The Antiquary - Volume II

Chapter 10

Subscribe for ad free access & additional features for teachers. Authors: 267, Books: 3,607, Poems & Short Stories: 4,435, Forum Members: 71,154, Forum Posts: 1,238,602, Quizzes: 344

Tell me not of it, friend--when the young weep,

Their tears are luke-warm brine;--from your old eyes

Sorrow falls down like hail-drops of the North,

Chilling the furrows of our withered cheeks,

Cold as our hopes, and hardened as our feeling--

Theirs, as they fall, sink sightless--ours recoil,

Heap the fair plain, and bleaken all before us.

Old Play.

The Antiquary, being now alone, hastened his pace, which had been

retarded by these various discussions, and the rencontre which had closed

them, and soon arrived before the half-dozen cottages at Mussel-crag.

They had now, in addition to their usual squalid and uncomfortable

appearance, the melancholy attributes of the house of mourning. The boats

were all drawn up on the beach; and, though the day was fine, and the

season favourable, the chant, which is used by the fishers when at sea,

was silent, as well as the prattle of the children, and the shrill song

of the mother, as she sits mending her nets by the door. A few of the

neighbours, some in their antique and well-saved suits of black, others

in their ordinary clothes, but all bearing an expression of mournful

sympathy with distress so sudden and unexpected, stood gathered around

the door of Mucklebackit's cottage, waiting till "the body was lifted."

As the Laird of Monkbarns approached, they made way for him to enter,

doffing their hats and bonnets as he passed, with an air of melancholy

courtesy, and he returned their salutes in the same manner.

In the inside of the cottage was a scene which our Wilkie alone could

have painted, with that exquisite feeling of nature that characterises

his enchanting productions,

The body was laid in its coffin within the wooden bedstead which the

young fisher had occupied while alive. At a little distance stood the

father, whose ragged weather-beaten countenance, shaded by his grizzled

hair, had faced many a stormy night and night-like day. He was apparently

revolving his loss in his mind, with that strong feeling of painful grief

peculiar to harsh and rough characters, which almost breaks forth into

hatred against the world, and all that remain in it, after the beloved

object is withdrawn. The old man had made the most desperate efforts to

save his son, and had only been withheld by main force from renewing them

at a moment when, without the possibility of assisting the sufferer, he

must himself have perished. All this apparently was boiling in his

recollection. His glance was directed sidelong towards the coffin, as to

an object on which he could not stedfastly look, and yet from which he

could not withdraw his eyes. His answers to the necessary questions which

were occasionally put to him, were brief, harsh, and almost fierce. His

family had not yet dared to address to him a word, either of sympathy or

consolation. His masculine wife, virago as she was, and absolute mistress

of the family, as she justly boasted herself, on all ordinary occasions,

was, by this great loss, terrified into silence and submission, and

compelled to hide from her husband's observation the bursts of her female

sorrow. As he had rejected food ever since the disaster had happened, not

daring herself to approach him, she had that morning, with affectionate

artifice, employed the youngest and favourite child to present her

husband with some nourishment. His first action was to put it from him

with an angry violence that frightened the child; his next, to snatch up

the boy and devour him with kisses. "Yell be a bra' fallow, an ye be

spared, Patie,--but ye'll never--never can be--what he was to me!--He has

sailed the coble wi' me since he was ten years auld, and there wasna the

like o' him drew a net betwixt this and Buchan-ness.--They say folks maun

submit--I will try."

And he had been silent from that moment until compelled to answer the

necessary questions we have already noticed. Such was the disconsolate

state of the father.

In another corner of the cottage, her face covered by her apron, which

was flung over it, sat the mother--the nature of her grief sufficiently

indicated by the wringing of her hands, and the convulsive agitation of

the bosom, which the covering could not conceal. Two of her gossips,

officiously whispering into her ear the commonplace topic of resignation

under irremediable misfortune, seemed as if they were endeavouring to

stun the grief which they could not console.

The sorrow of the children was mingled with wonder at the preparations

they beheld around them, and at the unusual display of wheaten bread and

wine, which the poorest peasant, or fisher, offers to the guests on these

mournful occasions; and thus their grief for their brother's death was

almost already lost in admiration of the splendour of his funeral.

But the figure of the old grandmother was the most remarkable of the

sorrowing group. Seated on her accustomed chair, with her usual air of

apathy, and want of interest in what surrounded her, she seemed every now

and then mechanically to resume the motion of twirling her spindle; then

to look towards her bosom for the distaff, although both had been laid

aside. She would then cast her eyes about, as if surprised at missing the

usual implements of her industry, and appear struck by the black colour

of the gown in which they had dressed her, and embarrassed by the number

of persons by whom she was surrounded. Then, finally, she would raise her

head with a ghastly look, and fix her eyes upon the bed which contained

the coffin of her grandson, as if she had at once, and for the first

time, acquired sense to comprehend her inexpressible calamity. These

alternate feelings of embarrassment, wonder, and grief, seemed to succeed

each other more than once upon her torpid features. But she spoke not a

word--neither had she shed a tear--nor did one of the family understand,

either from look or expression, to what extent she comprehended the

uncommon bustle around her. Thus she sat among the funeral assembly like

a connecting link between the surviving mourners and the dead corpse

which they bewailed--a being in whom the light of existence was already

obscured by the encroaching shadows of death.

When Oldbuck entered this house of mourning, he was received by a general

and silent inclination of the head, and, according to the fashion of

Scotland on such occasions, wine and spirits and bread were offered round

to the guests. Elspeth, as these refreshments were presented, surprised

and startled the whole company by motioning to the person who bore them

to stop; then, taking a glass in her hand, she rose up, and, as the smile

of dotage played upon her shrivelled features, she pronounced, with a

hollow and tremulous voice, "Wishing a' your healths, sirs, and often may

we hae such merry meetings!"

All shrunk from the ominous pledge, and set down the untasted liquor with

a degree of shuddering horror, which will not surprise those who know how

many superstitions are still common on such occasions among the Scottish

vulgar. But as the old woman tasted the liquor, she suddenly exclaimed

with a sort of shriek, "What's this?--this is wine--how should there be

wine in my son's house?--Ay," she continued with a suppressed groan, "I

mind the sorrowful cause now," and, dropping the glass from her hand, she

stood a moment gazing fixedly on the bed in which the coffin of her

grandson was deposited, and then sinking gradually into her seat, she

covered her eyes and forehead with her withered and pallid hand.

At this moment the clergyman entered the cottage. Mr. Blattergowl, though

a dreadful proser, particularly on the subject of augmentations,

localities, teinds, and overtures in that session of the General

Assembly, to which, unfortunately for his auditors, he chanced one year

to act as moderator, was nevertheless a good man, in the old Scottish

presbyterian phrase, God-ward and man-ward. No divine was more attentive

in visiting the sick and afflicted, in catechising the youth, in

instructing the ignorant, and in reproving the erring. And hence,

notwithstanding impatience of his prolixity and prejudices, personal or

professional, and notwithstanding, moreover, a certain habitual contempt

for his understanding, especially on affairs of genius and taste, on

which Blattergowl was apt to be diffuse, from his hope of one day

fighting his way to a chair of rhetoric or belles lettres,--

notwithstanding, I say, all the prejudices excited against him by these

circumstances, our friend the Antiquary looked with great regard and

respect on the said Blattergowl, though I own he could seldom, even by

his sense of decency and the remonstrances of his womankind, be _hounded

out,_ as he called it, to hear him preach. But he regularly took shame to

himself for his absence when Blattergowl came to Monkbarns to dinner, to

which he was always invited of a Sunday, a mode of testifying his respect

which the proprietor probably thought fully as agreeable to the

clergyman, and rather more congenial to his own habits.

To return from a digression which can only serve to introduce the honest

clergyman more particularly to our readers, Mr. Blattergowl had no sooner

entered the hut, and received the mute and melancholy salutations of the

company whom it contained, than he edged himself towards the unfortunate

father, and seemed to endeavour to slide in a few words of condolence or

of consolation. But the old man was incapable as yet of receiving either;

he nodded, however, gruffly, and shook the clergyman's hand in

acknowledgment of his good intentions, but was either unable or unwilling

to make any verbal reply.

The minister next passed to the mother, moving along the floor as slowly,

silently, and gradually, as if he had been afraid that the ground would,

like unsafe ice, break beneath his feet, or that the first echo of a

footstep was to dissolve some magic spell, and plunge the hut, with all

its inmates, into a subterranean abyss. The tenor of what he had said to

the poor woman could only be judged by her answers, as, half-stifled by

sobs ill-repressed, and by the covering which she still kept over her

countenance, she faintly answered at each pause in his speech--"Yes, sir,

yes!--Ye're very gude--ye're very gude!--Nae doubt, nae doubt!--It's our

duty to submit!--But, oh dear! my poor Steenie! the pride o' my very

heart, that was sae handsome and comely, and a help to his family, and a

comfort to us a', and a pleasure to a' that lookit on him!--Oh, my bairn!

my bairn! my bairn! what for is thou lying there!--and eh! what for am I

left to greet for ye!"

There was no contending with this burst of sorrow and natural affection.

Oldbuck had repeated recourse to his snuff-box to conceal the tears

which, despite his shrewd and caustic temper, were apt to start on such

occasions. The female assistants whimpered, the men held their bonnets to

their faces, and spoke apart with each other. The clergyman, meantime,

addressed his ghostly consolation to the aged grandmother. At first she

listened, or seemed to listen, to what he said, with the apathy of her

usual unconsciousness. But as, in pressing this theme, he approached so

near to her ear that the sense of his words became distinctly

intelligible to her, though unheard by those who stood more distant, her

countenance at once assumed that stern and expressive cast which

characterized her intervals of intelligence. She drew up her head and

body, shook her head in a manner that showed at least impatience, if not

scorn of his counsel, and waved her hand slightly, but with a gesture so

expressive, as to indicate to all who witnessed it a marked and

disdainful rejection of the ghostly consolation proffered to her. The

minister stepped back as if repulsed, and, by lifting gently and dropping

his hand, seemed to show at once wonder, sorrow, and compassion for her

dreadful state of mind. The rest of the company sympathized, and a

stifled whisper went through them, indicating how much her desperate and

determined manner impressed them with awe, and even horror.

In the meantime, the funeral company was completed, by the arrival of one

or two persons who had been expected from Fairport. The wine and spirits

again circulated, and the dumb show of greeting was anew interchanged.

The grandame a second time took a glass in her hand, drank its contents,

and exclaimed, with a sort of laugh,--"Ha! ha! I hae tasted wine twice in

ae day--Whan did I that before, think ye, cummers?--Never since"--and the

transient glow vanishing from her countenance, she set the glass down,

and sunk upon the settle from whence she had risen to snatch at it.

As the general amazement subsided, Mr. Oldbuck, whose heart bled to

witness what he considered as the errings of the enfeebled intellect

struggling with the torpid chill of age and of sorrow, observed to the

clergyman that it was time to proceed with the ceremony. The father was

incapable of giving directions, but the nearest relation of the family

made a sign to the carpenter, who in such cases goes through the duty of

the undertaker, to proceed in his office. The creak of the screw-nails

presently announced that the lid of the last mansion of mortality was in

the act of being secured above its tenant. The last act which separates

us for ever, even from the mortal relies of the person we assemble to

mourn, has usually its effect upon the most indifferent, selfish, and

hard-hearted. With a spirit of contradiction, which we may be pardoned

for esteeming narrow-minded, the fathers of the Scottish kirk rejected,

even on this most solemn occasion, the form of an address to the

Divinity, lest they should be thought to give countenance to the rituals

of Rome or of England. With much better and more liberal judgment, it is

the present practice of most of the Scottish clergymen to seize this

opportunity of offering a prayer, and exhortation, suitable to make an

impression upon the living, while they are yet in the very presence of

the relics of him whom they have but lately seen such as they themselves,

and who now is such as they must in their time become. But this decent

and praiseworthy practice was not adopted at the time of which I am

treating, or at least, Mr. Blattergowl did not act upon it, and the

ceremony proceeded without any devotional exercise.

The coffin, covered with a pall, and supported upon hand-spikes by the

nearest relatives, now only waited the father to support the head, as is

customary. Two or three of these privileged persons spoke to him, but he

only answered by shaking his hand and his head in token of refusal. With

better intention than judgment, the friends, who considered this as an

act of duty on the part of the living, and of decency towards the

deceased, would have proceeded to enforce their request, had not Oldbuck

interfered between the distressed father and his well-meaning tormentors,

and informed them, that he himself, as landlord and master to the

deceased, "would carry his head to the grave." In spite of the sorrowful

occasion, the hearts of the relatives swelled within them at so marked a

distinction on the part of the laird; and old Alison Breck, who was

present among other fish-women, swore almost aloud, "His honour Monkbarns

should never want sax warp of oysters in the season" (of which fish he

was understood to be fond), "if she should gang to sea and dredge for

them hersell, in the foulest wind that ever blew." And such is the temper

of the Scottish common people, that, by this instance of compliance with

their customs, and respect for their persons, Mr. Oldbuck gained more

popularity than by all the sums which he had yearly distributed in the

parish for purposes of private or general charity.

The sad procession now moved slowly forward, preceded by the beadles, or

saulies, with their batons,--miserable-looking old men, tottering as if

on the edge of that grave to which they were marshalling another, and

clad, according to Scottish guise, with threadbare black coats, and

hunting-caps decorated with rusty crape. Monkbarns would probably have

remonstrated against this superfluous expense, had he been consulted;

but, in doing so, he would have given more offence than he gained

popularity by condescending to perform the office of chief-mourner. Of

this he was quite aware, and wisely withheld rebuke, where rebuke and

advice would have been equally unavailing. In truth, the Scottish

peasantry are still infected with that rage for funeral ceremonial, which

once distinguished the grandees of the kingdom so much, that a sumptuary

law was made by the Parliament of Scotland for the purpose of restraining

it; and I have known many in the lowest stations, who have denied

themselves not merely the comforts, but almost the necessaries of life,

in order to save such a sum of money as might enable their surviving

friends to bury them like Christians, as they termed it; nor could their

faithful executors be prevailed upon, though equally necessitous, to turn

to the use and maintenance of the living the money vainly wasted upon the

interment of the dead.

The procession to the churchyard, at about half-a-mile's distance, was

made with the mournful solemnity usual on these occasions,--the body was

consigned to its parent earth,--and when the labour of the gravediggers

had filled up the trench, and covered it with fresh sod, Mr. Oldbuck,

taking his hat off, saluted the assistants, who had stood by in

melancholy silence, and with that adieu dispersed the mourners.

The clergyman offered our Antiquary his company to walk homeward; but Mr.

Oldbuck had been so much struck with the deportment of the fisherman and

his mother, that, moved by compassion, and perhaps also, in some degree,

by that curiosity which induces us to seek out even what gives us pain to

witness, he preferred a solitary walk by the coast, for the purpose of

again visiting the cottage as he passed.

In the 1600s, Balthasar Gracian, a jesuit priest wrote 300 aphorisms on living life called "The Art of Worldly Wisdom." Join our newsletter below and read them all, one at a time.