The Life of Mansie Wauch

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To those, nevertheless, that take the world as they find it, there are
pleasures in all situations; nor was mine, bad though I allow it to be,
entirely destitute of them; for our work-room being at the top of the
stairs, and the light of heaven coming down through skylights, three in
number, we could, by putting out our heads, have a vizzy of the grand
ancient building of George Heriot's Hospital, with the crowds of young
laddies playing through the grass parks, with their bit brown coaties,
and shining leather caps, like a wheen puddocks; and all the sweet
country out by Barrowmuirhead, and thereaway; together with the
Corstorphine Hills--and the Braid Hills--and the Pentland Hills--and all
the rest of the hills, covered here and there with tufts of blooming
whins, as yellow as the beaten gold--spotted round about their bottoms
with green trees, and growing corn, but with tops as bare as a
gaberlunzie's coat--kepping the rowling clouds on their awful shoulders
on cold and misty days; and freckled over with the flowers of the purple
heather, on which the shy moorfowl take a delight to fatten and fill
their craps, through the cosey months of the blythe summer time.

Let nobody take it amiss, yet I must bear witness to the truth, though
the devil should have me. My heart was sea-sick of Edinburgh folk and
town manners, for the which I had no stomach. I could form no friendly
acquaintanceship with a living soul; so I abode by myself, like St John
in the Isle of Patmos, on spare allowance, making a sheep-head serve me
for three days' kitchen. I longed like a sailor that has been far at
sea, and wasted and weatherbeaten, to see once more my native home; and,
bundling up, flee from the noisy stramash to the loun dykeside of
domestic privacy. Every thing around me seemed to smell of sin and
pollution, like the garments of the Egyptians with the ten plagues; and
often, after I took off my clothes to lie down in my bed, when the
watchmen that guarded us through the night in blue dreadnoughts with red
necks, and battons, and horn-bouets, from thieves, murderers, and
pickpockets, were bawling, "Half-past ten o'clock," did I commune with my
own heart, and think within myself, that I would rather be a sober, poor,
honest man in the country, able to clear my day and way by the help of
Providence, than the Provost himself, my lord though he be, or even the
Mayor of London, with his velvet gown trailing for yards in the glaur
behind him--do what he likes to keep it up; or riding about the
streets--as Joey Smith the Yorkshire jockey, to whom I made a hunting-
cap, told me--in a coach made of clear crystal, and wheels of the beaten
gold.

It was an awful business; dog on it, I ay wonder yet how I got through
with it. There was no rest for soul or body, by night or day, with
police-officers crying, "One o'clock, an' a frosty morning," knocking
Eirishmen's teeth down their throats with their battons, hauling limmers
by the lug and horn into the lock-up-house, or over by to Bridewell,
where they were set to beat hemp for a small wage, and got their heads
shaved; with carters bawling, "Ye yo, yellow sand, yellow sand," with
mouths as wide as a barn-door, and voices that made the drums of your
ears dirl, and ring again like mad; with fishwives from Newhaven,
Cockenzie, and Fisherrow, skirling, "Roug-a-rug, warstling herring," as
if every one was trying to drown out her neighbour, till the very
landladies, at the top of the seventeen story houses, could hear, if they
liked to be fashed, and might come down at their leisure to buy them at
three for a penny; men from Barnton, and thereaway on the Queensferry
Road, halloing "Sour douk, sour douk;" tinklers skirmishing the edges of
brown plates they were trying to make the old wives buy--and what not. To
me it was a real hell upon earth.

Never let us repine, howsomever, but consider that all is ordered for the
best. The sons of the patriarch Jacob found out their brother Joseph in
a foreign land, and where they least expected it; so it was here--even
here, where my heart was sickening unto death, from my daily and nightly
thoughts being as bitter as gall--that I fell in with the greatest
blessing of my life, Nanse Cromie!

In the flat below our workshop lived Mrs Whitteraick, the wife of Mr
Whitteraick, a dealer in hens and hams in the poultry market, that had
been fallen in with, when her gudeman was riding out on his bit sheltie
in the Lauder direction, bargaining with the farmers for their ducks,
chickens, gaislings, geese, turkey-pouts, howtowdies, guinea-hens, and
other barn-door fowls; and, among his other calls, having happened to
make a transaction with her father, anent some Anchovy-ducks, he, by a
warm invitation, was kindly pressed to remain for the night.

The upshot of the business was, that, on mounting his pony to make the
best of his way home, next morning after breakfast, Maister Whitteraick
found he was shot through the heart with a stound of love; and that,
unless a suitable remedy could be got, there was no hope for him on this
side of time, let alone blowing out his brains, or standing before the
minister. Right it was in him to run the risk of deciding on the last;
and so well did he play his game, that, in two months from that date,
after sending sundry presents on his part to the family, of smeaked hams
and salt tongues--acknowledged on theirs, by return of carrier, in the
shape of sucking pigs, jargonelle pears, skim-milk cheeses, and such
like--matters were soldered; and Miss Jeanie Learig, made into Mrs
Whitteraick by the blessing of Dr Blether, rode away into Edinburgh in a
post-chaise, with a brown and a black horse, one blind, and the other
lame, seated cheek-by-jowl with her loving spouse, who, doubtless, was
busked out in his best, with a Manchester superfine blue coat, and double
gilt buttons, a waterproof hat, silk stockings, with open-steek gushats,
and bright yellow shamoy gloves.

A stranger among strangers, and not knowing how she might thole the
company and conversation of town-life, Mrs Whitteraick that was to be,
hired a bit wench of a lassie from the neighbourhood, that was to follow
her, come the term. And who think ye should this lassie be, but Nanse
Cromie--afterwards, in the course of a kind Providence, the honoured wife
of my bosom, and the mother of bonny Benjie.

In going up and down the stairs--it being a common entry, ye observe--me
maybe going down with my everyday hat on to my dinner, and she coming up,
carrying a stoup of water, or half-a-pound of pouthered butter on a
plate, with a piece paper thrown over it--we frequently met half-way, and
had to stand still to let one another pass. Nothing came out of these
fore-gatherings, howsomever, for a month or two, she being as shy and
modest as she was bonny, with her clean demity short-gown, and snow-white
morning mutch, to say nothing of her cherry mouth, and her glancing eyes;
and me unco douffie in making up to strangers. We could not help,
nevertheless, to take aye a stolen look of each other in passing; and I
was a gone man, bewitched out of my seven senses, falling from my
clothes, losing my stomach, and over the lugs in love, three weeks and
some odd days before ever a single syllable passed between us.

Gude kens how long this Quaker-meeting-like silence would have continued,
had we not chanced to foregather one gloaming; and I, having gotten a
dram from one of our customers with a hump-back, at the Crosscausey,
whose fashionable new coat I had been out fitting on, found myself as
brave as a Bengal tiger, and said to her, "This is a fine day, I say, my
dear Nancy."

The ice being once broken, every thing went on as smoothly as ye like;
so, in the long run, we went like lightning from two-handed cracks on the
stair-head, to stown walks, after work-hours, out by the West Port, and
thereaway.

If ever a man loved, and loved like mad, it was me, Mansie Wauch--and I
take no shame in the confession; but, knowing it all in the course of
nature, declare it openly and courageously in the face of the wide world.
Let them laugh who like; honest folk, I pity them; such know not the
pleasures of virtuous affection. It is not in corrupted, sinful hearts
that the fire of true love can ever burn clear. Alas, and ohon orie!
they lose the sweetest, completest, dearest, truest pleasure that this
world has in store for its children. They know not the bliss to meet,
that makes the embrace of separation bitter. They never dreamed the
dreams that make wakening to the morning light unpleasant. They never
felt the raptures that can dirl like darts through a man's soul from a
woman's eye. They never tasted the honey that dwells on a woman's lip,
sweeter than yellow marygolds to the bee; or fretted under the fever of
bliss that glows through the frame in pressing the hand of a suddenly
met, and fluttering sweetheart. But tuts-tuts--hech-how! my day has long
since passed; and this is stuff to drop from the lips of an auld fool.
Nevertheless, forgive me, friends: I cannot help all-powerful nature.

Nanse's taste being like my own, we amused one another in abusing great
cities, which are all chokeful of the abominations of the Scarlet Woman;
and it is curious how soon I learned to be up to trap--I mean in an
honest way; for, when she said she was wearying the very heart out of her
to be home again to Lauder, which she said was her native, and the true
land of Goshen, I spoke back to her by way of answer--"Nancy, my dear,
believe me that the real land of Goshen is out at Dalkeith; and if ye'll
take up with me, and enter into a way of doing, I daursay in a while
ye'll come to think so too."

What will ye say there? Matters were by-and-bye settled full tosh
between us; and, though the means of both parties were small, we were
young, and able and willing to help one another. Nanse, out of her
wages, had hained a trifle; and I had safe lodged under lock-and-key in
the Bank of Scotland, against the time of my setting up, the siller which
was got by selling the bit house of granfaither's, on the death of my
ever-to-be-lamented mother, who survived her helpmate only six months,
leaving me an orphan lad in a wicked world, obliged to fend, forage, and
look out for myself.

Taking matters into account, therefore, and considering that it is not
good for man to be alone, Nanse and me laid our heads together towards
the taking a bit house in the fore-street of Dalkeith; and at our leisure
kept a look-out about buying the plenishing--the expense of which, for
different littles and littles, amounted to more than we expected; yet, to
our hearts' content, we made some most famous second-hand bargains of
sprechery, amongst the old-furniture warehousemen of the Cowgate. I
might put down here the prices of the room-grate, the bachelor's oven,
the cheese-toaster, and the warming-pan especially, which, though it had
a wheen holes in it, kept a fine polish; but, somehow or other, have lost
the receipt, and cannot make true affidavy.

Certain it is, whatever cadgers may say to the contrary, that the back is
aye made for the burden; and, were all to use the means, and be
industrious, many, that wyte bad harvests, and worse times, would have,
like the miller in the auld sang, "A penny in the purse for dinner and
for supper," or better to finish the verse, "Gin ye please a guid fat
cheese, and lumps of yellow butter."

For two three days, I must confess, after Maister Wiggie had gone through
the ceremony of tying us together, and Nanse and me found ourselves in
the comfortable situation of man and wife, I was a wee dowie and
desponding, thinking that we were to have a numerous small family, and
where trade was to come from; but no sooner was my sign nailed up, with,
four iron hold-fasts, by Johnny Hammer, painted in black letters on a
blue ground, with a picture of a jacket on one side, and a pair of shears
on the other,--and my shop-door opened to the public, with a wheen ready-
made waistcoats, gallowses, leather-caps and Kilmarnock cowls, hung up at
the window, than business flowed in upon us in a perfect torrent. First
one came in for his measure, and then another. A wife came in for a pair
of red worsted boots for her bairn, but would not take them for they had
not blue fringes. A bareheaded lassie, hoping to be handsel, threw down
twopence, and asked tape at three yards for a halfpenny. The minister
sent an old black coat beneath his maid's arm, pinned up in a towl, to
get docked in the tails down into a jacket; which I trust I did to his
entire satisfaction, making it fit to a hair. The Duke's butler himself
patronized me, by sending me a coat which was all hair-powder and pomate,
to get a new neck put to it. And James Batter, aye a staunch friend of
the family, dispatched a barefoot cripple lassie down the close to me,
with a brown paper parcel, tied with skinie, and having a memorandum
letter sewed on the top of it, and wafered with a wafer. It ran as
follows; "Maister Batter has sent down, per the bearer, with his
compliments to Mr Wauch, a cuttikin of corduroy, deficient in the instep,
which please let out, as required. Maister Wauch will also please be so
good as observe, that three of the buttons have sprung the thorls, which
he will be obliged to him to replace, at his earliest convenience. Please
send me a message what that may be; and have the account made out,
article for article, and duly discharged, that I may send down the bearer
with the change; and to bring me back the cuttikin and the account, to
save time and trouble. I am, dear sir, your most obedient friend, and
ever most sincerely,

"JAMES BATTER."

No wonder than we attracted customers, for our sign was the prettiest ye
ever saw, though the jacket was not just so neatly painted, as for some
sand-blind creatures not to take it for a goose. I daresay there were
fifty half-naked bairns glowring their eyes out of their heads at it,
from morning till night; and, after they all were gone to their beds,
both Nanse and me found ourselves so proud of our new situation in life,
that we slipped out in the dark by ourselves, and had a prime look at it
with a lantern.

CHAPTER VII.--THE FOREWARNING.

I had a dream which was not all a dream.

BYRON.

Coming events cast their shadows before.

CAMPBELL.

On first commencing business, I have freely confessed, I believe, that I
was unco solicitous of custom, though less from sinful, selfish motives,
than from the, I trust, laudable fear I had about becoming in a jiffy the
father of a small family, every one with a mouth to fill and a back to
cleid--helpless bairns, with nothing to look to or lean on, save and
except the proceeds of my daily handiwork. Nothing, however, is sure in
this world, as Maister Wiggie more than once took occasion to observe,
when lecturing on the house built by the foolish man on the sea-sands;
for months passed on, and better passed on; and these, added together by
simple addition, amounted to three years; and still neither word nor
wittens of a family, to perpetuate our name to future generations,
appeared to be forthcoming.

Between friends, I make no secret of the matter, that this was a
catastrophe which vexed me not a little, for more reasons than one. In
the first place, youngsters being a bond of mutual affection between man
and wife, sweeter than honey from the comb, and stronger than the Roman
cement with which the old Picts built their bridges, that will last till
the day of doom. In the second place, bairns toddling round a bit ingle
make a house look like itself, especially in the winter time, when
hailstanes rattle on the window, and winds roar like the voices of mighty
giants at the lum-head; for then the maister of the dwelling finds
himself like an ancient patriarch, and the shepherd of a flock, tender as
young lambs, yet pleasant to his eye, and dear to his heart. And, in the
third place, (for I'll speak the truth and shame the deil,) as I could
not thole the gibes and idle tongues of a wheen fools, that, for their
diversion, would be asking me, "How the wife and bairns were; and if I
had sent my auldest laddie to the school yet?"

I have swithered within myself for more than half-an-hour whether I
should relate a circumstance bordering a little on the supernatural line,
that happened to me, as connected with the business of the bairns of
which I have just been speaking; and, were it for no other reason, but
just to plague the scoffer that sits in his elbow-chair, I have
determined to jot down the whole miraculous paraphernally in black and
white. With folk that will not listen to the voice of reason, it is
needless to be wasterful of words; so them that like, may either prin
their faith to my coat-sleeve, about what I am going to relate, or
not--just as they choose. All that I can say in my defence, and as an
affidavy to my veracity, is, that I have been thirty year an elder of
Maister Wiggie's kirk--and that is no joke. The matter I make free to
consider is not a laughing concern, nor any thing belonging to the Merry-
Andrew line; and, if folk were but strong in the faith, there is no
saying what may come to pass for their good. One might as well hold up
their brazen face, and pretend not to believe any thing--neither the
Witch of Endor raising up Samuel; nor Cornel Gardener's vision; nor
Johnny Wilkes and the De'il; nor Peden's prophecies.

Nanse and me aye made what they call an anniversary of our wedding-day,
which happened to be the fifth of November, the very same as that on
which the Gunpowder Plot chances to be occasionally held--Sundays
excepted. According to custom, this being the fourth year, we collected
a good few friends to a tea-drinking; and had our cracks and a glass or
two of toddy. Thomas Burlings, if I mind, was there, and his wife; and
Deacon Paunch, he was a bachelor; and likewise James Batter; and David
Sawdust and his wife, and their four bairns, good customers; and a wheen
more, that, without telling a lie, I could not venture to particularize
at this moment, though maybe I may mind them when I am not wanting--but
no matter.--Well, as I was saying, after they all went away, and Nanse
and me, after locking the door, slipped to our bed, I had one of the most
miraculous dreams recorded in the history of man; more especially if we
take into consideration where, when, and to whom it happened.

At first I thought I was sitting by the fireside, where the cat and the
kittling were playing with a mouse they had catched in the meal-kit,
cracking with James Batter on check-reels for yarn, and the cleverest way
of winding pirns, when, all at once, I thought myself transplanted back
to the auld world--forgetting the tailoring trade; broad and narrow
cloth; worsted boots and Kilmarnock cowls; pleasant Dalkeith; our late
yearly ploy; my kith and kindred; the friends of the people; the Duke's
parks; and so on--and found myself walking beneath beautiful trees, from
the branches of which hung apples, and oranges, and cocky-nuts, and figs,
and raisins, and plumdamases, and corry-danders, and more than the tongue
of man can tell, while all the birds and beasts seemed as tame as our
bantings; in fact, just as they were in the days of Adam and Eve--Bengal
tigers passing by on this hand, and Russian bears on that, rowing
themselves on the grass, out of fun; while peacocks, and magpies, and
parrots, and cockytoos, and yorlins, and grey-linties, and all birds of
sweet voice and fair feather, sported among the woods, as if they had
nothing to do but sit and sing in the sweet sunshine, having dread
neither of the net of the fowler, the double-barrelled gun of the
gamekeeper, nor the laddies' girn set with moolings of bread. It was
real paradise; and I found myself fairly lifted off my feet and
transported out of my seven senses.

While sauntering about at my leisure, with my Sunday hat on, and a pair
of clean white cotton stockings, in this heavenly mood, under the green
trees, and beside the still waters, out of which beautiful salmon trouts
were sporting and leaping, methought in a moment I fell down in a trance,
as flat as a flounder, and I heard a voice visibly saying to me, "Thou
shalt have a son; let him be christened Benjamin!" The joy that this
vision brought my spirit thrilled through my bones, like the sounds of a
blind man grinding "Rule Britannia" out of an organ, and my senses
vanished from me into a kind of slumber on rousing from which I thought I
found myself walking, all dressed, with powdered hair, and a long tye
behind, just like a grand gentleman, with a valuable bamboo walking-stick
in my hand, among green yerbs and flowers, like an auncient hermit far
away among the hills, at the back of beyont; as if broad cloth and
buckram had never been heard tell of, and serge, twist, pocket-linings,
and shamoy leather, were matters with which mortal man had no concern.

Speak of auld-light or new-light as ye like, for my own part I am not
much taken up with any of your warlock and wizard tribe; I have no brew
of your auld Major Weir, or Tam o' Shanter, or Michael Scott, or Thomas
the Rhymer's kind, knocking in pins behind doors to make decent folk
dance, jig, cut, and shuffle themselves to death--splitting the hills as
ye would spelder a haddy, and playing all manner of evil pranks, and
sinful abominations, till their crafty maister, Auld Nick, puts them to
their mettle, by setting them to twine ropes out of sea-sand, and such
like. I like none of your paternosters, and saying of prayers backwards,
or drawing lines with chalk round ye, before crying,

"Redcowl, redcowl, come if ye daur;
Lift the sneck, and draw the bar.

I never, in the whole course of my life, was fond of lending the sanction
of my countenance to any thing that was not canny; and, even when I was a
wee smout of a callant, with my jacket and trowsers buttoned all in one,
I never would play, on Hallo'-e'en night, at any thing else but douking
for apples, burning nuts, pulling kail-runts, foul water and clean,
drapping the egg, or trying who was to be your sweetheart out of the
lucky-bag.

As I have often thought, and sometimes taken occasion to observe, it
would be well for us all to profit by experience--"burned bairns should
dread the fire," as the proverb goes. After the miserable catastrophe of
the playhouse, for instance--which I shall afterwards have occasion to
commemorate in due time, and in a subsequent chapter of my eventful
life--I would have been worse than mad, had I persisted, night after
night, to pay my shilling for a veesy of vagrants in buckram, and limmers
in silk, parading away at no allowance--as kings and queens, with their
tale--speaking havers that only fools have throats wide enough to
swallow, and giving themselves airs to which they have no more earthly
title than the man in the moon. I say nothing, besides, of their
throwing glamour in honest folks een; but I'll not deny that I have been
told by them who would not lie, and were living witnesses of the
transaction, that, as true as death, they had seen the tane of these
ne'er-do-weels spit the other, through and through, with a
weel-sharpened, old, Highland, forty-second Andrew Ferrary, in single
combat; whereupon, as might reasonably be expected, he would, in the
twinkling of a farthing rushlight, fall down as dead as a bag of sand;
yet, by their rictum-ticktum, rise-up-Jack, slight-of-hand, hocus-pocus
way, would be on his legs, brushing the stour from his breeches knees,
before the green curtain was half-way down. James Batter himself once
told me, that, when he was a laddie, he saw one of these clanjamphrey go
in behind the scenes with nankeen trowsers, a blue coat out at the
elbows, and fair hair hanging over his ears, and in less than no time
come out a real negro, as black as Robinson Crusoe's man Friday, with a
jacket on his back of Macgregor tartan, and as good a pair of buckskin
breeches as jockey ever mounted horse in at a Newmarket race. Where the
silk stockings were wrought, and the Jerusalem sandals made, that he had
on his feet, James Batter used doucely to observe he would leave every
reasonable man to guess at a venture.

A good story not being the worse of being twice told, I repeat it over
again, that I would have been worse than daft, after the precious warning
it was my fortune to get, to have sanctioned such places with my
presence, in spite of the remonstrances of my conscience--and of Maister
Wiggie--and of the kirk-session. Whenever any thing is carried on out of
the course of nature, especially when accompanied with dancing and
singing, toot-tooing of clarionets, and bumming of bass-fiddles, ye may
be as sure as you are born, that ye run a chance of being deluded out of
your right senses--that the sounds are by way of lulling the soul
asleep--and that, to the certainty of a without-a-doubt, you are in the
heat and heart of one of the devil's rendevooses.

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