WOKKS OF JOHN GALT [LIBRARY I UNIViRSITY OF CALIFORNIA I I SAN DIEGO I ANNALS OF THE PARISH. First Edition published in One Volume, 12mo, 1821. THE AYRSHIRE LEGATEES. Originally appeared in Blackwood's Magazine^ 1820-21 ; and published in One Volume, 12mo, 1821. . * I f \l Works of John Gait. Edited by D. Storrar Meldrum ANNALS OF THE PARISH AND THE AYRSHIRE LEGATEES WITH INTRODUCTION BY S. R. CROCKETT WITH A PORTRAIT AND ILLUSTKATIONS BY JOHN WALLACE VOLUME I WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON jincccxcv Printed by KALI.ANTVNK, HANSON & CO. At the Kallanlyne Press CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION xiii MEMOIR . xlvii CHAPTER I. YEAR 1760 The placing of Mr Balwhidder The resistance of the parishioners Mrs Malcolm, the widow Mr Bal- whidder's marriage ....... CHAPTER II. YEAR 1761 The great increase of smuggling Mr Balwhidder disperses a tea-drinking party of gossips He records the virtues of Nanse Banks, the schoolmistress The servant of a military man, who had been prisoner in France, comes into the parish, and opens a dancing-school . 15 CHAPTER III. YEAR 1762 Havoc produced by the smallpox Charles Malcolm is sent off a cabin-boy, on a voyage to Virginia Mizy Spaewell dies on Hallowe'en Tea begins to be ad- mitted at the manse, but the minister continues to exert his authority against smuggling ... 23 CHAPTER IV. YEAR 1763 Charles Malcolm's return from sea Kate Malcolm is taken to live with Lady Macadam Death of the first Mrs Balwhidder 30 vi CONTENTS CHAPTER V. YEAR 1764 PAGE He gets a headstone for Mrs Balwhidder, and writes an epitaph for it He is afflicted with melancholy, and thinks of writing a book Nichol Snipe's device when reproved in church 30 CHAPTER VI. YEAR 1765 Establishment of a whisky distillery He is again married to Miss Lizy Kibbock Her industry in the dairy Her example diffuses a spirit of industry through the parish 45 CHAPTER VII. YKAK 1766 The burning of the Breadland A new bell, and also a. steeple Nanse Birrel found drowned in a well The parish troubled with wild Irishmen .... 51 CHAPTER VIII. YEAR 1767 Lord Eaglesham meets with an accident, which is the means of getting the parish a new road I preach for the benefit of Nanse Banks, the schoolmistress, reduced to poverty ....... 59 CHAPTER IX. YEAR 1768 Lord Eaglesham uses his interest in favour of Charles Malcolm The finding of a new schoolmistress Miss Sabrina Hooky gets the place Change of fashions in the parish 66 CHAPTER X. YEAR 1769 A toad found in the heart of a stone Robert Malcolm, who had been at sea, returns from a northern voyage Kate Malcolm's clandestine correspondence with Lady Macadam's son 73 CONTENTS vii CHAPTER XI. YEAR 1770 PAGE This year a happy and tranquil one Lord Eaglesham establishes a fair in the village The show of Punch appears for the first time in the parish ... 80 CHAPTER XII. YEAR 1771 The nature of Lady Macadam's amusements She inter- cepts letters from her son to Kate Malcolm . . 83 CHAPTER XIII. YEAK 1772 The detection of Mr Heckletext's guilt He threatens to prosecute the elders for defamation The Muscovy duck gets an operation performed on it . .90 CHAPTER XIV. YEAR 1773 The new school-house Lord Eaglesham comes down to the castle I refuse to go and dine there on Sunday, but go on Monday, and meet with an English Dean 96 CHAPTER XV. YEAR 1774 The murder of Jean Glaikit The young Laird Macadam comes down and marries Kate Malcolm The cere- mony performed by me, and I am commissioned to break the matter to Lady Macadam Her behaviour 102 CHAPTER XVI. YEAR 1775 C;ijitaiu Macadam provides a house and an annuity for old Mrs Malcolm Miss Betty Wudrife brings from Edinburgh a new-fashioned silk mantle, but refuses to give the pattern to old Lady Macadam Her revenge ......... 108 viii CONTENTS CHAPTER XVII. YEAE 1776 PAGE A recruiting party comes to Irville Thomas Wilson and some others enlist Charles Malcolm's return . . 114 CHAPTEE XVIIL YEAR 1777 Old Widow Mirkland Bloody accounts of the war He gets a newspaper Great flood . . . . . 121 CHAPTER XIX. YEAE 1778 Revival of the smuggling trade Bettie and Janet Pawkie, and Robin Bicker, an exciseman, come to the parish Their doings Robin is succeeded by Mungo Argyle Lord Eaglesham assists William Malcolm . . 129 CHAPTER XX. YEAE 1779 He goes to Edinburgh to attend the General Assembly Preaches before the Commissioner .... 137 CHAPTER XXI. YEAE 1780 Lord George Gordon Report of an illumination . . 145 CHAPTER XXII. YEAR 1781 Argyle, the exciseman, grows a gentleman Lord Eagles- ham's concubine His death The parish children afflicted with the measles 148 CHAPTER XXIII. YEAE 1782 News of the victory over the French fleet He has to in- form Mrs Malcolm of the death of her son Charles in the engagement ....... 154 CHAPTER XXIV. YEAE 1783 Janet Gaffaw's death and burial 158 CONTENTS ix CHAPTER XXV. YEAR 1784 PAGE A year of sunshine and pleasantness .... 161 CHAPTER XXVI. YEAR 1785 Mr Cayenne comes to the parish A passionate character His outrageous behaviour at the Session-house . 164 CHAPTER XXVII. YEAR 1786 Repairs required for the manse By the sagacious man- agement of Mr Kibbock, the heritors are made to give a new manse altogether They begin, however, to look upon me with a grudge, which provokes me to claim an augmentation, which I obtain . . 170 CHAPTER XXVIIL YEAB 1787 Lady Macadam's house is changed into an inn The making of jelly becomes common in the parish Meg Gaffaw is present at a payment of victual Her be- haviour 176 CHAPTER XXIX. YEAR 1788 A cotton-mill is built The new spirit which it introduces among the people 181 CHAPTER XXX. YEAR 1789 William Malcolm comes to the parish and preaches The opinions upon his sermon ...... 186 CHAPTER XXXI. YEAR 1790 A bookseller's shop is set up among the houses of the weavers at Cayenneville 189 x CONTENTS CHAPTER XXXII. YEAB 1791 PAGE I place my son Gilbert in a counting-house at Glasgow My observations on Glasgow On my return I preach against the vanity of riches, and begin to be taken for a black-neb 193 CHAPTER XXXIII. YEAK 1792 Troubled with low spirits Accidental meeting with Mr Cayenne, who endeavours to remove the prejudices entertained against me 107 CHAPTER XXXIV. YEAK 1793 I dream a remarkable dream, and preach a sermon in consequence, applying to the events of the times Two democratical weaver lads brought before Mr Cayenne, as Justice of Peace 201 CHAPTER XXXV. YEAR 1794 The condition of the parish, as divided into government- men and Jacobins I endeavour to prevent Christian charity from being forgotten in the phraseology of utility and philanthropy 20G CHAPTER XXXVI. YEAR 1795 A recruiting party visits the town After them, players Then preaching Quakers The progress of philo- sophy among the weavers ...... 210 CHAPTER XXXVII. YEAR 1796 Death of second Mrs Balwhidder I look out for a third, and fix upon Mrs Nugent, a widow Particulars of the courtship . 21f> ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOLUME I PORTRAIT OF JOHN GALT . . Frontispiece " EVERY EYE IN THE KIKK WAS ON THEM" .... to face page 110 INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION JL HERE is no reason why this new edition of the best works of John Gait should require any introduction of mine, save the purely chrono- logical one that it arose out of some words spoken last year at the Edinburgh Philosophi- cal Institution. Certain chance sentences, ex- pressing admiration and appreciation of Gait, fell upon the wayside of a publisher's mind; where, not being instantly devoured by the birds of the air, they sprang up, and, in due course, they brought forth the excellent fruit of this new edition. Having had thus, at least, a left- handed and god-paternal interest in the en- terprise, I am called upon to be present at the christening. And this is the only excuse I have for intruding a prefatory word. But I may be permitted to say why the books of John Gait appear so excellent and xvi INTRODUCTION precious to me, and why I am anxious that the world of reading people should not forget him in the press of things new. At the risk of some misunderstanding, I think it best to confine myself to a few personal impressions, without attempting to write, what so many are better qualified than I to undertake, a com- plete study and estimate of the whole works of John Gait. This appears the best course, first of all, because I do not care for Gait's "complete works," or anything like them. After suitable, and even gallant attempts, I am now convinced that I shall die without completely perusing " The Spaewife," and " Ringan Gilhaize,"" not to speak of manifold travels and dramas that is, unless I happen to be cast upon a desert island with a complete set and nothing else. But even in a crowded and perpe- tually elbowing library, I manage to keep a shelf, at the right side of an armchair in a highly eligible position, entirely tenanted by the " smytrie o 1 wee duddy " volumes, all at sixes and sevens as to size and appearance, TNTEODUCTION xvii which bear on their title-pages the scroll, " By the Author of The Annals of the Parish.' " John Gait was not exactly a name to conjure with in his own days nor, indeed, is it yet. But nevertheless, we must do our best to change all that. There was never a more ravelled, hither-and- thither life than that of John Gait. Yet there are no books in our national literature which convey so melodious and continuous an impression of peace. The flavour of Gait's best books is exactly that of a bien and com- fortable burgher house, in one of the well- conditioned smaller county towns of Scotland a house which has been inhabited by genera- tions of well-to-do burghesses, whose happy history is, as sayeth the inscription in a Gallo- way kirk-yaird, complete in the record that they " keeped shop in Wigtown and that's all ! "" An aroma of fair white linen, woven on looms that are long since worm-eaten into kindling wood, washed by careful housewives, bleached for generations on green knowes by kindly smurrs of warm rain, pressed and folded VOL. i. I xviii INTRODUCTION with lavender laid in the drawers and between the folds that is the gracious impression we carry away from the " Annals of the Parish " and "The Provost," the two books of Gaits which I love the most. But there is a warning, and I will set it in . the forefront. There are many things which we have been accustomed to find in great fiction, and even in the more clever imitations of great fiction, to which Gait was completely a stranger. Gait's best books do not contain even the rudiments of a plot. One day pro- gresses after another, much like a douce house- holder's life in the quiet town of Irvine, punctuated only by the yet greater peace of the recurrent Sabbath-day. There is no plot in the lives of such men, no intrigue save that continual one of couthy self-interest, which Gait treats with a kindliness and an under- standing that are unparalleled. Above all there is no adventure. Things happen, indeed, but no blood is spilt to speak of. Yet one does not resent this mono- tone as, for instance, one is apt to do in some INTRODUCTION xix modern Transatlantic novels, where something is always on the point of happening, but never comes off. A recent work of this class held but one excitement between its boards, and that was when a Venetian sentry fired across the Piazza of St. Mark's and did not hit any one. But this complaint does not lie against John Gait, for in his books something is happening all the time. True, it is no more than you get into the habit of running to the window to see, if you live long, for instance, in Irvine a red cart with one creaking wheel, which complains as it goes of the lack of grease at some farm on the hill a fight between a terrier tyke and a rough herd's collie or a small difference between the senior burgh officer and Robin the town's crier. These are interesting, and even exciting in Irvine. But they must be con- sidered from the proper standpoint, which is that of an intimate and well-informed house-dweller in the main street of the town, in the days before railways, when the newsletter came twice a week by the coach, and was read aloud for the public benefit from the steps of the Blue Bell. xx INTRODUCTION " The grammar school was skailing at the time, and the boys, seeing the stramash, gathered round the officer; and, yelling and shouting, encouraged Robin more and more into rebellion, till at last they worked up his corruption to such a pitch, that he took the drum from about his neck, and made it fly like a bomb-shell at the officer's head."" Who does not call this sufficiently exciting ? Who complains that the incidents do not follow one another quickly enough ? How incisive and stirring is the incidence of the characteristic words " skailing," " stramash,"" "corruption!" These are just the words which the provost would have spoken, had an occurrence so unseemly befallen in the good town of Irvine. But this admirable passage brings us to another objection to the wide popularity of John Gait, at least in his own day. The matter is not so serious now as it once was, thanks to multiplied editions of Sir Walter, and to other more recent developments. Gait spares no pains to introduce every old and INTRODUCTION xxi recondite Scots word he knows. He has no mercy on the ignorant Southron. His books are, indeed, the Larger Catechism of the Scottish language, in so far that they are by no means written for those of weaker under- standing. Not only do his characters speak in dialect in every line of his conversations, but as often as not he writes his ordinary narrative in the same admirable Scots, without a thought of self-consciousness or fine-gentlemanship. Thus his every page is a delight to the initiate ; but I cannot deny that these very pages which delight so many of us, may prove somewhat more than trying to the profane. These, so far as I know, are the only reason- able indictments which can be brought against Gait. A possible addition might be made on the score of his confessed long-windedness, especially in his later books. But after all, we read Gait as we go to a but-and-ben in the happily unimproved Isle of Arran, prepared to put up with many things for the sake of the large leisureliness, the rustic air, and the en- xxii INTRODUCTION compassing quiet of heathery mountains and sheltered sea. To me, as I have said, by far the best of John Gait's books is "The Annals of the Parish." The " Provost," which comes second, may be more homogeneous, and written, as he himself would say, with more " bin* and smeddum." But the character of the writer, though made to emerge with conspicuous skill, is not altogether so sympathetic or delightful as that of the Reverend Micah Balwhidder, for fifty years minister of the parish of Dalmailing. The third and fourth decades of a man's life make the thinker ; but the first two make the writer. It is from the experiences of these early years that a man makes his backgrounds, and places and develops his characterisations. He may flavour his books with learning and ex- perience more lately gathered ; but at bottom the world of which he writes, is the world of reality or of fantasy, in which he lived till he was twenty. Now on this principle, the ancient, seemly, douce, moderately God-fearing burgh of INTRODUCTION xxiii Irvine is the foster-mother of most that is ex- cellent in the writing of John Gait. Of course, at times he crosses the breed, and as is the wont of all romancers, he works in the memories of Greenock and other later homes. But the basis and bed-rock are Ayrshire and Irvine. And he is never very successful when he goes farther afield, save when as an alternative he takes some simple people from his native district, and permits them to encounter in a larger and less kindly world the slings and arrows of fortune, which had proved so especially outrageous in his own career. The town of Irvine is described by the parish minister of Gait's time as then " dry and well- aired, with one broad street running through it from the south-east. On the south of the river, but connected with the town by a stone bridge, there is a row of houses on each side of the road, leading to the harbour. These are mostly of one story with finished garrets, and occupied chiefly by seafaring people. To the north-west of the town there is a commonty of three hundred acres, of a sandy xxiv INTRODUCTION soil and partly covered with whin and short broom." Now, almost as clearly as if we could see him, we may take our oaths that on this commonty were often to be observed the rough head and twinkling legs of John Gait. Hither assuredly his love for flowers would lead him, and here his mother would feel him to be safe among the whins and the short broom. For though Gait was quiet, and in youth instant upon his books, he was storing energy and knowledge to sustain the strenuous unrest which filled his later life. Everything he after- wards wrote bore token of a constant observa- tion, which, however cultivated, must primarily have been native to the man. Indeed, Gait is always happiest when he gives free play to his surpassing naturalness. He can hardly tell an adventure with any pith or reality. On the other hand, he can scarcely make a mistake with a character. Of course it is a common- place that all novelists become their good and bad characters for the occasion. As the poet sings INTRODUCTION xxv I am the batsman and the bat, I am the bowler and the ball, The fielders, the pavilion cat, The pitch, the stumps, and all. Or words to that effect. But Gait does all this and does it more abundantly. Who can doubt that all through his active, unresting, post-to-pillar life, he had dreams and visions of the kind of existence he might have led as minister in some country parish, or, mayhap, as a decent burgher of some small Ayrshire town, troubled with no greater worry than that increase of adipose which in due time would naturally have marked him out for the office of magistrate. In Canada and amid multifarious cares and troubles, Gait could set himself down and take over the duties, the pleasures, the limitations, the stand- point of such a man in that quiet old-world society of the south and west of Scotland. He has indeed given us the best account of it that we can ever hope to get. And he has done it with an ease which apparently is wholly without effort. He was charmed to write ; and so we, xxvi INTRODUCTION if we are at all to the manner born or endowed with a natural capacity for the " Gentle Life,' 1 of drowsy villages and farms, are also and equally charmed to read. But it is the most ungracious though the most natural of comparisons to set Gait beside Scott. It is as unjust to do so as it is to say that Gait derived wholly from him and was stimulated to write by Scott's success. The truth is, as Delta shows in the excellent biography of Gait prefixed to the "Annals," in Messrs. Black- wood's Standard Novels, that the "Annals" and probably some part of the "Legatees" were written before " Waverley." Nevertheless it is certain that Scott created a taste and made a market, so that Gait and others entered in to partake of the fruits of labours which were not wholly their own. But this has solely reference to publication, and in no way detracts from the originality of that great book, "The Annals of the Parish." Gait's methods were exceedingly simple and natural. When he succeeds best, he always starts out, as it were, without any apparent INTRODUCTION xxvh intention of telling a story at all. A worthy doctor of divinity, the parish minister of the town of Irvine, falls heir to a legacy from India. Accordingly he and all his family must go to London in order to make the necessary legal arrangements. They write letters home to their own special friends in the parish which they have left. There are few incidents, no adventures. Nothing happens, except the marriage of the minister's daughter to a young officer in the army. In this marriage, for the ordinary romancer, there would have been the opportunity for wars and stratagems, plot and counter-plot for the relief of comic business, as it might be between a country maid, imported for the purpose, and the marriageable young male domestics of the metropolis. Even an elopement and pursuit might have been arranged. But no, these things seem never to have occurred to Gait ; or if they did, his good angel was certainly at his ear, whispering to him to beware. For when he does essay this mechanism of tale- building in others of his books, he becomes xxviii INTRODUCTION at once, if not cheap, at least dull and un- convincing. But, as it is, the interest never for a moment flags, save, as it may be, in some of the windy political prelections of the somewhat priggish Mr. Andrew Pringle. But the author means to produce this effect, as we can see in the plain spoken "observes 1 ' with which Mr. Andrew's letters were received by the shrewd, level-headed burgesses and goodwives of the town of Irvine. For instance, the Clyde skipper, who had fallen asleep during the reading of the young advo- cate's " infinite deal of nothing," exclaimed upon waking, " I thought myself in a fog, and could not tell whether the land ahead was Pladda or the Lady's Isle." Some of the company thought the observation not inapplicable to what they had been hearing, while the most sharp-witted, and keenly orthodox Mrs. Glibbans was even more outspoken in her censure, for she roundly declared the Mr. Andrew Pringle"s letter was " nothing but a peasemeal of clishma- clavers ; there was no sense in it ; it was just like the writer, a canary idiot, a touch here and INTRODUCTION xxix a touch there, without anything in the shape of cordiality or satisfaction. 1 " Gait's wonderful skill in characterisation shows itself in every Scottish character he touches. Not only does he bring out all the characteristics of the various writers of the letters in itself not a small success, for letters are most kittle things to handle in romance but with equal vividness he presents to us the circle which received them, so that we add to our gallery of acquaintances Dominie Micklewham, the favourite correspondent of the Doctor, Mr. Craig, the orthodox elder inexorably severe, till he finds that he cannot afford to throw stones at others Mrs. Glibbans, his fit and ultimate partner, and above all, the " helper " Mr. Snodgrass, eager for a parish, though not quite sure that a rural one will quite suit him willing, however, to take Irvine on his way to a better, even when coupled with the necessity for espousals with Miss Isabella Todd. Gait is a tired man's author, and to such as love him there is no better tonic and restorative. It is better than well to read him on a winter's xxx INTRODUCTION night by the fireside, tasting every paragraph, too happy and too much at ease to be critical. It is then that the delightfulness of the Doctor, when he has to explain to the difficult Irvine audience that when he went to the theatre in the city of Babylon it was to hear an oratorio, tickles as with a feather those silent humours which lie far below laughter. We turn the delightsome pages, stretching luxuriously like a cat on the hearthrug, while the rain dashes and the windows rattle. We do not want incident. At such time Shakespeare is too high for us, even Scott too mighty and many-sided. It is John Gait's hour, and for the fiftieth time of asking we are eagerly interested to know every- thing that has been going on in the parish of Dalmailing. And the Reverend Micah Bal- whidder is, we find, as ready as ever to tell us. I suppose that it is partly early association which keeps me faithful to the " Annals," in preference to all Gait's other works. For I read that book many years before I had ever heard the name of the author. How such a book came in the " loft " of a decent Cameronian INTRODUCTION xxxi house, it is perhaps better not asking. I fancy that some grown-up uncle must in time past have secretly conveyed it into the house, unostenta- tiously deposited between waistcoat and shirt. At any rate there it was, and it was with deliciously wicked qualms that upon a day of quiet smurring rain, a boy of ten took it out, also under his jacket, into the cartshed ; and there with one ear bent for the footsteps of a foreign foe, he made his first excursion to the parish of Dalmailing. To this day that boy can smell the warm damp of the misty summer rain, and hear the complaining of the hens which shared his shelter, and who having no "Annals'" to read, did nothing but stare roopily and querulously at the drizzle. Yet, even as Eve very likely found her apple no great thing after all, I found no spice of popular commandment-breaking in the placid reminiscences of Micah Balwhidder. It was but the mystery of the forbidden which fascinated. For the minister does not settle First and Final Cause, as can now be done with accuracy and despatch over the teacups of the afternoon xxxii INTRODUCTION curate. His views are in no way dangerous. But the book was a novell (with a strong accent on the second syllable), and therefore in our house forbidden. Yet if any man in all the leaseholds of imagination would seem to be designed to please a good Cameronian, surely that man was the minister of Dalmailing. I almost despair of giving an idea of the delicacy and dignity of Galfs characterisation in this book. There is no doubt that Micah Balwhidder is the author's masterpiece. Yet there is no laborious working out of traits or heaping up of descriptions. Every part of the minister's character is allowed to emerge with an inevitableness and simplicity which is beyond all art. It is not, indeed, till the third or fourth time of reading that one really understands the strength and power of the man, or how perfectly we seem to know his hero. For we learn to love the good minister better as we become better acquainted with his whimsicalities, and can put our finger readilv on the more cross-gained patches which, even more than his virtues, endear him to us. INTRODUCTION xxxiii We love him as he is " sauntering along the edge of Eglesham Wood, looking at the industrious bee going from flower to flower, and the idle butterfly that layeth up no store, but perisheth ere it is winter. 11 We thrill with interest (that is, if we are of the elect and worthy to tie the latchet of John Gait's shoe) when he feels " a spirit from on high descending upon him, when he is transported out of himself, and seized with the notion of writing a book. 1 ' How delighful are his meditations as to what the book is to be ! It may be, he thinks, an orthodox poem, like " Paradise Lost,"" by John Milton. How excellent is the "like 11 ! The book, in fact, as it appears to his mind, is to be as " Paradise Lost, 11 but with additions and improvements; for Milton was not free of Brownism, or at least of the suspicion of that heresy. Mr. Balwhidder will, he tells us, treat more at large of Original Sin, and the great mystery of Redemption. At other times, he fancies that a " connect treatise " on the efficacy of Free Grace would be " more taking. 11 But O VOL. I. c xxxiv INTRODUCTION even with such inspiring subjects, fresh and original as sin itself, how we sympathise with him when he confesses to us that, owing to the " gilravaging of his servant lasses," and the new thoughts that came crowding into his mind, the whole summer passed away without a single line being written. It is one of the greatest merits of the book that Gait never condescends to cheap caricature of his greater creations. The whole passage which tells of the minister's great design of writing a book is written directly, simply, sym- pathetically and without the least exaggeration. Yet how easily could a humorous and amusing list have been made of the possible subjects upon which the Reverend Micah could have exercised himself. I am intimately acquainted with some authors who, I am certain, could not have resisted such an opportunity. Yet undeniably, how much better is the plain inevitable fact. An example of this exquisite fidelity, in which the art is so concealed that we can hardly believe in its existence, is to be found in the epitaph upon the original Mrs. Balwhidder, INTRODUCTION xxxv which her distracted husband first proposed to write in Latin a plan which he abandoned for the excellent and undeniable reason that Latin "is naturally a crabbed language and very difficult to write properly." The inscription, the composition of which beguiled the lonesome winter nights, is too long for quotation, but may be consulted at length in the " Annals."" It begins : A lovely Christian, spouse, and friend, Pleasant in life and at her end A pale consumption dealt the blow That laid her here with dust below. Sore was the cough that shook her frame, That cough her patience did proclaim And as she drew her latest breath, She said, the Lord is sweet in death. Now, to one who knows the South of Scot- land, and is familiar with the rhyming tomb- stones to be found in almost all its kirkyairds, it is hard to believe that these lines are not wholly taken from genuine " throughs," and not only, as the author himself confesses, the first four lines. xxxvi INTRODUCTION Now, there is no doubt that, as a man of the world and of experience in many lands, Gait quite understood that there was a humorous side to the minister's simplicity. Yet it is to his credit, and, to me, no mean proof of his genius, that he never lets this appear. The writer never appears to be laughing at his own creations. Still another excellent quality which underlies Gait's books is their mellow view of life. They are written by a man kindly to the core. Douce, pawky, sound-hearted humour lies on the sur- face of every page. No satyr ever looks at us, grinning goatish in the midst of a paragraph, such as continually surprises us in the sensitive prose of Sterne. The inhuman laughter of the great Dean is never heard. Nay, even the hearty roystering of countryside mirth is mostly banished from Gait's soberly charming pages. Yet how delightsome is that which is present. I do not mistake Gait for either a great writer or a great man. He was of "those humbler poets whose songs gushed from their heart." INTRODUCTION xxxvii He is like the best oatmeal porridge with cream. It is, to some, no doubt, the finest diet in the world. But, all the same, not every one likes it; and those who do not, cannot understand the taste of those who do. Gait's favourite muse is the muse of About-the-Doors, drab-skirted, yet jocose, kindly, tea-drinking, garrulous, early to bed and early to rise. We have now much of the writing which glorifies the little quietnesses of the towns and villages of Scotland. Gait deserves much of the credit for that full-eared crop, which in the fulness of time has come after him. He was the first that ever burst into that silent sea. For the Wizard was too great, too completely filled to the brim with incident and the creation of character. He could not be " taigled " with a whole book about the uneventful happenings of one small village. Princes had to rebel, and kings to totter, in order that the epic capacity of his pages might be filled. But even after Scott, the homeliness of Gait comes to us with a restfulness like a Scottish Sabbath day in the olden times, when the very xxxviii INTRODUCTION barn-yard was not so clamorous as upon ordinary unhallowed days. It is because of the abundance of this characteristic that I have asked the publishers to include in this edition the " Last of the Lairds," which is one of his latest works, and not, perhaps, in all respects quite one of his best. Yet, even Gait has never surpassed the descriptions of the approaches to the mansion house of Auldbiggings. I may be permitted, all the more that my quotings hitherto have been of the briefest, to extract a few lines and erect them here in the introduction a load- stone of attraction to some and a danger signal to others. Many persons of respectable life and demeanour, persons even of sound opinions on other subjects, do not, indeed, care for the kind of thing. Luckily, there are others who do, which is so much happiness the more assured to them in their lives, for Gait wrote many books better than the " Last of the Lairds." " The mansion house of Auldbiggings was a multiform aggregate of corners, and gables, and chimneys. Appended to it, but of somewhat INTRODUCTION xxxix lower and ruder structure, was a desultory mass of shapeless buildings the stable, sty, barn, and byre, with all the appurtenances thereunto belonging, such as peat-stack, dunghill, and coal-heap, with a bivouacry of invalided uten- sils, such as bottomless boyns, headless barrels, and brushes maimed of their handles ; to say nothing of the body of the cat, which the undealt-with packman^s cur worried on Satur- day se'nnight. At the far end was the court- house, in which, when the day was wet, the poultry were accustomed to murmur their sullen and envious Whiggery against the same weather, which was making their friends the ducks as garrulous with enjoyment at the midden hole as Tories in the pools of corrup- tion. " The garden was suitable to the offices and mansion. It was surrounded, but not enclosed, by an undressed hedge, which in more than fifty places offered tempting admission to the cows. The luxuriant grass walks were never mowed but just before hay time, and every stock of kail and cabbage stood in its gar- xl INTRODUCTION mentry of curled blades, like a new-made Glasgow bailie's wife on the first Sunday after Michaelmas, dressed for the kirk in the mony- plies of her flounces. Clumps of apple-ringie, daisies and Dutch-admirals, marigolds and nonesopretties, jonquils and gillyflowers, with here and tfrere a peony, a bunch of gardener's garters, a sunflower or an orange lily, mingled their elegant perfumes and delicate flourishes along the borders. Where the walks met stood a gnomenless dial, opposite to which, in a honeysuckle bower, a white-painted seat invited the laird's visitors of a sentimental turn to read Hervey's ' Meditations in a Flower Garden.' And there, in the still moonlight nights, in the nightingale singing season of southern climes, you might overhear one of the servant lasses keckling with her sweetheart."" There ! That is Gait at his best, when he is writing simply and graciously about familiar things. I declare that, even if I were not a Scot, I should love him as much as Goldsmith. And being one, I love him more. Again when Gait writes in Scots, he writes the INTRODUCTION xli language and not the dialect belonging to any particular locality. He is in the main stream. He belongs to the great tradition. Practically, he writes the Scots of Robert Burns. His vocabulary is not so extensive, his adjectives scantly so trenchant. He is by no means so " free in his discoorse " as the poet. But they are essentially shoots of the same stem. They learned, as it were, at one parent's knee. Gait's variety of his Scottish tongue is full of fine old grandmotherly words, marrowy with pith and sap. Scott, like Stevenson, wrote his vernacular a little from the heights. He had learned it, as it were, for love and adventurous- ness, as men in these days learn Romany. But Gait writes his Scots like one who has been cradled in it, who lisped it in the doorways and cried it to other loons across the street. He lived among men and women who habitually spoke it. In some ways the Doric of Scott may be finer, more literary, a "clear metro- politan utterance " indeed. But, though I reverence Sir Walter above all the sons of men, yet I do say that the Scots, even of Caleb xlii INTRODUCTION Balderston and Andrew Fairservice has hardly the rich tang of the mother-earth which I find in the " Annals " and the best books of John Gait. But that may be because I am West-land born, and of the Whigs, Whiggish. What special words of introduction the present volume requires may be very briefly said. The "Annals of the Parish 1 ' is in the main a book of the development of character, a chronicle of episodes. Not only is the shrewd, simple, clever, orthodox and upright old Christian gentleman, with one eye on the stipend and one on the kingdom of heaven, most delicately and sufficiently drawn ; but his three wives are so accurately individualised, that we seem to know them almost as well as the husband of their various bosoms. We sympathise with the first somewhat shadowy Mrs. Balwhidder 'with her imperfect domestic abilities, but her excellent performance of parish duties. We mourn when in providence she was removed by a " d wining," in fatal combination with the loss of twelve pounds of lint, intended, as her bereaved husband affectingly puts the INTRODUCTION xliii matter, for "sarking for ourselves, for sheets and for napery." A personality even more distinctive, though perhaps less good to live with, is the second Mrs. Balwhidder, whom her dutiful partner delights to think of as a great manager, the bee that gathered the honey ; but who did it withal with a birr and jangle which made the honest man greatly regret the piping times of peace he enjoyed with the first Mrs. Balwhidder. Often in his calm and considerate manner would the minister point out to his second spouse the error of her ways, but alas ! it did her little good, for the sufficient reason "that she was so engrained with the management of cows and grumphies in her father's house, that she could not desist " at the which," says the worthy man, " I was greatly grieved."" The third Mrs. Balwhidder does not enter so much into the chronicle. But that argues well- being, for, as in the case of a nation, that mar- riage also is most blessed that has no history. Indeed, the second Mrs. Balwhidder had so well provided the things necessary for this life, xliv INTRODUCTION that all the happy couple had to do was to enter into her providing, and in the evening of life enjoy the happiness of each other's society. Gait's Lady Macadam is also one of the finest studies in the book, full of brightness and distinction, with a fine flavour of good-breeding, self-will, and hatred of all Whiggery. The chapter which describes the amusements of the Lady Macadam, is bright with all Gait's best qualities. It has that humour which is beyond wit, the shrewd insight, the kindly point of view, the quipsome, couthy homeliness of phrase, which endear John Gait to us. I can indeed understand some people not liking John Gait; but, all the same, I am most mortally sorry for them. Certainly no such picture of the life of Scotland during the closing years of last century has even been written. So that the place of John Gait in Scottish literature, though not a supreme one, is at least a perfectly well assured one. He may be forgotten, but he will be remembered again. His books may creep up the shelves till they stand a-tiptoe on INTRODUCTION xlv the highest and dustiest ledge among the " dear and the dumpy twelves."" But assuredly a time will come when they will be taken down again. For he does what no other can do so well. He shows us with vivid directness and reality what like were the quiet lives of leal folk, burghers and ministers and country lairds, a hundred years ago. He makes us fall in love with their simple (but not short) annals, and causes our over-selfish hearts to beat in unison with the pleasures and heartbreaks of men and women who for a century and more have lain asleep in the quiet places of the land. S. R. CROCKETT. MEMOIK MEMOIR J OHN GALT was born at Irvine, in Ayrshire, on May 2, 1779- His father was the master of a West Indiaman : one of the best as he was one of the handsomest men, eminent for his probity, of an easy nature, and with only passable ability. That is the portrait of him left by his son, upon whom, we are to suppose, his influence was not marked. Gait's mother, on the other hand, was a strong force evidently. Dr Moir, "Delta," who has written the most intimate and agreeable of the biographies of the author, knew her well, and endorses her son's description of her as "a very singular person, possessing a masculine strength of character, with great natural humour, and a keen relish of the ridiculous in others." These are Gait's own qualities ; and his works discover also the habit of queer metaphorical expression, bordering on the fantastical, and the VOL. i. d 1 MEMOIR command of incomparable Scottish phraseology, which he records as having been hers. When Gait was ten, the family left Irvine and went to reside at Greenock. It is usual, indeed, to speak of him as a Greenock man : " a broad, gawsy Greenock man," says Carlyle, and, again, "has the air of a sedate Greenock burgher;" and in her Recollections Mrs Katherine Thomson speaks of him as being a noted conversationalist, the sweetness of whose tones was marred by a Greenock accent. At Irvine and at Greenock he received impressions which never slackened their hold upon his mind. It was at Irvine, and during his early years, that the sect of the Buchanites was established upon the expositions of a Mrs Buchan in the vain ear of the Relief minister, Mr White. Gait confesses that he never had the slightest knowledge of the doc- trine of the heretics ; but the manner of their worship, which raised the corruption (as Micah Balwhidder would say) of the populace to the mobbing of Mr White's house, and the dismissal of the " odious schismatic " from their town, en- thralled the child. When Mrs Buchan and her followers were marched forth, singing psalms, and on their way, as they said, to the New Jerusalem, MEMOIR li the boy must accompany them, until his mother, in a state of distraction, pursued and brought him back by the lug and the horn. In de- scribing the Covenanters in Ringan Gilhaize, he says, " The scene and more than once the en- thusiasm of the psalm-singing have risen on my remembrance ; " and the incident and its recollec- tion are mentioned by him to illustrate his gift of memory "a singular local memory," he calls it which grew with his years and distinguished him among his friends. In the Autobiography several examples of it are recorded, of which the most remarkable is that the " Windy Yule " chapter in the Provost, as justly remembered for the vividness of its descriptions as for its finely touched sentiment, is based upon an impression of a storm at sea received by him forty years previously, and, it would seem, when he was not more than eight years of age. The Autobiography discovers a child not very strong not ill, but with " a sort of ' all-overish- ness ' hanging about him " and cut off thereby from the hearty exercises of other boys. He had early a taste for flowers and their cultivation. When not engaged with them he was lounging in his bed, which gave him "a kind of literary lii MEMOIR predilection," receiving from his ballads and story-books vivid impressions that never left him, or having others still more vivid made upon him by the tales and legends of the old women, models for many such in his novels, whose society he sought in the close behind his grand- mother's house. After the removal to Greenock, his improved health, and the increased advantages of the town (in libraries, for example), gave his literary and other predilections greater scope. Behind these there always had been plenty of force. At six he was rhyming couplets upon the death of two larks, and when little older, kneeling down, in an access of enthusiasm over Pope's Iliad, to pray that one day he might be endowed with powers to do something similar. He carried the same energy into other pursuits. These were out of the beaten school tracks, along which his ill health and his tempera- ment prevented him making very great progress. For a time it was musical composition and prac- tice upon the flute that held him. Despite the gusto which he brought to the exercise, Gait never became expert upon the flute ; yet in one overture he "used to be rather above par, and there was a beautiful movement of MEMOIR liii Jomelli in which he thought himself divine." He is complaisantly modest in the same way about his compositions, which included his " Lochnagar," popular to the point of the street- organ when published afterwards to Lord Byron's words. To these exercises were added others exhibiting a mechanical bias : the construction of a pianoforte in a box, an edephusion (what- ever that may be), and an Eolian harp, which was allowed to perform in the staircase window when his mother happened to be absent. His zeal in these various enterprises was shared by two friends, evidently of superior intellectual constitution. William Spence was his guide to skill upon the flute, being not only a delicious performer, Gait says, but "a considerable com- poser, making beautiful sonatas which had as much character as the compositions of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia." This and much more is said by Gait, always kindly and en- thusiastic, in the biography of his friend which prefaces Spence's "Essay on Logarithmic Tran- scendents," edited by Sir John Herschell. The same enthusiastic note is struck about his other and closer friend, Park, " far more accomplished than any other person I have ever known, Kv MEMOIR and I do not except Lord Byron when I say so." Park, besides excelling as a linguist, had a fine taste in literature ; and it is possible that, but for infirm health, he would have produced something of note. As it was, his rhyming gifts were superior to those of Gait, whose endeavours he seems to have excited by his practice and chastened by his criticism. With these two, Gait spent his Greenock years in a fury of in- tellectual excitement. Sometimes short visits to Glasgow were made "to see London stars." Sometimes walking tours farther afield were " undertaken earnestly for the acquisition of knowledge : " one " a sort of gipsyan expedition to Loch Lomond ; " another, of two weeks' duration, beginning with twenty-five miles to Glasgow before breakfast ; another still, through Scott's Border Country, on as far as Durham, where the sight of Mrs Siddons as Lady Mac- beth came as reward. Under Park's guidance the studies in languages were pushed forward. The Committee of the Public Library had to be brought to its senses, too, for seeking to purge it of tainted authors, "an unheard -of pro- ceeding in a Protestant land," by which Gait's wrath "was inflamed prodigiously." Again, for MEMOIR Iv the wrath so prodigiously inflamed did not re- flect democratic principles, when the second Revolutionary War broke out, Gait "set about raising a corps of two companies of sharp- shooters, or riflemen, the first of the kind raised in the Volunteer force of the kingdom," whose services were accepted by the Government, ap- parently after negotiations not unlike those of the " propugnacious spirits" in the Provost. All this time there was a monthly society, which read papers, Spence conducting into profound depths ; and there were flights, Park leading, into the columns of the Greenock Advertiser and the Edinburgh Magazine. Such were the leisurely pursuits of Gait's youth, before he went to Lon- don and was launched upon the sea of enter- prises where he bore himself so bravely even in shipwreck. Gait left Greenock when he was about twenty- five ; and the thirty-five years of his life that remained were an adverse fight with Fortune. In them, according to his own bibliography, he published sixty volumes, twelve plays in the New British Tlieatre, three pamphlets, and tales and essays, of which there is no account, in various periodicals, publications, and annuals. That is an Ivi MEMOIR extraordinary amount of work to be placed to the credit of any literary life ; and yet his was not a literary life at all. It was during a short period of it only that literature was his pro- fession. His record in commercial and other en- terprises was as remarkable for a man of affairs as his literary output was for a man of letters. Scarce one of his works but contains some of his own experiences ; and combined they could not produce a history so full of experience as his. Novels, plays, and travels came from his voluminous his far too voluminous pen in the intervals left him by undertakings as large in conception as they. And in Gait's own eyes, undoubtedly, these enterprises were of far more value than his writings. It was his fate in his lifetime to fail in those endeavours upon which he set most store, to win applause where he least sought it ; and posterity has used him even as did his contemporaries. It has forgotten his schemes, and out of the long list of his literary works has remembered some half-a-dozen only which his own judgment had put near the foot. His plays, and the historical novels in which (so 'tis said) he attempted to rival Sir Walter Scott, the works which displayed, as he thought, the MEMOIR Ivii giant imagination that was his chief boast, are made of no account, and those only, compara- tively few in number, which embody his obser- vations of the Scotland in which he was born and bred, seem destined to live. He laughed incredibly, it is told, when some one's remark was repeated to him, " that he, like Antaeus, was never strong save when he touched mother- earth ; " but the remark was true. His mother- earth was Ayrshire, to which, when he left it now, save for one or two flying visits, he returned only to die. Before following his fortunes further, we will do well to seek for more detail in this Ayrshire period of his life that has just been sketched. And not only because it was spent among the Ayrshire folk and the Ayrshire ways, by his picture of which we remember him. In it, too, he discovered a character consistent with the failures and successes of his later years. Greenock had been his home from ten to twenty-five. " I do not say it was the happiest period of my life," he writes, "although it is recollected as the longest. Something of con- straint environed me. I do not recollect any circumstances which should endear the remem- brance of Greenock to me." Nevertheless, the Iviii MEMOIR remembrance was endeared. Undoubtedly the spring-time of life spent there was not without sunshine, he says himself. We are not surprised to find the " strongest local attachment " ac- companying the " singular local memory ; " it is in the nature of things that it should, even although there is no attachment to one's fellow- men, and that was not the case with Gait. He was affectionately attached to his kinsfolk, and loyal, with a ridiculous loyalty even, to his friends. " Much of my good nature towards mankind is assuredly owing to my associates at Greenock," Gait was able to write. " I have met, no doubt, with many more accomplished, but never with better men ; nor do I recollect that the slightest shade was ever cast upon any one of them. They had, however, what to me has ever appeared a ludicrous infirmity ; namely, a conceit of themselves, above all others of the human race whom I have ever seen. A thousand instances of this weakness come upon my re- collections as I live over again in this narrative my youthful days; but let me not be thought to calumniate their hearts." We need not be thought to calumniate Gait in any respect when we say that some such innocent good conceit MEMOIR lix of himself seems to have come to him in his residence there. And something of infinitely more importance came to him there : something that he under-estimated in comparison with his experiences abroad of it, just inasmuch and to the same extent as he over-estimated his ima- ginative over his observing powers. Gait's is an extreme example of the not uncommon case of a man failing to recognise wherein his strength lay, of his being jealous, even, of its recognition by others. Here is how he prefaces his account, in the Literary Life, of "those productions which have obtained the greatest share of attention, and in which, it is supposed, ' my great strength lieth ' " : " It is imagined that I have drawn entirely on my recollection, both for the incidents and characters of my most valuable pictures ; and it has been alleged that I have very little recourse to that kind of invention, composition, which constitutes the vitality of art ; " and then he proceeds to make little of his intimate nearness to the things he chose to depict, lest it should take away from " that kind of invention which constitutes the vitality of art." It is not necessary to show that he was wrong ; that although he never slept Ix MEMOIR but one night in a manse, and that was then the habitation of a clergyman anything but a Mr Balwhidder, and although he " was brought up in a respectable station which rendered me very unlikely to have after I was ten years old seen much of the life which it is supposed I have most delighted to paint," the Annals and the Provost were really written in Ayrshire, and the characters in them etched upon his mind by the strong acid of his observation, rather than recalled to it in later years by the action of a " strong local memory." With this marvellous sensitiveness to accurate and lasting impressions, however, there went an energy of mind as marvellous. We have had proof of it in the account of the pursuits of his youth in Greenock ; and we have kept until now one passage from the Autobiography which exhibits it most vividly. "I was a sort of a fisher," he writes, " but never distinguished. The scene of my reveries was a considerable stream in the moors behind the mountains above the town. ... It has since been brought round the shoulder of the hill, and being dammed up, it now by a canal gives to the town a valu- able water-power. Among my fishing dreams this MEMOIR Ixi very improvement, in a different manner, was one of the earliest. I brought forth to myself a notable plan, no other than to tunnel the mountain by the drain and lead it into The Shaws water, for exactly the same purpose as the canal has been since executed. ... In the Firth, opposite to Greenock, there is a large sand-bank often dry at low water. When it was proposed to enlarge the harbour it occurred to me that this bank might be converted into land, and I have still a very cheap and feasible plan for gradually doing it, but unfortunately the bank belonged to the Crown, and was too sacred to be improved. ... In contriving schemes such as these my youth was spent, but they were all of too grand a calibre to obtain any attention, and I doubt if there yet be any one among my contemporaries capable of appre- ciating their importance." Schemes of a calibre too grand for his con- temporaries to appreciate, these are what his mind ever ran upon. The expression itself points to a weakness (for so we must consider it in Gait the novelist at least) : a nature at once versatile and ambitious, and observant and reflective, and more stubborn than any. Ixii MEMOIR With this key to his character we will be able to read his life ; and it seems to unlock the secret of his literary work. For in the Annals and the Pro- vost there is more than observation, something, as he claims himself, that comes from a certain distance in the limning. From his intimate near- ness to the things depicted, he might, with equal wealth of detail, have pictured a stationary burgh and a stationary parish. But this did not con- tent the man of affairs, the traveller, the associate of men and women in all degrees of life, the "philosophic fellow," as Byron called him, who rejoiced in schemes of a grand calibre, whose instinct was for the heroic, whose very conversa- tions smacked of the melodramatic. And so we have, not one picture of parochial and burgher life, but a series of pictures, setting forth changes and transmutations with an intellectual subtlety not less remarkable than the fineness of their ob- servation. At the same time, these qualities of the man, which gave historical value to his work, account for the lack of distinction which the mass of his writing, like his fishing, displayed. It was one of his favourite maxims, Gillies says, that, bookrnaking being at best a kind of lottery chance, he could, by merely keeping the pen in MEMOIR Ixiii hand, begin and end a work in less time than a fastidious author would consume in laying his plans and debating how the thing was to be done. He was not essentially an artist. The matter and not the manner of his writings was his chief concern, and possibly he had little concern for his writings at all when there were schemes in hand. Above all, he was not tortured by the sense of form. Yet if we ac- count thus for the oblivion into which most of his writings have sunk, we bring into clearer relief the native genius that produced those which survive. The manner of his leaving Greenock shows at once the resolution that banked his char- acter and his restlessness under the feeling of "something of constraint." He had passed from the Custom House, where Park also was, into the office of a private firm. In the counting- house, late one evening, there arrived a most abusive letter from a Glasgow merchant one of a purse-proud crop sown in the first Revolu- tionary War. On receipt of it Gait's blood boiled, and he determined to have an apology. In the morning, therefore, he set out for Glasgow. Finding there that his man had Ixiv MEMOIR gone to Edinburgh, he followed him, sought him out in a hotel, bolted the door upon them, and gave him ten minutes to write an apology, which was done. With this in his pocket he posted back to Glasgow, and on to Irvine, "in the course of my journey many things came to mind, and instead of going home to Greenock I diverged to Irvine," is his account of the matter, from where he announced to his parents and his employer his intention to quit Greenock. He was fixed in his resolution to go to London ; and in a month or two, apparently in no very happy frame of mind, he had arrived there with a whole mail of introductory letters. The delivery of these brought him no good save a curious view of human nature. The realisation that he must depend upon his own exertions, and they never were slack, although disheartening for a time, strung him up to sterner endeavour, and after looking about for a little he entered into a copartnery with an- other youth from the same part of the country as himself. This partner, it turned out, was in- solvent, and had floating about many renewed bills, which had been represented to Gait as MEMOIR Ixv paid off. The discovery was one difficult for the young firm to stand up against. Gait, however, set himself to overcome the conse- quent embarrassments. He retained his partner in the business, and in time even took him back to their former intimacy. In three years, when seemingly the house had weathered the storm, it foundered in the difficulties of a corre- spondent. Gait now entered upon a mercan- tile undertaking with his brother Tom. He was induced to do so against his will : " the excitement I had undergone would not be sub- dued, and I was determined to quit commercial business as soon as I could see my brother established ; " and when, in a short time, Tom went off to Honduras, Gait entered himself at Lincoln's Inn, and, to pass the time before being called to the Bar, and to restore his health, made a tour abroad. This London period the second epoch, ac- cording to Gait's division of his life in the Autobiography lasted from June 1804 to 1809- Worried and driven as he had been in it, Gait had found time for some literary work and study. He had brought up to town with him the manuscript of his Battle of Largs, VOL. i. e bcvi MEMOIR a poem begotten of his antiquarian researches. This was prepared for press, in the intervals of delivering the introductory letters, and from sheer want of something else to do. Though published anonymously, the secret of the author- ship leaked out, and on that account, and on others, it was suppressed immediately after its publication was announced. Soon he was strug- gling, as he had to struggle all his days, to wring success from undertakings which held none ; and most men would have found that sufficient. But in the energy of his mind Gait was a very rare man. There is something almost laughable in his account of the studies in his leisure at this time : " I made myself master very early of the Lex Mercatoria. ... I composed a treatise on the practice of underwriting, as sanc- tioned by the existing laws and the decisions of tribunals. ... I composed also a history, to the time of Edward III. inclusive, of the ancient commerce of England, a work of research ; and wrote likewise a history of bills of exchange. . . . I derived a competent knowledge of families, their descents and connections, and rare recondite things of heraldry ; " and, from stumbling on the inquiries of Filanghieri, the Neapolitan, he " began MEMOIR Ixvii to frame a new doctrine " of crimes and punish- ments. All this study, he tells us, was proof of the ambition with which he was filled and yet, apparently, the idea that knowledge and research must be clothed upon by some- thing called style, if they are to live, never dawned upon him. When his business enter- prises were over, too, he set to work upon a long-cherished scheme for a Life of Wolsey. This was not published until later ; but previ- ously to his tour abroad he worked on it hard. Gait was out of England for three years. The course of his journeyings, described at great length in his Voyages and Travels and in his Letters from the Levant, and unsystematically sketched in the Autobiography, has been care- fully and pleasantly indicated by his biographer, Dr Moir. " On the day of his arrival at Gibraltar, our traveller met with Lord Byron, who was then on that tour with Sir John Cam Hobhouse which has been immortalised in the first and second cantos of Childe Harold. An acquaintance was subsequently formed, and the three sailed in the same packet to Sardinia and Malta. . . . "... Having resided for a season in Sicily, Ixviii MEMOIR Mr Gait repaired to Malta ; and, after touching at the islands of Zante and Patras, paid a visit to Corinth. Proceeding thence to Tripolizza, where he had an interview with the famous Ali Pasha, he bent his course towards Athens, to the Waywode of which place he had received a particular introduction from the Vizier Vilhi. He took up his residence in the Propaganda Fide of Rome Monastery, and Lord Byron chancing to be also at that time in the same city, their acquaintance was renewed. While there Mr Gait's health was very variable, at times obliging him to shut himself entirely up within the walls of his domicile ; nor could this solitude otherwise than have hung heavy on his hands, had he not endeavoured to while away ennui by poetical pastimes. One of his effusions he entitled // Inconsueto, being descriptions of scenes in a voyage to Palestine, written in the Spenserian stanza, and another, The Atheniad, a mock epic in heroic verse, relating to the Elgin marbles, in which the heathen deities are made to avenge the cause of Minerva. The manuscripts of both were, it seems, shown to the noble poet ; and the circumstance is here mentioned for the sake of pointing out the curious coincidence if nothing MEMOIR Ixix more that both Gait and Byron should have been, at the same time and in the same place, occupied with similar subjects, and both in the same kinds of verse. Here, however, the parallel ends. The latter was a great poet, which the former was not : Gait's mastery lay in a different line. The // Inconsueto was lost in manuscript; but The Atheniad, which contains many vigorous lines, has been preserved. " After leaving Athens, Mr Gait visited Hydra, Zea, and Scios, and thence proceeded by Ephesus to Smyrna. In reference to some commercial scheme connected with the firm of Messrs Struthers, Kennedy, & Co., he obtained posses- sion of a large building on the island of Myconi, which had been originally erected by Count Orloff, the Consul-General of Russia in the reign of Catharine the Second, when that ambitious queen had an eye to the dominion of the Grecian Archipelago. This circumstance, along with the seeming want of any feasible purpose for wan- dering about, gave rise to the idea that our valetudinarian was a political agent, bent on the furtherance of some secret mission. The alle- gation was no doubt idle enough, but, when we consider the country and the times, might Ixx MEMOIR have brought down on a suspected head many dangerous consequences. " Returning again to Athens, he found that his former apartments in the Propaganda Monastery had been taken possession of by Lord Byron ; but he was accommodated with others in the same building. Two personages who afterwards attracted great notoriety in the world, although in very different spheres, were also there at this particular time, and, along with the Marquis of Sligo, were unceasing in their kind attentions to our traveller, who continued a great invalid, the one was the Lady Hester Stanhope, then domiciled among the Moslem ; and the other, M. Bruce, who assisted in the escape of La Valette. On leaving the city of the Acropolis, Mr Gait visited Marathon, Thebes, and Chersonea sounds which stir the heart like the sound of a trumpet ; ascended Parnassus ; and, at Delphi, drank at the Castalian spring ; wound through the pass of Thermopylae ; looked upon the plain of Pharsalia ; and rode, by moonlight, across the vale of Tempe. " Having crossed the Gulf of Salonica, Mr Gait proceeded to Constantinople, where, after remaining some time, he penetrated into Nico- MEMOIR Ixxi media ; thence traversing the northern limb of Asia Minor, he at length reached Kirpe, on the shores of the Black Sea. It would appear that his object in taking this little-frequented track was to ascertain the possibility of conveying British goods, with any chance of successful speculation, into particular parts of the Continent, in spite of the interdict pronounced by the Berlin and Milan decrees ; and the journey created some feeling of disappointment as to the practicability of the scheme, so far as that particular quarter was concerned ; but this was counterbalanced by the advantages which it developed with reference to others. It was therefore arranged that a considerable cargo, amounting to a hundred bales of goods, should be sent to Widdin, whose arrival our traveller was to precede, and to see it deposited there until it could be transmitted to Hungary, by way of Orsova. This journey was attended with many difficulties and dangers, as it was through a region little known, across ' mountains high and deserts idle,' during the winter season, and, moreover, at a time when the Russians and Turks were at war. His en- thusiasm was, however, not to be daunted. Leaving Adrianople, he visited Philippi, where Ixxii MEMOIR erst the stalwart ghost of Caesar darkened the tent of Brutus; and hastened on to Sophia, then the headquarters of Vilhi Pasha, who kindly gave him an escort of horsemen across Mount Haemus. " Having remained at Widdin as long as his commercial ties made it necessary or useful, he travelled along ' the banks of the dark-rolling Danube/ on his retrograde route to Constan- tinople, where having arrived, he proceeded homewards by sea. At this time he chanced to remain for several days at Missolonghi, since rendered famous and familiar to British ears as the death-place of Byron. While there, it chanced that the works of Goldoni fell into his hands ; and the weather being so wet that he could not stir abroad, he translated, as an amuse- ment, the La Gelosia di Lindoro, and another comedy, which, under the name of Love, Honour, and Intercut, was also published afterwards in the New British Theatre. . . . " At Messina, to which Mr Gait next voyaged, the crew were put under quarantine for eighteen days. No situation more lugubrious can be ima- gined. The room assigned to him looked solely into a courtyard, the area of which was used MEMOIR Ixxiii as a burying-ground. He craved a book, and that brought to him was the Life and Works of Alfieri, which he now saw for the first time, and the impression which they made upon him, read under such circumstances, appears to have never been afterwards obliterated. He betook himself to translating select portions, to make himself more familiar with the style and habits of thought of that singular writer ; and he was struck with the feeling that some of his finest natural touches of passion were marred in their effect by the introduction of some recondite and classical, or, in other words, unnatural, expression. To test the truth of this impression, he set about himself composing a series of dramas, founded on the same principles as those of the Italian author, in so far as appertained to simplicity of plot and the number of characters to be introduced, but avoiding, as much as possible, the rocks on which his predecessor appeared, in his judgment, to have made wreck of many of his finest things." In the end of 1811 Gait was back in London, with his head full of the Levant scheme, and his hands with works for the press. The scheme did not succeed : that is only what the readers of Gait's life expect to hear ; and the negotiations Ixxiv MEMOIR before it failed have lost their interest. The curious thing is that, although, when he came to write the Autobiography, he had not lost his belief in the feasibility of his plans that had gone wrong, he could touch on his enthusiasms so playfully. " I built castles in the air of the most gorgeous description, with a Fame on the pediment blazoning with her trumpet," he wrote of himself and the Levant business. There had been a talk of Government taking up the under- taking and placing him at the head of it, and, in consequence, Gait abandoned the study of law, and with it, for a time, the idea of a literary life. Then, as the outlook in the Levant faded away, for him at any rate, he fell in with a pro- posal made him by Mr Kirkman Finlay to join a branch which his house intended to establish at Gibraltar. The business practically it was the smuggling of goods into Spain, then overrun by the French was not to his British taste, and he should not have undertaken it had not the stress of circumstance begun to tell upon him. Before setting out he sold off his valuable library, collected with the lavishness which he carried into all his pursuits ; and he paid a farewell visit to his native place. " The journey," he says, MEMOIR Ixxv " was in one respect not pleasant. I found my- self prodigiously changed, and I saw many per- sons altered by time changed too, I thought, in character. But the great transmutation of which I was sensible was in my own hopes. I remem- bered well how buoyant, even fantastical, they ever had been, how luxuriant and blossomy ; but I saw that a blight had settled on them, and that my career must in future be circum- scribed and very sober." Yet even his circum- scribed and sober career in Spain was to be cut short. The victories of the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula, and his triumphant entry into Madrid, cut the ground from under the Gibraltar house ; and once more Gait was cast upon his own resources. True to himself, he set about mastering the Spanish language ; and he was not persuaded to declare himself beaten by returning to London until the imperative call of his health for surgical aid forced him to the step. The slings and arrows of a singularly out- rageous fortune were di'iving Gait fast to litera- ture as a profession ; but he made one other effort to escape by way of mercantile endeavour. On the restoration of Louis the Eighteenth, he Ixxvi MEMOIR crossed to France, and passed from there to Belgium and Holland, on the outlook for in- ducements to settle in one or other of these countries. He could see none, however, and soon returned to London. From this time, more or less, until he under- took the management of the Canada Company, with which his name, as a man of affairs, is now generally remembered, he followed literature singly. Since his return from the Mediterranean, however, he had indulged as freely as ever his taste for scribbling down his thoughts, feelings, and observations, and for publishing the result. In preparing for the press his Voyages and Travels, originally a series of letters to Park, he was assisted by Dr Tilloch, the editor of the Philosophic Magazine, and proprietor of the Star newspaper, whose daughter he married now. The Life of Cardinal Wolsey was finished, and ultimately ran into three editions ; and was followed by a volume of six dramas, (" the worst ever seen," Scott said), which he had begun at Messina in the manner of Alfieri's, the reading of which there had impressed him greatly. These and his Letters from the Levant were roughly handled by the critics, who did not MEMOIR Ixxvii spare the looseness of his style, upon which he put little stress, and the rashness of his judg- ments, of which they were unable, he says, to see the value a reflection of the old complaint concerning his Greenock schemes, "They were all of too grand a calibre to obtain any attention, and I doubt if there be any among my contem- poraries capable of appreciating their importance." He was incensed especially at the Quarterly's re- views of his works, determining upon a horse- whipping of Croker, which his marriage happily prevented ; and he never forgot or forgave them, having the belief, rightly or wrongly, that the effect of their misrepresentations was to make his position in Canada later, difficult in any case, more difficult still. For a short time, too, he had edited Yorke's Political Review ; and by-and-by he had conceived and started another venture, the New British Theatre, for which even he himself came to have scarce a good word. Its original title, The Rejected Theatre, explains it : it was to give a hearing to re- jected dramas ; and in the first number Gait made an assault upon the monopoly of the London patent theatres. " I had some experi- ence myself," he writes naively, "respecting Ixxviii MEMOIR the difficulty of obtaining a candid hearing of a new piece, because, being now more inclined to the quiet cultivation of literature than formerly, I had offered to both theatres the tragedy of The Witness, and it was returned to me with a rejection, although the state of the manuscript gave me reason to believe that but the title had been read." The Witness, afterwards pro- duced in Edinburgh with some success as The Appeal, and at least ten other dramas by Gait, appeared in the New British Theatre. After the first number, the publication was a ludicrous failure. " It would absolutely not be within the range of belief to describe the sad efforts of genius which were afterwards sent me," says its founder and editor ; " and seeing that by the nature of its contributions it must be a failure, I cut and run." Majola, his first novel, was the last work of his amateur pen : " Hitherto I had written only to please myself, and had published more to acquire the reputation of a clever fellow than with the hope of making money ; but al- most immediately on sending forth the second volume, I saw that hereafter I was destined to eke out my income with my pen, with the causes the public, according to my opinion, have MEMOIR Ixxix nothing to do, and it would be exceedingly impertinent to inquire." For the next ten years the two currents of his energy ran almost entirely in the channel of literature. Its volume was extraordinary. The year of Majola saw the first part of the Life and Studies of Benjamin West. The Crusade : a Poem, The Wandering Jew, an abridgment of Modern Travels in Asia, two volumes of Historical Pictures, and the Earthquake, followed. And now, in 1821, the Ayrshire Legatees ap- peared in Blackwood's Magazine, and, late in life, Gait came into his own. Some ten years previously, in leisure snatched from those schemes and ventures we have noted, he had written The Annals of the Parish. When he offered it to the firm which a little later was to publish Waverley, he had it returned to him with the assurance that a novel entirely Scottish would not take with the public. As has been pointed out, it was left to Scott to create a taste and to make a market for work even so original as Gait's. Meanwhile, as the publishers would have none of it, the manuscript of the Annals was laid aside, and it was forgotten by its author until the success of the Legatees Ixxx MEMOIR recalled it to mind. That success was very notable. A paternity not lower than that of Waverley was ascribed to it, "Delta" says; and he tells us, too, that scarce had its publica- tion begun in the Magazine, when its editor, Mr Blackwood, with his noted sagacity and shrewd- ness, saw and appreciated Gait's peculiar powers, assisted him by his advice, convinced him where his strength lay, and prevailed on him to go on working the rich original vein which he had opened. " Although the Annals of the Parish is much older than the Ayrshire Legatees," Gait himself says, "it is due to Mr Blackwood to^ ascribe to him the peculiarities of that pro- duction ; for, although unacquainted with the Annals of the Parish, his reception of my first contribution to his Magazine, of the Ayrshire Legatees, encouraged me to proceed with the manner in which it is composed, and thus, if there be any originality in my Scottish class of compositions, he is entitled to be the first person who discovered it." The forgotten manu- script was hunted up, the chronicle of Dai- mailing rewritten in accordance with the advice of his publisher, and the reputation founded by the Ayrshire- Legatees firmly established by MEMOIR Ixxxi the Annals of the Parish. It is not necessary here to make a critical estimate of these books. Mr Crockett has done that in his Introduction to this volume, and will perform a similar office for the other novels of the present edition, Sir Andrew Wylie, The Entail, The Provost, and The Last of the Lairds, works which followed the Annals in rapid succession, and have survived with it. To this period of Scottish work belong also one or two more ambitious novels which have not been so fortunate : Ringan Gilhaize, a story of the Scottish Covenanters, most likely suggested by Old Mortality, and designed to counteract the injustice done them by Scott therein ; The Spaewife, founded on the life and fortunes of James the First of Scotland, which met with considerable success ; and Rothelan, hastily concluded by the pressure of the Canadian business. For although, as a writer, he had now reached the highest point of his fame, his ambition to excel in a more active field was not dead. Just when his adventurous days were over, and he had settled down to enjoy, and to add to, the triumphs of his pen, his restless nature broke bounds once more, and he entered upon the VOL. I. / Ixxxii MEMOIR Canadian undertaking in which his fortunes were wrecked. Between the publication of the Entail and of Rothelan, he had received letters from Canada appointing him agent for such of the principal inhabitants as had claims to urge for losses sustained during the invasion of the Province by the armies of the United States. Negotiations went forward for some years, Gait's share in them becoming more and more im- portant. He was appointed Secretary of the Canada Company, which sprang out of them, and one of the Commissioners whom the Government was sending out for the valuation of the Pro- vince. Difficulties arose between the Colonial Office and the Commissioners, owing to the action of the Canada clergy, and he was one of two arbiters in whose hands the settlement of them was left ; and when that had been reached, it became necessary for him to go out to Canada to make arrangements for the Com- pany's operations. There is no need to dwell upon the misun- derstandings and difficulties which hampered him in his work in the Province. He had hints of them before he set sail, and he had scarce landed when they declared themselves plainly. Enemies MEMOIR Ixxxiii had poisoned the ear of the Governor and of the local Government, and Gait's actions seemed to give colour to their tales. The old belief in his capacity to lead came out, the old ambition to lead into great possessions. During a lifetime he had been on the outlook for a field for his schemes of a grand calibre. He had found it at length, it seemed, but still not the contem- poraries capable of appreciating their importance. And although we cannot cast all the blame upon the contemporaries, nor even, perhaps, justify throughout Gait's conduct of the schemes, it is impossible not to sympathise with his indig- nation at the suspicions of the one, and his " tingling at every pore " at the censure passed upon the other. The Canada Company had originated in his suggestions. It was established by his endeavours ; organised, in disregard of many obstacles, by his perseverance ; and, though extensive and com- plicated in its scheme, a system was formed by him upon which it could be conducted with ease. Guelph had been founded "at the cost of not much more than the publication of a novel." To him it seemed as if " everything he had touched was prosperous : his endeavours to foster Ixxxiv MEMOIR the objects of his care were flourishing, and, without the blight of one single blossom, gave cheering promises of ample fruit." That was his estimate of his work in Canada, and it was endorsed by the settlers themselves ; yet troubles and misrepresentations were the return he received. He could not hide his chagrin at all this ; yet there was always a high note of manhood in his repinings. " Neither open enmity," he wrote, " nor covert machinations of personal malice, nor the ingenuity of sordid self-interest, can hereafter prevent my humble name from being associated with the legends of undertakings at least as worthy of commemoration as the bloody tradi- tions of heroic lands." Nor have they, or the other forces opposed to him less undeserving of such harsh names. Back in London, "retired from the arena of business with the sullenness of a vanquished bull," his fortunes shattered, and his health not of the best, he sat down at the desk once more. " I felt my independence augmented," he says, " by looking on poverty, undismayed at her emaciation." It was characteristic of him that he should estimate the income to be made by his pen at 1000 a year, and that he should MEMOIR Ixxxv write enough to justify the estimate if not to win the sum. In six months he published six volumes : Lawrie Todd, a novel based upon the autobiography of a seed merchant in New York whom he had met in his American travels, and affording a picture of life in the backwoods, touched by the poetry and sublimity that comes from contact with nature ; and Southennan, another novel in three volumes, embodying scenes and fancies of his youth, and depicting the customs and manners of Scotland in the reign of Queen Mary. In the same year appeared the Life of Lord Byron "that which I regard as the worst paid and the most abused, and yet among the most meritorious, of all my productions." On account of it he was the object of satire and criticism malicious both, he thought, and added characteristically, "The thing is to me some- what inexplicable ; for who can say that, either in life or literature, I have ever afforded him reason to complain that I wilfully meant him wrong ? " It was after the appearance of the Byron volume that he went to live at Barnes Cottage, Old Brompton. While there he published the Lives of the Players, an amusing compilation, and Ixxxvi MEMOIR Bogle Corbet, or the Emigrants ; wrote much in the magazines, Eraser's among others ; and was en- gaged on some eight other volumes. In the spring of the following year the condition of his health was greatly worse. The affection of the spine became intolerably painful, and some- thing resembling an attack of paralysis was in- duced. His speech was occasionally indistinct, his handwriting was visibly affected, and for several months he could not walk into his sit- ting-room without much difficulty. This was the beginning of the end. The wonderful spring of his nature, indeed, enabled him to go on working and hoping : Eben Erskine, The Stolen Child, The Stories of the Study, the Autobiography, and the Literary Life were still to come from his pen, and death found him busy with the proof-sheets of a volume of his poems. But the paralytic attacks continued, each one leaving him more shattered than before, and this ill condition of health brought his fortunes to a low ebb. " Nothing can be imagined more melancholy," writes Dr Moir, who attended him as a medical adviser and as a friend, and knew and appreciated him as none of his other biographers have done, " than the situa- MEMOIR Ixxxvii tion to which he found himself at this time reduced. It would have been even a consola- tion to think that his corporeal infirmities had in some degree blunted the acuteness of his feelings but this was by no means the case ; and all his manifold deprivations were spread out, as on a map, before him. One after another, his three sons had left him, and all were now away from their native land ; his life had been one of continued labour and exer- tion ; and, if he had accomplished much for others, little of worldly good had accrued to himself. While yet but at that age which many consider the vigour of life, he was a broken-down and nearly helpless invalid. Of the thousands who had been delighted by his works, how few spared even a thought for their author ; and while spreading the seeds of wealth and happi- ness around a young colony, he had been un- ceremoniously shall we say ungenerously? removed from the sphere of his usefulness. He had been dreaming golden dreams, and awoke to find himself in narrowed circumstances ; and, as if in mockery of his forlorn estate, prospects of aggrandisement were held out to him, when natural impossibilities interposed. With all the Ixxxviii MEMOIR eagerness to be useful, he was left alone in his solitary chair whose only travel was from his bedroom to his parlour, to think of baffled hopes and abandoned projects ; and to feel that his talents, however successfully applied for the advancement of others, had produced but a harvest of chaff for himself. The day of his destiny he knew to be over ; yet his sorrow arose not from mere chagrin. If he had looked forward to a more auspicious termination of his labours, he had also indulged in the fond hope of having accomplished more both in thought and action ; and though darkened even to the verge of despair as were his surrounding views, his natural energy refused to give way, and every transient gleam of returning health brought along with it a renewal of mental exertion." From Brompton he went to Edinburgh, to superintend the publication of the Literary Mis- cellanies, which he had received permission to dedicate to William the Fourth. Later, he re- tired to Greenock, where, after three years of suffering, borne with firmness and patience, he died on April 11, 1839. "A kinder, or less complaining spirit never sank to rest," says one who knew him well. MEMOIR Ixxxix To this sketch of Gait, the man, let us add some touches by other hands. Dr Moir has drawn him at the time of making his acquaint- ance, a year or two after the publication of the Annals. " He was then in his forty-fourth year, of Herculean frame, and in the full vigour of health. His height might be about six feet one or two, and he evinced a tendency to corpulency. His hair, which was jet black, had not yet become grizzled ; his eyes were small but piercing ; his nose almost straight ; long upper lip, and finely rounded chin. At an early period of life Mr Gait had suffered from smallpox, but the marks of its ravages were by no means severe, and, instead of impairing, lent a peculiar interest to his manly and strik- ing countenance. He was seldom or never seen without spectacles ; but we are uncertain whether the use of these arose from natural short-sightedness or from the severity of his studies. In conversation Mr Gait's manner was somewhat measured and solemn, yet full of animation and characterised by a peculiar be- nignity and sweetness. Except when questioned, he was not particularly communicative, and in mixed company was silent and reserved. His xc MEMOIR answers, however, always conveyed the results of a keen and discriminative judgment, and of an eye that allowed not the ongoings of the world to pass unobserved or unimproved. His learning was more of a singular than of a general kind ; and on many subjects of book- knowledge he seemed to have struck into the by- ways to avoid the highways ; consequently, the results of his reading might be said to have been curious rather than useful. It would be difficult to suppose, from the general tenor of his writings, that he should have been particu- larly fond of metaphysical or abstract discus- sions, yet such was remarkably the case in a quiet tete-a-t$te. In such he abjured with little ceremony the dogmas of the schools ; and he treated his subjects with ingenuity and acumen, not according to what was generally received regarding them, but according to what appeared to him to be their nature and bearings. For the sake of eliciting ingenuity in discussion, he often took up what was evidently the more vulnerable side of the argument, and thus acted on the offensive, to draw out the resources of his opponent in debate. In these gladiatorial exercises he uniformly displayed exceeding tact MEMOIR xci and address, together with an illustrative inven- tion often quite poetical ; although the arguments, when calmly considered, might be, perhaps, too shadowy and substanceless to convey intellectual satisfaction. . . . His views, even on practical subjects, were often sufficiently speculative and sanguine, but all indicating a grasp and com- prehension of mind, and all tending towards philanthropic conclusions." Byron, who knew him earlier, had already summed him up as a man, with all his eccentricities, of much good sense and experience of the world, " a good-natured, philosophic fellow." It was at a later period, when he had re- turned from Canada broken in health and for- tune, that Carlyle met him at Eraser's dinner in Regent Street, with Allan Cunningham, James Hogg, Lockhart, and other contributors. " Gait looks old," he recorded the impression made at the meeting, "is deafish, had the air of a sedate Greenock burgher; mouth indicating sly humour and self-satisfaction ; the eyes, old and without lashes, gave me a sort of wae interest for him. He wears spectacles and is hard of hearing ; a very large man, and eats and drinks with a certain West-country gusto and xcii MEMOIR research. Said little, but that little peaceable, clear and gutmuthig." "Old-growing, lovable with pity," is Carlyle's note about him a little later ; and very soon came the pathetic con- dition at Brompton, of which Mrs Thomson writes : " Day by day might his tall, bent form be seen, aided by servants, entering the City omnibus, as it stood in that hot, dusty road by Barnes Cottage. On he went, to argue and wrangle and press his claims with hard- headed men, and to return disappointed and irritable to his large easy-chair, and to the un- measured sympathy of the best of women and wives." Yet there never was a man, she tells us, for whom illness did so much in the way of personal improvement. She had known him in the prime of manhood and in the vigour of health, and he was ungainly, with a common- place though handsome cast of features, a hard- ness of aspect altogether ; and there was nothing of the quiet dignity and gentle deference to others that pleased in his later years. It is she who says that a kinder and less complain- ing spirit never sank to rest. Gentleness of heart, an unwearied spirit, a dignified bearing in the midst of ill fortune these we can read MEMOIR xciii into the personality of Gait, making it, even in the midst of his " ravelled, hither and-thither life," not altogether out of accord with the " melodious and continuous impression of peace," which, as Mr Crockett says, is conveyed by the Annals of' the Parish. ANNALS OF THE PARISH AND THE AYRSHIRE LEGATEES ANNALS OF THE PARISH INTRODUCTION _LN the same year, and on the same day of the same month, that his Sacred Majesty King George, the third of the name, came to his crown and kingdom, I was placed and settled as the minister of Dalmailing. When about a week thereafter this was known in the parish, it was thought a wonderful thing, and everybody spoke of me and the new king as united in our trusts and tempo- ralities, marvelling how the same should come to pass, and thinking the hand of Providence was in it, and that surely we were pre-ordained to fade and flourish in fellowship together : which has really been the case ; for in the same season that his Most Excellent Majesty (as he was very pro- perly styled in the proclamations for the general fasts and thanksgivings) was set by as a precious vessel which had received a crack or a flaw, and VOL. I. A 2 ANNALS OP THE PARISH could only be serviceable in the way of an orna- ment, I was obliged, by reason of age and the growing infirmities of my recollection, to consent to the earnest entreaties of the Session, 1 and to accept of Mr Amos to be my helper. I was long reluctant to do so ; but the great respect that my people had for me, and the love that I bore to- wards them, over and above the sign that was given to me in the removal of the royal candle- stick from its place, worked upon my heart and understanding, and I could not stand out. So, on the last Sabbath of the year 1810, I preached my last sermon ; and it was a moving discourse. There were few dry eyes in the kirk that day ; for I had been with the aged from the beginning, the young considered me as their natural pastor, and my bidding them all farewell was as when of old among the heathen an idol was taken away by the hands of the enemy. At the close of the worship, and before the blessing, I addressed them in a fatherly manner ; and, although the kirk was fuller than ever I saw it before, the fall of a pin might have been heard, and at the conclusion there was a sobbing and much sorrow. I said, " My dear friends, I have now finished my work among you for ever. I have often spoken to you from this place the words of truth and holiness ; and, had it been in poor frail human nature to practise the advice and counselling that I have 1 Note A. The Session, INTRODUCTION 3 given in this pulpit to you, there would not need to be any cause for sorrow on this occasion the close and latter end of my ministry. But, never- theless, I have no reason to complain ; and it will be my duty to testify, in that place where I hope we are all one day to meet again, that I found you a docile and a tractable flock, far more than at first I could have expected. There are among you still a few, but with grey heads and feeble hands now, that can remember the great opposi- tion that was made to my placing, and the stout part they themselves took in the burly, because I was appointed by the patron ; l but they have lived to see the error of their way, and to know that preaching is the smallest portion of the duties of a faithful minister. I may not, my dear friends, have applied my talent in the pulpit so effectually as perhaps I might have done, considering the gifts that it pleased God to give me in that way, and the education that I had in the Orthodox University of Glasgow, as it was in the time of my youth ; nor can I say that, in the works of peace-making and charity, I have done all that I should have done. But I have done my best, studying no interest but the good that was to rise according to the faith in Christ Jesus. "To my young friends I would, as a parting word, say : Look to the lives and conversation of your parents. They were plain, honest, and de- vout Christians, fearing God and honouring the 1 Note A. The Patron. 4 ANNALS OF THE PARISH King. They believed the Bible was the Word of God ; and, when they practised its precepts, they found, by the good that came from them, that it was truly so. They bore in mind the tribulation and persecution of their forefathers for righteousness' sake, and were thankful for the quiet and protec- tion of the government in their day and genera- tion. Their land was tilled with industry, and they ate the bread of carefulness with a contented spirit ; and, verily, they had the reward of well- doing even in this world, for they beheld on all sides the blessing of God upon the nation, and the tree growing and the plough going where the banner of the oppressor was planted of old and the war-horse trampled in the blood of martyrs. Reflect on this, my young friends, and know that the best part of a Christian's duty in this world of much evil is to thole l and suffer with resignation, as long as it is possible for human nature to do. I do not counsel passive obedience : that is a doctrine that the Church of Scotland can never abide ; but the divine right of resistance, which, in the days of her trouble, she so bravely asserted against popish and prelatic usurpations, was never resorted to till the attempt was made to remove the ark of the tabernacle from her. I therefore counsel you, my young friends, not to lend your ears to those that trumpet forth their hypothetical politics ; but to believe that the laws of the land are administered with a good intent, till in your 1 To thole. To endure. INTRODUCTION 5 own homes and dwellings ye feel the presence of the oppressor. Then, and not till then, are ye free to gird your loins for battle ; and woe to him, and woe to the land where that is come to, if the sword be sheathed till the wrong be redressed ! " As for you, my old companions, many changes have we seen in our day ; but the change that we ourselves are soon to undergo will be the greatest of all. We have seen our bairns grow to manhood ; we have seen the beauty of youth pass away ; we have felt our backs become unable for the burthen, and our right hand forget its cunning. Our eyes have become dim and our heads grey, we are now tottering with short and feckless l steps towards the grave ; and some that should have been here this day are bed-rid, lying, as it were, at the gates of death, like Lazarus at the threshold of the rich man's door, full of ails and sores, and having no enjoyment but in the hope that is in hereafter. What can I say to you but farewell ! Our work is done, we are weary and worn-out and in need of rest : may the rest of the blessed be our portion, and in the sleep that all must sleep, beneath the cold blanket of the kirkyard grass, and on that clay pillow where we must shortly lay our heads, may we have pleasant dreams, till we are awakened to partake of the everlasting banquet of the saints in glory ! " When I had finished, there was for some time a great solemnity throughout the kirk ; and, before 1 Feckless. Feeble. 6 ANNALS OF THE PARISH giving the blessing, I sat down to compose myself, for my heart was big, and my spii'it oppressed with sadness. As I left the pulpit, all the elders stood on the steps to hand me down, and the tear was in every eye, and they helped me into the session-house ; but I could not speak to them, nor they to me. Then Mr Dalziel, who was always a composed and sedate man, said a few words of prayer, and I was comforted therewith, and rose to go home to the manse ; but in the churchyard all the congre- gation was assembled, young and old, and they made a lane for me to the back-yett l that opened into the manse-garden. Some of them put out their hands and touched me as I passed, followed by the elders, and some of them wept. It was as if I was passing away, and to be no more. Verily, it was the reward of my ministry, a faithful account of which, year by year, I now sit down, in the evening of my days, to make up, to the end that I may bear witness to the work of a beneficent Providence, even in the narrow sphere of my parish, and the concerns of that flock of which it was His most gracious pleasure to make me the unworthy shepherd. 1 Yett. Gate. CHAPTER I YEAR 1760 The placing of Mr Balwhidder The resistance of the parishioners Mrs Malcolm, the widow Mr Balwhidder's marriage. JL HE An. Dom. one thousand seven hundred and sixty, was remarkable for three things in the parish of Dalmailing. First and foremost, there was my placing ; then, the coming of Mrs Mal- colm with her five children to settle among us ; and next, my marriage upon my own cousin, Miss Betty Lanshaw : by which the account of this year natu- rally divides itself into three heads or portions. First, of the placing. It was a great affair ; for I was put in by the patron, and the people knew nothing whatsoever of me, and their hearts were stirred into strife on the occasion, and they did all that lay within the compass of their power to keep me out, insomuch that there was obliged to be a guard of soldiers to protect the presbytery ; l and it was a thing that made my heart grieve when I heard the drum beating and the fife playing 1 Note A. The Patron. 8 ANNALS OF THE PARISH as we were going to the kirk. The people were really mad and vicious, and flung dirt upon us as we passed, and reviled us all, and held out the finger of scorn at me ; but I endured it with a resigned spirit, compassionating their wilfulness and blindness. Poor old Mr Kilfuddy of the Braehill got such a clash of glar 1 on the side of his face that his eye was almost extinguished. When we got to the kirk door it was found to be nailed up, so as by no possibility to be opened. The sergeant of the soldiers wanted to break it ; but I was afraid that the heritors would grudge and complain of the expense of a new door, and I supplicated him to let it be as it was. We were, therefore, obligated to go in by a window, and the crowd followed us in the most unreverent manner, making the Lord's house like an inn on a fair day with their grievous yellyhooing. During the time of the psalm and the sermon they behaved them- selves better ; but when the induction came on their clamour was dreadful, and Thomas Thorl, the weaver, a pious zealot in that time, got up and protested, and said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber." And I thought I would have a hard and sore time of it with such an outstrapolous people. Mr Given, that was then the minister of Lugton, was a jocose man, and would have his joke even at a solemnity. When 1 Clash of glar. Lump of mud. YEAR 1760 9 the laying of the hands upon me was adoing, he could not get near enough to put on his, but he stretched out his staff and touched my head, and said, to the great diversion of the rest, " This will do well enough : timber to timber ; " but it was an unfriendly saying of Mr Given, considering the time and the place, and the temper of my people. After the ceremony, we then got out at the window, and it was a heavy day to me ; but we went to the manse, and there we had an excel- lent dinner, which Mrs Watts of the new inns of Irville prepared at my request and sent her chaise-driver to serve (for he was likewise her waiter, she having then but one chaise, and that no often called for). But, although my people received me in this unruly manner, I was resolved to cultivate civility among them, and, therefore, the very next morn- ing I began a round of visitations ; but, oh ! it was a steep brae that I had to climb, and it needed a stout heart. For I found the doors in some places barred against me ; in others, the bairns, when they saw me coming, ran crying to their mothers, " Here's the feckless Mess-John ! " and then, when I went into the houses, their parents wouldna ask me to sit down, but with a scornful way said, " Honest man, what's your pleasure here ? " Nevertheless, I walked about from door to door like a dejected beggar, till I got the almous l deed of a civil reception, and (who 1 Almous. Charitable. 10 ANNALS OP THE PARISH would have thought it ?) from no less a person than the same Thomas Thorl that was so bitter against me in the kirk on the foregoing day. Thomas was standing at the door with his green duffle l apron, and his red Kilmarnock nightcap, I mind him as well as if it was but yesterday, and he had seen me going from house to house, and in what manner I was rejected ; and his bowels were moved, and he said to me in a kind manner, " Come in, sir, and ease yoursel' : this will never do : the clergy are God's gorbies, 2 and for their Master's sake it behoves us to respect them. There was no ane in the whole parish mair against you than mysel' ; but this early visitation is a symptom of grace that I couldna have expectit from a bird out the nest of patronage." I thanked Thomas, and went in with him, and we had some solid conversation together. I told him that it was not so much the pastor's duty to feed the flock as to herd them well; and that, although there might be some abler with the head than me, there wasna a he 3 within the bounds of Scotland more willing to watch the fold by night and by day. And Thomas said he had not heard a mair sound observe for some time, and that, if I held to that doctrine in the poopit, it wouldna be lang till I would work a change. " 1 was mindit," quoth he, " never to set my 1 Duffle. A coarse woollen cloth with a thick nap. Gorbies. Ravens. 8 A he. ne. YEAR 1760 11 foot within the kirk door while you were there ; but, to testify, and no to condemn without a trial, I'll be there next Lord's day, and egg l my neigh- bours to be likewise : so ye'll no have to preach just to the bare walls and the laird's family." I have now to speak of the coming of Mrs Malcolm. She was the widow of a Clyde ship- master that was lost at sea with his vessel. She was a genty 2 body, calm and methodical. From morning to night she sat at her wheel, spinning the finest lint, which suited well with her pale hands. She never changed her widow's weeds, and she was aye as if she had just been ta'en out of a bandbox. The tear was aften in her e'e when the bairns were at the school ; but when they came home her spirit was lighted up with gladness, although, poor woman, she had many a time very little to give them. They were, however, wonderful well-bred things, and took with thankfulness whatever she set before them ; for they knew that their father, the breadwinner, was away, and that she had to work sore for their bit and drap. 3 I dare say, the only vexation that ever she had from any of them, on their own account, was when Charlie, the eldest laddie, had won fourpence at pitch-and-toss at the school, which he brought home with a proud heart to his mother. I happened to be daunrin' 4 by at 1 Egg. Urge. 2 Genty. Neat, elegant. 8 Sit and drap. Bite and sup. 4 Daunrin. Sauntering. 12 ANNALS OF THE PARISH the time, and just looked in at the door to say gude-night : it was a sad sight. There was she sitting with the silent tear on her cheek, and Charlie greeting as if he had done a great fault, and the other four looking on with sorrowful faces. Never, I am sure, did Charlie Malcolm gamble after that night. I often wondered what brought Mrs Malcolm to our clachan instead of going to a populous town, where she might have taken up a huxtry- shop (as she was but of a silly l constitution), the which would have been better for her than spin- ning from morning to far in the night, as if she was in verity drawing the thread of life. But it was, no doubt, from an honest pride to hide her poverty ; for when her daughter Effie was ill with the measles, the poor lassie was very ill : nobody thought she could come through, and when she did get the turn, she was for many a day a heavy handful, our Session 2 being rich, and nobody on it but cripple Tammy Daidles, that was at that time known through all the country side for begging on a horse, I thought it my duty to call upon Mrs Malcolm in a sym- pathising way, and offer her some assistance. But she refused it. " No, sir," said she, " I canna take help from the poor's-box, although it's very true that I am in great need ; for it might hereafter be cast up to my bairns, whom it may please God to restore 1 Silly. Frail. 2 Note A. The Session and the Poor. YEAR 1760 13 to better circumstances when I am no to see't ; but I would fain borrow five pounds, and if, sir, you will write to Mr Maitland, that is now the Lord Provost of Glasgow, and tell him that Marion Shaw would be obliged to him for the lend of that soom, I think he will not fail to send it." I wrote the letter that night to Provost Mait- land, and, by the retour of the post, I got an answer (with twenty pounds for Mrs Malcolm), saying, "That it was with sorrow he heard so small a trifle could be serviceable." When I took the letter and the money, which was in a bank- bill, she said, "This is just like himsel'." She then told me that Mr Maitland had been a gentleman's son of the east country, but driven out of his father's house, when a laddie, by his stepmother ; and that he had served as a servant lad with her father, who was the Laird of Yill- cogie, but ran through his estate, and left her, his only daughter, in little better than beggary with her auntie, the mother of Captain Malcolm, her husband that was. Provost Maitland in his servitude had ta'en a notion of her, and when he recovered his patrimony, and had become a great Glasgow merchant, on hearing how she was left by her father, he offered to marry her ; but she had promised herself to her cousin the captain, whose widow she was. He then married a rich lady, and in time grew (as he was) Lord Provost of the city ; but his letter with the twenty pounds 14 ANNALS OF THE PARISH to me showed that he had not forgotten his first love. It was a short, but a well-written, letter, in a fair hand of write, containing much of the true gentleman ; and Mrs Malcolm said, " Who knows but, out of the regard he once had for their mother, he may do something for my five helpless orphans ? " Thirdly. Upon the subject of taking my cousin, Miss Betty Lanshaw, for my first wife, I have little to say. It was more out of a compassionate habitual affection than the passion of love. We were brought up by our grandmother in the same house, and it was a thing spoken of from the be- ginning that Betty and me were to be married. So, when she heard that the Laird of Breadland had given me the presentation of Dalmailing, she began to prepare for the wedding ; and as soon as the placing was well over, and the manse in order, I gaed to Ayr, where she was, and we were quietly married, and came home in a chaise, bringing with us her little brother Andrew, that died in the East Indies. And he lived and was brought up by us. Now, this is all, I think, that happened in that year worthy of being mentioned, except that at the sacrament, when old Mr Kilfuddy was preach- ing in the tent, it came on such a thunder-plump that there was not a single soul stayed in the kirk- yard to hear him ; for the which he was greatly mortified, and never after came to our preachings. 1 1 Note A. Communion Services. CHAPTER II YEAR 176 1 The great increase of smuggling Mr Bal- whidder disperses a tea-drinking party of gossips He records the virtues of Nanse Banks, the schoolmistress The servant of a military man, who had been prisoner in France, comes into the parish, and opens a dancing-school. J.T was in this year that the great smuggling trade x corrupted all the west coast, especially the laigh 2 lands about the Troon and the Loans. The tea was going like the chaff, the brandy like well-water ; and the wastrie of all things was terrible. There was nothing minded but the riding of cadgers by day and excisemen by night, and battles between the smugglers and the king's men, by both sea and land. There was a con- tinual drunkenness and debauchery; and our Session, that was but on the lip of this whirlpool of iniquity, had an awful time o't. I did all that was in the power of nature to keep my people from the contagion : I preached sixteen times 1 Note B. - Laigh lands. Low-lying. 16 ANNALS OF THE PARISH from the text, " Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's ; " I visited and I exhorted ; I warned and I prophesied ; I told them that, although the money came in like sclate l stones, it would go like the snow off the dyke. But, for all I could do, the evil got in among us, and we had no less than three contested bastard bairns upon our hands at one time, which was a thing never heard of in a parish of the shire of Ayr since the Reformation. Two of the bairns, after no small sifting and searching, we got fathered at last ; but the third, that was by Meg Glaiks, and given to one Rab Rickerton, was utterly refused, though the fact was not denied. He was a termagant fellow, and snappit his fingers at the elders. The next day he listed in the Scotch Greys, who were then quartered at Ayr, and we never heard more of him, but thought he had been slain in battle, till one of the parish, about three years since, went up to London to lift a legacy from a cousin that died among the Hindoos. When he was walking about, seeing the curiosities, and among others Chelsea Hospital, he happened to speak to some of the invalids, who found out from his tongue that he was a Scotchman ; and speaking to the invalids, one of them, a very old man, with a grey head and a leg of timber, inquired what part of Scotland he was come from. When he mentioned my parish, the invalid gave a great shout, and said he was from the same place him- 1 Sclate. Slate. YEAR 1761 17 self; and who should this old man be but the very identical Rab Rickerton that was art and part in Meg Glaiks' disowned bairn. Then they had a long converse together. He had come through many hardships, but had turned out a good soldier, and so, in his old days, was an indoor pensioner, and very comfortable ; and he said that he had, to be sure, spent his youth in the devil's service, and his manhood in the king's, but his old age was given to that of his Maker, which I was blithe and thankful to hear. And he inquired about many a one in the parish, the blooming and the green of his time, but they were all dead and buried ; and he had a contrite and penitent spirit, and read his Bible every day, delighting most in the Book of Joshua, the Chronicles, and the Kings. Before this year, the drinking of tea was little known in the parish, saving among a few of the heritors' houses on a Sabbath evening ; but now it became very rife. Yet the commoner sort did not like to let it be known that they were taking to the new luxury, especially the elderly women, who, for that reason, had their ploys l in out- houses and by-places, just as the witches lang syne had their sinful possets and galravitchings ; 2 and they made their tea for common in the pint-stoup, and drank it out of caps and luggies, 3 1 Ploys. Junkets. 2 Galravitchings. Noisy ongoings. 3 Caps and luggies. Both words signify wooden bowls. Caps, however, were turned out of the solid, while luggies were built up of staves, and hooped, and had handles. VOL. I. B 18 ANNALS OP THE PARISH for there were but few among them that had cups and saucers. Well do I remember that, one night in harvest, in this very year, as I was taking my twilight dauner aneath the hedge along the back side of Thomas Thorl's yard, meditating on the goodness of Providence, and looking at the sheaves of victual on the field, I heard his wife, and two three other carlins, 1 with their Bohea in the inside of the hedge ; and no doubt but it had a lacing of the conek, 2 for they were all cracking like pen-guns. But I gave them a sign, by a loud host, 3 that Providence sees all, and it skailed the bike ; 4 for I heard them, like guilty creatures, whispering, and gathering up their truck-pots and trenchers, and cowering away home. It was in this year that Patrick Dilworth, (he had been schoolmaster of the parish from the time, as his wife said, of Anna Regina, and before the Rexes came to the crown), was disabled by a paralytic, and the heritors, grudging the cost of another schoolmaster 5 as long as he lived, would not allow the Session to get his place supplied, which was a wrong thing, I must say, of them ; for the children of the parishioners were obliged, therefore, to go to the neighbouring towns for their schooling, and the custom was to take a piece of bread and cheese in their pockets for 1 Carlins, Old women. 2 Conek. Cognac. 3 Host. Cough. 4 Skailed the bike. Broke up the gathering. 6 Note A. The Session and Education. YEAR 1761 19 dinner, and to return in the evening always vora- cious for more, the long walk helping the natural crave of their young appetites. In this way Mrs Malcolm's two eldest laddies, Charlie and Robert, were wont to go to Irville, and it was soon seen that they kept themselves aloof from the other callans in the clachan, and had a genteeler turn than the grulshy * bairns of the cottars. Her bit lassies, Kate and Effie, were better off; for, some years before, Nanse Banks had taken up a teach- ing in a garret-room of a house, at the corner where John Bayne has biggit the sclate-house 2 for his grocery-shop. Nanse learnt them reading and working stockings, and how to sew the sem- plar, for twal-pennies a week. She was a patient creature, well cut out for her calling, with blear een, a pale face, and a long neck, but meek and contented withal, tholing the dule 3 of this world with a Christian submission of the spirit ; and her garret-room was a cordial of cleanliness, for she made the scholars set the house in order, time and time about, every morning ; and it was a common remark, for many a day, that the lassies who had been at Nanse Banks's school were always well spoken of, for both their civility and the trigness* of their houses, when they were afterwards married. In short, I do not know that 1 Grulshy. Coarsely-grown. a Biggit the sclate-house. Built the house with the slate roof. 3 Tholing the dule. Enduring the sorrows. * Trigness. Orderliness. 20 ANNALS OP THE PARISH in all the long epoch of my ministry any indivi- dual body did more to improve the ways of the parishioners, in their domestic concerns, than did that worthy and innocent creature, Nanse Banks, the schoolmistress ; and she was a great loss when she was removed, as it is to be hoped, to a better world. But anent this I shall have to speak more at large hereafter. It was in this year that my patron, the Laird of Breadland, departed this life, and I preached his funeral sermon ; but he was non-beloved in the parish, for my people never forgave him for putting me upon them, although they began to be more on a familiar footing with myself. This was partly owing to my first wife, Betty Lanshaw, who was an active, throughgoing woman, and wonderfu' useful to many of the cottars' wives at their lying in. When a death happened among them, her helping hand, and anything we had at the manse, were never wanting ; and I went about myself to the bedside of the frail, leaving no stone unturned to win the affections of my people, which, by the blessing of the Lord, in process of time, was brought to a bearing. But a thing happened in this year which de- serves to be recorded, as manifesting what effect the smuggling was beginning to take in the morals of the country side. One Mr Macskipnish (of Highland parentage, who had been a valet- de-chambre with a major in the campaigns, and taken a prisoner with him by the French), having YEAR 1761 21 come home in a cartel, 1 took up a dancing-school at Irville, the which art he had learnt in the genteelest fashion, in the mode of Paris, at the French court. Such a thing as a dancing-school had never, in the memory of man, been known in our country side ; and there was such a sound about the steps and cotillions of Mr Macskipnish that every lad and lass that could spare time and siller went to him, to the great neglect of their work. The very bairns on the loan, instead of their wonted play, gaed linking and louping 2 in the steps of Mr Macskipnish, who was, to be sure, a great curiosity, with long spindle legs, his breast shot out like a duck's, and his head powdered and frizzled up like a tappit-hen. 3 He was, in- deed, the proudest peacock that could be seen ; and he had a ring on his finger ; and when he came to drink his tea at the Breadland, he brought no hat on his head, but a droll cockit thing under his arm, which, he said, was after the manner of the courtiers at the petty suppers of one Madam Pompadour, who was at that time the concubine of the French king. I do not recollect any other remarkable thing that happened in this year. The harvest was very abundant, and the meal so cheap that it caused a great defect in my stipend ; so that I was obligated to postpone the purchase of a mahogany 1 Cartel. A ship employed in the exchange of prisoners. 3 Linking and louping. Tripping and leaping. 3 Tappit-hen. A hen with a tuft on her head. 22 ANNALS OF THE PARISH scrutoire for my study, as I had intended. But I had not the heart to complain of this : on the con- trary, I rejoiced thereat ; for what made me want my scrutoire till another year had carried blithe- ness into the hearth of the cottar, and made the widow's heart sing with joy ; and I should have been an unnatural creature had I not joined in the universal gladness because plenty did abound. CHAPTER III YEAR 1762 Havoc produced by the smallpox Charles Mal- colm is sent off a cabin-boy, on a voyage to Virginia Mizy Spaewell dies on Hallowe'en Tea begins to be admitted at the manse, but the minister continues to exert his authority against smuggling. JL HE third year of my ministry was long held in remembrance for several very memorable things. William Byres of the Loanhead had a cow that calved two calves at one calving ; Mrs Byres, the same year, had twins, male and female ; and there was such a crop on his fields as testified that the Lord never sends a mouth into the world without providing meat for it. But what was thought a very daunting sign of something hap- pened on the Sacrament Sabbath, at the conclu- sion of the action sermon, 1 when I had made a very suitable discourse. The day was tempestuous, and the wind blew with such a pith and birr that I thought it would have twirled the trees in 1 Note A. Communion Services. 24 ANNALS OF THE PARISH the kirkyard out by the roots, and, blowing in this manner, it tirled the thack from the rigging 1 of the manse stable ; and the same blast that did that took down the lead that was on the kirk- roof, which hurled off, as I was saying, at the conclusion of the action sermon, with a dreadful sound of which the like was never heard, and all the congregation thought that it betokened a mutation to me. However, nothing particular hap- pened to me ; but the smallpox came in among the weans of the parish, and the smashing that it made of the poor bits o' bairns was indeed woeful. One Sabbath, when the pestilence was raging, I preached a sermon about Rachel weeping for her children, which Thomas Thorl, who was surely a great judge of good preaching, said " was a monument of divinity whilk searched the heart of many a parent that day : " a thing I was well pleased to hear, for Thomas, as I have related at length, was the most zealous champion against my getting the parish. From this time, I set him down in my mind for the next vacancy among the elders. Worthy man ! it was not permitted him to arrive at that honour. In the fall of that year he took an income 2 in his legs, and couldna go about, and was laid up for the remainder of his days, a perfect Lazarus, by the fireside. But he was well supported in his affliction. In due 1 Tirled the thack from the rigging. Stripped the thatch from the roof. 2 Income. Abscess. YEAR 1762 25 season, when it pleased HIM, who alone can give and take, to pluck him from this life, as the fruit ripened and ready for the gathering, his death, to all that knew him, was a gentle dispensation, for truly he had been in sore trouble. It was in this year that Charlie Malcolm, Mrs Malcolm's eldest son, was sent to be a cabin- boy in the Tobacco trader, a three-masted ship that sailed between Port-Glasgow and Virginia in America. She was commanded by Captain Dickie, an Irville man ; for at that time the Clyde was supplied with the best sailors from our coast, the coal-trade with Ireland being a better trade for bringing up good mariners than the long voyages in the open sea ; which was the reason, as I often heard said, why the Clyde shipping got so many of their men from our country side. The going to sea of Charlie Malcolm was, on divers accounts, a very remarkable thing to us all ; for he was the first that ever went from our parish, in the memory of man, to be a sailor, and everybody was concerned at it, and some thought it was a great venture of his mother to let him, his father having been lost at sea. But what could the forlorn widow do ? She had five weans, and little to give them ; and, as she herself said, he was aye in the hand of his Maker, go where he might, and the will of God would be done, in spite of all earthly wiles and devices to the contrary. On the Monday morning, when Charlie was to go away to meet the Irville carrier on the road 26 ANNALS OF THE PARISH we were all up, and I walked by myself from the manse into the clachan l to bid him farewell. I met him just coming from his mother's door, as blithe as a bee, in his sailor's dress, with a stick, and a bundle tied in a Barcelona silk handker- chief hanging o'er his shoulder, and his two little brothers were with him, and his sisters, Kate and Effie, looking out from the door, all begreeten ; 2 but his mother was in the house, praying to the Lord to protect her orphan, as she afterwards told me. All the weans of the clachan were gathered at the kirkyard yett to see him pass, and they gave him three great shouts as he was going by ; and everybody was at their doors, and said some- thing encouraging to him. And there was a great laugh when auld Mizy Spaewell came hirpling with her bauchle 3 in her hand, and flung it after him for good-luck. Mizy had a wonderful faith in freats, 4 and was just an oracle of sagacity at expounding dreams, and bodes of every sort and description, besides being reckoned one of the best howdies 5 in her day ; but by this time she was grown frail and feckless, and she died the same year on Hallowe'en, which made everybody wonder that it should have so fallen out for her to die on Hallowe'en. 1 Clachan. A village lying round a church. 2 All begreeten. With their faces showing the marks of weeping. 3 Hirpling with her bauchle. Walking crazily with her old shoe. 4 Freats. Superstitious practices of all kinds. 5 Howdies. Midwives. YEAR 1762 27 Shortly after the departure of Charlie Malcolm, the Lady of Breadland, with her three daughters, removed to Edinburgh, where the young laird, that had been my pupil, was learning to be an advocate. The Breadland-house was set l to Major Gilchrist, a nabob from India; but he was a narrow, 2 ailing man, and his maiden-sister, Miss Girzie, was the scrimpetest 2 creature that could be : so that, in their hands, all the pretty policy 3 of the Breadlands, that had cost a power of money to the old laird that was my patron, fell into decay and disorder ; and the bonny yew-trees that were cut into the shape of peacocks soon grew out of all shape, and are now doleful monu- ments of the Major's tack and that of Lady Skimmilk, as Miss Girzie Gilchrist, his sister, was nicknamed by every ane that kent her. But it was not so much on account of the neglect of the Breadland that the incoming of Major Gilchrist was to be deplored. The old men that had a light labour in keeping the policy in order were thrown out of bread, and could do little ; and the poor women that whiles got a bit and a drap from the kitchen of the family soon felt the change : so that by little and little we were obligated to give help from the Session ; insomuch that, before the end of the year, I was 1 A property is "set to" one when it is let to him on a lease ; and the lease is known as the "tack." * Narrow . . . Scrimpetest. Both words refer to a close- ness (a " nearness ") in money matters. 3 Policy. Pleasure grounds round the mansion. 28 ANNALS OF THE PARISH necessitated to preach a discourse on almsgiving, specially for the benefit of our own poor, a thing never before known in the parish. But one good thing came from the Gilchrists to Mrs Malcolm. Miss Girzie, whom they called Lady Skimmilk, had been in a very penurious way as a seamstress, in the Gorbals of Glasgow, while her brother was making the fortune in India, and she was a clever needle-woman, none better, as it was said ; and she, having some things to make, took Kate Malcolm to help her in the coarse work, and Kate, being a nimble and birky l thing, was so useful to the lady, and to the com- plaining man the major, that they invited her to stay with them at the Breadland for the winter. There, although she was holden to her seam from morning to night, her foot lightened the hand of her mother, who, for the first time since her coming into the parish, found the penny for the day's darg 2 more than was needed for the meal- basin ; and the tea-drinking was beginning to spread more openly, insomuch that, by the advice of the first Mrs Balwhidder, Mrs Malcolm took in tea to sell, and in this way was enabled to eke something to the small profits of her wheel. Thus the tide that had been so long ebbing to her began to turn ; and here I am bound in truth to say that, although I never could abide the smuggling, both on its own account, and for the 1 Birky. Sharp, purposeful. 2 Day's darg. The day's portion of work. YEAR 1762 29 evils that grew therefrom to the country side, I lost some of my dislike to the tea after Mrs Malcolm began to traffic in it, and we then had it for our breakfast in the morning at the manse, as well as in the afternoon. But what I thought most of it for was that it did no harm to the head of the drinkers, which was not always the case with the possets that were in fashion before. There is no meeting now in the summer evenings, as I remember often happened in my younger days, with decent ladies coming home with red faces, tosy and cosh, 1 from a posset-masking. So, both for its temperance and on account of Mrs Malcolm's sale, I refrained from the November in this year to preach against tea ; but I never lifted the weight of my displeasure from off the smuggling trade, until it was utterly put down by the strong hand of government. There was no other thing of note in this year, saving only that I planted in the garden the big pear-tree, which had the two great branches that we call the Adam and Eve. I got the plant, then a sapling, from Mr Graft, that was Lord Eaglesham's head-gardener ; and he said it was, as indeed all the parish now knows well, a most juicy, sweet pear, such as was not known in Scotland till my lord brought down the father plant from the king's garden in London, in the forty-five, when he went up to testify his loyalty to the House of Hanover. 1 Tosy and cosh. Slightly intoxicated, and comfortable in their drink. CHAPTER IV YEAR 1763 Charles Malcolm's return from sea Kate Mal- colm is taken to live with Lady Macadam Death ofthejirst Mrs Bahvhidder. _LHE An. Dom. 1763, was, in many a respect, a memorable year, both in public and in private. The king granted peace to the French, and Charlie Malcolm, who went to sea in the Tobacco trader, came home to see his mother. The ship, after being at America, had gone down to Jamaica, an island in the West Indies, (with a cargo of live lumber, as Charlie told me himself), and had come home with more than a hundred and fifty hoggits of sugar, and sixty-three puncheons full of rum ; for she was, by all accounts, a stately galley, and almost two hundred tons in the burthen, being the largest vessel then sailing from the creditable town of Port-Glasgow. Charlie was not expected, and his coming was a great thing to us all ; so I will mention the whole particulars. One evening, towards the gloaming, as I was taking my walk of meditation, I saw a brisk sailor YEAR 1763 31 laddie coming towards me. He had a pretty green parrot sitting on a bundle, tied in a Barcelona silk handkerchief, which he carried with a stick over his shoulder, and in this bundle was a wonderful big nut, such as no one in our parish had ever seen. It was called a cocker-nut. This blithe callant was Charlie Malcolm, who had come all the way that day his leeful lane, 1 on his own legs, from Greenock, where the Tobacco trader was then 'livering her cargo. I told him how his mother and his brothers and his sisters were all in good health, and went to convoy him home ; and, as we were going along, he told me many curious things, and gave me six beautiful yellow limes that he had brought in his pouch, all the way across the seas, for me to make a bowl of punch with, and I thought more of them than if they had been golden guineas, it was so mindful of the laddie ! When we got to the door of his mother's house, she was sitting at the fireside, with her three other bairns at their bread and milk, Kate being then with Lady Skimmilk, at the Breadland, sewing. It was between the day and dark, when the shuttle stands still till the lamp is lighted. But such a shout of joy and thankfulness as rose from that hearth when Charlie went in ! The very parrot, ye would have thought, was a par- ticipator : for the beast gied a skraik that made my whole head dirl ; 2 and the neighbours came 1 His leeful lane. Lonely and alone. 2 Gied a skraik . . . dirl. Gave a screech . . . vibrate. 32 flying and nocking to see what was the matter, for it was the first parrot ever seen within the bounds of the parish, and some thought it was but a foreign hawk, with a yellow head and green feathers. In the midst of all this, Effie Malcolm had run off to the Breadland for her sister Kate, and the two lassies came flying breathless, with Miss Girzie Gilchrist, the Lady Skimmilk, pursuing them like desperation, or a griffin, down the avenue ; for Kate, in her hurry, had flung down her seam, a new printed gown, that she was helping to make,- and it had fallen into a boyne l of milk that was ready for the creaming, by which ensued a double misfortune to Miss Girzie, the gown being not only ruined but licking up the cream. For this, poor Kate was not allowed ever to set her face in the Breadland again. When Charlie Malcolm had stayed about a week with his mother, he returned to his berth in the Tobacco trader, and, shortly after, his brother Robert was likewise sent to serve his time to the sea, with an owner that was master of his own bark, in the coal trade at Irville. Kate, who was really a surprising lassie for her years, was taken off her mother's hands by the old Lady Macadam, who lived in her jointure house, which is now the Cross Keys Inns. Her ladyship was a woman of high breeding, (her husband having been a great general, and knighted by the king for his exploits), 1 Boyne. A broad, flat dish for milk. YEAR 1763 33 but she was lame, and could not move about in her dining-room without help ; so, hearing from the first Mrs Balwhidder how Kate had done such an unatonable deed to Miss Girzie Gilchrist, she sent for Kate, and, finding her sharp and apt, took her to live with her as a companion. This was a vast advantage, for the lady was versed in all manner of accomplishments, and could read and speak French with more ease than any professor at that time in the College of Glasgow ; and she had learnt to sew flowers on satin, either in a nunnery abroad, or in a boarding-school in Eng- land, and took pleasure in teaching Kate all she knew, and how to behave herself like a lady. In the summer of this year, old Mr Patrick Dilworth, that had so long been doited l with the paralytics, died, and it was a great relief to my people, for the heritors could no longer refuse to get a proper schoolmaster. 2 So we took on trial Mr Lorimore, who has, ever since the year after, with so much credit to himself and usefulness to the parish, been schoolmaster, session-clerk, and precentor : a man of great mildness, and extra- ordinary particularity. He was then a very young man, and some objection was made, on account of his youth, to his being session-clerk, especially as the smuggling immorality still gave us much trouble in the making up of irregular marriages ; but his discretion was greater than could have 1 Doited. Addle-pated. 1 Note A. The Session and Education. VOL. I. C 34 ANNALS OF THE PARISH been hoped for from his years, and, after a twelve- month's probation in the capacity of schoolmaster, he was installed in all the offices that had belonged to his predecessor, old Mr Patrick Dilworth that was. But the most memorable thing that befell among my people this year was the burning of the lint- mill on the Lugton water, which happened, of all the days of the year, on the very self-same day that Miss Girzie Gilchrist, better known as Lady Skimmilk, hired the chaise, from Mrs Watts of the New Inns of Irville, to go with her brother, the major, to consult the faculty in Edinburgh concerning his complaints. For, as the chaise was coming by the mill, William Huckle, the miller that was, came flying out of the mill like a de- mented man, crying, Fire ! and it was the driver that brought the melancholy tidings to the clachan. And melancholy they were ; for the mill was utterly destroyed, and in it not a little of all that year's crop of lint in our parish. The first Mrs Balwhidder lost upwards of twelve stone, which we had raised on the glebe with no small pains, watering it in the drouth, as it was intended for sarking 1 to ourselves, and sheets and napery. A great loss indeed it was, and the vexation thereof had a visible effect on Mrs Balwhidder's health, which from the spring had been in a dwining 2 way. But for it, I think, she might have wrestled through the winter ; however, it was ordered 1 Sarking. Sbirting. 2 Dwining. Declining. YEAR 1763 35 otherwise, and she was removed from mine to Abraham's bosom on Christmas-day, and buried on Hogmanay, for it was thought uncanny to have a dead corpse in the house on the new-year's day. She was a worthy woman, studying with all her capacity to win the hearts of my people towards me : in the which good work she prospered greatly ; so that, when she died, there was not a single soul in the parish that was not contented with both my walk and conversation. Nothing could be more peaceable than the way we lived together. Her brother Andrew, a fine lad, I had sent to the college at Glasgow, at my own cost. When he came out to the burial he stayed with me a month, for the manse after her decease was very dull. It was during this visit that he gave me an inkling of his wish to go out to India as a cadet ; but the transactions anent that fall within the scope of another year, as well as what relates to her head- stone, and the epitaph in metre, which I indicated myself thereon : John Truel the mason carving the same, as may be seen in the kirkyard, where it wants a little reparation and setting upright, having settled the wrong way when the second Mrs Balwhidder was laid by her side. But I must not here enter upon an anticipation. CHAPTER V YEAR 1764 He gets a headstone for Mrs Balwhidder, and writes an epitaph for it He is afflicted with melancholy, and thinks of writing a book Nichol Snipe's device when reproved in church. JL HIS year well deserved the name of the monu- mental year in our parish ; for the young laird of the Breadland, that had been my pupil, being learning to be an advocate among the faculty in Edinburgh, with his lady mother, who had removed thither with the young ladies her daughters for the benefit of education, sent out, to be put up in the kirk, under the loft over the family vault, an elegant marble headstone, with an epitaph engraven thereon, in fair Latin, set- ting forth many excellent qualities which the old laird, my patron that was, the inditer thereof said, possessed. I say the inditer, because it couldna have been the young laird himself, although he got the credit o't on the stone, for he was nae daub in my aught 1 at the Latin or any other language. 1 Nac daub in my aught. No adept in my eyes. YEAR 1764 37 However, he might improve himself at Edin- burgh, where a' manner of genteel things were then to be got at an easy rate, and doubtless the young laird got a probationer at the College to write the epitaph. But I have often wondered sin' syne how he came to make it in Latin, for assuredly his dead parent, if he could have seen it, could not have read a single word o't, notwithstanding it was so vaunty l about his virtues and other civil and hospitable qualifi- cations. The coming of the laird's monumental stone had a great effect on me, then in a state of deep despondency for the loss of the first Mrs Bal- whidder ; and I thought I could not do a better thing, just by way of diversion in my heavy sorrow, than to get a well-shapen headstone made for her, which, as I have hinted at in the record of the last year, was done and set up. But a headstone without an epitaph is no better than a body without the breath of life in't ; and so it be- hoved me to make a poesy for the monument, the which I conned and pondered upon for many days. I thought that, as Mrs Balwhidder, worthy woman as she was, did not understand the Latin tongue, it would not do to put on what I had to say in that language, as the laird had done ; nor indeed would it have been easy, as I found upon the experimenting, to tell what I had to tell in Latin, which is naturally a crabbed language, and 1 Vaunty. Boastful. 38 ANNALS OF THE PARISH very difficult to write properly. I, therefore, after mentioning her age and the dates of her birth and departure, composed in sedate poetry the following epitaph, which may yet be seen on the tombstone. EPITAPH. A lovely Christian, spouse, and friend, Pleasant in life, and at her end. A pale consumption dealt the blow That laid her here, with dust below. Sore was the cough that shook her frame ; That cough her patience did proclaim And as she drew her latest breath, She said, " The Lord is sweet in death." pious reader ! standing by, Learn like this gentle one to die. The grass doth grow and fade away, And time runs out by night and day ; The King of Terrors has command To strike us with his dart in hand. Go where we will, by flood or field, He will pursue and make us yield. But though to him we must resign The vesture of our part divine, There is a jewel in our trust That will not perish in the dust : A pearl of price, a precious gem, Ordained for Jesus' diadem ; Therefore, be holy while you can, And think upon the doom of man ; Repent in time and sin no more, That, when the strife of life is o'er, On wings of love your soul may rise To dwell with angels in the skies, YEAR 1764 39 Where psalms are sung eternally, And martyrs ne'er again shall die, But, with the saints, still bask in bliss, And drink the cup of blessedness. This was greatly thought of at the time, and Mr Lorimore, who had a nerve for poesy himself in his younger years, was of opinion that it was so much to the purpose, and suitable withal, that he made his scholars write it out for their exa- mination copies, at the reading whereof before the heritors, when the examination of the school came round, the tear came into my eye, and every one present sympathised with me in my great affliction for the loss of the first Mrs Balwhidder. Andrew Lanshaw, as I have recorded, having come from the Glasgow College to the burial of his sister, my wife that was, stayed with me a month to keep me company ; and staying with me, he was a great cordial. For the weather was wet and sleety, and the nights were stormy, so that I could go little out ; and few of the elders came in, they being at that time old men in a feckless condition, not at all qualified to warsle l with the blasts of winter. But when Andrew left me to go back to his classes I was eerie and lone- some ; and but for the getting of the monument ready, (which was a blessed entertainment to me in those dreary nights, with consulting anent the shape of it with John Truel, and meditating on the verse for the epitaph), I might have gone 1 Warsle. Wrestle, 40 ANNALS OF THE PARISH altogether demented. However, it pleased HIM, who is the surety of the sinner, to help me through the Slough of Despond, and to set my feet on firm land, establishing my way thereon. But the work of the monument, and the epitaph, could not endure for a constancy, and after it was done, I was again in great danger of sinking into the hypochonderies a second time. However, I was enabled to fight with my affliction, and by- and-by, as the spring began to open her green lattice, and to set out her flower-pots to the sunshine, and the time of the singing of birds was come, I became more composed and like my- self. So I often walked in the fields, and held communion with nature, and wondered at the mysteries thereof. On one of these occasions, as I was sauntering along the edge of Eaglesham-wood, looking at the industrious bee going from flower to flower, and at the idle butterfly that layeth up no store but perisheth ere it is winter, I felt as it were a spirit from on high descending upon me, a throb at my heart, and a thrill in my brain ; and I was trans- ported out of myself, and seized with the notion of writing a book. But what it should be about, I could not settle to my satisfaction. Sometimes I thought of an orthodox poem, like Paradise Lost by John Milton, wherein I proposed to treat more at large of Original Sin, and of the great mystery of Redemption. At others, I fancied that a con- nect treatise on the efficacy of Free Grace would YEAR 1764 41 be more taking. But, although I made divers be- ginnings in both subjects, some new thought ever came into my head, and the whole summer passed away and nothing was done. I therefore post- poned my design of writing a book till the winter, when I would have the benefit of the long nights. Before that, however, I had other things of more importance to think about. My servant lasses, having no eye of a mistress over them, wastered everything at such a rate, and made such a gal- ravitching in the house, that, long before the end of the year, the year's stipend was all spent, and I did not know what to do. At lang and length I mustered courage to send for Mr Auld, who was then living, and an elder. He was a douce l and discreet man, fair and well-doing in the world, and had a better handful of strong common sense than many even of the heritors. So I told him how I was situated, and conferred with him. He advised me, for my own sake, to look out for another wife, as soon as decency would allow, which, he thought, might very properly be after the turn of the year, by which time the first Mrs Balwhidder would be dead more than twelve months ; and, when I mentioned my design to write a book, he said, (and he was a man of good discretion), that the doing of the book was a thing that would keep, but wasterful servants were a growing evil. So, upon his counselling, I resolved not to meddle with the book till I was married 1 Douce. Quiet-going and sensible. 42 ANNALS OF THE PARISH again, but employ the interim, between then and the turn of the year, in looking out for a prudent woman to be my second wife, strictly intending, (as I did perform), not to mint a word l about my choice, if I made one, till the whole twelve months and a day, from the date of the first Mrs Balwhidder's interment, had run out. In this the hand of Providence was very visible, and lucky for me it was that I had sent for Mr Auld when I did send. The very week following, a sound began to spread in the parish that one of my lassies had got herself with bairn, which was an awful thing to think had happened in the house of her master, and that master a minister of the gospel. Some there were, for backbiting apper- taineth to all conditions, that jealoused and wondered if I had not a finger in the pie : which when Mr Auld heard, he bestirred himself in such a manful and godly way in my defence as silenced the clash, 2 telling that I was utterly in- capable of any such thing, being a man of a guile- less heart, and a spiritual simplicity, that would be ornamental in a child. We then had the latheron 3 summoned before the Session, and was not long of making her confess that the father was Nichol Snipe, Lord Glencairn's gamekeeper. Both she and Nichol were obligated to stand in 1 To mint a word. " To mint " is to endeavour. The sense here may be "to venture a word about my choice" that is, to the lady ; or, simply, to bint. (Legatees. Chap. IX. ) 2 Clash. Tittle-tattle, s Latheron, Drab, YEAR 1764 43 the kirk ; but Nichol was a graceless reprobate, for he came with two coats, one buttoned behind him, and another buttoned before him , and two wigs of my lord's, lent him by the valet-de-chamer, the one over his face, and the other in the right way ; and he stood with his face to the church wall. When I saw him from the poopit, I said to him, "Nichol, you must turn your face towards me ! " At the which he turned round, to be sure ; but there he presented the same show as his back. I was confounded, and did not know what to say, but cried out with a voice of anger, "Nichol, Nichol ! if ye had been a' back, ye wouldna hae been there this day ; " which had such an effect on the whole congregation that the poor fellow suffered afterwards more derision than if I had rebuked him in the manner prescribed by the Session. 1 This affair, with the previous advice of Mr Auld, was, however, a warning to me that no pastor of his parish should be long without a help- mate. Accordingly, as soon as the year was out, I set myself earnestly about the search for one ; but as the particulars fall properly within the scope and chronicle of the next year, I must re- serve them for it. And I do not recollect that anything more particular befell in this, excepting that William Mutchkins, the father of Mr Mutch- kins, the great spirit dealer in Glasgow, set up a change-house in the clachan, which was the first 1 Note A. The Session and Discipline, 44 ANNALS OF THE PARISH in the parish, and, if I could have helped, should have been the last ; for it was opening a howf l to all manner of wickedness, and was an immediate get 2 and offspring of the smuggling trade, against which I had so set my countenance. But William Mutchkins himself was a respectable man, and no house could be better ordered than his change. At a stated hour he made family worship, for he brought up his children in the fear of God and the Christian religion. Although the house was full, he would go in to the customers, and ask them if they would want anything for half- an -hour, for that he was going to make exercise with his family ; and many a wayfaring traveller has joined in the prayer. There is no such thing, I fear, now-a-days, of publicans entertaining travellers in this manner. 1 Howf. Shelter. - Get. Progeny. CHAPTER VI YEAR 1765 Establishment of a whisky distillery He is again married to Miss Lizy Kibbock Her industry in the dairy Her example diffuses a spirit of industry through the parish. there was little in the last year that con- cerned the parish, but only myself, so in this the like fortune continued ; and, saving a rise in the price of barley, (occasioned, as was thought, by the establishment of a house for brewing whisky in a neighbouring parish), it could not be said that my people were exposed to the mutations and influences of the stars that ruled in the seasons of Ann. Dom. 1765. In the winter there was a dearth of fuel, such as has not been since ; for when the spring loosened the bonds of the ice, three new coal-heughs were shanked * in the Douray moor, and ever since there has been a great plenty of that necessary article. Truly, it is very wonderful to see how things 1 Coal-heughs were shanked. Coal-pits were sunk. A coal- shank is the shaft to the coals. 46 ANNALS OF THE PARISH come round. When the talk was about the shanking of the heughs, and a paper to get folk to take shares in them was carried through the circumjacent parishes, it was thought a gowk's errand ; l but no sooner was the coal reached but up sprung such a traffic that it was a godsend to the parish, and the opening of a trade and com- merce that has (to use an old byword) brought gold in gowpins 2 amang us. From that time my stipend has been on the regular increase, and, therefore, I think that the incoming of the heri- tors must have been in like manner augmented. Soon after this, the time was drawing near for my second marriage. I had placed my affections, with due consideration, on Miss Lizy Kibbock, the well-brought-up daughter of Mr Joseph Kibbock of the Gorbyholm, who was the first that made a speculation in the farming way in Ayrshire, and whose cheese were of such an excellent quality that they have, under the name of Delap-cheese, spread far and wide over the civilized world. Miss Lizy and I were married on the 2.9th day of April (with some inconvenience to both sides) on account of the dread that we had of being married in May ; for it is said, " Of the marriages in May, The bairns die of a decay." However, married we were, and we hired the Irville chaise, and with Miss Jenny her sister, 1 Gowk's errand. Fool's errand. 2 Gowpins. Handfula. YEAR 1765 47 and Becky Cairns her niece, who sat on a port- manty at our feet, we went on a pleasure jaunt to Glasgow, where we bought a miracle of useful things for the manse that neither the first Mrs Balwhidder nor me ever thought of: the second Mrs Balwhidder that was had a geni l for manage- ment, and it was extraordinary what she could go through. Well may I speak of her with commendations ; for she was the bee that made my honey, although at first things did not go so clear with us. For she found the manse rookit and herrit, 2 and there was such a supply of plenishing of all sort wanted that I thought myself ruined and undone by her care and in- dustry. There was such a buying of wool to make blankets, with a booming of the meikle wheel to spin the same, and such birring of the little wheel for sheets and napery, that the manse was for many a day like an organ kist. Then we had milk cows, and the calves to bring up, and a kirning of butter, and a making of cheese ; in short, I was almost by myself with the jangle and din, which prevented me from writing a book as I had proposed. And for a time I thought of the peaceful and kindly nature of the first Mrs Balwhidder with a sigh ; but the outcoming was soon manifest. The second Mrs Balwhidder sent her butter on the market-days to Irville, and her cheese from time to time to Glasgow to Mrs 1 Geni. Genius. 2 Rookit and herrit. Plundered and despoiled. 48 ANNALS OP THE PARISH Firlot, that kept the huxtry in the Saltmarket ; and they were both so well made that our dairy was just a coining of money, insomuch that, after the first year, we had the whole tot of my stipend to put untouched into the bank. But 1 must say that, although we were thus making siller like sclate stones, I was not satisfied in my own mind that I had got the manse merely to be a factory of butter and cheese, and to breed up veal calves for the slaughter. So I spoke to the second Mrs Balwhidder, and pointed out to her what I thought the error of our way ; but she had been so ingrained with the profitable manage- ment of cows and grumphies l in her father's house that she could not desist, at the which I was greatly grieved. By-and-by, however, I began to discern that there was something as good in her example as the giving of alms to the poor folk ; for all the wives of the parish were stirred up by it into a wonderful thrift, and nothing was heard of in every house but of quiltings and wabs to weave ; insomuch that, before many years came round, there was not a parish better stocked with blankets and napery than mine was within the bounds of Scotland. It was about the Michaelmas of this year that Mrs Malcolm opened her shop. This she did chiefly on the advice of Mrs Balwhidder, who said it was far better to allow a little profit on the different haberdasheries that might be wanted 1 Grumphies. Pigs. YEAR 1765 49 than to send to the neighbouring towns an end's errand on purpose for them, none of the lasses that were so sent ever thinking of making less than a day's pay on every such occasion. In a word, it is not to be told how the second Mrs Balwhidder, my wife, showed the value of flying time, even to the concerns of this world, and was the mean of giving a life and energy to the house- wifery of the parish that has made many a one beek his shins 1 in comfort that would otherwise have had but a cold coal to blow at. Indeed, Mr Kibbock, her father, was a man beyond the common, and had an insight of things by which he was enabled to draw profit and advantage where others could only see risk and detriment. He planted mounts of fir-trees on the bleak and barren tops of the hills of his farm, the which everybody (and I among the rest) considered as a thrashing of the water and raising of bells. But as his tack ran his trees grew, and the plantations supplied him with stabs to make stake and rice 2 between his fields, which soon gave them a trig and orderly appearance, such as had never before been seen in the west country ; and his example has, in this matter, been so followed that I have heard travellers, who have been in foreign coun- tries, say that the shire of Ayr, for its bonny round 1 To beek his shins. To toast his shins. 2 Stake and rice. "Rice" is a thin bough or twig; and a hedge was made by stretching twigs between stakes driven into the ground. VOL. I. D 50 ANNALS OF THE PARISH green plantings on the tops of the hills, is above comparison either with Italy or Switzerland, where the hills are, as it were, in a state of nature. Upon the whole, this was a busy year in the parish, and the seeds of many great improvements were laid. The king's road, which then ran through the Vennel, was mended ; but it was not till some years after, as I shall record by-and-by, that the " trust road," as it was called, was made, the which had the effect of turning the town inside out. Before I conclude, it is proper to mention that the kirk-bell, which had to this time, from time immemorial, hung on an ash-tree, was one stormy night cast down by the breaking of the branch, which was the cause of the heritors agreeing to build the steeple. The clock was a mortification to the parish from the Lady Breadland, when she died some years after. CHAPTER VII YEAR 1766 The burning of the Breadland A new bell, and also a steeple Nanse Birrel found drowned in a well The parish troubled with wild Irishmen. J_T was in this Ann. Dom. that the great calamity happened, the which took place on a Sabbath evening in the month of February. Mrs Bal- whidder had just infused (or masket) the tea, and we were set round the fireside to spend the night in an orderly and religious manner, along with Mr and Mrs Petticrew, who were on a friendly visitation to the manse, the mistress being full cousin to Mrs Balwhidder. Sitting, as I was saying, at our tea, one of the servant lasses came into the room with a sort of a panic laugh, and said, " What are ye all doing there when the Bread- land's in a low ? " ] " The Breadland in a low ! " cried I. " Oh, ay ! " cried she : " bleezing at the windows and the rigging, and out at the lum, like a killogie." 2 Upon the which, we all went 1 In a low. In a blaze. 2 Bleezing,