CHAPTER IV.
This is no pilgrim's morning--yon grey mist
Lies upon hill, and dale, and field, and forest,
Like the dun wimple of a new-made widow;
And, by my faith, although my heart be soft,
I'd rather hear that widow weep and sigh,
And tell the virtues of the dear departed,
Than, when the tempest sends his voice abroad,
Be subject to its fury.
_The Double Nuptials._
The spring was far advanced, when, after a week spent in sport and
festivity at Burgh-Westra, Mordaunt Mertoun bade adieu to the family,
pleading the necessity of his return to Jarlshof. The proposal was
combated by the maidens, and more decidedly by Magnus himself: He saw no
occasion whatever for Mordaunt returning to Jarlshof. If his father
desired to see him, which, by the way, Magnus did not believe, Mr.
Mertoun had only to throw himself into the stern of Sweyn's boat, or
betake himself to a pony, if he liked a land journey better, and he
would see not only his son, but twenty folk besides, who would be most
happy to find that he had not lost the use of his tongue entirely during
his long solitude; "although I must own," added the worthy Udaller,
"that when he lived among us, nobody ever made less use of it."
Mordaunt acquiesced both in what respected his father's taciturnity, and
his dislike to general society; but suggested, at the same time, that
the first circumstance rendered his own immediate return more
necessary, as he was the usual channel of communication betwixt his
father and others; and that the second corroborated the same necessity,
since Mr. Mertoun's having no other society whatever seemed a weighty
reason why his son's should be restored to him without loss of time. As
to his father's coming to Burgh-Westra, "they might as well," he said,
"expect to see Sumburgh Cape come thither."
"And that would be a cumbrous guest," said Magnus. "But you will stop
for our dinner to-day? There are the families of Muness, Quendale,
Thorslivoe, and I know not who else, are expected; and, besides the
thirty that were in house this blessed night, we shall have as many more
as chamber and bower, and barn and boat-house, can furnish with beds, or
with barley-straw,--and you will leave all this behind you!"
"And the blithe dance at night," added Brenda, in a tone betwixt
reproach and vexation; "and the young men from the Isle of Paba that are
to dance the sword-dance, whom shall we find to match them, for the
honour of the Main?"
"There is many a merry dancer on the mainland, Brenda," replied
Mordaunt, "even if I should never rise on tiptoe again. And where good
dancers are found, Brenda Troil will always find the best partner. I
must trip it to-night through the Wastes of Dunrossness."
"Do not say so, Mordaunt," said Minna, who, during this conversation,
had been looking from the window something anxiously; "go not, to-day at
least, through the Wastes of Dunrossness."
"And why not to-day, Minna," said Mordaunt, laughing, "any more than
to-morrow?"
"O, the morning mist lies heavy upon yonder chain of isles, nor has it
permitted us since daybreak even a single glimpse of Fitful-head, the
lofty cape that concludes yon splendid range of mountains. The fowl are
winging their way to the shore, and the shelldrake seems, through the
mist, as large as the scart.[19] See, the very sheerwaters and bonxies
are making to the cliffs for shelter."
"And they will ride out a gale against a king's frigate," said her
father; "there is foul weather when they cut and run."
"Stay, then, with us," said Minna to her friend; "the storm will be
dreadful, yet it will be grand to see it from Burgh-Westra, if we have
no friend exposed to its fury. See, the air is close and sultry, though
the season is yet so early, and the day so calm, that not a windlestraw
moves on the heath. Stay with us, Mordaunt; the storm which these signs
announce will be a dreadful one."
"I must be gone the sooner," was the conclusion of Mordaunt, who could
not deny the signs, which had not escaped his own quick observation. "If
the storm be too fierce, I will abide for the night at Stourburgh."
"What!" said Magnus; "will you leave us for the new chamberlain's new
Scotch tacksman, who is to teach all us Zetland savages new ways? Take
your own gate, my lad, if that is the song you sing."
"Nay," said Mordaunt; "I had only some curiosity to see the new
implements he has brought."
"Ay, ay, ferlies make fools fain. I would like to know if his new plough
will bear against a Zetland rock?" answered Magnus.
"I must not pass Stourburgh on the journey," said the youth, deferring
to his patron's prejudice against innovation, "if this boding weather
bring on tempest; but if it only break in rain, as is most probable, I
am not likely to be melted in the wetting."
"It will not soften into rain alone," said Minna; "see how much heavier
the clouds fall every moment, and see these weather-gaws that streak the
lead-coloured mass with partial gleams of faded red and purple."
"I see them all," said Mordaunt; "but they only tell me I have no time
to tarry here. Adieu, Minna; I will send you the eagle's feathers, if an
eagle can be found on Fair-isle or Foulah. And fare thee well, my pretty
Brenda, and keep a thought for me, should the Paba men dance ever so
well."
"Take care of yourself, since go you will," said both sisters, together.
Old Magnus scolded them formally for supposing there was any danger to
an active young fellow from a spring gale, whether by sea or land; yet
ended by giving his own caution also to Mordaunt, advising him seriously
to delay his journey, or at least to stop at Stourburgh. "For," said he,
"second thoughts are best; and as this Scottishman's howf lies right
under your lee, why, take any port in a storm. But do not be assured to
find the door on latch, let the storm blow ever so hard; there are such
matters as bolts and bars in Scotland,(_e_) though, thanks to Saint
Ronald, they are unknown here, save that great lock on the old Castle
of Scalloway, that all men run to see--may be they make part of this
man's improvements. But go, Mordaunt, since go you will. You should
drink a stirrup-cup now, were you three years older, but boys should
never drink, excepting after dinner; I will drink it for you, that good
customs may not be broken, or bad luck come of it. Here is your bonally,
my lad." And so saying, he quaffed a rummer glass of brandy with as much
impunity as if it had been spring-water. Thus regretted and cautioned on
all hands, Mordaunt took leave of the hospitable household, and looking
back at the comforts with which it was surrounded, and the dense smoke
that rolled upwards from its chimneys, he first recollected the
guestless and solitary desolation of Jarlshof, then compared with the
sullen and moody melancholy of his father's temper the warm kindness of
those whom he was leaving, and could not refrain from a sigh at the
thoughts which forced themselves on his imagination.
The signs of the tempest did not dishonour the predictions of Minna.
Mordaunt had not advanced three hours on his journey, before the wind,
which had been so deadly still in the morning, began at first to wail
and sigh, as if bemoaning beforehand the evils which it might perpetrate
in its fury, like a madman in the gloomy state of dejection which
precedes his fit of violence; then gradually increasing, the gale
howled, raged, and roared, with the full fury of a northern storm. It
was accompanied by showers of rain mixed with hail, that dashed with the
most unrelenting rage against the hills and rocks with which the
traveller was surrounded, distracting his attention, in spite of his
utmost exertions, and rendering it very difficult for him to keep the
direction of his journey in a country where there is neither road, nor
even the slightest track to direct the steps of the wanderer, and where
he is often interrupted by brooks as well as large pools of water,
lakes, and lagoons. All these inland waters were now lashed into sheets
of tumbling foam, much of which, carried off by the fury of the
whirlwind, was mingled with the gale, and transported far from the waves
of which it had lately made a part; while the salt relish of the drift
which was pelted against his face, showed Mordaunt that the spray of the
more distant ocean, disturbed to frenzy by the storm, was mingled with
that of the inland lakes and streams.
Amidst this hideous combustion of the elements, Mordaunt Mertoun
struggled forward as one to whom such elemental war was familiar, and
who regarded the exertions which it required to withstand its fury, but
as a mark of resolution and manhood. He felt even, as happens usually to
those who endure great hardships, that the exertion necessary to subdue
them, is in itself a kind of elevating triumph. To see and distinguish
his path when the cattle were driven from the hill, and the very fowls
from the firmament, was but the stronger proof of his own superiority.
"They shall not hear of me at Burgh-Westra," said he to himself, "as
they heard of old doited Ringan Ewenson's boat, that foundered betwixt
roadstead and key. I am more of a cragsman than to mind fire or water,
wave by sea, or quagmire by land." Thus he struggled on, buffeting with
the storm, supplying the want of the usual signs by which travellers
directed their progress, (for rock, mountain, and headland, were
shrouded in mist and darkness,) by the instinctive sagacity with which
long acquaintance with these wilds had taught him to mark every minute
object, which could serve in such circumstances to regulate his course.
Thus, we repeat, he struggled onward, occasionally standing still, or
even lying down, when the gust was most impetuous; making way against it
when it was somewhat lulled, by a rapid and bold advance even in its
very current; or, when this was impossible, by a movement resembling
that of a vessel working to windward by short tacks, but never yielding
one inch of the way which he had fought so hard to gain.
Yet, notwithstanding Mordaunt's experience and resolution, his situation
was sufficiently uncomfortable, and even precarious; not because his
sailor's jacket and trowsers, the common dress of young men through
these isles when on a journey, were thoroughly wet, for that might have
taken place within the same brief time, in any ordinary day, in this
watery climate; but the real danger was, that, notwithstanding his
utmost exertions, he made very slow way through brooks that were sending
their waters all abroad, through morasses drowned in double deluges of
moisture, which rendered all the ordinary passes more than usually
dangerous, and repeatedly obliged the traveller to perform a
considerable circuit, which in the usual case was unnecessary. Thus
repeatedly baffled, notwithstanding his youth and strength, Mordaunt,
after maintaining a dogged conflict with wind, rain, and the fatigue of
a prolonged journey, was truly happy, when, not without having been more
than once mistaken in his road, he at length found himself within sight
of the house of Stourburgh, or Harfra; for the names were indifferently
given to the residence of Mr. Triptolemus Yellowley, who was the chosen
missionary of the Chamberlain of Orkney and Zetland, a speculative
person, who designed, through the medium of Triptolemus, to introduce
into the _Ultima Thule_ of the Romans, a spirit of improvement, which at
that early period was scarce known to exist in Scotland itself.
At length, and with much difficulty, Mordaunt reached the house of this
worthy agriculturist, the only refuge from the relentless storm which he
could hope to meet with for several miles; and going straight to the
door, with the most undoubting confidence of instant admission, he was
not a little surprised to find it not merely latched, which the weather
might excuse, but even bolted, a thing which, as Magnus Troil has
already intimated, was almost unknown in the Archipelago. To knock, to
call, and finally to batter the door with staff and stones, were the
natural resources of the youth, who was rendered alike impatient by the
pelting of the storm, and by encountering such most unexpected and
unusual obstacles to instant admission. As he was suffered, however, for
many minutes to exhaust his impatience in noise and clamour, without
receiving any reply, we will employ them in informing the reader who
Triptolemus Yellowley was, and how he came by a name so singular.
Old Jasper Yellowley, the father of Triptolemus, (though born at the
foot of Roseberry-Topping,) had been _come over_ by a certain noble
Scottish Earl, who, proving too far north for canny Yorkshire, had
persuaded him to accept of a farm in the Mearns, where, it is
unnecessary to add, he found matters very different from what he had
expected. It was in vain that the stout farmer set manfully to work, to
counterbalance, by superior skill, the inconveniences arising from a
cold soil and a weeping climate. These might have been probably
overcome; but his neighbourhood to the Grampians exposed him eternally
to that species of visitation from the plaided gentry, who dwelt within
their skirts, which made young Norval a warrior and a hero, but only
converted Jasper Yellowley into a poor man. This was, indeed, balanced
in some sort by the impression which his ruddy cheek and robust form had
the fortune to make upon Miss Barbara Clinkscale, daughter to the
umquhile, and sister to the then existing, Clinkscale of that ilk.
This was thought a horrid and unnatural union in the neighbourhood,
considering that the house of Clinkscale had at least as great a share
of Scottish pride as of Scottish parsimony, and was amply endowed with
both. But Miss Babie had her handsome fortune of two thousand marks at
her own disposal, was a woman of spirit who had been _major_ and _sui
juris_, (as the writer who drew the contract assured her,) for full
twenty years; so she set consequences and commentaries alike at
defiance, and wedded the hearty Yorkshire yeoman. Her brother and her
more wealthy kinsmen drew off in disgust, and almost disowned their
degraded relative. But the house of Clinkscale was allied (like every
other family in Scotland at the time) to a set of relations who were not
so nice--tenth and sixteenth cousins, who not only acknowledged their
kinswoman Babie after her marriage with Yellowley but even condescended
to eat beans and bacon (though the latter was then the abomination of
the Scotch as much as of the Jews) with her husband, and would
willingly have cemented the friendship by borrowing a little cash from
him, had not his good lady (who understood trap as well as any woman in
the Mearns) put a negative on this advance to intimacy. Indeed she knew
how to make young Deilbelicket,(_f_) old Dougald Baresword, the Laird of
Bandybrawl, and others, pay for the hospitality which she did not think
proper to deny them, by rendering them useful in her negotiations with
the lighthanded lads beyond the Cairn, who, finding their late object of
plunder was now allied to "kend folks, and owned by them at kirk and
market," became satisfied, on a moderate yearly composition, to desist
from their depredations.
This eminent success reconciled Jasper to the dominion which his wife
began to assume over him; and which was much confirmed by her proving to
be--let me see--what is the prettiest mode of expressing it?--in the
family way. On this occasion, Mrs. Yellowley had a remarkable dream, as
is the usual practice of teeming mothers previous to the birth of an
illustrious offspring. She "was a-dreamed," as her husband expressed it,
that she was safely delivered of a plough, drawn by three yoke of
Angus-shire oxen; and being a mighty investigator into such portents,
she sat herself down with her gossips, to consider what the thing might
mean. Honest Jasper ventured, with much hesitation, to intimate his own
opinion, that the vision had reference rather to things past than things
future, and might have been occasioned by his wife's nerves having been
a little startled by meeting in the loan above the house his own great
plough with the six oxen, which were the pride of his heart. But the
good _cummers_[20] raised such a hue and cry against this exposition,
that Jasper was fain to put his fingers in his ears, and to run out of
the apartment.
"Hear to him," said an old whigamore carline--"hear to him, wi' his
owsen, that are as an idol to him, even as the calf of Bethel! Na,
na--it's nae pleugh of the flesh that the bonny lad-bairn--for a lad it
sall be--sall e'er striddle between the stilts o'--it's the pleugh of
the spirit--and I trust mysell to see him wag the head o' him in a
pu'pit; or, what's better, on a hill-side."
"Now the deil's in your whiggery," said the old Lady Glenprosing; "wad
ye hae our cummer's bonny lad-bairn wag the head aff his shouthers like
your godly Mess James Guthrie,(_g_) that ye hald such a clavering
about?--Na, na, he sall walk a mair siccar path, and be a dainty
curate--and say he should live to be a bishop, what the waur wad he be?"
The gauntlet thus fairly flung down by one sibyl, was caught up by
another, and the controversy between presbytery and episcopacy raged,
roared, or rather screamed, a round of cinnamon-water serving only like
oil to the flame, till Jasper entered with the plough-staff; and by the
awe of his presence, and the shame of misbehaving "before the stranger
man," imposed some conditions of silence upon the disputants.
I do not know whether it was impatience to give to the light a being
destined to such high and doubtful fates, or whether poor Dame Yellowley
was rather frightened at the hurly-burly which had taken place in her
presence, but she was taken suddenly ill; and, contrary to the formula
in such cases used and provided, was soon reported to be "a good deal
worse than was to be expected." She took the opportunity (having still
all her wits about her) to extract from her sympathetic husband two
promises; first, that he would christen the child, whose birth was like
to cost her so dear, by a name indicative of the vision with which she
had been favoured; and next, that he would educate him for the ministry.
The canny Yorkshireman, thinking she had a good title at present to
dictate in such matters, subscribed to all she required. A man-child was
accordingly born under these conditions, but the state of the mother did
not permit her for many days to enquire how far they had been complied
with. When she was in some degree convalescent, she was informed, that
as it was thought fit the child should be immediately christened, it had
received the name of Triptolemus; the Curate, who was a man of some
classical skill, conceiving that this epithet contained a handsome and
classical allusion to the visionary plough, with its triple yoke of
oxen. Mrs. Yellowley was not much delighted with the manner in which her
request had been complied with; but grumbling being to as little purpose
as in the celebrated case of Tristram Shandy, she e'en sat down
contented with the heathenish name, and endeavoured to counteract the
effects it might produce upon the taste and feelings of the nominee, by
such an education as might put him above the slightest thought of sacks,
coulters, stilts, mould-boards, or any thing connected with the servile
drudgery of the plough.
Jasper, sage Yorkshireman, smiled slyly in his sleeve, conceiving that
young Trippie was likely to prove a chip of the old block, and would
rather take after the jolly Yorkshire yeoman, than the gentle but
somewhat _aigre_ blood of the house of Clinkscale. He remarked, with
suppressed glee, that the tune which best answered the purpose of a
lullaby was the "Ploughman's Whistle," and the first words the infant
learned to stammer were the names of the oxen; moreover, that the "bern"
preferred home-brewed ale to Scotch twopenny, and never quitted hold of
the tankard with so much reluctance as when there had been, by some
manoeuvre of Jasper's own device, a double straik of malt allowed to the
brewing, above that which was sanctioned by the most liberal recipe, of
which his dame's household thrift admitted. Besides this, when no other
means could be fallen upon to divert an occasional fit of squalling, his
father observed that Trip could be always silenced by jingling a bridle
at his ear. From all which symptoms he used to swear in private, that
the boy would prove true Yorkshire, and mother and mother's kin would
have small share of him.
Meanwhile, and within a year after the birth of Triptolemus, Mrs.
Yellowley bore a daughter, named after herself Barbara, who, even in
earliest infancy, exhibited the pinched nose and thin lips by which the
Clinkscale family were distinguished amongst the inhabitants of the
Mearns; and as her childhood advanced, the readiness with which she
seized, and the tenacity wherewith she detained, the playthings of
Triptolemus, besides a desire to bite, pinch, and scratch, on slight, or
no provocation, were all considered by attentive observers as proofs,
that Miss Babie would prove "her mother over again." Malicious people
did not stick to say, that the acrimony of the Clinkscale blood had not,
on this occasion, been cooled and sweetened by that of Old England;
that young Deilbelicket was much about the house, and they could not but
think it odd that Mrs. Yellowley, who, as the whole world knew, gave
nothing for nothing, should be so uncommonly attentive to heap the
trencher, and to fill the caup, of an idle blackguard ne'er-do-weel. But
when folk had once looked upon the austere and awfully virtuous
countenance of Mrs. Yellowley, they did full justice to her propriety of
conduct, and Deilbelicket's delicacy of taste.
Meantime young Triptolemus, having received such instructions as the
Curate could give him, (for though Dame Yellowley adhered to the
persecuted remnant, her jolly husband, edified by the black gown and
prayer-book, still conformed to the church as by law established,) was,
in due process of time, sent to Saint Andrews to prosecute his studies.
He went, it is true; but with an eye turned back with sad remembrances
on his father's plough, his father's pancakes, and his father's ale, for
which the small-beer of the college, commonly there termed
"thorough-go-nimble," furnished a poor substitute. Yet he advanced in
his learning, being found, however, to show a particular favour to such
authors of antiquity as had made the improvement of the soil the object
of their researches. He endured the Bucolics of Virgil--the Georgics he
had by heart--but the Æneid he could not away with; and he was
particularly severe upon the celebrated line expressing a charge of
cavalry, because, as he understood the word _putrem_,[21] he opined that
the combatants, in their inconsiderate ardour, galloped over a
new-manured ploughed field. Cato, the Roman Censor was his favourite
among classical heroes and philosophers, not on account of the
strictness of his morals, but because of his treatise, _de Re Rustica_.
He had ever in his mouth the phrase of Cicero, _Jam neminem antepones
Catoni_. He thought well of Palladius, and of Terentius Varro, but
Columella was his pocket-companion. To these ancient worthies, he added
the more modern Tusser, Hartlib, and other writers on rural economics,
not forgetting the lucubrations of the Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, and
such of the better-informed Philomaths, who, instead of loading their
almanacks with vain predictions of political events, pretended to see
what seeds would grow and what would not, and direct the attention of
their readers to that course of cultivation from which the production of
good crops may be safely predicted; modest sages, in fine, who, careless
of the rise and downfall of empires, content themselves with pointing
out the fit seasons to reap and sow, with a fair guess at the weather
which each month will be likely to present; as, for example, that if
Heaven pleases, we shall have snow in January, and the author will stake
his reputation that July proves, on the whole, a month of sunshine. Now,
although the Rector of Saint Leonard's was greatly pleased, in general,
with the quiet, laborious, and studious bent of Triptolemus Yellowley,
and deemed him, in so far, worthy of a name of four syllables having a
Latin termination, yet he relished not, by any means, his exclusive
attention to his favourite authors. It savoured of the earth, he said,
if not of something worse, to have a man's mind always grovelling in
mould, stercorated or unstercorated; and he pointed out, but in vain,
history, and poetry, and divinity, as more elevating subjects of
occupation. Triptolemus Yellowley was obstinate in his own course: Of
the battle of Pharsalia, he thought not as it affected the freedom of
the world, but dwelt on the rich crop which the Emathian fields were
likely to produce the next season. In vernacular poetry, Triptolemus
could scarce be prevailed upon to read a single couplet, excepting old
Tusser, as aforesaid, whose Hundred Points of Good Husbandry he had got
by heart; and excepting also Piers Ploughman's Vision, which, charmed
with the title, he bought with avidity from a packman, but after reading
the two first pages, flung it into the fire as an impudent and misnamed
political libel. As to divinity, he summed that matter up by reminding
his instructors, that to labour the earth and win his bread with the
toil of his body and sweat of his brow, was the lot imposed upon fallen
man; and, for his part, he was resolved to discharge, to the best of his
abilities, a task so obviously necessary to existence, leaving others to
speculate as much as they would, upon the more recondite mysteries of
theology.
With a spirit so much narrowed and limited to the concerns of rural
life, it may be doubted whether the proficiency of Triptolemus in
learning, or the use he was like to make of his acquisitions, would have
much gratified the ambitious hope of his affectionate mother. It is
true, he expressed no reluctance to embrace the profession of a
clergyman, which suited well enough with the habitual personal indolence
which sometimes attaches to speculative dispositions. He had views, to
speak plainly, (I wish they were peculiar to himself,) of cultivating
the _glebe_ six days in the week, preaching on the seventh with due
regularity, and dining with some fat franklin or country laird, with
whom he could smoke a pipe and drink a tankard after dinner, and mix in
secret conference on the exhaustless subject,
Quid faciat lætas segetes.
Now, this plan, besides that it indicated nothing of what was then
called the root of the matter, implied necessarily the possession of a
manse; and the possession of a manse inferred compliance with the
doctrines of prelacy, and other enormities of the time. There was some
question how far manse and glebe, stipend, both victual and money, might
have outbalanced the good lady's predisposition towards Presbytery; but
her zeal was not put to so severe a trial. She died before her son had
completed his studies, leaving her afflicted spouse just as disconsolate
as was to be expected. The first act of old Jasper's undivided
administration was to recall his son from Saint Andrews, in order to
obtain his assistance in his domestic labours. And here it might have
been supposed that our Triptolemus, summoned to carry into practice what
he had so fondly studied in theory, must have been, to use a simile
which _he_ would have thought lively, like a cow entering upon a clover
park. Alas, mistaken thoughts, and deceitful hopes of mankind!
A laughing philosopher, the Democritus of our day, once, in a moral
lecture, compared human life to a table pierced with a number of holes,
each of which has a pin made exactly to fit it, but which pins being
stuck in hastily, and without selection, chance leads inevitably to the
most awkward mistakes. "For how often do we see," the orator
pathetically concluded,--"how often, I say, do we see the round man
stuck into the three-cornered hole!" This new illustration of the
vagaries of fortune set every one present into convulsions of laughter,
excepting one fat alderman, who seemed to make the case his own, and
insisted that it was no jesting matter. To take up the simile, however,
which is an excellent one, it is plain that Triptolemus Yellowley had
been shaken out of the bag at least a hundred years too soon. If he had
come on the stage in our own time, that is, if he had flourished at any
time within these thirty or forty years, he could not have missed to
have held the office of vice-president of some eminent agricultural
society, and to have transacted all the business thereof under the
auspices of some noble duke or lord, who, as the matter might happen,
either knew, or did not know, the difference betwixt a horse and a cart,
and a cart-horse. He could not have missed such preferment, for he was
exceedingly learned in all those particulars, which, being of no
consequence in actual practice, go, of course, a great way to constitute
the character of a connoisseur in any art, and especially in
agriculture. But, alas! Triptolemus Yellowley had, as we already have
hinted, come into the world at least a century too soon; for, instead of
sitting in an arm-chair, with a hammer in his hand, and a bumper of port
before him, giving forth the toast,--"To breeding, in all its branches,"
his father planted him betwixt the stilts of a plough, and invited him
to guide the oxen, on whose beauties he would, in our day, have
descanted, and whose rumps he would not have goaded, but have carved.
Old Jasper complained, that although no one talked so well of common and
several, wheat and rape, fallow and lea, as his learned son, (whom he
always called Tolimus,) yet, "dang it," added the Seneca, "nought
thrives wi' un--nought thrives wi' un!" It was still worse, when Jasper,
becoming frail and ancient, was obliged, as happened in the course of a
few years, gradually to yield up the reins of government to the
academical neophyte.
As if Nature had meant him a spite, he had got one of the _dourest_ and
most intractable farms in the Mearns, to try conclusions withal, a place
which seemed to yield every thing but what the agriculturist wanted; for
there were plenty of thistles, which indicates dry land; and store of
fern, which is said to intimate deep land; and nettles, which show where
lime hath been applied; and deep furrows in the most unlikely spots,
which intimated that it had been cultivated in former days by the
Peghts, as popular tradition bore. There was also enough of stones to
keep the ground warm, according to the creed of some farmers, and great
abundance of springs to render it cool and sappy, according to the
theory of others. It was in vain that, acting alternately on these
opinions, poor Triptolemus endeavoured to avail himself of the supposed
capabilities of the soil. No kind of butter that might be churned could
be made to stick upon his own bread, any more than on that of poor
Tusser, whose Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, so useful to others of
his day, were never to himself worth as many pennies.[22]
In fact, excepting an hundred acres of infield, to which old Jasper had
early seen the necessity of limiting his labours, there was not a
corner of the farm fit for any thing but to break plough-graith, and
kill cattle. And then, as for the part which was really tilled with some
profit, the expense of the farming establishment of Triptolemus, and his
disposition to experiment, soon got rid of any good arising from the
cultivation of it. "The carles and the cart-avers," he confessed, with a
sigh, speaking of his farm-servants and horses, "make it all, and the
carles and cart-avers eat it all;" a conclusion which might sum up the
year-book of many a gentleman farmer.
Matters would have soon been brought to a close with Triptolemus in the
present day. He would have got a bank-credit, manoeuvred with
wind-bills, dashed out upon a large scale, and soon have seen his crop
and stock sequestered by the Sheriff; but in those days a man could not
ruin himself so easily. The whole Scottish tenantry stood upon the same
level flat of poverty, so that it was extremely difficult to find any
vantage ground, by climbing up to which a man might have an opportunity
of actually breaking his neck with some eclat. They were pretty much in
the situation of people, who, being totally without credit, may indeed
suffer from indigence, but cannot possibly become bankrupt. Besides,
notwithstanding the failure of Triptolemus's projects, there was to be
balanced against the expenditure which they occasioned, all the savings
which the extreme economy of his sister Barbara could effect; and in
truth her exertions were wonderful. She might have realized, if any one
could, the idea of the learned philosopher, who pronounced that sleeping
was a fancy, and eating but a habit, and who appeared to the world to
have renounced both, until it was unhappily discovered that he had an
intrigue with the cook-maid of the family, who indemnified him for his
privations by giving him private entrée to the pantry, and to a share of
her own couch. But no such deceptions were practised by Barbara
Yellowley. She was up early, and down late, and seemed, to her
over-watched and over-tasked maidens, to be as _wakerife_ as the cat
herself. Then, for eating, it appeared that the air was a banquet to
her, and she would fain have made it so to her retinue. Her brother,
who, besides being lazy in his person, was somewhat luxurious in his
appetite, would willingly now and then have tasted a mouthful of animal
food, were it but to know how his sheep were fed off; but a proposal to
eat a child could not have startled Mistress Barbara more; and, being of
a compliant and easy disposition, Triptolemus reconciled himself to the
necessity of a perpetual Lent, too happy when he could get a scrap of
butter to his oaten cake, or (as they lived on the banks of the Esk)
escape the daily necessity of eating salmon, whether in or out of
season, six days out of the seven.
But although Mrs. Barbara brought faithfully to the joint stock all
savings which her awful powers of economy accomplished to scrape
together, and although the dower of their mother was by degrees
expended, or nearly so, in aiding them upon extreme occasions, the term
at length approached when it seemed impossible that they could sustain
the conflict any longer against the evil star of Triptolemus, as he
called it himself, or the natural result of his absurd speculations, as
it was termed by others. Luckily at this sad crisis, a god jumped down
to their relief out of a machine. In plain English, the noble lord, who
owned their farm, arrived at his mansion-house in their neighbourhood,
with his coach and six and his running footmen, in the full splendour
of the seventeenth century.
This person of quality was the son of the nobleman who had brought the
ancient Jasper into the country from Yorkshire, and he was, like his
father, a fanciful and scheming man.[23] He had schemed well for
himself, however, amid the mutations of the time, having obtained, for a
certain period of years, the administration of the remote islands of
Orkney and Zetland, for payment of a certain rent, with the right of
making the most of whatever was the property or revenue of the crown in
these districts, under the title of Lord Chamberlain. Now, his lordship
had become possessed with a notion, in itself a very true one, that much
might be done to render this grant available, by improving the culture
of the crown lands, both in Orkney and Zetland; and then having some
acquaintance with our friend Triptolemus, he thought (rather less
happily) that he might prove a person capable of furthering his schemes.
He sent for him to the great Hallhouse, and was so much edified by the
way in which our friend laid down the law upon every given subject
relating to rural economy, that he lost no time in securing the
co-operation of so valuable an assistant, the first step being to
release him from his present unprofitable farm.
The terms were arranged much to the mind of Triptolemus, who had already
been taught, by many years' experience, a dark sort of notion, that
without undervaluing or doubting for a moment his own skill, it would be
quite as well that almost all the trouble and risk should be at the
expense of his employer. Indeed, the hopes of advantage which he held
out to his patron were so considerable, that the Lord Chamberlain
dropped every idea of admitting his dependent into any share of the
expected profits; for, rude as the arts of agriculture were in Scotland,
they were far superior to those known and practised in the regions of
Thule, and Triptolemus Yellowley conceived himself to be possessed of a
degree of insight into these mysteries, far superior to what was
possessed or practised even in the Mearns. The improvement, therefore,
which was to be expected, would bear a double proportion, and the Lord
Chamberlain was to reap all the profit, deducting a handsome salary for
his steward Yellowley, together with the accommodation of a house and
domestic farm, for the support of his family. Joy seized the heart of
Mistress Barbara, at hearing this happy termination of what threatened
to be so very bad an affair as the lease of Cauldacres.
"If we cannot," she said, "provide for our own house, when all is coming
in, and nothing going out, surely we must be worse than infidels!"
Triptolemus was a busy man for some time, huffing and puffing, and
eating and drinking in every changehouse, while he ordered and collected
together proper implements of agriculture, to be used by the natives of
these devoted islands, whose destinies were menaced with this formidable
change. Singular tools these would seem, if presented before a modern
agricultural society; but every thing is relative, nor could the heavy
cartload of timber, called the old Scots plough, seem less strange to a
Scottish farmer of this present day, than the corslets and casques of
the soldiers of Cortes might seem to a regiment of our own army. Yet the
latter conquered Mexico, and undoubtedly the former would have been a
splendid improvement on the state of agriculture in Thule.
We have never been able to learn why Triptolemus preferred fixing his
residence in Zetland, to becoming an inhabitant of the Orkneys. Perhaps
he thought the inhabitants of the latter Archipelago the more simple and
docile of the two kindred tribes; or perhaps he considered the situation
of the house and farm he himself was to occupy, (which was indeed a
tolerable one,) as preferable to that which he had it in his power to
have obtained upon Pomona (so the main island of the Orkneys is
entitled). At Harfra, or, as it was sometimes called, Stourburgh, from
the remains of a Pictish fort, which was almost close to the
mansion-house, the factor settled himself, in the plenitude of his
authority; determined to honour the name he bore by his exertions, in
precept and example, to civilize the Zetlanders, and improve their very
confined knowledge in the primary arts of human life.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] The cormorant; which may be seen frequently dashing in wild flight
along the roosts and tides of Zetland, and yet more often drawn up in
ranks on some ledge of rock, like a body of the Black Brunswickers in
181.
[20] _i. e._ Gossips.
[21] Quadrupedumque putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum.
[22] This is admitted by the English agriculturist:--
"My music since has been the plough,
Entangled with some care among;
The gain not great, the pain enough,
Hath made me sing another song."
[23] GOVERNMENT OF ZETLAND.--At the period supposed, the Earls of Morton
held the islands of Orkney and Zetland, originally granted in 1643,
confirmed in 1707, and rendered absolute in 1742. This gave the family
much property and influence, which they usually exercised by factors,
named chamberlains. In 1766 this property was sold by the then Earl of
Morton to Sir Lawrence Dundas, by whose son, Lord Dundas, it is now
held.