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him for some miles, till he was on the high-road to Lochside. She then restored his whole property, nor could his earnest entreaties prevail on her to accept so much as a single guinea.

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"I have heard the old people at Jedburgh say, that all Jean's sons were condemned to die there on the same day. It is said the jury were equally divided, but that a friend to justice, who had slept during the whole discussion, waked suddenly, and gave his vote for condemnation, in the emphatic words, Hang them a'!' Unanimity is not required in a Scottish jury, so the verdict of guilty was returned. Jean was present, and only said, The Lord help the innocent in a day like this! Her own death was accompanied with circumstances of brutal outrage, of which poor Jean was in many respects wholly undeserving. She had, among other demerits, or merits, as the reader may choose to rank it, that of being a stanch Jacobite. She chanced to be at Carlisle upon a fair or marketday, soon after the year 1746, where she gave vent to her political partiality, to the great offence of the rabble of that city. Being zealous in their loyalty, when there was no danger, in proportion to the tameness with which they had surrendered to the Highlanders in 1745, the mob inflicted upon poor Jean Gordon no slighter penalty than that of ducking her to death in the Eden. It was an operation of some time, for Jean was a stout woman, and, struggling with her murderers, often got her head above water; and, while she had voice left, continued to exclaim at such intervals, Charlie yet! Charlie yet!' When a child, and among the scenes which she frequented, I have often heard these stories, and cried piteously for poor Jean Gordon.

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"Before quitting the Border gipsies, I may mention, that my grandfather, while riding over Charterhouse moor, then a very extensive common, fell suddenly among a large band of them, who were carousing in a hollow of the moor, surrounded by bushes. They instantly seized on his horse's bridle with many shouts of welcome, exclaiming (for he was well known to most of them) that they had often dined at his expense, and he must now stay and share their good cheer. My ancestor was a little alarmed, for, like the Goodman of Lochside, he had more money about his person than he cared to risk in such society. However, being naturally a bold lively-spirited man, he entered into the humour of the thing, and sate down to the feast, which consisted of all the varieties of game, poultry, pigs, and so forth, that could be collected by a wide and indiscriminate system of plunder. The dinner was a very merry one; but my relative got a hint from some of the older gipsies to retire just when—

The mirth and fun grew fast and furious." and mounting his horse, accordingly, he took a French leave of his entertainers, but without experiencing the least breach of hospitality. I believe

Jean Gordon was at this festival.”—(Blackwood's Magazine, vol. i. p. 54.)

Notwithstanding the failure of Jean's issue, for

which,

'Weary fa' the waefu' wuddie,"

a grand-daughter survived her whom I remember to have seen. That is, as Dr Johnson had a shadowy recollection of Queen Anne, as a stately lady in black, adorned with diamonds, so my memory is haunted by a solemn remembrance of a woman of more than female height, dressed in a long red cloak, who commenced acquaintance by giving me an apple, but whom, nevertheless, I looked on with as much awe, as the future Doctor, High Church and Tory as he was doomed to be, could look upon the Queen. I conceive this woman to have been Madge Gordon, of whom an impressive account is given in the same article in which her Mother Jean is mentioned, but not by the present writer:

"The late Madge Gordon was at this time accounted the Queen of the Yetholm clans. She was, we believe, a grand-daughter of the celebrated Jean Gordon, and was said to have much resembled her in appearance. The following account of her is extracted from the letter of a friend, who for many years enjoyed frequent and favourable opportunities of observing the characteristic peculiarities of the Yetholm tribes:- Madge Gordon was descended from the Faas by the mother's side, and was married to a Young. She was a remarkable personage-of a very commanding presence, and high stature, being nearly six feet high. She had a large aquiline nose,-penetrating eyes, even in her old age,-bushy hair, that hung around her shoulders from beneath a gipsy bonnet of straw,a short cloak of a peculiar fashion, and a long staff nearly as tall as herself. I remember her well; —every week she paid my father a visit for her awmous, when I was a little boy, and I looked upon Madge with no common degree of awe and terror. When she spoke vehemently (for she made loud complaints), she used to strike her staff upon the floor, and throw herself into an attitude which it was impossible to regard with indifference. She used to say that she could bring from the remotest parts of the island, friends to revenge her quarrel, while she sat motionless in her cottage; and she frequently boasted that there was a time when she was of still more considerable importance, for there were at her wedding fifty saddled asses, and unsaddled asses without number. If Jean Gordon was the prototype of the character of Meg Merrilies, I imagine Madge must have sat to the unknown author as the representative of her person."(Blackwood's Magazine, vol. i. p. 56.)

How far Blackwood's ingenious correspondent was right, how far mistaken in his conjecture, the reader has been informed.

To pass to a character of a very different description, Dominie Sampson, the reader may easily suppose that a poor modest humble scholar, who

has won his way through the classics, yet has fallen to leeward in the voyage of life, is no uncommon personage in a country where a certain portion of learning is easily attained by those who are willing to suffer hunger and thirst in exchange for acquiring Greek and Latin. But there is a far more exact prototype of the worthy Dominie, upon which is founded the part which he performs in the romance, and which, for certain particular reasons, must be expressed very generally.

Such a preceptor as Mr Sampson is supposed to have been, was actually tutor in the family of a gentleman of considerable property. The young lads, his pupils, grew up and went out in the world; but the tutor continued to reside in the family, no uncommon circumstance in Scotland (in former days), where food and shelter were readily afforded to humble friends and dependents. The Laird's predecessors had been imprudent; he himself was passive and unfortunate. Death swept away his sons, whose success in life might have balanced his own bad luck and incapacity. Debts increased and funds diminished, until ruin came. The estate was sold; and the old man was about to remove from the house of his fathers, to go he knew not whither, when, like an old piece of furniture, which, left alone in its wonted corner, may hold together for a long while, but breaks to pieces on an attempt to move it, he fell down on his own threshold under a paralytic affection.

The tutor awakened as from a dream. He saw his patron dead, and that his patron's only remaining child, an elderly woman, now neither graceful

nor beautiful, if she had ever been either the one or the other, had by this calamity become a homeless and penniless orphan. He addressed her nearly in the words which Dominie Sampson uses to Miss Bertram, and professed his determination not to leave her. Accordingly, roused to the exercise of talents which had long slumbered, he opened a little school, and supported his patron's child for the rest of her life, treating her with the same humble observance and devoted attention which he had used towards her in the days of her prosperity.

Such is the outline of Dominie Sampson's real story, in which there is neither romantic incident nor sentimental passion; but which, perhaps, from the rectitude and simplicity of character which it displays, may interest the heart and fill the eye of the reader as irresistibly, as if it respected distresses of a more dignified or refined character.

These preliminary notices concerning the tale of Guy Mannering, and some of the characters introduced, may save the author and reader, in the present instance, the trouble of writing and perusing a long string of detached notes.

I may add, that the motto of this Novel was taken from the Lay of the Last Minstrel, to evade the conclusions of those who began to think that as the author of Waverley never quoted the works of Sir Walter Scott, he must have reason for doing so, and that the circumstances might argue an identity

between them.

ABBOTSFORD, August 1, 1829.

Guy Mannering.

CHAPTER I.

afforded. Kippletringan was distant at first “ a gey bit;" then the " gey bit" was more accurately deHe could not deny, that looking round upon the dreary region, and seeing nothing but bleak fields, and naked scribed, as "ablins three mile;" then the "three mile" trees, hills obscured by fogs, and flats covered with inun- diminished into "like a mile and a bittock;" then dations, he did for some time suffer melancholy to pre-extended themselves into "four mile or thereawa;” vail upon him, and wished himself again safe at home. Travels of Will. Marvel, Idler, No. 49.

and, lastly, a female voice, having hushed a wailing infant which the spokeswoman carried in her arms, assured Guy Mannering, "It was a weary lang gate yet to Kippletringan, and unco heavy road for footpassengers." The poor hack upon which Mannering was mounted, was probably of opinion that it suited him as ill as the female respondent; for he began to flag very much, answered each application of the spur with a groan, and stumbled at every stone (and they were not few) which lay in his road.

Mannering now grew impatient. He was occasionally betrayed into a deceitful hope that the end of his journey was near, by the apparition of a twinkling light or two; but, as he came up, he was disappointed to find that the gleams proceeded from some of those farm-houses which occasionally ornamented the surface of the extensive bog. At

Ir was in the beginning of the month of November 17, when a young English gentleman, who had just left the university of Oxford, made use of the liberty afforded him, to visit some parts of the north of England; and curiosity extended his tour into the adjacent frontier of the sister country. He had visited, on the day that opens our history, some monastic ruins in the county of Dumfries, and spent much of the day in making drawings of them from different points; so that, on mounting his horse to resume his journey, the brief and gloomy twilight of the season had already commenced. His way lay through a wide tract of black moss, extending for miles on each side and before him. Little eminences arose like islands on its surface, bearing here and there patches of corn, which even at this season was green, and sometimes a hut, or farm-length, to complete his perplexity, he arrived at a house, shaded by a willow or two, and surrounded by large elder-bushes. These insulated dwellings communicated with each other by winding passages through the moss, impassable by any but the natives themselves. The public road, however, was tolerably well made and safe, so that the prospect of being benighted brought with it no real danger. Still it is uncomfortable to travel, alone and in the dark, through an unknown country; and there are few ordinary occasions upon which fancy frets herself so much as in a situation like that of Mannering.

place where the road divided into two. If there had been light to consult the relics of a finger-post which stood there, it would have been of little avail, as, according to the good custom of North Britain, the inscription had been defaced shortly after its erection. Our adventurer was therefore compelled, like a knight-errant of old, to trust to the sagacity of his horse, which, without any demur, chose the left-hand path, and seemed to proceed at a somewhat livelier pace than before, affording thereby a hope that he knew he was drawing near to his quarters for the evening. This hope, however, was not speedily accomplished, and Mannering, whose impatience made every furlong seem three, began to think that Kippletringan was actually retreating before him in proportion to his advance.

As the light grew faint and more faint, and the morass appeared blacker and blacker, our traveller questioned more closely each chance passenger on his distance from the village of Kippletringan, where he proposed to quarter for the night. His queries It was now very cloudy, although the stars, from were usually answered by a counter-challenge re- time to time, shed a twinkling and uncertain light. specting the place from whence he came. While Hitherto nothing had broken the silence around sufficient day-light remained to show the dress and him, but the deep cry of the bog-blitter, or bull-ofappearance of a gentleman, these cross interroga-the-bog, a large species of bittern; and the sighs of tories were usually put in the form of a case supposed,―as, "Ye'll hae been at the auld abbey o' Halycross, sir? there's mony English gentlemen gang to see that;" or, "Your honour will be come frae the house o' Pouderloupat!" But when the voice of the querist alone was distinguishable, the response usually was, "Where are ye coming frae at sic a time o' night as the like o' this?" or, "Ye'll no be o' this country, freend!" The answers, when obtained, were neither very reconcilable to each other, nor accurate in the information which they

the wind as it passed along the dreary morass. To these was now joined the distant roar of the ocean, towards which the traveller seemed to be fast approaching. This was no circumstance to make his mind easy. Many of the roads in that country lay along the sea-beach, and some were liable to be flooded by the tides, which rise to a great height, and advance with extreme rapidity. Others were intersected with creeks and small inlets, which it was only safe to pass at particular times of the tide. Neither circumstance would have suited a dark

night, a fatigued horse, and a traveller ignorant of his road. Mannering resolved, therefore, definitively to halt for the night at the first inhabited place, however poor, he might chance to reach, unless he could procure a guide to this unlucky village of Kippletringan.

A miserable hut gave him an opportunity to execute his purpose. He found out the door with no small difficulty, and for some time knocked without producing any other answer than a duet between a female and a cur-dog, the latter yelping as if he would have barked his heart out, the other screaming in chorus. By degrees the human tones predominated; but the angry bark of the cur being at the instant changed into a howl, it is probable something more than fair strength of lungs had contributed to the ascendency.

"Sorrow be in your thrapple then!"-these were the first articulate words,- "will ye no let me hear what the man wants, wi' your yaffing?"

"Am I far from Kippletringan, good dame?" "Frae Kippletringan!!!" in an exalted tone of wonder, which we can but faintly express by three points of admiration; "Ow, man! ye should hae hadden eassel to Kippletringan-ye maun gae back as far as the Whaap, and haud the Whaap1 till ye come to Ballenloan, and then"

"This will never do, good dame! my horse is almost quite knocked up-can you not give me a night's lodgings?"

"Troth can I no; I am a lone woman, for James he's awa to Drumshourloch fair with the year-aulds, and I daurna for my life open the door to ony o' your gang-there-out sort o' bodies."

"But what must I do then, good dame? for I can't sleep here upon the road all night."

"Troth, I kenna, unless ye like to gae down and speer for quarters at the Place. I'se warrant they'll tak ye in, whether ye be gentle or semple."

«Simple enough, to be wandering here at such a time of night," thought Mannering, who was ignorant of the meaning of the phrase. "But how shall I get to the place, as you call it?"

"Ye maun haud wessel by the end o' the loan, and take tent o' the jaw-hole."

"O, if ye get to eassel and wessel 2 again, I am undone !-Is there nobody that could guide me to this place? I will pay him handsomely."

The word pay operated like magic. "Jock, ye villain," exclaimed the voice from the interior, "are ye lying routing there, and a young gentleman seeking the way to the Place? Get up, ye fause loon, and show him the way down the muckle loaning. He'll show you the way, sir, and I'se warrant ye'll be weel put up; for they never turn awa naebody frae the door; and ye'll be come in the canny moment, I'm thinking, for the laird's servant-that's no to say his body-servant, but the helper like-rade express by this e'en to fetch the houdie, and he just staid the drinking o' twa pints o' tippeny, to tell us how my leddy was ta'en wi' her pains."

"Perhaps," said Mannering, "at such a time a stranger's arrival might be inconvenient?"

"Hout, na, ye needna be blate about that; their house is muckle eneugh, and clecking time's aye canty time."

The Hope, often pronounced Whaap, is the sheltered part or hollow of the hill. Hoff, howff, haaf, and haven, are all modifications of the same word.

By this time Jock had found his way into all the intricacies of a tattered doublet, and more tattered pair of breeches, and sallied forth, a great whiteheaded, bare-legged, lubberly boy of twelve years old, so exhibited by the glimpse of a rush-light, which his half-naked mother held in such a manner as to get a peep at the stranger, without greatly exposing herself to view in return. Jook moved on westward, by the end of the house, leading Mannering's horse by the bridle, and piloting, with some dexterity, along the little path which bordered the formidable jaw-hole, whose vicinity the stranger was made sensible of by means of more organs than one. His guide then dragged the weary hack along a broken and stony cart-track, next over a ploughed field, then broke down a slap, as he called it, in a dry-stone fence, and lugged the unresisting animal through the breach, about a rood of the simple masonry giving way in the splutter with which he passed. Finally, he led the way, through a wicket, into something which had still the air of an avenue, though many of the trees were felled. The roar of the ocean was now near and full, and the moon, which began to make her appearance, gleamed on a turreted, and apparently a ruined mansion, of considerable extent. Mannering fixed his eyes upon it with a disconsolate sensation.

"Why, my little fellow," he said, "this is a ruin, not a house?"

"Ah, but the lairds lived there langsyne--that's Ellengowan Auld Place; there's a hantle bogles about it--but ye needna be feared-I never saw ony mysell, and we're just at the door o' the New Place."

Accordingly, leaving the ruins on the right, a few steps brought the traveller in front of a medern house of moderate size, at which his guide rapped with great importance. Mannering told his circumstances to the servant; and the gentleman of the house, who heard his tale from the parlour, stepped forward, and welcomed the stranger hospitably to Ellangowan. The boy, made happy with half-a-crown, was dismissed to his cottage, the weary horse was conducted to a stall, and Mannering found himself in a few minutes seated by a comfortable supper, for which his cold ride gave him a hearty appetite,

CHAPTER II,

-Comes me cranking in,

And cuts me from the best of all my land,
A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out.
Henry Fourth, Part I.

THE Company in the parlour at Ellangowan consisted of the Laird, and a sort of person who might be the village schoolmaster, or perhaps the minis ter's assistant; his appearance was too shabby to indicate the minister, considering he was on a visit to the Laird.

The Laird himself was one of those second-rate sort of persons, that are to be found frequently in rural situations. Fielding has described one class as feras consumere nati; but the love of field-sports indicates a certain activity of mind, which had forsaken Mr Bertram, if ever he possessed it. A * Provincial for eastward and westward,

3 latching time.

+

good-humoured listlessness of countenance formed the only remarkable expression of his features, although they were rather handsome than otherwise. In fact, his physiognomy indicated the inanity of character which pervaded his life. I will give the reader some insight into his state and conversation, before he has finished a long lecture to Mannering, upon the propriety and comfort of wrapping his stirrup-irons round with a wisp of straw when he had occasion to ride in a chill evening.

Godfrey Bertram, of Ellangowan, succeeded to a long pedigree and a short rent-roll, like many lairds of that period. His list of forefathers ascended so high, that they were lost in the barbarous ages of Galwegian independence; so that his genealogical tree, besides the Christian and crusading names of Godfreys, and Gilberts, and Dennises, and Rolands without end, bore heathen fruit of yet darker ages, -Arths, and Knarths, and Donagilds, and Hanlons. In truth, they had been formerly the stormy chiefs of a desert but extensive domain, and the heads of a numerous tribe, called Mac-Dingawaie, though they afterwards adopted the Norman surname of Bertram. They had made war, raised rebellions, been defeated, beheaded, and hanged, as became a family of importance, for many centuries. But they had gradually lost ground in the world, and, from being themselves the heads of treason and traitorous conspiracies, the Bertrams, or MacDingawaies, of Ellangowan, had sunk into subordinate accomplices. Their most fatal exhibitions in this capacity took place in the seventeenth century, when the foul fiend possessed them with a spirit of contradiction, which uniformly involved them in controversy with the ruling powers. They reversed the conduct of the celebrated Vicar of Bray, and adhered as tenaciously to the weaker side, as that worthy divine to the stronger. And truly, like him, they had their reward.

Allan Bertram of Ellangowan, who flourished tempore Caroli primi, was, says my authority, Sir Robert Douglas, in his Scottish Baronage (see the title Ellangowan), "a steady loyalist, and full of zeal for the cause of his Sacred Majesty, in which he united with the great Marquis of Montrose, and other truly zealous and honourable patriots, and sustained great losses in that behalf. He had the honour of knighthood conferred upon him by his Most Sacred Majesty, and was sequestrated as a malignant by the parliament 1642, and afterwards as a resolutioner, in the year 1648."-These two cross-grained epithets of malignant and resolutioner cost poor Sir Allan one half of the family estate. His son Dennis Bertram married a daughter of an eminent fanatic, who had a seat in the council of state, and saved by that union the remainder of the family property. But, as ill chance would have it, he became enamoured of the lady's principles as well as of her charms, and my author gives him this character: "He was a man of eminent parts and resolution, for which reason he was chosen by the western counties one of the committee of noblemen and gentlemen, to report their griefs to the privy council of Charles II. anent the coming in of the Highland host in 1678." For undertaking this patriotic task he underwent a fine, to pay which he was obliged to mortgage half of the remaining moiety of his paternal property. This loss he might have recovered by dint of severe economy, but on the breaking out of Argyle's rebellion, Dennis Ber

tram was again suspected by Government, apprehended, sent to Dunnotar Castle, on the coast of the Mearns, and there broke his neck in an attempt to escape from a subterranean habitation called the Whigs Vault, in which he was confined with some eighty of the same persuasion. The apprizer, therefore (as the holder of a mortgage was then called), entered upon possession, and, in the language of Hotspur, "came me cranking in," and cut the family out of another monstrous cantle of their remaining property.

Donohoe Bertram, with somewhat of an Irish name, and somewhat of an Irish temper, succeeded to the diminished property of Ellangowan. He turned out of doors the Rev. Aaron Macbriar, his mother's chaplain (it is said they quarrelled about the good graces of a milkmaid), drank himself daily drunk with brimming healths to the king, council, and bishops; held orgies with the Laird of Lagg, Theophilus Oglethorpe, and Sir James Turner; and lastly, took his grey gelding, and joined Clavers at Killiecrankie. At the skirmish of Dunkeld, 1689, he was shot dead by a Cameronian with a silver button (being supposed to have proof from the Evil One against lead and steel), and his grave is still called, the "Wicked Laird's Lair."

His son, Lewis, had more prudence than seems usually to have belonged to the family. He nursed what property was yet left to him; for Donohoe's excesses, as well as fines and forfeitures, had made another inroad upon the estate. And although even he did not escape the fatality which induced the Lairds of Ellangowan to interfere with politics, he had yet the prudence, ere he went out with Lord Kenmore in 1715, to convey his estate to trustees, in order to parry pains and penalties, in case the Earl of Mar could not put down the Protestant succession. But Scylla and Charybdis—a word to the wise-he only saved his estate at the expense of a lawsuit, which again subdivided the family property. He was, however, a man of resolution. He sold part of the lands, evacuated the old castle, where the family lived in their decadence, as a mouse (said an old farmer) lives under a firlot. Pulling down part of these venerable ruins, he built with the stones a narrow house of three stories high, with a front like a grenadier's cap, having in the very centre a round window, like the single eye of a Cyclops, two windows on each side, and a door in the middle, leading to a parlour and withdrawing room, full of all manner of cross lights.

This was the New Place of Ellangowan, in which we left our hero, better amused perhaps than our readers, and to this Lewis Bertram retreated, full of projects for re-establishing the prosperity of his family. He took some land into his own hand, rented some from neighbouring proprietors, bought and sold Highland cattle and Cheviot sheep, rode to fairs and trysts, fought hard bargains, and held necessity at the staff's end as well as he might. But what he gained in purse he lost in honour, for such agricultural and commercial negotiations were very ill looked upon by his brother lairds, who minded nothing but cock-fighting, hunting, coursing, and horse-racing, with now and then the alternation of a desperate duel. The occupations which he followed encroached, in their opinion, upon the article of Ellangowan's gentry; and he found it necessary gradually to estrange himself from their society, and sink into what was then a very ambi

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