The Life of Mansie Wauch

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Seeing what had happened, they were all frightened; but his lordship,
after laughing heartily, was politer, and knew better about manners than
all that; so, bidding the flunkies hurry away with the fragments of the
china jugs and jars, they found themselves, sweating with terror and
vexation, ranged along silk settees, cracking about the weather and other
wonderfuls.

Such a dinner! the fume of it went round about their hearts like myrrh
and frankincense. The landlord took the head of the table, the bailies
the right and left of him; the deacons and councillors were ranged along
the sides, like files of soldiers; and the chaplain at the foot said
grace. It is entirely out of the power of man to set down on paper all
that they got to eat and drink; and such was the effect of French
cookery, that they did not know fish from flesh. Howsoever, for all
that, they laid their lugs in every thing that lay before them, and what
they could not eat with forks they supped with spoons; so it was all to
one purpose.

When the dishes were removing, each had a large blue glass bowl full of
water, and a clean calendered damask towel, put down by a smart flunkie
before him; and many of them that had not helped themselves well to the
wine, while they were eating their steaks and French frigassees, were now
vexed to death on that score, imagining that nothing remained for them,
but to dight their nebs and flee up.

Ignorant folk should not judge rashly, and the worthy town-council were
here in error; for their surmises, however feasible, did the landlord
wrong. In a minute they had fresh wine decanters ranged down before
them, filled with liquors of all variety of colours, red, green, and
blue; and the table was covered with dishes full of jargonelles and
pippins, raisins and almonds, shell-walnuts and plumdamases, with nut-
crackers, and every thing else they could think of eating; so that, after
drinking "The King, and long life to him," and "The constitution of the
country at home and abroad," and "Success to trade," and "A good
harvest," and "May ne'er waur be among us," and "Botheration to the
French," and "Corny toes and short shoes to the foes of old Scotland,"
and so on, their tongues began at length not to be so tacked; and the
weight of their own dignity, that had taken flight before his lordship,
came back and rested on their shoulders.

In the course of the evening, his lordship whispered to one of the
flunkies to bring in some things--they could not hear what--as the
company might like them. The wise ones thought within themselves that
the best aye comes hindmost; so in brushed a powdered valet, with three
dishes on his arm of twisted black things, just like sticks of Gibraltar-
rock, but different in the colour.

Bailie Bowie helped himself to a jargonelle, and Deacon Purves to a wheen
raisins; and my uncle, to show that he was not frighted, and knew what he
was about, helped himself to one of the long black things, which, without
much ceremony, he shoved into his mouth and began to. Two or three more,
seeing that my uncle was up to trap, followed his example, and chewed
away like nine-year-olds.

Instead of the curious-looking black thing being sweet as honey--for so
they expected--they soon found they had catched a Tartar; for it had a
confounded bitter tobacco-taste. Manners, however, forbade them laying
it down again, more especially as his lordship, like a man dumfoundered,
was aye keeping his eye on them. So away they chewed, and better chewed,
and whammelled them round in their mouths, first in one cheek, and then
in the other, taking now and then a mouthful of drink to wash the trash
down, then chewing away again, and syne another whammel from one cheek to
the other, and syne another mouthful, while the whole time their eyes
were staring in their heads like mad, and the faces they made may be
imagined, but cannot be described. His lordship gave his eyes a rub, and
thought he was dreaming; but no--there they were bodily, chewing, and
whammelling, and making faces; so no wonder that, in keeping in his
laugh, he sprung a button from his waistcoat, and was like to drop down
from his chair, through the floor, in an ecstacy of astonishment, seeing
they were all growing seasick, and pale as stucco images.

Frightened out of his wits at last that he would be the death of the
whole council, and that more of them would poison themselves, he took up
one of the segars--every one knows segars now, for they are fashionable
among the very sweeps--which he lighted at the candle, and commenced
puffing like a tobacco-pipe.

My uncle and the rest, if they were ill before, were worse now; so when
they got to the open air, instead of growing better, they grew sicker and
sicker, till they were waggling from side to side like ships in a storm;
and, not knowing whether their heels or heads were uppermost, went
spinning round about like pieries.

"A little spark may make muckle wark." It is perfectly wonderful what
great events spring out of trifles, or what seem to common eyes but
trifles. I do not allude to the nine days' deadly sickness, that was the
legacy of every one that ate his segar, but to the awful truth, that, at
the next election of councillors, my poor uncle Jamie was completely
blackballed--a general spite having been taken to him in the town-hall,
on account of having led the magistracy wrong, by doing what he ought to
have let alone, thereby making himself and the rest a topic of amusement
to the world at large, for many and many a month.

Others, to be sure, it becomes me to make mention, have another version
of the story, and impute the cause of his having been turned out to the
implacable wrath of old Bailie Bogie, whose best black coat, square in
the tails, that he had worn only on the Sundays for nine years, was
totally spoiled, on their way home in the dark from his lordship's, by a
tremendous blash, that my unfortunate uncle happened, in the course of
nature, to let flee in the frenzy of a deadly upthrowing.

CHAPTER III.--COMING INTO THE WORLD.

--At first the babe
Was sickly; and a smile was seen to pass
Across the midwife's cheek, when, holding up
The feeble wretch, she to the father said,
"A fine man-child!" What else could they expect?
The father being, as I said before,
A weaver.

HOGG'S _Poetic Mirror_.

I have no distinct recollection of the thing myself, yet there is every
reason to believe that I was born on the 15th of October 1765, in that
little house standing by itself, not many yards from the eastmost side of
the Flesh-Market Gate, Dalkeith. My eyes opened on the light about two
o'clock in a dark and rainy morning. Long was it spoken about that
something great and mysterious would happen on that dreary night; as the
cat, after washing her face, went mewing about, with her tail sweeing
behind her like a ramrod; and a corbie, from the Duke's woods, tumbled
down Jamie Elder's lum, when he had set the little still a-going--giving
them a terrible fright, as they all took it first for the devil, and then
for an exciseman--and fell with a great cloud of soot, and a loud
skraigh, into the empty kail-pot.

The first thing that I have any clear memory of, was my being carried out
on my auntie's shoulder, with a leather cap tied under my chin, to see
the Fair Race. Oh! but it was a grand sight! I have read since then the
story of Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp, but this beat it all to sticks. There
was a long row of tables covered with carpets of bonny patterns, heaped
from one end to the other with shoes of every kind and size, some with
polished soles, and some glittering with sparribles and cuddy-heels; and
little red worsted boots for bairns, with blue and white edgings, hanging
like strings of flowers up the posts at each end;--and then what a
collection of luggies! the whole meal in the market-sacks on a Thursday
did not seem able to fill them;--and horn-spoons, green and black
freckled, with shanks clear as amber,--and timber caups,--and ivory egg-
cups of every pattern. Have a care of us! all the eggs in Smeaton dairy
might have found resting-places for their doups in a row. As for the
gingerbread, I shall not attempt a description. Sixpenny and shilling
cakes, in paper, tied with skinie; and roundabouts, and snaps, brown and
white quality, and parliaments, on stands covered with calendered linen,
clean from the fold. To pass it was just impossible; it set my teeth a-
watering, and I skirled like mad, until I had a gilded lady thrust into
my little nieve; the which, after admiring for a minute, I applied my
teeth to, and of the head I made no bones; so that in less than no time
she had vanished, petticoats and all, no trace of her being to the fore,
save and except long treacly daubs, extending east and west from ear to
ear, and north and south from cape neb of the nose to the extremity of
beardy-land.

But what, of all things, attracted my attention on that memorable day,
was the show of cows, sheep, and horses, mooing, baaing, and neighering;
and the race--that was best! Od, what a sight!--we were jammed in the
crowd of old wives, with their toys and shining ribands; and carter lads,
with their blue bonnets; and young wenches, carrying home their fairings
in napkins, as muckle as would hold their teeth going for a month;--there
scarcely could be much for love, when there was so much for the
stomach;--and men, with wooden legs, and brass virls at the end of them,
playing on the fiddle,--and a bear that roared, and danced on its hind
feet, with a muzzled mouth,--and Punch and Polly,--and puppie-shows, and
more than I can tell,--when up came the horses to the starting-post. I
shall never forget the bonny dresses of the riders. One had a napkin
tied round his head, with the flaps fleeing at his neck; and his coat-
tails were curled up into a big hump behind; it was so tight buttoned ye
would not think he could have breathed. His corduroy trowsers (such like
as I have often since made to growing callants) were tied round his
ankles with a string; and he had a rusty spur on one shoe, which I saw a
man take off to lend him. Save us! how he pulled the beast's head by the
bridle, and flapped up and down on the saddle when he tried a canter! The
second one had on a black velvet hunting-cap, and his coat stripped. I
wonder he was not feared of cold, his shirt being like a riddle, and his
nether nankeens but thin for such weather; but he was a brave lad; and
sorry were the folks for him, when he fell off in taking over sharp a
turn, by which old Pullen, the bell-ringer, who was holding the post, was
made to coup the creels, and got a bloody nose.--And but the last was a
wearyful one! He was all life, and as gleg as an eel. Up and down he
went; and up and down philandered the beast on its hind-legs and its fore-
legs, funking like mad; yet though he was not above thirteen, or fourteen
at most, he did not cry out for help more than five or six times, but
grippit at the mane with one hand, and at the back of the saddle with the
other, till daft Robie, the hostler at the stables, claught hold of the
beast by the head, and off they set. The young birkie had neither hat
nor shoon, but he did not spare the stick; round and round they flew like
mad. Ye would have thought their eyes would have loupen out; and loudly
all the crowd were hurraing, when young hatless came up foremost,
standing in the stirrups, the long stick between his teeth, and his white
hair fleeing behind him in the wind like streamers on a frosty night.

CHAPTER IV.--CALF-LOVE.

Bonny lassie, will ye go, will ye go, will ye go,
Bonny lassie, will ye go to the Birks of Aberfeldy?

BURNS.

For a tailor is a man, a man, a man,
And a tailor is a man.

_Popular Heroic Song_.

The long and the short is, that I was sent to school, where I learned to
read and spell, making great progress in the Single and Mother's
Carritch. No, what is more, few could fickle me in the Bible, being
mostly able to spell it all over, save the second of Ezra and the seventh
of Nehemiah, which the Dominie himself could never read through twice in
the same way, or without variations.

My father, to whom I was born, like Isaac to Abraham, in his old age, was
an elder in the Relief Kirk, respected by all for his canny and douce
behaviour, and, as I have observed before, a weaver to his trade. The
cot and the kail-yard were his own, and had been auld granfaither's; but
still he had to ply the shuttle from Monday to Saturday, to keep all
right and tight. The thrums were a perquisite of my own, which I
niffered with the gundy-wife for Gibraltar-rock, cut-throat, gib, or
bull's-eyes.

Having come into the world before my time, and being of a pale face and
delicate make, Nature never could have intended me for the naval or
military line, or for any robustious trade or profession whatsoever. No,
no, I never liked fighting in my life; peace was aye in my thoughts. When
there was any riot in the streets, I fled, and scougged myself at the
chimley-lug as quickly as I dowed; and, rather than double a nieve to a
schoolfellow, I pocketed many shabby epithets, got my paiks, and took the
coucher's blow from laddies that could hardly reach up to my waistband.

Just after I was put to my prenticeship, having made free choice of the
tailoring trade, I had a terrible stound of calf-love. Never shall I
forget it. I was growing up, long and lank as a willow-wand. Brawns to
my legs there were none, as my trowsers of other years too visibly
effected to show. The long yellow hair hung down, like a flax-wig, the
length of my lantern jaws, which looked, notwithstanding my yapness and
stiff appetite, as if eating and they had broken up acquaintanceship. My
blue jacket seemed in the sleeves to have picked a quarrel with the
wrists, and had retreated to a tait below the elbows. The
haunch-buttons, on the contrary, appeared to have taken a strong liking
to the shoulders, a little below which they showed their tarnished
brightness. At the middle of the back the tails terminated, leaving the
well-worn rear of my corduroys, like a full moon seen through a dark
haze. Oh! but I must have been a bonny lad.

My first flame was the minister's lassie, Jess, a buxom and forward
quean, two or three years older than myself. I used to sit looking at
her in the kirk, and felt a droll confusion when our eyes met. It dirled
through my heart like a dart, and I looked down at my psalm-book sheepish
and blushing. Fain would I have spoken to her, but it would not do; my
courage aye failed me at the pinch, though she whiles gave me a smile
when she passed me. She used to go to the well every night with her two
stoups, to draw water after the manner of the Israelites at gloaming; so
I thought of watching to give her the two apples which I had carried in
my pocket for more than a week for that purpose. How she started when I
stappit them into her hand, and brushed by without speaking! I stood at
the bottom of the close listening, and heard her laughing till she was
like to split. My heart flap-flappit in my breast like a pair of
fanners. It was a moment of heavenly hope; but I saw Jamie Coom, the
blacksmith, who I aye jealoused was my rival, coming down to the well. I
saw her give him one of the apples; and hearing him say, with a loud
gaffaw, "Where is the tailor?" I took to my heels, and never stopped
till I found myself on the little stool by the fireside, and the hamely
sound of my mother's wheel bum-bumming in my lug, like a gentle lullaby.

Every noise I heard flustered me, but I calmed in time, though I went to
my bed without my supper. When I was driving out the gaislings to the
grass on the next morn, who was it my ill fate to meet but the
blacksmith. "Ou, Mansie," said Jamie Coom, "are ye gaun to take me for
your best-man? I hear you are to be cried in the kirk on Sunday?"

"Me!" answered I, shaking and staring.

"Yes!" said he; "Jess the minister's maid told me last night, that you
had been giving up your name at the manse. Ay, it's ower true--for she
showed me the apples ye gied her in a present. This is a bonny story,
Mansie, my man, and you only at your prenticeship yet."

Terror and despair had struck me dumb. I stood as still and as stiff as
a web of buckram. My tongue was tied, and I could not contradict him.
Jamie folded his arms, and went away whistling, turning every now and
then his sooty face over his shoulder, and mostly sticking his tune, as
he could not keep his mouth screwed for laughing. What would I not have
given to have laughed too!

There was no time to be lost: this was the Saturday. The next rising sun
would shine on the Sabbath. Ah, what a case I was in! I could mostly
have drowned myself, had I not been frighted. What could I do? My love
had vanished like lightning; but oh, I was in a terrible gliff! Instead
of gundy, I sold my thrums to Mrs Walnut for a penny, with which I bought
at the counter a sheet of paper and a pen; so that in the afternoon I
wrote out a letter to the minister, telling him what I had been given to
hear, and begging him, for the sake of mercy, not to believe Jess's word,
as I was not able to keep a wife, and as she was a leeing gipsy.

CHAPTER V.--CURSECOWL.

From his red poll a redder cowl hung down;
His jacket, if through grease we guess, was brown;
A vigorous scamp, some forty summers old;
Rough Shetland stockings up his thighs were roll'd;
While at his side horn-handled steels and knives
Gleam'd from his pouch, and thirsted for sheeps' lives.

ODOHERTY'S _Miscellanea Classica_.

But, losh me! I have come on too far already, before mentioning a
wonderful thing that happened to me when I was only seven years old. Few
things in my eventful life have made a deeper impression on me than what
I am going to relate.

It was the custom, in those times, for the different schools to have cock-
fighting on Fastern's E'en; and the victor, as he was called, treated the
other scholars to a football. Many a dust have I seen rise out of that
business--broken shins and broken heads, sore bones and sound
duckings--but this was none of these.

Our next neighbour was a flesher; and right before the window was a large
stone, on which old wives with their weans would sometimes take a rest;
so what does I, when I saw the whole hobble-shaw coming fleeing down the
street, with the kick-ba' at their noses, but up I speels upon the stone,
(I was a wee chap with a daidley, a ruffled shirt, and leather cap edged
with rabbit fur,) that I might see all the fun. This one fell, and that
one fell, and a third was knocked over, and a fourth got a bloody nose:
and so on; and there was such a noise and din, as would have deaved the
workmen of Babel--when, lo! and behold! the ball played bounce mostly at
my feet, and the whole mob after it. I thought I should have been dung
to pieces; so I pressed myself back with all my might, and through went
my elbow into Cursecowl's kitchen. It did not stick long there. Before
you could say Jack Robison, out flew the flesher in his killing-clothes;
his face was as red as fire, and he had his pouch full of bloody knives
buckled to his side. I skreighed out in his face when I looked at him,
but he did not stop a moment for that. With a girn that was like to rive
his mouth, he twisted his nieve in the back of my hair, and off with me
hanging by the cuff of the neck, like a kittling. My eyes were like to
loup out of my head, but I had no breath to cry. I heard him thraw the
key, for I could not look down, the skin of my face was pulled so tight;
and in he flang me like a pair of old boots into his booth, where I
landed on my knees upon a raw bloody calf's skin. I thought I would have
gone out of my wits, when I heard the door locked upon me, and looked
round me in such an unearthly place. It had only one sparred window, and
there was a garden behind; but how was I to get out? I danced round and
round about, stamping my heels on the floor, and rubbing my begritten
face with my coat sleeve. To make matters worse, it was wearing to the
darkening. The floor was all covered with lappered blood, and sheep and
calf skins. The calves and the sheep themselves, with their cuttit
throats, and glazed een, and ghastly girning faces, were hanging about on
pins, heels uppermost. Losh me! I thought on Bluebeard and his wives in
the bloody chamber!

And all the time it was growing darker and darker, and more dreary; and
all was as quiet as death itself. It looked, by all the world, like a
grave, and me buried alive within it; till the rottens came out of their
holes to lick the blood, and whisked about like wee evil spirits. I
thought on my father and my mother, and how I should never see them more;
for I was sure that Cursecowl would come in the dark, tie my hands and
feet thegither, and lay me across the killing-stool. I grew more and
more frightened; and it grew more and more dark. I thought all the sheep-
heads were looking at one another, and then girn-girning at me. At last
I grew desperate; and my hair was as stiff as wire, though it was as wet
as if I had been douking in the Esk. I began to bite through the wooden
spars with my teeth, and rugged at them with my nails, till they were
like to come off--but no, it would not do. At length, when I had greeted
myself mostly blind, and cried till I was as hoarse as a corbie, I saw
auld Janet Hogg taking in her bit washing from the bushes, and I reeled
and screamed till she heard me.--It was like being transported into
heaven; for, in less than no time, my mother, with her apron at her eyes,
was at the door; and Cursecowl, with a candle in the front of his hat,
had scarcely thrawn the key, when out I flew; and she lifted up her foot,
(I dare say it was the first and last time in her life, for she was a
douce woman,) and gave him such a kick and a push, that he played bleach
over, head foremost, without being able to recover himself; and, as we
ran down the close, we heard him cursing and swearing in the dark, like a
devil incarnate.

CHAPTER VI.--PUSHING MY FORTUNE.

Oh, love, love, lassie,
Love is like a dizziness,
It winna let a puir bodie
Gang about their business.

JAMES HOGG.

The days of the years of my prenticeship having glided cannily over on
the working-board of my respected maister, James Hosey, where I sat
sewing cross-legged like a busy bee, in the true spirit of industrious
contentment, I found myself, at the end of the seven year, so well
instructed in the tailoring trade, to which I had paid a near-sighted
attention, that, without more ado, I girt myself round about with a proud
determination of at once cutting my mother's apron string, and venturing
to go without a hold. Thinks I to myself, "faint heart never won fair
lady;" so, taking my stick in my hand, I set out towards Edinburgh, as
brave as a Highlander, in search of a journeyman's place. When I think
how many have been out of bread, month after month, making vain
application at the house of call, I may set it down to an especial
Providence, that I found a place, on the very first day, to my heart's
content, in by at the Grassmarket, where I stayed for the space of six
calendar months.

Had it not been from a real sense of the duty I owed to my future
employers, whomsoever they might be, in making myself a first-rate hand
in the cutting, shaping, and sewing line, I would not have found courage
in my breast to have helped me out through such a long and dreary time.
The change from our own town, where every face was friendly, and where I
could ken every man I saw, by the cut of his coat, at half a mile's
distance, to the bum and bustle of the High Street, the tremendous
cannons of the Castle, packed full of soldiers ready for war, and the
filthy, ill-smelling abominations of the Cowgate, where I put up, was
almost more than could be tholed by man of woman born. My lodging was up
six pair of stairs, in a room of Widow Randie's, which I rented for half-
a-crown a-week, coals included; and many a time, after putting out my
candle, before stepping into my bed, I used to look out at the window,
where I could see thousands and thousands of lamps, spreading for miles
adown streets and through squares, where I did not know a living soul;
and dreeing the awful and insignificant sense of being a lonely stranger
in a foreign land. Then would the memory of past days return to me; yet
I had the same trust in Heaven as I had before, seeing that they were the
dividual stars above my head which I used to glour up at in wonder at
Dalkeith--pleasant Dalkeith! ay, how different, with its bonny river Esk,
its gardens full of gooseberry bushes and pear-trees, its grass parks
spotted with sheep, and its grand green woods, from the bullying
blackguards, the comfortless reek, and the nasty gutters of the
Netherbow.

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