PENELOPE'S PROGRESS - Complete Series. Kate Douglas Wiggin
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I am the most peaceful person in the world, but the Castle was too much for my imagination. I was mounted and off and away from the first moment I gazed upon its embattled towers, heard the pipers in the distance, and saw the Black Watch swinging up the green steps where the huge fortress ‘holds its state.’ The modern world had vanished, and my steed was galloping, galloping, galloping back into the place-of-the-things-that-are-past, traversing centuries at every leap.
‘To arms! Let every banner in Scotland float defiance to the breeze!’ (So I heard my new-born imaginary spirit say to my real one.) ‘Yes, and let the Deacon Convener unfurl the sacred Blue Blanket, under which every liege burgher of the kingdom is bound to answer summons! The bale-fires are gleaming, giving alarm to Hume, Haddington, Dunbar, Dalkeith, and Eggerhope. Rise, Stirling, Fife, and the North! All Scotland will be under arms in two hours. One bale-fire: the English are in motion! Two: they are advancing! Four in a row: they are of great strength! All men in arms west of Edinburgh muster there! All eastward, at Haddington! And every Englishman caught in Scotland is lawfully the prisoner of whoever takes him!’ (What am I saying? I love Englishmen, but the spell is upon me!) ‘Come on, Macduff!’ (The only suitable and familiar challenge my warlike tenant can summon at the moment.) ‘I am the son of a Gael! My dagger is in my belt, and with the guid broadsword at my side I can with one blow cut a man in twain! My bow is cut from the wood of the yews of Glenure; the shaft is from the wood of Lochetive, the feathers from the great golden eagles of Locktreigside! My arrowhead was made by the smiths of the race of Macphedran! Come on, Macduff!’
And now a shopkeeper has filled his window with royal Stuart tartans, and I am instantly a Jacobite.
‘The Highland clans wi’ sword in hand,
Frae John o’ Groat’s to Airly,
Hae to a man declar’d to stand
Or fa’ wi’ Royal Charlie.
‘Come through the heather, around him gather,
Come Ronald, come Donald, come a’thegither,
And crown your rightfu’ lawfu’ king,
For wha’ll be king but Charlie?’
It is the eve of the battle of Prestonpans. Is it not under the Rock of Dunsappie on yonder Arthur’s Seat that our Highland army will encamp to-night? At dusk the prince will hold a council of his chiefs and nobles (I am a chief and a noble), and at daybreak we shall march through the old hedgerows and woods of Duddingston, pipes playing and colours flying, bonnie Charlie at the head, his claymore drawn and the scabbard flung away! (I mean awa’!)—
‘Then here’s a health to Charlie’s cause,
And be’t complete an’ early;
His very name my heart’s blood warms
To arms for Royal Charlie!
‘Come through the heather, around him gather,
Come Ronald, come Donald, come a’thegither,
And crown your rightfu’, lawfu’ king,
For wha’ll be king but Charlie?’
I hope that those in authority will never attempt to convene a Peace Congress in Edinburgh, lest the influence of the Castle be too strong for the delegates. They could not resist it nor turn their backs upon it, since, unlike other ancient fortresses, it is but a stone’s-throw from the front windows of all the hotels. They might mean never so well, but they would end by buying dirk hat-pins and claymore brooches for their wives, their daughters would all run after the kilted regiment and marry as many of the pipers as asked them, and before night they would all be shouting with the noble FitzEustace—
‘Where’s the coward who would not dare
To fight for such a land?’
While I was rhapsodising, Salemina and Francesca were shopping in the Arcade, buying some of the cairngorms, and Tam O’Shanter purses, and models of Burns’s cottage, and copies of Marmion in plaided covers, and thistle belt-buckles, and bluebell penwipers, with which we afterwards inundated our native land. When my warlike mood had passed, I sat down upon the steps of the Scott monument and watched the passers-by in a sort of waking dream. I suppose they were the usual professors and doctors and ministers who are wont to walk up and down the Edinburgh streets, with a sprinkling of lairds and leddies of high degree and a few Americans looking at the shop windows to choose their clan tartans; but for me they did not exist. In their places stalked the ghosts of kings and queens and knights and nobles; Columba, Abbot of Iona; Queen Margaret and Malcolm—she the sweetest saint in all the throng; King David riding towards Drumsheugh forest on Holy Rood day, with his horns and hounds and huntsmen following close behind; Anne of Denmark and Jingling Geordie; Mary Stuart in all her girlish beauty, with the four Maries in her train; and lurking behind, Bothwell, ‘that ower sune stepfaither,’ and the murdered Rizzio and Darnley; John Knox, in his black Geneva cloak; Bonnie Prince Charlie and Flora Macdonald; lovely Annabella Drummond; Robert the Bruce; George Heriot with a banner bearing on it the words ‘I distribute chearfully’; James I. carrying The King’s Quair; Oliver Cromwell; and a long line of heroes, martyrs, humble saints, and princely knaves.
Behind them, regardless of precedence, came the Ploughman Poet and the Ettrick Shepherd, Boswell and Dr. Johnson, Dr. John Brown and Thomas Carlyle, Lady Nairne and Drummond of Hawthornden, Allan Ramsay and Sir Walter; and is it not a proof of the Wizard’s magic art, that side by side with the wraiths of these real people walked, or seemed to walk, the Fair Maid of Perth, Jeanie Deans, Meg Merrilies, Guy Mannering, Ellen, Marmion, and a host of others so sweetly familiar and so humanly dear that the very street-laddies could have named and greeted them as they passed by?
Chapter IV.
Susanna Crum Cudna Say
Life at Mrs. M’Collop’s apartments in 22 Breadalbane Terrace is about as simple, comfortable, dignified, and delightful as it well can be.
Mrs. M’Collop herself is neat, thrifty, precise, tolerably genial, and ‘verra releegious.’
Her partner, who is also the cook, is a person introduced to us as Miss Diggity. We afterwards learned that this is spelled Dalgety, but it is not considered good form, in Scotland, to pronounce the names of persons and places as they are written. When, therefore, I allude to the cook, which will be as seldom as possible, I shall speak of her as Miss Diggity-Dalgety, so that I shall be presenting her correctly both to the eye and to the ear, and giving her at the same time a hyphenated name, a thing which is a secret object of aspiration in Great Britain.
In selecting our own letters and parcels from the common stock on the hall table, I perceive that most of our fellow-lodgers are hyphenated ladies, whose visiting-cards diffuse the intelligence that in their single persons two ancient families and fortunes are united. On the ground floor are the Misses Hepburn-Sciennes (pronounced Hebburn-Sheens); on the floor above us are Miss Colquhoun (Cohoon) and her cousin Miss Cockburn-Sinclair (Coburn-Sinkler). As soon as the Hepburn-Sciennes depart, Mrs. M’Collop expects Mrs. Menzies of Kilconquhar, of whom we shall speak as Mrs. Mingess of Kinyuchar. There is not a man in the house; even the Boots is a girl, so that 22 Breadalbane Terrace is as truly a castra puellarum as was ever the Castle of Edinburgh with its maiden princesses in the olden time.
We talked with Miss Diggity-Dalgety on the evening of our first day at Mrs. M’Collop’s, when she came up to know our commands. As Francesca and Salemina were both in the room, I determined to be as Scotch as possible, for it is Salemina’s proud boast that she is taken for a native of every country she visits.
“We shall not be entertaining at present, Miss Diggity,” I said, “so you can give us just the ordinary dishes,—no doubt you are accustomed to them: scones, baps or bannocks with marmalade, finnan-haddie or kippered herring for breakfast; tea,—of course we never touch coffee in the morning” (here Francesca started with