[He was probably thinking of a famous Edinburgh character, "Singing Jamie
Balfour." Jamie was found very drunk and adhering to the pavement one
night. He could not raise himself; but when helped to his feet, ran his
preserver a race to the tavern, and won!]

The account of the year's work which preceded "Guy Mannering" is given by
Lockhart, and is astounding. In 1814 Scott had written, Lockhart
believes, the greater part of the "Life of Swift," most of "Waverley" and
the "Lord of the Isles;" he had furnished essays to the "Encyclopaedia,"
and had edited "The Memorie of the Somervilles." The spider might well
seem spun out, the tilth exhausted. But Scott had a fertility, a
spontaneity, of fancy equalled only, if equalled at all, by Alexandre
Dumas.

On November 7 of this laborious year, 1814, Scott was writing to Mr.
Joseph Train, thanking him for a parcel of legendary lore, including the
Galloway tale of the wandering astrologer and a budget of gypsy
traditions.  Falling in the rich soil of Scott's imagination, the tale of
the astrologer yielded a name and an opening to "Guy Mannering," while
the gypsy lore blossomed into the legend of Meg Merrilies. The seed of
the novel was now sown. But between November 11 and December 25 Scott was
writing the three last cantos of the "Lord of the Isles." Yet before the
"Lord of the Isles" was published (Jan. 18, 1815), two volumes of "Guy
Mannering" were in print  (Letter to Morritt, Jan. 17, 1815.) The novel
was issued on Feb. 14, 1815. Scott, as he says somewhere, was like the
turnspit dog, into whose wheel a hot cinder is dropped to encourage his
activity. Scott needed hot cinders in the shape of proof-sheets fresh
from the press, and he worked most busily when the printer's devil was
waiting. In this case, not only the printer's devil, but the wolf was at
the door. The affairs of the Ballantynes clamoured for moneys In their
necessity and his own, Scott wrote at the rate of a volume in ten days,
and for some financial reason published "Guy Mannering" with Messrs.
Longmans, not with Constable. Scott was at this moment facing creditors
and difficulties as Napoleon faced the armies of the Allies,--present
everywhere, everywhere daring and successful. True, his "Lord of the
Isles" was a disappointment, as James Ballantyne informed him. "'Well,
James, so be it; but you know we must not droop, for we cannot afford to
give over. Since one line has failed, we must just stick to something
else.' And so he dismissed me, and resumed his novel."

In these circumstances, far from inspiring, was "Guy Mannering" written
and hurried through the press. The story has its own history: one can
watch the various reminiscences and experiences of life that crystallized
together in Scott's mind, and grouped themselves fantastically into his
unpremeditated plot. Sir Walter gives, in the preface of 1829, the legend
which he heard from John MacKinlay, his father's Highland servant, and on
which he meant to found a tale more in Hawthorn's manner than in his own.
That plan he changed in the course of printing, "leaving only just enough
of astrology to annoy pedantic reviewers and foolish Puritans." Whence
came the rest of the plot,--the tale of the long-lost heir, and so on?
The true heir, "kept out of his own," and returning in disguise, has been
a favourite character ever since Homer sang of Odysseus, and probably
long before that. But it is just possible that Scott had a certain modern
instance in his mind. In turning over the old manuscript diary at
Branxholme Park (mentioned in a note to "Waverley"), the Editor lighted
on a singular tale, which, in the diarist's opinion, might have suggested
"Guy Mannering" to Sir Walter. The resemblance between the story of
Vanbeest Brown and the hero of the diarist was scanty; but in a long
letter of Scott's to Lady Abercorn (May 21, 1813), a the Editor finds Sir
Walter telling his correspondent the very narrative recorded in the
Branxholme Park diary. Singular things happen, Sir Walter says; and he
goes on to describe a case just heard in the court where he is sitting as
Clerk of Sessions. Briefly, the anecdote is this: A certain Mr.
Carruthers of Dormont had reason to suspect his wife's fidelity. While
proceedings for a divorce were pending, Mrs. Carruthers bore a daughter,
of whom her husband, of course, was legally the father. But he did not
believe in the relationship, and sent the infant girl to be brought up,
in ignorance of her origin and in seclusion, among the Cheviot Hills.
Here she somehow learned the facts of her own story. She married a Mr.
Routledge, the son of a yeoman, and "compounded" her rights (but not
those of her issue) for a small sung of ready money, paid by old Dormont.
She bears a boy; then she and her husband died in poverty. Their son was
sent by a friend to the East Indies, and was presented with a packet of
papers, which he left unopened at a lawyer's. The young man made a
fortune in India, returned to Scotland, and took a shooting in
Dumfriesshire, near bormont, his ancestral home. He lodged at a small inn
hard by, and the landlady, struck by his name, began to gossip with him
about his family history. He knew nothing of the facts which the landlady
disclosed, but, impressed by her story, sent for and examined his
neglected packet of papers. Then he sought legal opinion, and was
advised, by President Blair, that he had a claim worth presenting on the
estate of Dormont. "The first decision of the cause," writes Scott, "was
favourable." The true heir celebrated his legal victory by a
dinner-party, and his friends saluted him as "Dormont." Next morning he
was found dead. Such is the true tale. As it occupied Scott's mind in
1813, and as he wrote "Guy Mannering" in 1814-15, it is not impossible
that he may have borrowed his wandering heir, who returns by pure
accident to his paternal domains, and there learns his origin at a
woman's lips, from the Dormont case. The resemblance of the stories, at
least, was close enough to strike a shrewd observer some seventy years
ago.

Another possible source of the plot--a more romantic origin,
certainly--is suggested by Mr. Robert Chambers in "Illustrations of the
Author of 'Waverley.'" A Maxwell of Glenormiston, "a religious and
bigoted recluse," sent his only son and heir to a Jesuit College in
Flanders, left his estate in his brother's management, and died. The
wicked uncle alleged that the heir was also dead. The child, ignorant of
his birth, grew up, ran away from the Jesuits at the age of sixteen,
enlisted in the French army, fought at Fontenoy, got his colours, and,
later, landed in the Moray Firth as a French officer in 1745. He went
through the campaign, was in hiding in Lochaber after Drumossie, and in
making for a Galloway port, was seized, and imprisoned in Dumfries. Here
an old woman of his father's household recognized him by "a mark which
she remembered on his body." His cause was taken up by friends; but the
usurping uncle died, and Sir Robert Maxwell recovered his estates without
a lawsuit. This anecdote is quoted from the "New Monthly Magazine," June,
1819. There is nothing to prove that Scott was acquainted with this
adventure. Scott's own experience, as usual, supplied him with hints for
his characters. The phrase of Dominie Sampson's father, "Please God, my
bairn may live to wag his pow in a pulpit," was uttered in his own
hearing. There was a Bluegown, or Bedesman, like Edie Ochiltree, who had
a son at Edinburgh College. Scott was kind to the son, the Bluegown asked
him to dinner, and at this meal the old man made the remark about the
pulpit and the pow.' A similar tale is told by Scott in the Introduction
to "The Antiquary" (1830). As for the good Dominie, Scott remarks that,
for "certain particular reasons," he must say what he has to say about
his prototype "very generally." Mr. Chambers' finds the prototype in a
Mr. James Sanson, tutor in the house of Mr. Thomas Scott, Sir Walter's
uncle. It seems very unlike Sir Walter to mention this excellent man
almost by his name, and the tale about his devotion to his patron's
daughter cannot, apparently, be true of Mr. James Sanson. The prototype
of Pleydell, according to Sir Walter himself (Journal, June 19, 1830),
was "my old friend Adam Rolland, Esq., in external circumstances, but not
in frolic or fancy." Mr. Chambers, however, finds the original in Mr.
Andrew Crosbie, an advocate of great talents, who frolicked to ruin, and
died in 1785. Scott may have heard tales of this patron of "High Jinks,"
but cannot have known him much personally. Dandie Dinmont is simply the
typical Border farmer. Mr. Shortreed, Scott's companion in his Liddesdale
raids, thought that Willie Elliot, in Millburnholm, was the great
original. Scott did not meet Mr. James Davidson in Hindlee, owner of all
the Mustards and Peppers, till some years after the novel was written.
"Guy Mannering," when read to him, sent Mr. Davidson to sleep. "The kind
and manly character of Dandie, the gentle and delicious one of his wife,"
and the circumstances of their home, were suggested, Lockhart thinks, by
Scott's friend, steward, and amanuensis, Mr. William Laidlaw, by Mrs.
Laidlaw, and by their farm among the braes of Yarrow. In truth, the
Border was peopled then by Dandies and Ailies: nor is the race even now
extinct in Liddesdale and Teviotdale, in Ettrick and Yarrow. As for
Mustard and Pepper, their offspring too is powerful in the land, and is
the deadly foe of vermin. The curious may consult Mr. Cook's work on "The
Dandie Dinmont Terrier." The Duke of Buccleugh's breed still resembles
the fine example painted by Gainsborough in his portrait of the duke (of
Scott's time). "Tod Gabbie," again, as Lockhart says, was studied from
Tod Willie, the huntsman of the hills above Loch Skene. As for the
Galloway scenery, Scott did not know it well, having only visited "the
Kingdom" in 1793, when he was defending the too frolicsome Mr. McNaught,
Minister of Girthon. The beautiful and lonely wilds of the Glenkens, in
central Galloway, where traditions yet linger, were, unluckily, terra
incognita to Scott. A Galloway story of a murder and its detection by the
prints of the assassin's boots inspired the scene where Dirk Hatteraick
is traced by similar means. In Colonel Mannering, by the way, the Ettrick
Shepherd recognized "Walter Scott, painted by himself."

The reception of "Guy Mannering" was all that could be wished. William
Erskine and Ballantyne were "of opinion that it is much more interesting
than 'Waverley.'" Mr. Morritt (March, 1815) pronounced himself
to be "quite charmed with Dandie, Meg Merrilies, and Dirk
Hatteraick,--characters as original as true to nature, and as forcibly
conceived as, I had almost said, could have been drawn by Shakspeare
himself." The public were not less appreciative. Two thousand copies, at
a guinea, were sold the day after publication, and three thousand more
were disposed of in three months. The professional critics acted just as
Scott, speaking in general terms, had prophesied that they would. Let us
quote the "British Critic" (1815).

"There are few spectacles in the literary world more lamentable than to
view a successful author, in his second appearance before the public,
limping lamely after himself, and treading tediously and awkwardly in the
very same round, which, in his first effort, he had traced with vivacity
and applause. We would not be harsh enough to say that the Author of
'Waverley' is in this predicament, but we are most unwillingly compelled
to assert that the second effort falls far below the standard of the
first. In 'Waverley' there was brilliancy of genius.... In 'Guy
Mannering' there is little else beyond the wild sallies of an original
genius, the bold and irregular efforts of a powerful but an exhausted
mind. Time enough has not been allowed him to recruit his resources, both
of anecdote and wit; but, encouraged by the credit so justly, bestowed
upon one of then most finished portraits ever presented to the world, he
has followed up the exhibition with a careless and hurried sketch, which
betrays at once the weakness and the strength of its author.

"The character of Dirk Hatteraick is a faithful copy from nature,--it is
one of those moral monsters which make us almost ashamed of our kind.
Still, amidst the ruffian and murderous brutality of the smuggler, some
few feelings of our common nature are thrown in with no less ingenuity
than truth. . . . The remainder of the personages are very little above
the cast of a common lively novel. . . . The Edinburgh lawyer is perhaps
the most original portrait; nor are the saturnalia of the Saturday
evenings described without humour. The Dominie is overdrawn and
inconsistent; while the young ladies present nothing above par. . . .

"There are parts of this novel which none but one endowed with the
sublimity of genius could have dictated; there are others which any
ordinary character cobbler might as easily have stitched together. There
are sparks both of pathos and of humour, even in the dullest parts, which
could be elicited from none but the Author of 'Waverley.' . . . If,
indeed, we have spoken in a manner derogatory to this, his later effort,
our censure arises only from its comparison with the former. . .

"We cannot, however, conclude this article without remarking the absurd
influence which our Author unquestionably attributes to the calculations
of judicial astrology. No power of chance alone could have fulfilled the
joint predictions both of Guy Mannering and Meg Merrilies; we cannot
suppose that the Author can be endowed with sufficient folly to believe
in the influence of planetary conjunctions himself, nor to have so
miserable an idea of the understanding of his readers as to suppose them
capable of a similar belief. We must also remember that the time of this
novel is not in the dark ages, but scarcely forty years since; no aid,
therefore, can be derived from the general tendency of popular
superstition. What the clew may be to this apparent absurdity, we cannot
imagine; whether the Author be in jest or earnest we do not know, and we
are willing to suppose in this dilemma that he does not know himself."

The "Monthly Review" sorrowed, like the "British," over the encouragement
given to the follies of astrology. The "Critical Review" "must lament
that 'Guy Mannering' is too often written in language unintelligible to
all except the Scotch." The "Critical Monthly" also had scruples about
morality. The novel "advocates duelling, encourages a taste for peeping
into the future,--a taste by far too prevalent,--and it is not over nice
on religious subjects!"

The "Quarterly Review" distinguished itself by stupidity, if not by
spite. "The language of 'Guy Mannering,' though characteristic, is mean;
the state of society, though peculiar, is vulgar. Meg Merrilies is
swelled into a very unnatural importance." The speech of Meg Merrilies to
Ellangowan is "one of the few which affords an intelligible extract." The
Author "does not even scruple to overturn the laws of Nature"--because
Colonel Mannering resides in the neighbourhood of Ellangowan! "The Author
either gravely believes what no other man alive believes, or he has, of
malice prepense, committed so great an offence against good taste as to
build his story on what he must know to be a contemptible absurdity. . . .
The greater part of the characters, their manners and dialect, are at
once barbarous and vulgar, extravagant and mean. . . . The work would be,
on the whole, improved by being translated into English. Though we
cannot, on the whole, speak of the novel with approbation, we will not
affect to deny that we read it with interest, and that it repaid us with
amusement."

It is in reviewing "The Antiquary" that the immortal idiot of the
"Quarterly" complains about "the dark dialect of Anglified Erse."
Published criticism never greatly affected Scott's spirits,--probably, he
very seldom read it. He knew that the public, like Constable's friend
Mrs. Stewart, were "reading 'Guy Mannering' all day, and dreaming of it
all night."

Indeed, it is much better to read "Guy Mannering" than to criticise it. A
book written in six weeks, a book whose whole plot and conception was
changed "in the printing," must have its faults of construction. Thus, we
meet Mannering first as "a youthful lover," a wanderer at adventure, an
amateur astrologer, and suddenly we lose sight of him, and only recover
him as a disappointed, "disilluded," and weary, though still vigorous,
veteran. This is the inevitable result of a novel based on a prediction.
Either you have to leap some twenty years just when you are becoming
familiar with the persons, or you have to begin in the midst of the
events foreseen, and then make a tedious return to explain the prophecy.
Again, it was necessary for Scott to sacrifice Frank Kennedy, who is
rather a taking adventurer, like Bothwell in "Old Mortality." Readers
regret the necessity which kills Kennedy. The whole fortunes of Vanbeest
Brown, his duel with the colonel, and his fortunate appearance in the
nick of time, seem too rich in coincidences: still, as the Dormont case
and the Ormiston case have shown, coincidences as unlooked for do occur.
A fastidious critic has found fault with Brown's flageolet. It is a
modest instrument; but what was he to play upon,--a lute, a concertina, a
barrel-organ?

The characters of the young ladies have not always been applauded. Taste,
in the matter of heroines, varies greatly; Sir Walter had no high opinion
of his own skill in delineating them. But Julia Mannering is probably a
masterly picture of a girl of that age,--a girl with some silliness and
more gaiety, with wit, love of banter, and, in the last resort, sense and
good feeling. She is particularly good when, in fear and trembling, she
teases her imposing father.

"I expect," says Colonel Mannering, "that you will pay to this young lady
that attention which is due to misfortune and virtue." "Certainly, sir.
Is my future friend red-haired?" Miss Mannering is very capable of
listening to Brown's flageolet from the balcony, but not of accompanying
Brown, should he desire it, in the boat. As for Brown himself, he is one
of Sir Walter's usual young men,--"brave, handsome, not too clever,"--the
despair of their humorous creator. "Once you come to forty year," as
Thackeray sings, "then you'll know that a lad is an ass;" and Scott had
come to that age, and perhaps entertained that theory of a jeune premier
when he wrote "Guy Mannering." In that novel, as always, he was most
himself when dealing either with homely Scottish characters of everyday
life, with exaggerated types of humorous absurdity, and with wildly
adventurous banditti, who appealed to the old strain of the Border reiver
in his blood. The wandering plot of "Guy Mannering" enabled him to
introduce examples of all these sorts. The good-humoured, dull, dawdling
Ellangowan, a laird half dwindled to a yeoman, is a sketch absolutely
accurate, and wonderfully touched with pathos. The landladies, Mrs.
MacCandlish and Tib Mumps, are little masterpieces; so is Mac-Morlan, the
foil to Glossin; and so is Pleydell, allowing for the manner of the age.
Glossin himself is best when least villanous. Sir Robert Hazlewood is
hardly a success. But as to Jock Jabos, a Southern Scot may say that he
knows Jock Jabos in the flesh, so persistent is the type of that
charioteer. It is partly Scott's good fortune, partly it is his evil
luck, to be so inimitably and intimately true in his pictures of Scottish
character. This wins the heart of his countrymen, indeed; but the
stranger can never know how good Scott really is, any more than a
Frenchman can appreciate Falstaff. Thus the alien may be vexed by what he
thinks the mere clannish enthusiasm of praise, in Scott's countrymen.
Every little sketch of a passing face is exquisite in Scott's work, when
he is at his best. For example, Dandie Dinmont's children are only
indicated "with a dusty roll of the brush;" but we recognize at once the
large, shy, kindly families of the Border. Dandie himself, as the
"Edinburgh Review" said (1817), "is beyond all question the best rustic
portrait that has ever yet been exhibited to the public,--the most
honourable to rustics, and the most creditable to the heart as well as to
the genius of the Author, the truest to nature, the most complete in all
its lineaments." Dandie is always delightful,--whether at Mumps's Hall,
or on the lonely moor, or at home in Charlieshope, or hunting, or
leistering fish, or entering terriers at vermin, or fighting, or going to
law, or listening to the reading of a disappointing will, or entertaining
the orphan whom others neglect; always delightful he is, always generous,
always true, always the Border farmer. There is no better stock of men,
none less devastated by "the modern spirit." His wife is worthy of him,
and has that singular gentleness, kindliness, and dignity which prevail
on the Border, even in households far less prosperous than that of Dandie
Dinmont.--[Dr. John Brown's Ailie, in "Rab and his Friends," will
naturally occur to the mind of every reader.]

Among Scott's "character parts," or types broadly humorous, few have been
more popular than Dominie Sampson. His ungainly goodness, unwieldy
strength, and inaccessible learning have made great sport, especially
when "Guy Mannering" was "Terryfied" for the stage.

As Miss Bertram remarks in that singular piece,--where even Jock Jabos
"wins till his English," like Elspeth in the Antiquary,--the Dominie
"rather forces a tear from the eye of sentiment than a laugh from the
lungs of ribaldry." In the play, however, he sits down to read a folio on
some bandboxes, which, very naturally, "give way under him." As he has
just asked Mrs. Mac-Candlish after the health of both her husbands, who
are both dead, the lungs of ribaldry are more exercised than the fine eye
of sentiment. We scarcely care to see our Dominie treated thus. His
creator had the very lowest opinion of the modern playwright's craft, and
probably held that stage humour could not be too palpable and practical.
Lockhart writes (v. 130): "What share the novelist himself had in this
first specimen of what he used to call 'the art of Terryfying' I cannot
exactly say; but his correspondence shows that the pretty song of the
'Lullaby' was not his only contribution to it; and I infer that he had
taken the trouble to modify the plot and rearrange for stage purposes a
considerable part of the original dialogue." Friends of the Dominie may
be glad to know, perhaps on Scott's own testimony, that he was an alumnus
of St. Andrews. "I was boarded for twenty pence a week at Luckie
Sour-kail's, in the High Street of St. Andrews." He was also fortunate
enough to hold a bursary in St. Leonard's College, which, however, is a
blunder. St. Leonard's and St. Salvator's had already been merged in the
United College (1747). All this is in direct contradiction to the
evidence in the novel, which makes the Dominie a Glasgow man. Yet the
change seems to be due to Scott rather than to Terry. It is certain that
Colonel Mannering would not have approved of the treatment which the
Dominie undergoes, in a play whereof the plot and conduct fall little
short of the unintelligible.

Against the character of Pleydell "a few murmurs of pedantic criticism,"
as Lockhart says, were uttered, and it was natural that Pleydell should
seem an incredible character to English readers. But there is plenty of
evidence that his "High Jinks" were not exaggerated.

There remains the heroine of the novel, as Mr. Ruskin not incorrectly
calls her, Meg Merrilies, the sybil who so captivated the imagination of
Keats. Among Scott's many weird women, she is the most romantic, with her
loyal heart and that fiery natural eloquence which, as Scott truly
observed, does exist ready for moments of passion, even among the
reticent Lowlanders. The child of a mysterious wandering race, Meg has a
double claim to utter such speeches as she addresses to Ellangowan after
the eviction of her tribe. Her death, as Mr. Ruskin says, is
"self-devoted, heroic in the highest, and happy." The devotion of Meg
Merrilies, the grandeur of her figure, the music of her songs, more than
redeem the character of Dirk Hatteraick, even if we hold, with the
"Edinburgh" reviewer, that he is "a vulgar bandit of the German school,"
just as the insipidity and flageolet of the hero are redeemed by the
ballad sung in the moment of recognition.
         "Are these the Links of Forth, she said,
          Or are they the crooks of Dee,
          Or the bonnie woods of Warroch Head,
          That I so fain would see?"
"Guy Mannering," according to Lockhart, was "pronounced by acclamation
fully worthy to share the honours of 'Waverley.'" One star differeth from
another in glory, and "Guy Mannering" has neither that vivid picture of
clannish manners nor that noble melancholy of a gallant and forlorn
endeavour of the Lost Cause,
              "When all was done that man may do,
               And all was done in vain,"
which give dignity to "Waverley." Yet, with Lockhart, we may admire, in
"Guy Mannering," "the rapid, ever-heightening interest of the narrative,
the unaffected kindliness of feeling, the manly purity of thought,
everywhere mingled with a gentle humour and homely sagacity, but, above
all, the rich variety and skilful contrast of character and manners, at
once fresh in fiction and stamped with the unforgeable seal of truth and
nature."

ANDREW LANG.






GUY MANNERING

OR

THE ASTROLOGER






CHAPTER I
     He could not deny that, looking round upon the dreary region,
     and seeing nothing but bleak fields and naked trees, hills
     obscured by fogs, and flats covered with inundations, he did
     for some time suffer melancholy to prevail upon him, and
     wished himself again safe at home.

          --'Travels of Will. Marvel,' IDLER, No. 49.
It was in the beginning of the month of November 17--when a young English
gentleman, who had just left the university of Oxford, made use of the
liberty afforded him to visit some parts of the north of England; and
curiosity extended his tour into the adjacent frontier of the sister
country. He had visited, on the day that opens our history, some monastic
ruins in the county of Dumfries, and spent much of the day in making
drawings of them from different points, so that, on mounting his horse to
resume his journey, the brief and gloomy twilight of the season had
already commenced. His way lay through a wide tract of black moss,
extending for miles on each side and before him. Little eminences arose
like islands on its surface, bearing here and there patches of corn,
which even at this season was green, and sometimes a hut or farm-house,
shaded by a willow or two and surrounded by large elder-bushes. These
insulated dwellings communicated with each other by winding passages
through the moss, impassable by any but the natives themselves. The
public road, however, was tolerably well made and safe, so that the
prospect of being benighted brought with it no real danger. Still it is
uncomfortable to travel alone and in the dark through an unknown country;
and there are few ordinary occasions upon which Fancy frets herself so
much as in a situation like that of Mannering.

As the light grew faint and more faint, and the morass appeared blacker
and blacker, our traveller questioned more closely each chance passenger
on his distance from the village of Kippletringan, where he proposed to
quarter for the night. His queries were usually answered by a
counter-challenge respecting the place from whence he came. While
sufficient daylight remained to show the dress and appearance of a
gentleman, these cross interrogatories were usually put in the form of a
case supposed, as, 'Ye'll hae been at the auld abbey o' Halycross, sir?
there's mony English gentlemen gang to see that.'--Or, 'Your honour will
become frae the house o' Pouderloupat?' But when the voice of the querist
alone was distinguishable, the response usually was, 'Where are ye coming
frae at sic a time o' night as the like o' this?'--or, 'Ye'll no be o'
this country, freend?' The answers, when obtained, were neither very
reconcilable to each other nor accurate in the information which they
afforded. Kippletringan was distant at first 'a gey bit'; then the 'gey
bit' was more accurately described as 'ablins three mile'; then the
'three mile' diminished into 'like a mile and a bittock'; then extended
themselves into 'four mile or thereawa'; and, lastly, a female voice,
having hushed a wailing infant which the spokeswoman carried in her arms,
assured Guy Mannering, 'It was a weary lang gate yet to Kippletringan,
and unco heavy road for foot passengers.' The poor hack upon which
Mannering was mounted was probably of opinion that it suited him as ill
as the female respondent; for he began to flag very much, answered each
application of the spur with a groan, and stumbled at every stone (and
they were not few) which lay in his road.

Mannering now grew impatient. He was occasionally betrayed into a
deceitful hope that the end of his journey was near by the apparition of
a twinkling light or two; but, as he came up, he was disappointed to find
that the gleams proceeded from some of those farm-houses which
occasionally ornamented the surface of the extensive bog. At length, to
complete his perplexity, he arrived at a place where the road divided
into two. If there had been light to consult the relics of a finger-post
which stood there, it would have been of little avail, as, according to
the good custom of North Britain, the inscription had been defaced
shortly after its erection. Our adventurer was therefore compelled, like
a knight-errant of old, to trust to the sagacity of his horse, which,
without any demur, chose the left-hand path, and seemed to proceed at a
somewhat livelier pace than before, affording thereby a hope that he knew
he was drawing near to his quarters for the evening. This hope, however,
was not speedily accomplished, and Mannering, whose impatience made every
furlong seem three, began to think that Kippletringan was actually
retreating before him in proportion to his advance.

It was now very cloudy, although the stars from time to time shed a
twinkling and uncertain light. Hitherto nothing had broken the silence
around him but the deep cry of the bog-blitter, or bull-of-the-bog, a
large species of bittern, and the sighs of the wind as it passed along
the dreary morass. To these was now joined the distant roar of the ocean,
towards which the traveller seemed to be fast approaching. This was no
circumstance to make his mind easy. Many of the roads in that country lay
along the sea-beach, and were liable to be flooded by the tides, which
rise with great height, and advance with extreme rapidity. Others were
intersected with creeks and small inlets, which it was only safe to pass
at particular times of the tide. Neither circumstance would have suited a
dark night, a fatigued horse, and a traveller ignorant of his road.
Mannering resolved, therefore, definitively to halt for the night at the
first inhabited place, however poor, he might chance to reach, unless he
could procure a guide to this unlucky village of Kippletringan.

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

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

'Am I far from Kippletringan, good dame?'

'Frae Kippletringan!!!' in an exalted tone of wonder, which we can but
faintly express by three points of admiration. 'Ow, man! ye should hae
hadden eassel to Kippletringan; ye maun gae back as far as the whaap, and
baud the whaap till ye come to Ballenloan, and then--'

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

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

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

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

'Simple enough, to be wandering here at such a time of night,' thought
Mannering, who was ignorant of the meaning of the phrase; 'but how shall
I get to the PLACE, as you call it?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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






CHAPTER  II

     Comes me cranking in,
     And cuts me from the best of all my land
     A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle, out

          Henry IV, Part 1.
The company in the parlour at Ellangowan consisted of the Laird and a
sort of person who might be the village schoolmaster, or perhaps the
minister's assistant; his appearance was too shabby to indicate the
minister, considering he was on a visit to the Laird.

The Laird himself was one of those second-rate sort of persons that are
to be found frequently in rural situations. Fielding has described one
class as feras consumere nati; but the love of field-sports indicates a
certain activity of mind, which had forsaken Mr. Bertram, if ever he
possessed it. A good-humoured listlessness of countenance formed the only
remarkable expression of his features, although they were rather handsome
than otherwise. In fact, his physiognomy indicated the inanity of
character which pervaded his life. I will give the reader some insight
into his state and conversation before he has finished a long lecture to
Mannering upon the propriety and comfort of wrapping his stirrup-irons
round with a wisp of straw when he had occasion to ride in a chill
evening.

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







Allan Bertram of Ellangowan, who flourished tempore Caroli primi, was,
says my authority, Sir Robert Douglas, in his Scottish Baronage (see the
title 'Ellangowan'), 'a steady loyalist, and full of zeal for the cause
of His Sacred Majesty, in which he united with the great Marquis of
Montrose and other truly zealous and honourable patriots, and sustained
great losses in that behalf. He had the honour of knighthood conferred
upon him by His Most Sacred Majesty, and was sequestrated as a malignant
by the parliament, 1642, and afterwards as a resolutioner in the year
1648.' These two cross-grained epithets of malignant and resolutioner
cost poor Sir Allan one half of the family estate. His son Dennis Bertram
married a daughter of an eminent fanatic who had a seat in the council of
state, and saved by that union the remainder of the family property. But,
as ill chance would have it, he became enamoured of the lady's principles
as well as of her charms, and my author gives him this character: 'He was
a man of eminent parts and resolution, for which reason he was chosen by
the western counties one of the committee of noblemen and gentlemen to
report their griefs to the privy council of Charles II. anent the coming
in of the Highland host in 1678.' For undertaking this patriotic task he
underwent a fine, to pay which he was obliged to mortgage half of the
remaining moiety of his paternal property. This loss he might have
recovered by dint of severe economy, but on the breaking out of Argyle's
rebellion Dennis Bertram was again suspected by government, apprehended,
sent to Dunnotar Castle on the coast of the Mearns, and there broke his
neck in an attempt to escape from a subterranean habitation called the
Whigs' Vault, in which he was confined with some eighty of the same
persuasion. The apprizer therefore (as the holder of a mortgage was then
called) entered upon possession, and, in the language of Hotspur, 'came
me cranking in,' and cut the family out of another monstrous cantle of
their remaining property.

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

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

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

The danger of the father's speculations was soon seen. Deprived of Laird
Lewis's personal and active superintendence, all his undertakings
miscarried, and became either abortive or perilous. Without a single
spark of energy to meet or repel these misfortunes, Godfrey put his faith
in the activity of another. He kept neither hunters nor hounds, nor any
other southern preliminaries to ruin; but, as has been observed of his
countrymen, he kept a man of business, who answered the purpose equally
well. Under this gentleman's supervision small debts grew into large,
interests were accumulated upon capitals, movable bonds became heritable,
and law charges were heaped upon all; though Ellangowan possessed so
little the spirit of a litigant that he was on two occasions charged to
make payment of the expenses of a long lawsuit, although he had never
before heard that he had such cases in court. Meanwhile his neighbours
predicted his final ruin. Those of the higher rank, with some malignity,
accounted him already a degraded brother. The lower classes, seeing
nothing enviable in his situation, marked his embarrassments with more
compassion. He was even a kind of favourite with them, and upon the
division of a common, or the holding of a black-fishing or poaching
court, or any similar occasion when they conceived themselves oppressed
by the gentry, they were in the habit of saying to each other, 'Ah, if
Ellangowan, honest man, had his ain that his forbears had afore him, he
wadna see the puir folk trodden down this gait.' Meanwhile, this general
good opinion never prevented their taking advantage of him on all
possible occasions, turning their cattle into his parks, stealing his
wood, shooting his game, and so forth, 'for the Laird, honest man, he'll
never find it; he never minds what a puir body does.' Pedlars, gipsies,
tinkers, vagrants of all descriptions, roosted about his outhouses, or
harboured in his kitchen; and the Laird, who was 'nae nice body,' but a
thorough gossip, like most weak men, found recompense for his hospitality
in the pleasure of questioning them on the news of the country side.

A circumstance arrested Ellangowan's progress on the highroad to ruin.
This was his marriage with a lady who had a portion of about four
thousand pounds. Nobody in the neighbourhood could conceive why she
married him and endowed him with her wealth, unless because he had a
tall, handsome figure, a good set of features, a genteel address, and the
most perfect good-humour. It might be some additional consideration, that
she was herself at the reflecting age of twenty-eight, and had no near
relations to control her actions or choice.

It was in this lady's behalf (confined for the first time after her
marriage) that the speedy and active express, mentioned by the old dame
of the cottage, had been despatched to Kippletringan on the night of
Mannering's arrival.

Though we have said so much of the Laird himself, it still remains that
we make the reader in some degree acquainted with his companion. This was
Abel Sampson, commonly called, from his occupation as a pedagogue,
Dominie Sampson. He was of low birth, but having evinced, even from his
cradle, an uncommon seriousness of disposition, the poor parents were
encouraged to hope that their bairn, as they expressed it, 'might wag his
pow in a pulpit yet.' With an ambitious view to such a consummation, they
pinched and pared, rose early and lay down late, ate dry bread and drank
cold water, to secure to Abel the means of learning. Meantime, his tall,
ungainly figure, his taciturn and grave manners, and some grotesque
habits of swinging his limbs and screwing his visage while reciting his
task, made poor Sampson the ridicule of all his school-companions. The
same qualities secured him at Glasgow College a plentiful share of the
same sort of notice. Half the youthful mob of 'the yards' used to
assemble regularly to see Dominie Sampson (for he had already attained
that honourable title) descend the stairs from the Greek class, with his
lexicon under his arm, his long misshapen legs sprawling abroad, and
keeping awkward time to the play of his immense shoulder-blades, as they
raised and depressed the loose and threadbare black coat which was his
constant and only wear. When he spoke, the efforts of the professor
(professor of divinity though he was) were totally inadequate to restrain
the inextinguishable laughter of the students, and sometimes even to
repress his own. The long, sallow visage, the goggle eyes, the huge
under-jaw, which appeared not to open and shut by an act of volition, but
to be dropped and hoisted up again by some complicated machinery within
the inner man, the harsh and dissonant voice, and the screech-owl notes
to which it was exalted when he was exhorted to pronounce more
distinctly,--all added fresh subject for mirth to the torn cloak and
shattered shoe, which have afforded legitimate subjects of raillery
against the poor scholar from Juvenal's time downward. It was never known
that Sampson either exhibited irritability at this ill usage, or made the
least attempt to retort upon his tormentors. He slunk from college by the
most secret paths he could discover, and plunged himself into his
miserable lodging, where, for eighteenpence a week, he was allowed the
benefit of a straw mattress, and, if his landlady was in good humour,
permission to study his task by her fire. Under all these disadvantages,
he obtained a competent knowledge of Greek and Latin, and some
acquaintance with the sciences.

In progress of time, Abel Sampson, probationer of divinity, was admitted
to the privileges of a preacher. But, alas! partly from his own
bashfulness, partly owing to a strong and obvious disposition to
risibility which pervaded the congregation upon his first attempt, he
became totally incapable of proceeding in his intended discourse, gasped,
grinned, hideously rolled his eyes till the congregation thought them
flying out of his head, shut the Bible, stumbled down the pulpit-stairs,
trampling upon the old women who generally take their station there, and
was ever after designated as a 'stickit minister.' And thus he wandered
back to his own country, with blighted hopes and prospects, to share the
poverty of his parents. As he had neither friend nor confidant, hardly
even an acquaintance, no one had the means of observing closely how
Dominie Sampson bore a disappointment which supplied the whole town with
a week's sport. It would be endless even to mention the numerous jokes to
which it gave birth, from a ballad called 'Sampson's Riddle,' written
upon the subject by a smart young student of humanity, to the sly hope of
the Principal that the fugitive had not, in imitation of his mighty
namesake, taken the college gates along with him in his retreat.