Fred Richards - "Rome"

Charles Morris - "Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15)"

Sophie May - "Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's"

Bernie Babcock - "The Coming of the King"

Editorial
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Life of Mansie Wauch

D >> David Macbeth Moir >> The Life of Mansie Wauch




Benjie, poor doggie, was vastly proud of the flute, which he fifed away
on morning, noon, and night; and, for more than a fortnight, would not go
to his bed unless it was laid under his pillow. But for me I could not
bide the sight of it, knowing whose hands it had been in, and reminding
me as it did of the depravity of human nature.

Verily, verily, this is a wonderfully wicked world. To find out the two
vagabonds would have been hopeless; unless I could have followed them to
the Back of Beyond, where the mare foaled the fiddler.




CHAPTER XII.--VOLUNTEERING.


Come from the hills where your hirsels are grazing,
Come from the glen of the buck and the roe;
Come to the crag where the beacon is blazing,
Come with the buckler, the lance, and the bow:
Many a banner spread
Flutters above your herd,
Many a crest that is famous in story;
Mount and make ready then,
Sons of the mountain glen,
Fight for the _King_, and our old Scottish glory.

SIR WALTER SCOTT'S _Monastery_.

The sough of war and invasion flew over the face of the land, at this
time, like a great whirlwind; and the hearts of men died within their
persons with fear and trembling. The accounts that came from abroad were
just dreadful beyond all power of description. Death stalked about from
place to place, like a lawless tyrant, and human blood was spilt like
water; while the heads of crowned kings were cut off; and great dukes and
lords were thrown into dark dungeons, or obligated to flee for their
lives into foreign lands, and to seek out hiding-places of safety beyond
the waves of the sea. What was worst of all, our trouble seemed a
smittal one; the infection spread around; and even our own land, which
all thought hale and healthy, began to show symptoms of the plague-spot.
Losh me! that men, in their seven senses, could have ever shown
themselves so infatuated. Johnny Wilkes and liberty was but a joke to
what was hanging over the head of the nation, brewing like a dark tempest
which was to swallow it up. Bills were posted up through night, by hands
that durst not have been seen at the work through day; and the agents of
the Spirit of Darkness, calling themselves the Friends of the People,
held secret meetings, and hatched plots to blow up our blessed King and
Constitution.

Yet the business, though fearsome in the main, was in some parts almost
laughable. Every thing was to be divided, and every one made alike:
houses and lands were to be distributed by lot; and the mighty man and
the beggar--the auld man and the hobble-de-hoy--the industrious man and
the spendthrift--the maimed, the cripple, and the blind, the clever man
of business and the haveril simpleton, made all just brethren, and alike.
Save us! but to think of such nonsense!!--At one of their meetings, held
at the sign of the Tappet Hen and the Tankard, there was a prime fight of
five rounds between Tammy Bowsie the snab, and auld Thrashem the dominie
with the boulie-back, about their drawing cuts which was to get Dalkeith
Palace, and which Newbottle Abbey. Oh, sic riff-raff!!!

What was worst of all, it was an agreed and determined on thing among
them, these wise men of Gotham, to abolish all kings, clergy, and
religion, as havers. No, no--what need had such wise pows as theirs of
being taught or lectured to? What need had such feelosophers of having a
king to rule over, or a Parliament to direct them? There was not a
single one among their number, that did not think himself, in his own
conceit, as wise as Solomon or William Pitt, and as mighty as King
Nebuchadnezzar.

It was full time to put a stop to all such nonsense. The newspapers told
us what it had done abroad; and what better could we expect from it at
home? Weeds will not grow into flowers anywhere, and no man can handle
tar without being defiled; the first of which comparisons is I daresay
true, and the latter must be--for we read of it in Scripture. Well, as I
was saying, it was a brave notion of the king to put the loyalty of his
land to the test, that the daft folk might be dismayed, and that the
clanjamphrey might be tumbled down before their betters, like
windle-straes in a hurricane:--and so they were.

Such a crowd that day, when the names of the volunteers came to be taken
down! No house could have held them, even though many had not stepped
forward who thought to have got themselves enrolled. Losh me! did they
think the government was so far gone, as to take characters with deformed
legs, and thrawn necks, and blind eyes, and hashie lips, and grey hairs
on their pows? No, no, they were not put to such straits; though it
showed that the right spirit was in the creatures, and that, though their
bodies might be deformed, they had consciences to direct them, and souls
to be saved like their neighbours.

I will never forget the first day that I got my regimentals on; and when
I looked myself in the bit glass, just to think I was a sodger, who never
in my life could thole the smell of powder, and had not fired any thing
but a penny cannon on a Fourth of June, when I was a haflins callant. I
thought my throat would have been cut with the black corded stock; for,
whenever I looked down, without thinking like, my chaff-blade played
clank against it, with such a dunt that I mostly chacked my tongue off.
And, as to the soaping of the hair, that beat cock-fighting. It was
really fearsome; but I could scarcely keep from laughing when I glee'd
round over my shoulder, and saw a glazed leather queue hanging for half
an ell down the braid of my back, and a pickle horse-hair curling out
like a rotten's tail at the far end of it. And then the worsted taissels
on the shoulders--and the lead buttons--and the yellow facings,--oh, but
it was grand! I sometimes fancied myself a general, and giving the word
of command. Then the pipeclayed breeches--but that was a sore job; many
a weary arm did they give me--beat-beating camstane into them.

The pipeclaying of the breeches, I was saying, was the most fashious job,
let alone courtship, that ever mortal man put his hand to. Indeed, there
was no end to the rubbing, and scrubbing, and brushing, and fyling, and
cleaning; for to the like of me, who was not well accustomed to the
thing, the whitening was continually coming off and destroying my red
coat, or my black leggings. I had mostly forgot to speak of the birse
for cleaning out the pan, and the piker for clearing the motion-hole. But
time enough till we come to firing.

Big Sam, who was a sergeant of the Fencibles, and enough to have put five
Frenchmen to flight any day of the year, whiles came to train us; and a
hard battle he had with more than me. I have already said, that nature
never intended me for the soldiering trade; and why should I hesitate
about confessing, that Sam never got me out of the awkward squad? But I
had two or three neighbours to keep me in countenance. A weary work we
made with the right, left--left, right,--right-wheel, left-wheel--to the
right about,--at ease,--attention,--by sections,--and all the rest of it.
But then there is nothing in the course of nature that is useless; and
what was to hinder me from acting as orderly, or being one of the camp-
colour-men on head days?

We all cracked very crouse about fighting, when we heard of garments
rolled in blood only from abroad; but one dark night we got a fleg in
sober earnest.

There were signal-posts on the hills, up and down all the country, to
make alarms in case of necessity; and I never went to my bed without
giving first a glee eastward to Falside-brae, and then another westward
to the Calton-hill, to see that all the country was quiet. I had just
papped in--it might be about nine o'clock--after being gey hard drilled,
and sore between the shoulders, with keeping my head back and playing the
dumb-bells; when, lo and behold! instead of getting my needful rest in my
own bed, with my wife and wean, jow went the bell, and row-de-dow gaed
the drums, and all in a minute was confusion and uproar. I was seized
with a severe shaking of the knees, and a flaffing at the heart; but I
hurried, with my nightcap on, up to the garret window, and there I too
plainly saw that the French had landed--for all the signal posts were in
a bleeze. This was in reality to be a soldier! I never got such a
fright since the day I was cleckit. Then such a noise and hullabaloo in
the streets--men, women, and weans, all hurrying through ither, and
crying with loud voices, amid the dark, as if the day of judgment had
come, to find us all unprepared; and still the bells ringing, and the
drums beating to arms. Poor Nanse was in a bad condition, and I was well
worse; she, at the fears of losing me, their bread-winner; and I, with
the grief of parting from her, the wife of my bosom, and going out to
scenes of blood, bayonets, and gunpowder, none of which I had the least
stomach for. Our little son, Benjie, mostly grat himself blind, pulling
me back by the cartridge-box; but there was no contending with fate, so
he was obliged at last to let go.

Notwithstanding all that, we behaved ourselves like true-blue Scotsmen
called forth to fight the battles of our country; and if the French had
come, as they did not come, they would have found that to their cost, as
sure as my name is Mansie. However, it turned out as well, in the
meantime, that it was a false alarm, and that the thief Buonaparte had
not landed at Dunbar, as it was jealoused: so, after standing under arms
for half the night, with nineteen rounds of ball-cartridge in our boxes,
and the baggage carts all loaden, and ready to follow us to the field of
battle, we were sent home to our beds; and, notwithstanding the awful
state of alarm to which I had been put, never in the course of my life
did I enjoy six hours sounder sleep; for we were hippet the morning
parade, on account of our gallant men being kept so long without natural
rest. It is wise to pick a lesson even out of our adversities; and, at
all events, it was at this time fully shown to us the necessity of our
regiment being taught the art of firing--a tactic to the length of which
it had never yet come.

Next day, out we were taken for the whilk purpose; and we went through
our motions bravely. Prime--load--handle cartridge--ram down
cartridge--return bayonets--and shoulder hoop--make ready--present--fire.
Such was the confusion, and the flurry, and the din of the report, that I
was so flustered and confused, thinking that half of us would have been
shot dead, that--will ye believe it?--I never yet had mind to pull the
tricker. Howsomever, I minded aye with the rest to ram down a fresh
cartridge at the word of command; and something told me I would repent
not doing like the rest, (for I had half a kind of notion that my piece
never went off;) so, when the firing was over, the sergeant of the
company ordered all that had loaded pieces to come to the front. I
swithered a little, not being very sure like what to do; but some five or
six stept out; and our corporal, on looking at my piece, ordered me with
the rest to the front. It was just by all the world like an execution;
we six, in the face of the regiment, in a little line, going through our
mauoeuvres at the word of command; and I could hardly stand upon my feet,
with a queer feeling of fear and trembling, till at length the terrible
moment came. I looked straight forward--for I durst not jee my head
about, and turned to the hills and green trees, as if I was never to see
nature more.

Our pieces were cocked; and at the word--Fire!--off they went. It was an
act of desperation to draw the tricker, and I had hardly well shut my
blinkers, when I got such a thump in the shoulder, as knocked me
backwards head-over-heels on the grass. Before I came to my senses, I
could have sworn I was in another world; but, when I opened my eyes,
there were the men at ease, holding their sides, laughing like to spleet
them; and my gun lying on the ground, two or three ell before me.

When I found myself not killed outright, I began to rise up. As I was
rubbing my breek-knees, I saw one of the men going forward to lift up the
fatal piece; and my care for the safety of others overcame the sense of
my own peril,--"Let alane--let alane!" cried I to him, "and take care of
yoursell, for it has to gang off five times yet."

The laughing was now terrible, but being little of a soldier, I thought,
in my innocence, that we should hear as many reports as I had crammed
cartridges down her muzzle. This was a sore joke against me for a length
of time; but I tholed it patiently, considering cannily within myself,
that knowledge is only to be bought by experience, and that, if we can
credit the old song, even Johnny Cope himself did not learn the art of
war in a single morning.




CHAPTER XIII.--THE CHINCOUGH PILGRIMAGE.


Man hath a weary pilgrimage
As through the world he wends:
On every stage from youth to age
Still discontent attends.
With heaviness he casts his eye
Upon the road before,
And still remembers with a sigh
The days that are no more.

SOUTHEY.

Some folks having been bred up from their cradle to the writing of books,
of course naturally do the thing regularly and scientifically; but that's
not to be expected from the like of me, that have followed no other way
of life than the shaping and sewing line. It behoves me, therefore, to
beg pardon for not being able to carry my history aye regularly straight
forward, and for being forced whiles to zig-zag and vandyke. For
instance, I clean forgot to give, in its proper place, a history of one
of my travels, with Benjie in my bosom, in search of a cure for the
chincough.

My son Benjie was, at this dividual time, between four and five years
old, when--poor wee chieldie!--he took the chincough, and in more
respects than one was not in a good way; so the doctor recommended his
mother and me, for the change of air, first to carry him down a coal-pit,
and syne to the limekilns at Cousland.

The coal-pit I could not think of at all; to say nothing of the danger of
swinging down into the bowels of the earth in a creel, the thing aye put
me in mind of the awful place, where the wicked, after death and
judgment, howl, and hiss, and gnash their teeth; and where, unless Heaven
be more merciful than we are just--we may all be soon enough. So I could
not think of that, till other human means failed; and I determined, in
the first place, to hire Tammie Dobbie's cart, and try a smell of the
fresh air about the limekilns.

It was a fine July forenoon, and the cart, filled with clean straw, was
at the door by eleven o'clock; so our wife handed us out a pair of
blankets to hap round me, and syne little Benjie into my arms, with his
big-coatie on, and his leather cappie tied below his chin, and a bit red
worsted comforterie round his neck; for, though the sun was warm and
pleasant withal, we dreaded cold, as the doctor bade us. Oh, he was a
fine old man, Doctor Hartshorn!

We had not well got out of the town, when Tammie Dobbie louped up on the
fore-tram. He was a crouse, cantie auld cock, having seen much and not
little in his day; so he began a pleasant confab, pointing out all the
gentlemen's houses round the country, and the names of the farms on the
hill sides. To one like me, whose occupations tie him to the town-foot,
it really is a sweet and grateful thing to be let loose, as it were, for
a wee among the scenes of peace and quietness, where nature is in a way
wild and wanton--where the clouds above our heads seem to sail along more
grandly over the bosom of the sky, and the wee birds to cheep and churm,
from the hedges among the fields, with greater pleasure, feeling that
they are God's free creatures.

I cannot tell how many thoughts came over my mind, one after another,
like the waves of the sea down on Musselburgh beach; but especially the
days when I was a wee callant with a daidly at Dominie Duncan's school,
were fresh in my mind as if the time had been but yesterday; though much,
much was I changed since then, being at that time a little, careless,
ragged laddie, and now the head of a family, earning bread to my wife and
wean by the sweat of my brow. I thought on the blythe summer days when I
dandered about the braes and bushes seeking birds'-nests with Alick
Bowsie and Samuel Search; and of the time when we stood upon one
another's backs, to speil up to the ripe cherries that hung over the
garden walls of Woodburn. Awful changes had taken place since then. I
had seen Sammy die of the black jaundice--an awful spectacle! and poor
Alick Bowsie married to a drucken randie, that wore the breeks, and did
not allow the misfortunate creature the life of a dog.

When I was meditating thus, after the manner of the patriarch Isaac,
there was a pleasant sadness at my heart, though it was like to loup to
my mouth; but I could not get leave to enjoy it long for the tongue of
Tammie Dobbie. He bade me look over into a field, about the middle of
which were some wooden railings round the black gaping mouth of a coal-
pit. "Div ye see that dark bit owre yonder amang the green clover, wi'
the sticks about it?" asked Tammie.

"Yes," said I; "and what for?"

"Weel, do you ken," quo' Tammie, "that has been a weary place to mair
than ane. Twa-three year ago, some o' the collyer bodies were choked to
death down below wi' a blast of foul air; and a pour o' orphan weans they
left behint them on the cauldrife parish. But ye'll mind Hornem, the
sherry-officer wi' the thrawn shouther?"

"Ou, bravely; I believe he came to some untimeous end hereaway about?"

"Just in that spat," answered Tammie. "He was a drucken, blustering
chield, as ye mind; fearing neither man nor de'il, and living a wild,
wicked, regardless life; but, puir man, that couldna aye last. He had
been bousing about the countryside somehow--maybe harrying out of house
and hald some puir bodies that hadna the wherewith to pay their rents;
so, in riding hame fou--it was pitmirk, and the rain pouring down in
bucketfu's--he became dumfoundered wi' the darkness and the dramming
thegither; and, losing his way, wandered about the fields, hauling his
mare after him by the bridle. In the morning the beast was found
nibbling away at the grass owre by yonder, wi' the saddle upon its back,
and a broken bridle hinging down about its fore-legs, by the which the
folks round were putten upon the scent; for, on making search down yon
pit, he was fund at the bottom, wi' his brains smashed about him, and his
legs and arms broken to chitters!"

"Save us!" said I, "it makes a' my flesh grue."

"Weel it may," answered Tammie, "or the story's lost in the telling; for
the collyers that fand him shook as if they had been seized wi' the ague.
The dumb animal, ye observe, had far mair sense than him; for, when his
fitting gaed way, instead of following it had plunged back; and the bit
o' the bridle, that had broken, was still in his grup, when they spied
him wi' their lanterns."

"It was an awful like way to leave the world," said I.

"'Deed it was, and nae less," answered Tammie, "to gang to his lang
account in the middle of his mad thochtlessness, without a moment's
warning. But see, yonder's Cousland lying right forrit to the east
hand."

At this very nick of time Benjie was seized with a severe kink; so Tammie
stopped his cart, and I held his head over the side of it till the cough
went by. I thought his inside would have jumped out; but he fell sound
asleep in two or three minutes; and we jogged on till we came to the yill-
house door, where, after louping out, we got a pickle pease-strae to
Tammie's horse.




CHAPTER XIV.--MY LORD'S RACES.


Aff they a' went galloping, galloping;
Legs and arms a' walloping, walloping;
De'il take the hindmost, quo' Duncan M'Calapin,
The Laird of Tillyben, joe.

_Old Song_.

He went a little further,
And turn'd his head aside,
And just by Goodman Whitfield's gate,
Oh there the mare he spied,
He ask'd her how she did,
She stared him in the face,
Then down she laid her head again--
She was in wretched case.

_Old Poulter's Mare_.

It happened curiously that, of all the days of the year, this should have
been the one on which the Carters'-play was held; and, by good luck, we
were just in time to see that grand sight. The whole regiment of carters
were paraded up at my Lord's door, for so they call their box-master; and
a beautiful thing it was, I can assure ye. What a sight of ribands was
on the horses! Many a crame must have been emptied ere such a number of
manes and long tails could have been busked out. The beasts themselves,
poor things, I dare say, wondered much at their bravery, and no less I am
sure did the riders. They looked for all the world like living
haberdashery shops. Great bunches of wallflower, thyme, spearmint,
batchelor buttons, gardeners' gartens, peony roses, gillyflower, and
southernwood, were stuck in their button-holes; and broad belts of
stripped silk, of every colour in the rainbow, were flung across their
shoulders. As to their hats, the man would have had a clear ee that
could have kent what was their shape or colour. They were all rowed
round with ribands, and puffed about the rim with long green or white
feathers; and cockades were stuck on the off side, to say nothing of long
strips fleeing behind them in the wind like streamers. Save us! to see
men so proud of finery; if they had been peacocks one would have thought
less; but in decent sober men, the heads of small families, and with no
great wages, the thing was crazy-like. Was it not?

At long and last we saw them all set in motion, like a regiment of
dragoons, two and two, with a drum and fife at their head, as if they had
been marching to the field of battle. By-the-bye, it was two of our own
volunteer lads that were playing that day before them, Rory Skirl the
snab, and Geordie Thump the dyer; so this, ye see, verified the old
proverb, that travel where ye like, to the world's end, ye'll aye meet
with kent faces; Tammie and me coming out to the yill-house door to see
them pass by.

Behind the drum and fife came a big, half-crazy looking chield, with a
broad blue bonnet on his head, and a red worsted cherry sticking in the
crown of it. He was carrying a new car-saddle over his shoulder on a
well-cleaned pitchfork. Syne came three abreast, one on each side of my
lord, being the key-keepers; he keeping the box, and they keeping the
keys, in case like he should take any thing out. And syne came the auld
my lord--him that was my lord last year, ye observe; and syne came the
colours, as bright and bonny as mostly any thing ye ever saw. On one of
them was painted a plough and harrows, and a man sowing wheat; over the
top of which were gilded letters, the which I was able to read when I put
on my specs, being, if I mind well, "Speed the Plough." On the other
one, which was a mazarine blue with yellow fringes, was the picture of
two carters, with flat bonnets on their heads, the tane with a whip in
his hand, and the tither a rake, making hay like. Then came they all
passing by two and two, looking as if each one of them had been the Duke
of Buccleuch himself, every one rigged out in his best; the young
callants, such like as had just entered the box, coming hindmost, and
thinking themselves, I daresay, no small drink, and the day a great one
when they were first allowed to be art and part in such a grand
procession.

But losh me! I had mostly forgot the piper, that played in the middle,
as proud as Hezekiah, that we read of in Second Kings, strutting about
from side to side with his bare legs and big buckles, and bit Macgregor
tartan jacket--his cheeks blown up with wind like a smith's bellows--the
feathers dirling with conceit in his bonnet--and the drone, below his
oxter, squeeling and skirling like an evil spirit tied up in a green bag.
Keep us all! what gleys he gied about him to observe that the folk were
looking at him! He put me in mind of the song that old Barny used to
sing about the streets--

Ilka ane his sword and dirk has,
Ilka ane as proud's a Turk is;
There's the Grants o' Tullochgorum,
Wi' their pipers gaun before 'em;
Proud the mithers are that bore 'em.
Feedle, faddle, fa, fum.

But who do ye think should come up to us at this blessed moment, with a
staff in his hand, being old now, and not able to ride in the procession,
as he had many a time and often done before, but honest Saunders Tram,
that had been a staunch customer of mine since the day on which I opened
shop, and to whom I had made countless pairs of corduroy spatterdashes;
so we shook hands jocosely together, like old acquaintances, and the body
hodged and leuch as if he had found a fiddle, he was so glad to see me.

Benjie having fallen asleep, Luckie Barm of the Change, a douce woman,
put him to his bed, and promised to take care of him till we came back;
Saunders Tram insisting on us to go forward along with him to see the
race. I had no great scruple to do this, as I thought Benjie would
likely sleep for an hour, being wearied with the joogling of the cart,
and having supped a mutchkin bowlful of Luckie Barm's broo and bread.

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