A Scots Quair. Lewis Grassic Gibbon

thing about the creature was that she believed none spoke ill of her, for if she heard a bit hint of such, dropped sly-like, she’d redden up like a stalk of rhubarb in a dung patch and look as though she might start to cry, and the body would feel real sorry for her till next minute she’d be screeching at Andy or Tony, and fleering them out of the little wits they had, poor devils.

      Now, Andy and Tony were two dafties that Mistress Munro had had boarded out on her from an Asylum in Dundee, they weren’t supposed to be dangerous. Andy was a meikle slummock of a creature, and his mouth was aye open, and he dribbled like a teething foal, and his nose wabbled all over his face and when he tried to speak it was just a fair jumble of foolishness. He was the daftest one, but fell sly, he’d sometimes run away to the hills and stand there with his finger at his nose, making faces at Mistress Munro, and she’d scraich at him and he’d yammer back at her and then over the moor he’d get to the bothy at Upperhill where the ploughmen would give him cigarettes and then torment him till he fair raged; and once tried to kill one with an axe he caught up from a hackstock. And at night he’d creep back to Cuddiestoun, outside he’d make a noise like a dog that had been kicked, and he’d snuffle round the door till the few remaining hairs on the bald pow of Munro would fair rise on end. But Mistress Munro would up and be at the door and in she’d yank Andy by the lug, and some said she’d take down his breeks and skelp him, but maybe that was a lie. She wasn’t feared at him and he wasn’t feared at her, so they were a gey well-matched pair.

      And that was the stir at Cuddiestoun, all except Tony, for the Munros had never a bairn of their own. And Tony, though he wasn’t the daftest, he was the queer one, too, right enough. He was small-bulked and had a little red beard and sad eyes, and he walked with his head down and you would feel right sorry for him for sometimes some whimsy would come on the creature, right in the middle of the turnpike it might be or half-way down a rig of swedes, and there he would stand staring like a gowk for minutes on end till somebody would shake him back to his senses. He had fine soft hands, for he was no working body; folk said he had once been a scholar and written books and learned and learned till his brain fair softened and right off his head he’d gone and into the poor house asylum. Now Mistress Munro she’d send Tony errands to the wee shop out beyond the Bridge End, and tell him what she wanted, plain and simple-like, and maybe giving him a bit clout in the lug now and then, as you would a bairn or a daftie. And he’d listen to her and make out he minded the messages and off to the shop he’d go, and come back without a single mistake. But one day, after she’d told him the things she wanted, Mistress Munro saw the wee creature writing on a bit of paper with a pencil he’d picked up somewhere. And she took the paper from him and looked at it and turned it this way and that, but feint the thing could she make of it. So she gave him a bit clout in the lug and asked him what the writing was. But he just shook his head, real gowkéd-like, and reached out his hand for the bit of paper, but Mistress Munro would have none of that and when it was time for the Strachan bairns to pass the end of the Cuddiestoun road on their way to school down there she was waiting and gave the paper to the eldest, the quean Marget, and told her to show it to the Dominie and ask him what it might mean. And at night she was waiting for the Strachan bairns to come back and they had an envelope for her from the Dominie; and she opened it and found a note saying the writing was shorthand and that this was what it read when put in the ordinary way of writing: Two pounds of sugar The People’s Journal half an ounce of mustard a tin of rat poison a pound of candles and I don’t suppose I can swindle her out of tuppence change for the sake of a smoke, she’s certainly the meanest bitch unhung this side of Tweed. So maybe Tony wasn’t so daft, but he got no supper that night; and she never asked to see his notes again.

      NOW, FOLLOWING the Kinraddie road still east, you passed by Netherhill on your left, five places had held its parks in the crofter days before Lord Kenneth. But now it was a fair bit farm on its own, old Sinclair and his wife, a body that was wearing none so well—soured up the creature was that her eldest daughter Sarah still bided all unwed—lived in the farmhouse, and in the bothy was foreman and second man and third man and orra lad. The Denburn lay back of the Netherhill, drifting low and slow and placid in its hollow, feint the fish had ever been seen in it and folk said that was just as well, things were fishy enough at Netherhill without the Denburn adding to them. Through the rank schlorich of moor that lay between the place and Peesie’s Knapp were the tracks of an old-time road, some said it was old as Calgacus, him that chased the Romans all to hell at the battle of Mons Graupius, others said it was a Druid work, laid by them that set the stones above Blawearie loch. And God! there must have been an unco few idle masons among the creatures, they’d tried their hands at another stone circle in the Netherhill moor, right midway the old-time road. But there were no more than two-three stones above the ground in this later day, Netherhill’s ploughmen swore the rest must have been torn up and broadcast over the arable land, the parks were as tough and stony as the heart of the old wife herself.

      But it was no bad place for turnips and oats, the Netherhill, sometimes the hay was fair to middling but the most of the ground was red clay and over coarse and wet for barley, if it hadn’t been for the droves of pigs old Mistress Sinclair fed and sold in Laurencekirk maybe her man would never have sat where he did. She came of Gourdon stock, the old wife, and everybody knows what they are, the Gourdon fishers, they’d wring silver out of a corpse’s wame and call stinking haddocks perfume fishes and sell them at a shilling a pair. She’d been a fishing quean before she took up with old Sinclair, and when they settled down in Netherhill on borrowed money it was she that would drive to Gourdon twice a week in the little pony lorry and come back with it stinking out the countryside for miles around with its load of rotten fish to manure the land. And right well it manured it and they’d fine crops the first six years or so and then the land was fair bled white and they’d to stop the fish-manure. But by then the pig-breeding was fine and paying, their debts were gone, they were coining silver of their own. He was a harmless stock, old Sinclair, and had began to doiter and Mistress Sinclair would push him into his chair at night and take off his boots and put slippers on him there in front of the kitchen fire and say to him You’ve tired yourself out again, my lad. And he’d put his hand below her chin and say Och, I’m fine, don’t vex yourself … Aye your lad still, am I, lass? And they’d look at each other, daft-like, two wrinkled old fools, and their daughter Sarah that was so genteel would be real affronted if there were visitors about. But Sinclair and his old wife would just shake their heads at her and in their bed at night, hiddling their old bones close for warmth, give a bit sigh that no brave billy had ever shown inclination to take Sarah to his bed. She’d hoped and peeked and preened long years, and once there had seemed some hope with Long Rob of the Mill, but Rob wasn’t the marrying sort. God! if Cuddiestoun’s dafties were real dafties what would you say of a man with plenty of silver that bided all by his lone and made his own bed and did his own baking when he might have had a wife to make him douce and brave?

      BUT ROB OF the Mill had never a thought of what Kinraddie said of him. Further along the Kinraddie road it stood, the Mill, on the corner of the side-road that led up to Upperhill, and for ten years now had Rob bided there alone, managing the Mill and reading the books of a coarse creature Ingersoll that made watches and didn’t believe in God. He’d aye two-three fine pigs about the Mill had Rob, and fine might well they be for what did he feed them on but bits of corn and barley he’d nicked out of the sacks folk brought him to the Mill to grind? Nor could a body deny but that Long Rob’s boar was one of the best in the Mearns; and they’d bring their sows from as far afield as Laurencekirk to have them set by that boar of his, a meikle, pretty brute of a beast. Forbye the Mill and his swine and hens Rob had a Clydesdale and a sholtie beast he ploughed his twenty acres with, and a cow or so that never calved, for he’d never time to send them to the bull though well might he have taken the time instead of sweating and chaving like a daft one to tear up the coarse moorland behind the Mill and turn it into a park. He’d started that three years before and wasn’t half through with it yet, it was filled with great holes and ponds and choked with meikle broom-roots thick as the arm of a man, you never saw a dafter ploy. They’d hear Rob out in that coarse ground hard at work when they went to bed, the rest of Kinraddie, whistling away to himself as though it were nine o’clock in the forenoon and the sun shining bravely. He’d whistle Ladies of Spain and There was a