Jock Barefoot

Front matter

Book Li 6 6

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT

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Foreword

The story of Jock Barefoot grew from a legend which I found in a history of my own people; “The Lives of the Lindsays” by Lord Alexander Lindsay, Sixth Earl of Balcarres and the brother of Lady Anne Lindsay Barnard who wrote the famous ballad “Auld Robin Grey.”

I have been to Scotland and know the charms of its countryside but the atmosphere of my story I owe to my father, Robert Burns Lindsay, who was born and lived through boyhood in a little Scotch village in that section of the Lowlands made famous by Walter Scott.

Another Scotchman, Dr. George Lang, now of the University of Alabama, hearing that I was writing Jock Barefoot hastened in true Scotch fashion to send me a helpful book, “The Glamour of the Glen” by Dr. William McConachie, from which I got informa¬ tion for the natural setting of the story. And Hugh Miller, a noted Scotch writer of the early nineteenth century, initiated me into the mysteries of fairies and their like through his “Scottish Scenes and Legends” published in 1835.

IX

X

FOREWORD

There is a glen called The Glen of the Fairies. The tree, from which the real Jock Barefoot is sup¬ posed to have broken a branch, actually grew to such a size that in its prime it was forty-three feet in circum¬ ference !

Maud Lindsay

Sheffield, Alabama Dec. 30, 1938

Chapter I

If Jock Barefoot had known, as he climbed the hill to the Laird’s house, all that would happen before he came that way again, he might not have been in such high spirits. As it was he went along as if he had just been left a fortune, and no wonder. Any boy who was trusted by Mistress Margot, the postmistress and sweet¬ shop-keeper of Wraye, to take a letter to the Laird had a right to be pleased, and proud too.

The letter was pinned securely in a pocket of his coat and he was already planning how the sixpence fee, which he was sure to get for the errand, should be spent. First he would buy a fine new taw for he was a great marble player. Then, maybe a bag of sweets or cracknuts to share with his playfellows. And then something special, a ribbon or a kerchief, for Kirsty the minister’s little daughter who was always sharing with him. Yes, it was a very fortunate thing that he had chosen this morning to wade in the mud puddle directly opposite Mistress Margot’s shop, else it might be Robin Mucklewraith or Jamie Ferguson or Davy

•3 i 4 JOCK BAREFOOT

Davit who was trudging up the hill and making plans.

Robin had pretended that he would not have gone on such an errand if it had been offered to him twenty times over on account of the Laird’s temper.

“You’re as likely to get a clout on the head as a six¬ pence,” he had told Jock, but that was only because he was envious. If the Laird did have a terrible temper, what difference would that make to Jock? All he had to do was to hand the letter to the Laird’s steward, An¬ drew MacAndrew MacPherson, get his sixpence— it might even be a shilling—and come away.

He thrust his toes into every soft ridge of earth left by cart wheels along the road, and sang at top of his voice a foolish song that he liked for its nonsensical words:

Come dance a jig with Granny’s pig.

Rowdy, dowdy, dowdy.

Come dance a jig with Granny’s pig,

Singing rantie, cantie, rollicking rantie. Rowdy, dowdy-O.

What did he care what Robin Mucklewraith said, though he did wonder at the Laird. Why should a man who owned a house as big as a castle, and almost the whole village of Wraye besides, to say nothing of moorlands where the curlews called and pasture lands for blackfaced sheep, fields for oats and barley and even a glen where fairies were supposed to live, go ranting and roaring if his porridge were too hot or too cold, or his dinner too early or too late, or maybe for nothing at all as folk declared he did?

Everybody was of the opinion that Andrew Mac- Andrew MacPherson led an unhappy life with the Laird when he was at home. Though for that matter the Laird was seldom there. He had a fine house in Edinboro’ Town and another in London, and he was fond of traveling in foreign lands. He had gotten home only the day before, after so long an absence that Jock, who had never seen him except in his carriage on his rare visits to Wraye, could scarcely remember how he looked.

Robin Mucklewraith, who thought he knew every¬ thing, said that he was as tall as a giant, and strong enough to carry his great Derby ram over his shoulder. But Jock turned up his nose at this.

Robin said, too, that there was just one thing that the Laird was afraid of—fairies. You could not have gotten him into his own glen, according to Robin, and however he had found this out it was likely to be true. There was nobody in the village who would dare go to the Glen of the Fairies, even in broad daylight, unless it was the minister.

The minister did not believe in The Little Good People, as it was safer to call fairies, and neither did he believe in the tales about the Laird. Stories grow in the telling he always said, and he insisted, too, that the Laird had a kind heart in spite of his quick tem¬ per.

“Nobody in Wraye is ever driven for his rent,” he pointed out. But everybody else gave Andrew Mac- Andrew MacPherson the credit for that. Anyway it was a good thing for the village people that the steward was there to stand between them and the Laird, and pay out sixpences or shillings.

Jock began to run, now, for the gateway of the Laird’s place was in sight, and he was eager to get his errand done before anybody else had time to buy the marble that he had set his heart on. It was a blue one with one white spot.

He had never been inside the gateway, for the great iron gates were always locked when the Laird was away, but he had often peeped in to see the fountains and statues and trees in the courtyard. One of the trees was worth a thousand pounds, or at least it was told that the Laird would not take that much in gold for it. He had brought it from across the seas to plant by his gates, though his own woods were filled with trees just as bonny. And when he was off on his travels and adventures the steward had to write letters to tell how it was growing.

Somebody or something had broken one of its branches this morning, and the broken piece lay di¬ rectly in Jock’s way. He picked it up as he passed and took it into the yard with him. Now that he was there he felt a little abashed by his fine surroundings. Per¬ haps it would have been better to have brought Robin along—for all of his talk he’d have jumped at the chance—but it was too late to think of that now. Jock would have to get through his errand alone, and to keep up his courage he slashed at the pebbles on the graveled walk and whistled “The Campbells are com¬ ing” which was the bravest tune he could remember at the moment. He had scarcely begun it when he heard a great voice roaring behind him:

“STOP! STOP!” And when he turned whom should he see but the Laird, for it could be no other, coming towards him in a towering rage. “Scamp! Rogue! Trespasser!” he shouted, “I’ll teach you how to come into my grounds breaking and destroying and slashing and whistling! WHISTLING!” He bran¬ dished his walking stick as if he werd about to give Jock the clout on the head that Robin had predicted, but he only pointed to the gate with it calling louder than ever:

“I’ll teach you how to come into my grounds!”

“Away with you! Away with you for an idle im¬ pudent callant that will come to no good end. Begone and never let me see your face again or I’ll—I’ll—

I’ll—”

What he would do he had no chance to tell for, casting the letter and branch on the ground, Jock Barefoot went bounding away. If a pack of wolves had been at his heels he could not have traveled faster. And no sooner was he off than the Laird, whose temper was always as quick to go as it was to come, began to be sorry for his hasty words.

The letter was proof enough that the lad had been sent to the house on an errand, and, now that it lay on the ground before him, the broken branch which had been the cause of all his anger seemed to the Laird a trifling thing. He went to the gate and looked down the road, but, though he could see almost to the village street, no small boy was there. It passed all belief how he could have vanished so quickly, and, with the hope that he was lingering about to get his fee from the steward, the Laird called once or twice, “Laddie, come back, I’ve a shilling for you.”

He soon saw that this was wasting breath and he was so put out by the whole matter that, though he went in when dinner was ready, he would not touch a bite.

“He is fairly spoiled with foreign cooking and there’ll be no pleasing him. I have it in mind to seek another place,” the cook told the steward.

“Wait a little. Wait a little,” he advised. “There’s something lies heavy on his mind and I’ll hear it soon or my name is not Andrew Mac Andrew MacPherson as my father’s was before me.” He was right, too, for dinner was not long over when the Laird sent for him to inquire if he knew anything of a small lad with a red head and freckles on his nose like the specks on a throstle’s egg.

“Had he shoon?” said Andrew MacAndrew, which was his way of asking if the child wore shoes.

“No, he was barefoot,” answered the Laird, who looked downcast and ashamed, though the steward pretended not to notice this.

“It could not have been Davy that’s Mistress Davit’s bairn,” he answered briskly, “for he will not gang barefoot for fear of stumping his toe, nor Mrs. Ferguson’s Jamie, for his hair is yellow as ripe barley, nor Mrs. Mucklewraith’s Robin—”

“HAVE DONE! HAVE DONE!” cried the Laird. “Do I want to hear the names of the whole village and their mothers. Who is the child and where does he live?”

“Well,” said Andrew MacAndrew, who was too used to the Laird’s humors to be disturbed by them, “I’m thinking that it’s Jock Barefoot that you mean.” But his answer only provoked the Laird to a frenzy.

“Who would give a name like that to any bairn?” he demanded. “Jock Barefoot! Jock Barefoot.”

“Folks call him that,” said the steward, “and I’ve heard it told that he got the name because he cannot abide the feel of leather on his feet, and he a poor or¬ phan laddie that has neither kith nor kin to make him wear what he doesna’ like. And where would your Lairdship be seeing Jock Barefoot?” he added for he was not above showing a little curiosity. His Laird¬ ship was in no mood to gratify him.

“Have you no ears to hear or civility to answer a plain question?” he asked bitterly. “Where does the laddie live?”

“It’s no easy question to answer,” retorted Andrew Mac Andrew. “He sleeps mostly at Granny Blair’s for she’s old and needing company. He eats at the miller’s where there are already so many children that one more to sup porridge makes no difference. All the mothers that your Lairdship does not like to hear about do his mending and the like. He gets his Sat¬ urday tub along with Robin Mucklewraith, and the minister sees to it that he knows his catechism and Bible.”

“HOLD YOUR TONGUE!” shouted the Laird forgetful that he had been the one to urge the speaking. “HOLD YOUR TONGUE and have the horses put to the carriage. I’m going to the minister.”

Only a little later the minister and the minister’s wife and the minister’s little daughter Kirsty were astonished to see the Laird’s fine carriage, drawn by two high-stepping bay horses, stopping in front of the manse. The Laird himself was getting out to visit them! They were still more astonished to learn that he had come to inquire for Jock Barefoot, though he could not have gone to a better place. J ock was in and out of the Manse like one of the family for he was Kirsty’s great playmate.

“Run and find him, lassie,” her mother bade, “He’ll not be far away I’m thinking.”

The Laird sat in the minister’s study to wait, but none too patiently. He did not explain why he wished to see Jock and when the minister told, as the steward had, that the boy was at home in every house in the village, and mothered by every woman there, he growled like an angry bear:

“Foolishness. They will spoil him among them. What he needs is a good home and to stay there.”

The minister and his wife agreed that he might be right, though Jock’s case was different from most.

When his father and mother died, which was before the minister’s family had come to Wraye, there had been no one to take the bairn but distant cousins who were not eager, and the village women were poor but tenderhearted. First one and then another had offered to do her part in caring for the child, and all together they had worked so well that now nobody ever thought of sending him away.

“Jock is as happy as any laddie,” said the minister, “and good. There is no child more bidable except in the matter of wearing shoes, and that he will outgrow. I have advised against troubling him about it.”

His eyes twinkled as he spoke, and so, for a won¬ der, did the Laird’s. The minister’s wife always thought he would have laughed outright if Kirsty had not come running in just then with plenty to tell, though not what the Laird wanted to hear. Jock Barefoot was not at the sweetshop, nor the mill, nor off with Robin and the other boys nor at Crippled Dick’s house.

“He’s nowhere that he likes to be,” she reported breathlessly, “and Dick thinks he’s maybe gone to be a sailor.”

The Laird told the whole story to the minister then, and it was not long before the Town-Crier went through the streets ringing his bell and calling:

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“Has anybody seen Jock Barefoot? Has anybody seen Jock Barefoot?” And varying his cry once in a while by adding:

“If anybody’s seen Jock Barefoot, the minister wants to know.”

Chapter II

Soon a string of people were at the minister’s door, though most of them came to get news rather than to tell anything of the missing boy. A few had seen him at the mudpuddle that morning, a playmate or two had spoken to him on his way from the village, and a wag¬ goner had passed him on the road.

“He was all right then and singing like a laverock,” the waggoner assured the minister, but that had been early in the day. No one had seen or heard of Jock Barefoot after he left the Laird’s house.

Mistress Margot who had been among the first to reach the Manse was full of remorse for having sent him on the errand.

“My heart has been in my mouth ever since I saw him go,” she said tearfully, “though the worst I feared was that he would lose the letter.” She took great com¬ fort in the thought that she had made him wash his feet before he went.

“They were as white as the driven snow, poor lad¬ die,” she repeated over and over.

Robin Mucklewraith and Jamie Ferguson and Davy Davit came running to tell that a pair of Davy’s outgrown shoes, that his mother had given Jock Bare¬ foot only the day before, were hanging in a tree near the puddle.

“I tellit her he would not wear them,” said Davy who was half-crying with excitement.

All the children in the village went to look at the shoes, and Robin would have climbed the tree and brought them down but Kirsty would not hear of this.

“He’ll get them himself when he comes home for supper,” she insisted, for she would not give up hope that Jock would soon be back to laugh with all of them at the great stir he had caused.

Many friends and neighbors thought the same, and the miller’s wife set Jock’s usual place at the table, and filled a mug with milk for him.

“Run to the door, hinny, and have a look for him,” she bade her youngest child when everything was ready for supper. But though more than one was watching for him no Jock Barefoot came singing down the street. Even the men grew uneasy now, and by bed¬ time everyone was roused.

“He has run away and fallen into a peat-hag and it’s all my fault,” sobbed Mistress Margot when the women gathered at her shop to talk over their fears.

The minister was consulted and search parties went out with lanterns to be lighted when the long twilight ended. Jock Barefoot might be asleep on the moor or hillside. He might have gone so far that he had to stop at a farmhouse or shepherd’s hut for the night. He might have lost his way in a bog or ravine. These were some of the suggestions.

“He’s too canny to have gotten into the loch,” said the miller in answer to an unspoken fear, but, when daylight came and the boy was not found, the Laird sent his men with ropes and nets to drag the water.

At last every place in the neighborhood, dingles and copses, the glen of the Fairies, and the far pas¬ tures had been searched without a trace of Jock Bare¬ foot. And where to look next was a question! The Laird offered one pound, two pounds, five pounds for news, and ten pounds if the child were found. But, though this was more money than most of the villagers saw in a year, they could do no better for a reward than they had done without a thought of any pay.

Still the reward made talk not only in Wraye but outside as well, and soon all sorts of rumors were brought in. One of these was that Jock Barefoot had been seen with a cattle drover footing it away over the border into England. This so caught the children’s fancy that they made a song about it with the very same chorus that their lost playmate had liked:

Jock Barefoot’s over the Border-0 Rowdy, dowdy, dowdy.

Ho, good Jock, would you serve us so,

Singing rantie, cantie, rollicking rantie. Rowdy, dowdy-O.

Then came a tale that Jock Barefoot in kilt and tartan and bonnet was marching away to the hills with wild Highlanders, and the song must have an¬ other verse:

Rowdy, dowdy, dowdy.

Jock Barefoot’s off with Hieland men Singing rantie, cantie, rollicking rantie, Rowdy, dowdy-O.

This verse was scarcely learned when Robin Mucklewraith came running and whooping to tell great news. “Jock Barefoot’s with GYPSIES! And he’s got a red kerchief on his head. The packman tellit the Laird and he’s sent to catch them all and bring them back.”

There was no time for singing then. The children were too busy watching the highway and shouting,

3 o JOCK BAREFOOT

“Here they are! There they are!” if there was so much as a cloud of dust on the road. The excitement lasted for more than a day, but nothing came of it. The Laird followed every clue only to be disappointed again and again. The whole country seemed to be full of drovers, and Highlanders, and gypsies, and every one of them as hard to find as a flaxseed in a bushel of barley.

After a little nobody beside the Laird and a few others had hopes of ever seeing Jock Barefoot again. Because of other strange things that were happening in the village just then, the child was almost forgotten, or at least for a time.

The first to know of anything out of the way was the boy known as Crippled Dick. Crippled Dick was a great one for play. He could not go running and shouting about the streets with the other children, but nobody’s thoughts traveled faster than his. He was never at a loss for something to do.

To hear him talk, his crutch was sometimes a horse, a grand black or grey or bay horse with crimson trap¬ pings, ready to gallop at a word up hill and down dale all over the world with Dick on its back. And an¬ other time, maybe on a day when Robin and all the other boys had gone fishing, that same crutch with a string attached would change into a fishing rod. Nobody, not even Robin, ever caught such fish as Dick brought up from a pool of sunlight on the kitchen floor.

“Give him a brick and he’ll build a house,” his mother said. And she did not know half the splendid things he imagined. Nobody, unless it were Kirsty or Jock Barefoot, knew all of his games. They were his best playfellows.

Dick had grieved his heart sick over Jock’s disap¬ pearance and he was thinking of him the very night that he heard a noise—a queer little scratching sound —at the wooden shutter of a window close by his bed.

The shutter was strong and securely fastened, but in one of its panels was a hole as large as a penny. This hole had always been a source of great pleasure to Dick. If he played that he was shut into a prison by a wicked king, the hole-in-the-shutter was a fine outlet through which to let down a string to draw up a mes¬ sage from his friends which read perhaps, “WE WILL RESKUE YOU TO-NITE.” Or if the play was that he was besieged in his castle, he could lie with an eye at a loophole to watch the enemy’s every movement.

All of this had been make-believe, but the noise was real—scratch, scratch, scratch. Dick was not afraid.

All of his life he had been expecting something to happen, and now it was coming true.

As a usual thing he had an older brother for a bedfellow, but to-night he was away. Because of this a little lantern had been left burning in the room to keep Dick company. By its light he could see the knot hole plainly. At first he lay still, watching it with his heart beating fast, but after a moment or two of suspense he called softly, “Who is there? What is your wish?”

Just as if someone had been waiting to find out if he were awake, the scratching stopped. A small object that appeared to be nothing but an ordinary stick came through the hole and fell on the bed. A token, thought Dick, who was prepared for anything. Still he must be careful. He lifted the stick as gingerly as if it were a poisoned arrow and gave a gasp of delight. What he held was a tiny flute or flageolet such as shepherds make from hollow reeds. Dick had often and often longed for one.

“Thank you, thank you,” he whispered through the hole in the shutter, but if he expected an answer he was disappointed. Listen as he would, not another sound was to be heard.

Dick sat up in bed and turned the flute over and over, as if by looking at it he could discover the giver.

It had been carefully made with a mouthpiece and four finger holes. He put it to his mouth and blew softly, one, two, three, four fine little, weird little notes. The very sound of them made him tingle all over.

A small object came through the hole.

Just like fairy music, he thought. Yes, and who, but the Little Good People, went about in the night playing tricks like this? They were the ones who had brought the flute he hadn’t a doubt. Oh, oh, if he could just have seen them scratching on the shutter, and peeking through the hole, though perhaps it was bet¬ ter as it was. Once a man had tried to see fairies and all he got out of it was a tweak on his nose. His nose was crooked ever after.

Dick could not wait until morning to tell his mother what had happened.

“Wake up, wake up,” he called, “and see what the fairies have given me.”

Chapter III

“There are no such folks as fairies, or brownies, or the like. The minister himself says so and there’s no going against the minister with all his learning.” This was what Crippled Dick’s mother told him more than once on the day after his strange experience, but when she tried to guess who the mysterious visitor, or visitors, might have been, she was soon at her wit’s end.

“Laddies,” said she, “or maybe Larry Lickladle, the fiddler. He is out later than most and likes his fun. Or—” but here she came to an end of her guessing, and had to begin again. “You’ll find it was that long-leg¬ ged Robin Mucklewraith or some of his gang.”

What was found out by cautious questions among the neighbors left her as puzzled as ever. Larry Lickladle had been at a fiddler’s contest miles away. Robin had spent the night at his grandmother’s in Next Town. Jamie Ferguson, who had a cold, had been well dosed and put to bed before supper, and that Davy Davit would go anywhere by himself in the middle of the night was too much to believe.

“There’s nobody to have done it but the Little Good People,” said Dick who wished to think that very thing and nothing else. “I tellit you that before you went asking about.”

“Well, keep it to yourself,” said his mother, “or folks will think ye’re daftie.”

In spite of her warning, though, it was soon all over the village that the Little Good People had brought Dick a flute that might be a magic one. Every child in Wraye went to bed at night hoping for a visit from fairy folk. One enterprising laddie even took the pains to bore a hole in a shutter to be ready for them, but all he got was a scolding from his mother.

Not a child, but an old, old woman was the next to have a surprise. She was not expecting anything, and she could not believe her own eyes when she went out one morning and found, close to the doorstep, a heap of sticks for her fire. And, hanging to the doorlatch, was a fine fresh fish for her breakfast.

“I have not had such a fish since Jock Barefoot went away. He was always a great one for fish¬ ing, poor laddie,” she said, for she was the very Granny Blair at whose house the orphan boy had often stayed.

She had no other thought than that some good neighbor had brought the fish and the fuel, but when she hobbled from cottage to cottage to find out whom she must thank, nobody knew anything about them.

“Fairies,” whispered the children who soon learned what had happened, and, when Davy Davit com-

Not a child, but an old, old woman was the next.

plained of being wakened by birds chissicking and peeping and cawing and craiking in the night, not only children but older people as well were full of talk. Davy’s mother, it is true, thought that he might have had a nightmare.

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“He is always restless-like,” she said, but this did not keep others from thinking and saying, too, that what Davy had heard was the chatter of—well, if not the Little Good People themselves something just as uncanny.

There was one person who should have been able to find out the truth, and that man was the watchman of Wraye. He went up and down the streets at night telling the time and the weather, and keeping an eye on things so that everyone else could sleep safe and easy.

“Laddies or fairies they’ll not get away from me,” he said, when he heard of the strange happenings. And that very night he started out to end the mystery or know the reason why. At ten o’clock a stray cat crossed his path, at eleven a dog barked, at twelve the sexton’s rooster crowed, and at one the watchman sat down on the church steps to rest. The next thing he knew some¬ one was shouting in his ears:

Two o’clock! Two o’clock! Off and away,

If the fox comes to town the geese will all gae.

“Where? What? Who?” cried the watchman springing up in a hurry but he got no answer. Not a soul was there and nobody was to be found, though the poor man fairly ran about the village, dashing around corners and crying into dark places, “Come out! Come out! or I’ll come and fetch you.”