OLD MORTALITY.

son,

CHAPTER I.

Preliminary,

Why seeks he with unwearied toil

Through death's dim walks to urge his way, Reclaim his long-asserted spoil,

“

"MOST readers," says the Manuscript of Mr. Pattie'must have witnessed with delight the joyous burst which attends the dismissing of a village school on a fine summer evening. The buoyant spirit of childhood, repressed with so much difficulty during the tedious hours of discipline, may then be seen to explode, as it were, in shout, and song, and frolic, as the little urchins join in groups on their play-ground, and arrange their matches of sport for the evening. But there is one individual who partakes of the relief afforded by the moment of dismission, whose feelings are not so obvious to the eye of the spectator, or so apt to receive his sympathy. I mean the teacher himself, who, stunned with the hum, and suffocated with the closeness of his school-room, has spent the whole day (himself against a host) in controlling petulance, exciting indifference to action, striving to enlighten stupidity, and labouring to soften obstinacy; and whose very powers of intellect have been confounded by hearing the same dull lesson repeated a hundred times by rote, and only varied by the various blunders of the reciters. Even the flowers of classic genius, with which his solitary fancy is most gratified, have been rendered degraded, in his imagination, by their connexion with tears, with errors, and with punishment; so that the Eclogues of Virgil and Odes of Horace are each inseparably allied in association with the sullen figure and monotonous recitation of some blubbering school-boy. If to these mental distresses are added a delicate frame of body, and a mind ambitious of some higher distinction than that of being the tyrant of childhood, the reader may have some slight conception of the relief which a solitary walk, in the cool of a fine summer evening, affords to the head which has ached, and the nerves which have been shattered, for so many hours, in plying the irksome task of public instruction.

"To me these evening strolls have been the happiest hours of an unhappy life; and if any gentle reader shall hereafter find pleasure in perusing these lucubrations, I am not unwilling he should know, that the plan of them has been usually traced in those moments, when relief from toil and clamour, combined with the quiet scenery around me, has disposed my mind to the task of composition.

bably at no very distant day) be my final resting-place after my mortal pilgrimage.*

"It is a spot which possesses all the solemnity of feeling attached to a burial-ground, without exciting those of a more unpleasing description. Having been very little used for many years, the few hillocks which rise above the level plain are covered with the same short velvet turf. The monuments, of which there are not above seven or eight, are half sunk in the ground, and overgrown with moss. No newly-erected tomb disturbs the sober serenity of our reflections by reminding us of recent calamity, and no rank-springing grass forces upon our imagination the recollection, that it owes its dark luxuriance to the foul and festering remnants of mortality which ferment beneath. The daisy which sprinkled the sod, and the harebell which hangs over it, derive their pure nourishment from the dew of heaven, and their growth impresses us with no degrading or disgusting recollections. Death has indeed been here, and its traces are before us; but they are softened and deprived of their horror by our distance from the period when they have been first impressed. Those who sleep beneath are only connected with us by the reflection, that they have once been what we now are, and that, as their relics are now identified with their mother earth, ours shall, at some future period, undergo the same transformation.

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"Yet, although the moss has been collected on the most modern of these humble tombs during four generations of mankind, the memory of some of those who sleep beneath them is still held in reverent remembrance. It is true, that, upon the largest, and, to an antiquary, the most interesting monument of the group, which bears the effigies of a doughty knight in his hood of mail, with his shield hanging on his breast, the armorial bearings are defaced by time, and a few worn-out letters may be read at the pleasure of the decipherer, Dns. Johan --- de Hamel, Johande Lamel--- And it is also true, that of another tomb, richly sculptured with an ornamented cross, mitre, and pastoral staff, tradition can only aver, that a certain nameless bishop lies interred there. But upon other two stones which lie beside, may still be read in rude prose, and ruder rhyme, the history of those who sleep beneath them. They belong, we are assured by the epitaph, to the class of persecuted Presbyterians who afforded a melancholy subject for history in the times of Charles II. and his successor.t In returning from the battle of Pentland Hills, a party of the insurgents had been attacked in this glen by a small detachment of the King's troops, and three or four either killed in the skirmish, or shot after being inade prisoners, as rebels taken with arms in their hands. The peasantry continued to attach to the tombs of those victims of prelacy an honour which they do not render to more splendid mausoleums; and, when they point them out to their sons, and narrate the fate of the sufferers, usually conclude, by exhorting them to be ready, should times call for it, to resist to the death in the cause of civil and religious liberty, like their brave forefathers.

"My chief haunt, in these hours of golden leisure, 18 the banks of the small stream, which, winding through alone vale of green bracken,' passes in front of the village school-house of Gandercleugh. For the first quarter of a mile, perhaps, I may be disturbed from my meditations, in order to return the scrape, or doffed bonnet, of such stragglers among my pupils as fish for trouts or minnows in the little brook, or seek rushes and wild-flowers by its margin. But, beyond the space I have mentioned, the juvenile anglers do not, after sunset, voluntarily extend their excursions. The cause is, that farther up the narrow valley, and in *Note, by Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham.--That I kept my plign. a recess which seems scooped out of the side of in this melancholy matter with my deceased and lamented the steep heathy bank, there is a deserted burial-friend, appeareth from a handsome head-stone erected at my ground, which the little cowards are fearful of proper charges in this spot, bearing the name and calling of Peter approaching in the twilight. To me, however, the also with a testimony of his merits, attested by myself, as his Pattieson, with the date of his nativity and sepulture; together place has an inexpressible charm. It has been long superior and patron.-J. C. the favourite termination of my walks, and, if my kind patron forgets not his promise, will (and pro

✦ James, Seventh King of Scotland of that name, and Second

according to the numeration of the Kings of England.-J. C

"Where this man was born, or what was his res name, I have never been able to learn; nor are the motives which made him desert his home, and adopt the erratic mode of life which he pursued, known is me except very generally. According to the belief o most people, he was a native of either the county of Dumfries or Galloway, and lineally descended from some of those champions of the Covenant, whose deeds and sufferings were his favourite theme. He is said to have held, at one period of his life, a smal moorland farm; but, whether from pecuniary losses and every other gainful calling. In the language d Scripture, he left his house, his home, and his k dred, and wandered about until the day of his death. a period of nearly thirty years.

'During this long pilgrimage, the pious enthusiast

"Although I am far from venerating the peculiar tenets asserted by those who call themselves the followers of those men, and whose intolerance and narrow-minded bigotry are at least as conspicuous as their devotional zeal, yet it is without depreciating the memory of those sufferers, many of whom united the independent sentiments of a Hampden with the suffering zeal of a Hooper or Latimer. On the other hand, it would be unjust to forget, that many even of those who had been most active in crushing what they conceived the rebellious and seditious spirit of those unhappy wanderers, displayed themselves, when call-or domestic misfortune, he had long renounced that ed upon to suffer for their political and religious opinions, the same daring and devoted zeal, tinctured, in their case, with chivalrous loyalty, as in the former with republican enthusiasm. It has often been remarked of the Scottish character, that the stubbornness with which it is moulded shows most to advan-regulated his circuit so as annually to visit the graves tage in adversity, when it seems akin to the native of the unfortunate Covenanters, who suffered by the sycamore of their hills, which scorns to be biassed in sword, or by the executioner, during the reigns of the its mode of growth even by the influence of the pre- two last monarchs of the Stewart line. These are vailing wind, but, shooting its branches with equal most numerous in the western districts of Ayr. Gal boldness in every direction, shows no weather-side to loway, and Dumfries, but they are also to be found i the storm, and may be broken, but can never be other parts of Scotland, wherever the fugitives had bended. It must be understood that I speak of my fought, or fallen, or suffered by military or civil exe countrymen as they fall under my own observation. cution. Their tombs are often apart from all human When in foreign countries, I have been informed that habitation, in the remote moors and wilds to which they are more docile. But it is time to return from this the wanderers had fled for concealment. But wher digression. ever they existed, Old Mortality was sure to visit them when his annual round brought them within his reach. In the most lonely recesses of the mour tains, the moor-fowl shooter has been often surprised to find him busied in cleaning the moss from the gray stones, renewing with his chisel the half-defaced inscriptions, and repairing the emblems of death with which these simple monuments are usually adorned. Motives of the most sincere, though fanciful devotion, induced the old man to dedicate so many years of existence to perform this tribute to the memory of the deceased warriors of the church. He considered himself as fulfilling a sacred duty, while renewing to the eyes of posterity the decaying emblems of the zeal and sufferings of their forefathers, and thereby trimming, as it were, the beacon-light, which was to warn future generations to defend their religion even unto blood.

"One summer evening, as in a stroll, such as I have described, I approached this deserted mansion of the dead, I was somewhat surprised to hear sounds distinct from those which usually soothe its solitude, the gentle chiding, namely, of the brook, and the sighing of the wind in the boughs of three gigantic ash-trees, which mark the cemetery. The clink of a hammer was, on this occasion, distinctly heard; and I entertained some alarm that a marchdike, long meditated by the two proprietors whose estates were divided by my favourite brook, was about to be drawn up the glen, in order to substitute its rectilinear deformity for the graceful winding of the natural boundary. As I approached, I was agreeably undeceived. An old man was seated upon the monument of the slaughtered presbyterians, and busily employed in deepening, with his chisel, the letters of the inscription, which, announ"In all his wanderings, the old pilgrim never cing, in scriptural language, the promised blessings seemed to need, or was known to accept, pecuniary of futurity to be the lot of the slain, anathematized assistance. It is true, his wants were very few; for the murderers with corresponding violence. A blue wherever he went, he found ready quarters in the bonnet of unusual dimensions covered the gray hairs house of some Cameronian of his own sect, or of of the pious workman. His dress was a large old- some other religious person. The hospitality which fashioned coat of the coarse cloth called hoddin- was reverentially paid to him he always acknow gray, usually worn by the elder peasants, with waist-ledged, by repairing the gravestones (if there existe coat and breeches of the same; and the whole suit, though still in decent repair, had obviously seen a train of long service. Strong clouted shoes, studded with hobnails, and gramoches or leggins, made of thick black cloth, completed his equipment. Beside him, fed among the graves a pony, the companion of his journey, whose extreme whiteness, as well as its projecting bones and hollow eyes, indicated its antiquity. It was harnessed in the most simple manner, with a pair of branks, a hair tether, or halter, and a sunk, or cushion of straw, instead of bridle and saddle. A canvass pouch hung around the neck of the animal, for the purpose, probably, of containing the rider's tools, and any thing else he might have occasion to carry with him. Although I had never seen the old man before, yet from the singularity of his employment, and the style of his equipage, I had no difficulty in recognising a religious itinerant whom I had often heard talked of, and who was known in various parts of Scotland by the title of Old Mortality. *I deem it fitting that the reader should be apprised that this imitary boundary between the conterminous heritable property of his honour the Laird of Gandercleugh, and his honour the Laird of Gusedub, was to have been in fashion an agger, or rather murus of uncemented granite, called by the vulgar a drystane dyke, surmounted, or coped, cespite viridi, i. e. with a sod. Karf. Truly their honours fell into discord' concerning two roods of marshy ground, near the cove called the Bedral's Beild; and the controversy, having some years bygone been removed from before the judges of the land, (with whom it abode long,) even unto the Great City of London and the Assembly of the Nooles therein, is, as I may say, adhuc in pendente.-J.C.

any) belonging to the family or ancestors of his host As the wanderer was usually to be seen bent on the pious task within the precincts of some county churchyard, or reclined on the solitary tombston among the heath, disturbing the plover and the black cock with the clink of his chisel and mallet, with old white pony grazing by his side, he acquired, from his converse among the dead, the popular appellation of Old Mortality.

"The character of such a man could have in it Et tle connexion even with innocent gayety. Yet, amor. those of his own religious persuasion, he is reported to have been cheerful. The descendants of pers cutors, or those whom he supposed guilty of enter taining similar tenets, and the scoffers at religion b whom he was sometimes assailed, he usually term the generation of vipers. Conversing with others, he was grave and sententious, not without a cast of severity. But he is said never to have been observe to give way to violent passion, excepting upon on occasion, when a mischievous truant-boy deface with a stone the nose of a cherub's face, which th old man was engaged in retouching. I am in gene ral a sparer of the rod, notwithstanding the max. of Solomon, for which school-boys have little reaso to thank his memory; but on this occasion I deeme it proper to show that I did not hate the child-Bu I must return to the circumstances attending my firinterview with this interesting enthusiast.

"In accosting Old Mortality, I did not fail to pay

respect to his years and his principles, beginning my address by a respectful apology for interrupting his labours. The old man intermitted the operation of the chisel, took off his spectacles and wiped them, then, replacing them on his nose, acknowledged my courtesy by a suitable return. Encouraged by his affability, I intruded upon him some questions concerning the sufferers on whose monument he was now employed. To talk of the exploits of the Covenanters was the delight, as to repair their monuments was the business, of his life. He was profuse in the communication of all the minute information which he had collected concerning them, their wars, and their wanderings. One would almost have supposed he must have been their contemporary, and have actually beheld the passages which he related, so much had he identified his feelings and opinions with theirs, and so much had his narratives the circumstantiality of an eye-witness.

"We,' he said, in a tone of exultation, we are the only true whigs. Carnal men have assumed that triumphant appellation, following him whose kingdom is of this world. Which of them would sit six hours on a wet hill-side to hear a godly sermon? I trow an hour o't wad staw them. They are ne'er a hair better than them that shamena to take upon themsells the persecuting name of bludethirsty tories. Self-seekers all of them, strivers after wealth, power, and worldly ambition, and forgetters alike of what has been dree'd and done by the mighty men who stood in the gap in the great day of wrath. Nae wonder they dread the accomplishment of what was spoken by the mouth of the worthy Mr. Peden, (that precious servant of the Lord, none of whose words fell to the ground,) that the French monzies sall rise as fast in the glens of Ayr, and the kenns of Galloway, as ever the Highlandmen did in 1677. And now they are gripping to the bow and to the spear, when they suld be mourning for a sinfu' land and a broken covenant.'

your cheek, that, like the bud of the rose, serveth oft to hide the worm of corruption. Wherefore labour as one who knoweth not when his master calleth. And if it be my lot to return to this village after ye are gane hame to your ain place, these auld withered hands will frame a stane of memorial, that your name may not perish from among the people.'

"I thanked Old Mortality for his kind intentions in my behalf, and heaved a sigh, not, I think, of regret so much as of resignation, to think of the chance that I might soon require his good offices. But though, in all human probability, he did not err in supposing that my span of life may be abridged in youth he had over-estimated the period of his own pilgrimage on earth. It is now some years since he has been missed in all his usual haunts, while moss, lichen, and deer-hair, are fast covering those stones, to cleanse which had been the business of his life. About the beginning of this century he closed his mortal toils, being found on the highway near Lockerby, in Dumfriesshire, exhausted and just expiring. The old white pony, the companion of all his wanderings, was standing by the side of his dying master. There was found about his person a sum of money sufficient for his decent interment, which serves to show that his death was in no ways hastened by violence or by want. The common people still regard his memory with great respect; and many are of opinion, that the stones which he repaired will not again require the assistance of the chisel. They even assert, that on the tombs where the manner of the martyrs' murder is recorded, their names have remained indelibly legible since the death of Old Mortality, while those of the persecutors, sculptured on the same monuments, have been entirely defaced. It is hardly necessary to say that this is a fond imagination, and that since the time of the pious pilgrim, the monuments which were the objects of his care are hastening, like all earthly memorials, into ruin or decay. "My readers will of course understand, that in imbodying into one compressed narrative many of the anecdotes which I had the advantage of deriving from Old Mortality, I have been far from adopting either his style, his opinions, or even his facts, so far as they appear to have been distorted by party prejudice. I have endeavoured to correct or verify them from the most authentic sources of tradition, afforded by the representatives of either party.

"Soothing the old man by letting his peculiar opinions pass without contradiction, and anxious to prolong conversation with so singular a character, I prevailed upon him to accept that hospitality, which Mr. Cleishbotham is always willing to extend to those who need it. In our way to the school-master's house, we called at the Wallace Inn, where I was pretty certain I should find my patron about that hour of the evening. After a courteous interchange of civilities, "On the part of the Presbyterians, I have conOld Mortality was, with difficulty, prevailed upon to sulted such moorland farmers from the western disjoin his host in a single glass of liquor, and that on tricts, as, by the kindness of their landlords, or othercondition that he should be permitted to name the wise, have been able, during the late general change pledge, which he prefaced with a grace of about five of property, to retain possession of the grazings on minutes, and then, with bonnet doffed and eyes up- which their grandsires fed their flocks and herds. I lifted, drank to the memory of those heroes of the must own, that of late days, I have found this a limKirk who had first uplifted her banner upon the moun-ited source of information. I have, therefore, called tains. As no persuasion could prevail on him to extend his conviviality to a second cup, my patron accompanied him home, and accommodated him in the Prophet's Chamber, as it is his pleasure to call the closet which holds a spare bed, and which is frequently a place of retreat for the poor traveller.t The next day I took leave of Old Mortality, who seemed affected by the unusual attention with which I had cultivated his acquaintance and listened to his conversation. After he had mounted,, not without difficulty, the old white pony, he took me by the hand and said, 'The blessing of our Master be with you, young man! My hours are like the ears of the latter harvest, and your days are yet in the spring; and yet you may be gathered into the garner of mortality before me, for the sickle of death cuts down the green as oft as the ripe, and there is a colour in *Probably monsieurs. It would seem that this was spoken during the apprehensions of invasion from France.-Publishers. +He might have added, and for the rich also; since, I laud my stars, the great of the earth have also taken harbourage in my poor domicil. And, during the service of my hand-maiden, Dorothy, who was buxom and comely of aspect, his Honour the Laird of Smackawa, in his peregrinations to and from the metropolis, was wont to prefer my Prophet's Chamber even to the sanded chamber of dais in the Wallace Inn, and to bestow a mutchkin, as he would jocosely say, to obtain the freedom of the house, but, in reality, to assure himself of my company during the evening-J C.

in the supplementary aid of those modest itinerants, whom the scrupulous civility of our ancestors denominated travelling merchants, but whom, of late, accommodating ourselves in this as in more material particulars, to the feelings and sentiments of our more wealthy neighbours, we have learned to call packmen or pedlars. To country weavers travelling in hopes to get rid of their winter web, but more especially to tailors, who, from their sedentary profession, and the necessity, in our country, of exercising it by temporary residence in the families by whom they are employed, may be considered as possessing a complete register of rural traditions, I have been indebted for many illustrations of the narratives of Old Mortality, much in the taste and spirit of the original.

I had more difficulty in finding materials for correcting the tone of partiality which evidently pervaded those stores of traditional learning, in order that I might be enabled to present an unbiassed picture of the manners of that unhappy period, and, at the same time, to do justice to the merits of both parties. But I have been enabled to qualify the narratives of Old Mortality and his Cameronian friends by the reports of more than one descendant of an cient and honourable families, who, themselves decayed into the humble vale of life, yet look proudly back on the period when their ancestors fought and

fell in behalf of the exiled house of Stewart. I may | pen-schaws, as they were termed, when the feudal even boast right reverend authority on the same array of the county was called out, and each crownscore; for more than one nonjuring bishop, whose vassal was required to appear with such muster authority and income were upon as apostolical a of men and armour as he was bound to make by scale as the greatest abominator of Episcopacy could his fief, and that under high statutory penalties. well desire, have deigned, while partaking of the The Covenanters were the more jealous of those humble cheer of the Wallace Inn, to furnish me with assemblies, as the lord lieutenants and sheriffs under information corrective of the facts which I learned whom they were held had instructions from the from others. There are also here and there a laird or government to spare no pains which might render two, who, though they shrug their shoulders, pro- them agreeable to the young men who were thus fess no great shame in their fathers having served in summoned together, upon whom the military exerthe persecuting squadrons of Earlshall and Claver- cise of the morning, and the sports which usually house. From the gamekeepers of these gentlemen, closed the evening, might naturally be supposed to an office the most apt of any other to become here- have a seductive effect. ditary in such families, I have also contrived to collect much valuable information.