Chapter 20

_They_ began the warfare--these boastful men of B----! And what think you was the amount of their innings? These challengers--the famous eleven--how many did they get? Think! Imagine! Guess! You cannot. Well, they got twenty-two, or, rather, they got twenty, for two of theirs were short notches, and would never have been allowed, only that, seeing what they were made of, we and our umpires were not particular. Oh, how well we fielded.

Then we went in. And what of our innings? Guess! A hundred and sixty-nine! We headed them by a hundred and forty-seven; and then they gave in, as well they might. William Grey pressed them much to try another innings, but they were beaten sulky and would not move.

The only drawback in my enjoyment was the failure of the pretty boy David Willis, who, injudiciously put in first, and playing for the first time in a match amongst men and strangers, was seized with such a fit of shamefaced shyness that he could scarcely hold his bat, and was bowled out without a stroke, from actual nervousness. Our other modest lad, John Strong, did very well; his length told in the field, and he got good fame. William Grey made a hit which actually lost the cricket-ball. We think she lodged in a hedge a quarter of a mile off, but nobody could find her. And so we parted; the players retired to their supper and we to our homes, all good-humoured and all happy--except the losers.

_IV.--Love, the Leveller_

The prettiest cottage on our village green is the little dwelling of Dame Wilson. The dame was a respected servant in a most respectable family, which she quitted only on her marriage with a man of character and industry, and of that peculiar universality of genius which forms what is called, in country phrase, a handy fellow. His death, which happened about ten years ago, made quite a gap in our village commonwealth.

Without assistance Mrs. Wilson contrived to maintain herself and her children in their old, comfortable home. The house had still, within and without, the same sunshiny cleanliness, and the garden was still famous over all other gardens. But the sweetest flower of the garden, and the joy and pride of her mother's heart, was her daughter Hannah. Well might she be proud of her! At sixteen, Hannah Wilson was, beyond a doubt, the prettiest girl in the village, and the best. Her chief characteristic was modesty. Her mind was like her person: modest, graceful, gentle and generous above all.

Our village beauty had fairly reached her twentieth year without a sweetheart; without the slightest suspicion of her having ever written a love-letter on her own account, when, all of a sudden, appearances changed. A trim, elastic figure, not unaccompanied, was descried walking down the shady lane. Hannah had gotten a lover!

Since the new marriage act, we, who belong to the country magistrates, have gained a priority over the rest of the parish in matrimonial news. We (the privileged) see on a work-day the names which the Sabbath announces to the generality. One Saturday, walking through our little hall, I saw a fine athletic young man, the very image of health and vigour, mental and bodily, holding the hand of a young woman, who was turning bashfully away, listening, and yet not seeming to listen, to his tender whispers. Hannah! And she went aside with me, and a rapid series of questions and answers conveyed the story of the courtship. "William was," said Hannah, "a journeyman hatter, in B----. He had walked over to see the cricketing, and then he came again. Her mother liked him. Everybody liked him--and she had promised. Was it wrong?"

"Oh, no! And where are you to live?" "William had got a room in B----. He works for Mr. Smith, the rich hatter in the market-place, and Mr. Smith speaks of him, oh, so well! But William will not tell me where our room is. I suppose in some narrow street or lane, which he is afraid I shall not like, as our common is so pleasant. He little thinks--anywhere--" She stopped suddenly. "Anywhere with him!"

The wedding-day was a glorious morning.

"What a beautiful day for Hannah!" was the first exclamation at the breakfast-table. "Did she tell you where they should dine?"

"No, ma'am; I forgot to ask."

"I can tell you," said the master of the house, with the look of a man who, having kept a secret as long as it was necessary, is not sorry to get rid of the burthen. "I can tell you--in London."

"In London?"

"Yes. Your little favourite has been in high luck. She has married the only son of one of the best and richest men in B----, Mr. Smith, the great hatter. It is quite a romance. William Smith walked over to see a match, saw our pretty Hannah, and forgot to look at the cricketers. He came again and again, and at last contrived to tame this wild dove, and even to get the _entrée_ of the cottage. Hearing Hannah talk is not the way to fall out of love with her. So William, finding his case serious, laid the matter before his father, and requested his consent to the marriage. Mr. Smith was at first a little startled. But William is an only son, and an excellent son; and after talking with me, and looking at Hannah, the father relented. But, having a spice of his son's romance, and finding that he had not mentioned his station in life, he made a point of its being kept secret till the wedding-day. I hope the shock will not kill Hannah."

"Oh, no! Hannah loves her husband too well."

And I was right. Hannah has survived the shock. She is returned to B----, and I have been to call on her. She is still the same Hannah, and has lost none of her old habits of kindness and gratitude. She did indeed just hint at her trouble with visitors and servants; seemed distressed at ringing the bell, and visibly shrank from the sound of a double knock. But in spite of these calamities Hannah is a happy woman. The double rap was her husband's, and the glow on her cheek, and the smile of her lips and eyes when he appeared spoke more plainly than ever: "Anywhere with him!"

* * * * *

DAVID MOIR

Autobiography of Mansie Wauch

David Macbeth Moir was born at Musselburgh, Scotland, Jan. 5, 1798, and educated at the grammar school of the Royal Burgh and at Edinburgh University, from which he received the diploma of surgeon in 1816. He practised as a physician in his native town from 1817 until 1843, when, health failing, he practically withdrew from the active duties of his profession. Moir began to write in both prose and verse for various periodicals when quite a youth, but his long connection with "Blackwood's Magazine" under the pen name of "Delta", began in 1820, and he became associated with Christopher North, the Ettrick Shepherd, and others of the Edinburgh coterie distinguished in "Noctes Ambrosianae." He contributed to "Blackwood," histories, biographies, essays, and poems, to the number of about 400. His poems were esteemed beyond their merits by his generation, and his reputation now rests almost solely on the caustic humour of his "Autobiography of Mansie Wauch," published in 1828, a series of sketches of the manner of life in the shop-keeping and small-trading class of a Scottish provincial town at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Moir died at Dumfries on July 6, 1851.

_I.--Mansie's Forebears and Early Life_

Some of the rich houses and great folk pretend to have histories of the ancientness of their families, which they can count back on their fingers almost to the days of Noah's Ark, and King Fergus the First, but it is not in my power to come further back than auld grand-faither, who died when I was a growing callant. I mind him full well. To look at him was just as if one of the ancient patriarchs had been left on the earth, to let succeeding survivors witness a picture of hoary and venerable eld.

My own father, auld Mansie Wauch, was, at the age of thirteen, bound a 'prentice to the weaver trade, which he prosecuted till a mortal fever cut through the thread of his existence. Alas, as Job says, "How time flies like a weaver's shuttle!" He was a decent, industrious, hard-working man, doing everything for the good of his family, and winning the respect of all who knew the value of his worth. On the five-and-twentieth year of his age he fell in love with, and married, my mother, Marion Laverock.

I have no distinct recollection of the thing myself, but there is every reason to believe that I was born on October 13, 1765, in a little house in the Flesh-Market Gate, Dalkeith, and the first thing I have any clear memory of was being carried on my auntie's shoulders to see the Fair Race. Oh! but it was a grand sight! I have read since the story of Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp, but that fair and the race, which was won by a young birkie who had neither hat nor shoon, riding a philandering beast of a horse thirteen or fourteen years auld, beat it all to sticks.

In time, I was sent to school, where I learned to read and spell, making great progress in the Single and Mother's Carritch. What is more, few could fickle me in the Bible, being mostly able to spell it all over, save the second of Ezra and the seventh of Nehemiah, which the Dominie himself could never read through twice in the same way, or without variation.

Being of a delicate make--nature never intended me for the naval or military line, or for any robustious profession--I was apprenticed to the tailoring trade. Just afterwards I had a terrible stound of calf-love, my first flame being the minister's lassie, Jess, a buxom and forward queen, two or three years older than myself. I used to sit looking at her in the kirk, and felt a droll confusion when our eyes met. It dirled through my heart like a dart. Fain would I have spoken to her, but aye my courage failed me, though whiles she gave me a smile when she passed. She used to go to the well every night with her two stoups to draw water, so I thought of watching to give her two apples which I had carried in my pocket for more than a week for that purpose. How she started when I stappit them into her hand, and brushed by without speaking!

Jamie Coom, the blacksmith, who I aye jealoused was my rival, came up and asked Jess, with a loud guffaw, "Where is the tailor?" When I heard that, I took to my heels till I found myself on the little stool by the fireside with the hamely sound of my mother's wheel bum-bumming in my lug, like a gentle lullaby.

The days of the years of my 'prenticeship having glided cannily over, I girt myself round about with a proud determination of at once cutting my mother's apron-string. So I set out for Edinburgh in search of a journeyman's place, which I got the very first day in the Grassmarket. My lodging was up six pairs of stairs, in a room which I rented for half-a-crown a week, coals included; but my heart was sea-sick of Edinburgh folk and town manners, for which I had no stomach. I could form no friendly acquaintanceship with a living soul. Syne I abode by myself, like St. John in the Isle of Patmos, on spare allowance, making a sheep-head serve me for three days' kitchen.

Everything around me seemed to smell of sin and pollution, and often did I commune with my own heart, that I would rather be a sober, poor, honest man in the country, able to clear my day and way by the help of Providence, than the provost himself, my lord though he be, or even the mayor of London, with his velvet gown trailing for yards in the glaur behind him, or riding about the streets in a coach made of clear crystal and wheels of beaten gold.

But when my heart was sickening unto death, I fell in with the greatest blessing of my life, Nanse Cromie, a bit wench of a lassie frae the Lauder direction, who had come to be a servant in the flat below our workshop, and whom I often met on the stairs.

If ever a man loved, and loved like mad, it was me; and I take no shame in the confession. Let them laugh who like; honest folk, I pity them; such know not the pleasures of virtuous affection. Matters were by and bye settled full tosh between us; and though the means of both parties were small, we were young, and able and willing to help one another. Nanse and me laid our heads together towards the taking a bit house in the fore-street of Dalkeith, and at our leisure bought the plenishing.

Two or three days after Maister Wiggie, the minister, had gone through the ceremony of tying us together, my sign was nailed up, painted in black letters on a blue ground, with a picture of a jacket on one side and a pair of shears on the other; and I hung up a wheen ready-made waistcoats, caps, and Kilmarnock cowls in the window. Business in fact, flowed in upon us in a perfect torrent.

Both Nanse and I found ourselves so proud of our new situation that we slipped out in the dark and had a prime look with a lantern at the sign, which was the prettiest ye ever saw, although some sandblind creatures had taken the neatly painted jacket for a goose.

_II.--The Resurrection Men_

A year or two after the birth and christening of wee Benjie, my son, I was cheated by a swindling black-aviced Englishman out of some weeks' lodgings and keep, and a pair of new velveteen knee-breeches.

Then there arose a great surmise that some loons were playing false with the kirkyard; and, on investigation, it was found that four graves had been opened, and the bodies harled away to the college. Words cannot describe the fear, the dool, and the misery it caused, and the righteous indignation that burst through the parish.

But what remead? It was to watch in the session-house with loaded guns, night about, three at a time. It was in November when my turn came. I never liked to go into the kirkyard after darkening, let-a-be sit through a long winter night with none but the dead around us. I felt a kind of qualm of faintness and downsinking about my heart and stomach, to the dispelling of which I took a thimbleful of spirits, and, tying my red comforter about my neck, I marched briskly to the session-house.

Andrew Goldie, the pensioner, lent me his piece and loaded it to me. Not being well acquaint with guns, I kept the muzzle aye away from me, as it is every man's duty not to throw his precious life into jeopardy. A bench was set before the sessions-house fire, which bleezed brightly. My spirits rose, and I wondered, in my bravery, that a man like me should be afraid of anything. Nobody was there but a towzy, carroty-haired callant.

The night was now pitmirk. The wind soughed amid the headstones and railings of the gentry (for we must all die), and the black corbies in the steeple-holes cackled and crawed in a fearsome manner. Oh, but it was lonesome and dreary; and in about an hour the laddie wanted to rin awa hame; but, trying to look brave, though half-frightened out of my seven senses, I said, "Sit down, sit down; I've baith whiskey and porter wi' me. Hae, man, there's a cawker to keep your heart warm; and set down that bottle of Deacon Jaffrey's best brown stout to get a toast."

The wind blew like a hurricane; the rain began to fall in perfect spouts. Just in the heart of the brattle the grating of the yett turning on its rusty hinges was but too plainly heard.

"The're coming; cock the piece, ye sumph!" cried the laddie, while his red hair rose, from his pow like feathers. "I hear them tramping on the gravel," and he turned the key in the lock and brizzed his back against the door like mad, shouting out, "For the Lord's sake, prime the gun, or our throats will be cut before you can cry Jack Robinson."

I did the best I could, but the gun waggled to and fro like a cock's tail on a rainy day. I trust I was resigned to die, but od' it was a frightful thing to be out of one's bed to be murdered in an old session-house at the dead hour of the night by devils incarnate of ressurrection men with blacked faces, pistols, big sticks, and other deadly weapons.

After all, it was only Isaac, the bethrel, who, when we let him in, said that he had just keppit four ressurrectioners louping over the wall. But that was a joke. I gave Isaac a dram to kep his heart up, and he sung and leuch as if he had been boozing with some of his drucken cronies; for feint a hair cared he about auld kirkyards, or vouts, or dead folk in their winding-sheets, with the wet grass growing over them. Then, although I tried to stop him, he began to tell stories of Eirish ressurrectioners, and ghaists, seen in the kirkyard at midnight.

Suddenly a clap like thunder was heard, and the laddie, who had fallen asleep on the bench, jumped up and roared "Help!" "Murder!" "Thieves!" while Isaac bellowed out, "I'm dead! I'm killed!--shot through the head! Oh, oh, oh!" Surely, I had fainted away, for, when I came to myself, I found my red comforter loosed, my face all wet, Isaac rubbing down his waistcoat with his sleeve--the laddie swigging ale out of a bicker--and the brisk brown stout, which, by casting its cork, had caused all the alarm, whizz-whizz, whizzing in the chimney lug.

_III.--The Friends of the People_

The sough of war and invasion flew over the land at this time, like a great whirlwind; and the hearts of men died within their persons with fear and trembling. Abroad the heads of crowned kings were cut off, and great dukes and lords were thrown into dark dungeons, or obligated to flee for their lives to foreign countries.

But worst of all the trouble seemed a smittal one, and even our own land began to show symptoms of the plague spot. Agents of the Spirit of Darkness, calling themselves the Friends of the People, held secret meetings, and hatched plots to blow up our blessed king and constitution. Yet the business, though fearsome in the main, was in some parts almost laughable. Everything was to be divided, and everyone made alike. Houses and lands were to be distributed by lots, and the mighty man and the beggar--the old man and the hobble-de-hoy--the industrious man and the spendthrift, the maimed, the cripple, and the blind, the clever man of business, and the haveril simpleton, made all just brethern, and alike. Save us! but to think of such nonsense! At one of their meetings, held at the sign of the Tappet Hen and the Tankard, there was a prime fight of five rounds between Tammy Bowsie, the snab, and auld Thrashem, the dominie, about their drawing cuts which was to get Dalkeith Palace, and which Newbottle Abbey! Oh, sic riff-raff!

It was a brave notion of the king to put the loyalty of the land to the test, that the daft folk might be dismayed, and that the clanjamphrey might be tumbled down before their betters, like the windle-straes in a hurricane. And so they were. Such crowds came forward when the names of the volunteers were taken down. I will never forget the first day that I got my regimentals on, and when I looked myself in the glass, just to think I was a sodger who never in my life could thole the smell of powder! Oh, but it was grand! I sometimes fancied myself a general, and giving the word of command. Big Sam, who was a sergeant in the fencibles, and enough to have put five Frenchmen to flight any day of the year, whiles came to train us; but as nature never intended me for the soldiering trade, I never got out of the awkward squad, though I had two or three neighbours to keep me in countenance.

We all cracked very crouse about fighting; but one dark night we got a fleg in sober earnest. Jow went the town bell, and row-de-dow gaed the drums, and all in a minute was confusion and uproar in ilka street. I was seized with a severe shaking of the knees and a flapping at the heart, when, through the garret window, I saw the signal posts were in a bleeze, and that the French had landed. This was in reality to be a soldier! I never got such a fright since the day I was cleckit. There was such a noise and hullabaloo in the streets, as if the Day of Judgment had come to find us all unprepared.

Notwithstanding, we behaved ourselves like true-blue Scotsmen, called forth to fight the battles of our country, and if the French had come, as they did not come, they would have found that to their cost, as sure as my name is Mansie. However, it turned out that it was a false alarm, and that the thief Buonaparte had not landed at Dunbar, as it was jealoused; so, after standing under arms for half the night, we were sent home to our beds.

But next day we were taken out to be taught the art of firing. We went through our motions bravely--to load, ram down the cartridge, made ready, present, fire. But so flustered and confused was I that I never had mind to pull the tricker, though I rammed down a fresh cartridge at the word of command. At the end of the firing the sergeant of the company ordered all that had loaded pieces to come to the front, and six of us stepped out in a little line in face of the regiment. Our pieces were cocked, and at the word "Fire!" off they went. It was an act of desperation on my part to draw the tricker, and I had hardly well shut my blinkers when I got such a thump on the shoulder as knocked me backwards, head over heels, on the grass. When I came to my senses and found myself not killed outright, and my gun two or three ells away, I began to rise up. Then I saw one of the men going forward to lift the fatal piece, but my care for the safety of others overcame the sense of my own peril. "Let alane, let alane!" cried I to him, "and take care of yoursell, for it has to gang off five times yet." I thought in my innocence that we should hear as many reports as I had crammed cartridges down her muzzle. This was a sore joke against me for a length of time; but I tholed it patiently, considering cannily within myself, that even Johnny Cope himself had not learned the art of war in a single morning.

_IV.--My First and Last Play_

Maister Glen, a farmer from the howes of the Lammermoor, Hills, a far-awa cousin of our neighbour Widow Grassie, came to Dalkeith to buy a horse at our fair. He put up free of expense at the widow's, who asked me to join him and her at a bit warm dinner, as may be, being a stranger, he would not like to use the freedom of drinking by himself--a custom which is at the best an unsocial one--especially with none but women-folk near him.

When we got our joy filled for the second time, and began to be better acquainted, we became merry, and cracked away just like two pen-guns. I asked him, ye see, about sheep and cows, and ploughing and thrashing, and horses and carts, and fallow land and lambing-time, and such like; and he, in his turn, made inquiries regarding broad and narrow cloth, Shetland hose, and mittens, thread, and patent shears, measuring, and all other particulars belonging to our trade, which he said, at long and last, after we had joked together, was a power better one than the farming line; and he promised to bind his auldest callant 'prentice to me to the tailoring trade.

On the head of this auld Glen and I had another jug, three being cannie, after which we were both a wee tozymozy. Mistress Grassie saw plainly that we were getting into a state where we could not easily make a halt, and brought in the tea-things and told us that a company of strolling players had come to the town and were to give an exhibition in Laird Wheatley's barn. Many a time I had heard of play-acting, and I determined to run the risk of Maister Wiggie, our minister's rebuke, for the transgression. Auld Glen, being as full of nonsense and as fain to gratify his curiosity as myself, volunteered to pay the ransom of a shilling for admission, so we went to the barn, which had been browley set out for the occasion by Johnny Hammer, the joiner.