The Black Dwarf
The Black DwarfI. TALES OF MY LANDLORDII. INTRODUCTION to THE BLACK DWARF.III. THE BLACK DWARF.CHAPTER I.CHAPTER II.CHAPTER III.CHAPTER IV.CHAPTER V.CHAPTER VI.CHAPTER VII.CHAPTER VIII.CHAPTER IX.CHAPTER X.CHAPTER XI.CHAPTER XII.CHAPTER XIII.CHAPTER XIV.CHAPTER XV.CHAPTER XVI.CHAPTER XVII.CHAPTER XVIII.Copyright
The Black Dwarf
Walter Scott
I. TALES OF MY LANDLORD
COLLECTED AND REPORTED BY JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM, SCHOOLMASTER
AND PARISH-CLERK OF GANDERCLEUGH.INTRODUCTION.As I may, without vanity, presume that the name and official
description prefixed to this Proem will secure it, from the sedate
and reflecting part of mankind, to whom only I would be understood
to address myself, such attention as is due to the sedulous
instructor of youth, and the careful performer of my Sabbath
duties, I will forbear to hold up a candle to the daylight, or to
point out to the judicious those recommendations of my labours
which they must necessarily anticipate from the perusal of the
title-page. Nevertheless, I am not unaware, that, as Envy always
dogs Merit at the heels, there may be those who will whisper, that
albeit my learning and good principles cannot (lauded be the
heavens) be denied by any one, yet that my situation at
Gandercleugh hath been more favourable to my acquisitions in
learning than to the enlargement of my views of the ways and works
of the present generation. To the which objection, if,
peradventure, any such shall be started, my answer shall be
threefold:First, Gandercleugh is, as it were, the central part—the
navel (SI FAS SIT DICERE) of this our native realm of Scotland; so
that men, from every corner thereof, when travelling on their
concernments of business, either towards our metropolis of law, by
which I mean Edinburgh, or towards our metropolis and mart of gain,
whereby I insinuate Glasgow, are frequently led to make
Gandercleugh their abiding stage and place of rest for the night.
And it must be acknowledged by the most sceptical, that I, who have
sat in the leathern armchair, on the left-hand side of the fire, in
the common room of the Wallace Inn, winter and summer, for every
evening in my life, during forty years bypast (the Christian
Sabbaths only excepted), must have seen more of the manners and
customs of various tribes and people, than if I had sought them out
by my own painful travel and bodily labour. Even so doth the
tollman at the well-frequented turn-pike on the Wellbraehead,
sitting at his ease in his own dwelling, gather more receipt of
custom, than if, moving forth upon the road, he were to require a
contribution from each person whom he chanced to meet in his
journey, when, according to the vulgar adage, he might possibly be
greeted with more kicks than halfpence.But, secondly, supposing it again urged, that Ithacus, the
most wise of the Greeks, acquired his renown, as the Roman poet
hath assured us, by visiting states and men, I reply to the Zoilus
who shall adhere to this objection, that, DE FACTO, I have seen
states and men also; for I have visited the famous cities of
Edinburgh and Glasgow, the former twice, and the latter three
times, in the course of my earthly pilgrimage. And, moreover, I had
the honour to sit in the General Assembly (meaning, as an auditor,
in the galleries thereof), and have heard as much goodly speaking
on the law of patronage, as, with the fructification thereof in
mine own understanding, hath made me be considered as an oracle
upon that doctrine ever since my safe and happy return to
Gandercleugh.Again—and thirdly, If it be nevertheless pretended that my
information and knowledge of mankind, however extensive, and
however painfully acquired, by constant domestic enquiry, and by
foreign travel, is, natheless, incompetent to the task of recording
the pleasant narratives of my Landlord, I will let these critics
know, to their own eternal shame and confusion as well as to the
abashment and discomfiture of all who shall rashly take up a song
against me, that I am NOT the writer, redacter, or compiler, of the
Tales of my Landlord; nor am I, in one single iota, answerable for
their contents, more or less. And now, ye generation of critics,
who raise yourselves up as if it were brazen serpents, to hiss with
your tongues, and to smite with your stings, bow yourselves down to
your native dust, and acknowledge that yours have been the thoughts
of ignorance, and the words of vain foolishness. Lo! ye are caught
in your own snare, and your own pit hath yawned for you. Turn,
then, aside from the task that is too heavy for you; destroy not
your teeth by gnawing a file; waste not your strength by spurning
against a castle wall; nor spend your breath in contending in
swiftness with a fleet steed; and let those weigh the Tales of my
Landlord, who shall bring with them the scales of candour cleansed
from the rust of prejudice by the hands of intelligent modesty. For
these alone they were compiled, as will appear from a brief
narrative which my zeal for truth compelled me to make
supplementary to the present Proem.It is well known that my Landlord was a pleasing and a
facetious man, acceptable unto all the parish of Gandercleugh,
excepting only the Laird, the Exciseman, and those for whom he
refused to draw liquor upon trust. Their causes of dislike I will
touch separately, adding my own refutation thereof.His honour, the Laird, accused our Landlord, deceased, of
having encouraged, in various times and places, the destruction of
hares, rabbits, fowls black and grey, partridges, moor-pouts,
roe-deer, and other birds and quadrupeds, at unlawful seasons, and
contrary to the laws of this realm, which have secured, in their
wisdom, the slaughter of such animals for the great of the earth,
whom I have remarked to take an uncommon (though to me, an
unintelligible) pleasure therein. Now, in humble deference to his
honour, and in justifiable defence of my friend deceased, I reply
to this charge, that howsoever the form of such animals might
appear to be similar to those so protected by the law, yet it was a
mere DECEPTIO VISUS; for what resembled hares were, in fact,
HILL-KIDS, and those partaking of the appearance of moor-fowl, were
truly WOOD PIGEONS and consumed and eaten EO NOMINE, and not
otherwise.Again, the Exciseman pretended, that my deceased Landlord did
encourage that species of manufacture called distillation, without
having an especial permission from the Great, technically called a
license, for doing so. Now, I stand up to confront this falsehood;
and in defiance of him, his gauging-stick, and pen and inkhorn, I
tell him, that I never saw, or tasted, a glass of unlawful aqua
vitae in the house of my Landlord; nay, that, on the contrary, we
needed not such devices, in respect of a pleasing and somewhat
seductive liquor, which was vended and consumed at the Wallace Inn,
under the name of MOUNTAIN DEW. If there is a penalty against
manufacturing such a liquor, let him show me the statute; and when
he does, I'll tell him if I will obey it or no.Concerning those who came to my Landlord for liquor, and went
thirsty away, for lack of present coin, or future credit, I cannot
but say it has grieved my bowels as if the case had been mine own.
Nevertheless, my Landlord considered the necessities of a thirsty
soul, and would permit them, in extreme need, and when their soul
was impoverished for lack of moisture, to drink to the full value
of their watches and wearing apparel, exclusively of their inferior
habiliments, which he was uniformly inexorable in obliging them to
retain, for the credit of the house. As to mine own part, I may
well say, that he never refused me that modicum of refreshment with
which I am wont to recruit nature after the fatigues of my school.
It is true, I taught his five sons English and Latin, writing,
book-keeping, with a tincture of mathematics, and that I instructed
his daughter in psalmody. Nor do I remember me of any fee or
HONORARIUM received from him on account of these my labours, except
the compotations aforesaid. Nevertheless this compensation suited
my humour well, since it is a hard sentence to bid a dry throat
wait till quarter-day.But, truly, were I to speak my simple conceit and belief, I
think my Landlord was chiefly moved to waive in my behalf the usual
requisition of a symbol, or reckoning, from the pleasure he was
wont to take in my conversation, which, though solid and edifying
in the main, was, like a well-built palace, decorated with
facetious narratives and devices, tending much to the enhancement
and ornament thereof. And so pleased was my Landlord of the Wallace
in his replies during such colloquies, that there was no district
in Scotland, yea, and no peculiar, and, as it were, distinctive
custom therein practised, but was discussed betwixt us; insomuch,
that those who stood by were wont to say, it was worth a bottle of
ale to hear us communicate with each other. And not a few
travellers, from distant parts, as well as from the remote
districts of our kingdom, were wont to mingle in the conversation,
and to tell news that had been gathered in foreign lands, or
preserved from oblivion in this our own.Now I chanced to have contracted for teaching the lower
classes with a young person called Peter, or Patrick, Pattieson,
who had been educated for our Holy Kirk, yea, had, by the license
of presbytery, his voice opened therein as a preacher, who
delighted in the collection of olden tales and legends, and in
garnishing them with the flowers of poesy, whereof he was a vain
and frivolous professor. For he followed not the example of those
strong poets whom I proposed to him as a pattern, but formed
versification of a flimsy and modern texture, to the compounding
whereof was necessary small pains and less thought. And hence I
have chid him as being one of those who bring forward the fatal
revolution prophesied by Mr. Robert Carey, in his Vaticination on
the Death of the celebrated Dr. John Donne:Now thou art gone, and thy strict
laws will be Too hard for libertines in
poetry; Till verse (by thee refined) in this
last age Turn ballad rhyme.I had also disputations with him touching his indulging
rather a flowing and redundant than a concise and stately diction
in his prose exercitations. But notwithstanding these symptoms of
inferior taste, and a humour of contradicting his betters upon
passages of dubious construction in Latin authors, I did grievously
lament when Peter Pattieson was removed from me by death, even as
if he had been the offspring of my own loins. And in respect his
papers had been left in my care (to answer funeral and death-bed
expenses), I conceived myself entitled to dispose of one parcel
thereof, entitled, "Tales of my Landlord," to one cunning in the
trade (as it is called) of bookselling. He was a mirthful man, of
small stature, cunning in counterfeiting of voices, and in making
facetious tales and responses, and whom I have to laud for the
truth of his dealings towards me.Now, therefore, the world may see the injustice that charges
me with incapacity to write these narratives, seeing, that though I
have proved that I could have written them if I would, yet, not
having done so, the censure will deservedly fall, if at all due,
upon the memory of Mr. Peter Pattieson; whereas I must be justly
entitled to the praise, when any is due, seeing that, as the Dean
of St. Patrick's wittily and logically expresseth it,That without which a thing is
not, Is CAUSA SINE QUA NON.The work, therefore, is unto me as a child is to a parent; in
the which child, if it proveth worthy, the parent hath honour and
praise; but, if otherwise, the disgrace will deservedly attach to
itself alone.I have only further to intimate, that Mr. Peter Pattieson, in
arranging these Tales for the press, hath more consulted his own
fancy than the accuracy of the narrative; nay, that he hath
sometimes blended two or three stories together for the mere grace
of his plots. Of which infidelity, although I disapprove and enter
my testimony against it, yet I have not taken upon me to correct
the same, in respect it was the will of the deceased, that his
manuscript should be submitted to the press without diminution or
alteration. A fanciful nicety it was on the part of my deceased
friend, who, if thinking wisely, ought rather to have conjured me,
by all the tender ties of our friendship and common pursuits, to
have carefully revised, altered, and augmented, at my judgment and
discretion. But the will of the dead must be scrupulously obeyed,
even when we weep over their pertinacity and self-delusion. So,
gentle reader, I bid you farewell, recommending you to such fare as
the mountains of your own country produce; and I will only farther
premise, that each Tale is preceded by a short introduction,
mentioning the persons by whom, and the circumstances under which,
the materials thereof were collected.JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM.
II. INTRODUCTION to THE BLACK DWARF.
The ideal being who is here presented as residing in
solitude, and haunted by a consciousness of his own deformity, and
a suspicion of his being generally subjected to the scorn of his
fellow-men, is not altogether imaginary. An individual existed many
years since, under the author's observation, which suggested such a
character. This poor unfortunate man's name was David Ritchie, a
native of Tweeddale. He was the son of a labourer in the
slate-quarries of Stobo, and must have been born in the misshapen
form which he exhibited, though he sometimes imputed it to
ill-usage when in infancy. He was bred a brush-maker at Edinburgh,
and had wandered to several places, working at his trade, from all
which he was chased by the disagreeable attention which his hideous
singularity of form and face attracted wherever he came. The author
understood him to say he had even been in Dublin.Tired at length of being the object of shouts, laughter, and
derision, David Ritchie resolved, like a deer hunted from the herd,
to retreat to some wilderness, where he might have the least
possible communication with the world which scoffed at him. He
settled himself, with this view, upon a patch of wild moorland at
the bottom of a bank on the farm of Woodhouse, in the sequestered
vale of the small river Manor, in Peeblesshire. The few people who
had occasion to pass that way were much surprised, and some
superstitious persons a little alarmed, to see so strange a figure
as Bow'd Davie (i.e. Crooked David) employed in a task, for which
he seemed so totally unfit, as that of erecting a house. The
cottage which he built was extremely small, but the walls, as well
as those of a little garden that surrounded it, were constructed
with an ambitious degree of solidity, being composed of layers of
large stones and turf; and some of the corner stones were so
weighty, as to puzzle the spectators how such a person as the
architect could possibly have raised them. In fact, David received
from passengers, or those who came attracted by curiosity, a good
deal of assistance; and as no one knew how much aid had been given
by others, the wonder of each individual remained
undiminished.The proprietor of the ground, the late Sir James Naesmith,
baronet, chanced to pass this singular dwelling, which, having been
placed there without right or leave asked or given, formed an exact
parallel with Falstaff's simile of a "fair house built on another's
ground;" so that poor David might have lost his edifice by
mistaking the property where he had erected it. Of course, the
proprietor entertained no idea of exacting such a forfeiture, but
readily sanctioned the harmless encroachment.The personal description of Elshender of Mucklestane-Moor has
been generally allowed to be a tolerably exact and unexaggerated
portrait of David of Manor Water. He was not quite three feet and a
half high, since he could stand upright in the door of his mansion,
which was just that height. The following particulars concerning
his figure and temper occur in the SCOTS MAGAZINE for 1817, and are
now understood to have been communicated by the ingenious Mr.
Robert Chambers of Edinburgh, who has recorded with much spirit the
traditions of the Good Town, and, in other publications, largely
and agreeably added to the stock of our popular antiquities. He is
the countryman of David Ritchie, and had the best access to collect
anecdotes of him."His skull," says this authority, "which was of an oblong and
rather unusual shape, was said to be of such strength, that he
could strike it with ease through the panel of a door, or the end
of a barrel. His laugh is said to have been quite horrible; and his
screech-owl voice, shrill, uncouth, and dissonant, corresponded
well with his other peculiarities."There was nothing very uncommon about his dress. He usually
wore an old slouched hat when he went abroad; and when at home, a
sort of cowl or night-cap. He never wore shoes, being unable to
adapt them to his mis-shapen finlike feet, but always had both feet
and legs quite concealed, and wrapt up with pieces of cloth. He
always walked with a sort of pole or pike-staff, considerably
taller than himself. His habits were, in many respects, singular,
and indicated a mind congenial to its uncouth tabernacle. A
jealous, misanthropical, and irritable temper, was his prominent
characteristic. The sense of his deformity haunted him like a
phantom. And the insults and scorn to which this exposed him, had
poisoned his heart with fierce and bitter feelings, which, from
other points in his character, do not appear to have been more
largely infused into his original temperament than that of his
fellow-men."He detested children, on account of their propensity to
insult and persecute him. To strangers he was generally reserved,
crabbed, and surly; and though he by no means refused assistance or
charity, he seldom either expressed or exhibited much gratitude.
Even towards persons who had been his greatest benefactors, and who
possessed the greatest share of his good-will, he frequently
displayed much caprice and jealousy. A lady who had known him from
his infancy, and who has furnished us in the most obliging manner
with some particulars respecting him, says, that although Davie
showed as much respect and attachment to her father's family, as it
was in his nature to show to any, yet they were always obliged to
be very cautious in their deportment towards him. One day, having
gone to visit him with another lady, he took them through his
garden, and was showing them, with much pride and good-humour, all
his rich and tastefully assorted borders, when they happened to
stop near a plot of cabbages which had been somewhat injured by the
caterpillars. Davie, observing one of the ladies smile, instantly
assumed his savage, scowling aspect, rushed among the cabbages, and
dashed them to pieces with his KENT, exclaiming, 'I hate the worms,
for they mock me!'"Another lady, likewise a friend and old acquaintance of his,
very unintentionally gave David mortal offence on a similar
occasion. Throwing back his jealous glance as he was ushering her
into his garden, he fancied he observed her spit, and exclaimed,
with great ferocity, 'Am I a toad, woman! that ye spit at me—that
ye spit at me?' and without listening to any answer or excuse,
drove her out of his garden with imprecations and insult. When
irritated by persons for whom he entertained little respect, his
misanthropy displayed itself in words, and sometimes in actions, of
still greater rudeness; and he used on such occasions the most
unusual and singularly savage imprecations and threats." [SCOTS
MAGAZINE, vol. lxxx. p.207.]Nature maintains a certain balance of good and evil in all
her works; and there is no state perhaps so utterly desolate, which
does not possess some source of gratification peculiar to itself,
This poor man, whose misanthropy was founded in a sense on his own
preternatural deformity, had yet his own particular enjoyments.
Driven into solitude, he became an admirer of the beauties of
nature. His garden, which he sedulously cultivated, and from a
piece of wild moorland made a very productive spot, was his pride
and his delight; but he was also an admirer of more natural beauty:
the soft sweep of the green hill, the bubbling of a clear fountain,
or the complexities of a wild thicket, were scenes on which he
often gazed for hours, and, as he said, with inexpressible delight.
It was perhaps for this reason that he was fond of Shenstone's
pastorals, and some parts of PARADISE LOST. The author has heard
his most unmusical voice repeat the celebrated description of
Paradise, which he seemed fully to appreciate. His other studies
were of a different cast, chiefly polemical. He never went to the
parish church, and was therefore suspected of entertaining
heterodox opinions, though his objection was probably to the
concourse of spectators, to whom he must have exposed his unseemly
deformity. He spoke of a future state with intense feeling, and
even with tears. He expressed disgust at the idea, of his remains
being mixed with the common rubbish, as he called it, of the
churchyard, and selected with his usual taste a beautiful and wild
spot in the glen where he had his hermitage, in which to take his
last repose. He changed his mind, however, and was finally interred
in the common burial-ground of Manor parish.The author has invested Wise Elshie with some qualities which
made him appear, in the eyes of the vulgar, a man possessed of
supernatural power. Common fame paid David Ritchie a similar
compliment, for some of the poor and ignorant, as well as all the
children, in the neighbourhood, held him to be what is called
uncanny. He himself did not altogether discourage the idea; it
enlarged his very limited circle of power, and in so far gratified
his conceit; and it soothed his misanthropy, by increasing his
means of giving terror or pain. But even in a rude Scottish glen
thirty years back, the fear of sorcery was very much out of
date.David Ritchie affected to frequent solitary scenes,
especially such as were supposed to be haunted, and valued himself
upon his courage in doing so. To be sure he had little chance of
meeting anything more ugly than himself. At heart, he was
superstitious, and planted many rowans (mountain ashes) around his
hut, as a certain defence against necromancy. For the same reason,
doubtless, he desired to have rowan-trees set above his
grave.We have stated that David Ritchie loved objects of natural
beauty. His only living favourites were a dog and a cat, to which
he was particularly attached, and his bees, which he treated with
great care. He took a sister, latterly, to live in a hut adjacent
to his own, but he did not permit her to enter it. She was weak in
intellect, but not deformed in person; simple, or rather silly, but
not, like her brother, sullen or bizarre. David was never
affectionate to her; it was not in his nature; but he endured her.
He maintained himself and her by the sale of the product of their
garden and bee-hives; and, latterly, they had a small allowance
from the parish. Indeed, in the simple and patriarchal state in
which the country then was, persons in the situation of David and
his sister were sure to be supported. They had only to apply to the
next gentleman or respectable farmer, and were sure to find them
equally ready and willing to supply their very moderate wants.
David often received gratuities from strangers, which he never
asked, never refused, and never seemed to consider as an
obligation. He had a right, indeed, to regard himself as one of
Nature's paupers, to whom she gave a title to be maintained by his
kind, even by that deformity which closed against him all ordinary
ways of supporting himself by his own labour. Besides, a bag was
suspended in the mill for David Ritchie's benefit; and those who
were carrying home a melder of meal, seldom failed to add a GOWPEN
[Handful] to the alms-bag of the deformed cripple. In short, David
had no occasion for money, save to purchase snuff, his only luxury,
in which he indulged himself liberally. When he died, in the
beginning of the present century, he was found to have hoarded
about twenty pounds, a habit very consistent with his disposition;
for wealth is power, and power was what David Ritchie desired to
possess, as a compensation for his exclusion from human
society.His sister survived till the publication of the tale to which
this brief notice forms the introduction; and the author is sorry
to learn that a sort of "local sympathy," and the curiosity then
expressed concerning the Author of WAVERLEY and the subjects of his
Novels, exposed the poor woman to enquiries which gave her pain.
When pressed about her brother's peculiarities, she asked, in her
turn, why they would not permit the dead to rest? To others, who
pressed for some account of her parents, she answered in the same
tone of feeling.The author saw this poor, and, it may be said, unhappy man,
in autumn 1797 being then, as he has the happiness still to remain,
connected by ties of intimate friendship with the family of the
venerable Dr. Adam Fergusson, the philosopher and historian, who
then resided at the mansion-house of Halyards, in the vale of
Manor, about a mile from Ritchie's hermitage, the author was upon a
visit at Halyards, which lasted for several days, and was made
acquainted with this singular anchorite, whom Dr. Fergusson
considered as an extraordinary character, and whom he assisted in
various ways, particularly by the occasional loan of books. Though
the taste of the philosopher and the poor peasant did not, it may
be supposed, always correspond, [I remember David was particularly
anxious to see a book, which he called, I think, LETTERS TO ELECT
LADIES, and which, he said, was the best composition he had ever
read; but Dr. Fergusson's library did not supply the volume.] Dr.
Fergusson considered him as a man of a powerful capacity and
original ideas, but whose mind was thrown off its just bias by a
predominant degree of self-love and self-opinion, galled by the
sense of ridicule and contempt, and avenging itself upon society,
in idea at least, by a gloomy misanthropy.David Ritchie, besides the utter obscurity of his life while
in existence, had been dead for many years, when it occurred to the
author that such a character might be made a powerful agent in
fictitious narrative. He, accordingly, sketched that of Elshie of
the Mucklestane-Moor. The story was intended to be longer, and the
catastrophe more artificially brought out; but a friendly critic,
to whose opinion I subjected the work in its progress, was of
opinion, that the idea of the Solitary was of a kind too revolting,
and more likely to disgust than to interest the reader. As I had
good right to consider my adviser as an excellent judge of public
opinion, I got off my subject by hastening the story to an end, as
fast as it was possible; and, by huddling into one volume, a tale
which was designed to occupy two, have perhaps produced a narrative
as much disproportioned and distorted, as the Black Dwarf who is
its subject.
III. THE BLACK DWARF.
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY.Hast any philosophy in thee,
Shepherd?—AS YOU LIKE IT.It was a fine April morning (excepting that it had snowed
hard the night before, and the ground remained covered with a
dazzling mantle of six inches in depth) when two horsemen rode up
to the Wallace Inn. The first was a strong, tall, powerful man, in
a grey riding-coat, having a hat covered with waxcloth, a huge
silver-mounted horsewhip, boots, and dreadnought overalls. He was
mounted on a large strong brown mare, rough in coat, but well in
condition, with a saddle of the yeomanry cut, and a double-bitted
military bridle. The man who accompanied him was apparently his
servant; he rode a shaggy little grey pony, had a blue bonnet on
his head, and a large check napkin folded about his neck, wore a
pair of long blue worsted hose instead of boots, had his gloveless
hands much stained with tar, and observed an air of deference and
respect towards his companion, but without any of those indications
of precedence and punctilio which are preserved between the gentry
and their domestics. On the contrary, the two travellers entered
the court-yard abreast, and the concluding sentence of the
conversation which had been carrying on betwixt them was a joint
ejaculation, "Lord guide us, an this weather last, what will come
o' the lambs!" The hint was sufficient for my Landlord, who,
advancing to take the horse of the principal person, and holding
him by the reins as he dismounted, while his ostler rendered the
same service to the attendant, welcomed the stranger to
Gandercleugh, and, in the same breath, enquired, "What news from
the south hielands?""News?" said the farmer, "bad eneugh news, I think;—an we can
carry through the yowes, it will be a' we can do; we maun e'en
leave the lambs to the Black Dwarfs care.""Ay, ay," subjoined the old shepherd (for such he was),
shaking his head, "he'll be unco busy amang the morts this
season.""The Black Dwarf!" said MY LEARNED FRIEND AND PATRON, Mr.
Jedediah Cleishbotham, "and what sort of a personage may he
be?"[We have, in this and other instances, printed in italics
(CAPITALS in this etext) some few words which the worthy editor,
Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham, seems to have interpolated upon the text
of his deceased friend, Mr. Pattieson. We must observe, once for
all, that such liberties seem only to have been taken by the
learned gentleman where his own character and conduct are
concerned; and surely he must be the best judge of the style in
which his own character and conduct should be treated
of.]"Hout awa, man," answered the farmer, "ye'll hae heard o'
Canny Elshie the Black Dwarf, or I am muckle mistaen—A' the warld
tells tales about him, but it's but daft nonsense after a'—I dinna
believe a word o't frae beginning to end.""Your father believed it unco stievely, though," said the old
man, to whom the scepticism of his master gave obvious
displeasure."Ay, very true, Bauldie, but that was in the time o' the
blackfaces—they believed a hantle queer things in thae days, that
naebody heeds since the lang sheep cam in.""The mair's the pity, the mair's the pity," said the old man.
"Your father, and sae I have aften tell'd ye, maister, wad hae been
sair vexed to hae seen the auld peel-house wa's pu'd down to make
park dykes; and the bonny broomy knowe, where he liked sae weel to
sit at e'en, wi' his plaid about him, and look at the kye as they
cam down the loaning, ill wad he hae liked to hae seen that braw
sunny knowe a' riven out wi' the pleugh in the fashion it is at
this day.""Hout, Bauldie," replied the principal, "tak ye that dram the
landlord's offering ye, and never fash your head about the changes
o' the warld, sae lang as ye're blithe and bien
yoursell.""Wussing your health, sirs," said the shepherd; and having
taken off his glass, and observed the whisky was the right thing,
he continued, "It's no for the like o' us to be judging, to be
sure; but it was a bonny knowe that broomy knowe, and an unco braw
shelter for the lambs in a severe morning like this.""Ay," said his patron, "but ye ken we maun hae turnips for
the lang sheep, billie, and muckle hard wark to get them, baith wi'
the pleugh and the howe; and that wad sort ill wi' sitting on the
broomy knowe, and cracking about Black Dwarfs, and siccan clavers,
as was the gate lang syne, when the short sheep were in the
fashion.""Aweel, aweel, maister," said the attendant, "short sheep had
short rents, I'm thinking."Here my WORTHY AND LEARNED patron again interposed, and
observed, "that he could never perceive any material difference, in
point of longitude, between one sheep and another."This occasioned a loud hoarse laugh on the part of the
farmer, and an astonished stare on the part of the
shepherd."It's the woo', man,—it's the woo', and no the beasts
themsells, that makes them be ca'd lang or short. I believe if ye
were to measure their backs, the short sheep wad be rather the
langer-bodied o' the twa; but it's the woo' that pays the rent in
thae days, and it had muckle need."