Part 11
There could hardly be a greater contrast than that between the fog-laden atmosphere of Queen Street Station, Glasgow, on a winter morning, and the frosty, bracing air of the country outside. Ever since the train emerged from the murky gloom of the long city tunnel into the open freedom of the frost-covered fields, the sense of exhilaration has been increasing. Sounds of laughter from the compartments before and behind bespeak the high spirits of the occupants; while at every roadside station along the Clyde valley fresh parties of pleasure-seekers, their cheeks red and eyes bright with the cold, have added to the freight, and swelled the merriment. The ice on Loch Lomond is “bearing,” and the clash of skates is in the air.
Slowly at last the train, crammed by this time with skaters of both sexes and all ages, pants into the station at Balloch Pier. Before it has stopped, the doors of the carriages swing open, and an eager crowd swarms out upon the platform. The throng chokes the stairway down the face of the pier, so many impatiently hasten back to the shore; there is a scramble over a wire fence, a stampede across a well-trodden stubble-field to the loch, and then the stream of enthusiasts disperses in all directions to don the necessary foot-gear.
Different indeed is the scene now from what it was in summer! Then the clear water glistened and twinkled in the sunshine, the white sail of a boat slowly moved across the dark green of a distant island, and the mountains beyond rose, purple and grey, into a fleckless sky; while one of the little loch steamers at the pier blew clouds of steam noisily from its funnel, as it took on board its gay crowd of tourists. Now no lapse of water is to be heard upon the pebbles, not a whisper moves among the frosted fretwork of the trees. The landscape everywhere is draped and lifeless, the loch itself lies a level sheet of snow, and far up yonder, above the dark narrows where the waters are still unfrozen, Ben Lomond raises his shoulder, ermine-clad, into a darkling heaven. The twin steamers, too, lie prisoned in the ice, crusted white, and motionless as Lot’s wife.
If Nature herself, however, is crystallised into silence and stillness, there is both movement and sound of another sort about. Here at a run over the field to the ice comes a schoolboy, as eager as if the whole day were not before him, his wooden skates clashing together as he stumbles on the molehills. Farther off a young man and a maiden are transacting in orthodox fashion the idyll of the ice, she seated on what has ordinarily been a mooring post, and holding out a dainty boot, while he, kneeling devotedly in the snow, buckles on her skate. All along the shore, on every hillock that affords a seat, are groups of eager enthusiasts, busy with straps and buckles; and the shrill whirring sound of the ice tells that many of the new-comers are already moving over it.
But the last refractory screw-nut is adjusted--Mercury has buckled on his wings; and yonder, two miles away, lies Inch Murren. Each winter, when the loch is frozen, the first person who crosses on foot to the island receives a pair of deer antlers as a trophy; and often, before the ice is very strong, the efforts of some bold skater to win the honours are exciting enough. Since the trophy was won this year,[C] however, thousands of pleasure-seekers have crossed the loch; venders of hot coffee and biscuits have established themselves on the shore of the island, under the ruined keep; and a rink of curlers has taken possession of the little bay. Where the deer came down to drink in summer, there mingles now the crackling roar of heavy stones hurled along the ice, with shrieks of vulgar laughter as some conspicuous skater comes to grief. The cries of the curlers themselves are loud and puzzling enough. At the near end of the rink the leader, a stout, grizzled countryman, shouts with many explanatory gestures to the player at the far end to “Tak’ a wick aff the fore stane, and lie in front to gaird.” The person addressed, evidently a clergyman (for on the ice social distinctions are forgotten), sends his cheese-shaped block of granite “birling” towards his instructor, and, as it comes along, the cries of the players stationed on either side of the rink with brushes to “soup her up,” and their vigorous efforts to smooth the path before it, are exciting as well as amusing, until the stone comes crashing in at last among the others round the mark.
[C] 1882, I think.
The “roaring game” is perhaps more interesting to the player than to the onlooker, but the enthusiasm it excites, and the exertion it requires, are exactly suited to the season, and prepare its votaries to enjoy most heartily the traditional “curler’s dinner” of corned beef and greens.
One soon grows tired of the noise and stir around this oasis of the ice. Indeed, the laughter and the movement seem almost sacrilege in a place where so lately the autumn leaves dropped silently into the clear brown water below, where the plash of a trout made stillness felt, and the solitude was unbroken by the step of man. Away, then, from the coffee-stands and the curling-rink, from the shouting of the shinty-players, and the fragrance of intolerable cigarettes! The loch is frozen all the way to Luss; last night’s wind has swept every particle of snow from the surface; and to the little loch village, out of sight in the bay ahead, stretch seven miles of ice, smooth as black glass.
Easily as thought the skates curl over the keen ice. The air is clear, cold, and bracing, with just a faint odour of the shore woods upon it; and curve after curve on the “outside edge” adds, every moment, to the exhilarating sense of power and the conscious poetry of motion. It is a new and strange sensation, this flight for miles over ice whose surface has till now known no invasion. One feels as an astronomer must, when exploring new depths of Heaven--
Or like stout Cortez, when, with eagle eyes, He stared at the Pacific--and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise-- Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Lonely and far stretches the level realm of ice away northward to the dark narrows of the loch, where, under the steep dark sides of the mountains, the water is too deep to freeze. To terrible tragedy have the black depths under foot been witness. Here it was that Sir James Colquhoun, returning from a hunting party on one of the islands, in his boat, deep-laden with deer, was caught by a sudden squall on the loch and drowned, and it was long before the hidden depths gave up their prey. For the waters that lie motionless now in their icy prison are given to rise and rage at a moment’s warning; and many are the fair pleasure freights they have swallowed. Across these waters, too, in the days when might was right, and the Highlands lived by helping themselves, have not the boats of the Red Macgregor swept down by night from the narrows to pillage and burn? For the Rob Roy country lies opposite among the mountains.
But away! away! this is the joyous motion of a bird, and the miles fly under foot without effort. It is seven miles from Balloch; and the fatigue of the distance has been trifling. A point of land, covered with trees, runs out into the loch, and a mile beyond lies Luss. Another turn, and a little bay is discovered, most like, in all the world, a miniature scene from fairy-land. The glassy ice sleeps on the crusted shore; birch and beech and hazel hang motionless around, a delicate tracery of snow; not a squirrel moves; the silence is perfect. The spot is under the spell of the Frost King. Not altogether, though, for a robin flutters down with a twitter from a shaken spray, and, proud of his scarlet breast, hops bravely out upon the ice.
At hand, however, appears the chimney of the inn, and--inspiring sight!--there is smoke rising from it. The air of the loch is appetising, and, as it is now almost five o’clock, something more solid than a sandwich seems desirable. Unbuckle the skates, therefore, and, following the windings of that narrow loch-side road among the trees, let us awaken the hospitality of mine host. It will be dark before we start for home; but the sky is clear, there will be a full moon, and, under the scintillations of the frosty stars, it will be a merry party that skims back over the ice by night to Balloch.
HALLOWMAS EVE.
“The good old customs of the country are passing away.”
No speech, perhaps, is oftener heard than this when, over the walnuts and the wine, about Christmas time or Hallowe’en, the talk has turned upon the subject of old-fashioned festivities. And the sentiment seldom fails to evoke a sigh of regret, and to awake recollections of frolic mirth enjoyed in lighter-hearted days. But while there is, without doubt, truth in the remark, happily it is not altogether true. The portly old gentleman who animadverts upon the subject is generally too apt to take for granted that, because for some decades he has ceased to share in these festal sports, the sports themselves have ceased to be observed. If, however, the speaker were to return upon such a night as All Hallow’s Eve to the village where perchance his youthful years were passed, he might find that the quaint and merry customs he laments do not altogether belong to the golden dust of long-forgotten days. Though he himself has grown older and graver, the great heart of the world has remained ever young; and ever still, as the traditional occasions come round, there breaks forth amid its long-accustomed scenes the ancient madcap carnival of mirth.
Not, indeed, quite as in bygone times is this festival of Hallowe’en now observed. The witches no longer, as in days of yore, are believed to hold their revels then upon the green-sward, and something of the ancient superstition which otherwise lent awe to the eve of All Saints’ Day has been dispelled by modern education. But enough remains of uncanny feeling to lend interest to the more mysterious proceedings of the night; and the spirit of simple enjoyment may be trusted to keep alive for its own sake most of the mirth-giving functions of the feast. An institution which took its origin probably from some strange rite of far-back pagan times, which has managed to survive countless changes of thought, and, like a rolling snowball, to incorporate in itself traces of the Crusades, of the mediæval church mysteries or miracle plays, and of later witchcraft and elfin superstitions, must have a strong hold somewhere upon human nature, and is not likely to disappear quite at once even before the blast of the steam-engine and the roll of the printing-press.
If one wishes to know how lads and lasses spent their Hallowe’en in Ayrshire a hundred years ago, he has but to read the famous description of the occasion written by the glowing peasant-pen of Burns; and cold indeed must be his imagination if he does not catch from that description something of the frolic spirit of the night. In these lines he may hear the timid lasses “skirl” as their sweethearts surprise them pulling the fateful corn-stalks; he may watch Jamie Fleck secretly sowing his handful of hemp-seed, and waiting for the image of his destined true-love to appear behind him in the act of harrowing it; he may see Meg in the empty barn, winnowing her “wechts o’ naething,” and likewise waiting for her true-love’s presentment; and he may laugh at the mishap befalling the wanton widow as she dips her left sleeve in the rivulet at the meeting of three lairds’ lands. But one must not think that these time-honoured rites are all unpractised now.
Let him step into some great farm-kitchen of the Lothians, with its red fire roaring up the chimney, its plate-racks gleaming on the walls, and dressers, tables, and chairs clean as scrubbing can make them, and he will find in practice bits of traditional folklore and traits of human nature equally worthy of the poet’s pen.
The place for the moment is empty, the lamps shining from their bright tin sconces on the walls upon unoccupied wooden settles and chairs; for lads and lasses together have betaken themselves to pull each his particular prophetic stock in the kailyard at hand. But presently, with shouts of laughter, they come streaming in from the darkness; and shrieks of merriment greet the discovery of the fortune which has befallen individual members of the company. For, according as the stock lighted on in the dark turns out to be straight or crooked, and its taste sweet or bitter, so the appearance and disposition of its possessor’s future mate will be; and according as earth has clung to the uptorn root or not will the pockets of the future pair be well filled or the reverse. A merry party these men and maidens make, bringing in with them, as they enter, a breeze of the cool night air, and a breath of the sweet, fresh-smelling earth. And from the flaming cheeks and sparkling eyes of at least one of the laughing girls, it is to be doubted that she has met outside with somewhat warmer and more certain assurance of the personality of her future partner in life than is likely to be afforded by her stock of curly kail.
Another method of divination, however, presently engrosses all attention indoors. Three bowls are set out on the hearth--one full of clean water, one muddy, and the remaining vessel empty. One after another each lad and lass is blindfolded, the position of the bowls is changed in thimble-rigging fashion, and he or she is led forward and invited to place a hand in one. According as the dish chosen proves dirty, clean, or empty, will the inquirer of the Fates marry a widow or a maid, or remain a bachelor; and shrieks of merriment are occasioned by the appropriate mishaps which befall the most confident.
Then there is the burning of nuts to be done in the great kitchen-fire--a method of discovering whether the future wedded state is to be one of peace or discord. And it is amusing to see the quietest of the maids drop two nuts side by side into a red corner of the coal, blushing at the guesses made by her merry companions, but shyly whispering to herself, “This is Patey and this is me,” and watching with bashful eagerness as the two take fire together. Puff! Alas for her hopes, poor child! “Patey” has shot away from her side; and the hot tears are woefully near her eyes as she notices that he has settled down to burn by the nut of her neighbour. May her sorrows, sweet lass, never have darker cause than this imaginary presage of losing a fickle lover!
And now, by way of supper, a mighty platter of “champed” potatoes is placed upon the table--a pile mountain high, in which are hidden somewhere a ring, a sixpence, a thimble, and a button. The lamps are put out, each person is armed with a spoon, and in the uncertain light of the glowing fire the mystic procession moves round the table in single file. Each one as he passes the platter takes a spoonful of potatoes, and he or she who finds the ring is fated to be first married. The sixpence is an augury of wealth, and the finding of the thimble or the button is, according to the sex of the finder, an indication that he or she will marry a maiden spouse or will die single.
But, listen! There is a sudden loud knocking at the door. It heralds the time-honoured visitation of the Guizards, a ceremony annually renewed by each succeeding generation of village boys. In they stalk, got up in grotesque improvisations of mumming costume, each armed with a wooden sword, and carrying a ghostly lantern hollowed out of a giant turnip. “Here comes in Galoshin,” as that individual himself informs the company--being doubtless the traditional representative of some forgotten Templar Knight; and presently he is engaged in a sanguinary hand-to-hand encounter with another wooden-sworded champion upon the floor. Many are the bold words that are said and the doughty deeds that are done; and through the whole performance one may see, as Scott remarked in a note to “Marmion,” traces of the ancient monkish plays and the revels of the mediæval Lord of Misrule. At the end the players are contented with a reward of apples and nuts, and a share in their elders’ merriment.
Tubs full of water are placed on the floor, and dozens of red-cheeked apples set swimming in them; and immediately a wild scene of revel ensues, as all and sundry, men and maids, on their knees, seek to snatch the floating apples with their teeth. Many an unexpected ducking is got, and shrieks of laughter greet each mishap and each ineffectual effort to secure a prize. Then there is a wild game of blind man’s buff, led off by Galoshin himself, who turns out, now that his burnt cork and whiskers have been washed off, to be one of the younger men of the house, and the soul of all the fun. And from the sly fashion in which he avoids other quarry, and keeps hemming one rosy little maid into corners, compelling her to spring shrieking over settles and chairs, it may be gathered that the knowing fellow is no more blinded than he wishes himself to be.
And so the night goes on, a night of whole-hearted and innocent mirth--enough to prove that the spirit of old-fashioned revelry is by no means dead, and that, for at least one night in the year, the young blood of Lowland and Lothian still can make as much and as joyous merriment as ever did its progenitors a hundred years ago.
HOGMANAY.
Conspicuous among the folk-customs which, north of the Tweed, have survived from the remotest antiquity, remains that of welcoming with wassail and good wishes the birth of the New Year. To all appearance a pagan custom, dating from the pre-Christian past, it probably owes its permanence to instincts acquired amid the superstitions of the Dark Ages. Of late years, it is true, under the influence of southern fashion, the festival of Christmas has seemed to be superseding that of New Year’s Eve. But, as with many other picturesque and interesting customs of Scotland, the older observance remains yet deeply rooted in the heart of the people, and, having already survived so many changes of habit and creed, may be expected to outlive even this latest inroad.
There is much to be said, too, for the keeping of Hogmanay. Christmas, indeed, is the commemoration of a great religious event, and even in the North it appears interesting and appropriate enough as a Church festival; while to those with whom its observance has been a national and family custom it contains, of course, an ample significance. But to people who have inherited the instinct with their blood, the end of the year remains a more fitting time for recalling the deeds and the days that are past; and the keeping of Hogmanay awakens, north of the Border, a subtle train of early feelings and associations--the pensive charm and sweetness of “auld lang syne.” Scarcely a dwelling is there, cottage or hall, in the breadth of all broad Scotland, which has not, time out of mind, on this night of the year witnessed some observance of the ancient and pleasant festival. Alike under gilded ceilings and roofs of thatch there is to be heard then the toasting of old memories and the pledging of health and fortune to the house and its occupants throughout the dawning year. About every village cross, too, as the last moments of the year approach, the young men of the neighbourhood have ever been wont to gather to greet the incoming day with shouts of rejoicing and with the curious traditional custom of “first-footing.” Even in the cities, where contact with the world tends greatly to obliterate such folk-customs, it is curious to see the ancient festival year after year assert itself, its observance the better assured, probably, because it brings back to those who attend it the scenes and memories of earlier, and, perhaps, happier days.
Ever with the same details the time-honoured proceeding may be witnessed on the night of any 31st day of December at the Cross of the ancient city of St Mungo.
Some time before midnight the roar of the day’s traffic has died out of the streets. The great warehouses are closed, and their windows gaze, like sightless eyes, into the deserted thoroughfares. To one imbued with the spirit of the hour, it is as if the city herself were thinking of the past; and the sudden sweep of wind that comes and dies away seems a sigh of regret for her departed glories. Many memories cluster about this ancient heart of Glasgow; and at such an hour, and upon such a night, it would seem little more than natural if the historic figures of the past should move again abroad. Strangely enough, too, the creatures of imagination present a no less tangible presence to the mind’s eye than the real persons of bygone days. Behind the tall, limping figure of Sir Walter Scott, a curious visitor here, the equally immortal Bailie picks his steps; and as the bold Rob Roy strides past into the shadow, there is heard the tramp of Cromwell’s bodyguard and the clatter of the Regent Moray’s cavalry. For it was out by the Gallowgate here, and across the river by the Briggate, that the troops of the Protestant lords marched in 1568 to the battle of Langside; and at the head of Saltmarket the Protector Cromwell quartered himself in 1650, issued his orders, and held levees. In the Gallowgate yet, though sore transformed from its ancient glory, stands that once-famous inn, the Saracen’s Head, at which the learned Dr Johnson put up while passing through Glasgow on his Hebridean tour. Close by the Cross, where the street lamps shine on the shuttered windows of a great east-end warehouse, stood the town-house of the Earls of Lennox; and past it, up the gentle hill, and still wearing something of its old-world look, bends the High Street with its memories. Out of sight up there the façade of the venerable College, _alma mater_ of Campbell the poet, Smollett the novelist, Archbishop Tait, and a host of great divines, was wont for over four hundred years to frown upon the pavement. The Vandal, however, has at last prevailed against it. A few paces farther and the gigantic form of Sir William Wallace still seems to slaughter his enemies at the Bell o’ the Brae. And beyond all, on the slope of the hollow where the classic Molendinar once flowed, surrounded in the darkness by its city of the dead, stands the grey cathedral of St Kentigern.
The spot itself, however, has indeed changed with time, and but few links are left it to recall bygone days. The loud tramp of Dundee’s dragoons long since died away in Rottenrow. No longer do the rustling gowns of bishop and dean sweep through the cathedral choir. Even the house from which the ill-fated Lord Darnley, sick to death, was carried to the lonely Kirk o’ Fields three hundred years ago, has disappeared. Cavalier and Covenanter and Virginia merchant have given place to the petty trader and the artizan. The house at the foot of Glassford Street, where Prince Charlie put up in the ’45, has been pulled down; and of the walls which witnessed the rejoicing bonfires of the Whig burgesses after the news of Culloden, few are left but those of the dim cathedral. Even the Saltmarket at hand has been so altered of late years, that if worthy Bailie Nicol Jarvie were to step out again on the causeway he would find no trace at all of the narrow, ill-paved, unlighted lane of his day, with its high, rickety houses, and creaking shop-signs.