Old Mortality

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Chapter I Preliminary

Why seeks he with unwearied toil Through death’s dim walks to urge his way,

Reclaim his long-asserted spoil,

And lead oblivion into day ?

Langhorne.

f ‘ Most readers,” says the Manuscript of Mr. Pattieson, “ must have witnessed with delight the joyous burst which attends the dismissing of a village school on a fine summer evening. The buoyant spirit of childhood, repressed with so much difficulty during the tedious hours of discipline, may then be seen to explode, as it were, in shout, and song, and frolic, as the little urchins join in groups on their playground, and arrange their matches of sport for the evening. But there is one individual who partakes of the relief afforded by the moment of dismission, whose feelings are not so obvious to the eye of the spectator, or so apt to receive his sympathy. I mean the teacher himself, who, stunned with the hum, and suffocated with the closeness of his schoolroom, has spent the whole day (himself against a host) in controlling petulance, exciting indifference to action, striving to enlighten stupidity, and laboring to soften obstinacy ; and whose very powers of intellect have been confounded by hearing the same dull lesson repeated a hundred times by rote, and only varied by the various blunders of the reciters. Even the flowers of classic genius, with which his solitary fancy is most gratified, have been rendered degraded in his imagination by their connection with tears, with errors, and with punishment; so that the Eclogues of Virgil and Odes of Horace are each inseparably allied in association with the sullen figure and monotonous recitation of some blubbering schoolboy. If to these mental

i distresses are added a delicate frame of body, and a mind ambitious of some higher distinction than that of being the tyrant of childhood, the reader may have some slight conception of the relief which a solitary walk in the cool of a fine summer evening affords to the head which has ached, and the nerves which have been shattered, for so many hours in plying the irksome task of public instruction.

“ To me these evening strolls have been the happiest hours of an unhappy life ; and if any gentle reader shall hereafter find pleasure in perusing these lucubrations, I am not unwilling he should know that the plan of them has been usually traced in those moments when relief from toil and clamor, combined with the quiet scenery around me, has disposed my mind to the task of composition.

“My chief haunt, in these hours of golden leisure, is the banks of the small stream which, winding through a f lone vale of green bracken/ passes in front of the village school-house of Gandercleugh. For the first quarter of a mile, perhaps, I may be disturbed from my meditations in order to return the scrape or doffed bonnet of such stragglers among my pupils as fish for trouts or minnows in the little brook, or seek rushes and wild flowers by its margin. But beyond the space I have mentioned the juvenile anglers do not after sunset voluntarily extend their excursions. The cause is, that further up the narrow valley, and in a recess which seems scooped out of the side of the steep heathy bank, there is a deserted burial-ground, which the little cowards are fearful of approaching in the twilight. To me, however, the place has an inexpressible charm. It has been long the favorite termination of my walks, and, if my kind patron forgets not his promise, will (and probably at no very distant day) be my final resting-place after my mortal pilgrimage.*

“ It is a spot which possesses all the solemnity of feeling attached to a burial-ground, without exciting those of a more unpleasing description. Having been very little used for many years, the few hillocks which rise above the level plain are covered with the same short velvet turf. The monuments, of which there are not above seven or eight, are half sunk in the ground and overgrown with moss. No newly erected tomb disturbs the sober serenity of our reflections by reminding us of recent calamity, and no rank-springing grass forces upon our imagination the recollection, that it owes its dark luxuriance to the foul and festering remnants of mortality which ferment beneath. The daisy which sprinkles the sod, and * See tfewr FatUeson’s Grave. Note 1.

the harebell which hangs over it, derive their pure nourishment from the dew of heaven, and their growth impresses us with no degrading or disgusting recollections. Death has indeed been here, and its traces are before us ; but they are softened and deprived of their horror by our distance from the period when they have been first impressed. Those who sleep beneath are only connected with us by the reflection, that they have once been what we now are, and that, as their relics are now identified with their mother earth, ours shall at some future period undergo the same transformation.

“ Yet, although the moss has been collected on the most modern of these humble tombs during four generations of mankind, the memory of some of those who sleep beneath them is still held in reverent remembrance. It is true that, upon the largest, and, to an antiquary, the most interesting monument of the group, which bears the effigies of a doughty knight in his hood of mail, with his shield hanging on his breast, the armorial bearings are defaced by time, and a few worn-out letters may be read at the pleasure of the decipherer, Dns. Johan de Hamel, or Johan de Lamel. And it is also true that of another tomb, richly sculptured with an ornamental cross, mitre, and pastoral staff, tradition can only aver that a certain nameless bishop lies interred there. But upon other two stones which lie beside may still be read in rude prose and ruder rhyme the history of those who sleep beneath them. They belong, we are assured by the epitaph, to the class of persecuted Presbyterians who afforded a melancholy subject for history in the times of Charles II. and his successor. * In returning from the battle of Pentland Hills, a party of the insurgents had been attacked in this glen by a small detachment of the king's troops, and three or four either killed in the skirmish, or shot after being made prisoners, as rebels taken with arms in their hands. The peasantry continued to attach to the tombs of those victims of prelacy an honor which they do not render to more splendid mausoleums ; and, when they point them out to their sons, and narrate the fate of the sufferers, usually conclude by exhorting them to be ready, should times call for it, to resist to the death in the cause of civil and religious liberty, like their brave forefathers.

“ Although I am far from venerating the peculiar tenets asserted by those who call themselves the followers of those men, and whose intolerance and narrow-minded bigotry are at least as conspicuous as their devotional zeal, yet it is with-

* James, Seventh King of Scotland of that name, and Second according to the numeration of the Kings of England.— J . C.

out depreciating the memory of those sufferers, many of whom united the independent sentiments of a Hampden with the suffering zeal of a Hooper or Latimer. On the other hand, it would be unjust to forget that many even of those who had been most active in crushing what they conceived the rebellious and seditious spirit of those unhappy wanderers, displayed themselves, when called upon to suffer for their political and religious opinions, the same daring and devoted zeal, tinctured, in their case, with chivalrous loyalty, as in the former with republican enthusiasm. It has often been remarked of the Scottish character, that the stubbornness with which it is moulded shows most to advantage in adversity, when it seems akin to the native sycamore of their hills, which scorns to be biassed in its mode of growth even by the influence of the prevailing wind, but, shooting its branches with equal boldness in every direction, shows no weather-side to the storm, and may be broken, but can never be bended. It must be understood that I speak of my countrymen as they fall under my own observation. When in foreign countries, I have been informed that they are more docile. But it is time to return from this digression.

“ One summer evening as, in a stroll such as I have described, I approached this deserted mansion of the dead, I was somewhat surprised to hear sounds distinct from those which usually soothe its solitude, the gentle chiding, namely, of the brook, and the sighing of the wind in the boughs of three gigantic ash-trees, which mark the cemetery. The clink of a ham'- mer was on this occasion distinctly heard ; and I entertained some alarm that a march dike, long meditated by the two proprietors whose estates were divided by my favorite brook, was about to be drawn up the glen, in order to substitute its rectilinear deformity for the graceful winding of the natural > boundary. * As I approached I was agreeably undeceived. An old man was seated upon the monument of the slaughtered Presbyterians, and busily employed in deepening with his chisel the letters of the inscription which, announcing in Scriptural language the promised blessings of futurity to be the lot of the slain, anathematized the murderers with corresponding violence. A blue bonnet of unusual dimensions covered the gray hairs of the pious workman. His dress was a large old-fashioned coat of the coarse cloth called f hodden-gray/ usually worn by the elder peasants, with waistcoat and breeches of the same ; and the whole suit, though still in decent repair, had obviously seen a train of long service.

* See A March-Dike Boundary. Note 2.

Strong clouted shoes, studded with hob-nails and ‘ g^uiashes* or ‘ leggins/ made of thick black cloth, completed his equipment. Beside him, fed among the graves a pony, the companion of his journey, whose extreme whiteness, as well as its projecting bones and hollow eyes, indicated its antiquity. was harnessed in the most simple manner, with a pair of branks, a hair tether, or halter, and a "sunk/ or cushion of straw, instead of bridle and saddle. A canvas pouch hung around the neck of the animal, for the purpose, probably, of containing the rider's tools, and anything else he might have occasion to carry with him. Although I had never seen the old man before, yet from the singularity of his employment and the style of his equipage, I had no difficulty in recognizing a religious itinerant whom I had often heard talked of, and who was known in various parts of Scotland by the title of Old Mortality.

“ Where this man was born, or what was his real name, I have never been able to learn ; nor are the motives which made him desert his home and adopt the erratic mode of life which he pursued known to me except very generally. According to the belief of most people, he was a native of either the county of Dumfries or Galloway, and lineally descended from some of those champions of the Covenant whose deeds and sufferings were his favorite theme. He is said to have held, at one period of his life, a small moorland farm ; but, whether from pecuniary losses or domestic misfortune, he had long renounced that and every other gainful calling. In the language of Scripture, he left his house, his home, and his kindred, and wandered about until the day of his death, a period of nearly thirty years.

“ During this long pilgrimage, the pious enthusiast regulated his circuit so as annually to visit the graves of the unfortunate Covenanters who suffered by the sword, or by the executioner, during the reigns of the two last monarehs of the Stewart line. These are most numerous in the western districts of Ayr, Galloway, and Dumfries ; but they are also to be found in other parts of Scotland, wherever the fugitives had fought, or fallen, or suffered by military or civil execution. Their tombs are often apart from all human habitation, in the remote moors and wilds to which the wanderers had fled for concealment. But wherever they existed, Old Mortality was sure to visit them when his annual round brought them within his reach. In the most lonely recesses of the mountains the moor-fowl shooter has been often surprised tc find him busied in cleaning the moss from the gray stones.

WAVERLEV NOVELS renewing with his chisel the half-defaced inscriptions, and repairing the emblems of death with which these simple monuments are usually adorned. Motives of the most sincere, though fanciful, devotion induced the old man to dedicate so many years of existence to perform this tribute to the memory of the deceased warriors of the church. He considered himself as fulfilling a sacred duty, while renewing to the eyes of posterity the decaying emblems of the zeal and sufferings of their forefathers, and thereby trimming, as it were, the beaconlight which was to warn future generations to defend their religion even unto blood.

“ In all his wanderings the old pilgrim never seemed to need, or was known to accept, pecuniary assistance. It is true, his wants were very few ; for wherever he went, he found ready quarters in the house of some Cameronian of his own sect, or of some other religious person. The hospitality which was reverentially paid to him he always acknowledged by repairing the grave-stones (if there existed any) belonging to the family or ancestors of his host. As the wanderer was usually to be seen bent on this pious task within the precincts of some country churchyard, or reclined on the solitary tombstone among the heath, disturbing the plover and the blackcock with the clink of his chisel and mallet, with his old white pony grazing by his side, he acquired, from his converse among the dead, the popular appellation of Old Mortality.

“ The character of such a man could have in it little connection even with innocent gayety. Yet among those of his own religious persuasion, he is reported to have been cheerful. The descendants of persecutors, or those whom he supposed guilty of entertaining similar tenets, and the scoffers at religion by whom he was sometimes assailed, he usually termed the generation of vipers. Conversing with others, he was grave and sententious, not without a cast of severity. But lie is said never to have been observed to give way to violent passion, excepting upon one occasion, when a mischievous truant-boy defaced with a stone the nose of a cherub's face which the old man was engaged in retouching. I am in general a sparer of the rod, notwithstanding the maxim of Solomon, for which schoolboys have little reason to thank his memory ; but on this occasion I deemed it proper to show that I did not hate the child. But I must return to the circumstances attending my first interview with this interesting enthusiast.

“In accosting Old Mortality, I did not fail to pay respect to his years and his principles, beginning my address by a

*

respectful apology for interrupting his labors. The old man intermitted the operation of the chisel, took oft his spectacles and wiped them, then, replacing them on his nose, acknowledged my courtesy by a suitable return. Encouraged by his affability, I in truded upon him some questions concerning the sufferers on whose monument he was now employed. To talk of the exploits of the Covenanters was the delight, as to repair their monuments was the business, of his life. He was profuse in the communication of all the minute information which he had collected concerning them, their wars, and their wanderings. One would almost have supposed he must have been their contemporary, and have actually beheld the passages which he related, so much had he identified his feelings and opinions with theirs, and so much had his narratives the circumstantiality of an eye-witness.

“‘We,’ he said, in a tone of exultation — ‘we are the only true Whigs. Carnal men have assumed that triumphant appellation, following him whose kingdom is of this world. Which of them would sit six hours on a wet hillside to hear a godly sermon ? I trow an hour oT wad staw them. They are ne^er a hair better than them that shamena to take upon themsells the persecuting name of bluid thirsty Tories. Self-seekers all of them, strivers after wealth, power, and worldly ambition, and forgetters alike of what has been dreeM and done by the mighty men who stood in the gap in the great day of wrath. Nae wonder they dread the accomplishment of what was spoken by the mouth of the worthy Mr. Peden — that precious servant of the Lord, none of whose words fell to the ground — that the French monzies sail rise as fast in the glens of Ayr and the Kens of Galloway as ever the Highlandmen did in 1677. And now they are gripping to the bow and to the spear, when they suld be mourning for a sinfu* land and a broken Covenant/

“ Soothing the old man by letting his peculiar opinions pass without contradiction, and anxious to prolong conversation with so singular a character, I prevailed upon him to accept that hospitality which Mr. Cleishbotham is always willing to extend to those who need it. In our way to the schoolmaster’s house we called at the Wallace Inn, where I was pretty certain I should find my patron about that hour of the evening. Aftqr a courteous interchange of civilities. Old Mortality was, with difficulty, prevailed upon to join his host in a single glass of liquor, and that on condition that he should be permitted to name the pledge, which he prefaced with a grace of about five minutes, and then, with bonnet doffed and eyes uplifted, drank to the memory of those heroes of the Kirk who had first uplifted her banner upon the mountains. As no persuasion could prevail on him to extend his conviviality to a second cup, my patron accompanied him home, and accommodated him in the ‘ prophet’s chamber/ * as it is his pleasure to call the closet which holds a spare bed, and which is frequently a place of retreat for the poor traveller.

“ The next day I took leave of Old Mortality, who seemed affected by the unusual attention with which I had cultivated his acquaintance and listened to his conversation. After he had mounted, not without difficulty, the old white pony, he took me by the hand, and said, ‘ The blessing of our Master bo with you, young man ! My hours are like the ears of the latter harvest, and your days are yet in the spring ; and yet you may be gathered into the garner of mortality before me, for the sickle of death cuts down the green as oft as the ripe, and there is a color in your cheek that, like the bud of the rose, serveth oft to hide the worm ofcorruption. Wherefore labor as one who knoweth not when his Master calleth. And if it be my lot to return to this village after ye are gane hame to your ain place, these auld withered hands will frame a stane of memorial, that your name may not perish from among the people.’

“ I thanked Old Mortality for his kind intentions in my behalf, and heaved a sigh, not, I think, of regret so much as of resignation, to think of the chance that I might soon require his goad offices. But though, in all human probability, he did not err in supposing that my span of life may be abridged in youth, he had overestimated the period of his own pilgrimage on earth. It is now some years since he has been missed in all his usual haunts, while moss, lichen, and deer-hair are fast covering those stones to cleanse which had been the business of his life. About the beginning of this century he closed his mortal toils, being found on the highway near Lockerbie, in Dumfriesshire, exhausted and just expiring. The old white pony, the companion of all his wanderings, was standing by the side of his dying master. There was found about his person a sum of money sufficient for his decent interment, which serves to show that his death was iti no ways hastened by violence or by want. The common people still regard his memory with great respect ; and many are of opinion that the stones which he repaired will not again require the assistance of the chisel. They even assert that on the tombs where the manner of the martyrs’ murder is recorded, their names have remained in-

*See Note 3.

delibly legible since the death of Old Mortality, while those of the persecutors, sculptured on the same monuments, have been entirely defaced. It is hardly necessary to say that this is a fond imagination, and that, since the time of the pious pilgrim, the monuments which were the objects of his care are hastening, like all earthly memorials, into ruin or decay.

“ My readers will of course understand that in embodying into one compressed narrative many of the anecdotes which I had the advantage of deriving from Old Mortality, I have been far from adopting either his style, his opinions, or even his facts, so far as they appear to have been distorted by party prejudice. I have endeavored to correct or verify them from the most authentic sources of tradition, afforded by the representatives of either party.

“ On the part of the Presbyterians, I have consulted such moorland farmers from the western districts as, by the kindness of their landlords, or otherwise, have been able, during the late general change of property, to retain possession of the grazings on which their grandsires fed their flocks and herds. I must own, that of late days, I have found this a limited source of information. I have, therefore, called in the supplementary aid of those modest itinerants whom the scrupulous civility of our ancestors denominated travelling merchants, but whom, of late, accommodating ourselves in this as in more material particulars to the feelings and sentiments of our more wealthy neighbors, we have learned to call packmen or peddlers. To country weavers travelling in hopes to get rid of their winter web, but more especially to tailors, who, from their sedentary profession, and the necessity in our country of exercising it by temporary residence in the families by whom they are employed, may be considered as possessing a complete register of rural traditions, I have been indebted for many illustrations of the narratives of Old Mortality, much in the taste and spirit of the original.

“ I had more difficulty in finding materials for correcting the tone of partiality which evidently pervaded those stores of traditional learning, in order that I might be enabled to present an unbiassed picture of the manners of that unhappy period, and at the same time to do justice to the merits of both parties. But I have been enabled to qualify the narratives of Old Mortality and his Cameronian friends by the reports of more than one descendant of ancient and honorable families, who, themselves decayed into the humble vale of life, yet look proudly back on the period when their ancestors fought and fell in behalf of the exiled house of Stewart. I may even boast right reverend authority on the same score ; for more than one nonjuring bishop, whose authority and income were upon as apostolical a scale as the greatest abominator of Episcopacy could well desire, have deigned, while partaking of the humble cheer of the Wallace Inn, to furnish me with information corrective of the facts which I learned from others. There are also here and there a laird or two who, though they shrug their shoulders, profess no great shame in their fathers having served in the persecuting squadrons of Earlshall and Claverhouse. From the gamekeepers of these gentlemen, an office the most apt of any other to become hereditary in such families, I have also contrived to collect much valuable information.

“ Upon the whole, I can hardly fear that at this time, in describing the operation which their opposite principles produced upon the good and bad men of both parties, I can be suspected of meaning insult or injustice to either. If recollection of former injuries, extra-loyalty, and contempt and hatred of their adversaries, produced rigor and tyranny in the one party, it will hardly be denied, on the other hand, that, if the zeal for G-od’s house did not eat up the Conventiclers, it devoured at least, to imitate the phrase of Dryden, no small portion of their loyalty, sober sense, and good breeding. We may safely hope that the souls of the brave and sincere on either side have long looked down with surprise and pity upon the ill-appreciated motives which caused their mutual hatred and hostility while in this valley of darkness, blood, and tears. Peace to their memory ! Let us think of them as the heroine of our only Scottish tragedy entreats her lord to think of her departed sire :

“ O rake not up the ashes of our fathers !

Implacable resentment was their crime,

And grievous has the expiation been.”

CHAPTER II Summon an hundred horse by break of day

To wait our pleasure at the castle gates.

Douglas.

Ukder the reign of the last Stewarts there was an anxious wish on the part of government to counteract, by every means in their power, the strict or puritanical spirit which had been the chief characteristic of the republican government, and to revive those feudal institutions which united the vassal to the liege lord, and both to the crown. Frequent musters and assemblies of the people, both for military exercise and for sports and pastimes, were appointed by authority. The interference in the latter case was impolitic, to say the least ; for, as usual on such occasions, the consciences which were at first only scrupulous became confirmed in their opinions, instead of giving way to the terrors of authority ; and the youth of both sexes, to whom the pipe and tabor in England, or the bagpipe in Scotland, would have been in themselves an irresistible temptation, were enabled to set them at defiance from the proud consciousness that they were at the same time resisting an act of council. To compel men to dance and be merry by authority has rarely succeeded even on board of slave-ships, where it was formerly sometimes attempted by way of inducing the wretched captives to agitate their limbs and restore the circulation during the few minutes they were permitted to enjoy the fresh air upon deck. The rigor of the strict Calvinists increased in proportion to the wishes of the government that it should be relaxed ; a Judaical observance of the Sabbath, a supercilious condemnation of all manly pastimes and harmless recreations, as well as of the profane custom of promiscuous dancing — that is, of men and women dancing together in the same party, for I believe they admitted that the exercise might be inoffensive if practised by the parties separately — distinguishing those who professed a more* than ordinary share of sanctity. They discouraged, as far as lay in their power, even the ancient “ wappenschaws,” as they were termed; when the

U feudal array of the county was called out, and each crownvassal was required to appear with such muster of men and armor as he was bound to make by his fief, and that under high statutory penalties. The Covenanters were the more jealous of those assemblies, as the lord-lieutenants and sheriffs under whom they were held had instructions from the government to spare no pains which might render them agreeable to the young men who were thus summoned together, upon whom the military exercise of the morning, and the sports which usually closed the evening, might naturally be supposed to have a seductive effect.

The preachers and proselytes of the more rigid Presbyterians labored, therefore, by caution, remonstrance, and authority, to diminish the attendance upon these summonses, conscious that in doing so they lessened not only the apparent, but the actual, strength of the government, by impeding the extension of that esprit de corps which soon unites young men who are in the habit of meeting together for manly sport, or military exercise. They, therefore, exerted themselves earnestly to prevent attendance on these occasions by those who could find any possible excuse for absence, and were especially severe upon such of their hearers as mere curiosity led to be spectators, or love of exercise to be partakers, of the array and the sports which took place. Such of the gentry as acceded to these doctrines were not always, however,, in a situation to be ruled by them. The commands of the law were imperative ; and the privy council, who administered the executive power in Scotland, were severe in enforcing the statutory penalties against the crown-vassals who did not appear at the periodical wappenschaw. The landholders were compelled, therefore, to send their sons, tenants, and vassals to the rendezvous, to the number of horses, men, and spears at which they were rated ; and it frequently happened that, notwithstanding the strict charge of their elders to return as soon as the formal inspection was over, the young men-at-arms were unable to resist the temptation of sharing in the sports which succeeded the muster, or to avoid listening to the prayers read in the churches on these occasions, and thus, in the opinion of their repining parents, meddling with the accursed thing which is an abomination in the sight of the Lord.