the relieved household would be free from both the evil spirit and the little pig. The mill-pond was situated immediately beside her dwelling: its steep sides, which were walled with stone, were unscaleable by at least little pigs; and among the aged ashes which sprang up immediately at its edge, there was one that shot out a huge bough, like a bent arm, directly over it, far beyond the stonework, so that the boys of the neighbourhood used to take their seat on it, and fish for little trout that sometimes found their way into the pond. On the projecting branch one day, when her husband's back was turned, and there was no one to see or interfere, she placed the pig. It stood for a while: there was no doubt, therefore, it _could_ stand; but, unwilling to stand any longer, it sprawled--slipped--fell--dropped into the water, in short--and ultimately, as it could not make its way up the bank, was drowned. And thus ended the pig. It would seem, however, as if the evil spirit had got into her husband instead--so extreme was his indignation at the transaction. He would accept of neither apology nor explanation; and, unable of course to live any longer under the same roof with a man so unreasonable, she took the opportunity, when he was quitting that part of the country for employment at a distance, to remain behind in her old cottage--the same in which she at that time resided. Such was the maniac's account of her quarrel with her husband; and, when listening to men chopping little familiar logic on one of the profoundest mysteries of Revelation--a mystery which, once received as an article of faith, serves to unlock many a difficulty, but which is itself wholly irreducible by the human intellect--I have been sometimes involuntarily led to think of her ingenious but not very sound argumentation on the fall of the pig. It is dangerous to attempt explaining, in the theological province, what in reality cannot be explained. Some weak abortion of the human reason is always substituted, in the attempt, for some profound mystery in the moral government of God; and men ill-grounded in the faith are led to confound the palpable abortion with the inscrutable mystery, and are injured in consequence.

I succeeded in getting a bed in the mansion-house, without, like Marsyas of old, perilling my skin; and though there was but little of interest in the immediate neighbourhood, and not much to be enjoyed within doors--for I could procure neither books nor congenial companionship--with the assistance of my pencil and sketch-book I got over my leisure hours tolerably well. My new friend Isabel would have given me as much of her conversation as I liked; for there was many a point on which she had to consult me, and many a mystery to state, and secret to communicate; but, though always interested in her company, I was also always pained, and invariably quitted her, after each lengthened _tête-à-tête_, in a state of low spirits, which I found it difficult to shake off. There seems to be something peculiarly unwholesome in the society of a strong-minded maniac; and so I contrived as much as possible--not a little, at times, to her mortification--to avoid her. For hours together, however, I have seen her perfectly sane; and, on these occasions, she used to speak much about her brother, for whom she entertained a high reverence, and gave me many anecdotes regarding him, not uninteresting in themselves, which she told remarkably well. Some of these my memory still retains. "There were two classes of men," she has said, "for whom he had a special regard--Christian men of consistent character; and men who, though they made no profession of religion, were honest in their dealings, and of kindly dispositions. And with people of this latter kind he used to have a great deal of kindly intercourse, cheerful enough at times--for he could both make a joke and take one--but which usually did his friends good in the end. So long as my father and my mother lived, he used to travel across the country once every year to pay them a visit; and he was accompanied, on one of these journeys, by one of this less religious class of his parishioners, who had, however, a great regard for him, and whom he liked, in turn, for his blunt honesty, and obliging disposition. They had baited for some time at a house in the outer skirts of my brother's parish, where there was a child to baptize, and where, I fear, Donald must have got an extra dram; for he was very argumentative all the evening after; and finding he could not agree with my brother on any one subject, he suffered him to shoot a-head for a few hundred yards, and did not again come up with him, until, in passing through a thick clump of natural wood, he found him standing, lost in thought, before a singularly-shaped tree. Donald had never seen such a strange-looking tree in all his days before. The lower part of it was twisted in and out, and backwards and forwards, like an ill-made cork-screw; while the higher shot straight upwards, direct as a line; and its taper top seemed like a finger pointing at the sky. 'Come, tell me, Donald,' said my brother, 'what you think this tree is like?' 'Indeed, I kenna, Mr. Lachlan,' replied Donald; 'but if you let me take that straight bit aff the tap o't, it will be gey an' like the _worm_ o' a whisky still.' 'But I cannot want the straight bit,' said my brother; 'the very pith and point of my comparison lies in the straight bit. One of the old fathers would perhaps have said, Donald, that that tree resembled the course of the Christian. His early progress has turns and twists in it, just like the lower part of that tree; one temptation draws him to the left--another to the right: his upward course is a crooked one; but it is an upward course for all that; for he has, like the tree, the principle of sky-directed growth within him: the disturbing influences weaken as grace strengthens, and appetite and passion decay; and so the early part of his career is not more like the warped and twisted trunk of that tree, than his latter years resemble its taper top. He shoots off heavenward in a straight line.'" Such is a specimen of the anecdotes of this poor woman. I saw her once afterwards, though for only a short time; when she told me that, though people could not understand _us_, there was meaning in both her thoughts and in mine; and some years subsequently, when I was engaged as a journeyman mason in the south of Scotland, she walked twenty miles to pay my mother a visit, and stayed with her for several days. Her death was a melancholy one. When fording the river Conon in one of her wilder moods, she was swept away by the stream and drowned, and her body cast upon the bank a day or two after.

Our work finished at this place, my master and I returned on a Saturday evening to Conon-side, where we found twenty-four workmen crowded in a rusty corn-kiln, open from gable to gable, and not above thirty feet in length. A row of rude beds, formed of undressed slabs, ran along the sides; and against one of the gables there blazed a line of fires, with what are known as masons' setting-irons, stuck into the stonework behind, for suspending over them the pots used in cooking the food of the squad. The scene, as we entered, was one of wild confusion. A few of the soberer workmen were engaged in "baking and firing" oaten cakes, and a few more occupied, with equal sobriety, in cooking their evening porridge; but in front of the building there was a wild party of apprentices, who were riotously endeavouring to prevent a Highland shepherd from driving his flock past them, by shaking their aprons at the affrighted animals; and a party equally bent on amusement inside were joining with burlesque vehemence in a song which one of the men, justly proud of his musical talents, had just struck up. Suddenly the song ceased, and with wild uproar a bevy of some eight or ten workmen burst out into the green in full pursuit of a squat little fellow, who had, they said, insulted the singer. The cry rose wild and high, "A ramming! a ramming!" The little fellow was seized and thrown down; and five men--one holding his head, and one stationed at each arm and leg--proceeded to execute on his body the stern behests of barrack-law. He was poised like an ancient battering-ram, and driven endlong against the wall of the kiln,--that important part of his person coming in violent contact with the masonry, "where," according to Butler, "a kick hurts honour" very much. After the third blow, however, he was released, and the interrupted song went on as before. I was astonished, and somewhat dismayed, by this specimen of barrack-life; but, getting quietly inside the building, I succeeded in cooking for my uncle and myself some porridge over one of the unoccupied fires, and then stole off, as early as I could, to my lair in a solitary hay-loft--for there was no room for us in the barrack--where, by the judicious use of a little sulphur and mercury, I succeeded in freeing my master from the effects of the strange bed-fellowship which our recent misery had made, and preserving myself from infection. The following Sabbath was a day of quiet rest; and I commenced the labours of the week, disposed to think that my lot, though rather a rough one, was not altogether unendurable; and that, even were it worse than it was, it would be at once wise and manly, seeing that winter would certainly come, cheerfully to acquiesce in and bear up under it.

I had, in truth, entered a school altogether new--at times, as I have just shown, a singularly noisy and uproarious one, for it was a school without master or monitor; but its occasional lessons were, notwithstanding, eminently worthy of being scanned. All know that there exists such a thing as professional character. On some men, indeed, nature imprints so strongly the stamp of individuality, that the feebler stamp of circumstance and position fails to impress them. Such cases, however, must always be regarded as exceptional. On the average masses of mankind, the special employments which they pursue, or the kinds of business which they transact, have the effect of moulding them into distinct classes, each of which bears an artificially induced character peculiarly its own. Clergymen, as such, differ from merchants and soldiers, and all three from lawyers and physicians. Each of these professions has long borne in our literature, and in common opinion, a character so clearly appreciable by the public generally, that, when truthfully reproduced in some new work of fiction, or exemplified by some transaction in real life, it is at once recognised as marked by the genuine class-traits and peculiarities. But the professional characteristics descend much lower in the scale than is usually supposed. There is scarce a trade or department of manual labour that does not induce its own set of peculiarities--peculiarities which, though less within the range of the observation of men in the habit of recording what they remark, are not less real than those of the man of physic or of law. The barber is as unlike the weaver, and the tailor as unlike both, as the farmer is unlike the soldier, or as either farmer or soldier is unlike the merchant, lawyer, or minister. And it is only on the same sort of principle that all men, when seen from the top of a lofty tower, whether they be tall or short, seem of the same stature, that these differences escape the notice of men in the higher walks.

Between the workmen that pass sedentary lives within doors, such as weavers and tailors, and those who labour in the open air, such as masons and ploughmen, there exists a grand generic difference. Sedentary mechanics are usually less contented than laborious ones; and as they almost always work in parties, and as their comparatively light, though often long and wearily-plied employments, do not so much strain their respiratory organs but that they can keep up an interchange of idea when at their toils, they are generally much better able to state their grievances, and much more fluent in speculating on their causes. They develop more freely than the laborious out-of-door workers of the country, and present, as a class, a more intelligent aspect. On the other hand, when the open-air worker does so overcome his difficulties as to get fairly developed, he is usually of a fresher or more vigorous type than the sedentary one. Burns, Hogg, Allan Cunningham, are the literary representatives of the order; and it will be found that they stand considerably in advance of the Thoms, Bloomfields, and Tannahills, that represent the sedentary workmen. The silent, solitary, hard-toiled men, if nature has put no better stuff in them than that of which stump-orators and Chartist lecturers are made, remain silent, repressed by their circumstances; but if of a higher grade, and if they once do get their mouths fairly opened, they speak with power, and bear with them into our literature the freshness of the green earth and the freedom of the open sky.

The specific peculiarities induced by particular professions are not less marked than the generic ones. How different, for instance, the character of a sedentary tailor, as such, from that of the equally sedentary barber! Two imperfectly-taught young lads, of not more than the average intellect, are apprenticed, the one to the hair-dresser, the other to the fashionable clothes-maker of a large village. The barber has to entertain his familiar round of customers, when operating upon their heads and beards. He must have no controversies with them; that might be disagreeable, and might affect his command of the scissors or razor; but he is expected to communicate to them all he knows of the gossip of the place; and as each customer supplies him with a little, he of course comes to know more than anybody else. And as his light and easy work lays no stress on his respiration, in course of time he learns to be a fast and fluent talker, with a great appetite for news, but little given to dispute. He acquires, too, if his round of customers be good, a courteous manner; and if they be in large proportion Conservatives, he becomes, in all probability, a Conservative too. The young tailor goes through an entirely different process. He learns to regard dress as the most important of all earthly things--becomes knowing in cuts and fashions--is taught to appreciate, in a way no other individual can, the aspect of a button, or the pattern of a vest; and as his work is cleanly, and does not soil his clothes, and as he can get them more cheaply, and more perfectly in the fashion, than other mechanics, the chances are ten to one that he turns out a beau. He becomes great in that which he regards as of all things greatest--dress. A young tailor may be known by the cut of his coat and the merits of his pantaloons, among all other workmen; and as even fine clothes are not enough of themselves, it is necessary that he should also have fine manners; and not having such advantages of seeing polite society as his neighbour the barber, his gentlemanly manners are always less fine than grotesque. Hence more ridicule of tailors among working men than of any other class of mechanics. And such--if nature has sent them from her hand ordinary men, for the extraordinary rise above all the modifying influences of profession--are the processes through which tailors and hair-dressers put on then distinctive characters as such. A village smith hears well-nigh as much gossip as a village barber; but he develops into an entirely different sort of man. He is not bound to please his customers by his talk; nor does his profession leave his breath free enough to talk fluently or much; and so he listens in grim and swarthy independence--strikes his iron while it is hot--and when, after thrusting it into the fire, he bends himself to the bellows, he drops, in rude phrase, a brief judicial remark, and again falls sturdily to work. Again, the shoemaker may be deemed, in the merely mechanical character of his profession, near of kin to the tailor. But such is not the case. He has to work amid paste, wax, oil, and blacking, and contracts a smell of leather. He cannot keep himself particularly clean; and although a nicely-finished shoe be all well enough in its way, there is not much about it on which conceit can build. No man can set up as a beau on the strength of a prettily-shaped shoe; and so a beau the shoemaker is not, but, on the contrary, a careless, manly fellow, who, when not overmuch devoted to Saint Monday, gains usually, in his course through life, a considerable amount of sense. Shoemakers are often in large proportions intelligent men; and Bloomfield, the poet, Gifford the critic and satirist, and Carey the missionary, must certainly be regarded as thoroughly respectable contributions from the profession, to the worlds of poetry, criticism, and religion.

The professional character of the mason varies a good deal in the several provinces of Scotland, according to the various circumstances in which he is placed. He is in general a blunt, manly, taciturn fellow, who, without much of the Radical or Chartist about him, especially if wages be good and employment abundant, rarely touches his hat to a gentleman. His employment is less purely mechanical than many others: he is not like a man ceaselessly engaged in pointing needles or fashioning pin-heads. On the contrary, every stone he lays or hews demands the exercise of a certain amount of judgment for itself; and so he cannot wholly suffer his mind to fall asleep over his work. When engaged, too, in erecting some fine building, he always experiences a degree of interest in marking the effect of the design developing itself piecemeal, and growing up under his hands; and so he rarely wearies of what he is doing. Further, his profession has this advantage, that it educates his sense of sight. Accustomed to ascertain the straightness of lines at a glance, and to cast his eye along plane walls, or the mouldings of entablatures or architraves, in order to determine the rectitude of the masonry, he acquires a sort of mathematical precision in determining the true bearings and position of objects, and is usually found, when admitted into a rifle club, to equal, without previous practice, its second-rate shots. He only falls short of its first-rate ones, because, uninitiated by the experience of his profession in the mystery of the parabolic curve, he fails, in taking aim, to make the proper allowance for it. The mason is almost always a silent man: the strain on his respiration is too great, when he is actively employed, to leave the necessary freedom to the organs of speech; and so at least the provincial builder or stone-cutter rarely or never becomes a democratic orator. I have met with exceptional cases in the larger towns; but they were the result of individual idiosyncrasies, developed in clubs and taverns, and were not professional.

It is, however, with the character of our north-country masons that I have at present chiefly to do. Living in small villages, or in cottages in the country, they can very rarely procure employment in the neighbourhood of their dwellings, and so they are usually content to regard these as simply their homes for the winter and earlier spring months, when they have nothing to do, and to remove for work to other parts of the country, where bridges, or harbours, or farm-steadings are in the course of building--to be subjected there to the influences of what is known as the barrack, or rather bothy life. These barracks or bothies are almost always of the most miserable description. I have lived in hovels that were invariably flooded in wet weather by the overflowings of neighbouring swamps, and through whose roofs I could tell the hour at night, by marking from my bed the stars that were passing over the openings along the ridge: I have resided in other dwellings of rather higher pretensions, in which I have been awakened during every heavier night-shower by the rain-drops splashing upon my face where I lay a-bed. I remember that Uncle James, in urging me not to become a mason, told me that a neighbouring laird, when asked why he left a crazy old building standing behind a group of neat modern offices, informed the querist that it was not altogether through bad taste the hovel was spared, but from the circumstance that he found it of great convenience every time his speculations brought a _drove of pigs_ or _a squad of masons_ the way. And my after experience showed me that the story might not be in the least apocryphal, and that masons had reason at times for not touching their hats to gentlemen.

In these barracks the food is of the plainest and coarsest description: oatmeal forms its staple, with milk, when milk can be had, which is not always; and as the men have to cook by turns, with only half an hour or so given them in which to light a fire, and prepare the meal for a dozen or twenty associates, the cooking is invariably an exceedingly rough and simple affair. I have known mason-parties engaged in the central Highlands in building bridges, not unfrequently reduced, by a tract of wet weather, that soaked their only fuel the turf, and rendered it incombustible, to the extremity of eating their oatmeal raw, and merely moistened by a little water, scooped by the hand from a neighbouring brook. I have oftener than once seen our own supply of salt fail us; and after relief had been afforded by a Highland smuggler--for there was much smuggling in salt in those days, ere the repeal of the duties--I have heard a complaint from a young fellow regarding the hardness of our fare, at once checked by a comrade's asking him whether he was not an ungrateful dog to grumble in that way, seeing that, after living on fresh poultices for a week, we had actually that morning got porridge with salt in it. One marked effect of the annual change which the north-country mason has to undergo, from a life of domestic comfort to a life of hardship in the bothy, if he has not passed middle life, is a great apparent increase in his animal spirits. At home he is in all probability a quiet, rather dull-looking personage, not much given to laugh or joke; whereas in the bothy, if the squad be a large one, he becomes wild, and a humorist--laughs much, and grows ingenious in playing off pranks on his fellows. As in all other communities, there are certain laws recognised in the barrack as useful for controlling at least its younger members, the apprentices; but in the general tone of merriment, even these lose their character, and, ceasing to be a terror to evildoers, become in the execution mere occasions of mirth. I never, in all my experience, saw a serious punishment inflicted. Shortly after our arrival at Conon-side, my master, chancing to remark that he had not wrought as a journeyman for twenty-five years before, was voted a "ramming," for taking, as was said, such high ground with his brother workmen; but, though sentence was immediately executed, they dealt gently with the old man, who had good sense enough to acquiesce in the whole as a joke. And yet, amid all this wild merriment and license, there was not a workman who did not regret the comforts of his quiet home, and long for the happiness which was, he felt, to be enjoyed only there. It has been long known that gaiety is not solid enjoyment; but that the gaiety should indicate little else than the want of solid enjoyment, is a circumstance not always suspected. My experience of barrack-life has enabled me to receive without hesitation what has been said of the occasional merriment of slaves in America and elsewhere, and fully to credit the often-repeated statement, that the abject serfs of despotic Governments laugh more than the subjects of a free country. Poor fellows! If the British people were as unhappy as slaves or serfs, they would, I daresay, learn in time to be quite as merry. There are, however, two circumstances that serve to prevent the bothy life of the north-country mason from essentially injuring his character in the way it almost never fails to injure that of the farm-servant. As he has to calculate on being part of every winter, and almost every spring, unemployed, he is compelled to practise a self-denying economy, the effect of which, when not carried to the extreme of a miserly narrowness, is always good; and Hallow-day returns him every season to the humanizing influences of his home.