by Unknown
“In what way have I shamed ye?”
“In many a way, and particularly with what ye say at family worship. Take your feet off that fender.”
“I keep my feet on the fender till I hear what new blether this is; ay, and longer if I like.”
“The things ye say in the prayer is an insult.”
“Canny, Chirsty Todd. That prayer, as weel ye ken, was learned out of a book, the which was lended to me for the purpose by a flying stationer.”
“Ye’re a puir crittur if ye canna’ make up what to say yersel’. Do you think you’ll ever be an elder? Not you.”
“Wha wants to be an elder?”
“None of your blasphemy, Tammas Haggart.”
“What’s wrang with the prayer?”
“Gang through it in your head, and you’ll soon see that.”
Tammas repeated the prayer aloud, but without enlightenment; whereupon Chirsty nearly went the length of shaking him.
“Did ye not pray this minute,” she said, “‘ for the heads of this house, and also the children thereof?’”
“I did so.”
“And have ye no’ repeated these words every nicht for near three years?”
“And what about that?”
“Tammas Haggart, have we any bairns? Is there ‘children thereof? 5”
Tammas used to say that at this point he took his feet off the fender. When he spoke it was thus —— , “As sure as death, Chirsty, I never thocht of that.”
His intention was to soothe the woman, but the utter unreasonableness of the sex, as he has pointed out, was finely illustrated by the way Chirsty took his explanation.
“Ye never thocht of it!” she exclaimed, “Tammas, you’re a most aggravating man.”
In his humorous period, Haggart could have stood even this, but that night it was beyond bearing. He jumped to his feet and stumbled to the door.
“Chirsty Todd,” he turned to say, slowly and emphatically, “you’re a vain tid. But beware, woman, there’s others than Jeames Pitbladdo as can take the hiccup.”
Chirsty had strange cause to remember this prophecy, but at the moment it only sent her running to the door. Tammas was halfway down Tillyloss already, but she caught him in the back with this stone:
“Guid-nicht, Jeames!”
With these words the Thrums Odyssey began.
CHAPTER III
SHOWS HOW HAGGART SAT ON A DYKE LOOKING AT HIS OWN FUNERAL
Haggart must have left Tillyloss with Chirsty heavy on his mind, for an hour afterwards he was surprised to find himself out of Thrums. He was wandering beneath trees alongside the Whunny drain, which is said to have been chiselled from the rocks when men’s wages were fourpence a day. Here he sat down, preparatory to turning back. It was now past his usual bedtime, and he had been twelve hours at work that day.
“I canna say whether I sat lang thinking about Chirsty,” he afterwards admitted; “but I mind watching a water-rat running out and in among some nettles till it got mixed in my mind with the shuttle of my loom, and by that time I was likely sleeping.”
The probability is that Tammas, who met no one, walked west from Tillyloss to Susie Linn’s pump, where he took the back wynd and made for the drain edge by the west town end. This is the route we have usually given him — though Lookabout you sends him round by the den — and I have walked it often with Tammas when we were drawing up a sort of map of his wanderings. The last time I did this was in the company of William Byars, who came back to Thrums recently after nearly thirty years’ absence, and spoke of Haggart the moment his eyes lighted again on Tillyloss. Those that saw him say that William was overcome with emotion when he gazed at the memorable outside stair, and at last walked away softly saying, “Haggart was a man.” What I can say of my own knowledge is that William met me one day as I was coming into Thrums from my schoolhouse and asked me as a favour to go round the “Haggart places” with him. This I mention as showing what a hold the affair we are now tracking took upon the popular mind.
I pointed out to William the very spot on which Tammas fell asleep. The drain edge path crossed the burn at that time by a footbridge of stone, and climbed a paling into the Long Parks of Auchtersmellie. A hoarding has been erected on this bridge to make travellers go another way, but it is also as good as a sign-post, for ten yards due south from it stands the short thick beech against which Tammas Haggart undoubtedly slept for nearly seven hours on that queer night. Even Look about you admits this.
To make the scene as vivid as possible, William, at my suggestion, sat down beneath the tree like one sleeping. I then went a little way into the Long Parks and came back hurriedly, making pretence that it was a dark night. I climbed the paling, crossed the bridge — there being two loose spars in the hoarding — and was passing on when suddenly I saw a man sleeping at the foot of a tree. When regarding him I shivered, as if it was the depth of winter, and then noted that he had on a thick topcoat. After a little hesitation I raised him cautiously and got the coat off without wakening him. I was rushing off with it when I remembered that the night was cold for him as well as for me, and flung my old coat down beside him. Then I hurried off, but of course came back directly, the make-believe being over.
Something very like this happened while Haggart was asleep, though no human eye witnessed the scene. All we are sure of is that the thief was dressed in corduroys like Tammas’s, and that the coat he left behind him was a thin linen one, coarse, stained — though not torn — and apparently worthless. There were twelve buttons on it — an unusual number, but not, as Tammas discovered, too many. It is a matter for regret that this coat was not preserved.
No doubt Tammas was shivering when he woke up, but all his minor troubles were swallowed in the loss of his topcoat, which was not only a fine one, but contained every penny he had in the world, namely, seven shillings and sixpence in a linen bag. He climbed into the Long Parks looking for the thief; he ran along the drain edge looking for him, and finally he sat down in dull despair. It was a cruel loss, and now not his indignation with Chirsty, but Chirsty’s case against him, shook his frame.
“The first use I ever made of the linen coat,” he allowed, “was to wipe the water off my e’en wi’t.”
Only fear of Chirsty can explain Haggart’s next step, which was, after putting on the linen coat, to wander off by the Long Parks, instead of at once returning to Tillyloss.
I did not take William over the ground covered by Haggart during the next three days; indeed, the great part of it is only known to me by vague report. Tammas doubtless had no notion when he ran away, as one might call it, from Chirsty, that he would sleep next night thirty miles from Thrums. At the back of the house of Auchtersmellie, however, he fell in with a wandering tailor, bound for a glen farm, where six weeks’ work awaited him. He was not a man of these parts, but Tammas offered to walk a few miles with him, and ended by going the whole way. Of Haggart’s experiences at this time I know much, but none of them is visible beside the surprising event that sent him homewards striding.
It takes one aback to think that Haggart might never have been a humorist had not one of the buttons fallen off his coat. The immediate effect of this was dramatic rather than humorous. The tailor picked up the button to sew it on to the coat again, but surprised by its weight had the curiosity to tear its linen covering with his scissors. Then he drew in his breath, extending his eyes and looking so like a man who would presently whistle with surprise that Haggart stooped forward to regard the button closely. Next moment he had snatched up the button with one hand and the coat with another, and was off like a racer to the tinkle of the starter’s bell.
When beyond pursuit Haggart sat down to make certain that he was really a rich man. The button that had fallen off was a guinea — gold guineas we said in Thrums, out of respect for them — covered with cloth, and a brief examination showed that the eleven other buttons were of the same costly kind. One popular explanation of this mysterious affair is that the tramp wh
o left this coat to Tammas had stolen it from some person unknown, without realising its value. Who the owner was has never been discovered, but he was doubtless a miser, who liked to carry his hoard about with him unostentatiously. I have known of larger sums hidden by farmers in as unlikely places.
Before resuming his triumphal march home Tammas pricked a hole in each of the buttons, to make sure of his fortune, and wasted some time in deciding that it would be safer to carry the guineas as they were than stowed away in his boots.
“Sometimes on the road home,” he used to say, “I ran my head on a tree or splashed into a bog, for it’s sair work to keep your e’en on twelve buttons, when they’re all in different places. Lads, I watched them as if they were living things.”
William and I crossed from the drain edge to the hill, where the next scene in the drama was played. The hill is public ground to the north of Thrums, separated from it by the cemetery and a few fields. So steep is the descent that a heavy stone pushed from the south side of the hill-dyke might crash two minutes afterwards against the back walls of Tillyloss. The view from the hill is among the most extensive in Scotland, and it also exposes some dilapidated courts in Thrums that are difficult to find when you are within a few feet of them. Fifty years ago the hill was nearly covered with whins, and it is half hidden in them still, despite the life-work of D. Fittis.
For some reason that I probably never knew, we always called him D. Fittis, but tradition remembers him as the Whinslayer. At a time when neither William nor I was of an age to play smuggle, D. Fittis’s wife lay dying far up Glen Quharity. Her head was on D. Fittis’s breast, and the tears on her cheeks came from his eyes. There were no human beings within an hour’s trudge of them, and what made D. Fittis gulp was that he must leave Betsy alone while he ran through the long night for the Thrums doctor, or sit with her till she died.
“Ye’ll no leave me, Davie,” she said.
“Oh, Betsy; if I had the doctor ye micht live.”
Betsy did not think she could live, but she knew her man writhed in his helplessness, and she told him to go.
“Put on your cravat, Davie,” she said, “and mind and button up your coat.”
“Oh, but I’m loth to gang frae ye,” he said when his cravat was round his neck and he stood holding Betsy’s hand.
“God’s with me, Davie, and with you,” Betsy said, but she could not help clinging to him, and then D. Fittis cried, “Oh, blessed God, Thou who didst in Thy great wisdom make poor folk like me, in Thy hands I leave this woman, and oh, ye micht spare her to me.”
‘‘Ay, but God’s will be done,” said Betsy. “ He kens best. “ It was not God’s will that these two should meet again on this earth. At the schoolhouse, which was to become my home, D. Fittis found friends who hastened to his wife’s side, and Craigiebuckle lent him a horse on which he galloped off to Thrums. But among the whins of the hill the horse flung him and broke his leg. D. Fittis tried to crawl the rest of the way, but he was found next morning in a wild state among the whins, and he was never a sane man again. For the remainder of his life he had but one passion — to cut down the whins, and many a time, at early morn, at noon, and when the gloaming was coming on I have seen him busy among them with his scythe. They grew as fast as he could cut, but he had loving relatives to tend him, and was still a kindly harmless man, though his laugh was empty.
William and I waded through the whins to a hollow in the hill, known as the toad’s hole. It was here that Haggart, returning boldly to Thrums four days after Chirsty had the last word, fell in with D. Fittis.
“He was cutting away at the whins,” Tammas remembered, “and I dinna think that the whole time me and him spoke he ever raised his head; he was a terrible busy man, D. Fittis.”
Haggart, big with his buttons, had, doubtless, as he approached the whinslayer, the bosom of a victorious soldier marching home to music. Nevertheless it has been noticed that the warrior, who thrives on battles, may, even in the hour of his greatest glory, be forever laid prone by a chimney can. For Tammas Haggart, confident that a few minutes would see him in Tillyloss, was preparing a surprise that rooted him to the toad’s-hole like a whin. I have a poor memory if I cannot remember Haggart?s own words on this matter.
“I stood looking at D. Fittis for a while,” he told me, “but I said nothing loud out, though the chances are I was pitying the stocky in my mind. Then I says to him in an ordinary voice, not expecting a dumfounding answer, I says, ‘Ay, D. Fittis, and is there onything fresh in Thrums?’
“He hacks away at the whins, but says he, ‘The bural’s this day.’
“‘Man,’ I says, ‘so there’s a funeral! wha’s dead?’
“‘Ye ken fine,’ says he, implying as the thing was notorious.
“‘Na,’ I says, ‘I dinna ken. Wha is it?’
“‘Weel,’ says he, ‘it’s Tammas Haggart.’”
Tammas always warned us here against attempting to realise his feelings at these monstrous words. “I dinna say I can picture my position now mysel’,”he said, “but one thing sure is that for the moment these buttons slipped clean out of my head. It was an eerie-like thing to see D. Fittis cutting away at the whins after making sich an announcement. A common death couldna have affected him less.
“‘Say wha’s dead again, D. Fittis,’ I cries, minding that the body was daft.
“‘Tammas Haggart,’ says he, with the utmost confidence. “‘Man, D. Fittis,’ I says, with uncontrolled indignation, ‘ye’re a big liar.’
“‘Whaever ye are,’ says he, ‘I would lick ye for saying that if I could spare the time.’
“‘Whaever I am!’ I cries. ‘Very weel ye ken I’m Tammas Haggart.’
“‘Wha’s the liar now?’ says he.
“I was a sort of staggered at this, and I says sharp-like, ‘What did Tammas Haggart die of?’
“I thocht that would puzzle him, if it was just his daftness that made him say I was gone, but he had his cause of death ready. ‘He fell down the quarry,’ says he.
“Weel, lads, his confidence about the thing sickened me, and I says, ‘Leave these whins alone, D. Fittis, and tell me all about it.’
“‘I canna stop my work,’ he says, ‘but Tammas Haggart fell down the quarry four nichts since. Ou, it was in the middle of the nicht, and all Thrums were sleeping when it was wakened by one awful scream. It wakened the whole town. Ay, a heap of folk set up sudden in their beds.’
“‘And was that Tammas Haggart falling down the quarry?’ I says, earnest-like, for I was a kind of awestruck. “‘It was so,’ says he, tearing away in the whins.
“‘ They didna find the body, though,’ I says, looking down on mysel’ with satisfaction.
“‘Ay,’ says he, ‘ the masons found it the next morning, and there was a richt rush of folk to see it.’
“‘Ye had been there?’ I says.
“‘I was,’ says he, ‘and so was the wifie as lives beneath me. She took her bairn too, for she said, “ It’ll be something for the little one to boast about having seen when he grows bigger.” Ay, man, it had been a michty fall, and the face wasna recognisable.’
“‘How did they ken, then,’ says I, ‘that it was Tammas Haggart?’
‘Ou,’ says he at once, ‘they kent him by his topcoat.’
‘‘Lads, of course I saw in a klink that the man as stole my topcoat had fallen down the quarry and been mista’en for me. Weel, I nipped mysel’ at that. It’s an unco thing to say, but I admit I was glad to have this proof, as ye may call it, that it was really me as was standing in the toad’s hole.
“‘When did ye say the bural was?’ I asked him.
“‘It’s at half three this day,’ he says, ‘and I’ll warrant it’s half three now, so if ye want to be sure ye’re no Tammas Haggart ye can see him buried.’ — , “I took a long look at D. Fittis, and it’s gospel I tell ye when I say I never liked him from that minute. Then I hurried up the hill to the cemetery dyke, and sat down on it. Lads, I sat ther
e, just at the very corner, whaur they’ve since put a cross to mark the spot, and I watched my ain bural. Yes, there I sat for near an hour, me, Tammas Haggart, an ordinary man at that time, getting sich an experience as has been denied to the most highly edicated in the land. I’m no boasting, but facts is facts.
“I’m no saying it wasna a fearsome sight, for I had a terrible sinking at the heart, and a mortal terror took grip of me, so that I couldna have got off that dyke except by falling. Ay, and when the grave was filled up and the mourners had dribbled away I sat on with some uncommon thochts in my mind. It would be wearing on to four o ‘clock when I got up shivering, and walked back to whaur D. Fittis was working. There was a question I wanted to put to him.
“‘D. Fittis,’ I says, ‘was there ony of the Balribbie folk as visited Tammas Haggart’s wife in her affliction?’
“‘Ay,’ says the crittur, trying to break a supple whin with his foot, ‘the wifie as lives beneath me was in the house at Tillyloss when in walks a grand leddy.’
“‘So, so,’ I says, ‘ and was Chirsty ta ‘en up like about her man being dead?’
“‘Ay,’ says D. Fittis, ‘she was greeting, but as soon as the grand woman comes in, Chirsty takes the wifie as lives beneath me into a corner and whispers to her.’
“‘D. Fittis,’ I says, sternly, ‘tell me what Chirsty Todd whispered, for muckle depends on it.’
“‘Weel,’ he says, ‘she whispered, “If the leddy calls the corpse ‘Jeames’ dinna conterdict her,”’
“I denounced Chirsty in my heart at that, not being sufficient of a humorist to make allowance for women, and I says, just to see if the thing was commonly kent, I says, “‘And wha would Jeames be?’
“‘I dinna ken,’ says D. Fittis, ‘but maybe you’re Jeames yersel’, when ye canna be Tammas Haggart.’
“Lads, ye see now that it was D. Fittis as put it into my head to do what I subsequently did. ‘Jeames,’ I said, ‘I’ll be frae this hour,’ and without another word I walked off in the opposite direction frae Thrums.