The Brownie of Bodsbeck (Volume 1&2). James Hogg
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That doctor was the gabbiest body ever I met wi’; he spake for them a’, and I whiles feared that he sclented a wee. He tried a’ that he could to make me a Cameronian, but I wadna grip; and when I was coming away to leave him, ‘Laidlaw,’ quo’ he, ‘we ken ye to be an honest, honourable man; here you see a remnant of poor, forlorn, misrepresented creatures, who have thrown themselves on your mercy; if ye betray us, it will be the worse for ye both here and hereafter; if you save and protect us, the prayers of the just win their way to Heaven, though fiends should be standing by to oppose them—Ay, there’s naething can stop theirjourney, Laidlaw!—The winds canna blaw them aside, the clouds canna drown them, and the lights o’ Heaven canna burn them; and your name will stand at that bar where there’s nae cruel and partial judge—What you gie to us, ye gie to your Maker, and he will repay you seven fold.’ Od, the body was like to gar me play the bairn and greet even out. Weel, I canna mind the half that he said, but he endit wi’ this:—‘We have seen our friends all bound, banished, and destroyed; they have died on the field, on the scaffold, and at the stake; but the reek o’ their blood shall drive the cruel Stuarts frae the land they have disgraced, and out of it a church of truth and liberty shall spring. There is still a handfu’ remaining in Israel that have not yet bowed the knee to Baal, nor yet kissed him—That remnant has fled here to escape the cruelty of man; but a worse fate threatens us now—we are all of us perishing with famine—For these three days we have tasted nothing but the green moss, save a few wretched trouts, eels, and adders.’ ‘Ethers, man!’ quo’ I,—‘For the love o’ God take care how ye eat the ethers—ye may as weel cut your throats at aince as eat them. Na, na, lad, that’s meat that will never do.’ I said nae mair, but gae just a wave to my dog. ‘Reaver,’ quo’ I, ‘yon’s away.’—In three minutes he had ten score o’ ewes and wedders at my hand. I grippit twa o’ the best I could wale, and cut aff their heads wi’ my ain knife. ‘Now, doctor,’ quo’ I, ‘take these and roast them, and part them amang ye the best way ye can—ye’ll find them better than the ethers—Lord, man, it will never do to eat ethers.’”
After a hearty laugh, in which his guests generally joined, Walter concluded thus: “That meeting cost me twa or three hunder round bannocks, and mae gude ewes and wedders than I’ll say; but I never missed them, and I never rued what I did. Folk may say as they like, but I think aye the prayers out amang the hags and rash–bushes that year did me nae ill—It is as good to hae a man’s blessing as his curse, let him be what he may.”
Walter never went farther with his story straight onward than this; for it began to involve family concerns, which he did not much like to recount. He had a number of abstract stories about the Covenanters and their persecutors; but as I must now proceed with the narrative as I gathered it from others, these will be interwoven in their due course.
Chapter IV
Walter visited them next day at the time and place appointed, taking with him a dozen of bannocks and a small cheese. These he was obliged to steal out of his own pantry, for he durst not by any means trust his wife and family with the discovery he had made, knowing that he might as well have confided it with the curate himself, the sworn enemy of his motley protegees. They gathered around him with protestations of gratitude and esteem; for the deserted and oppressed generally cling to the first symptoms of friendship and protection with an ardency that too often overshoots its aim. Walter naturally felt an honest pride, not so much in that he had done, as that he intended to do; but before he produced his repast, he began in a most serious way to question them relating to some late incidents already mentioned.
They all with one assent declared, and took God to witness, that they knew nothing at all about the death of the five soldiers; that it was not perpetrated by them, nor any connected with them; nor could they comprehend, in the least degree, how it was effected, if not by some supernatural agency—a judgment sent down from Heaven for their bloody intent. With regard to the murder of the priest, they were sorry that they knew so much. It was perpetrated by a few rash men of their number, but entirely without their concurrent assent, as well as knowledge; that though his death might have been necessary to the saving of a great number of valuable lives, they had, nevertheless, unanimously protested against it; that the perpetrators had retired from their body, they knew not whither; and that at that very time the Rev. Messrs Alexander Shiels and James Renwick were engaged in arranging for publication a general protest against many things alleged against them by their enemies, and that among others.1
There was a candour in this to which Walter’s heart assented. He feasted them with his plentiful and homely cheer—promised to visit them every day, and so to employ his shepherds that none of them should come into that quarter to distress them. Walter was as good as his word—He visited them every day—told them all the news that he could gather of the troops that beleagured them—of the executions that were weekly and daily taking place—and of every thing else relating to the state of the country. He came loaden with food to them daily; and when he found it impossible to steal his own bread, butter, and cheese, he supplied their wants from his flock. The numbers of the persecuted increased on his hands incalculably—The gudewife of Chapelhope’s bannocks vanished by scores, and the unconscionable, insatiable Brownie of Bodsbeck was blamed for the whole.
Some time previous to this, a young vagrant, of the name of Kennedy, chanced to be out on these moors shooting grouse, which were extremely plentiful. He tarried until the twilight, for he had the art of calling the heath–fowl around him in great numbers, by imitating the cry of the hen. He took his station for this purpose in one of those moss–hags formerly described; but he had not well begun to call ere his ears were saluted by the whistling of so many plovers that he could not hear his own voice. He was obliged to desist, and lay for some time listening, in expectation that they would soon cease crying. When lying thus, he heard distinctly the sound of something like human voices, that spoke in whispers hard by him; he likewise imagined that he heard the pattering of feet, which he took for those of horses, and, convinced that it was a raid of the fairies, he became mortally afraid; he crept closer to the earth, and in a short time heard a swell of the most mellifluous music that ever rose on the night. He then got up, and fled with precipitation away, as he thought, from the place whence the music seemed to arise; but ere he had proceeded above an hundred paces, he met with one of the strangest accidents that ever happened to man.
That same night, about, or a little before, the hour of midnight, two of Laidlaw’s men, who happened to be awake, imagined that they heard a slight noise without; they arose, and looked cautiously out at a small hole that was in the end of the stable where they slept, and beheld to their dismay the appearance of four men, who came toward them carrying a coffin; on their coming close to the corner of the stable, where the two men stood, the latter heard one of them say distinctly, in a whisper, “Where shall we lay him?”
“We must leave him in the barn,” said another.
“I fear,” said a third, “the door of that will be locked;” and they past on.
The men were petrified; they put on their clothes, but they durst not move, until, in a short time thereafter, a dreadful bellowing and noise burst forth about the door of the farm–house. The family was alarmed, and gathered out to see what was the matter; and behold! there lay poor Kennedy in a most piteous plight, and, in fact, stark staring mad. He continued in a high fever all the night, and the next morning; but a little after noon he became somewhat more calm, and related to them a most marvellous tale indeed.
He said, that by the time he arose to fly from the sound of the music, the moor was become extremely dark, and he could not see with any degree of accuracy where he was running, but that he still continued to hear the sounds, which, as he thought, came still nigher and nigher behind him. He was, however, mistaken in this conjecture; for in a short space he stumbled on a hole in the heath, into which he sunk at once, and fell into a pit which he described as being at least fifty fathom deep; that he there found himself immediately beside a multitude of hideous beings, with green clothes, and blue faces, who sat in