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Wilson's

Tales of the Borders

AND OF SCOTLAND.

HISTORICAL, TRADITIONARY, & IMAGINATIVE.

WITH A GLOSSARY.

REVISED BY
ALEXANDER LEIGHTON,
ONE OF THE ORIGINAL EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS.

VOL. IX.

LONDON:
WALTER SCOTT, 14 PATERNOSTER SQUARE.
AND NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE.
1885.




CONTENTS.


                                                     Page.

  THE <DW36>; OR, EBENEZER THE DISOWNED
  (_John Mackay Wilson_)                                1

  THE LEGEND OF FAIR HELEN OF KIRCONNEL
  (_Alexander Leighton_)                               23

  TOM DUNCAN'S YARN (_Oliver Richardson_)              55

  THE PROFESSOR'S TALES (_Professor Thomas Gillespie_)

    THE THREE BRETHREN                                 87

    THE MISTAKE RECTIFIED                              97

    DURA DEN; OR, SECOND THOUGHTS ARE BEST            106

  THE LAIRD OF LUCKY'S HOW (_Alexander Campbell_)     119

  THE ABDUCTION (_Alexander Leighton_)                151

  SIR PATRICK HUME: A TALE OF THE HOUSE OF MARCHMONT
  (_John Mackay Wilson_)                              167

  THE SERJEANT'S TALES (_John Howell_)

    THE PACKMAN'S JOURNEY TO LONDON                   178

  CHARLES LAWSON (_John Mackay Wilson_)               210

  BON GAULTIER'S TALES (_Theodore Martin_)

    MRS. HUMPHREY GREENWOOD'S TEA-PARTY               217

  THE RECLUSE OF THE HEBRIDES (_Walter Logan_)        230

  ELLEN ARUNDEL (_Walter Logan_)                      238

  CHATELARD (_Alexander Campbell_)                    243

  CHRISTIE OF THE CLEEK (_Alexander Leighton_)        275




WILSON'S

TALES OF THE BORDERS,

AND OF SCOTLAND.




THE <DW36>; OR, EBENEZER THE DISOWNED.


It is proverbial to say, with reference to particular constitutions or
habits of body, that May is a _trying_ month, and we have known what it
is to experience its trials in the sense signified. With our
grandmothers too, yea, and with our grandfathers also, May was held to
be an unlucky month. Nevertheless, it is a lovely, it is a beautiful
month, and the forerunner of the most healthy of the twelve. It is like
a timid maiden blushing into womanhood, wooing and yet shrinking from
the admiration which her beauty compels. The buds, the blossoms, the
young leaves, the tender flowers, the glittering dew-drops, and the song
of birds, burst from the grasp of winter as if the God of nature
whispered in the sunbeams--"Let there be life!" But it is in the morning
only, and before the business of the world summons us to its mechanical
and artificial realities, that the beauties of May can be felt in all
their freshness. We read of the glories of Eden, and that the earth was
cursed because of man's transgression; yet, when we look abroad upon the
glowing landscape, above us, and around us, and behold the pure heavens
like a sea of music floating over us, and hear the earth answer it back
in varied melody, while mountain, wood, and dale, seem dreaming in the
sound, and stealing into loveliness, we almost wonder that a bad man
should exist in the midst of a world that is still so beautiful, and
where every object around him is a representative of the wisdom, the
goodness, the mercy, the purity, and the omnipotence of his Creator.
There is a language in the very wild-flowers among our feet that
breathes a lesson of virtue. We can appreciate the feeling with which
the poet beheld

  "The _last_ rose of summer left blooming alone;"

but in the firstlings of the spring, the primrose, the lily, and their
early train, there is an appeal that passes beyond our senses. They are
like the lispings and the smiles of infancy--lowly preachers, emblems of
our own immortality, and we love them like living things. They speak to
us of childhood and the scenes of youth, and _memory_ dwells in their
very fragrance. Yes, May is a beautiful month--it is a month of fair
sights and of sweet sounds. To it belongs the lowly primrose blushing by
the brae-side in congregated beauty, with here and there a cowslip
bending over them like a lover among the flowers; the lily hanging its
head by the brook that reflects its image, like a bride at the altar, as
if conscious of its own loveliness; the hardy daisy on the green sward,
like a proud man struggling in penury with the storms of fate. Now, too,
the blossoms on a thousand trees unfold their rainbow hues; the tender
leaves seem instinct with life, and expand to the sunbeams; and the
bright fields, like an emerald sea, wave their first undulations to the
breeze. The lark pours down a flood of melody on the nest of its mate,
and the linnet trills a lay of love to its partner from the yellow
furze. The chaffinch chants in the hedge its sweet but unvaried _line of
music_; the thrush hymns his bold roundelay; and the blackbird swells
the chorus; while the bird of spring sends its voice from the glens,
like a wandering echo lost between love and sadness; and the swallow,
newly returned from warmer climes or its winter sleep,

  "Twitters from the straw-built shed."

The insect tribe leap into being, countless in numbers and matchless in
livery, and their low hum swims like the embodiment of a dream in the
air. The May-fly invites the angler to the river, while the minnow
gambols in the brook; the young salmon sports and sparkles in the
stream, and the grey trout glides slowly beneath the shadow of a rock in
the deep pool. To enjoy for a single hour in a May morning the luxuries
which nature spreads around--to wander in its fields and in its
woods--to feel ourselves a part of God's glad creation--to _feel_ the
gowan under our feet, and health circulating through our veins with the
refreshing breeze, is a recipe worth all in the Materia Medica.

Now, it was before sunrise on such a morning in May as I have described,
that a traveller left the Black Bull in Wooler, and proceeded to the
Cheviots. He took his route by way of Earle and Langleeford; and, at the
latter place, leaving the long and beautiful glen, began to ascend the
mountain. On the cairn, which is perhaps about five hundred yards from
what is called the extreme summit of the mountain, he met an old and
intelligent shepherd, from whom he heard many tales, the legends of the
mountains--and amongst others, the following story:--

Near the banks of one of the romantic streams which take their rise
among the Cheviots, stood a small and pleasant, and what might be termed
respectable or genteel-looking building. It stood like the home of
solitude, excluded by mountains from the world. Beneath it, the rivulet
wandered over its rugged bed; to the east rose Cheviot, the giant of the
hills; to the west, lesser mountains reared their fantastic forms,
thinly studded here and there with dwarf alders, which the birds of
heaven had planted, and their progeny had nestled in their branches; to
the north and the south stretched a long and secluded glen, where beauty
blushed in the arms of wildness--and thick woods, where the young fir
and the oak of the ancient forest grew together, flourished beneath the
shelter of the hills. Fertility also smiled by the sides of the rivulet,
though the rising and setting sun threw the shadows of barrenness over
it. Around the cottage stood a clump of solitary firs, and behind it an
enclosure of alders, twisted together, sheltered a garden from the
storms that swept down the hills.

Now, many years ago, a stranger woman, who brought with her a female
domestic and a male infant, became the occupant of this house among the
hills. She lived more luxuriously than the sheep-farmers in the
neighbourhood, and her accent was not that of the Borders. She was
between forty and fifty years of age, and her stature and strength were
beyond the ordinary stature and strength of women. Her manners were
repulsive, and her bearing haughty; but it seemed the haughtiness of a
weak and uneducated mind. Her few neighbours, simple though they were,
and little as they saw or knew of the world, its inhabitants and its
manners, perceived that the stranger who had come amongst them had not
been habituated to the affluence or easy circumstances with which she
was then surrounded. The child also was hard-favoured, and of a
disagreeable countenance; his back was strangely deformed; his feet were
distorted, and his limbs of unequal length. No one could look upon the
child without a feeling of compassion, save the woman who was his
mother, his nurse, or his keeper (for none knew in what relation she
stood to him), and she treated him as a persecutor, who hated his sight,
and was weary of his existence.

She gave her name as Mrs Baird; and, as the child grew up, she generally
in derision called him "_AEsop_," or, in hatred, "the little monster!"
but the woman-servant called him Ebenezer, though she treated him with a
degree of harshness only less brutal than she whom he began to call
mother. We shall, therefore, in his history mention him by the name of
Ebenezer Baird. As he grew in years, the disagreeable expression of his
countenance became stronger, his deformity and lameness increased, and
the treatment he had experienced added to both.

When nine years of age, he was sent to a boarding-school about twelve
miles distant. Here a new series of persecutions awaited him. Until the
day of his entering the school, he was almost ignorant that there was an
alphabet. He knew not a letter. He had seen one or two books, but he
knew not their use: he had never seen any one look upon them; he
regarded them merely as he did a picture--a piece of useless furniture,
or a plaything. Lame as he was, he had climbed the steep and the
dripping precipice for the eggs of the water-ouzel, sought among the
crags for the young of the gorgeous kingfisher, or climbed the tallest
trees in quest of the crested wrens, which chirped and fluttered in
invisible swarms among the branches.[A] The birds were to him
companions; he wished to rear their young, that they might love him, for
there was a lack of something in his heart--he knew not what it was--but
it was the void of being beloved, of being regarded. It is said that
nature abhors a vacuum, and so did the heart of Ebenezer. He knew not
what name to give it, but he longed for something that would show a
liking for him, and to which he could show a liking in return. The heart
is wicked, but it is not unsocial--its affections wither in
solitariness. When he strolled forth on these rambles about the glen,
having asked the permission of his mother or keeper (call her what you
will) before he went, "Go, imp! AEsop!" she was wont to exclaim, "and I
shall pray that you may break your neck before you return." There were
no farmers' or shepherds' children within several miles: he had seen
some of them, and when they had seen him, they had laughed at his
deformity--they had imitated his lameness, and contorted their
countenances into a caricatured resemblance of his. Such were poor
Ebenezer's acquirements, and such his acquaintance with human nature,
when he entered the boarding-school. A primer was put into his hands.
"What must I do with it?" thought Ebenezer. He beheld the rod of
correction in the hands of the teacher, and he trembled--for his
misshapen shoulders were familiar with such an instrument. He heard
others read, he saw them write; and he feared, wondered, and trembled
the more. He thought that he would be called upon to do the same, and he
knew he could not. He had no idea of _learning_--he had never heard of
such a thing. He thought that he must do as he saw others doing at once,
and he cast many troubled looks at the lord of a hundred boys. When the
name of "Ebenezer Baird" was called out, he burst into tears, he sobbed,
terror overwhelmed him. But when the teacher approached him kindly, took
him from his seat, placed him between his knees, patted his head, and
desired him to speak after him, the heart of the little <DW36> was
assured, and more than assured; it was the first time he had experienced
kindness, and he could have fallen on the ground and hugged the knees of
his master. The teacher, indeed, found Ebenezer the most ignorant
scholar he had ever met with, but he was no tyrant of the birch, though
to his pupils

  "A man severe he was, and stern to view;"

and though he had all the manners and austerity of the old school about
him, he did not lay his head upon the pillow with his arm tired by the
incessant use of the ferule. He was touched with the simplicity and the
extreme ignorance of his new boarder, and he felt also for his lameness
and deformity. Thrice he went over the alphabet with his pupil,
commencing, "_Big Aw_--_Little Aw_," and having got over _b_, he told
him to remember that _c_ was like a half-moon. "Ye'll aye mind _c_
again," added he; "think ye _see_ the moon." Thus they went on to _g_,
and he asked him what the carters said to their horses when they wished
them to go faster; but this Ebenezer could not tell--carts and horses
were sights that he had seen as objects of wonder. They are but seldom
seen amongst the hills now, and in those days they were almost unknown.
Getting over _h_, he strove to impress _i_ upon the memory of his pupil,
by touching the solitary grey orbit in his countenance (for Ebenezer had
but one), and asking him what he called it. "My _e'e_," answered
Ebenezer.

"No, sir, you must not say your _e'e_, but your _eye_--mind that; and
that letter is _I_."

The teacher went on, showing him that he could not forget round O, and
crooked S; and in truth, after his first lesson, Ebenezer was master of
these two letters. And, afterwards, when the teacher, in trying him
promiscuously through the alphabet, would inquire, "What letter is
this?"--"I no ken," the <DW36> would reply; "but I'm sure it's no O,
and it's no S." Within a week he was master of the six-and-twenty
mystical symbols, with the exception of four--and those four were _b_
and _d_, _p_ and _q_. Ebenezer could not for three months be brought to
distinguish the _b_ from the _d_, nor the _p_ from the _q_; but he had
never even heard that he had a right hand and a left until he came to
the school--and how could it be expected?

Scarce, however, had he mastered the alphabet, until the faculties of
the deformed began to expand. He now both understood and felt what it
was to learn. He passed from class to class with a rapidity that
astonished his teacher. He could not join in the boisterous sports of
his schoolfellows, and while they were engaged in their pastime, he
sought solitude, and his task accompanied him. He possessed strong
natural talents, and his infirmities gave them the assistance of
industry. His teacher noted these things in the <DW36>, and he was
gratified with them; but he hesitated to express his feelings openly,
lest the charge of partiality should be brought against him. Ebenezer,
however, had entered the academy as the butt of his schoolfellows--they
mocked, they mimicked, they tormented, they despised, or affected to
despise him; and his talents and progress, instead of abating their
persecutions, augmented them. His teacher was afraid to show him more
kindness than he showed to others; and his schoolfellows gloried in
annoying the <DW36>--they persecuted, they shunned, they hated him more
than even his mother did. He began to hate the world, for he had found
none that would love him. His teacher was the only human being that had
ever whispered to him words of praise or of kindness, and that had
always been in cold, guarded, and measured terms.

Before he was eighteen, he had acquired all the knowledge that his
teacher could impart, and he returned to the cottage among the
mountains. There, however, he was again subjected to a persecution more
barbarous than that which he had met with from his schoolfellows. Mrs
Baird mocked, insulted, and drove him from her presence; and her
domestic showed him neither kindness nor respect. In stature, he
scarcely exceeded five feet; and his body was feeble as well as
deformed. The cruelty with which he had been treated had given an
asperity to his temper, and made him almost a hater of the human race;
and these feelings had lent their character to his