The Life of Mansie Wauch. D. M. Moir

pouch, and thirsted for sheeps’ lives.

      Odoherty’s Miscellanea Classica.

      But, losh me! I have come on too far already, before mentioning a wonderful thing that happened to me when I was only seven years old. Few things in my eventful life have made a deeper impression on me than what I am going to relate.

      It was the custom, in those times, for the different schools to have cock-fighting on Fastern’s E’en; and the victor, as he was called, treated the other scholars to a football. Many a dust have I seen rise out of that business—broken shins and broken heads, sore bones and sound duckings—but this was none of these.

      Our next neighbour was a flesher; and right before the window was a large stone, on which old wives with their weans would sometimes take a rest; so what does I, when I saw the whole hobble-shaw coming fleeing down the street, with the kick-ba’ at their noses, but up I speels upon the stone, (I was a wee chap with a daidley, a ruffled shirt, and leather cap edged with rabbit fur,) that I might see all the fun. This one fell, and that one fell, and a third was knocked over, and a fourth got a bloody nose: and so on; and there was such a noise and din, as would have deaved the workmen of Babel—when, lo! and behold! the ball played bounce mostly at my feet, and the whole mob after it. I thought I should have been dung to pieces; so I pressed myself back with all my might, and through went my elbow into Cursecowl’s kitchen. It did not stick long there. Before you could say Jack Robison, out flew the flesher in his killing-clothes; his face was as red as fire, and he had his pouch full of bloody knives buckled to his side. I skreighed out in his face when I looked at him, but he did not stop a moment for that. With a girn that was like to rive his mouth, he twisted his nieve in the back of my hair, and off with me hanging by the cuff of the neck, like a kittling. My eyes were like to loup out of my head, but I had no breath to cry. I heard him thraw the key, for I could not look down, the skin of my face was pulled so tight; and in he flang me like a pair of old boots into his booth, where I landed on my knees upon a raw bloody calf’s skin. I thought I would have gone out of my wits, when I heard the door locked upon me, and looked round me in such an unearthly place. It had only one sparred window, and there was a garden behind; but how was I to get out? I danced round and round about, stamping my heels on the floor, and rubbing my begritten face with my coat sleeve. To make matters worse, it was wearing to the darkening. The floor was all covered with lappered blood, and sheep and calf skins. The calves and the sheep themselves, with their cuttit throats, and glazed een, and ghastly girning faces, were hanging about on pins, heels uppermost. Losh me! I thought on Bluebeard and his wives in the bloody chamber!

      And all the time it was growing darker and darker, and more dreary; and all was as quiet as death itself. It looked, by all the world, like a grave, and me buried alive within it; till the rottens came out of their holes to lick the blood, and whisked about like wee evil spirits. I thought on my father and my mother, and how I should never see them more; for I was sure that Cursecowl would come in the dark, tie my hands and feet thegither, and lay me across the killing-stool. I grew more and more frightened; and it grew more and more dark. I thought all the sheep-heads were looking at one another, and then girn-girning at me. At last I grew desperate; and my hair was as stiff as wire, though it was as wet as if I had been douking in the Esk. I began to bite through the wooden spars with my teeth, and rugged at them with my nails, till they were like to come off—but no, it would not do. At length, when I had greeted myself mostly blind, and cried till I was as hoarse as a corbie, I saw auld Janet Hogg taking in her bit washing from the bushes, and I reeled and screamed till she heard me.—It was like being transported into heaven; for, in less than no time, my mother, with her apron at her eyes, was at the door; and Cursecowl, with a candle in the front of his hat, had scarcely thrawn the key, when out I flew; and she lifted up her foot, (I dare say it was the first and last time in her life, for she was a douce woman,) and gave him such a kick and a push, that he played bleach over, head foremost, without being able to recover himself; and, as we ran down the close, we heard him cursing and swearing in the dark, like a devil incarnate.

CHAPTER VI.—PUSHING MY FORTUNE.

       Table of Contents

      Oh, love, love, lassie,

       Love is like a dizziness,

       It winna let a puir bodie

       Gang about their business.

      James Hogg.

      The days of the years of my prenticeship having glided cannily over on the working-board of my respected maister, James Hosey, where I sat sewing cross-legged like a busy bee, in the true spirit of industrious contentment, I found myself, at the end of the seven year, so well instructed in the tailoring trade, to which I had paid a near-sighted attention, that, without more ado, I girt myself round about with a proud determination of at once cutting my mother’s apron string, and venturing to go without a hold. Thinks I to myself, “faint heart never won fair lady;” so, taking my stick in my hand, I set out towards Edinburgh, as brave as a Highlander, in search of a journeyman’s place. When I think how many have been out of bread, month after month, making vain application at the house of call, I may set it down to an especial Providence, that I found a place, on the very first day, to my heart’s content, in by at the Grassmarket, where I stayed for the space of six calendar months.

      Had it not been from a real sense of the duty I owed to my future employers, whomsoever they might be, in making myself a first-rate hand in the cutting, shaping, and sewing line, I would not have found courage in my breast to have helped me out through such a long and dreary time. The change from our own town, where every face was friendly, and where I could ken every man I saw, by the cut of his coat, at half a mile’s distance, to the bum and bustle of the High Street, the tremendous cannons of the Castle, packed full of soldiers ready for war, and the filthy, ill-smelling abominations of the Cowgate, where I put up, was almost more than could be tholed by man of woman born. My lodging was up six pair of stairs, in a room of Widow Randie’s, which I rented for half-a-crown a-week, coals included; and many a time, after putting out my candle, before stepping into my bed, I used to look out at the window, where I could see thousands and thousands of lamps, spreading for miles adown streets and through squares, where I did not know a living soul; and dreeing the awful and insignificant sense of being a lonely stranger in a foreign land. Then would the memory of past days return to me; yet I had the same trust in Heaven as I had before, seeing that they were the dividual stars above my head which I used to glour up at in wonder at Dalkeith—pleasant Dalkeith! ay, how different, with its bonny river Esk, its gardens full of gooseberry bushes and pear-trees, its grass parks spotted with sheep, and its grand green woods, from the bullying blackguards, the comfortless reek, and the nasty gutters of the Netherbow.

      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