Chapter 28

Saw ye Johnie coming? quo' she, Saw ye Johnie coming? Wi' his blue bonnet on his head, And his doggie running.

_Old Ballad_.

The welfare of the human race and the improvement of society being my chief aim, in this record of my sayings and doings through the pilgrimage of life, I make bold at the instigation of Nanse, my worthy wife, to record in black and white a remarkably curious thing, to which I was an eyewitness in the course of nature. I have little reluctance to consent, not only because the affair was not a little striking in itself--as the reader will soon see--but because, like AEsop's Fables, it bears a good moral at the end of it.

Many a time have I thought of the business alluded to, which happened to take place in our fore-shop one bonny summer afternoon, when I was selling a coallier wife, from the Marquis of Lothian's upper hill, a yard of serge at our counter-side. At the time she came in, although busied in reading an account of one of Buonaparte's battles in the Courant newspaper, I observed at her foot a bonny wee doggie, with a bushy black tail, of the dancing breed--that could sit on its hind-legs like a squirrel, cast biscuit from its nose, and play a thousand other most diverting tricks. Well, as I was saying, I saw the woman had a pride in the bit creature--it was just a curiosity like--and had belonged to a neighbour's son that volunteered out of the Berwickshire militia, (the Birses, as they were called,) into a regiment that was draughted away into Egypt, Malta, or the East Indies, I believe--so, it seems, the lad's father and mother thought much more about it, for the sake of him that was off and away--being to their fond eyes a remembrancer, and to their parental hearts a sort of living keepsake.

After bargaining about the serge--and taking two or three other things, such as a leather-cap edged with rabbit-fur for her little nevoy--a dozen of plated buttons for her goodman's new waistcoat, which was making up at Bonnyrig by Nicky Sharpshears, my old apprentice--and a spotted silk napkin for her own Sunday neck wear--I tied up the soft articles with grey paper and skinie, and was handing over the odd bawbees of change, when, just as she was lifting the leather-cap from the counter, she said with a terrible face, looking down to the ground as if she was short-sighted--"Pity me! what's that?"

I could not imagine, gleg as I generally am, what had happened; so came round about the far end of the counter, with my spectacles on, to see what it was, when, lo and behold! I perceived a dribbling of blood all along the clean sanded floor, up and down, as if somebody had been walking about with a cut finger; but, after looking around us for a little, we soon found out the thief--and that we did.

The bit doggie was sitting cowering and shivering, and pressing its back against the counter, giving every now and then a mournful whine, so we plainly saw that every thing was not right. On the which, the wife, slipping a little back, snapped her finger and thumb before its nose, and cried out--"Hiskie, poor fellow!" but no--it would not do. She then tried it by its own name, and bade it rise, saying, "Puggie, Puggie!" when--would ever mortal man of woman born believe it?--its bit black, bushy, curly tail, was off by the rump--docked and away, as if it had been for a wager.

"Eh, megstie!" cried the woman, laying down the leather-cap and the tied- up parcel, and holding out both her hands in astonishment. "Eh, my goodness, what's come o' the brute's tail? Lovy ding! just see, it's clean gane! Losh keep me! that's awfu'! Div ye keep rotten-fa's about your premises, Maister Wauch? See, a bonny business as ever happened in the days of ane's lifetime!"

As a furnishing tailor, as a Christian, and as an inhabitant of Dalkeith, my corruption was raised--was up like a flash of lightning, or a cat's back. Such doings in an enlightened age and a civilized country!--in a town where we have three kirks, a grammar school, a subscription library, a ladies' benevolent society, a mechanics' institution, and a debating club! My heart burned within me like dry tow; and I could mostly have jumped up to the ceiling with vexation and anger--seeing as plain as a pikestaff, though the simple woman did not, that it was the handiwork of none other than our neighbour Reuben Cursecowl, the butcher. Dog on it, it was too bad--it was a rascally transaction; so, come of it what would, I could not find it in my heart to screen him. "I'll wager, however," said I, in a kind of off-hand way, not wishing exactly, ye observe, to be seen in the business, "that it will have been running away with beef-steaks, mutton-chops, sheep feet, or something else out of the booth; and some of his prentice laddies may have come across its hind- quarters accidentally with the cleaver."

"Mistake here, or mistake there," said the woman, her face growing as red as the sleeve of a soldier's jacket, and her two eyes burning like live coals--"'Od the butcher, but I'll butcher him, the nasty, ugly, ill-faured vagabond; the thief-like, cruel, malicious, ill-hearted, down- looking blackguard! He would go for to offer for to presume for to dare to lay hands on an honest man's son's doug! It sets him weel, the bloodthirsty Gehazi, the halinshaker ne'er-do-weel! I'll gie him sic a redding up as he never had since the day his mother boor him!" Then looting down to the poor bit beast, that was bleeding like a sheep--"Ay, Puggie, man," she said in a doleful voice, "they've made ye an unco fright; but I'll gie them up their fit for't; I'll show them, in a couple of hurries, that they have catched a Tartar!"--and with that out went the woman, paper parcel, leather-cap and all, randying like a tinkler from Yetholm; the wee wretchie cowering behind her, with the mouse-wabs sticking on the place I had put them to stop the bleeding; and looking, by all the world, like a sight I once saw, when I was a boy, on a visit to my father's half-cousin, Aunt Heatherwig, on the Castle-hill of Edinburgh--to wit, a thief going down Leith Walk, on his road to be shipped for transportation to Botany Bay, after having been pelted for a couple of hours with rotten eggs in the pillory.

Knowing the nature of the parties concerned, and that intimately on both sides, I jealoused directly that there would be a stramash; so not liking, for sundry reasons, to have my neb seen in the business, I shut to the door, and drew the long bolt; while I hastened ben to the room, and, softly pulling up a jink of the window, clapped the side of my head to it; that, unobserved, I might have an opportunity of overhearing the conversation between Reuben Cursecowl and the coallier wife; which, weel- a-wat, was likely to become public property.

"Hollo! you man, do ye ken onything about that?" cried the randy woman;--but wait a moment, till I give a skiff of description of our neighbour Reuben.

By this time--it was ten years after James Batter's tragedy--Mr Cursecowl was an oldish man--he is gathered to his fathers now--and was considerably past his best, as his wife, douce, honest woman, used to observe. His dress was a little in the Pagan style, and rendered him kenspeckle to the eye of observation. Instead of a hat, he generally wore a long red Kilmarnock nightcap, with a cherry on the top of it, through foul weather and fair; and having a kind of trot in his walk, from a bink forward in his knees, it dang-dangled behind him, like the cap of Mr Merryman with the painted face, the show-folks' fool. On the afternoon alluded to, he was in full killing-dress, having on an auld blue short coatie, once long, but now docked in the tails, so that the pocket-flaps and the hainch-buttons were not above three inches from the place where his wife had snibbed it across by; and, from long use in his bloodthirsty occupation, his sleeves flashed in the daylight as if they had been double japanned. Tied round his beer-barrel-like waist was a stripped apron, blue and white; and at his left side hung a bloody gaping leather pouch, as if he had been an Israelite returned from the slaughter of the Philistines, filled with steels and knives, straight and crooked, that had done ample execution in their day, I'll warrant them. Up his thighs were rolled his coarse rig-and-fur stockings, as if it were to gird him for the battle, and his feet were slipped into a pair of bauchles--that is, the under part of old boots cut from the legs. As to his face, lo and behold! the moon shining in the Nor-west--yea, the sun blazing in all his glory--had not a more crimson aspect than Reuben. Like the pig-eyed Chinese folk on tea-cups, his peepers were diminutive and twinkling; but his nose made up for them--and that it did--being portly in all its dimensions broad and long, and as to colour, liker a radish than any other production in nature. In short, he was as bonny a figure as ever man of woman born clapped eye on; and was cleaving away, most devoutly, at a side of black-faced mutton, when the woman, as I said before, cried out, "Hollo! you man, do ye ken onything about that?" pointing to the dumb animal that crawled and crouched behind her.

"Aweel, what o't?" cried Cursecowl, still hacking and cleaving away at the meat.

"What o't? i' faith, billy, that's a gude ane," answered the wife. "But ye'll no get aff that way; catch me, my man. My name's no Jenny Mathieson an I haena ye afore your betters. I'll learn ye what soommenses are."

Looking at her with a look of lightning for a couple of seconds--"Aff wi' ye, gin you're wise," quo' Cursecowl, still cleaving away--"or I'll maybe bring ye in for the sheep's-head it was trying to make off with in its teeth. Do ye understand that?" And he gave a girn, that stretched his mouth from ear to ear.

This was too much for the subterranean daughter of Eve; it was like putting a red-hot poker among the coals of her own pit. "Oh, ye incarnate cannibal!" she bawled out, doubling her nieve, and shaking it in Reuben's face; "If ye have a conscience at a', think black-burning shame o' yoursell! Just look, ye bluidy salvage; just take a look there, my bonny man, o' your handiwark now. Isn't that very pretty?"--"Aff wi' ye," continued Cursecowl, still cleaving away with the chopping-axe, and muttering a volley of curses through the knife, which he held between his teeth--"Aff wi' ye; and keep a calm sough."

"The dog's no mine, or I wadna have cared sae muckle. Siccan a like beast! Siccan a fright to be seen!!! I'faith I think shame to tak' it hame again!! Ay, man, ye're a pretty fellow! Ye've run fast when the noses were dealing; ye're a bonny man to hack off a poor dumb animal's tail. If it had been a Christian like yoursell, it wad have mattered less--but a puir bit dumb, harmless animal!"

"Aff wi' ye there, and nane o' your chatter," thundered Reuben, stopping in his cleaving, and turning the side of his red face round to the woman. "Flee--vanish--and be cursed to ye--baith you and your doug thegither, ye infernal limmer! It's weel for't, luckie, it was not its head instead of its tail. Ye had better steik your gab--cut your stick--and pack off, gin ye be wise."

"Think shame--think shame--think black-burning shame o' yoursell, ye born and bred ruffian!" roared out the wife at the top story of her voice--shaking her doubled nieve before him--stamping her heels on the causey--then, drawing herself up, and holding her hands on her hainches--"Just look, I tell ye, you unhanged blackguard, at your precious handywark! Just look, what think ye of that, now? Tak' another look now, ower that fief-like fiery nose o' yours, ye regardless Pagan!"

Flesh and blood could stand this no longer; and I saw Cursecowl's anger boiling up within him, as in a red-hot fiery furnace.

"Wait a wee, my woman," muttered Cursecowl to himself, as, swearing between his teeth, he hurried into the killing-booth.

Furious as the woman, however, was, she had yet enough of common sense remaining within her to dread skaith; so, apprehending the bursting storm, she had just taken to her heels, when out he came, rampauging after her like a Greenland bear, with a large liver in each hand;--the one of which, after describing a circle round his head, flashed after her like lightning, and hearted her between the shoulders like a clap of thunder; while the other, as he was repeating the volley, slipping sideways from his fingers while he was driving it with all his force, played drive directly through the window where I was standing, and gave me such a yerk on the side of the head, that it could be compared to nothing else but the lines written on the stucco image of Shakspeare, the great playactor, on our parlour chimneypiece,

"The great globe itself, Yea, all that it inherits, shall dissolve;"

and I lay speechless on the floor for goodness knows the length of time. Even when I came to my recollection, it was partly to a sense of torment; for Nanse, coming into the room, and not knowing the cause of my disastrous overthrow, attributed it all to a fit of the apoplexy; and, in her frenzy of affliction, had blistered all my nose with her Sunday scent- bottle of aromatic vinegar.

For some weeks after there was a bumming in my ears, as if all the bee- skeps on the banks of the Esk had been pent up within my head; and though Reuben Cursecowl paid, like a gentleman, for the four panes he had broken, he drove into me, I can assure him, in a most forcible and striking manner, the truth of the old proverb--which is the moral of this chapter--that "listeners seldom hear any thing to their own advantage."