1. The standard clan history is Chiefs of Grant (three volumes privately published in 1883) by William Fraser.
2. Minority.
3. He raised one of the original companies of the Black Watch.
4. An eighteenth-century lady’s riding coat.
5. Ballad by Alexander Geddes (1737–1802).
6. 1759, one of the turning points of the Seven Years’ War.
7. Old Scots word for rennet.
8. E.G. wrote ‘beag’ as she heard it, ‘peck’.
9. Dambrod is Scots for a draughts board.
10. Coarse linen fabric.
11. Following her ear, E.G. wrote ‘pagne a priesht’.
12. Home-made cheese, sometimes made from a mixture of ewe and cow milk.
CHAPTER TWELVE
1812–1813
THE small farms in Rothiemurchus lay all about in various directions, most of them beautifully situated; the extent of the old forest was always said to be 16 square miles, and it was reckoned that near ten more was growing up, either of natural fir, or my father’s planted larch. The whole lay in the bosom of the Grampians in a bend of a bow, as it were, formed by the mountains, the river Spey being the string and our boundary. The mountains are bare, not very picturesquely shaped, yet imposing from their size. Many Glens run up through them all richly carpeted with sweet grass peculiarly suited to the fattening of cattle, one or two of these ending in a lake dropt at the bottom of a skreen of precipices. One pass, that of Lairig Ghru, leads to Braemar, Lord Fife’s country, with whose lands and the Duke of Gordon’s, ours march in that direction. Several rapid streams run through the forest, the smaller burnies rattling along their rocky course to join the larger, which in their turn flow on to be lost in the Spey. The Luineag and the Beanaidh are quite rivers, the one rises north from Loch Morlich in Glenmore, the other south from Loch Einich in Glen Einich; they join just above the bridge of Coylum and form the Druie, an unmanageable run of water that divides, subdivides, sometimes changes its principal channel and keeps a fine plain of many acres in a state of stony wilderness. The vagaries of the Druie were not alone watched with anxiety by the Crofters on its bank. There was a tradition that it had broken from its old precincts on the transference of the property to the Grants from the Shawes, that the Grants would thrive while the Druie was tranquil, but when it wearied of its new channel and returned to its former course, the fortunes of the new family would fail. The change happened in the year 1829, at the time of the great Lammas floods so well described, not by our pleasant friend Tom Lauder, but by a much greater man, Sir Thomas Dick Lauder of Fountainhall, the Grange, and Relugas, author of Lochandhu and the Wolf of Badenoch! We used to laugh at the prediction in our unthinking days.1
Besides the streams, innumerable lakes lay hid among the pine trees of that endless forest. On one of these was the small island completely occupied by the ruins of the Comyn fortress, a low building with one square tower, a flank wall with a door in it and one or two small windows high up, and a sort of house with a gable end, attached, part of which stood on piles. The people said there was a zigzag causeway beneath the water, from the door of the old castle to the shore, the secret of which was always known to three persons only. We often tried to hit upon this causeway, but we never succeeded. A great number of paths crossed the forest, and one or two cart roads; the robbers’ road at the back of Loch an Eilein, ’the lake of the island,’ was made by Rob Roy for his own convenience when out upon his cattle raids, and a decayed fir tree was often pointed out to us as the spot where Laird James, the Spreckled Laird, occasionally tied a bullock or two when he heard of such visitors in the country; they were of course driven away and never seen again, but the Laird’s own herds were never touched. It has been the fashion of late to father all moss trooping throughout the highlands on Rob Roy, but there was a Macpherson nearer to us, and a Mackintosh equally clever at the gathering of gear—Mackintosh of Borlam, of whom I shall have a tale to tell anon.
In a country of such remarkable beauty, and with so many objects of interest and legends of interest to add to the mere pleasure of exercise, our long walks became delightful even to such a Cockney as Miss Elphick. She was a clever woman, she soon came to appreciate all the worth of her new situation. She actually studied up to it, and though an innate vulgarity never left her, the improvement in her ideas was very perceptible. She corresponded occasionally with her only surviving sister, a poor little woman who kept a day school at Teddington and regularly with a Mr Somebody, a Builder. When she became more sociable with her pupils she used to read to us her letters descriptive of the savage land she had got into, and what was worse for us, she recounted this and every other adventure of the like kind she had ever had, love adventures of course. What English girl of her age and class was ever without a whole string of them, told to every acquaintance I believe as the fittest subject of conversation. No beauty, no heiress, ever had been the heroine of more romances than had fallen to the share of this little bundle of a body, by her own account. It never entered our young heads to doubt the catalogue. Mr Thomas Herbert’s replies did not come very frequently from the beginning, neither were they very long, nor were such parts as we were favoured with very loving, and by degrees they ceased. She did most of the writing and really I remember now her description of our first kirk Sunday was both cleverly and truthfully and very amusingly told; it must certainly have astonished a Londoner.
The unadorned but neat small kirk is very different now, when hardly any one sits in it, from what it was then, when filled to overflowing.2 It was very much out of repair; neither doors nor windows fitted, the plaister fallen from the roof lay in heaps about the seats, the walls were rough, the graveyard overgrown with nettles, even the path from the gate was choked with weeds in many places and in others was worn, over the sods that were laid upon the dead. Far from there being any ceremony about this highland style of worship, there was hardly even decency, so rude were all the adjuncts of our Sermon Sunday. Mr Stalker was dead—the good man who drank so many cups of tea, whom my wicked Aunt Mary used to go on helping to more, cup after cup, till one evening they counted nine, always pressing another on him by repeating that his regular number was three! It was a luxury that probably in those dear times the poor Dominie seldom could afford to give himself at home, for there was a wife and children, and his income must have been economically managed to bring them all through the year. He had £5 from Queen Anne’s bounty, a house and garden and a field and £10 from my father, and he taught the school. My Mother got the wife £4 additional for teaching sewing, which they hailed as a perfect godsend. I suppose the people were all kind to them, made them little presents. He was gone, and he had not been replaced, so we had sermon only every third Sunday in our own Kirk. The devout attended the neighbouring parishes on the blank days, some of the kirks being at no great distance, speaking highlandly, two to five or six miles and indeed for all they heard in our own, it was hardly worth coming so far as some did to listen in it.
Good Mr Peter of Duthil was gone, he had died in the winter. His Widow and her school removed to Inverness, and another Grant had succeeded him, for of course the patronage was very faithfully kept in the Clan. The new minister was a perfect contrast to his predecessor; he was fat, thickset, florid, with a large cauliflower wig on his large head. Within the head was more learning than may be half a dozen professors could boast of among them, but it was not in the divinity line. His turn was acutely satirical; he had been both a poet and an essayist, what he was now it would be hard to say; he seemed to have no particular employment; his wife managed the Glebe, the parishes managed themselves, and he certainly gave himself little trouble about his sermons. What he did in gaelick I cannot say; in English he had but two, although he altered the texts to give them an air of variety. The text did not always suit the discourse, but that was no matter. The sermons were by no means bad, though from constant repetition they grew tiresome; it was lucky we had six weeks to forget each of t
hem in. One was against an undue regard for the vanities of life, and always contained this sentence: ‘Behold the lilies of the valley they toil not neither do they spin yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of those.’ The other was on Charity and the 13th Chapter of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians was all of it dextrously interwoven with the various divisions of the subject. A violent Tory, detesting the House of Hanover, yet compelled to pray for the reigning family, he cut the business as short as possible—‘God bless the King, and all the Royal Family; as thou hast made them great make them good,’ with great emphasis, and then he hurried on to more agreeable petitions, all, sermon and prayer and psalm appearing to be a task to him that he was just getting through. Yet he was liked. On the day he was expected, the people began gathering early, forming little knots moving slowly on, visiting sometimes by the way, always stopping to have a talk with passing friends. The Kirk was very near our house, on a height in the field below the Drum, prettily sheltered by planting, and commanding from the gate a fine view of the valley of the Spey. The Bell tolled from time to time, and as the hour for the service approached the crowd began to pour in from either side, the white caps and the red plaids gleaming through the birch woods on the bank between the kirk field and the Drum, through which the path lay. Our farm people moved up from the low grounds to join them, and such of the house servants as understood the gaelick. The rest followed us an hour or more afterwards to the English portion of the Ceremony.
I think the gaelick service began with a psalm, then a long prayer, then a sermon, then a prayer again and then another psalm, during the singing of which, accompanied by the toll of the bell, the Laird’s family entered the Kirk. We generally walked from the house along the flowdyke by the only piece of the backwater left, under the shade of natural alder to the right and a thriving plantation of larch to the left; a small gate painted green opened on the road to the west lodge; we had to cross it into the field and then step up the long slope to the kirk yard. My father opened the gate to let my mother pass; Miss Elphick next, we three according to our ages followed. Then he went in himself. We sat in a long pew facing the pulpit, with two seats, one in front for the Laird, and one behind for his servants. There was a wooden canopy over it with a carved frieze all round and supporting pillars flat but fluted, and with lonick capitals like moderate ram’s horns. McAlpine’s seat was at the end, nothing to mark it but his scutcheon on a shield; the Captain, his surviving son, sat there. My father would not have moved him from it for the world. There were 160 years between the birth of that father and the death of that son, more than five generations. It is near 200 years now since Annie Need’s grandfather was born. The Captain did not set his feet upon the Shawe—the Spreckled Laird had taken advantage of some repairs proceeding to move that ill used carse once more. He did not dare to lay it by the dust of his Ancestors, he buried it close to the kirk, very slightly raised above the mould and with a plain flat stone upon it. How they came there who could say but as by magick—four chiselled stones rose at each corner of the grave, in shape, be it said reverently, not unlike Stilton cheeses and about that size and the sough3 ran that while they there kept watch, no evil would happen to Rothiemurchus. If they disappeared woe was approaching: not a soul in the country but firmly believed in the fulfilment of this prophesy, not one but turned to the Shawe’s grave every Sunday when they passed it. I looked on it regularly, old and time worn it was, no inscription on it, no workmanship, nothing but the four guardian stones to mark the resting place of the last of an old brave race, numerous still as a name, but without a Chief.
The stir consequent on our entrance was soon hushed, and the minister gave out the psalm; he put a very small dirty volume up to one eye, for he was near sighted and feeble sighted and read as many lines of the old version of the rhythmical paraphrase (we may call it) of the Psalms of David as he thought fit, drawling them out in a sort of sing song that was very strange. He stooped over the pulpit to hand his little book to the precentor, who then rose and calling out aloud the time—‘the St. George’s tune,’ ‘Auld A berdeen,’ ‘hondred an’ fifteen,’ etc.—began himself a recitative of the first line on the key note, then taken up and repeated by the congregation; line by line he continued in the same fashion, thus doubling the length of the exercise, for really to some it was no play—serious severe screaming quite beyond the natural pitch of the voice, a wandering search after the air by many who never caught it, a flourish really, of difficult execution and plenty of the tremolo lately come into fashion with the tenor singers in particular. The dogs seized this occasion to bark, for they always came to the kirk with the rest of the family, and the babies to cry. When the minister could bear the din no longer he popt up again, again leaned over, touched the precentor’s head, and instantly all sound ceased. The long prayer began. Every body stood up while the minister asked for us such blessings as he thought best: with closed eyes it should have been, that being a part of the ‘rubrick’; our oddity of a parson closed but one, the one with which he had squinted at the Psalm book, some affection of the other eyelid rendering it unmanageable. The prayer over, the sermon began; that was my time for making my observations, ‘Charity’ and ‘Solomon’s Lilies’ soon requiring no further attention.
Few save our own people sat around; old gray haired rough visaged men that had known my grandfather and great grandfather, black, red, and fairer hair, belonging to such as were in the prime of life, younger men, lads, boys—all in the tartan. The plaid as a wrap, the plaid as a drapery, with kilt to match on some, blue trews on others, blue jackets on all, that was the style of the male part of the assemblage. The women were plaided too, an outside shawl was seen on none, though the wives wore a large handkerchief underneath the plaid, and looked picturesquely matronly in their very high white caps. A bonnet was not to be seen among them, no young highland girl ever covered her head; the girls wore their own hair neatly braided in the front, plaited up in Grecian fashion behind, and bound by the snood, a bit of velvet or ribbon placed rather low on the forehead and tied beneath the plait at the back. The wives were all in homespun, homedyed linsey woolsey gowns, covered to the chin by the modest kerchief worn outside the gown. The girls who could afford it had a sabbath day’s gown of like manufacture and very bright colours, but the throat was more exposed, and generally ornamented by a string of beads, often amber or a bit of black ribbon. Some had to be content with the best blue flannel petticoat and a clean white jacket, their ordinary and most becoming dress, and few of these had either shoes or stockings; but all had the plaid, and they folded it round them very gracefully. They had a custom in the spring of washing their beautiful hair with a decoction of the young buds of the birch trees, a cleanly habit at any rate. Whether it improved or hurt the hair I really do not know, but it most agreeably scented the kirk, which at other times was wont to be overpowered by the combined odours of snuff and peatreak, for the men snuffed up an immensity during the delivery of the English sermon; they fed their noses with quills fastened by strings to the lids of their mulls, spooning up the snuff in quantities and without waste, none ever dropping by the way. The old women snuffed too, and groaned a great deal, expressive this of their mental sufferings, their grief for all the backslidings supposed to be thundered at from the pulpit; lapses from faith was their grand self accusation, lapses from virtue were, alas, little commented on, perhaps because they were too common among them; temperance in man, and in woman chastity are not in the Highland code of morality.
The sermon over, the concluding prayer, a thanksgiving, brought us all to our feet again. Another psalm, then the blessing and a general bow to the pulpit ended the whole. After a pause we all dispersed—but I am forgetting the Collection. This was made just after the second psalm when every one, excepting such as were to receive an alms, put in an alms however small the amount—halfpence was the coin most frequently dropt into the oblong box with half a lid and a long handle carried round to every individual. The Captain
and Mrs Grant put in pennies, so did Mr Cameron and our upper servants, so did the minister. We were always each given a sixpence for this purpose, my Mother gave a shilling and my father some unknown sum written on a bit of paper, in value I suppose equal to all the rest that was there. Who ever had the keeping of this fund, and it is strange that I should forget who this was, carefully preserved these bits of paper—my father redeemed them at the proper time, the beginning of winter when the gatherings of the year were divided in just proportions among all who wanted help. This was the way we provided for our poor before we were provided with poor laws. The dispersion of the crowd was a pretty sight, taking into account the landscapes, such picturesque groups filled with life—you must remember our own Sundays there and the scattering of the small flock the free kirk had left. The year I write of dreamed of no free kirk doings,4 the full kirk near filled the field, so many groups, filing off north, south, east and west, up the steep narrow road to the Drum, by the path through the bank of birchwood to the garden gate, along the green meadow beneath the guigne trees to the Doune farm offices—the servants by the green gate under the crooked beech tree to the house; the family, after shaking hands and speaking and bowing and smiling all round, returning by the flowdyke and the alders as they went. The minister dined with us, and thus ended our Sunday, but not our acquaintance with him. We got very much to like this strangely eccentrick man. His head was so well filled, and his heart, in spite of the snarl, so kindly, that old and young we took a fancy to him, and often prevailed on him to spend a few days with us. He was a disappointed man, equal to a much, or rather I should say to a very different, position, and be was lost in the manse of Duthil, far from any mind capable of understanding his, and not fitted by inclination or principles to go actively through the duties of his calling.
Memoirs of a Highland Lady Page 29